The Farming Saint in the Starry Wasteland (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 418

Chapter 418 News Report

[Exclusive: The Farm “Lacking Transit Value” – What Are They Actually Growing? A Visit to Planet A001’s Tycoon Farm]

The Tycoon Farm.

The legendary Tycoon Farm.

Maverick tapped the article open and found himself looking at footage shot directly on the property.

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Rows of crops glowing an almost impossible green, fruit trees heavy with produce, workers moving through the fields with smiles on their faces, and a handful of spaceships under renovation, battered–looking but radiating a lean, formidable kind of efficiency.

The writing itself was measured and careful, but the photographs were absolutely devastating.

The tomatoes, strawberries, grapes, and apples looked so vivid in the sunlight they barely seemed real. Even through a screen, the sheer vitality of them hit like a physical sensation.

One close–up showed a freshly picked strawberry, deep red and jeweled with water droplets, sitting beside a small label that read “Premier Beauty.”

The comments section had already ignited.

[This is the place they called ‘lacking transit value?‘ I hate it here.]

[Hold on. Gorgeous land, incredible produce, and someone looked at this and said no transit value? Seriously?]

[Someone’s pulling strings. There’s no other explanation.]

[Investigate. Make whoever lied to our faces come out and answer for it.]

[Wait, does nobody else recognize this? My relatives in Military Command have had this before. They told me it was special–issue supply only.]

[Special–issue supply, and they’re calling it worthless? How deep does this go?]

Maverick set his device down, closed his eyes, and breathed.

The regret was setting in like a slow poison.

When the Fifth Military’s guy had approached him and casually asked him to block a lane application for a farm on some backwater planet, Maverick hadn’t hesitated for a single second.

Why?

Because his wife’s family had ties to the Fifth Military.

Over the years, aligning himself in their favor had simply become second nature.

A favor like this cost him nothing. Blocking a waste planet’s lane application? That barely counted as a decision.

He hadn’t even read the full file. He’d barely glanced at it: Planet A001, waste planet classification, no assessed development value.

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12:32 pm

A

Chapter 418 News Report

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Block it and move on.

He’d had absolutely no idea that this particular “waste planet farm” had this many people standing behind it.

Angeltide Group. A senator. The Hewitts. The Second Military. The Third Military. The Fourth Military. And several million very angry people on Starnet.

He’d blocked one lane application. One. And somehow he’d walked directly into a hornet’s nest the size of a continent.

If he’d known for even a second that this farm had anything to do with the Hewitts, no amount of pressure from the Fifth Military would’ve made him touch it.

But it was far too late for that now.

His device lit up again.

This time it was a voice message, and the encryption level on it was the kind that made Maverick’s stomach drop before he’d even played it. That was a channel reserved exclusively for the upper echelons of Military Command.

His hands were shaking as he opened it.

A voice came through, resonant and unhurried, carrying a weight that filled the room.

“Mr. Jensen? This is Jacob Quimby, First Military.”

Maverick nearly slid off his chair entirely.

Jacob Quimby.

Chief of Staff of the First Military.

Commander Hawthorne’s right hand.

One of the most genuinely powerful figures in all of Kingdom’s Military Command.

Maverick had the distinct and terrible sensation that he was finally finished “Chief… Chief of Staff! Hello, hello!” His voice was shaking badly enough to be audible.

“Not hello.” Jacob’s voice didn’t rush. It didn’t need to. It simply sat in the air with an oppressive weight that made Maverick’s scalp prickle. “I’ve been informed that Interstellar Route Authority has determined Planet A001 lacks transit value.”

Maverick opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“I’ve eaten the potatoes from that farm,” Jacob continued, his tone casual, conversational, each word landing on Maverick like the stroke of a hammer. “I’ve also eaten the apples. As have the soldiers of the entire First Military Command. Commander Hawthorne personally authorized a special allocation last month. Said it was a morale improvement for the troops.”

He paused. “And you’re telling me it has no transit value?”

“Chief of Staff, I…” Maverick’s voice came out like dry paper scraping wood. “There may have been an error in the review process at a lower level. First thing tomorrow I’ll personally…”

“A lower level?” Jacob laughed. There was no warmth in it. “Mr. Jensen, are you telling me that something of this magnitude was handled unilaterally by a subordinate? Without your knowledge?”

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12:33 pm

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