Metaltown by Kristen Simmons Page B

Neighbors wanted guns for protection from each other, and increased violence led to increased sales. The statistics from that time show that one out of every three people in the Tri-City had a weapon. Orders were being shipped from the northern border to the small farming communities south of the Yalan Mountains.”
    â€œSouth?” said Darcy, a wry smile quirking her mouth. “But everything south of the Yalans belongs to the Eastern Federation.”
    Lena changed wall screens to a map of the Silah Peninsula, finger trailing down the eastern coast to a series of bays on the southern tip. Darcy was testing her, but she was glad for it. “It was before the Federations were formed,” she told her tutor.
    From their history lessons, she knew that the fishing industry had survived only a little while after the start of the famine. Overfishing and pollution from the congested coastal cities had turned people back inland to farm the last viable crop: corn. Scientists developed chemicals to increase the harvests and prolong the growing seasons, not knowing that they were actually creating the first strains of the deadly corn flu, a disease that would kill hundreds of thousands. People were starving, too desperate to think of the consequences. They fought over control of the fields and how to distribute the rations, forming alliances. Those in the East used their Hampton Industries weapons to defend the southern crops, defeating the Northern troops that retreated behind the protection of the Yalan Mountains. There, the Northern Federation became self-sufficient, withdrawing trade agreements with the East, who ended up with nothing but dry fishing ports and deadly fields of corn.
    Her grandfather, Kolten Hampton, had taken over the company as soon as he turned eighteen, only a year older than she was now. He’d died when she was three—a hunting accident in the Yalans—and her memories were only what her father had told her of him, mostly that he was stern and hard-working. She’d found a picture of Kolten on the stone steps in front of Division I, surrounded by smiling workers and cutting a fat red ribbon with a comically large pair of scissors. Though he looked like he could have been Otto’s twin, Kolten’s drive was far greater.
    â€œMy grandfather made the company what it is today,” Lena said. “He branched out from the small munitions orders and purchased similar businesses, putting them all under the Hampton name.” After the Northern Federation was established, the companies in other nearby cities were closed, and moved to a more manageable, central location in the capital, later known as the factory district. “The various focuses were organized into divisions—everything from handheld weaponry to military-grade arsenals, including explosives—and now, thanks to my father, Hampton Industries is the exclusive provider for the Northern Federation’s military.”
    And Otto was next in line to take control.
    She slumped in her chair, as much as the dress would allow. The men in her family had worked too hard to have a spoiled playboy lose it all.
    â€œThat’s very good.” Darcy rose to stretch her back. When she leaned closer to the desk, her gaze landed on a small scrap of paper bearing an address. She squinted at it, but before she could ask, Lena tucked it beneath the stack of papers. Perhaps too tired to care, her tutor turned away and walked the length of the room.
    It was a good start, but there was still so much Lena didn’t understand. She looked back down at the statements, brows drawing together.
    â€œI didn’t even know that we owned a medical division,” she said. “I mean, the Medical Division. It oversees the hospital, the medical school in the River District, the clinics in practically every town, even research facilities . Basically everything that involves a pill or a bandage in this entire Federation belongs