Comms Update _ October and Racism in the future.

Sorry, it's been a while since the ship broke a system boundary, so no data loads for some while.

So, Progress has been slow, but it is there. Sharren is still alive, and she is about to meet some new folks. One of the tones i have had to deal with recently is racism. Tough subject, and one only approached from a side ways angle in the book. Still, i thought i would put down a little about what is happening in the story world in terms of racism, and how it is expressed.

First off, I need to note that bigotry and prejudice are actually more important terms, as they are the real factors at work here.   Earth it self is a pretty nice place to live and work, and "race" as we know it is not a major concern in most humans daily lives. With travel being fast and cheap, the work force being highly mobile, and industry being largely off-planet, people of all colors and origins interact frequently, and end up working on the same space side facilities.

Also, the wars of the story's past were costly, and left Africa and South America in very strong political/social positions at the beginning of the new age. Religion is not in fashion, so many former cultural problems have migrated to a new form of elitism, and good old fashioned classism.

This closeness, and the reduction of language and religious barriers has largely eliminated color based bigotry.

Classism is quite simple. Earth folk tend to view new colonies much like 18th century Britain viewed Australia, as a penal colony. They look at deportees with a mix of pity and distaste, and are likely to lump such folks all together into one heap, the heap of poor criminals. Earthers also tend to assume that folks from any other planet are poor, at best. One of the more commonly held negative beliefs in this setting is that the chaff falls to the bottom, and it's a good thing we can use them on the colonies, because they have no place here. Levels of classist behavior of course vary from one individual to the next.

Elitism is a different, but related problem. the most common forms are the earth first attitude held by many earthers. This is a simple belief that earth is just better, and that any one, from nay where must recognized this fact.

The most culturally shared bigotry, however, is anti-posthumanism. There are a large number of people, especially on the more religious colonies, who hate post humans. they argue that giving up, or deeply modifying your body is some kind of unforgivable sin. This applies equally to Chimeras, bio-moded people, and cyborgs. Thus, most biggies, greyhounds, goblins have had some kind of negative or strongly negative experience growing up.

the Character Keeva in Avi's stories is a good example, as her father was run out of office and black balled because of marrying her mother, a Greyhound class chimera. The simple act of marring a fully human looking person, but one that was a gene-mod from a war that happened before h was born, ruined a man's life.

One would hope that bigotry might have ended, but like all things, it merely changed.

Comms Update - Pirates

So, what do interstellar pirates do? Why would they go to the rather hefty expense of acquiring a ship, and maintaining it, just to thieve and extort?

Well, they don't do it to steal space ships. Once away from a planet, it can be rather difficult to catch a star ship. Space is pretty big, and it is relatively easy to see some one coming and run away. Add to that the dangers of ship to ship combat, and space-born piracy is both difficult and unlikely to be profitable.

Most pirates make their living stealing essentials like food and water from newer colonies, or selling black market equipment to established but under-supported colonies. It generally depends on how desperate they are.

A lot of pirates start out as legitimate business folk such as miners, long-haul traders, or floating hospitals. When these businesses inevitably fail, the crews sometimes get desperate. food, water, and the desire to be free are strong motivators. Desperate folks do desperate things when survival is on the line. Some just establish themselves as colonists, using the resourse thier ship provides as leverage to join a new colony. Others take what they need and leave, often by force or extortion.

The violent ones usually target very new colonies, and steal food, raw ore, and people. Yes, sadly there is a market for people out there. The less violent act as illegal traders and "defenders", extorting protection money from the local population. either way, pirates tend to be underfunded, and often stay away from any place they know to be defended. A real military or militia can often drive them away with ease.

As the UNCN garrisons more and more fledgling colonies, the pirate element grows more and more desperate,

Comms Load 22- Death of a cyborg

This is the end of Sharren's first scene, redone please let me know what you think!

---

Henderson saw it burst out of the back door. It was huge, and fast, and carrying a big gun. He was ready for it. He led the target a few feet and fired a grenade at it. All his time at the range paid off, he scored a direct hit, rocking the beast on it's heels and sending a shower of glowing shrapnel washing over it.

It turned towards him and leveled it’s rifle, but nothing happened. He fired again, but the beast side stepped, shrapnel harmlessly skittering over it’s armor. It dropped it’s rifle, and drew a hand cannon the like of which he had never seen.

