Chapter 309
Compartmentalizing was the only way forward.
In making the connection between Matt and Myrddin, Miles had done the status quo equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to a load-bearing wall. It left me on shaky ground, and heightened the importance of maintaining the layers of insulation that remained, while putting as many as I could in place.
So as much as I would prefer relying on people I knew—the strike team would have been perfect for this—Kinsley's nascent "Gray Mercenary" contingent offered a safer alternative.
The lax gun-control laws, low cost of living, access to vet services, and a laundry-list of other positives made Texas something of a hotspot for ex-military retirees, regardless of age. With plenty of service-friendly employers around, many made the transition to civilian life with little issue. Others used the state as a temporary hub, leveraging their connections to land a gig in the private sector.
Kinsley had been snapping up the latter at an accelerated rate. They were a godsend in the early days, when you could count the entire Merchant's Guild roster on one hand. As Kinsley's popularity skyrocketed, the membership of the guild along with it, she'd continued to recruit them. Nowadays the mercenary population of the Merchant's Guild outnumbered the Users 2 to 1. There were no tangible problems yet, but I had a decent enough grasp on history to identify the potential downfall.
When we finally addressed the topic, I let history make the point for me. Carthage. Renaissance era Italian city-states. As always Kinsley was quick on the uptake. By the time I got to the Byzantine Empire, she was already working through possible solutions.
The first step was to bolster User recruitment. An average User wasn't much of a match for a firearm-packing mercenary. Some of them were, however. And as I knew entirely too well, it was difficult to evaluate how much of a threat an individual User posed before they sent their exploding-projectile-of-ear-drum-bursting-skull-fuckery on direct course to your unprepared face.
This was more of a long-term investment, as many of the stronger Users were already spoken for, and recruitment would slow to a crawl. The second, more immediate step was to establish the Grays. Cultivate an internal division of hired guns, pulling from a list of individuals who excelled in their respective fields and outperformed their peers. They went through rigorous evaluation that ensured anyone who made it through had a wealth of expertise and a minimum degree of social savvy. Unlike a traditional military contingent, the Grays had no chain of command. Each Gray Mercenary kept their original place in Kinsley's existing defensive structure, answered to their original leadership, got paid exponentially more, and most importantly, kept their mouths shut. In normal times, they acted as watchdogs for dissidents among the mercs, listening for dissatisfaction and any whisper of a coup and relaying potential problems to Kinsley.
And when there was a situation that required discretion above all else, we had plenty of options to pull from. I didn't know what number she'd landed on. I'd counseled her to keep the amount sustainable, but more than anyone else in the dome could feasibly afford to pay.