11: Mountaineers and Madmen
Coreman watched the Black Mountaineers as they lined the prisoners across the open field for him to inspect. He’d been in Stone River long enough to remember when the Mountaineers were rescue teams, saving stranded miners. The patches on their uniforms portrayed that history, but they had long since gone from rescuing miners to arresting them. As private security guards, they had no legal right to be arresting anyone or doing anything else of the sort, especially on a dome ship. This place didn’t belong to Black Mountain. The domes belonged to independent contractors. But no government existed here, only the corporations and Coreman.
On Coreman’s orders, the Mountaineers had rounded up every stowaway and every crewmember. Even the three resident hermits were t