The cyborg sprinted towards him, jinking left and right, firing at him with that massive gun. The first hit caught him in the shoulder, and he spun, losing his balance. He tried to recover a shooting position, but several more rounds slammed into his armor. Warnings were flashing in his visor. The only thing keeping him alive was that no two rounds hit him in the same place as the heavy rounds made him dance like marionette.

the hail of bullets let up, and He dropped to one knee, finally able to level his gun, but it was too late. It had closed the gap.

---

Sharren ripped the gun from the marines hands, and pressed her own weapon into his face with her left.  The smooth white face of his helmet reminded her of self.  As she squeezed the trigger,  time slowed to a crawl.

Warnings screamed in her HUD. One of the other marines saw her, and her peripheral sensors warned her he was firing. The grenade slammed into her side, just under her left arm. He armor would have stopped a frag grenade. The white hot thermite lance of the armor-piercer was a different matter.

The heat and pressure sliced through her armor and washed over her internal systems,  melting and blasting her them askew. She slew sideways, feeling her limbs go weak, barley able to take a step as tried to catch herself.

The second grenade hit her in the small of her back. She went numb, and fell. Darkness came upon her like a wall, and she was gone. 

Comms Load 21. Sharren Re-do.

been doing some serious editing lately, here is the most recent update, a complete redo of chapter one. Vastly improved.

comments re more than welcome, they are encouraged. 

She was enjoying the rain, the sound it made as it fell to the ground. It played out across the landscape in whispers and plops, a random pitter patter that gently washed away the silence of the colonial country side. While the soft white noise of shipboard life was pleasant, it was not loud enough to drown out her thoughts. The rain was.   

She paused for a moment, enjoying the peace. She held out her right hand, and caught a few drops, watching them splash against the flexible polymer skin of her palm. They were to light to feel, but telltales scrolling along the edges of her peripheral vision showed her that it was a cold, heavy rain; the kind she would have hated as a child. Different times, she thought. She quickly brushed the thought aside; her father had taught her better than to dawdle when there was work to be done.

She was crouched low, her double jointed legs compressed tightly and leaning forward on her left hand.  She was at the edge of her targets’ property, having come on foot through the forest that hemmed in the large farm. She was taking cover behind an earthen windbreak at the south edge of the fields. Her feet were sunk several inches into the mud.

The other side of the artificial ridge sheltered some kind of cabbage. Vile stuff, she remembered. Why do I only remember things I didn’t like? Sharren shook the memories away again, wondering why they came unbidden at times like this.

There was work to do. She crawled forward like a giant cat, moving carefully on all fours.  The windbreak was only a meter or so high, and it took an effort to stay low enough as she crept closer to her goal. The ridge ended some 50 meters later, Sharren dropped on her belly and  slid her body as close to the edge of it as she dared without exposing herself.

A thin aerial slid out of her left shoulder, no more than 2 millimeters across.  It was tipped with a series of tiny camera beads, hardly larger than the antenna itself. She extended it to its full length, allowing her to peer  over the edge of the ridge without risking the rest of her body. The only way these hillbillies would be able to see it at all in this weather would be with thermal imaging gear.  She was wiling to bet they had no such thing.

She let her point of view change from that of her head to that of the camera. She had gotten used to the sudden shift years ago, but it still took her a moment to adjust.  The night was dark, and aerial’s optics were not as good as her primary system.

Her onboard Virtual Intelligence was showing her a composite of night vision and thermal mode. The view it created was a pretty mix of green tinged with thermal hot spots overlaid in reds and yellows.  There was a farm house across a large unkempt lawn, and a barn further to her right, nearer the other corner of the field. The house was glowing hot on the thermal spectrum, but the barn was cold, and there were vehicles parked near it.

She focused her attention on the house.  Her VI started to bring up relevant structural data in the lower left corner of her vision, but she ignored it. The main house was a prefabricated model, standard on most UNW colonies. It was a single floor, with one door in front, and one in back. The windows were a thin light-weight plastic, with simple internal locks.  The owner had added a two story wing on the eastern side of the house. He had used local wood and stone, the effect was quite pretty. The siding panels had been painted in alternating blue and white horizontal stripes.  

The main door was clearly the original prefab’s front door. There was a pretty little garden wall surrounding a quaint yard in front of the house, about 5 by 5 meters. There was a guard near that door, and a window just to his right. He was the only person in sight.

