Chapter 43: Negotiating with the Resistance
Lieutenant Rudolphson remained silent for a long time. It was a silence so heavy that Kian thought a century had passed—long enough for an incompetent officer to find his spine and refuse.
But in the end, Rudolphson merely sighed, covering his eyes with a trembling hand, as if his palm were the last shroud of his dignity.
"I... I want a cut."
Kian responded instantly. "Thirty percent of the net profit. Whether you hoard it or split it with your men is none of my business."
Rudolphson kept his face hidden, his voice muffled behind his fingers. "I also need you to kill someone for me."
Kian's eyes narrowed. "Who?"
"Lieutenant Winchester."
"Who the hell is Winchester?"
"A company commander in our battalion. He's the only thing standing between me and the rank of Major. The Colonel told me plainly: Winchester is a minor noble from the Spire. He's only down here to 'earn his stripes' so he can climb the political ladder. His family is already pulling strings to hand him the battalion command. Unless he's removed from the roster permanently, I'm stuck as a Lieutenant until the day I die."
Kian's mouth twisted into a grin. "If I take him out and you get that promotion, how much 'logistical oversight' can you provide?"
Rudolphson lowered his hand. "As a Major, I'd control three PDF infantry companies and a motorized platoon. This entire two-kilometer stretch of the perimeter would be mine. It would be my personal fiefdom. You could run a daemon-summoning circle here and no one would report it."
Kian licked his lips. With a Battalion Commander in his pocket, his business would be untouchable.
"Winchester is a cautious coward," Rudolphson added. "He spends every engagement locked inside a Chimera armored transport. Getting to him won't be easy."
"I'll find a way," Kian said confidently. "Just keep me updated on his movements. I'll handle the 'promotion' when the window opens."
Kian shifted gears. "Now, how do I find the rebel leaders? I need to establish a trade route."
Rudolphson thought for a moment. "The Secessionist command isn't fixed. If they stay in one place, our orbital scanners find them and we level the grid. But during that night raid on the Monitoring Station, my boys caught a wounded rebel. I haven't turned him over to the Commissars yet. You might be able to use him to find a local cell leader."
"Perfect," Kian said. "Give me the prisoner, a standard autogun, and a ride to the wire."
Half an hour later, a rugged open-top scout car skidded to a halt in the center of the No-Man's Land. The landscape was a graveyard of scorched earth and cratered ruins. Housing blocks had collapsed into piles of rebar and dust. The fields were fallow, showing no sign of life.
Rudolphson sat in the driver's seat. In the back sat Kian, an Imperial autogun slung over his shoulder. Beside him was the wounded rebel—a man in rags, his hands bound and a black hood over his head.
Rudolphson engaged the handbrake and turned to Kian. "Are you sure about this? You don't know who these people are. If their leader is a fanatic, he'll put a bullet in your head the moment you open your mouth. Our deal ends there."
Kian offered a cryptic smirk. "Death isn't the end for me, Rudy. It's just the beginning of a very expensive grudge."
He hauled the whimpering rebel out of the car. Rudolphson gave a curt nod. "Good luck." The scout car roared to life, turning back toward the Imperial lines.
Once the dust settled, Kian yanked the hood off the prisoner. The man looked to be in his late forties—a simple farmer with skin like weathered leather. His eyes were wide with terror, his lips moving in silent pleas for mercy.
Kian drew his combat knife. The rebel began to wail, trying to scramble away, but his bound hands made him clumsy. He tumbled into the dirt. Kian moved in, pinning the man's neck with his knee. The rebel thrashed, certain the end had come.
Snip.
Kian cut the ropes. He stood up and, to the man's absolute bewilderment, tossed the PDF autogun into his lap.
Kian lit a Lho-stick, looking bored. "Take me to your leader. Someone with the authority to sign a contract. I've got a business proposal that'll keep your people from starving."
Six hours later, deep within a dense forest forty kilometers north of the PDF camp, Kian sat on a wooden stump. His hands were bound (for show), and he was surrounded by the sights and sounds of a Secessionist war-camp.
It was a primitive sight. Over a thousand people lived in wooden shacks. Most were working the fields or hauling timber. There were armed guards—maybe a hundred—but their gear was pathetic. Most carried single-shot pipe-guns or rusted farm tools. Kian even saw a man using a stone axe to clear brush.
