“I guess I could,” Grace said.
“I have Glen Harriman’s body—what I can piece together of it. Could you take him home or do I just ship him?”
“I’ll take Glen back to his wife.”
Wilson’s new 4x4 served well as a hearse, but the stop was more than just a good deed. Little London was mad. When Grace brought their mayor’s casket to his widow, she walked into an impassioned argument over which street poles to hang the captured mercs from. That they would hang was already settled. Ben reddened and was opening his mouth when Grace stepped in.
“Did any of these mercs kill anyone?”
“Well, no.”
“Have any of the mercs done anything since they arrived in Little London that made you want to kill them?”
“No, but—”
“No buts. Glen led you. He kept this place safe and the mercs decent to you. The son of a bitch who killed him is back there in Allabad, not here. What kind of songs do you think they’ll sing about the Maid in the Mist if we string them up?”
“But what do we do with them? There’s a story going round that the mercs are pulling out and those Black and Reds will take over Little London. We can’t hold the mercs here.”
“Send them to Falkirk. We’ll keep them locked up tight.”
So Ben drove a small van north with ten prisoners, and Grace made a quick detour to Lothran to collect ten more. She was back at Falkirk and eating breakfast after her first good night’s sleep in a week when Chato and Jobe knocked on her door.
“Have you heard the latest news?” Jobe asked.
“I was enjoying a quiet cup of coffee and figuring how to pay my taxes,” Grace said, pointing at her ’puter and its sad proof that owning a mine conferred no income unless it was worked.
Chato turned on the kitchen vid as Jobe poured coffee. A familiar business reporter was talking to Robert Carey, eldest son and scion of one of the first families to settle on Alkalurops. “I had my tax money in hand,” he said, waving cash. “But as the tax collector pulled up, another guy jogged up and made an offer to buy my family’s home, mines, ranch—everything. It was a good offer, but I can’t sell out my family. This land is ours. So as he’s leaving, he gives his offer to the tax man, and that’s the bill I get. Not what my inheritance was taxed at but this new price, ten times higher. I can’t pay that.”
“So what now?” the reporter asked.
“I have twenty-four hours to come up with the money or get off the land. But I can’t sell! Not with a thirty percent sales tax! I couldn’t raise the money even if I tried.”
“So you’ll be moving?”
“Over my dead body,” Robert said, glaring at the camera.
“So there you have it from Robert Carey’s own mouth. And he’s not alone in facing this—not at all,” the camera panned down the mansions of Landers Row, where the wealthy families of Alkalurops kept their town residences. “Every owner here can tell you the same story. One did agree to sell,” the reporter said. “But the offer was withdrawn and passed to the tax collector anyway. This is Clyde Hinman. I’ll be here tomorrow morning, live, when the twenty-four hours expire.”
“That was a rerun of yesterday’s story,” Chato said.
“What happens this morning?” Grace asked.
“You’d have to be on Landers Row to know. Seems the reporter didn’t show for work this morning. He shot himself last night. Suicide, the Special Police reported.”
“What does the coroner’s office say?”
“Body was sent for cremation immediately. Seems the Special Police can do that,” Jobe said.
Grace went to the sink and slowly washed her coffee cup—a ritual her father did many times as he thought about things that needed hard thinking. “Santorini doesn’t just want LCI to move its headquarters here. He wants to own most of the planet when LCI arrives,” she said slowly.
“The better to profit from the sales of land to LCI’s boss men and hangers-on,” Jobe said. “Isn’t that how a lot of old wealthy got started?”
“I’ll remind you, Jobe, Irish and Scots had plenty of experience on the receiving end—and with Black and Tans, who seem to be wearing Black and Red hereabout.”
Chato eyed the vid. “How far will Santorini’s grasp reach—both in places like Allabad and out to places like Falkirk?”
“If we worry only about our own backyard,” Grace said, “there will be few to help us when the Black and Reds knock on our door. If we’re going to do something, we need to do it together.” Grace put down her coffee cup. “Let’s get Ben and the mercs.”
Ben was deep in calisthenics, leading both his mercs and the militia who would be fighting with them. That included a young woman from Kilkenny who had taken over Pirate since she’d had more time to practice than Grace.
Grace waited until Ben came out of his exercise-induced trance. He and the other six quickly joined the three mayors, other MOD warriors keeping a respectful distance but not leaving, either. Grace filled them in on the extortion under way and the cost to the reporter who covered it.
“What are the networks saying about this?” Ben asked.
“Most have switched to old romance vids, no guns.”
“Smart cookies, didn’t need that message twice,” Syn said.
“Are the Roughriders in on this?” Grace asked.
“No,” Ben said with finality. “That is why Santorini moved them out of the major towns. No, he is rooting his tyranny where the money is. The Roughriders will be detailed to keep people like us from molesting Santorini’s own while they fleece the sheep. I do not remember the last time a merc ended up with this mission. It is not something we like to think about.”
“So what do we do now?” Grace asked.
Ben turned to his warriors. “We train harder. Now we know the face of our enemy. We know the evil he nurtures in his heart. We know why we must fight. And when we fight, we must win.”
The students left quickly, quietly, with purpose in their steps and anger stiffening their backs. Good, Grace thought. You’re going to need all that, and a hell of a lot of skill if you’re to survive a battle with the Roughriders and live to fight our real enemy, the Black and Reds.
“Any word from Betsy?” Grace whispered.
“You will be the first to know when there is,” Ben said.
“I’d sure like to know what Santorini’s up to,” Grace said.
“You think he knows what he’s doing?” Syn said, laughing and shrugging her shoulders. How she kept her boobs inside that low-cut bodysuit was a clear violation of the law of gravity.
“You don’t think he knows?” Grace said.
“Probably can’t tell from minute to minute,” Syn said, walking off. “Maybe I could help him make up his mind.”
“I would not let that woman help any man make up his mind unless I knew how her mind was set,” Grace said, eyes following Syn. Then she turned to Ben. “I want to talk to Hanson. He needs to make up his mind. Maybe, if we talk, we can settle part of this mess before it goes horribly bad.”
“Grace, that is the miner in you talking. You look to the bottom line of your profit and loss and think you can agree to most anything that is mutually profitable.”
“It’s always worked before.”
“But now you are talking to a Roughrider under contract. His primary concern has little to do with profit and everything to do with honorably fulfilling that contract.”
“How do you honorably fulfill a contract to a tyrant?”
“That is a problem I imagine Hanson is sweating out right about now,” Ben said with a thin smile.
L. J. hated sitting in tribunals. If a merc broke the law, terminate his contract and let the local police handle the rest. But today he sat in a tribunal with his XO fidgeting uncomfortably, and Mallary’s face a mask. The prisoner was a mess: both eyes were blackened, a broken nose had been taped by the surgeon, and his arms above the handcuffs showed the yellow and blue of further beatings. Two female MPs stood at parade rest at the prisoner’s elbows.