It was an hour later when they finished the call. Daugereaux was a shrewd negotiator, and while Fleer had been able to squeeze some extra concessions out of the old Cajun, he hadn't gotten nearly as much as he'd thought he would. He slumped back, exhausted and satisfied.

Oliver, who had tuned out for most of the negotiations, perked up.

"Okay David, so what did you find? You would never have jumped on a contract that quickly unless you detected another angle in it."

Fleer's eyes crinkled ever so slightly in a not-quite smile.

"Look at the table, Oliver. Tell me what you see."

Oliver dragged a thick finger through the glowing data flowing along the table's surface, considering.

"Hmm. There are land deeds, corporate bylaws, asset sheets. It's just a jumble, as far as I can tell."

"Think it through. Think of the men on Daugereaux' land. What are they doing?"

"Well nothing to do with Daugereaux, I'd imagine. Fourteen weapons caches? Even for a tough old Cajun they wouldn't need that much."

Fleer nodded. Oliver continued.

"So they're gearing up for something. Something on Daugereaux' land maybe?" Oliver scanned the land survey of Daugereaux' property, and shook his head. "I'm not seeing it."

"I'll give you two clues. One is about when he got the land."

"Didn't his grandfather give it to him?"

"Something like that, but when?"

Oliver searched his memory. "2327, was it?"

"Right. And for ten bonus points on your history quiz, when did the second Corporate Land Grab happen?"

"2395, I think. So... if this deed is indeed legitimate, and it's been constantly occupied by the Daugereaux family, then that land was never part of any corporation's holdings. It's an independent territory?"

"Exactly. Just like Concordium. He literally lives on 1,000 acres of the Daugereaux Nation. A nation that only has two old people to defend it."

"So it makes an ideal staging point to launch an operation, since there won't be anybody to raise a fuss about the movement of troops on their soil. Except for Mr. Daugereaux. And us, I guess."

"That's exactly right. So what are they staging for?"

Oliver sifted through more of the data on the desk. He pulled up a map of Daugereaux' land and the surrounding areas. It was a fairly clean satellite image, with territory borders clearly marked out.

"Well, there's not much here. Their land's butted up against this corporate territory to the north. Cryocorp."

Fleer nodded. Oliver continued, reading through paperwork.

"So Cryocorp has a facility here. Some kind of holdings facility. Hm."

Fleer decided to spin out some corporate history while Oliver read through the company's asset sheets and background data.

"Cryocorp," he said, "was founded about twenty years after the second Land Grab by Gerald Harrigan. He carved out a little niche down there near the Gulf of Mexico, producing parts for cryogenic freezers, long-haul space cruisers and such."

"Harrigan was sharp, his business flourished, and everybody was happy for a while. He had two sons, each of which he privately promised the entire business to, but he would never put anything down on paper. He wanted his sons to compete for his company. And they did. Viciously."

Fleer paused and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Problem was," he continued, "neither of them could maintain a clear advantage over the other. They fought, you know, in the corporate way, but it was a perfect stalemate, and Harrigan liked it that way. He kept them going at each other, boosting whichever one was at a disadvantage, and undercutting him once he was gaining power. This is not all that unusual, but as he aged, he became eccentric."

"Isn't that rich-people-speak for 'crazy'?" Oliver asked.

"Precisely. He became delusional, paranoid. Had his mansion torn down because he claimed the windows were staring at him and the hallways whispered. He had it rebuilt into a windowless cube. It's still kind of a tourist attraction today. He dotted his property with bunkers, and started hiring people to follow him around yelling things in a language nobody recognized, to keep 'them' at bay."

"'Them' who?"

"Nobody knows."

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Yep. Sounds crazy."

"Anyway, his focus was on whatever he believed was going on, not his company. Between that and his sons' constant fight for control, Cryocorp dwindled, fast. Harrigan cast around for something to blame. He became quite the connoisseur of conspiracy theories. At that time he started drastically shifting the company's assets to protect what they had left."

Oliver looked through the asset sheets. "Their asset mix is a little concentrated. Mostly hard assets. Gold?" Fleer nodded. "What kind of corporation holds that much gold?"

"One with an obsessed maniac at the helm."

"You know an awful lot about this company, David."

"It was all over the newsfeeds a few years ago, before you were in town. Big scandal. You know how the news is: 'Will Cryocorp Survive?', a bunch of human-interest stories about the employees that would be out of work, and financial and military analysis about how the land would be divided up when they imploded."

"So what happened? With the brothers, I mean?"

"Harrigan passed away suddenly, and his sons started cooperating with each other. The brothers have been getting the company back on track. It's nothing like it once was, but they're doing alright. They had to take the company public, to survive. Even so, they've been cash-thin, had to make a bunch of cuts and borrow some money to stay afloat, but they've got a lot of gold they can borrow against."

