A Young Girl’s Outer Heaven
09
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Commissioned by Sneaky.
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“Fresh air,” I sighed, stretching as I stepped off of Murder Inc, onto hot tarmac. The air was thick and humid. Not nearly as nice as it was in Germany, but it beat being cooped up in a plane for nearly two days since leaving Germany.
“Ma’am! Welcome back!” one of my aerial mages snapped off a salute from nearby, standing beside a group of cars and trucks.
“Thank you. I need you to take Col. Ugar and his family, along with Dr. Schugel, and get them situated in the base. Capt. Serebryakov, please go with them and get them what they need for their quarters, then accompany Dr. Schugel and find a suitable lab space for him, and make a list of equipment he needs. I need to speak with the governor.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Visha saluted, and led Max, his wife and daughter, and Schugel to the vehicles where they began to load up our luggage and goodies.
Gesturing for Edwina to follow, I got us a car and a driver, and had them take us up to the governor’s mansion, but not before Edwina gave Jorge the order to have Murder Inc checked out, refueled, and moved off to the side with the other planes for storage. As we traveled, I asked her, “Should we have those planes in individual hangars?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she nodded. “We’ll put tarps over them for now, but I’ll talk to grandpa and papa and see about getting some sheds built to house them.”
“Mm.” I studied her for a moment and she turned in her seat, turning an amused look on me.
“Something on my face?”
“I was thinking. You said you wanted to be our personal pilot.”
“That’s right!” she nodded. “Papa has his own business. I figure, I take one or two of the bombers for myself, and start my own business, ferrying you and your people around. A private company, with my own mechanics and crew, separate from your people.”
“And how do you think the chain of command would work, there?”
The girl grinned. “You tell me where you want to go, when, and how fast, and I take you there. I don’t salute and I don’t kiss your ass. I bill you for fuel, labor, ammo, maintenance, and modifications.”
“You should pay for your own maintenance—”
“And I’ll just raise the labor cost to pass that cost on to you, so you can either pay it up front and honestly on an itemized bill, or as a hidden cost packed in there somewhere.” The girl crossed her arms over her small bust and added, “You seem like the kind of person who likes straightforward, honest dealings.”
I glared at her and Edwina glared back, light brown eyes boring into my silver-blue. Finally, I smirked. “It seems you’ve got me figured out. Very well. However, on the subject of modifications.”
“Yeah?”
“There are certain things I want. Extended fuel capability—”
“Already on my list,” Edwina nodded.
“Better seating for my people and some bunks for sleeping.”
“On the list.”
“An ice box and entertainment. A radio, perhaps.”
“Right.”
“Also, weapons. I want at least one .50 caliber automatic rifle, preferably two, mounted inside along with a Bofors 40mm cannon. Or, if we can find one, a small 105mm howitzer.”
Edwina whistled. “What are you planning to do with it? Just… do death donuts over a battlefield?”
“Yes,” I grinned. “It’s called close air support, or CAS. Mount the cannon and machine gun on the left side of the plane, then make a port pylon turn over a battlefield, range the guns over the course of a minute, then fire for effect.”
“They’ve got dome turrets already. Why not use those instead of mounting another machine gun?” Edwina asked, though she looked intrigued by the idea.
“Those are for defense. We wouldn’t want to leave ourselves vulnerable when it’s time to make our escape.”
“Ahh,” she nodded. “Yeah, okay. Makes sense.”
“Also, I want camera equipment. Lots of cameras. I want to be able to use them for aerial reconnaissance if we need to.”
“Can do,” she agreed, before muttering, “I’ll have to source them from America, probably. And that howitzer.”
“And finally, I need an airfield and our own private hangar on Colina. You’ll bunk there, along with whatever other pilots we hire. Your mechanics can either come and go by ferry, or have their own homes built nearby. But if we want to be able to fly at a moment’s notice, I need you available.”
Edwina grinned. “Papa is going to be angry that his little girl is moving out so early, but… I would love to. Will you build me a house, or is this going to be some sort of military bunk thing in the hangar?”
“I’ll have a small house built on the airfield and utilities run. I’ll bill you for it,” I smirked, and she grinned. “You can work it off over time.”
“A woman after my own heart,” she nodded. “Alright, sounds good. I’ll talk to papa and schedule some flights. We’ll probably convert one of those bombers into a long range luxury ferry, so we can skip all of the stops any time we need to head up to the States on business. …Actually, I’ll just get him to give me three instead of two and do that. One for business and two for the business.”
