Chapter 117: Book 2: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Day 53

 

The negotiation went on for several fraught hours but came to a satisfying conclusion. And no, I’m not talking about what I got up to with Shana once I was back on Marena’s Mercy. Rest assured there was plenty of satisfaction to go around in that arena as well.

I had the Muskegon Collective, as they had named themselves, by the metaphorical balls. And I squeezed those hairy plums for all I was worth.

They would officially be paying the Shattered Storm tribute for the next twenty-five years. Technically, piratical tribute was supposed to be the result of a corsair faction bullying another with overwhelming force as opposed to us doing them a favour, but it worked out for all involved.

Quixbix was instrumental in hammering out the details of their tribute. Quinntexxis would have been proud of him, not that either of them would admit it.

The agreed tribute was predicated on our participation in the upcoming battle. And that by the end of the battle, the Brotherhood of the Lion’s Claw forces were routed from Grand Haven and the settlement was turned over to the Muskegon Collective’s control.

That was fine by me. As much as I might have liked to extend the Shattered Storm’s property portfolio, we weren’t able to maintain the necessary presence in the town at the moment. We still had a dozen islands to expand onto first. Better it be in their hands than in Luca’s.

But that did give me a bit of extra leverage during the negotiation, and we wrung several concessions out of them for something we never intended to claim.

In exchange for our aid, the Collective was bound to pay the Shattered Storm twenty-five thousand in gold annually. That would be six hundred and twenty-five thousand over the lifetime of the tribute contract.

They baulked at the sum initially, but we held firm on the number.

Quixbix was adamant this was a fraction of what we should demand and refused to accept it being lowered. The Collective had more than fifty thousand citizens which would go up by another ten or fifteen thousand when they properly absorbed their three southern neighbours. This would be less than half a gold per citizen per year. Even a level one non-combat class could make that in a day if they got off their ass and tried.

More importantly, they ceded some of their diplomatic freedoms to the Shattered Storm. They couldn’t make any formal agreements or merge with another faction without our approval. They were happy to agree to that demand as they had no intention of doing so anyway.

This meant they couldn’t make peace with Luca’s Brotherhood behind our backs, and would keep them at odds with him, exerting pressure, and increasing competition for resources in the area. An important detail for my quest.

Stormblade Harbour also became their preferred market for the duration. This meant they had to offer their goods for sale or buy from our markets first before they could look elsewhere. Initially, this was a sticking point, mostly because the Collective weren’t as aware of how the markets worked as we were.

Once it was explained, and confirmed independently by their own people, that the Framework checked and indexed mean prices for all trade goods within a town’s network, they understood we couldn’t use this to rip them off. The preference was only obligatory if we made offers within the index’s accepted margins.

In layman’s terms if we low-balled them too much on the price they could refuse and go elsewhere. We could still high-low them within the margins, though. And as my markets were Prime, in a few months their reach would be much greater, which would affect the indexes in our favour. We’d be able to choose whether to include or exclude the wider markets we could interact with in the calculations to get the mean that benefitted us the most for any given transaction.

There had to be some advantage for being the dominant partner in the arrangement after all.

Despite some of their misgivings, the tribute I demanded from the Muskegon Collective was rather light by Darkwyrlds standards. By itself, it didn’t even qualify as a lesser act of piracy.

However, with tributes. it was always an accumulation of the total your faction was in receipt of each year that counted. Corsairs who managed to build up enough annual tribute to qualify for a superior piratical act never had to worry about notoriety losses.

Provided the tributes were paid, of course.

The diplomatic and market elements would be enforced by the Framework for the twenty-five years or until the tribute contract was broken. The payments, on the other hand, were kind of voluntary in that the Framework wouldn’t debit the Collective’s account and hand it over to me. They had to pay me themselves.

But there were some hefty penalties in place if they did not pay within the deadlines of the tribute contract.

If they paid late, then the tribute for every subsequent year remaining would be doubled. This compounded if there were multiple years with late payments. Miss the payment date by more than a month and they would be in default and the contract officially broken.

Punitive action on my part was then expected.

Specifically, I had two months to extract ten times the remaining value of the tribute contract from them. For example, let’s say they only paid for this year and then defaulted on the next. Then their tribute contract would have six hundred thousand left to pay. I would be expected to seize assets to the value of six million gold from them within two months or begin to lose personal notoriety and faction influence.

The losses I’d incur were dependent on the length of the tribute contract remaining. In the example above, with twenty-four years left, I would lose twenty-four points from my notoriety and the Shattered Storm’s influence every month that the punitive action went incomplete. This would go on for ten months. For two-hundred and forty points in total if I did nothing.

