11

Journal #369

            As usual, my employer carefully read his briefing materials about the new world his company was going to. Landoor had been settled two hundred years ago as a mining colony (the planet was unusually rich in certain rare earths). The Moguls, as the mine owners were called, had imported convict labor to work the mines, with the promise of land and freedom after the laborers had served a stated term in the mines. The Moguls had grown enormously rich off the sweat of their imported convicts. They built their capital city on an unspoiled tropical island they called Atlantis-which became a popular vacation spot for the wealthy of that era.

            Nowadays, the mainland mines were largely owned by offplanet cartels, which found it more difficult with every passing year to derive a profit from the played-out beds of ore. The original owners had, for the most part, taken their profits and left the planet for more cosmopolitan worlds where they could enjoy their wealth unhindered. That left the government in the hands of the former bureaucrats and middle managers. They ruled a population of miners, farmers, factory workers, and small merchants, who did not have the luxury of pulling up stakes and moving to a new world at whim.

            Then, a few years ago, revolutionary fervor had swept the planet, and Federation troops were imported to stem the violence. Peace had been established placing the rebel faction in the saddle, with the former government as an opposition party within the system. (A few diehards had escaped to the mainland and set up as a resistance movement, but they were considered of no consequence.)

            While peace itself was greeted with rejoicing, its imposition by outside forces had left a sour taste in the mouths of many Landoorans-especially after Federation pilots strafed the peace conference. The Legion officer who ordered the gratuitous strafing was a certain Captain Scaramouche, who disappeared from the Legion rolls shortly before Captain Jester took command of the Omega Mob. This fact was not widely known on Landoor-but it was about to become so.

            And for some reason, that fact had been omitted from the briefing materials General Blitzkrieg provided to my employer.