“The safety of your ship and your crew are the most important thing,” Singh said. “I understand your caution.”
“I’ll match orbit with the gate until we hear from you,” Song said. “And thank you, Governor. I do appreciate this.”
He nodded and dropped the connection. She didn’t trust him. Of course she didn’t. He didn’t trust himself.
The Marines who accompanied him on his review of the docks were a mixed group—half of them in power armor and half in standard ballistic plates. Even if the underground managed to disable the power armor again—which Overstreet had assured Singh would be impossible—there would still be a guard ready to take point. Singh hated that they’d had to change their protocol. He hated remembering the fear of realizing his protection was gone, and he hated knowing that the fear would never completely go away. He still didn’t know how the underground had even known the antimutiny protocols existed, much less how they’d managed to reverse engineer them. Was someone—a Laconian—a turncoat? Had they been careless? He had no way of finding where the information had leaked out. It was another little insult that burrowed into his skin.
He maneuvered through the docks on a small thruster of compressed air. The empty berths stared back at him like an accusation. The pocks in the decks and bulkheads where bullets had struck during the fighting hadn’t been buffed out or painted over yet, though they would be. He felt the attention of the dockworkers. They were, after all, the audience for this excursion. Meant to see that the governor of the station wasn’t cowering in his office, afraid to peek out from behind his desk. That he wasn’t hiding in a public restroom. The heavy guard undercut the message, as did the fear in his gut. But he would pretend and pretend and pretend in the hopes that it would somehow become true.
So he lifted his chin, and made his way through the full round of the docks—even where the damage from the bombing of the primary oxygen tanks twisted and deformed the deck. He looked at the temporary plating with what he hoped was dignity and thoughtfulness. All he really wanted was to be done with this and back in his office.
The acting dockmaster followed along just behind him. The anger in her expression was unmistakable, but he didn’t know if it was rage at the terrorists who’d done the damage or at him for not preventing it.
“How long will it take us to make repairs?” he asked.
“That will depend on the supply chain, sir,” she said. “Once we have the
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t respond. “What is our capacity at this point?”
“It’s not bad. The only berth that took serious damage was the first. Sheared off the docking clamps. Once that old gunship was out, the bastards took over my office. All the rest were released from the controls. That’s one way it could have been worse, I suppose.”
What if he’d brought Natalia and the monster had been here? Laconians had died in these uprisings. If his family had come to Medina, would they have been targets too? Would he have watched his daughter die the way he’d watched Kasik?
And yes, locals suffered too, but to have his people dead and hurt … And with what repercussions? The criminals had scattered like seeds on the wind, and taken his ship with them. What colony would see these images and not think that they could do the same?
He pushed over to the broken decking and put his hands on it. He’d been weak before. Lenient. He’d thought that by treating the people of Medina as if they were citizens of the empire, they would be transformed somehow. They would be civilized. The decking was half a meter thick, and twisted like a torn leaf. They’d been willing to do this, and he’d pretended he could treat them as if they were sane. Another of his mistakes.
He had hesitated to wield his power before. And the universe had taught him what rewards hesitation brought. Well, he’d learned his lesson.
“Thank you. I understand now,” he said. Possibly to the acting dockmaster. Possibly to something deeper in his own soul. He turned to her. “This won’t happen again.”
“This was what they were building toward,” Overstreet said. “The bad news is, they were by and large quite successful in their aim. I’m not going to make this pretty, sir, they trounced us.”
“I agree,” Singh said.
Overstreet leaned forward in his chair and threw the image from his wrist monitor to the screen over Singh’s desk. A list of all the people presently unaccounted for on Medina. The people that they knew had escaped. Or died.
“On the other hand,” Overstreet said, “their objective was defensive. This was a retreat. I’ve had the technicians make a complete audit, and I’m prepared to certify that it’s safe for the
“You’re sure about that? Completely safe?”