“That would work for us.”
We spoke a bit more about plans for the future before we came to a stop at the governor’s estate. We were shown inside to his office and, the moment he saw us, he stood and made his way over to hug his granddaughter. “Edwina, it’s good to see you’re back.” He looked her over for a moment and nodded, before turning a smile on me.
“Grandfather, I’m fine,” she brushed him off, in the way of children embarrassed at being fussed over.
“I can see that. Thank you for keeping her safe, Tanya.”
“I promised I would, Pedro,” I waved him off, taking a seat in front of his desk.
“So? How did it go?” he asked as he dropped into his chair and Edwina took the seat beside me.
“It went well. Better than expected, really.”
He nodded, signaling to his butler to bring drinks. “I was worried when Luca showed up without you.”
“And papa didn’t tell you where we went?” Edwina asked, rolling her eyes.
“No, it’s because he told me where you went that I was worried. You flew into a war zone, after all,” he sent her a look that said this should be obvious.
“It’s fine~,” Edwina waved his concern off. “There wasn’t a single shot fired. Besides, I mostly sat with the plane while waiting on Tanya. I played a game of cards and wiped the floor with some American assigned to watch us.”
“What exactly necessitated a trip to Germany?” he asked as the butler returned with drinks.
I checked them out of habit before accepting a cool glass of iced juice. “We made contact with a friend in the Empire, who told us that the Americans had taken an interest in one of our scientists and his team, so we went to either extract or neutralize him. I was able to extract him successfully, but his team were lost. To the Russy, I think.” Looking at him over the rim of my glass, I said, “Trust me. No one wants that man in the hands of the Americans, especially not with an unlimited black budget. The world is already changing quickly enough as it is. And speaking of, we need to talk about just what it is you want. What your end goal is.”
“Peace and prosperity for Brasa. A wonderful place where my granddaughter can continue growing up, make a family of her own, and raise her children in safety and security,” Pedro answered immediately, leaning back in his seat. “We can’t do that with the communists spreading their ideological poison, the cartels enslaving our people through ‘might makes right,’ or with the existing corrupt government.”
“Ah,” I smiled, understanding perfectly. “Say no more.”
The mission couldn’t be clearer. Eliminate the commies and cartels, and gut the corrupt government of Brasa. The last would honestly be easier than the other two. A government was composed of a small number of people, with names and homes, public figures who weren’t trying to hide—not scattered all across the country, hiding in basements and crowds. The Americans had been engaging in covert, involuntary, expedited regime changes for years now so I wouldn’t be doing anything new here.
Remove those in the upper echelons of power. Host an emergency election. Campaign for governor Vazquez to be elected president. Do some ballot tampering—I mean, ‘fortification.’ Scare off any real competition, eliminate anyone the commies try to slip in. Get Pedro in office, then clean house. Fire everyone over a few months and replace them with people loyal to us. Then start having him push through the social and economic policies we want, while throwing money at us to help take care of the commie problem. We can expand our operations and buy new equipment, the country has a major economic boom, employment skyrockets, crime goes down, everyone wins.
“I spoke with Col. Ugar, one of the men I extracted from Germany, on the way over. Tell me, how does the idea of building up rail and communication infrastructure sound?”
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I sighed as I touched down at the base and made my way inside, heading for my quarters. I just wanted a shower and to sleep a full eight hours. Physically, I wasn’t tired—nor was I even really sleepy. But I wanted to rest, so I would.
So I was understandably a bit annoyed when, almost as soon as I made it inside, I was accosted by Weiss, who fell into step with me as I made my way towards my quarters. “Col. Degurechaff, these are our reports for the time you’ve been gone,” he said, handing me a surprisingly hefty folder.
“Summarize it for me,” I said, opening it up and starting to flip through it absently. There were several printed photos I recognized as aerial recon shots of the two neighboring towns we’d been keeping an eye on, and their growing communist infection. Behind those, mixed in with printed reports, were photos of buildings, dead bodies, equipment, and more. Someone’s been busy.
