“We’re doing a full maintenance sweep on  the Mighty Transporter,” Chelan answered.  “We won’t know until that’s done.  The ship appears to be filthy, ill-maintained, but sound.  As agreed, we are in the process of hiring crews for all four ships, plus some extra people.  With extra bodies, maintenance is much faster.  With respect to cash flow, this month fine spray becomes a cash source.  Fusactors soon become a cash source.  With those up and running, we have the cash flow needed to bring up all the maintenance shops , which guarantees we can eventually fly the  Mighty Transporter.  Even with the 65% cut of nickel-iron sales to debt repayment, that for sure pays for whatever needs to be done to get our other transports flying again, at which point the positive cash flow becomes quite large.”

“What about our competitors?” Morningstar asked.  “What are they doing while we are stuck doing house cleaning and repair?”

“They are in a difficult position,” Chelan answered.  “Tara can explain it better than I can.”

“The new Republic trade restrictions have categories for services, including spaceship repair,” Tara answered.  “It’s not clear what they can do to pay for that service.  However, they have Republic part-owners, who aren’t subject to those restrictions, who may be stuck paying for ship maintenance, if they want to keep getting an income from their part-ownership of the competition.”

“And if the part-owners refuse to pay?” Rose Cohen asked.

“A some point, our competitors each go broke,” Tara answered.  “They can’t fly their ships. Their ships end up on the ground or in orbit around Proserpine.  The new bankruptcy laws don’t let property seized to cover a debt to be taken out of the Union, so the foreign part-owners end up with derelict spaceships worth little, on the ground here.  However, they know all this, so they’re more likely to try to sell their fractional ownerships.”