New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

A cold, cutting wind sweeps across a land of snow and ice.  People stand together, looking the same in thick cloaks and furred caps, rallying around a large man.

The People:

Usser!

We are hungry.

We are cold.

We have no homes and war with our neighbors still rages!

Usser:

My brothers and sisters,

All looks grim.

But now is our finest hour.

We are hungry but we will have bread.

We will make it with our cold and pained hands.

We are cold but we will build fires.

Even though we are tired.

We have no homes but we will build them from wood and stone.

We did not ask for war, but we will have peace.

The People:

Usser!

How can you ask us to do these things?

We are too hungry now,

We are too cold now,

We have no homes now,

And the enemy is at the gates.

Usser:

We must do these things.

We have no food and no one will feed us.

We are cold and no one will warm us.

We have no homes and no one will build them.

Except us.

But we do not toil alone.

We toil together.

And with every step I shall be walking with you.

From now until my dying breath.

The people cheer.  The work is hard, and many die of hunger, of cold, of war that they did not want.

But they conquered the hunger with the grain they grew.

They conquered the cold through building homes for all.

They conquered war through peace and solidarity.

Where none would give it to them, they took peace, land, and bread for themselves.

*******

Brooks yawned deeply as he entered his quarters.

He had just returned from the formal event, which had dragged on for another three hours as many there had gotten increasingly drunk.

He’d felt obliged to stay at least as long as Klezul Hoshe.  Qlerning manners made that quite clear.  Once the playwright had left, the guests had continued to celebrate, and probably would go on long into the night.

It had been his chance to escape, though, and during his trip back had written a report on all he’d seen and heard.

Once he’d come back aboard, Jaya had volunteered to continue the watch, for which he’d been grateful.  Her report had indicated that nothing much had occurred, save for a few attempted Glorian drone fly-bys.

“They were quite sedate for the time you were in transit.  I believe they did not want to risk their fly-bys being seen as an attempted attack on your shuttle,” she had told him, to both of their amusement.  No matter how much the Glorians thought themselves better at war, in practice they knew they had to respect the fighting prowess of Union ships.

Changing out of his dress suit, he picked a comfortable outfit for sleeping that was an acceptable suit in case of decompression.  It didn’t matter that his cabin was deep in the ship and the Craton was in safe harbor.  Some habits were immortal.

Perusing his messages, he saw an update from Urle, but it was marked as non-urgent.  He gave it a glance but resolved to answer tomorrow, but as he was about to close out for the night he got a notification of an incoming call, marked as high-level and important.

It was Trevod Waites-Kosson.

Biting back a curse, he turned on just audio.

“Ah, Brooks, excellent,” Trevod said.  “Just the man I need, I did not want to speak to a flunky.”

“What do you want?” Brooks asked, letting just a hint of his testiness slip in.  He was not at the man’s beck and call.

“I hear you were at the party tonight?  I didn’t want to take too much attention off Hoshe, so I did not go myself.  Of course, I can’t say his works interest me much.  Though you caused some stir, I hear, with that old archeologist, hm?”

“If this is a social call then I will have to be going,” Brooks replied flatly.

His cheek did ache slightly where Nadian had punched him, but he’d treated it on the way back so there’d be no bruise.

“No, not really.  But I admit I was entertained by what I heard.”

“All right, well good night, Waites-Kosson.”

“Ah, ah!  I do have something worth talking about.  You’ll be getting the official orders in a few hours, but you’re going to need to be turning over those three criminals you’re sheltering tomorrow.”

Brooks mind raced.  Criminals . . . ?

“You mean the women asking for asylum?  Do you understand what that request means?  You can’t have them.”

“Oh, Captain,” Trevod said, his voice mocking.  “I knew you would say this, but who are they seeking asylum from?  Their employer they claimed was out to get them is dead now – at the hands of one of your officers.  And in their escape – which violated their contracts, I might add – they killed two people.”

“Who are they accused of killing?” Brooks asked carefully.

“Baro Jett and Earl Thompson, two others working for their deceased employer.  They were found with their throats slit in the establishment where they had worked.”

The whorehouse, Brooks knew.  Where they’d been tricked and forced to stay with Baro Jett and Earl Thompson being the muscle that kept them in line.

“Regardless of the present state of the threats to their person – which we feel are still valid – they are also requesting economic asylum.”

“Gohhi does not recognize that claim, Captain,” Trevod snapped back.  “Just because your people think-“

“They are on my ship, and they are not leaving,” Brooks said.

“We do not have a death penalty – so they can have their fair trial here, and protection from whatever imagined threats they can come up with.  This won’t hold up, Brooks.  They committed their crimes on Gohhi – and that is truly the crux of the matter.”

Brooks’s heart was pounding now.  The man was turning these women into unwilling bartering chips, it was obvious.

“I’ve already spoken to some of the other major families, Captain.  We’re prepared to push on this – it’s a case that matters.  There’s a lot of concern that this might catch on and we’d have a flood of unhappy employees trying to murder their way out and then claim refuge on visiting Sapient Union ships.  This Daze fellow was an independent entrepreneur, but we all have investments in the sex entertainment field.  We stand to lose a lot of product.”

“You piece of shit,” Brooks snapped, his temper finally breaking.  He’d spent too much time around these selfish, vile people and this was finally the last straw.  “These are people, not products!”

“You don’t need to get so annoyed, Captain.  I’m doing you a favor here, letting you know about this ahead of time.  I am but the messenger, the official documentation will be brought by the lawyers later.”

Brooks had fought down his anger, but he counted it as a blessing that the man was not actually present.  The temptation to take rash action might be too strong . . .

“Well, anyway, Captain, I hope to hear back from you soon, I’m sure that between the two of us we can come to some sort of deal that-“

Brooks terminated the call.

It seemed that sleep was going to have to wait.

---

< Ep 8 Part 34 | Ep 8 Part 36 >