The People's Predicament

Raynor's mother, Carol, knew her son was coming back, so whenever she had free time, she would stand at the door and look up at the gloomy sky over Shiloh caused by the sandstorm, even though the bright sun might burn her beautiful pale green eyes.

Most of the farmland in Centerville has been abandoned. The economic depression, population loss, and fuel shortage caused by the war are the main causes of soil erosion and desert expansion.

Although startled by the fierce-looking Tychus Finley, Carol said nothing, but simply smiled and invited Augustus and the others into the foyer of the dome. The soldiers noticed that despite suffering from hunger and poverty, this gentle and beautiful woman Shiloh, kept her home clean, tidy, and well-organized.

This cottage, characteristic of the Shiloh colonists, is a metal and granite building with brown walls adorned with fossils of local prehistoric vertebrates and beautiful spiral patterns.

In the foyer was a small, rectangular oak dining table and a few chairs. These wooden pieces were quite expensive in Shiloh, a place lacking vegetation and forests, almost equivalent in value to precious metals. Between the table and a star map of the Koprulu Sector hanging on the wall was a red rug, woven by the lady of the house herself.

As Carol poured tea for the guests, Raynor noticed that much of the furniture in the house was missing. His father's favorite Chau Sara Sunwood music box was gone, and many of the old pieces of furniture he remembered seemed to have been erased by time.

"Where's Dad?" Raynor asked as he poured tea for his mother.

"He's still working on the farm and is on his way back."

"Mrs. Raynor, I am Lieutenant Augustus Mengsk, Jim's superior officer." Augustus introduced himself to Carol, pointing to the others, "These are Jim's comrades. I don't know if Jim has told you that he is now the sergeant major of this squad."

"We are proud of him, sir." Carol handed Augustus a cup of cooled black tea, a staple drink for farmers and workers in Shiloh, where it was unusually hot for most of the year.

"Please sit down, gentlemen. Oh, and there's a beautiful lady here too."

"Mom, why don't you use the money I gave you to buy some food?" Raynor helped his mother put the tea jug back in the refrigerator. "Did Dad still sell that music box?"

"After you left, government taxes increased month by month, and farms suffered significant production losses due to shortages of genetically modified seeds and fuel for agricultural robots. Even so, Shiloh, as the main agricultural world, still had to pay food to the government as part of its tax revenue to supply the troops at the front."

"Shit, someone must have embezzled all that food. Jim's mother, you have no idea how we survived in the army. Eating shit all day long." Harnack was dressed in civilian clothes, wearing a black jacket and tattered dark blue jeans. Before leaving the military camp, he had cut his hair into a mohawk-style rooster comb.

Between Harnack's bald head, his spiky, deep red hair looked like a brightly colored rooster's comb.

"Shut up, Hank," Augustus whispered.

"At first, we used the salary you sent back to pay off our debts. But the few payments that came back later were definitely not something someone of your rank and years of service could have earned. They came from an unknown source, and you didn't tell us where you got the money. Your father and I both think we shouldn't have used it." Carol glanced at Harnack a few times before looking away.

"We are all very worried about you, child. If you obtained this money through crime or some other means I don't know about, then we absolutely cannot touch it."

Raynor was speechless. Although he did not consider profiting from the spoils of war a crime, and taking the wealth that would eventually flow to the rich and powerful would not make his conscience hurt, his parents were unaware of this.

"I think there might be some misunderstanding here." Augustus looked at Carol: "Madam, you don't need to worry that this money is of dubious origin, because it was earned by Jim through countless battles in the war."

"My soldiers have received generous rewards for their repeated victories and have the right to dispose of their spoils as they see fit, and Jim deserves all of this. I learned of the Raynor ' plight, so I gave him an extra bonus. He didn't tell you, simply because of military secrecy regulations."

"Really? Jim?" Carol looked at her son, still somewhat skeptical of Augustus's words.

In Carol's eyes, Augustus was an excellent soldier. He was young and handsome, yet not frivolous at all, and always stood straight as a pine tree, which made him very easy to win the favor of an older woman.

"Of course." Raynor nodded quickly. To some extent, what Augustus was basically the truth.

"We are the Heaven's Devils, and our names and deeds are celebrated in many colony worlds."

"You never lie to me. But we still can't accept them. They belong to you. We are your parents, not vampires." Carol shook her head at her son. The Raynor family all had very similar personalities: they were extremely persistent in what they believed in and were difficult to persuade.

"I know your concerns." Augustus noticed some opened cans in the Raynor family's kitchen and realized that the family was using them as a staple food.

"You hope to earn the money you need to live on with your own hands, but poverty will eventually destroy your bodies."

Judging solely from the poor-quality metal packaging, Augustus could imagine that, given the farm's bankruptcy and the inability to secure any subsidies, the canned goods purchased by the Raynor family were likely cheap smuggled goods.

The sources of these smuggled canned goods are often very complex. They may have been stored for more than ten years and have long since expired, spoiled, and bred with bacteria, or they may be synthetic foods from unscrupulous processing plants in the Edge World.

Smugglers travel between stars to evade quarantine or to avoid the additional qualifications required by non- Old Families, such as food safety production licenses. They stop at various illegal black ports and sell smuggled goods to the world's poorest people at incredibly low prices.

Consuming these canned foods of questionable quality carries numerous risks; moldy contaminants can be fatal. In the Koprulu Sector, while many intractable diseases have been eradicated, many more emerging illnesses remain incurable.

It is very likely that these were the very things that took the lives of Raynor's parents.

This was the shared fate of Shiloh and the people of the other colonies: poor food, harsh living conditions, and a bleak future.

Augustus realized that the only way to save these people was to rebuild this corrupt system.

Carol Raynor nodded, and Augustus hoped she took it to heart.

After that, Augustus didn't say anything more, leaving more time for Raynor, his mother, and his father who was about to return, letting him persuade his family himself.

The spaceship's stay in Shiloh was brief, only half a day. Augustus didn't have the courage to meet Tom Omo's parents because he felt responsible for Omo's death.

Before the spaceship was about to depart for Tarsonis, Augustus placed a bouquet of flowers at Omo's tomb and stood there for a long time.