“Agreed,” Wesley said. “But not today.”

In a small, modestly gilded office on the major transition station for the Prall System, a Darhel looked at the material coming in from his AID and sighed. As a senior over-manager in the Epetar Group, he was far enough up the corporate chain to reflect his extraordinary talent, but too far down the chain to have any real effect on events of this magnitude. He was, however, fortuitously placed to see the obvious Indowy collaboration in the ruining of his group by the Gistar Group. There was enough shifting around in the human communities to show they were in it up to their necks as well.

Personally, he was well and truly fucked. The assets of his group would go to pay default judgments. He, personally, was in the same position as an Indowy whose contract had just been called. His fellows in the group would be, no doubt were, dropping like flies as the disaster drove them to fatal rage and lintatai. Any few with the sense to forbear would be in the same position he was, unless they could get taken in by another group to do the lowest of shit jobs, like administering the out-station in some crappy food planet’s system — positions informally called “junior assistant factor for dirt.”

He was calm, but unlike his experience of his whole post-adolescent life, his emotional control was not going to be sufficient to even begin to solve his basic problems. Very well.

Fucked-over Indowy had their clans to consider. They’d sit and starve to avoid hurting their clans. Lalon had no one. It was the normal, satisfactory state of things. He was not Indowy. He was Darhel. Which meant he had every incentive to take as many bastards with him as possible.

The first thing to consider was that no interests got in line for money until actual contract execution or valid default judgment. Epetar’s total insolvency was inevitable; it would certainly crash in the red, but that would take time. Time enough to put a few debts and payments at the front of the line. He began dictating his analysis, his wishes, and his contractual offer into his AID.