“Intel came in after you left. We planned and executed a simultaneous attack on Santa Maria and Sao Domingos. Both cities were successfully captured. No losses on our side, one injury—a broken arm from where a man tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, after everything was said and done. We set the arm and sent him for medical treatment. He’ll be on light duty for a few weeks while it heals. As for the communists who had taken the cities, we managed to eliminate the bulk of their forces during the initial strike. We’ve tasked the local police force with going through and sweeping for any remaining infiltrators, but who knows how effective it’ll be.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Commies are like roaches. It’s impossible to get them all,” I sighed. “As long as there aren’t enough of them to organize, and we keep an eye on those cities to make sure that more don’t show up, it’ll be good enough for now. Good work, Weiss. We’ll meet again at 0800 tomorrow and we can go over everything. We need to have a meeting anyway. Make sure all the officers know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I bid him goodnight and made my way into my quarters. I took my time soaking to read over the printed reports. Eventually, I went to bed, but my mind was too busy to sleep. Visha entered and slipped into my bed, snuggling up and curling around me like I was a human dakimakura. I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore her warm body holding me tightly as she began to snore softly in my ear.
Looking for something to occupy myself, I pulled up a map of the country and another of South America as a whole, projecting them as a hologram as I let my mind wander. The maps filled with reported enemy strongholds and troop movements that I was aware of, and my own group’s movements and actions. More holograms of our assets joined them. Colina, my troops, our equipment, our new pilot and planes, the governor and the new mayor of Bellum.
More and more information and pictures joined the glowing web above the bed as I put everything together. Until eventually, I blinked as something stood out. Bringing the visualized screen forward, I frowned. Where did I see this? Certainly not in any of the reports…
I focused on it and it began to play. A video I vaguely recalled seeing, some years ago. And as I watched, I remembered where I’d seen it. At home, on my original Earth, one of many nights spent watching television. And from there, I remembered other things—lectures from college, reading, more videos, and a project I had done titled, ‘Communism and its Role in Creating Failed States.’ I had been extremely thorough in my research for that paper—probably more than I really needed to be, looking back on it. I’d gone into detail on how the fall or failure of various nations could be tied directly or indirectly to communism—from the most obvious case of the U.S.S.R., the P.R.C., North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and others. But, most related to my current situation, how the infection of communism had essentially tanked the entire continent of South America, all the way up to Mexico.
Communism had allowed, promoted even, the spread of the cartels and drug trade, which had poisoned those nations from within. There were other factors that led to their decline and eventual status as failed states, certainly, but communism was the major contributing factor—the infection that allowed other problems to creep in. Directly or indirectly, that ideological death cult was responsible for destroying more nations than any five wars you cared to name throughout history.
But the failure of basically every nation in South America to rise above the status of ‘second world’ or ‘developing nation’ was especially egregious, given just how rich the entire continent was in resources!
Venezuela and Brazil were the two largest oil producers in South America, and in fact had some of the largest oil reserves in the world. There were failed mines all over the place, untapped reserves of rare earth metals and things like lithium, due either to the terrain and no one wanting to invest in infrastructure to get to them, or due to cartels coming and taking over the mines—not to mention, blatant corruption in the running of those mines that caused them to fail. A difference in values and social mores that saw everyone from the lowliest employee up to the owner, inspectors, and so on demanding bribes or just outright stealing things.
It reminded me of China’s concept of ‘face,’ and how it led to problems calling anything into question—because if you questioned how well something had been done, you also called into question all of the workers, supervisors, the inspectors, and the government itself who were supposed to oversee those inspectors, and so on and so forth, and the entire system just got in the way of getting the real work done. So it didn’t matter if you could look at something and tell it was leaning, or cracked, questioning it was tantamount to social and political suicide because doing so meant questioning the entire system—and you can’t fight the system.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? I mused, as I began putting points on the map where I remembered some of those mines and deposits to be, and flagging them for later investigation.
Then, saving those files and moving them to the side, I cloned the current map and began running theoretical projections. I started by replacing the current president of Brasa with Pedro. From there, I began making infrastructure changes, keeping a running estimate of the price as I projected out rail lines crossing the country and connecting up various theoretical mines. Roads, power and telephone lines, pipelines to carry oil. I gathered up troops to form an army. Put together a program to start identifying and training aerial mages. Created shipyards and ships. I proposed theoretical deals with America to sell crude oil. Deals with our neighbors to lay track, copper, and pipe—and contingency plans to wage small scale warfare and directed regime changes if they refused, using my PMC to effect those changes. Even theoretical treaties with newly ‘democratically elected’ officials in charge of those countries to ally with Brasa, essentially becoming vassal states.
