TASIA TAMBLYN
Tasia Tamblyn had never seen such an uproar among the clans—and Roamers were not known for their calm, sedate discussions. Even though she had caused the outcry herself, she did not feel guilty about it, not a whit. She stood in the convocation chamber next to Robb, Orli, and DD, waiting for the noise to die down.
No, she thought, she hadn’t caused this outrage—Lee Iswander had brought it upon himself, by placing ruthlessness above genius.
After making her accusations and listening to the growing reactions in the chamber, Tasia saw the look of speechless astonishment on Iswander’s face. He seemed completely taken aback that he’d been caught. Such arrogance! With an operation of that size dumping so much stardrive fuel on the market, it was as if he had never imagined that his harsh activities might be exposed! The destruction of the Duquesne operation and Elisa Enturi trying to destroy the Voracious Curiosity just because they had wandered into the wrong area—did he really think no one would ever notice?
“This is … not possible,” Iswander said.
Fuming, Tasia gestured to Robb. “Not possible?”
He held up a transfer datapack. “Speaker Ricks, can I play this on your wallscreen? A picture is worth a thousand accusations.”
“And proof against a thousand denials,” Tasia added.
“By all means!” Ricks actually sounded cheery. “This is a convocation hall. We have a full projection system.”
Iswander looked out of place among the Roamers in his business suit, and now he glanced from side to side, pale and astonished. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “This can’t be possible,” he said again, as if trying to convince himself.
For a moment—just a moment—Tasia wondered if he really wasn’t aware of what his own people were doing. Then she dismissed the idea.
DD presented the datapack to the Speaker, who installed it in the projection system in his podium. Ricks smiled as he waited for the files to be loaded.
As the images appeared, Orli explained to the group, “I encountered one of Iswander’s extraction fields, and I received medical attention there. Garrison Reeves was also with me.” She looked around at the Roamers. “Some of you may know him.”
Ricks fiddled with the controls, trying to find the proper files. DD assisted him.
“We know clan Reeves,” someone called back.
“And he’s the one still alive,” Orli said. “At the time, we didn’t know what the ekti operations were. I was sick, on the edge of death, and Garrison just wanted to take his son away to safety.”
“What operations?” someone else shouted. Tasia recognized the matriarch of clan Beauvais, who operated two traditional skymines. By the expression on her face, she was out for blood.
Iswander seemed dazed, but a flare of indignation went through his voice. “The method of harvesting ekti-X is my proprietary development, but I didn’t kill anyone. I destroyed no other competition. This is absurd!”
In blatant contradiction, damning images were projected in the convocation chamber: the wreckage of Duquesne ships with clan markings prominent on the shattered hulls. Everyone could see that a disaster had occurred there. Next, DD played the log clip of Aaron Duquesne shouting angrily at Elisa Enturi, before she set off the massive cascade of bloater explosions.
The Roamers in the audience were appalled and outraged. Tasia looked at Lee Iswander, trying to gauge his guilt, and she was surprised to see that he looked thunderstruck. Something wasn’t right.
She faced those gathered in the chamber. “You all know me as the daughter of clan Tamblyn and also as the acting administrator of Kett Shipping, along with my husband. Even though we distributed a lot of ekti-X, Iswander Industries never revealed the source even to us—but as a shipping company, we don’t like distributing commodities if we have no idea where they come from. So we placed a tracker on his representative’s ship and we followed the flight path to the site of the Duquesne massacre and to Iswander’s main operations.”
Next, she played their images of the much larger extraction yards, the industrial equipment, the administrative and habitation complex, the tankers, the pumping ships, the bloater cluster, the ekti-X arrays, and all of the drained husks. “This is where Iswander gets his stardrive fuel. Ekti-X comes from those nodules. Bloaters.”
Tasia didn’t care that she was blowing the operations wide open. The disruption in stardrive fuel distribution would harm Kett Shipping’s bottom line, but it would harm the company even more to keep doing business with the murderous industrialist.
“By the Guiding Star, I’ve seen those things out in empty space!” said one of the Roamers. “Never knew what they were, but they’re cropping up like weeds.”
“They’re filled with raw ekti-X,” Orli said.
Tasia added, “Now watch what happens when the Iswander employees realize that we’ve discovered their operations.”