The guy was leaning against the house in a feeble attempt to avoid getting rain on his face.  The heavy poncho he wore made it difficult for Sharren to determine if the guard was wearing armor. The poor bastard was just huddled under the eve, trying not to shiver in the cold, sloppy rain.

The house had some external lights, but nothing like a search light. The glow they cast did not reach far beyond the garden.

 Sharren’s lips would have curled into an evil smirk, but she had not kept her face in the last upgrade. You poor, dirt-eating hillbillies. These are your security measures?  She shook her head. I can’t belive they expect to stand up to us. She felt like the villain in a children’s story.  The people, they were the villagers.

Why do they do this? She thought. Captain Marcotte had given these locals five days to come up with a metric ton of untainted food, and at least a kilo of gold or platinum. He had come armed. He had been specific, with the usual death threats and show of force. He had even calculated in advance what these people could afford to lose, using data from orbital flyovers.

These goat-fuckers had messed it all up. They had not paid. Now they had to be shown that defiance was more expensive than compliance. Her orders were clear: Find their leaders and make an example of them. Tear them limb from limb and leave behind a nightmare; those were the words Captian Marcotte had used.

Sharren looked the area over one last time. Her VI calculated the distance to the door and feed it to her Heads Up Display, almost exactly 112 meters. She retracted the camera, and checked her rifle as the ariel slid back inside her shoulder. It was an older Prussian model, a heavy 12mm bull-pup set up with an excellent optics package.

The rifle’s scope had been hardwired to her VI through a data connection in the gun’s grip. She could see ammo quantity, gun status, and point of aim through her H.U.D., showing her exactly where the gun was pointed via a little red X. She preferred simple graphics over some of the more modern versions.

Despite the system showing her green lights, a manual check of the gun made her feel better. She released the plastic ammo block, and confirmed the first round had already been chipped off.  Sharren slapped it back into the feed and checked the chamber, then made sure her side arm was secure in its magnetic holster on her left leg. Once she was sure everything was in place, she waited for the storm.

The storm did not disappoint her. Lighting flashed, and brought with it the thunder she had been waiting for.

She was ready for it. Her powerful electro-polymer muscles launched her two hundred and forty kilogram frame over the ridge and into a sprint, the rolling sound of thunder hiding the noise of her foot falls. Sharren cleared the distance in just over five seconds. The guard saw her as she skipped over the garden wall, he let out surprised yell and tried to raise his shot gun.

The gun never reached level. Sharren used the momentum built up on her sprint to deliver a stomp-kick to his chest.  Ribs collapsed beneath her armored foot, and her talons scrapped against the house as she pressed his corpse to the ground.

It seems he was not wearing armor, she noted to herself.

Without looking at her handy work, she side stepped and punched through the window nearest the door. The clear polymer sheet gave way to her fist, leaving the window a spider web of cracks. She released a flash-bang from her forearm and whirled around. Her VI knew what she wanted, and detonated the grenade remotely, not waiting for its timer to expire. Sharren turned her attention back to the door, and kicked it. The door’s bolt failed under the force, slamming it open. Her forward momentum carried her across the threshold like death's bride.

She could see the people in the main room easily, despite the dark. Most of them were reeling, blind and deaf from the flash bang.  The ones that could see were stricken with fear, wide eyed and open mouthed in shock. They hid behind makeshift barricades of over turned furniture.

She rose from her usual combative crouch to her full seven foot height as she strode one more step into the room, letting the light fall on her demonic armored form. Slowly and deliberately, she  swayed side to side. She had seen a snake do this once, and enjoyed the way it menaced folks.

“Do you have our payment?” She vocalized. Sharren was using a voice she had calibrated just for such occasions, female, but harsh and dark. No one moved, and for a moment the world seemed frozen. Distant lightning highlighted the open door behind her, and its thunder passed by a moment later.

The Locals were trying to study her face, but there was nothing to gauge but an unmoving armor plate, sloping back from a central riser. Her armor was red and black, in a camouflage pattern, except for her fingers and hands, which were solid black.

“Well? Does this end here, or do I need to make good the Captain’s words?” She vocalized the last line slowly. Internally, she had assigned her VI to assume control of her right hand, and prioritized targets for it to shoot. 

The man closest to her seemed to find his courage. He was still young, but perhaps old enough to be called a man in some places. He had his right hand on a pistol butt, and squared up his shoulders though his eyes were still watery from the dazzle of the flash grenade.

