But bringing up his age now felt like a power play. A way to point out how little experience he had. He tried not to show that it got under his skin.
“Not old enough to think of it as the Io Campaign, though of course I’m thoroughly versed on the history.”
“I was a JG when that shitstorm went down,” Tanaka said. “We were actively fighting with Belter factions back then. You probably think these people are a half step up from spear-carrying savages—”
“I don’t—”
“And you’d be right,” she continued. “They can be the most stupidly stubborn people you’ll ever meet. But they’re tough as nails, and resourceful.”
“I think you misunderstood me,” Singh said, fighting to keep a flush out of his cheeks.
“I’m sure,” Tanaka said, then stood up. “I have an interview with the technical-assessment crew. I’ll report in when I’m done with them. In the meantime, don’t leave this office without your monitor on. Security directive.”
“Of course,” Singh said, the flush of shame he’d felt shifting over into anger. Personnel security fell under Tanaka’s operational command while they were occupying the station. It was one of the few areas where Singh could not countermand her orders. So, after dressing him down and questioning his understanding of their situation, she was now delivering a direct order. The humiliation stung.
“Appreciated,” she said, and headed for the door.
“Colonel,” Singh said at her back. He waited until she’d turned to look back at him. “I am the provisional governor of this station, by direct order from High Consul Duarte himself. When you’re in this office, you will stand at attention until I offer you a seat, and you will salute me as your superior. Is that understood?”
Tanaka cocked her head to the side and gave him another of her enigmatic little half smiles. It occurred to Singh that Aliana Tanaka had risen to the rank of colonel in the most punishingly trained combat unit humanity had ever known, and that he was alone in his office with her. He wanted to look down at her legs, see if she was rolling up onto the balls of her feet or shifting her stance. Instead, he stared her in the eye and clamped his stomach down into a knot. If he was supposed to be kind and humble, to ask about her family and trade familiarities with her, he was doing a poor job of it.
“Sir,” Tanaka said, coming to attention with a sharp salute. “Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed,” Singh said, then sat down and looked at his monitor as though she’d already disappeared. A moment later, his door opened and then closed.
Only then did he collapse back into his chair and wipe the sweat off his face.
“Give me one reason we don’t tell you to go fuck yourselves,” the head of Medina Station’s Air, Water, and Power Authority said. “The AWP—”
“The AWP works for us now,” Singh replied, keeping his voice level.
“Like hell we do.”
It’s shock, Singh told himself. It’s surprise and confusion and sorrow that the universe doesn’t behave the way they thought it did. And everyone on Medina Station—maybe everyone on the colonies and in Sol system too—was going to be struggling with it. All he could do for them was keep telling the truth, as clearly and as simply as he could, and hope it sank in.
“You do,” Singh continued. “And if you do not order your workers to resume their duties, I will have technicians from the Gathering Storm take over for them, and then I will have every single member of your organization arrested.”
“You can’t do that,” the AWP chief said with bravado, but he rubbed his bald head, and his expression wasn’t as certain.
“I can,” Singh said. “Everyone on your staff is back at work by next shift rotation or I start issuing arrest orders.”
“You won’t—”
“Dismissed,” Singh said, then gestured at one of his Marine guards, who ushered the AWP chief out of the room. Putting Medina Station in order was messy. He had imagined, coming out, that as governor of the station, he would be kept apart from the normal rank-and-file citizens and laborers. That he would have a status that kept those around him a little more in awe, with underlings to deal directly with the hands-on administration. In practice, Admiral Trejo had the role of power, and he was the underling. He accepted it with good grace. It would all be more pleasant in a few months, when the new defense emplacements were complete and the Tempest could progress to the next phase of their mission.
The briefings he’d had on the way out—all information gleaned from passively monitoring the backsplash radio that leaked through Laconia’s ring gate—were accurate, but wildly incomplete. It left him feeling a half step behind himself all the time. It wasn’t even the basic structures—those were constrained by the biological and energetic needs of the ships and station and so were, in a sense, predictable. It was the cultural forms and expectations. The absurdities and accidents of human character that affected the flow of goods and information in ways that were as unpredictable as they were exhausting. Like having to throw an entire branch of Medina’s infrastructure staff in the brig.
“Who’s next,” Singh asked his aide, a junior lieutenant named Kasik he’d grabbed from the admin pool on the Storm. Kasik scrolled through a list on his monitor.
“You have Carrie Fisk next,” Kasik said.
“The president of the Association of Worlds,” Singh said with a laugh. “Bring her in.”
Carrie Fisk entered his office, her frown lines and fidgety hands telling Singh she’d be trying to hide her fear with anger. She was a short, thin woman, with a severe face and beautiful black hair piled up on her head. Her clothes were expensive. Someone from one of the richer colonies, then. He knew her from the newsfeeds they’d captured. She looked thinner and less pleasant in person.
Singh gestured at the chair across from his desk and said, “Please sit, Madam President.”
She sat, the anger dissipating at his politeness.