It was clear that at least some of the individuals in Reaper Command were sympathetic to the strike, as the channel remained open despite the ugly bickering and lack of decorum being displayed by Reaper Command and the vitriolic House Indron officers.
“This signal is being bounced and broadcast throughout the Grotto fleets and in the systems at home. The Line does strange things to communications, but sooner or later people will know this is happening,” Bianca said, stasnding firm next to Samuel. “You can hear the stops and starts in the feed as new comms ping on the signal.”
“If this turns into a gun fight the whole war effort will fall apart” Samuel observed. “Not every marine is willing to strike, but enough are that Helion could possibly capitalize on the chaos and push Grotto back across the Line.”
He carefully looked through his sights at the face of the stormtrooper he’d picked as his target. Both he and the stormtrooper looked into each other’s eyes, recognizing that if the shooting started they were both likely dead men.
“Hey, Boss?” Gretchen asked Marsters as she looked out at the stormtroopers over the pilot light of her flamer, “Do we stand here until somebody gets bored and starts shooting or is there a plan? No offense, sir.”
“We hold our position, fangs out, until I get the right guarantees from the right command rating,” responded Boss Marsters, his cold eyes scanning the increasingly hostile no man’s land that had formed between the marines and the stormtroopers.
“Keep it steady, marines,” growled Samuel on the task force channel, taking a chance that it would galvanize his comrades without sending them into a shooting fit and knowing that he was likely creating a saying that would be on the lips of strikers all across Grotto, “Remember Tillman.”
Those words instantly echoed back from untold numbers of marines in the crowd, and were soon repeated again and again on even the task force channel as more and more marines broke protocol and made themselves heard.
9. THE ANOINTED
Fangs were shown on both sides between the striking marines and the stormtroopers and the standoff had gone on for eighteen grueling hours. In that time the ranks of both sides had grown considerably. It might have gone on even longer had it not been for a sudden Helion counter attack.
By then several thousand marines remained in the camp and refused to participate in the fighting, only a few of them breaking away from the strike to defend the camp with anti-air batteries. The stormtroopers facing off with the strikers were unable to break away and join in the defense.
The Dire Swords and remaining stormtrooper units were hard pressed to fend off the Helion attack. Though eventually successful in their efforts, the casualties were significantly higher compared to what they would have been if they had fought alongside the Reapers.
That had been a direct hit to the Bottom Line and finally slammed the point home.
After eighteen hours, fatigue had Samuel struggling to even keep his rifle even pointed in the general direction of the stormtroopers when Boss Marsters had finally given the order to disperse. He had received a confirmation of negotiations and a writ of protection for striking marines from the Anointed, a group of Grotto elites whose word was absolute. Unbelievably, their strike had been felt all the way to the apex of Grotto society.
No Grotto citizen, enforcer, stormtrooper, factory worker or aristocrat would dare defy the word of the Anointed. The Anointed were the highest power in Grotto civilization, a shadowy collective of individuals to whom even the Board of Executives had to abide.
With the strike ended, the marines had mustered out to aide in the defense of the Grotto claim, as a third and even more savage Helion counter attack was launched against them.
It took the better part of two weeks before the Anointed representative arrived, but during that time key negotiations had already been exchanged by the core members of the strike, Samuel among them, and the Anointed.
Samuel could hardly believe that he had been transformed into a unionist. He was a factory boy, then a Reaper, and now a unionist boss. To be seated in a small chamber, across from one of the most powerful individuals in Grotto, was stunning, even if Samuel was one of the three squad leaders in a highly decorated military unit that had apparently just won a major victory against their own corporation.
Samuel struggled to keep his composure in the presence of the Anointed, and listened keenly as Boss Marsters made history.
“You realize, of course, Citizen Marsters, that total forgiveness of the life-bond would have a catastrophic effect upon Grotto Corporation as a whole,” stated the Actuary as he squared his shoulders and intertwined his fingers to form a steeple as he set his elbows on the hard surface of the table, “Moreover it would have a cascading negative impact upon the Bottom Line for a multitude of corporations.”
“With respect, Anointed One, that impact is of modest immediate concern to us. I have soldiers fighting and dying for Grotto in the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families. Beyond a few exceptions, most of them will continue that better life as part of Grotto. However, due to institutionalized financial obstacles and the overall adversarial relationship between the actuarial tables and the citizen that has been cultivated within Grotto society, their willingness to fight has come to an end,” Marsters responded as he held the gaze of the Actuary with a deep calm Samuel had not seen on display since the face-off with Boss Aiken in the Vorhold downspire.
“The life-bond creates a near insurmountable interest bearing principle that reduces the effectiveness of standard salvage wages in extricating a soldier from those obligations, less so if that same soldier has dependents on the home front.
Hazard deployments do offer a sizeable wage spike, though when balanced against potential medical costs or the actual loss of life, they become only marginally more effective at lifting a soldier or their family out of the toxic debt cycle.
The death benefit is a large sum indeed, though you know much better than I do that the average death benefit does little more than pay off the individual bond and medical debts of the soldier, leaving at most only a modest remainder for any dependents.”
“Without the burden of a life-bond the Reapers would be highly motivated, through financial incentive, to be aggressively effective salvage combatants,” added Samuel, doing his best to match the tone of Boss Marsters, “Because then we would, according to the hard numbers, be fighting for our families and our futures. Any marine who can perform basic math knows that a high percentage of their daily wage is stripped away by debt.”
“May I presume that in addition to the strike broadcasts and footage, you have seen the vid-clip of Reaper Virginia Tillman being KIA?” asked Wynn as he fluidly interrupted Samuel, with only the slightest air of rebuke at the outburst.
“An effective bit of theater preceded by a most tragic loss of life,” nodded the Actuary before he glared at Boss Aiken, “And an equally tragic breach of information control on the part of one or more members of Reaper Command.”
“Marines throughout the Reaper Corps, even the small percentage who have not laid down arms, are calling her Saint Tillman,” said Wynn. “I am told that back on Baen 6 there is a foundry, where she once worked, that has been tagged with graffiti of her name and urges to unionize and strike.”
“Remember Tillman. Yes, the combination of strike broadcasts and the explicit coverage of her death has caused a great deal of defiance and unrest among the bonded class, most of which, however, we have been able to quell effectively and with little conflict,” responded the Actuary. “Though no acts of civil disobedience has had quite the immediate impact as your Reaper strike did. Nevertheless, many others in the bonded class have been incited to strikes, gatherings, and demonstrations.