Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Beyer cleared his throat meaningfully.
    “Aside from Earth, of course,” the new ambassador amended himself hastily.
    “Open worlds weren’t an option for humans until just a few years ago,” Clive explained. “It takes money to buy passage and land, not to mention capital to invest in setting up a farm or a business. Generally speaking, unless the world is well established, newcomers are expected to handle their own affairs. The open worlds currently accepting humans are owned by Dollnick merchant princes, Drazen consortiums and of course, the Verlocks. But it’s rare for any other species to want to live anywhere a Verlock would feel comfortable.”
    “I’ve heard the Dollnicks hire human laborers for terraforming projects, and when the world is ready for occupation, they try to recover their investment by selling part of the real estate to the same laborers who did the work,” President Beyer said.
    “It seems to be a successful business model,” Clive replied. “From the human standpoint, it saves on transportation costs if they remain on the world where they or their parents served out a labor contract, and they also know exactly what to expect.”
    “But I suppose when they move from a work camp or a company town into an independent human settlement, the Dollnicks are no longer responsible for policing,” Belinda said. “Do you have any information on how they’re coping?”
    “Everything we know to date comes from an analysis of the help-wanted ads posted to the mercenary exchanges,” Clive said. “We’ve assigned a pair of senior agents to visit some representative communities and to talk things over with whoever is in charge. The ads usually state that the humans are willing to consider proposals from artificial people and aliens, but for the money they’re offering, the only takers will be human, or perhaps some Gem ex-military. By contrast, doing police work on alien outposts has always been viewed as desirable work for human mercenaries, but of course, the aliens can afford to pay well.”
    “Why would any of the advanced species need human cops?” the president asked.
    “It mainly comes down to economics,” Clive explained. “None of the advanced species hire mercenaries for policing on developed worlds, or even on their own colonies, for that matter. Most of the demand is from mining outposts, recreational orbitals and commercial ag worlds. The only aliens who go to live at those places are doing it as a job, or on mining outposts, for a chance to strike it rich on shares. If they want to work as police, they prefer to do it somewhere civilized.”
    “I recall that you started out as a mercenary, Mr. Oxford,” Svetlana said. “Did you have any experiences in this field?”
    “I worked as a market cop on a Frunge orbital for six months,” Clive replied. “It was even more depressing than fighting in the endless Vergallian wars. As on the Stryx stations, Frunge surveillance made it nearly impossible to get away with committing a crime undetected, so there’s little point in trying unless the criminal has the means to immediately flee into space. My platoon was responsible for investigating transient-on-transient crimes, but the Frunge had a different system to address problems with their own citizens.”
    “Do you believe we should be encouraging the humans on these open worlds to set up their own surveillance societies?” Raj inquired.
    “That’s above my pay grade,” Clive responded. “I can only tell you that the near-certainty of being detected tends to remove the profit motive from most crimes. The advanced species have their problems, but other than the feuds and the occasional crime of passion, it’s mostly sophisticated stuff, more like industrial espionage than smash-and-grab. The kind of police work that human mercenaries are capable of doing for aliens is of the frontier town variety, or anti-piracy patrols.”
    “We recently had an unfortunate incident involving