The Starfield Farming Sovereign (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 344

Chapter 344 Collateral Damage

expect.

Stand with the farm, respect its people and its rules, and you’d be rewarded in ways you wouldn’t Come in swinging against it, bully its staff, and it didn’t matter if you ran half the shipping lanes in the kingdom. You’d be gone.

The visitors who’d watched the whole thing unfold were still processing it. They’d all seen managers and owners bend over backwards to smooth things over with difficult customers, pressuring their own employees to apologize, to absorb it, to keep the peace. Not one of them had ever seen an owner blacklist a client on the spot to protect a kid on her payroll.

Abigail

EL

ied herself enough to move. She guided Paul forward by the shoulders and stepped up t ce cracking before she’d gotten a single word out.

hank you. Thank you so much

eady reaching for Elizabeth’s h firm but not unkind.

good work. Take care of Paul. F people in this farm.” She left n voice shifting into something sli

Paul shook his head so hard i different kind of tears this t

He understood what sh recognized the peopl

He felt somethi

that comes fr

“Good.” E

“Next ti alone

n’t even know how to…”

Elizabeth caught her by the arms and held her

and you’re part of this farm. And nobody messes with ament in it, then turned and looked down at Paul, her “Still hurt?”

night come off. His eyes were filling up again, but it was a aurt anymore, Ms. Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank you!”

rotected him and his mom, held the bad guy accountable, and

that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Pride. Safety. The particular kind s got your back.

recruitment flyers still scattered across the ground, then looked at him. happens, you find one of the adults on staff first. Don’t try to handle it ake them to get some rest. And get someone to clean this up.”

ttle hover bike and puttered off toward the fields, not looking back, not waiting the way people are when they’ve already moved on to the next thing.

for a moment longer, watching the space where she’d been.

net A001 in what could generously be called a hurry, engines burning hot with

but she’d left a mess behind, and the people stuck standing in it were the NovaSea Transport she had never even bothered to acknowledge.

ved mixed in with the general visitors, quiet and careful, running assessments on the farm and noting everything with the meth

**ntion of people who got paid to evaluate threats and

ities.

ad a report to write

ere being honest with themselves, a

Chapter 344 Collateral Damage

personal reason or two for wanting a closer look at produce that supposedly did things to mental power damage that no licensed treatment center had managed to replicate.

That last part wasn’t in any official brief. It was just the reality of life in the interstellar era. High-pressure work, constant transit, radiation exposure, the low-grade grinding stress that came with the territory. Nobody who operated at their level came through it completely clean.

The damage was just a question of degree, of whether it had started affecting your daily functioning yet.

For people who spent their careers calculating angles on shipping routes and corporate positioning. mental fatigue wasn’t a complaint. It was background noise. They’d been prepared to see whether the farm’s reputation held up in person.

They hadn’t gotten that far.

One heiress’s tantrum had been enough to land the entire NovaSea Transport network, every affiliated company, every major shareholder, every executive and their families, on a permanent blacklist.

Which naturally included the handful of internal staff currently standing at the gate with company IDs and company business cards and absolutely nowhere to go.

Desmond confirmed it on the screen without any particular expression. They were on the list. The mood among them was difficult to describe. Frustrated, yes. Humiliated, certainly. And somewhere underneath it, a quiet, simmering resentment aimed squarely at Claire, who had caused all of this and was now presumably back on her ship and no longer anyone’s problem but her own.

The man with glasses tried first. “Sir, we’re just regular employees. We came here on our own time, we’re genuinely fans of the farm. What happened with Ms. Rhodes has nothing to do with our personal views. Is there any way we could at least speak with Ms. Schofield directly? We’d just like a chance to explain…”

Desmond didn’t look up. “The blacklist applies equally to everyone. No exceptions.”

The older man, the one who seemed to be the team lead, stepped forward and tried a different angle. more measured, more formal. “We understand the situation, and we regret it deeply. But we were also sent here with a mandate to open a communication channel with the farm. This incident shouldn’t necessarily preclude future business contact or potential partnership…”

“Sorry.” A word, and every door shut at once.

They looked at each other. The mission was a wash, that much was obvious. But what stung more, in a way none of them would have admitted out loud, was being this close to the strawberries and cucumbers and tomatoes laid out at the sales stalls just beyond the gate, close enough to smell them, and knowing they weren’t going to get so much as a sample.

One member of the group, a young woman named Orla Everson, was taking it harder than the rest.

She had her personal device gripped in both hands, knuckles pale, eyes drifting repeatedly toward the stalls, Not toward the strawberries for the taste of them, or toward the tomatoes out of professional curiosity.

She had a reason she hadn’t told any of her colleagues about, something more urgent and more personal than anything on the company’s agenda.

8:52 am P ppp.

The Farming Saint in the Starry Wasteland