6 February 3303. Roberts Port, Fedmich system.



The Type-9’s crowded hold smelled of sweat, grease and tobacco (illegal throughout the Fedmich system) containers were stacked disorderly, but leaving a narrow corridor to the center of the room. The cargo had been set aside to make a room for the meeting that was being held there among the most powerful scrap dealer families. The meeting was coming to an end:



- I support the proposal with 20,000 credits.

- I also support it, I will contribute with 15,000 credits.

- Damn merchant's sons! I vote 25,000 credits against it…



What the scrap dealers of The Bubble understood as “democracy” is quite interesting... each family was governed internally on their own way, but important issues were discussed by representatives of the most powerful families and during the sequent voting (where they decided how to solve them), the families accompanied their vote with a generous amount of credits. At the end of the vote credits were counted, not votes.



- Council members - The Council Moderator took a sip of her whiskey, losing all the officiality that their words could have - the total count has been 55.000 agree, 40.500 against and 0 to the abstention, the proposal is approved…



Yes, it might seem silly to recount the credits for abstention. This began to be done when the Wenrich family paid for their abstention more than the amount of yes and no during a vote to show that he didn't vote for any option, not because his family was lacking money, but because they didn’t care that particular subject at all.



- … the next point of the meeting has been included by Householder Nathaniel at the last moment, so we give the floor to the representative of the Verok family.



A figure stood up from the overturned container he was using as a seat and made a sign to the back of the room. A man leaning against a control panel stood up hurriedly and began to handle the powerful crane of the cargo hold. The scene intrigued the group of Householders that until now surrounded the Moderator and they started to watch what it seemed a container, covered by a tarp. It was being approached to the center of the circle and it was disengaged from the crane with a sharp sound. Nathaniel Verok was next to the object that look like several centimeters taller, he took the cigar from his mouth and began to speak with the typical accent of the bubble's center inhabitants.



- Scrap dealer families, I will go to the point because we all want to keep making money - there was laughter among the listeners - The reason of why we have held this meeting in Roberts Port is well-known to all of you, all of us were in the vicinity collecting escape pods and wreckage components to "deliver" them here. But the Alliance's call for help has been rather suspicious… I'm pretty sure an Alliance convoy is not an easy target and yet the criminals did not wait for it to leave a high security system, this, and thinking that it took a week longer than expected to find the point where the attack occurred, creates the suspicion that the security troops of the system had not been warned that this convoy was going to jump here, nevertheless the criminals themselves did know this fact - there was a break, and the Householder of the Verok reviewed their companions expressions to make sure his words were being understood - On the other hand, some of the explosions that we have seen in the remains of the convoy appear to be internal explosions… perfectly attributable to exploding subsystems when collapsing, but taking in mind the espionage game previously commented… - everyone present had been at the scene of the incident, so some heads began to affirm, remembering the state of the scrap - So my questions are, what or who was the Alliance carrying? Why should they keep a secret between their own ranks? Who attacked the convoy and from what posit…



- That's a waste of time! - an old woman rose indignantly from the seat that had been brought from her ship - Scrap dealers don't ask questions, we take the load and look for the highest bidder. If we had to worry about the source of each encrypted data we collect…



- Bukanan family, you disappoint me. - Nathaniel interrupted, getting closer to the covered stuff - Our job is simple, but I have always thought that taking advantage of the others' garbage made us smarter than the rest… I was led to think that we were able to make a profit from where the rest didn't see it. Therefore, if we have these potentially valuable questions on the table - Nathaniel withdrew the canvas with a wide movement of his two arms - I find disappointing to not get the answers out of the scrap that we have been trying to collect so hard.



Nathaniel smiled, the rest of Hoseholders smiled, the occupant inside the escape pod smiled, obviously for a nervous tic.