“Sounds good to me,” Cay said, his voice bluff and deep, ridiculously so for a man who stood at barely five feet. “What’s it all about, that’s what I want to know.”
“You standing or sitting there, boy?” John the Gaunt muttered, directing the piercing gaze of his skeletal face to the rival baron. “Never can tell with you, just as I can never tell if you’re asking a good question or talking shit.”
“What did you say?” Cay exploded, rising to his feet, which in truth didn’t make him much taller than when seated. “I—”
“Cool it, dude,” Baron Lord murmured with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Let’s leave the rivalries at the door while we’re in this. If the well gets screwed, then we all go down together.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t understand what’s going on,” Silveen blustered, thumping the table with his large, raw fist. “Who the fuck is sabotaging all our work?”
“And you think I don’t want to know?” Baron Silas countered. “Who stands to lose the most out of this? Yeah, sure we all lose out big time if it goes fagazi,” he continued, forestalling the complaints from the collected barons, “but who loses most? Not only do I lose my dream, but I owe all you guys enough jack for you to move in and take over Salvation.”
“A fair point, Silas, I’ll grant you that,” Lord mused. “But the fact remains that work is running behind, and taking up more time and jack than it should. So why? And, more importantly, who?”
Silas shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”
“Well, it shouldn’t,” Lord continued. “After all, it’s your sec boys who are patrolling the work areas, and who are guarding the well and refinery, as well as patrolling the camps. So why don’t they spot anything?”
“Because whoever it is manages to make their attacks and plant their bombs between patrols, and I’ve only got so many men to patrol a big area and a hell of a lot of people.”
“So bring in some of our sec,” Red Cloud countered.
Silas leaned forward, eyes blazing. “You think I’m some kind of fool? Let some of your sec in and before long you oust me.”
“You don’t and we do it anyway,” Red Cloud said calmly. “This can’t continue.”
Baron Eddison had been silent throughout the exchange, but now spoke up. “There’s one thing that bothers me about all this, though.”
Silas raised an eyebrow, unable to hide the contempt he still felt for his old ville. “And that is, pray tell?”
Eddison leaned forward, looking down at the table, marshaling his thoughts before speaking. “Okay, let’s look at it this way. We all have our villes near the old blacktop, which is how come we all are in this, right?” He waited for a general agreement before continuing. “Yeah, so that means that the only way there could be any sabotage other than us is if it came from some ville that was from outside the area. ‘Cause it’d have to be a big ville to have resources. Now apart from a few small scavenger tribes, there ain’t jackshit like that around. Certainly not with the firepower to cause this much damage. We all agree on that?”
There was a muted agreement from around the table before Eddison continued.
” ‘Kay. So if it was some bunch of desperadoes from outside the area, ain’t no way they could have slipped past every post on the way, or past every outlying sec guard for every ville on the way without getting some kind of interest. That right?”
There was a silence while the assembled barons pondered the words of the quiet man.
“Guess that’s right,” Baron Silas agreed eventually, on behalf of all of them.
Eddison nodded. “That’s what I figure. In which case, it’s an inside job. Now we all ain’t that stupid to want to shaft each other—” he took a long hard look at the barons gathered around the table “—leastways, not so that we shaft ourselves, as well. So it wouldn’t make sense it if it was us.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Silas looked at the puzzled faces of the barons around the table…puzzled apart from Eddison, who was looking deep in thought.