Robert Asprin – Tambu

“A fair deal?” Tambu frowned. “You’ll have to be a little clearer than that, Hairy. I was under the impression you already had a fair deal.”

“Maybe that’s what you call it,” Hairy snarled, his nervousness overcome by his anger. “But we don’t see it that way.”

“Don’t you think this is a bit extreme?” Tambu chided him. “There are formal channels for registering complaints. I fail to see why you feel you have to resort to such drastic methods to make your feelings known.”

“Normal channels!” The man spat. “Normal channels haven’t been open to us. That’s one of our complaints. Our last petition to the captain got torn up in front of us. When we’ve tried to complain to you, either the captain hasn’t relayed the messages, or you’ve ignored them completely.”

Memories flooded Tambu’s head. Memories of Egor’s numerous calls, assaulting him with tales of his crew’s discontent. Memories of Tambu telling him to handle it himself.

“We’ve even tried complaining to crews from other ships when we met them,” Hairy continued. “We told them to pass the word to their captains, hoping it would reach you indirectly. That didn’t get us anything but more grief when the other captains called Egor to criticize his handling of his crew.”

“If the situation is as bad as that, why don’t you just resign?” Tambu asked.

“Resign?” Hairy snorted. “Cheese tried to resign. The captain killed him outright. After that, no one’s tried to resign. We don’t get leave planetside anymore, so we don’t even have a chance to jump ship.”