And that was it. Nat saying she loved him shattered whatever resolve he thought he had, and he spent the next several minutes blubbering shamefully to himself.
Someone tapped at his door, and he called out, “Give me a moment!” Then rushed off to his private bathroom. While he was washing his face, he heard the sounds of someone cleaning up his office, and by the time he’d put himself back in shape to see people, there was a fresh pot of coffee percolating on the shelf. A noncom was just finishing up by placing new flowers in his vase. The chief threw him a snappy salute, then faded out of the room like a cat.
Singh sat at his desk, composed himself, then started a recording to Nat. “Hello, my dear. Thank you for the lovely message. I’m so happy to hear things are going well there, and Monster looks very well fed, so my father is almost certainly spoiling her rotten with sweet rolls. Things are still ahead of schedule here. Living here will take some getting used to, but there’s plenty of usable land for your sheep and lab, and we’re working to get all the services up to snuff for my little girl. Talk soon. I love you, Nat. I love you—” He almost said Monster, but something felt wrong about using her pet name. “I love you, Elsa.”
He killed the connection, and sent the file for processing to pass it down to Laconia with the next comm dump. He took a lot of pride in the fact that saying “I love you” to Nat hadn’t sent him into another weeping fit. There were people who thought that sort of thing was unmanly. Singh didn’t care about that. But it was undignified.
“Five minutes,” Ensign Somebody said from his monitor.
“I’m ready,” he replied.
Carrie Fisk sat in a chair in his office, drinking his coffee and looking twitchy and uncomfortable. She’d been picked up at her office by fully armored Marines and driven to the governor’s offices in a convoy of three carts filled with other Marines. For her protection, certainly, but it could also be a little intimidating for someone who wasn’t used to it. If that gave Singh a bit of a home-field advantage when dealing with the minor functionaries on Medina, he’d happily take it. He waited until she’d stopped fidgeting and started paying attention to him, then pulled up a list of the hundreds of ring systems that had habitable colonies and threw the list up onto his wall.
“Madam President,” he said. “We’ve reached an exciting moment for us all, but especially for you as the first president of the Laconian Congress of Worlds.”
“Are we married to that name change?” she asked. “Or …”
“The name of the legislative body is established in the documentation I gave you after our first meeting. Did you not read those documents?”
“I did,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure if that was a working title, or not. We haven’t voted on adopting the new—”
“You do not vote on directives delivered from the executive authority of the high consul’s office.”
“I see,” Fisk said. She stared at her lap and blew steam off her coffee.
“As I was saying,” Singh continued. “This is an exciting time for us all. High Admiral Trejo has decided that our situation is now secure enough to allow limited trade to resume through the gates.”
Fisk looked up at him with genuine surprise. “What?”
“Yes. Limited trade can be scheduled starting now. Put together a list of the worlds in the greatest need, as well as a schedule of deliveries that can meet those needs. Not from Sol system. Not yet. At first, we’ll allow a single ship transit per week, and of course each transit must be approved by me personally at least thirty days before it’s scheduled to occur.”
“That’s actually—” Fisk started, then stopped for a moment. “That’s actually really good to hear. There are a lot of colonies barely hanging on by a thread. This will save lives.”
“And that is, of course, always the first priority of our respective positions.”
“Ah,” Fisk said, then leaned forward to put her coffee cup on the edge of his desk. As Singh frowned at it and the disrespectful informality it denoted, she said, “On that topic I passed along your threat to every colonized world. I also extended your invitation to the planets that have not already joined the association—forgive me, the Laconian Congress of Worlds—to elect a representative to join our group once trade has resumed. I assume some of those planets will be asking to send their new reps along with the trade ships.”
“That’s good,” Singh said. The Laconian Congress of Worlds was something
High Consul Duarte insisted on to make the member worlds feel like they had a voice in government. As annoying as the idea of dealing with thirteen hundred Carrie Fisks would be, the high consul’s opinion on this topic had the force of law, so he’d do his best to see that the new legislative body succeeded.
Fisk was still staring at him, waiting for some sort of answer.
“And?” he asked.
“And, if some of these transiting ships are carrying newly elected representatives, they’ll need permission to dock or send shuttles to Medina. Does the lifting of the transit ban also include permission to dock with the station?”
Which was an excellent question, and Singh was annoyed that Carrie Fisk had thought of it before he did.
“Permission will be granted by this office on a case-by-case basis. Requests to be filed at minimum thirty days prior to the transit,” he said, feeling like it came across as established policy and not something he’d just made up on the spot. He’d need to document that once Fisk left.
“Thank you, Governor,” Fisk said.
“It’s important that this feel familiar, stable, and safe as quickly as possible,” Singh told her. “To the degree possible, you will use Transport Union ships and pilots. The union will also handle the pickup and delivery of goods using their existing policies. Other than the approval process for transits, everything should work the way it did before.”
“I’ll send out a notice to the union reps here on the station, and to the local leadership on each world.”
“Excellent,” Singh said, standing up and reaching out to shake her hand. “At the risk of sounding repetitive, these are very exciting times for us all.”