Pedro Vélez - Merchant

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"What are you selling?"

"Interdiction fields."

"I thought that was restricted tech."

I hated customs. UNSC bureaucrats were, on the average, assholes because everyone decent had gotten drafted into the war effort. The people left to man the civilian sector were the old, the young, and people no one wanted to deal with.

"It was."

"You do realize 10 billion fucking people died during the war because you didn't share your tech? That's a quarter of the human race."

I shook my head.

"No, it isn't."

"39 billion people and-"

"There are a lot more people than that. There has been a lot more people than that for a long time. In 2000 humanity had around 6 billion people, it's estimated that it takes between 60 to 80 years for a human population to double. That means humanity has between 384 billion and 768 billion people. The UNSC hasn't had an accurate census in generations. First because tax evasion is practically a national sport, and second because if Earth ever admitted just how many people existed outside of Sol there would be very big questions about representation and you don't want to deal with that."

Man was growing red.

"And since the Front's latest census has us at a little over a hundred billion? I would put our true numbers at the higher end. Also, the 10 billion mark is probably a gross understatement. We've probably lost at least twice that number because once again records, especially in the outer system, are garbage."

"Those people could have lived if you had shared this tech."

"When your ship is sinking you secure your own life vest before you help others. Yeah, a bunch of your systems got glassed, and believe me I feel sympathy, but we are dealing with the bulk of the enemy's attacks. We had to think of our own people first."

"Selfish."

"The UNSC's plan was to use our people as ablative armor to protect the inner colonies. You're really surprised that we protected ourselves first?"

"That's a lie."

"What has happened to the outer colonies that remained under UNSC protection?"

He was silent.

"Yeah, I thought so... Look I'm here to deliver an IF for this system, or rather I am a part of a large crew of people delivering them for sale for this system. Do you really want to be known as the guy who screwed that up?"

"Fine."

He signed some paperwork and handed it to me, I waited and some UNSC military personal arrived a couple of hours later.

"You have the stuff?"

"Yeah it takes at least a thousand of these bad boys to lock down a system, I only have 100 with me."

"Any way to get what we have working?"

"You shrink the radius if you do that, my advice is to just buy more of them. The more you have, the farther you can put out the interdiction field and the more time you get. Plus if some asshole takes potshots at your IF device you have back up."

He nodded his head as I handed over the data.

"You know a lot of lives could have been saved if you let us buy this earlier."

I just knew that this was going to be a long day.