They did this to their own station, just to spite me, he thought. And then No, not their own. Mine. This more than anything else proves they can’t be trusted with the future. This station is mine.
They passed by the crowd of people waiting for permission to visit their ships, the Marines alert for any sign of violence, and passed by without so much as a scowl. At the berth, the guards held Holden at the airlock, assuming that Singh had come because he wanted to inspect the prisoner before he left. On the float, Holden looked younger. The lines in his face softened, and his hair stood wildly out from his head. He could see what the man had looked like as a boy.
Singh nodded.
“Governor,” Holden said. He made it just polite enough to make it clear he was impatient without actually demanding offense be taken.
“Captain Holden. I wish you a safe journey.”
“Thanks.”
“Laconia is a beautiful place.”
“Not sure I’m going to be seeing the nice parts of it, but I’m open for a pleasant surprise.”
“If you cooperate with the high consul, you will be treated well,” Singh said. “We are an honorable people. No matter what you think, we were never your enemy.”
Holden’s smile was weary. “Okay.” That’s bullshit, but I’m too tired to fight about it.
Singh nodded, and the guards guided the prisoner away. The airlock closed behind him.
Fifteen minutes later, the Lightbreaker left dock and burned hard for the Laconia gate with Holden aboard.
Singh heard Overstreet’s report in the security office rather than his own. The walls were a pleasantly neutral gray-green that matched everything. The only decorations were a small potted fern and a framed piece of calligraphy in red, black, and gold that listed the high consul’s Nine Moral Tenets.
Overstreet himself sat behind his desk with a physical solidity that made it seem like he’d grown there. Singh stood looking down at the man rather than take the seat and posture of a visitor. It might be Overstreet’s office, but it was all Singh’s station.
“I’m expecting some unrest after the news comes back from Sol,” Overstreet said. “People don’t like seeing their team lose. I’m trying to get ahead of that. Channel it into something we can control. Not let it turn into something that can gain momentum.”
“That’s wise. Are you seeing a reaction to the news about the underground losing their hiding place?”
“Not among the general population, no. But it meant a lot to the security force. We knew it was here someplace, but actually finding the hub and shutting it down? It’s a major step forward. Without a physically isolated space, it’s harder for the terrorists to coordinate. And it lets us move into the next phase. Identification.”
“How many have you found?” Singh asked.
Overstreet spread his massive hands. “Fifteen for certain. Maybe twenty. The level of internal corruption within the local population can’t be understated. My best estimate is that a third of our operating personnel are at least open to working against us.”
Singh let the assessment sit for a moment, watching his outrage at the ingratitude and arrogance of the locals flare like it was happening outside himself. When he was sure he wouldn’t curse, he spoke.
“That’s unacceptable,” Singh said. “Changing that has to be a top priority.”
“Didn’t mean to suggest I was accepting it. Just reporting in on where it stood. I’ve put in double and triple checks, random audits, all the internal security procedures I can, but this is going to be something we struggle with until we start getting regular commerce open again. Once we can start breaking up the old guard here, I expect to see these problems fall away. Wash out the bad, bring in the new. Like that.”
Singh made a small sound of acknowledgment, neither approval nor condemnation.
“The dock attack was what led us to their nest,” Overstreet said. “But even there, I’m fairly sure some information isn’t getting passed up the chain to us.”
“And where do we stand on that investigation?”
Overstreet’s ice-blue eyes looked away.
“Permission to speak freely, Governor?”
“Granted.”
“It’d be going a lot better if you hadn’t shipped my best resource back home. Holden was central to the conspiracy. The man’s a murderer. And I’m still not a hundred percent certain what the aim of the attack was.”
“To damage the Storm while it was still in dock,” Singh said.
“Maybe,” Overstreet said. “But why? In preparation for something? Or was it to degrade the oxygen supply and force us to open shipping before we’re ready? Or was it to destroy the air gap server, or the secondary power storage, or one of the eight warehouses that got scraped out by the blast? Or was it just a propaganda move to make Laconian rule look weak? Or provoke a crackdown as a way to recruit new insurgents?”
“It did all of those things,” Singh said.
“But which ones it intended matters, sir. Understanding the mind of the enemy is what lets me do my job.”
Singh heard the frustration in Overstreet’s tone. That was fair. Part of his error in removing Tanaka had been putting Overstreet into position without the training and preparation time he should have had. And with the underground running circles around them, the man couldn’t feel he was doing a good job. Nothing degraded morale like the sense that the potential for excellence was being denied.
Happily, Singh was in a position to address that point right away. He took out his hand terminal, opened the message that had occasioned this particular visit, took off his personal security encryption and passed it to Overstreet. The young man appeared on Overstreet’s monitor. Wide, slightly feverish eyes, unruly hair. The lens and the perspective made the bent nose seem larger than it actually was.
“Hoy, bossmang. Something big going down,” Jordao said, “I only got my part, but it’s about the sensor arrays. Parley, tu y mé, aber keep it quiet. Voltaire finds out I know you, and you’ll see my water in your faucets, yeah?”
Overstreet’s eyes narrowed to slivers of ice. His lips had thinned to a single dark line.
“Well, that’s interesting,” he said.
“The Belters aren’t the only ones with a network,” Singh said. “Not anymore. See that your debriefing isn’t observed. This time, we’ll be ahead of the bastards.”
“May mean pulling personnel off the engineering investigation,” Overstreet said.
“This is the most important thing now,” Singh said.
Overstreet nodded slowly, lost in thoughts and calculations of his own. When he sighed, it was like a dying man’s breath. “We’re holding this station with just the crew we carried out here on the Gathering Storm and a few extras that Admiral Trejo could spare us. And this station is a damn lot bigger than our ship was.”
“Is that a problem for you, Overstreet?”
“It’s just that we do have a great selection of number-one priorities. Don’t we, sir?”
Chapter Forty-Two: Drummer
“… and if you fail to turn back,” Secretary-General Li said, “we will be forced to respond with force. There will be no further warnings.”