The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(34)

“No, my lady,” Blinnikka said.

“Well, then.” Kiva looked at Ghreni, steadily.

“As long as I’m here, I would love to see some of the ship,” Ghreni said, after a moment.

“You want a fucking tour,” Kiva said.

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Because three days out from departure we don’t have better things to do than indulge your whims.”

“You really don’t.”

“This is your subtle attempt to talk with me alone, yes?”

Ghreni held his hands open, as if to say, You got me.

Kiva nodded and turned to Blinnikka. “I’m taking him to the production floor. If I need you again to spout imperial law at him, I’ll call.”

Blinnikka nodded and left.

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” Kiva said, and motioned to Ghreni to follow her.

The shuttle bay was at the aft of the main body of the Yes, Sir, a long, segmented needle, off from which branched two separate rings, which held the farming and processing modules, among others. Each rotated to provide a baseline .5 standard G, with push fields employed to bring the internal effective gravity to 1 G. Variations could be employed within individual modules and areas for production and other purposes.

As Ghreni noted when they entered an agricultural module. “I’m bouncier in here.”

Kiva nodded. “Haverfruit grow best at .8 G, so that’s what these modules are kept at.”

“End is slightly over 1 G. Were you going to tell the people you licensed to about that?”

“It’s not like it won’t grow at that gravity,” Kiva said. “It’ll grow just fine. And they’d be growing them off of actual haverfruit bushes rather than the hydroponic setup we’re using here.” She motioned to the growing racks, densely packed with lights and fruits arising out of the growth medium. “If you have anything on End, it’s acreage. Not that it matters, thanks to the fucking duke.”

“To be fair, the House of Lagos let loose a virus that wiped out a staple crop.”

“To be fair, you can go fuck yourself because we had nothing to do with that and you know it.”

“I’ve missed you, Kiva. You and your marvelous way with the word ‘fuck.’”

“No you haven’t, but thank you anyway.”

Ghreni motioned to the haverfruit. “So what will you do with all of this?”

“Follow me to the next module and find out.”

The next ring module was a processing module, set to 1.1 G for efficiency.

“You’re juicing them,” Ghreni said, looking.

Kiva nodded. “Juicing, concentrating, making fruit pastes from the remains, all that shit. Not that we’ll be able to do much with them directly. It doesn’t make sense for us to compete against our franchisees. We thought about it, but we’d just make them upset. So when I get back to Hub we’ll see if we can sell it as surplus to the imperial government. They’ll distribute it as part of their food assistance to poor families, or whatever, and the House of Lagos will get a tax deduction.”

“So you’ll finish the trip just fine, is what you’re saying.”

“It’s a maybe. If the imperial government doesn’t shove this shit into its food assistance program, we’re on the hook for all of it.”

“I’m sure the Lagos accountants are clever enough to find a way to bury the loss. Combine that with the extortion you’re wrenching out from the people trying to leave End, you might even eke out a profit.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“Not at all. What are the guild houses if they don’t make money? That is their point. Your point. My point.”

“You haven’t actually come to your point yet,” Kiva said.

“Then here’s my point, Kiva: The duke is concerned about some of the people you might be transporting off the planet.”

“Okay. So what?”

“Some of them are people who are of interest to the duke, for various reasons.”

“This is where I say ‘so what’ again.”

“So, if certain people try to buy passage from you, the duke wants to know.”

Kiva laughed at this. “You have to be fucking kidding me, Ghreni. The duke is the reason I’m resorting to making fruit paste and taking on rich assholes as cargo.”

“The duke asks it as a favor, one noble to another.”

“The duke can fuck himself with a loaded shotgun.”

Ghreni nodded again. “I thought you might say that. So I’ve also been authorized to offer you a bribe.”

“For what?”

“For letting us know if certain people try to book passage on your ship. And for telling us where to find them if they do.”

“I’m asking for a lot of money for passage,” Kiva said.

“The duke is willing to match what you’re charging as the reward.”

“Match, hell. If he wants my cooperation, it starts at two million marks per person.”

“That doesn’t strike you as perhaps a lot to ask?”

“The duke screwed me out of sixty million marks at least, so, no, in fact, it doesn’t strike me as a lot to ask.”