Cooperate, Survive - The Tale of Styria Cooperative.

[Enkidu]

"Fix me a Rhinebier, brother. Ye', thanks. We're in Munich. Prox Bedskytter." She deadpanned. Of course, she was going to get a beer whatever she asked for. There were several high-grade Molly malts behind the counter, but there was a shogun between her and the whiskey. No sense in doing Heinrich's work for her.

Gunda Riehl flipped him a chit that'd be some value or another to him. She didn't care what he skimmed, how much he took, or even what the price of the bier was - neither of them had to earn a living. The problem was if she overpaid him, he might do a runner between the next set of attacks - and then the station would be down one good tap-puller and the morale of the whole 'a torpedo behind every rock' militia that'd been bounced together from all over the republic, might just dissolve into gelatine. The only currency that anybody was spending, was time.

A 'war effort'. Everyone who knew the importance of keeping a tongue hadn't called it that yet. It was a shared sensitivity that'd run through the station. The tapman knew his own value, of course. He'd been here since the station had first thrown itself together under the clang of welding arcs and reckless impetus.

Riehl eyeballed the turn-shift crowd - it had caught just between the Combat Air Patrol rotations and the chamber was full of strangers. Her Cretian Spanish was blending in French and she didn't know how she was going to handle shifting into anything other than Hamburg Tomrum as she scanned for somebody who might know a gram of German, Danish, or anything other than bloody Libertonian English.

On the second thought, he'd better be giving out that whiskey, given the strain that'd passed through the station. It was getting hard not to make eye-contact with the younger kids in the flight smocks.

Gunda Riehl hunted for a chair - and a receptive guest - and sat at it, hoping for conversation. Her own thoughts were beckoning her to an airlock.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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