If partial action was taken, then those losses would be reduced proportionally. Similarly, if the contract breaker’s faction doesn’t have assets to meet the full value of the penalty, then their complete conquest and eradication as an independent entity would be considered punitive fulfilment on my part.

I didn’t think we had to worry about the Collective, though.

We’d set the deadline for the first payment as the six months after integration mark, which was when the Earth’s plexus connections would be made available. They’d have realised by that point that twenty-five thousand gold really was a pittance not worth risking open conflict with me about.

The real concern was this system could also be used to effectively buy out the tribute contract. Pay the Shattered Storm ten times what was owed, and the contract would be voided, leaving them free to make their own diplomatic and market choices.

Hence my imp’s insistence that the annual gold payment had to be substantive. Too cheap and they’d simply buy their way out when it was convenient for them. Long term, the preferential market clause would likely be more valuable than mere gold upfront.

In the end, we didn’t stay overnight in Muskegon Lake. It made more sense for us to leave earlier and then sail back out to the middle of Lake Michigan before going south and then doubling back to approach Grand Haven from the southern side. This would circumvent whatever watch they had put in place.

The intelligence the Collective provided, detailed that the people of Grand Haven had done what many towns without Framework shielding had done. They had retreated from the outer suburbs and barricaded themselves inside the urban sprawl where the podium was sited.

The ship crunched into the sand about half a mile south of their defensive fortifications. It was a stretch of land with sandy ground mostly clear of any plant life and trees. This made the ship and my forces easier to spot, but we could also see the sentry outpost clearly. Our advantage was that we had several deadeye marksmen and the incredibly lethal Shana in our ranks who rained pointed death down on them from afar.

My crew and militia disembarked in rapid time, and we rushed up the sandy soil like it was the Normandy landings until we made contact with the road. The road was route thirty-one and it ran through the centre of the town.

Speed was our ally. Having dealt with some of Luca’s people before, I knew they made use of walkie-talkies. And the dead sentries, when looted, did indeed have one on them. Part of the reason I chose the sandy area rather than somewhere more covered was that when we intersected with the main road it was just before it curved and then straightened before heading up through the centre of Grand Haven, so we wouldn’t be spotted.

Then we headed over the road and ran parallel to the town until we reached the Grand Haven Memorial Airpark at which point, we finally turned northwards up 168^th Avenue. This meant we intersected with the Claw’s forces in the southeast quadrant.

You are reading story Corsairs & Cataclysms at novel35.com

This corner of the square they had reinforced was the site of a cluster of schools. The intelligence our allies provided suggested that before the Lion’s Claw took over it had the lightest barricading. The people of Grand Haven had used the natural shielding the schools supplied and only built barricades between the school buildings.

Thankfully, the new regime hadn’t changed things up and continued to rely on this. I doubted we’d get this fortunate again. If the understanding of the flaws of the school’s security features didn’t spread, the increased strength of the spawned beasts would soon force a reassessment.

The crew and militia moved forward into a hail of bullets from behind the barricades which the frontline absorbed on shields some of the crafters on the island had constructed.

They were simple square wooden shields made with the hides of spawned monsters that had been skinned or looted stretched over them to provide mana-infused protection. They looked a bit like the shields you’d associate with Zulu warriors, only square, not oblong.

These weren’t properly crafted shields, though. They’d be next to useless against real Darkwyrlds weaponry. The hides would last until their durability was worn down, but the wooden slats they were made from would crack and break from any impact. But bullets were not mana infused and the stretched hides absorbed most of the force as the bullets bounced off as Victor’s shots had done against my chest.

The retrieval of Anastasia’s creepy doll-golem had confirmed that Luca’s people were primarily still armed with old-world technology despite its deficiencies. It was one of the few pieces of information Anastasia had managed to extract.

The Gattosi family were known to be involved in gun running, so it made sense that he had a ready source at hand. Also, there was a National Guard armoury in Grand Rapids that he’d likely emptied out and then all the guns in the hands of private citizens that he’d have confiscated when he took power.

We didn’t charge the manned barricades, though. The shield-bearers got us to the doors of the school instead. This plan worked before, and it would work again.

This time rather than have Danny bash the doors down, we squeezed an alchemical concoction that Sheamus had cooked up mostly from pine sap, ash, and the livers of pestilence monkeys all over the hinges. The sap gave it a slightly yellowish hue and it had the texture of chewed gum. The gum, which Sheamus named Simtex, stank most foully when exposed to the air.

Once it was jammed in place the activating ingredient was squirted on it from a handheld water-spray we’d procured from a garden centre. Unfortunately, the last piece of the puzzle wasn’t water, but urine.