“Fuck. You. You come here and demand our crops? Our money? What are we supposed to eat after you clean us out?” The young man stood his ground, glaring at her and seething with rage.

“Life is hard little boy. We need to eat as well. We have the strength to take what we need, so we do.” She softened her voice a bit, in hopes he would back down.  “It’s a small price, compared to the alternative. Last chance to buy peace, little boy. Will you pay or will you die?”

The defiant young man started to drawn his gun, and some of the others began to follow his lead. Sharren did not even think about it, 30 years of experience made her an old hand. She grabbed the boy, her left hand shot out quick as lightning. Her VI used her right to begin shooting the others. She paid the gunfire no mind as she slammed the boys head in the ceiling one handed. She felt his skull crack, so she tossed him aside like a broken toy. The room was silent.

The after image of the boy reminded Sharren of herself at his age. Things almost worked out better for you, eh boy? Back to work. She chided herself. These distractions were going to be a problem if she could not lock it down.

Five seconds, six bodies; not bad work she thought.  The VI was trying to put names to faces, but none of them matched the Mayor's picture profile.  More work to do.

The VI was letting her know there were thirty rounds left in the gun’s ammo block as Sharren noted the stairway on her right. It seemed to go up into the newer part of the house.  She moved carefully towards it, the floor softly creaking under her weight.

There was a closed door blocking her view. She listened for breathing, but the rain was giving her too much white noise. She put two rounds through door, and got what she wanted. A startled yelp slipped out of someone, a someone which her VI highlighted faster than thought. She sent two more bullets that way, and heard the target fall over.

The pushed through the feeble wooden door and saw a male body, holding some kind of heavy fire arm. It was big enough to have possibly put a hole in her.

This is why you never advance blindly. These folk might be a challenge after all.

She slung the rifle and it magnetized itself to her back. She picked up the dead man’s boom-stick and fired through a wall, leaving an enormous hole where it blew through, showering the room inhabitants with wooden splinters.

Or maybe not, the thought as she tore the rest of the way through the wall to finish her work. 

New post coming shortly Folks!

Comm Load 20 - thinking back part 2.

We'll be taking a break from Sharren for a bit, and have a brief interlude.

As always, critique and comments are welcome and encouraged.

Her thoughts drifted to her old life.  Her father had trained her to be a survivor. He had sold his gun arm for credits for over twenty years, mostly in service to the colonists of Gaia III.

As Greek ethnic colony, it was underfunded from the start, and new colonists were scarce. The locals had been happy to trade land for a protection contract.  

It had been a nice place. Gaia III was a little cold, but it had trees, and rivers. There was even local plant and animal life, tough nothing intelligent. At five thousand two hundred light years from Sol, Gaia was rarely resupplied by the UN. The UN could not spare the 250 day trip very often, it seemed. Colonists made do with what they had, or they did without. For the most part, it was not so bad. There were no real predators to worry about, and the arable land was well suited to Earth flora.

Still, one bad year could wipe out a homestead. Medicine was a guarded commodity, as were fuel cells and high tech goods.  The UN ban on auto-doctors meant that medical training was also in short supply on the colony.

She had learned young that only the strong survive, and ‘luck’ is the word lesser people use to describe skill. She had spent hours each day working the farm, cooking and maintaining the equipment her father had worked hard to acquire. Her father taught her basic mechanics, as well as math and history, such as he could.

Her mother had died in childbirth; she had been old enough to remember it. Her baby brother only outlived their mother by a few days. Her father was the only family she had.

His work defending the locals had been easiest when she was little. Gaia III was a far flung colony in those days, and bandits were scarce. Still, not everyone who took up work as a hauler or miner can make it, and the dispossessed have to go somewhere.   

As in the ancient times on Earth, desperate people would take to raiding to supplement their own failing fortunes. When Sharren was twenty, free trader ships started to show up, usually two or three ships each year. They had tech, medicine, data loads, and fancy booze. Everything folks needed.

One such ship touched down near her own stead. They had come in without any cargo, but were looking to leave with a full hold. Her father had gone to meet the ship, to make a show of keeping order as he always did. When he came home, Sharren had ben able to tell right away that something was wrong.   

