“On first glance, you’d think they might. But thinking a little deeper, it will cause them an unholy amount of trouble if they do. What’s to motivate anyone to go off world if The Corporation will just confiscate your earnings? And my people are going back with their plunder listed as ‘earnings.’” Kalico chuckled. “No doubt about it, it will cause a firestorm, especially with the value of the cargo.” A pause. “Assuming they make it back at all.”

“And all this wealth pays for the pad, charger, and guns?”

Kalico stepped out to get a better look around, let her gaze trace the edge of the pad. “Michaela, when you parse it down to the absolute fundamentals, essentially we’re all relying on each other. It’s a sort of bootstrap economy. We’re extracting wealth, true, but we’re also manufacturing it. Here’s your bit of economic reality for the day: Every sustainable economy, ever, has functioned based on the principle of the creation of wealth. The true economic powers on Donovan don’t reside at Corporate Mine. They’re farmers like Terry Mishka and Reuben Miranda, the fabricators like Mac Hanson at the foundry and Rude Marsdome, the bootmaker.” She pointed to her quetzal-hide boots.

“Hard to think of a bootmaker being more important than you.”

“Oh yeah?” Kalico asked. “Answer me this: What has greater value on Donovan? A metric ton of rhodium or a good pair of boots?”

Michaela gave her a wooden stare. “You’re kidding, right?”

Kalico squinted at the dot that appeared over the trees. Headed their direction. Had to be Stepan Allenovich. “Kidding? Not at all. You tell me, what can you do on Donovan with a metric ton of rhodium? But you walk over past the edge of the pad, and what’s the most vulnerable part of your body?”

“My feet?” Michaela glanced down at her Corporate-issue plastic-flex shoes.

Kalico told her, “Not sure a slug can chew through the soles, even thin as they are. But your ankles are bare. Step in the mud past the tops of your shoes, and you’re gone. Not to mention scrambling across the roots. It’s way too easy for the roots to pull those nice comfortable slip-ons right off your feet.”

“This place is insane,” Lara commented as she studied her rock.

“Now you know how I felt when I first set foot here.” Kalico stepped out, waving as Step’s aircar approached. “Not to mention that the man coming to meet us? Stepan Allenovich? Once, in my early days, he was dead set on killing me. And now? Here we are, old, if not the best of friends.”

“Double insane,” Michaela agreed with Lara.

Kalico propped one hand on her pistol as Step slowed, hovered, and settled to the ground. The fans blew out bits of sand and angular gravel before the airtruck spooled down.