Robert Asprin – Tambu

“And that would be… ?”

“That we hire ourselves out as a peacekeeping force. That way we get paid whether there’s fighting or not. In fact the less fighting there is, the more we should be paid.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Easy,” he smiled, “in theory, we’ll be paid to keep the trade routes free of pirates. If we botch the job and somebody loses a shipment, we might have to refund part of our fee; but as long as things go smoothly, we get full payment.”

“Full payment from who? Refund our fee to who?” Ramona pressed. “Just who are you expecting to foot the bill for all this?”

“The ones who are benefiting from our services. The corporations and the merchants. I still have to figure out how to spread the cost around proportionately but I figure it should be a small percentage of the value of each shipment, to be paid equally by the shipper and the receiver.”

“What if they won’t pay?” Ramona asked pointedly. “So far they’ve been getting the service for free.”

“If they won’t pay, we take our ships away and guard the systems that will pay. When the word gets around that a system is unguarded, the pirates will move in again. Sooner or later, the systems will come around to seeing it our way and will ante up.”

“I don’t know. It sounds a little too good to be true. I’d like to hear what a couple of the other captains have to say about this.”

“I can go you one better than that. You’ll have a chance to hear what all the captains have to say about it.”

“How so?”

“I’m planning to have a mass meeting of the entire fleet, specifically to get the captains all in one place so I can sell this idea to them all at once. It’s a little too big for a unilateral decision.”