“Bandits, my dear,” was all he had to tell her.  She set to helping him, as he had trained her to do. She set out their small collection of fire arms, mostly cheap, locally built jobs. She checked her knife, and honed it’s edge. Her father saw to his body armor, and the better of the rifles.

“They’ll be coming here first” He had told her. She remembered that. He had always believed in meeting problems as head-on as possible. He had set her up in a blind near the garden.  Her Job was clear, only fire if he engaged them first.

“We need to talk them out of this if we can. If it comes to fighting, it will be a hard one. ” He never really seemed to believe he could, though.  “They will come in force, so surprise is our game. “

They had not talked much more about it. The Bandits arrived early in the morning, rolling up in a clean but old looking cargo vertol. It settled in for a landing in their front lawn, between the house and the garden, partially cutting her off from where her father planned to meet them.

They piled out of the vertol in a military like pattern, fanning out from the side and rear cargo hatches, looking on all directions. Their gear was new looking, but poor. Resin and alloy turtle shells over a web rig, heavy resin helmets, and nifty looking shin guards. Neat looking, but most likely made aboard their ship. Their fire arms were no better than her own shoddy rifle.

The pilot got out last, bringing the total count of men to nine. They approached her father, who had donned a poncho in the cool morning air. Hopefully, it would help to conceal his armor, which was a fair shade better than theirs.

The bandit captain and her father talked for several minutes, but she could not hear them very well. She was a good 60 yards from their position, and her blind was only good for visual observation. One of the better equipped bandits broke out a thermal imager and checked over the house, and the captain became more angry. Her pushed her father, a hard shove to the center of his chest.

The captain was clearly not very observant. Her father’s armor was old, but it was a power assist infantry model. Her Father threw his left arm up under the captain’s right arm, and snapped the man’s arm at the elbow with a classic standing arm bar, even as he stepped back into a weapon retention stance and drew.

Sharren heard him scream in pain. Her father was a quick draw, and a veteran mercenary. He shot the two men nearest him, his high end pistol barking out three shots. He retreated to the shed, looking for cover as the Bandits opened fire. Their assault rifles had good ammo, and the concrete walls of the shed sprayed stone and dust and they were torn to shreds.

Seeing his cover erode away, her father made for the house, trying to use the shed as visual cover for as long as possible. The six men still on their feet moved in an organized pattern, two checking their wounded, four splitting up to circle the shed on both sides.  Sharren moved up from the blind, and took careful aim, shooting one of the ones closer to her father in the hip, just below his armor. The man dropped, and the other hesitated only to be shot by her father a moment later. Dad had switched to his carbine. The heavy 7mm round knocked the man to the ground, and her father shot him a second time to be sure before heading to the house.

The other four regrouped, and moved behind their vertol for cover, dragging the wounded with them.  Sharren moved to the other side of the barn, hoping for a better angle.  She heard a few more shots while she was moving.  Her father had seen them move and circled around, she had thought.

The bandits had moved to the back area of the vertol, and were taking shelter in the cargo bay’s opening, still dragging their wounded aboard. She fired a round at one of the bandits doing the dragging. It caught him center mass, and his armor held. He returned fire one handed, spraying his rifle in her direction. Sharren dropped to the ground, and shot at him one more time. This time she missed. She rolled closer to the barn as one of the other fired on her as well.

She shot him in the leg, and he went down in a shout of frustration. Sharren did not wait, and tried to crawl backwards, to get at least visual cover form the barn. The bandits began to fan out, flanking her in. she fired and missed again, and she remembered thinking that the bandits should have had her number.

Her Father had flanked them as well, and shot each one of them in the back with his heavy carbine. Seeing her on the ground, He forgot his training and ran towards her, crossing he cargo bay as he did.

Sharren stood, up, thinking it was over, when one of the wounded bandits inside the vertol sprayed a burst of fire into her Father.  He fell like a puppet with its strings cut. She screamed, and moved to where she could see into the vertol. She shot her lest round into the head of a bandit who was reloading his weapon. She drew her revolver and shot each of the other two inside 3 times. She kicked the man she had wounded in the leg, but he had grabbed her leg, less wounded than she thought.

He struggled to bring her down, but his grip was unshakeable. She fell Hard on her ass, but her father’s training showed through her fear and surprise, pain and anguish. She drew her knife, a simple affair of hull alloy. She slammed the point into the Bandits arm, but is glanced off, sparks scattering as it scored a mark along his fore arm.

