The Harriers Book Two: Blood and War

by David Drake

  Ikeyumi grinned. "The Bankers must have loved that."

  "Oh, you bet! Operating on a gold standard, and suddenly seeing gold inflation? Losing a dollar an ounce a day? When the farmers started paying off their mortgages with cheap gold, and the Bankers realized they were not only going to lose money, but also weren't going to get any more real estate, they passed a law forbidding the importation of gold. The Farmers raised unholy hell, claiming they hadn't been represented, but the Bankers were in no mood to negotiate. They just called in the mercenaries."

  "And the Farmers used all their new gold to buy arms and ammo from the Grand Harriers," Ikeyumi mused, "so the Grands even got their gold back. Neat, very neat."

  "But we didn't weaken the Farmers for them," Sarben told Infarus.

  Ikeyumi nodded. "We fired on both sides, with great impartiality and fairness—and the result is, they both hate our guts. Then, as we took off, both sides fired at us, but they didn't have any guns left close enough to do us any damage."

  "Except for one shot," Sarben amended. "Knocked off a few skin tiles. Took two hours to secure new ones."

  "Heavy casualties," Infarus said, with irony. "Who winged us? Farmers, or Bankers?"

  Ikeyumi grinned. "Who cares?"

  No one, as it turned out—least of all, the Bankers and Farmers, who, united by the common enemy of a Petit Harrier, quickly formed a coalition government to resist all off-planet invasions. They compared notes and discovered that both gold and guns had been coming from the Grand Harriers. The Farmers felt used, and the Bankers felt assaulted; both agreed on barring the Grand Harriers from the planet.

  The Grand Harriers took offense and sent down a landing craft to teach them better manners. Both sides together blasted it out of the sky.

  This was not much consolation to Infarus, who was cashiered for incompetence. Oh, he had prevented a plague—it made it worse that it had been a Petit Harrier that had taken him to New Czerno with the serum—but he hadn't made Ikeyumis expedition weaken the Bankers the way his bosses had planned. He was stripped of rank and drummed out of the Grand Harriers in a very impressive ceremony. He felt very badly about it—until Ikeyumi signed him on. All in all, he felt much better being a doctor in the Petit Harriers. Better doctor, but a better Harrier, too.