Simtex had been made from pestilence monkey livers, so the activating agent was equally distasteful.

Unlike its near namesake, Simtex didn’t explode when triggered.

Well, not much.

So, we didn’t need to worry about a blast radius unless you kept your face up close and personal. The gum fizzed and popped like a piece of sodium dropped in a bowl of water and the hinges melted away in about five seconds.

Simtex was nasty smelling but effective. Also, you always had to wear gloves when applying the stuff. You didn’t want a trace of it on your fingers the next time you went for a piss for obvious reasons

<You need more alchemists, Torin> Quixbix commented as we watched the fizzing mixture do its work. <That stuff will be a good seller when the markets open.>

“I know, Quix,” I muttered under my breath.

Recruiting alchemists was easier said than done. Even the non-combat versions were high-grade classes. And those were just the apprentices who would have a high failure rate at mixing up recipes.

As an Alchemic Bombardier, Sheamus had several bonuses when creating explosive or destructive recipes like the Simtex, increasing his success rate enormously. The flip side was that his failure rate for any other type of alchemic mixture was about ninety-eight percent. Unacceptably high to waste resources trying.

Still, both Quixbix and Quinntexxis had confirmed that to the best of their knowledge there was nothing like Simtex available on either the regular or black market. That didn’t mean another alchemist or alchemic bombardier hadn’t discovered the recipe or something similar. Only that they hadn’t made it available for purchase. Apparently, they could be quite jealous of their discoveries to the point of paranoia.

My musings on the future were put to the back of my mind as the double doors fell forward and we were in.

The crew went first. In general, they had better classes and more combat experience than the militia members. Once inside we were able to utilise another of Sheamus inventions. He called them Night-Nights; they were basically gas canisters that dispensed a narcoleptic mist.

A sleep gas.

They were only useful indoors. Outside the gas would disperse upwards or be blown away by any kind of breeze. If they went off right beside somebody they would likely be affected, but anybody more than a couple of feet away would go untouched. It was fast-acting, almost colourless, contained an irritant that encouraged inhalation, and went inert about thirty seconds after it was released into the air.

We would throw them into rooms and close the door like a SWAT team. If those that inhaled failed their resistance checks, they would be forced into unconsciousness for thirty minutes and they could not be roused until that time limit expired.

That was why alchemists were so valued. Anybody with the right ingredients and know-how could make a naturally narcoleptic concoction. Only alchemists could make it using mana and instil it with that magical advantage that enforced the results on Darkwyrlds enhanced physiologies.

As the crew exited the building to deal with the defenders on the barricades that now offered them no protection as we were already inside their perimeter, the militia cleared the rooms. They bound those who were asleep and either killed or accepted the surrender of the few who had resisted the effect.

The prisoners were a mixture of people who came with the Lions’ Claw and resident Havenites. The Havenites would be pressed into service to transport any booty we accumulated back to the ship, but after that would be released back to the care of the Muskegon Collective.

The Claw’s people, willing or not, would be coming with us. That was part of the agreement I’d struck with Pete and Sheila. Something else they were not to have to deal with themselves.

Now that battle was met, we made no effort to conceal our presence. After all, the point was for us to draw defenders away from the frontline at the northern end of the settlement.

We pushed onwards back towards the lake side of the town and came across an assisted living facility that had been converted into a barracks of sorts.

It was close enough to the schools that we reached it before most of the warriors inside had been properly roused. The pop-pop of gunfire through the night and the early morning had become a familiar refrain these days. Initially, it hadn’t disturbed them to hear it. Moreover, these guys had likely been on the night shift and had fallen into a deep sleep.

This was an enormous stroke of good luck as we literally caught almost two hundred of their fighters napping or near enough to it. Once this barracks was taken the entire southeast quarter of the enclosed town swiftly fell into our hands.

So far, we’d only lost two people. One from the crew and one from the militia. I didn’t like any fatalities, but this was about as good as we could have hoped for.

I left a large force of mostly militia under Brant’s command to corral those we’d already taken and hold the quarter.

My assumption was those on the barricades were under orders not to abandon their posts unless ordered. To be sure, I despatched scouts into the adjoining southwest quadrant to raise the alarm if the enemy stationed there made a move.

Meanwhile, the rest of us returned to route thirty-one and bloodily started to make our way up the road.

You can find story with these keywords: Corsairs & Cataclysms, Read Corsairs & Cataclysms, Corsairs & Cataclysms novel, Corsairs & Cataclysms book, Corsairs & Cataclysms story, Corsairs & Cataclysms full, Corsairs & Cataclysms Latest Chapter