His sleeve fell away to reveal an enhanced prosthetic arm. The bandit crawled over her legs in a single drunken effort, and punched her hard in the stomach. Sharren wanted to vomit. She had never been hit so hard in her entire life.

She focused through the pain, riding high on the adrenaline wave. His mechanical arm was still clutching her leg, and he drew back his other arm to strike her again. As he brought it down she slammed the edge of the knife into his forearm, hoping to at least deflect the punch. This arm was flesh. The knife held a razor edge, the arm was fileted from wrist to elbow, flesh waving like a flag on the wind.

She lashed out at his face, again and again, until it was over. 

Thinking back - Comms load 19

So, what is a war frame? Post humans can suffer from a certain degree of alienation when dealing with baseline humans. The less human the body, the more likely this is to be a problem. War frames are combat oriented cyborg bodies. Generally designers forgo things like eyes, faces, necks, and other fragile human features. also, these bodies are frequently tall, sometimes as tall as 2.5 meters, though 2 is more common. 

Having such frightening outward forms, and a great deal of physical power can lead these warriors to believe that humans are inferior, and develop deep psychological problems. 

In order to avoid these problems, some 'borgs maintain less monstrous frames, to use when "at home", where ever that may be. These lighter, more human bodies are often referred to as ship frames. This comes from the fact that most 'borgs only use such frames aboard ships. such supplemental bodies can be run remotely, or by directly mounting the brain into the frame. For this reason, modular life support is very common in heavy cyborgs.  Most cyborgs are nervous that their shipframe will be hacked if it is under wireless control. 

- - -

The next few weeks had a remarkably familiar routine, after she had sorted out the details with Dicemen.  She was not allowed into her war frame, but she had always maintained a separate ship frame. It made life easier in the close quarters of a crowded vessel. And it was easier to deal with the crew when you are the same height as everyone else.

She painted a camouflage scheme on her warframe, and ran several diagnostics. It was nice to be so close to it. It felt more like home. The new systems were interesting as well. It gave her a lot to consider.

Sharren rebuilt her Virtual training environment to help her train on the new features. The techs aboard the UN ship were helpful and loaned her some fairly decent code. The VI hostiles were better than she was used to, and she felt the training environment was most helpful. It also served to pass the time.

This was still a prison, and she wanted out. She knew that this was death sentence, but once she was free of this ship, it could at least be death on her own terms. She could not ignore the hope of escape, either. Freedom was why she had swapped out her body in the first place.

The crew she was to rendezvous with looked well enough on a spreadsheet.  The crew of 20 consisted 16 combatants and 4 pilots. One of them was a post human, like herself. Not as monstrous however, he had kept his face and some other bits.

Most of them were Prussians, caught in the web, just like she was. The gear was not too bad either. Midrange PAX arms stuff. No fancy ammo, but if this was half as easy as Dicemen had described it, that should not be a problem.  

The UN crew stayed away from her unless she sought them out. She was restricted to the bay where they were storing her warframe. she hat a cot setup there, and she had over two weeks of food stored in the ship frame they had given her. 

Her thoughts drifted to her old life.  Her father had trained her to be a warrior. He had sold his gun arm for credits for over 20 years, mostly in service to the colonists at Gaia. A Greek ethnic colony, it was underfunded from the start, and new colonists were scarce. It was a nice place though.  It was a little cold, but it had trees, and rivers.

Life there was harsh. At 5200 light years from Sol, Gaia was rarely resupplied. Colonists made do with what they had. For the most part, it was not so bad. One bad year could wipe out a home stead, however. Medicine was a guarded commodity.  The UN ban on auto-doctors meant that medical training was also in short supply on new colonies.

She had learned young that only the strong survive, and luck is the work lesser people use to describe skill. Her mother had died in childbirth; she had been old enough to remember it. Her baby brother only outlived her mother by a few days. Her father taught her to farm, and hunt. To defend their property against bandits.

There were not many bandits when she was young, but as she aged, more and more dispossessed would take to raiding to supplement their own failing fortunes. When Sharren was twenty, free trader ships started to show up, usually two or three ships each year. They had tech, medicine, data loads, and fancy booze. Everything folks needed.

One such ship touched down near her own stead. Her father had come back empty handed, which was rare. The traders were extorting the local, and wanted 100 kilos of fresh foodstuff from every one in 100 klicks.

She was ready when they came to her door.