The cost was astronomical, but theoretically possible with the resources Brasa had on hand. The country just needed to get its shit together. The people needed motivation. They needed to see that it could work—that dedicated hard work would get them more than accepting the poisoned fruit of the tree of communism.
And for that, the country would need something to come along and change the culture. A charismatic leader. A competent government. A complicit news media. A propaganda campaign directed at the citizens, extolling a culture of hard work and excellence, and the rewards for them. New laws to prevent corruption and regulatory bodies to enforce them. A strong currency, backed by gold, oil, and labor—so that the workers’ labor has intrinsic worth, thus giving them a reason to invest into the system. A central banking system owned by the government, not some parasite pretending to be a government entity by putting ‘federal’ in its name and loaning the government money.
Unfortunately, the free market here appears stagnant. No one is looking to invest. So, the best thing to do is to… ugh, nationalize certain things like oil production, utilities, and rail. Once we’ve got the infrastructure laid, then the free market can spring up around that. And if they can’t out compete us, then I’ll have to think up some way to keep the entire thing from becoming corrupt.
I hated the idea of nationalization in principle, but… there was precedent for it working out. There was also precedent for uncontrolled capitalism screwing over a nation.
An example of that was America and the telephone wars—where one service provider had taken over, squeezed out the competition, and owned all the lines. They then raised their prices and refused to lay new lines, or even do routine maintenance, except in major cities or when there were major technological advances. The government had stepped in and broken the monopoly up, but by then it was too late. The breakup was a farce—it was just the same company, working together, wearing multiple hats claiming to be different companies.
At the time of my untimely death as a salary man in Japan, I seemed to recall that there were large portions of the United States with substandard phone and internet service, just because the providers refused to invest in areas outside the cities—and even in those cities, service lagged well behind what we had in Japan. Whereas in Japan, the government had laid the lines, then rented the use of them out to service providers.
Of course, the difference there is that Japan is a tiny island nation and America is essentially fifty individual nations in a trench coat, each larger than many, if not most, European countries. But in the case of Brasa, it could work.
All of that depended on several conditions—required several things to happen first, in a specific order. The current government had to be replaced. The communists and cartels needed to be eliminated. Both of which would likely fall to me, which meant growing my Military Without Borders to operate in any theater.
I needed more men. More mages. More money to pay them. More bullets, beans, and boots. More equipment. More planes, ships, tanks, guns, and everything we could get our hands on.
…I need to restructure, I mused, bringing up my org chart.
The chart started with myself at the top, as the overall leader. Below me were Lt. Col. Weiss, in charge of the former Salamander Kampfgruppe—with its entire organizational tree below him, mostly intact save for a few promotions and reassignments. To Weiss’s right was Capt. Fischer, in charge of our navy of one ship—its own org tree laid out below him, with Cmdr. Fuchs at the top. To Weiss’s left was Col. Ugar, with no one below him, but a note to expect people coming in by ship in the coming weeks. Though, after some thought, I tentatively placed Edwina under Ugar, since that was probably the best place to put our air support/transportation—I just made a note that she was to be treated as a civilian and not in the chain of command, but that on her planes she was effectively the commanding officer. I would have to give her some sort of official rank, the same way militaries granted them to civilian consultants.
Air and land combat operations, naval transport and combat operations, logistics. I’m going to need more. A medical team here at base. We have a couple of medics in the kampfgruppe, but not enough to really make a department—which is what we need. An intelligence and counter intelligence department—spies suited both for field recon and making friends and networking in and outside of the country. An R&D team…
I sighed and immediately put Schugel’s face up beside Ugar. He was a madman, but he was the best candidate. I just needed to get someone to ride herd over him to keep him from blowing us all up.
And I need an engineering department, so we don’t have to rely on external contractors. That way, we can further build up Colina and not open ourselves up to infiltration.
Eventually, I was satisfied with my plans for the immediate future and finally managed to get some sleep.
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The following three months were very busy as we dug in and got to work.
With more people on the way, we were forced to expand. We had to add an expansion of barracks to the garrison, then clear some land out and start building homes for families. While that was ongoing, we had another group of workers come in and make a proper runway, a hangar big enough to hold twice as many bombers as we had available, and a home for Edwina. Since we had to have the equipment brought in to put down tarmac anyway, we went ahead and made a long, straight road between the garrison in the south and the castle in the north, then connected it to the runway and the village on the island.
