A dimly-lit back room on Allentown housed several Junkers. One, a nervous young man, sat shaking in a chair. Another, a Rheinlandic woman with a shotgun, stood over him - she was clearly very displeased. Two other men stood in the corners.
"I- I don't- what did I do wrong?"
"You somehow managed to offload an entire tanker of cardamine. On Manhattan."
"Yeah, but I bought parts to keep the station-"
"You think of the money. You think of the short term. That is not our way!" The two men in the corners nodded silently, and she continued. "We do not take every grand payoff we find. We must protect our operations."
"I don't see-"
"Of course you don't!" the woman shouted. "If you saw the problem, you wouldn't have done something so stupid! Do you think all those drugs simply disappear? NO! They go somewhere. And the police notice. Even the LPI aren't that incompetent." She paused, waiting for the man to try to defend himself. He knew better by now. "So they track down the street dealers. And when they find them, every pig in the sector will envy how loud and fast they squeal. Within a week, you've been ratted out for one of the biggest drug shipments in months. And nothing we can do will save you - because if we try, we're putting Rochester at risk. And on top of all that-"
Just then, the door swung open and John Fenton, a well-built middle-aged Junker carrying an electrolaser pistol, walked into the room. "Easy, Hilda," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. His tone wasn't particularly reassuring though. "I managed to... deal with the problem. How fortunate that we were able to track down a wanted terrorist on short notice." John then stared directly into the face of the seated man, and spoke slowly and clearly. "You don't want to be in Liberty for a while. We clear?"