Security ships flew out, threatening them, led by Elisa Enturi. Even when Robb obviously tried to surrender, Elisa opened fire on them with the clear intent of destroying their ship. Roamers in the chamber gasped and grumbled. “We barely escaped with our lives. Good thing Robb and I have combat flying experience.”
“I never gave those orders,” Iswander said. “I never wanted…”
Sam Ricks was grinning. “We’ll see about that. You’ve been criticized before, Mr. Iswander. Roamer clans share advances and technologies. But you would kill to protect your business operations…” Ricks spat out the rest as if it were the foulest insult he could imagine. “You are worse than Chairman Wenceslas.”
“Who’s going to make reparations to clan Duquesne?” called one of the clan leaders. “How many people were killed?”
“We never should’ve turned from traditional skymining. Look at the cost of that ekti-X,” said the Beauvais clan leader.
Other Roamers had more practical questions. “So … that’s all there is to it? Find those bloaters and drain them dry? Fill tank after tank with ekti-X? No wonder Iswander’s been producing so much fuel.”
The audience buzzed with excitement, inflamed with the possibilities, much more concerned with the easy wealth than about the shocking crimes.
“But I never gave Elisa those instructions!” Iswander wrestled with either taking responsibility or throwing his employee to the wolves. He seemed so stunned and shaken that Tasia actually believed him, but not to the extent that she felt sorry for him.
“There was a large concentration of bloaters drifting toward Ikbir,” Orli pointed out. “Someone might want to set up extraction operations there.”
Robb shrugged. “Or find other clusters. Nobody’s really bothered to look before.”
Tasia said, “Kett Shipping makes this offer to anybody here because I am still a Roamer at heart. Our distribution ties with Iswander Industries are severed—we figure that getting shot at by your trading partner does not indicate a good business relationship. We refuse to distribute their ekti-X any longer, so we’ll have plenty of ships to take the ekti-X that any other clan produces. Robb and I would be happy to discuss terms.”
“The bloaters are just there for the taking,” Orli said. “And I could feel…”
Two clan leaders slipped out of the convocation chamber, maybe to deal with other business, but Tasia suspected they were eager to beat the rush in the search for other bloater clusters.
For generations, Roamers had produced ekti from huge skymines on gas giants, and now the traditional skyminers looked more dismayed than ever. Since the Roamer clans understood how quickly and easily stardrive fuel could be extracted from the ubiquitous bloaters, there would be a veritable “ekti rush.”
Kett Shipping would take advantage of that.
Prices would drop substantially, but the need would remain high. With efficient extraction and distribution, the Roamer clans would have plenty of ways to make money.
But Lee Iswander would be a pariah—that much was obvious.
“You can’t do this to me,” he said. “I pulled myself up after a disaster, discovered ekti-X, rebuilt my business.…”
“You should have stayed on Sheol,” grumbled Sam Ricks. “Made the final count fifteen forty-four.”
Lee Iswander made his way to an empty seat where he collapsed.
“As Speaker for the clans, I will submit this matter to the Confederation legal system.” Ricks kept grinning foolishly as if he had just won an unexpected lottery. “Or would you prefer that we finish our business here first, Mr. Iswander? I believe you were calling a motion among the clans? A no-confidence vote?”
A large number of audience members had already left the chamber. There would likely be a long line of people waiting to use the services of Newstation’s contract green priests, while others would simply fly away, rushing out to track down bloater concentrations so they could begin their work.
Clan Duquesne had set up their operations on a shoestring and apparently they had begun delivering ekti-X within weeks. Soon, all the clans would be draining bloaters dry wherever they found them in open space. Even without Ulio Station, the loss of which still stunned Tasia, there would be more stardrive fuel than had ever been available before.
With the looming possibility of war with the Shana Rei, the Confederation Defense Forces and the Ildiran Solar Navy would need a great supply. With fuel so cheap, she suspected there would also be a resurgence of prospectors and explorers, sniffing out new territory, mapping new worlds, new resources.
Robb leaned closer to her. “You know we’ve just changed the whole Confederation.”
“For the better, I hope.”
The possibilities seemed endless. The bloaters appeared to be an inexhaustible resource.
As the convocation chamber emptied, Iswander sat slumped, his shoulders fallen. He ran his hands through his hair and looked stunned; Tasia almost sympathized with him.
But she had only to recall Elisa Enturi charging after them and opening fire on the Curiosity, and also the massacre of the Duquesne site. The sympathy faded quickly.