03/24/2020 Snippet, TRADE NEGOTIATIONS.

Things are, ha!, heating up.

The huddle of Quawk — the Universal Dominion didn’t have ‘towns,’ really — looked like the rest of the liberated territories always did; too poor to afford the luxury of trash. Jimmy hated going into Dominion huddles, and always felt guilty for it. There was a reason why the very shacks and lean-tos themselves seemed to be half-cringing against a kick that could come at any second, and it was known locally as ‘long experience.’ This part of the former Dominion was probably going to end up getting grabbed by the Kentucky Free State once the war was over (and wasn’t that a strange thought to have?, he mused), but Jimmy wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted the Free State to have it. Then again, all the other real estate now up for grabs labored under the same problem.

Quawk being slightly on fire was a bit out of the ordinary, though. It had been a while since the huddle had been liberated. And it wasn’t all on fire, either; it looked like somebody had come in from the fields and started moving to the garrison, burning everything in its way. Magic, thought Jimmy, and he called out: “SECURE GUNS!”

RSA was a successful and professional organization; Jimmy made damned sure that his crews could neutralize their firearms on a moment’s notice. They all quickly and steadily detached magazines and cylinders from their rifles and revolvers, dropping both in the special magic-proofed bags each Adventurer carried, then adding their extra ammunition. The firearms themselves went back into holsters, after of course double-checking to make sure that there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber.

A trained Adventurer could go through the whole process while concentrating on something else, and RSA hired at that level. Within half a minute the crew was reasonably safe from any random gunpowder-exploding spell, although there was always the chance of somebody forgetting a loose bullet somewhere. But one exploding bullet couldn’t wipe out the whole crew.