Gunboat Diplomacy by Jason Cordova & Jamie Ibson

Author:Jason Cordova & Jamie Ibson [Cordova, Jason & Ibson, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seventh Seal Press
Published: 2019-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Well, that was appalling, Hr’ent thought as the shuttle blasted off from Merarch for the last time.

Seven continents. Seven Pushtal languages.

Seven samples of starvation-level poverty and crime-ridden cities full of little more than villains and victims. Empty homes, empty houses, and little more than squalor left behind. The cities were holes where dreams died. A week was all he could tolerate in those ruined jungles of plascrete and rubble. He had no idea how the Pushtal managed—and then he thought of the twitching one in the park, of Roxtador’s drug-fueled subterranean parties, and realized some of them didn’t. They walled off their past with drugs and vice, lived for the day, and little else.

The happiest, healthiest areas he visited were probably Clan Grotha’s tiny rural villages. They were small enough there was enough work to be found in pre-industrial subsistence farming and industries directly related to it. At least they saw the fruits of their labor and had a purpose, even if it was a simple, rugged life. That said, everywhere he went, the word was the same. The MinSha had grossly mismanaged the cities and demolished their industries.

The weight of his mission pressed as surely on his shoulders as the G-forces did as the shuttle left Merarch with a full tank of fuel, boosting for the station above it once again. If he was going to make a real dent in Pushtal piracy long term, he had to identify why they’d turned to piracy in the first place. Hr’ent was convinced escaping the hell that was Vorrhurna was reason number one. When the MinSha had assumed control of the planet, if they were genuinely interested in profits, they should have been doing everything they could to maximize productivity. Instead, they’d left nothing but ruin and death in their wake. He hadn’t been exaggerating before in Oron’Khaira Hive City when Drake and Rylak had pushed back against his investigation. Genocide was the systematic, deliberate, ongoing killing of a particular people or race, and that’s exactly what the MinSha had been doing. He just needed hard data to support his conclusions. Then, of course, he had to figure out what to do about it.

Meekos brought the craft cleanly into orbit, and a few hours later they docked with the Blythe again. The shop was done repairing the corvette, and Drake’s earlier contact, Tzztch, accepted a small bump in her bank account balance in exchange for one of the small internal pressurized cargo bays. Her office was one of their first stops.

“If I wanted census data, where would I start?” Drake asked. He was pretending to be in charge again, and Hr’ent was pretending to be his new muscle. After the week they’d just had, it was a jarring shift.

“Resource management office,” Tzztch replied. “Talk to my cousin Jadazz in the Information Guild offices on Deck Six. If she can’t get you what you need, she’ll know who can. I thought you were hunting pirates, Drake, why would you want census data?”

“I thought you liked getting credits for information, Tzztch,” Rylak growled.

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