Once Edwina was settled in, she had our bombers moved over. Ugar set up a regular, hourly ferry service for people and vehicles between the island and the mainland, then had a meeting with the governor and scheduled having a bridge built.
Edwina got her mechanics to work and soon began drafting plans and modifying our planes. The easiest was the bomber to be converted into a luxury transport, so they knocked that one out first, since everything they needed was easy to get. Once it was finished, I sent Edwina off to the States with Capt. Maybert and a couple of his people to purchase the artillery pieces, Bofors, and machine guns we needed to mount on our planes and have them shipped back to us. For some reason, Visha wanted to accompany them. I figured having her there, I’d probably get a better report on what had transpired out of her than Maybert anyway, who was notorious for his bland, minimalist reporting, so I agreed as a matter of saving myself a future headache even if her absence inconvenienced me for a few days.
People began arriving by boat not long after we completed the housing. The first batch of them escorted by Capt. Fischer as he and his people returned more than successfully, having captured several pirate ships that had attacked them and sold most of them, but kept the best of them for our own use. The captain was happy to see that we had completed a dock and berth for the Ingrid on our little island, right beside the castle, and immediately took the opportunity to put it to use getting his ship some much needed maintenance.
With the families of my men streaming in, along with new recruits from the motherland bringing their own families, morale was at an all time high. I may have turned a blind eye when the parties got a little noisy at night, so long as the men on duty did their jobs.
As for the biggest thorn in my side… Schugel claimed none of the rooms in the garrison were fit for his lab. We eventually had to build him a facility from the ground up nearby, to his specifications. The mad scientist’s lab had three floors including a basement—room for offices, supplies, and a small hangar. We also had to construct housing for Schugel and his soon to be new team nearby. As for the team, Schugel decided the best thing for him to do was to poach from the nearby college. The man had the audacity to just walk into various physics, chemistry, and science classes, take over the class himself, and give impromptu tests. Anyone who could score high enough was immediately offered a job. After that, he set up in his new lab and began holding classes himself to get them up to speed and on par with his old team.
I had to step in and hire a team of my own to work with him—specifically, people to handle paperwork and the budget. Those, I also poached from the college—specifically, their business and finance department. I assigned them a budget, then told Schugel that he needed to have plans drawn up and make working prototypes on the cheap if he wanted me to green light anything he wanted done, unless he could find a way to make money himself just to keep him from immediately blowing his budgetary load on something dumb.
Of course, we weren’t just building up and training. Even without the planes, we could still run operations in country. We needed funds quickly, so I set about getting them in the fastest way possible. I assigned a couple of teams to do the same thing with our recently liberated neighbor cities that we had done with Bellum—that is, hunting down the cartels and gutting them. Stripping them of their assets and making them ours, leaving no survivors behind.
All of their equipment, along with that of the communists we’d seized, was shipped back to Bellum. Everything not nailed down that we didn’t keep for ourselves, we donated to the families of those who were coming in by ship—so they had furniture, beds, decorations, and generally more creature comforts than they would have otherwise had. The properties we either sold, converted into bolt holes, or razed to the ground—though in that last case, if there were building materials we could use, we happily repurposed those.
Then, we went through and did a little cleaning of the local governments, just as we had with Bellum. Everyone either got with the program or wound up unemployed—or dead, if they fought back. Once we had instituted some regime changes there, we had them increase the size of their police forces and put together a volunteer militia, which we then armed with some of the things we’d confiscated from the commies. Communications protocols were established and we turned Sao Domingo and Santa Maria, and outlying villages, into an early warning system against commies approaching from that direction by land.
When the intelligence came in from Sao Paulo and the capital, we were ready to act on it.
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“Hello everyone~! Thank you for coming!” Visha grinned as she closed the door to the small room everyone had gathered in.
“What’s this about, Capt. Serebryakov?” Cmdr. Fuchs asked, as the colonel’s adjutant moved around the table and began pouring them coffee. In addition to herself and Capt. Serebryakov was Lt. Col. Weiss, Col. Ugar, and the new young civilian pilot, Lt. Vazquez.
She leaned forward and claimed a hot chocolate muffin off of a plate in the center of the table and carefully dug in with a fork, even as she considered the pile of things in the center of the table. In addition to the muffins and the pot of coffee Capt. Serebryakov was placing down, there was what looked like two different kinds of bars of chocolate wrapped in light and dark wax paper, one pound bags of roasted coffee beans, small pouches of local dried pipe tobacco, a couple of boxes of local cigars, bags of mixed local fruit, and a plate containing a selection of sliced local fruit—only one of which she recognized, that being a banana.
