“I don’t know if—”
“Madam President,” Singh said, leaning forward and waiting until her attention was fully on him before he continued. “I advise you to take this very seriously. The high consul wants a fully functioning legislature and bureaucracy, and believes that the existing one, with some modification of course, fits the bill. I strongly advise that you not give him a reason to think it’s better to tear this down and build something new in its place. Do we understand each other?”
Fisk nodded. Her hands were fidgeting in her lap again.
“Excellent,” Singh said. He stood up and extended his hand. Fisk stood and took it. “I look forward to working with you as High Consul Duarte’s representative. We have much to do, but I believe it will be exciting and rewarding work.”
Singh released her hand and gave a small bow.
“What comes next?” Fisk asked.
“I would recommend you begin by familiarizing yourself with the document I sent you. It contains all the provisional rules for the Association Legislature, until such time as more permanent protocols can be voted into place.”
“Okay,” Fisk said.
“I know you will be quite busy,” Singh told her, gently guiding her past his Marine guards and over to the door. “But I look forward to our next meeting.”
Once she’d left, he let out a long sigh and leaned against the wall.
“One more, Lieutenant, then we can break for lunch,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Kasik said. “Next is Onni Langstiver, head of station security for Medina.”
Singh smiled a little, thinking how Tanaka would have reacted to hearing that title. “Former head of security,” he said as he returned to his desk. “Give me a moment. Let him wait.”
“Yes, sir,” Kasik said. “Can I get you anything in the meantime? Water? Coffee?”
“The water here tastes like old piss, and the coffee tastes like old piss run through a gym sock,” Singh said. “The recycling systems on this station are decades out of date and badly maintained.”
“Yes, sir,” Kasik replied. “I can have water brought from the Storm for you.”
“Or,” Singh said, turning to his aide, “we can go about actually fixing the problems here.”
“Yes, sir,” Kasik said, bobbing his head. If Singh hadn’t been tired already and irritable, he would have let it sit there. But the constant pushing back from his own people and the natives of Medina had scratched him enough to raise welts, and he couldn’t quite rein himself in.
“If the posting here becomes permanent,” he said, “and there is no reason to think it won’t, I will be bringing my family to this station. I won’t have my daughter drinking badly recycled water, breathing badly filtered air, and attending badly run schools.”
Kasik had found a bottle of water from somewhere, and was pouring it into the coffee machine.
“Yes, sir,” he said, like it had become an autonomic reaction.
“Lieutenant, look at me.”
“Sir?” Kasik said, turning around.
“What we’re doing here is important. Not just for Laconia but for all of humanity. These people? They need us. They even need us to show them that they need us. When you have children, you’ll understand why that matters. Until then, you will behave at all times as an example of Laconian character and discipline. If you don’t understand why that’s critical, you will act as though you understand, or I will place you in charge of personally scrubbing the water-recycling system until it produces laboratory-grade potables. Are we clear?”
If there was a flicker of resentment in the man’s eyes, it was a natural reaction to discipline.
“Crystal, Governor Singh.”
“Excellent. Then send their former head of security in.”
Onni Langstiver was a lanky Belter type in a sloppy Medina Security uniform, with greasy hair and a permanent sneer curling his lip. He looked over Singh’s Marine guards just inside the door, then gave Singh himself a look of such low cunning that he almost had the man turned back out again.
“I’m here,” Onni said. “You want, bossmang?”
“We’re going to discuss your change in status on this station,” Singh said.
“Discuss? Bist bien. Let’s discuss.” Onni shrugged, then walked toward the guest chair.
“Do not sit,” Singh said. Something in his tone brought Onni up short, and the man frowned at him as if really seeing him for the first time. “You won’t be here long.”
Onni shrugged again, a short lift of both hands that did not involve the shoulders. The psy-ops briefing on Belter culture had talked about this. That most of their physical gestures had evolved to use the hands only, because they spent so much time in vacuum suits that body language was invisible. It also talked about their cultural conviction that they were the put-upon victims in all interactions with non-Belters. Well, if this Onni had come into the room expecting to be victimized, Singh would oblige him.
“You are no longer the head of security on Medina Station,” Singh said.
“Who’s the new boss?” Onni replied. He wasn’t angry, which was interesting.
“It doesn’t matter to you,” Singh said with a smile. “Because you no longer work for station security. In fact, you no longer hold any official duties of any kind on this station. The last official task you will perform is to hand over all personal files related to this station that are not in the official database. Failure to do this will result in arrest and prosecution by a military tribunal of the Laconian Navy.”
“Sure, sure, jefelito. Only you know most that’s gone. Purged,” Onni said.
“What you have, you will surrender.”
“You’re the man now.”
“You may leave.”
A smile passed over Onni’s face, soft and ingratiating. Singh had seen this before, from the playground to the academy. He’d seen it as a boy in the eyes of the science team that had been on Laconia when Duarte’s ships arrived and on the football team when the woman who’d been their coach was reassigned and a new man stepped in. Respect for power, yes, but also the scent of opportunity. The opportunism of making good with the new powers.
“One thing, bossmang,” Onni said, as Singh had known he would.
“No, not one more—”
“No, no, no. Wait. You’ve got to hear this one.”
“Fine,” Singh said. “Out with it.”
“So that weapon your big ship used? The magnetic one?”
“The Tempest. Yes, what about it?”
“Yeah, so,” Onni said, then paused to scratch his greasy hair and smirk. “When you hit the hub station with it? Where the rail guns were?”
“Yes,” Singh said. “We have extensive experience with similar artifacts, and judged the risk to be minimal.”
“Okay. So when that beam thing hit the hub station that pinché ball glowed bright yellow for que, fifteen seconds. Anytime anything hits the ball that dumps any energy into it, you get these little flashes of yellow. This is the first time the whole damn thing lit up, and fifteen seconds is a long time.”
“I’m having trouble understanding your point,” Singh said.
“So during that fifteen seconds, all thirteen hundred rings dumped a massive gamma-ray burst into their systems. Hard enough that four ships on approach to the rings had their crews cooked. Emergency systems kicked in, autopilot stopped the ships, so we don’t have four unmanned projectiles flying through the rings at us, but …”
Onni lifted his hands as if he was presenting a gift. Singh blinked and sat back. Something shifted in his belly. An emotion he hadn’t felt since he’d arrived at Medina. Surprise. Maybe even hope. The ring space was, by the best understanding of the science teams, one of the most energetically active things in the perceivable universe. The power required to keep the space itself from collapsing was astounding even to people who routinely built things like Magnetar-class battleships. The effect Langstiver described wouldn’t even be a rounding error in the overall system, but the application of it could mean a significant windfall.