In the twisted reality of the 41st Millennium, the Spire Lords hoarded all industrial capacity. Every factory on the planet was located inside the Hive City. When the peasants rebelled, the Governor simply cut the supply of manufactured goods. The rebels were effectively being forced back into the Stone Age.
A man of quiet, intense authority approached, flanked by a dozen guards. This was the local Cell Leader—Elder Varick. He looked to be in his fifties, his hair white at the temples.
"Who are you?" Varick demanded, his expression cold. "And why shouldn't I hang you as a spy?"
Kian raised his bound hands, rattling the rope. "I just saved one of your boys from a PDF interrogation cell. Is this how you treat a guest?"
The guards leveled their scrap-metal guns at Kian's head. Kian let out a sharp bark of laughter.
"What's so funny, Imperial rat?" Varick hissed.
Kian looked the Elder in the eye. "I'm laughing at your arrogance. You're being choked to death by the Hive's industrial monopoly. You're poor, you're regressing into cavemen, and yet you're about to throw away the only chance you have to change your fate."
Varick spat on the ground. "Our revolution will succeed! We will cast the Governor and his leeches into the dust of history! We have the will of the people!"
Kian shook his head. "Your revolution consists of throwing rocks at a wall of reinforced ceramite sixty meters thick. If that's your plan, I should give you a medal for optimism."
One of the guards, enraged, shoved his pipe-gun against Kian's forehead. "We are not afraid to die! We have iron wills!"
Kian didn't flinch. "Sure, you have iron wills. But the PDF has infinite ammunition and willed iron. I'd love to see which one breaks first when the tanks roll in."
"You son of a—!" The guard raised his rifle butt to smash Kian's face.
Kian performed a lightning-fast sweep, kicking the guard square in the groin. The man collapsed with a wet wheeze, clutching his 'grox-marbles' as tears streamed down his face. The other guards surged forward, ten rifles pressing into Kian's skin.
Kian remained calm. He looked at the crude weapons. "Tsk, tsk. No rifling. Smoothbore pipes. Can these even punch through flak-plate? And that smell... sulfur? You're still using black powder propellants?"
He looked at Varick with pure disdain. "It's the 41st Millennium, and you're using weapons from the 2k era. Do the lead pellets you fire even scratch the paint on a Chimera?"
Varick signaled his men to hold. He was curious now. "What do you want, stranger?"
Kian pointed to the man he had released, who was still clutching the PDF-issue autogun.
"See that? Rifled barrel. Military-grade propellant. That slug will travel a kilometer and put a hole in a man's skull before he hears the report. That is a real weapon. An industrial product. Something you couldn't manufacture in a thousand years of farming.
"I have a way to get you hundreds of them. Thousands."
The atmosphere in the camp shifted instantly. Greed and desperation replaced the hostility. They knew the power of a PDF rifle. One man with a real autogun was worth a hundred peasants with pipe-guns.
Varick narrowed his eyes. "What is your price?"
Kian grinned. The hook was set. "One rifle for three tons of grain."
Varick's jaw tightened. "Three tons?! Do you have any idea how much work that is? For a five-kilogram piece of iron?"
"I don't care about the work," Kian said. "I know grain isn't a 'scarce resource' for you. You control the surface. You can dig a hole, drop a seed, and wait. To you, grain is cheap. But that rifle? That was forged by Tech-Priests in a cathedral of fire. It was pressed by ten-thousand-ton stamps and blessed by the Omnissiah.
"I'm offering you a chance to trade something you can grow in the dirt for something you can never build. Is there a problem?"
Varick hesitated. He knew Kian was right, but his revolutionary pride bristled. "Why do you need so much grain? To feed the PDF? You want to open a supply line to the Hive so the 'leeches' can stay fat while we toil?"
Kian rolled his eyes. "You think you can starve out tens of billions of people in a Hive City? Don't be naive. Do you have any idea how efficient Promethium-Waste Starch Synthesis is?"
He leaned in, his voice dropping. "One of those machines produces enough starch every day for tens of billions; trying to starve out the Hive with a food blockade is simply impossible."
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