“Well,” Visha began, taking one of the bars of chocolate and breaking off a piece, before dropping it in her cup of coffee. Seeing this, Cmdr. Fuchs took one of the bars and did likewise, humming quietly at the flavor as the chocolate began to melt. “As you all know, we’ve seized property and assets from the local cartels. Among them were several legitimate businesses. A coffee plantation, a cocoa plantation, a small chocolate factory, and with the latest raids, more cocoa and coffee plantations, some growing local fruit, a few growing tobacco, and a company that prepares the tobacco and produces pipe tobacco and cigars.”
“I see,” Ugar murmured, reaching out and taking one of the cigars. He gave it a sniff and nodded appreciatively. “Much better than the local cigarettes I’ve tried.”
Weiss stood and projected a hologram from his computation orb above the table. “We’ve mostly left the running of these facilities alone, aside from doing some inspections and making sure everything looks above board. Unfortunately, we know nothing of the trade, nor do we know anything of industrial safety. So, we’re looking into hiring people from the States to come down and take care of those aspects of things.”
“Alright. What does this have to do with us?” Fuchs wondered, while making a note that if they owned all of those things, she would certainly be procuring all of her coffee and chocolate needs from their own companies. Actually, coffee is the lifeblood of the Ingrid, almost more so than fuel. If we could guarantee a cheap, regular supply, that would certainly ease some of the burden of resupply. Likewise, I know many of the men are fond of their tobacco. And if we’ve got our own fruit, we can source that locally as well. Three of our ships’ dietary needs met from within our own ability to supply. This is good.
“Well, while Edwina and I were in America,” Visha gestured between herself and Lt. Vazquez, who grinned, “We might have made a few stops here and there and spoken to a few distributors and businessmen…”
“She means to say that she flashed a pretty smile and sweet talked them,” Edwina chuckled, earning a giggle from Visha. “So, we now have guaranteed buyers in the States. I’ve already spoken with papa and he’s going to dedicate two cargo planes to flying fruit up to see how it sells in that market. But you know how the Americans go nuts over exotic imports. We’ll be chartering ships to ship out coffee, chocolate, and tobacco for now, then more for fruit later, if it does well.”
“That’s where the Ingrid comes in. We’d like you to run escort for them,” Weiss explained. “Also, to put together, train, and equip at least two crews and ships to do the same, so we don’t have to rely on the Ingrid exclusively.”
“And Col. Ugar’s role will be to work the locations of those plantations, and our air and sea ports into his plans for laying down dedicated rail lines,” Visha continued.
Sipping his coffee as he sat back in his chair, Ugar hummed. “And we own these, not the country?” he asked, and Visha and Weiss nodded. “So then, the money from the sales will be going back into the businesses and into our private military, so we don’t have to rely on the Brasa government.”
“Exactly,” Weiss nodded.
“And the better you do, the better I do, ‘cause you can buy me new planes,” Edwina grinned. “Our fortunes are well and truly tied together now.”
Fuchs considered the others before asking, “Why is Col. Degurechaff not here?”
Visha grinned. “Because it’s a surprise! Don’t worry, she’s actually helping, just not how she thinks she is. I’ve been running all of the financial decisions by her under the guise of asking for lessons in economics. She loves talking about it, so she’s a wellspring of information. I want to surprise her with the first yearly budget report and a lump sum of money.”
“I suppose I should get started making a list of things we can spend that windfall on then,” Ugar chuckled dryly. “If only so I can see her face, in that moment when she realizes that she has to spend the money she was just given.”
Fuchs nodded, considering for a moment before asking, “If we’re taking enemy assets as spoils of war, does this leave us free to plunder pirates?”
“Absolutely!” Visha nodded, which Weiss echoed.
“Please do. Consider it an unofficial order. If you can capture and interrogate pirates and find out where they’re based out of, we can clean them out and take over their facilities for ourselves.”
“Giving us small ports and bases in the Caribbean that we can use to refuel and repair, as needed,” Fuchs murmured. “Yes, I’ll pass the word along.”
“Great! That about does it, everyone. Please, take some samples with you when you go!” Visha smiled, gesturing at the pile on the table. And with that, the meeting was over.