She Bleeds for Us: The Galactic Consortium 3

Chapter 21

Jake and Abioya stood beside their truck, Brown Bessy as Åse called it. They looked back over the refugee camp in the early morning haze.

Jake gave a wistful sigh. There was something about seeing it come together, seeing the people you were helping. Scared sick kids one day, running around the edge of the camp the next day playing.

Åse appeared at his side. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, they will still be here when you get back and the quartermaster will have our hides if we aren't back to Bamako by nightfall."

He nodded. Helvig and Pierre were already climbing the ladder towards the cab and Chatura was inside, getting the systems ready to go.

"She's right," Abioya said with a frown. "They will still be here." Neither the crisis at the border or within the country seemed likely to be resolved anytime soon. The capital city of Freetown was in revolt. Authorities were quarantining sections, trying to keep small groups of protestors and rebels separate from each other. Elsewhere people were fleeing the region in droves.

Jake looked up and caught a glimpse of Åse's rear as she climbed to the cab. He blushed and tried not to look up again as he climbed after her. He was glad they were with them for this drive.

Her crew would be taking Brown Bessy on their usual long mission. Crisis notwithstanding there were deliveries to be made. Jake and his crew would work around the base for the last remaining days of their stint.

"Any chance they resolve things soon?" he asked Abioya as they all settled into the cab, Chatura behind the wheel with Pierre running copilot for him.

"If Bundi over steps; if there is violence, then the Consortium will have little choice but to move in," Abioya said.

"And we've seen what that means," Pierre said. "It will be over quick. Even America couldn't stand against them long."

"Ganaka is threatening that," Åse said. "I saw it on the news this morning."

"About all he's good for," Jake muttered. Jake still shared the same view most Americans had of Captain Ganaka, the leader of the expeditionary forces. He was quick to anger and had nearly caused a war with all of the earth by botching first contact. Many of the African locals seemed to like him though.

"It's his job, no?" Åse said. "Did you see the interview he gave Holi about his meeting the Sarasvat when she first arrived."

Jake shook his head. He knew what American news said, that he should be taken off his job, sent home in disgrace. Even their news said it. But Sarasvat had kept him, using him in Africa and the Middle East.

"She said to him, 'you've earned a reputation as an ill-tempered guard dog. Now you must play the role you've set yourself.'" Åse said. "And so he has. He barks at Bundi about stepping in. When Bundi is afraid, the diplomats will offer him a peaceful solution and he'll agree."

"No," Abioya said. "That has happened elsewhere. It will happen again. But not here. Bundi's gone too far already."

There had been rumors of scattered violence, arrests of protestors and similar things, but Jake didn't think that was too far. Surely a diplomatic solution could be worked out.

"The people there, they don't want reform anymore," Abioya went on. "They would have been satisfied a month ago, but not now. I heard one of their leaders talking. 'We won't accept new names in an old system.'"

"Then what do they want?" Pierre asked.

"For the consortium to take over, for Sierra Leone to be another Consortium government, either as a collective or through reconciliation."

Reconciliation was becoming a new buzz word in the news as several European nations were seeking it. It was a diplomatic process by which their constitutions and laws were reconciled with Consortium laws, at which point they became part of the Consortium voluntarily.

American news, at least the channels popular back home, were dead set against it. A terrible loss of freedom, they called it. All Jake could think was that it would mean not having to exchange currency and that his kid brother Mike could go to a Consortium school instead of the crap they had back home.