“And?” MacNaughtan said warily. Getting into the crossfire between Frontier Security bureaucrats was not something a prudent Saltashan did.
“And I told him where he could put any further cooperation from me,” Tiilikainen told him flatly. “I never did like this brainstorm of his, and I wish to hell I’d argued harder when he first came up with it. But I didn’t, and now it’s come home to roost with a vengeance. You know what happened to Dubroskaya.”
“Yes,” he said, although it hadn’t been a question.
“Well, Dueñas still refuses to back down. He even refused to authorize Myau to evacuate her ships.”
“What?” MacNaughtan’s brows knit, and he glanced at the plot showing the thick shower of life pods descending towards Cinnamon atmosphere. “But—”
“Myau did that on her own…after I gave her a heads-up.” MacNaughtan could almost see Tiilikainen’s tart, sharp edged grimace even over the audio-only link. “I suggested to her that it would probably be best to initiate direct contact with this Zavala before our esteemed Governor got around to complicating things for her. She still may take it in the ear, but at least she didn’t have any orders not to abandon—yet—and she can make a pretty damned good case for having to make a quick decision without any guidance from her civilian superiors. Officially, at least.”
“I see. And you’re comming me to do the same thing?”
“More or less.” He heard the sound of an exasperated exhalation. “You’re not in the same position Myau was. You can’t just evacuate the station, and I’m damned sure he’s going to be ordering you and MacWilliams—and that jackass Pole—not to release the Manties. He’s got this notion Zavala won’t push it, won’t dare to take any action that could get civilians hurt.”
“Which you think he will?” MacNaughtan kept his voice down, but his expression tightened.
“My honest impression? I don’t think he wants to, but this is one genuine hard-ass, Val. I don’t know how typical he is of Manties in general, but this guy isn’t going to take any crap from anybody, and the fact is that we’re legally in the wrong on this one. Worse, Zavala knows we are, and I think he’s just demonstrated he isn’t likely to spend a lot of time dithering about his next move. I don’t know what he may have said to Dueñas after I left, but if I had to guess, it would be something along the lines of give me back my nationals, and nobody else needs to get hurt. Get in my way, and a lot of people will get hurt. And since the nationals in question happen to be aboard your space station…”
Her voice trailed off in the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and MacNaughtan closed his eyes. Wonderful. This day just kept getting better and better.
“Well, I appreciate the information, Sir,” he said briskly, raising his voice just enough for anyone standing close enough to him to hear the honorific’s gender. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get back to work now. Things are a little lively here, you know, and I probably need to keep the link open for official calls.”
“I do know, and…I’m sorry. Luck.”
Tiilikainen disconnected, and MacNaughtan drew a deep breath, then strode back over to Rankeillor.
“Get hold of Bridie,” he said softly. “I need her and MacGeechan in my briefing room ten minutes ago. And for God’s sake don’t put it on the PA!”
“I’ll do that thing,” Rankeillor agreed, looking less surprised than he might have, and MacNaughtan nodded and headed for the briefing room just off Shona station’s command deck.
* * *
Lieutenant Commander Bridie MacWilliams, the commander of the SSS police forces aboard the station, and Lieutenant Eardsidh MacGeechan, her second-in-command, arrived in MacNaughtan’s briefing room in under three minutes. He wasn’t really surprised. MacWilliams was young, but he’d always known she was quick. She was also the sort who thought ahead, and she’d probably been waiting by her com with her track shoes already sealed, anticipating his call.
“You called, Skipper?” she said as she and MacGeechan stepped through the door and it closed behind them.
“I did indeed.” He smiled bleakly. “I think it’s entirely possible things are about to get really ugly.”
“Ugly as in right here aboard the station? Or as in getting even uglier in general?” MacWilliams asked.
“Maybe both, but I’m more concerned about Shona than anything else. I’ve just been informed by a reliable source that Governor Dueñas has no intention of meeting the Manties’ demand that their personnel be released to them.”
“Jesus,” MacGeechan muttered, then blushed and shook himself. “Sorry, Sir.”
“You’re not thinking anything I’m not, Lieutenant,” MacNaughtan assured him.
“Should I take it, Sir, that ‘a reliable source’ wasn’t Governor Dueñas?” MacWilliams asked, her eyes shrewd.
“I think we should just move along quickly without getting into that particular point,” MacNaughtan told her with a tight smile. “What matters right this minute is that the Manties are going to insist we hand their people over and Dueñas is going to order us not to hand their people over. Under the circumstances, I could live with telling our esteemed Governor to suck vacuum, but I strongly suspect Major Pole would be disinclined to support us in that.”
MacWilliams’ blue eyes hardened. She and Major John Pole, the CO of the Solarian Gendarmerie intervention battalion OFS had stationed here aboard Shona Station, loathed one another. Pole’s people hadn’t enforced the kind of brutal reign of terror Frontier Security had imposed—or supported, at any rate—in all too many protectorate systems, but that didn’t make him a knight in shining armor. MacWilliams and her predecessor had been forced to deal with several complaints about Pole, most from women who hadn’t responded favorably enough to his advances. Any Saltashan would have been hammered hard over the same sort of accusations. At the very least, he would have been dragged in while they were thoroughly investigated. But local police forces didn’t go around investigating the commanders of intervention battalions. That was one of the facts of life in the Verge, and it stuck in Bridie MacWilliams’ craw sideways.
Worse, as the Gendarmes’ CO, Pole set the standard. Two or three of his troopers had gotten far enough out of line that the previous OFS governor had actually authorized their prosecution, and one of them had even been broken out of the Gendarmerie and sent away for ten T-years of hard time on the gas-extraction platforms orbiting Himalaya. Dueñas had promptly turned the clock back, however…which was how MacWilliams came to hold her present position, since one of the governor’s first actions had been to sack her predecessor precisely because of those prosecutions.
“Skipper,” she said now, “I think we have limited options here. I’ve got around five hundred cops for the entire Station, most with nothing heavier than side arms, and even after detachments, Pole’s got the better part of two companies of gendarmes on-station. I don’t have an up-to-the-minute count, but he’s got to have close to three hundred people up here, and they’ve got a lot heavier equipment than mine do.”
“Two hundred and seventy-three as of this morning, Ma’am,” MacGeechan put in. “Not counting three on sick call in the infirmary.” MacNaughtan and MacWilliams both looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he shrugged. “I just thought it was something I should be checking on, given the situation. Just so we could have a better feel for how we might…integrate our own people with his if we had to, you understand.”