“Should I assume that means you intend to refuse to cooperate with my boarding party?” Zavala’s voice was noticeably colder, and MacNaughtan drew a deep breath.
“Your personnel aren’t in the Saltash Space Service’s custody,” he said. “Their security and medical treatment are an Office of Frontier Security responsibility under the terms of OFS’ management of traffic here in Saltash. Governor Dueñas made that point to me rather firmly when his medical staff determined that a quarantine was appropriate. As a consequence, I can’t release them to you, however cooperative I might otherwise wish to be.”
Zavala gazed at him for a moment, lips pursed thoughtfully. Then the Manticoran tipped back in his command chair and cocked his head to one side.
“May I assume, then, that you’re as desirous as I am to avoid any unfortunate incidents aboard your station, Captain?”
“I’m administratively responsible for the safety and well-being of the better part of a quarter million civilians, not to mention a major portion of my star system’s industrial infrastructure, Captain Zavala,” MacNaughtan said flatly. “I think you can assume no one in the entire galaxy could be more desirous of avoiding ‘unfortunate incidents’ than I am.”
“I can appreciate that. I trust you can appreciate that my people are coming aboard, one way or another. I would vastly prefer for my pinnaces to dock with Shona Station like any other small craft and for my personnel to come and go with the minimum disturbance of your routine, your civilians’ well-being, or the operation of your industrial nodes. Since both of us would obviously prefer that outcome, will you be good enough to issue docking clearance?”
“I suspect Governor Dueñas would prefer for me to refuse you clearance, Captain Zavala. Unfortunately, he hasn’t specifically told me that, and it seems evident you have more than sufficient firepower available to compel me to at least allow you access to the station. That being the case, yes, your pinnaces are cleared to dock, although I feel constrained to point out that it’s only under official protest. Understand, however,” he looked very steadily into Zavala’s eyes, “that I am responsible for those civilians’ safety. Should they be endangered, it will be my duty to intervene.”
He spoke firmly, crisply, and Zavala nodded.
“I understand, Captain MacNaughtan, and I assure you my people will have no intention of endangering your civilians. Of course, once they board, they will have to make contact with the Frontier Security personnel responsible for maintaining the medical quarantine aboard your station. Would it be possible for you to provide them with a guide or a map board to direct them to the quarantine facilities when they come aboard?”
“I can certainly see to it that they have directions,” MacNaughtan replied. “And in order to minimize the possibility of any of those incidents you and I both want to avoid, I’ve taken the precaution of evacuating both civilian and Saltash Space Service personnel from the module supporting the quarantine facilities.”
“I appreciate that,” Zavala said with a thin smile. “Hopefully this will be a relatively painless visit, Captain. We’ll certainly try to keep it that way, at least.”
* * *
“All right, people,” Lieutenant Abigail Hearns said, standing at the head of the pinnace passenger compartment. Her image appeared simultaneously on the main bulkhead viewscreens in each of the other three pinnaces, and she hoped she looked calmer than she actually felt.
“According to our last update, the locals don’t want any part of this. They haven’t come right out and said so, but we have docking clearance and their CO’s withdrawn his personnel from the portion of the station between our docking bay and our people. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we still don’t know how many of the gendarmes stationed here are currently on board and how many may be deployed elsewhere in the system, but we do know our people are in their custody and they don’t have orders to give them back.”
She saw the tension in the faces actually looking back at her aboard her own pinnace and she knew the faces aboard the other small craft of her flight were just as tense. And well they should be, since only one member of her entire boarding party had ever been a Marine. Gendarmerie intervention battalions had a well-earned reputation as thugs and enforcers, rather than soldiers, but they were at least nominally trained with infantry and support weapons, and there were almost certainly more of them aboard Shona Station than there were Manticorans and Graysons aboard her pinnaces.
“Obviously, we all hoped these people would be smart enough to recognize reality when it smacked them in the face,” she continued. “What happened to their battlecruisers should have convinced them it would be a really, really bad idea to make Commodore Zavala unhappy with them. They seem to be a little slow, however…even for Sollies.”
Her timing on the last three words was perfect, and several people laughed out loud despite the tension curdling the pinnace’s atmosphere.
“I have no intention of getting any of you killed,” she told them when the laughter had faded. “A lot of you were with me and Mateo pulling SAR in Spindle, and that’s why you lucky souls get to take point with the two of us. The rest of you know the plan, and I expect you to stick to it. We don’t want any shooting if it can possibly be avoided. We don’t want to escalate any confrontations that don’t have to be escalated. Having said that, your own safety is paramount. I don’t want anyone killed if we can avoid it, but I’d a lot rather have some Solly gendarme killed than one of you. Is that clear?”
Heads nodded, and she nodded back.
“Once we’ve boarded, the pinnaces will undock under Lieutenant Xamar’s command. Thanks to Captain Zavala’s discussions with the station’s personnel, we know which module our people are in, and we already know roughly what route we’re going to have to take to reach them. While we’re doing that, Lieutenant Xamar will take up station on the module. Hopefully, we won’t need fire support from the pinnaces, but if we need it, it’ll be there.”
Heads nodded again, far more grimly.
“All right. Remember your briefings, watch your backs, and come home safe. If any of you don’t come back in one piece, I’m going to be really upset with you, and you won’t like me when I’m upset. Understood?”
* * *
Eardsidh MacGeechan was acutely conscious of how alone he was as the Manticoran pinnaces mated with Shona station’s personnel tubes and the Manty boarding party swam quickly and efficiently aboard.
All of them wore skinsuits, not powered armor, he observed, but they seemed to be frighteningly well equipped with pulse rifles, side arms, flechette guns, tribarrels, and grenade launchers. He even saw a few anti-armor launchers he hoped to hell were armed with chemical or kinetic warheads and not impeller heads. They moved with grim, disciplined competence, and he reminded himself he was effectively a neutral.
The question, of course, was whether or not they knew that.
A slender (and preposterously young looking) brunette with gray-blue eyes and a skinsuit showing the rank markings of a senior lieutenant crossed the bay gallery to him. A massively built fellow who would have made at least two and probably three of her followed at her heels in an armored skinsuit, carrying a flechette gun casually at port arms while a slung rifle hung over his shoulder. He also carried a pulser in a belt holster and another one in a shoulder holster, and all of his weapons had an ominously well-used look. So did his dark eyes, for that matter. He should have looked ridiculous festooned with so much firepower; instead, he looked like a man accompanied by several old friends who were ready to help out if he needed them. MacGeechan didn’t recognize the insignia on his skinsuit, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Manticoran.