Oliver considered all this for a moment.

"It's quite an interesting story, but what does that have to do with Daugereaux?"

"Think about it. What's the problem with gold?"

"I'm not sure. It'd be hard to liquidate much at once, I'd imagine."

"True, but not quite what I was thinking. What's another problem with physical money?"

"People want to steal it. You have to keep it secure?"

"Exactly."

"So that's this facility?" Oliver asked.

"Precisely."

"So there's a large building full of gold in the middle of nowhere. I think I'm starting to see what these 'oilmen' are staging up for."

Fleer sat back with a satisfied grin.

"Very good, Oliver. Now the first rule of a burglary is that you have to get away. Look at the surrounding area and tell me what you see."

"I can see why nobody's tried to infiltrate that facility. Swampland and trees. One road in or out, and I strongly suspect the tree cover has been cleared to expose the road for air support. The photos of the facility aren't the best, but I see what looks like a helipad. You could grab the gold, but you'd never escape in one piece." Oliver nodded as he began to understand. "That's how you knew where they were cutting the trees. They're clearing a path through Daugereaux' land to take the gold through. Right here, north-south, like you said. That will give them a direct route to the highway. If they can get there, they can go any direction. Free and clear."

Fleer nodded.

"Now you've got it."

"So where do we come in? You're thinking we should stop them? Try to get some kind of reward?"

"Not quite. See, once that gold is on Daugereaux' land, a new set of rules comes into play. There are no corporate agreements with what we might call the Daugereaux Nation. The 'Stable Powers' Default Treaties don't apply. And under the old treasure laws, Daugereaux is not obligated to return that to Cryocorp, since it was brought into his sovereign nation during the commission of a crime."

Oliver's brow crinkled.

"I don't think I like where this is going," he said.

"Hear me out. Since we'll be defending his land under contract, that triggers the 'Equipment and Found Goods' clause of our standard contract. It's simple enough, and nobody thinks of it, but there's a finder's fee of 10%. We could conceivably carve out a slice of that stash."

Oliver stared levelly at Fleer for a moment.

"That's why you took the contract," he said. "You don't care about Daugereaux, you just want a crack at that gold."

Fleer shrugged uncomfortably.

"We still owe a lot of credits, Oliver. This represents our best shot at getting that monkey off our backs."

Oliver worried at a thumbnail.

"But David, we know they're going to commit a crime. We have to stop it."

"We can't," Fleer replied flatly. "Legally speaking, we can't go onto Cryocorp land without cause. Corporate law, jurisdiction and what-all. If we step foot on Cryocorp land without a contract, we'll be the criminals. And we don't know that anybody is going to commit a crime, we've just got a strong suspicion."

"We should tell Cryocorp."

Fleer nodded slowly.

"We could. Do you know who's pulling off the heist?"

Oliver shook his head.

"Me neither," Fleer said. "And since I don't know which megacorp is running this operation, I won't know which rich and powerful people I've suddenly made hate me. If we do this under the Daugereaux contract, we're covered. Work for hire and all that. If we go off white-knighting, well, a lot of companies would see that as a declaration of intent to ally, or a power play. I don't have anything against Cryocorp, but I don't want to be stuck with them as an ally all of a sudden, and we're nowhere near big enough to survive any kind of power grab. We'd be ground up by bigger players before the message was finished transmitting."

Oliver deflated a little.

"But David, we can't... profit from this!"

"Daugereaux will certainly profit, if we can run them off his land. If we're smart about how we do it, we can maximize his profit. We'll have earned that 10%, and then some."

Oliver frowned.

"I just don't want to think of myself making money that way. I don't think I want to do this op."

Fleer nodded.

"Every contract Riotfish, Inc. accepts is strictly voluntary for every employee. You do not have to participate in any contract you don't want to." Fleer punched a few numbers into a spreadsheet on his datapad and pulled in some data. He flung the numbers out onto the table.

"What's this?" Oliver asked.

"An estimate. Building volume, gold density, local infrastructure... that's a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much gold is in that facility."

Oliver's face grew very still as Fleer flicked another document onto the table.

"That's this morning's bid price on the gold exchange. I'll let you do the rest of the math."

Oliver stared wordlessly at the numbers.

"Ten percent of that?" he asked finally.

Fleer shrugged.

"Could be. I'll admit that these numbers are a lot of guesses and maybes. But they're feasible. Naturally, each of you would get your contractual share. And there would be plenty left over to pay off Pearce. And fix this place up. Or just buy a new place. And have some left over. A lot left over."

Oliver was quiet for a bit.

"We should tell Daugereaux, at least."

"I agree. I'll let you tell him all about it at our next contact. We should have at least one more before we head down."

Oliver chewed on his thumbnail, riveted to the numbers on the table.