Shoshone Station: The Galactic Consortium season 2

Episode 8: The Sting #4

It was the next day before Fox found time to get back to Lannister. He was ushered into the captain's office, only to discover two women waiting with the captain. The older of the two was well dressed in a pantsuit, and her gray hair was styled severely. The woman next to her was younger, dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. She had a small tattoo butterfly on one side of her face.

"Fox," Lannister greeted him. "This is Representative Haughland and . . . Sarah Gormen, was it?"

The younger woman nodded affirmative. The older woman, Representative Haughland, held out her hand to Fox. "Chief of security. We've heard good things. Sarah here has joined me on this trip as one of the founders of the Phoenix Operation. Are you familiar?"

"Can't say I am," Fox said. At Lannister's prompting, he sat.

"We're a service organization for women trying to escape prostitution. We provide counseling, halfway houses, drug treatment, whatever services the women need," Sarah said.

Fox thought about his father, some of things he saw as an Indian Bureau cop on the rez. Then he thought of Shannon Otterdance's granddaughter.

"You can probably guess what prompted this trip," Representative Haughland said.

Fox gulped and nodded. "You heard someone wants to open a brothel."

She nodded. "Lannister assures me he personally vetoed the request. However, he thinks this Karana might try to convince the Shoshone Collective to play host. To get around our regulations."

Fox looked to Lannister, who nodded. Fox took that as his sign to speak openly. "He has already. The collective will vote on it. It's . . . complicated."

"Complicated how?" Representative Haughland's tone showed that she didn't see it as a complicated issue at all.

Fox deflected. "The issue of the brothel aside, there is a strong feeling in the collective that they left the surface to be more independent of the American government."

"Then they shouldn't have settled on an American station," Representative Haughland sniffed.

That was the moment Fox decided he didn't like the woman much. "They didn't. They formed a separate treaty with the Consortium and the US president. They were given a quarter of this station to serve for their collective. They have their own council and their own governance—"

"So long as they don't break the law," Lannister put in.

"So long as they don't break Consortium guidelines on human rights," Fox corrected. "They can govern themselves as they see fit."

"And prostitution is legal in the Consortium," Lannister said. "So they feel they would be in their rights to approve this. I can't believe Shannon would do that to me."

"Not to you, sir," Fox said. "And not primarily Shannon. She's getting pressure from others on her council. To make the point to America, to the government as a whole, that they are no longer beholden to follow the rules of reservation."

"I've always been active in Native issues," Haughland said.

"Then you should understand as well as any," Fox snapped. "The white man gave us the worst grazing lands in the entire territory as a reservation. A hundred years later, they discovered valuable minerals underneath those lands and sold them out from under us." His voice carried more bitterness than he had been aware of carrying. "Sorry. The point is, there is a lot of anger over there. And fear." To the others' blank looks, he explained further. "Fear that this is only another kind of reservation, with the same restrictions. They want to test their newfound independence."

"Well, this is a hell of an issue to do it over," Lannister groused.

"I know, sir."

"I, for one, can't believe it," Haughland said. "I've been active in women's issues my entire career. And Native issues. I know the kinds of poverty, drugs, and prostitution Native women have been subjected to. The way they've been victimized by white men. Now they have their freedom and Native men want to get back at us by doing the same to their own women?"

"It's not like that," Fox said.

She raised an eyebrow.

He turned to Sarah. "We could have used you, the first week or so. We found a number of women, like you say, addicted, poor, with no support system. On the surface, they resorted to prostitution. Survival sex. We helped them—my team, Lannister, the collective. The Consortium healers can help addictions. We found them good jobs, training for careers. The collective made sure they had what they needed to break that cycle. Shannon was the first to speak for them."

"That's good to know," Haughland said. "Maybe I should talk to this woman." She looked to Lannister.

"I will set something up as soon as possible." He made a note on his slate.

"You'll be happy to know we've had a great success rate," Fox went on. "I've checked up on as many of the cases as I could yesterday. The Consortium's treatment for addiction seems to work as long as they stay with it, and with us. None of those still on the station have relapsed."

"That's remarkable," Sarah said.

"Yeah, those that go back to the surface," Fox added and shrugged, "that's another story. The same seems to hold for the prostitution. Most are still on the station, working at regular jobs and doing well. Some of those who have returned to the surface have returned to their old lives too. Thankfully, that's only a few."

"I'm glad to hear that," Haughland said.

"The thing is," Fox said, putting his palms together in a prayer pose, "prostitution in the Consortium is very different, culturally and legally. It's highly regulated. There are tests, training. They are respected in this culture. It's a completely different system."

"And your point?" Haughland's tone told him he'd better have a good one.

"Of all the women we've caught on the station involved in prostitution, there were five women, two men. They 'fit a certain psychological profile,' according to the woman who conducted their interviews, oversaw their trials. These were people who hadn't been forced into it. They just didn't mind having sex with strangers."

"And?" Lannister prompted, though the look on his face showed that he knew where this was going.

"Four of the women and one of the men opted for the training. Courtesan training takes years. The service academy for prostitution significantly less. In a year or so . . ."

"There will be members of the collective with the necessary license?" Lannister said. He swore.

"If your granddaughter is going to be a whore," Fox said, echoing something Shannon had told him, "she could at least be a whore at home."