“Mmhmm,” Singh said. “Anyway, I’ve sent in my recommendation that you be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, as befits the posting you now hold. We’re just waiting on word from Laconia to make it official. You’ve certainly got the years in, and your record is exemplary. I don’t foresee any difficulty.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” Overstreet started, then looked down at the monitor on his wrist. “That’s fast work. The detachment reports that all seven of the suspects have already been rounded up and taken to a holding area, awaiting your orders. Shall I have them taken to the open-air cells, pending trial? Let everyone on the station see them locked up? Sends a message.”
“Yes, I—” Singh began, then rethought it. “No. If that holding area is private, keep them there. I’d like to speak to them.”
“Of course,” Overstreet said. Into his monitor he said, “Triphammer oscar mike. We need transport and escort to level four, compartment one three one one echo bravo. Ready to move in five.”
Singh had studied detailed files on the history of Medina, from its aspirational beginnings with an Earther religious faction to its outright theft by the OPA and conversion into the universe’s worst battleship before finally settling in as the hub of human expansion through the gate network.
Singh found the idea of a generation ship fascinating, in a morbid sort of way. He could understand taking great risks for your children. He was doing that right now. Trying to help build the well-regulated human empire that his monster Elsa and her future children could thrive in. There was a romance in the idea of setting out on a journey you’d never see the end of so that your grandchildren might live a better life. But all the numbers he’d seen on how a hundred-year voyage like that would play out were fairly horrifying. It was, to say the least, a very high cost and very low probability of success. Singh assumed there was a faith element to the risk that he was just missing. In his opinion, faith was generally for people who were bad at math.
Compartment 1311EB turned out to be a former storage compartment for animal feed. Another of the many structures built into Medina Station back when it had been the
Singh entered the room flanked by two Marines in power armor and Overstreet taking up a position by the door. The four Marine guards in the room snapped him a salute, then went back to watching their little gang of prisoners. With fifteen bodies in the room, it felt very cramped.
“I am the station governor, Captain Santiago Singh,” he said, taking time to stare each of the seven prisoners in the eye as he spoke. The youngest stared back with a fierce rage that looked entirely out of place on their beautiful, genderless face.
“No one fuckin’ cares,” one of the men spat back at him. The Marine closest to him casually kicked him in the ribs. Singh waved him back.
“I need you all to listen to me very carefully,” he said. “A bomb was made using chemicals from the warehouse you seven work in. That bomb killed a Laconian naval officer, and injured another.”
“Good,” said one of the women.
“Not good,” Singh replied, without changing his tone. “Because the penalty for this criminal act will be death by firing squad. At this point, there is no reason to believe all seven of you aren’t in collusion. You are either working with terrorist cells, or you are in fact the cell that planted that bomb.”
“Better to die a free Belter than live a slave,” the young one said. They had a singer’s voice, high and clear.
He started to wonder if it might have been better to have seven different conversations with the prisoners rather than one with all of them. They were performing for each other now. Each of them signaling their loyalty to the others. It made it more difficult to know what their actual flexibility might be.
“We can debate the benefits of centralized government later,” Singh replied. “For now, I have one offer to make, and only one. When I leave this room, I am going to ask that an appointed judge review the evidence from the bombing and find all seven of you guilty of terrorist acts. You will then be taken to a public place, and shot.”
“Not much of a fuckin’ offer,” the first man said, rubbing his bruised ribs.
“While the judge reviews that evidence, I am going to have you held in private cells. The first one of you to cooperate in our investigation of terrorist activity on this station, lives.”
“Turn traitor to save our own necks,” the young one said. “You don’t know Belters at all.”
