“I agree, sir. All we can do is make it harder for them to operate,” Overstreet said. “We’re going to have Marines enter every compartment on the station. Anything we don’t control or have immediate use of will be sealed and the atmosphere removed. It won’t end this, but it’ll make it harder for them to plan and execute with no spaces under their control.”
“Agreed,” Singh said. “You have authorization to conduct this operation, and shut down any sections of the station you see fit. Let’s see if these people can work in daylight, not hiding in the sewers.”
Overstreet stood and saluted, then headed for the door. But just before he left, he turned back as if suddenly remembering something. “Sir, you might consider putting more pressure on your civilian informants. This is exactly the sort of thing they should be doing for us.”
“Yes,” Singh agreed. “That’s next on my list.”
The Belter with the badly broken nose—Jordao, Singh thought he called himself—was ushered into the office by two Marines. They held him by the arms, his feet barely touching the ground. His expression was somewhere between angry and sniveling.
“Put him down,” Singh told the Marines. When Jordao moved toward a chair, he said, “Don’t sit.”
“Sabe, bossmang.”
“You know about the attack?” Singh’s hands had mostly stopped shaking after Overstreet left, so he took a sip of his water. It was all playacting. Look calm, casual, in control. Make Jordao feel like Singh already knew the answer to every question he was asked. Make him afraid to lie. It seemed to be working. Jordao rubbed his hands together and bobbed his head like a supplicant.
“Sa—I mean, yes, boss, I heard.”
“It shook the station hard enough to knock down buildings in the drum section,” Singh said. “So, of course, everyone knows about it. I’m not asking that. I’m asking if you know about it.”
“Knew the underground was up to something, them, but details? I don’t—”
“Because, you see,” Singh continued, “I released your sister from our lockup as a down payment for future services rendered. Services like letting me know when a bomb was going to blow up half the engineering section of my station, for example.”
All the servility left Jordao’s face. Singh watched it happen, like a switch had been flipped in the man’s head. He was a man who would grovel only so far and no farther. It was a useful fact about him, though it did seem to diminish his value.
“Old OPA, them, sa sa que? The ones the inners couldn’t kill,” Jordao said, not attempting to hide his thick Belter accent now. “The ones like me? We never get to know.”
“Before you leave this room, you will give me a list of every name you think might be involved in this underground so we can add them to our surveillance list. You will also make sure that whatever happens next, you are part of it, so that we can catch the conspirators in the act and bring the full force of the law against them.”
Jordao was shaking his head. “Kenna nothing, you—”
“Or,” Singh continued. “I will have your sister rearrested, tried for larceny and crimes against the empire, and hanged in a public space as a warning to others.”
Before Jordao could respond, Singh nodded at his Marines, and they picked the Belter up off the floor again. “He doesn’t leave until his list is delivered and verified.”
“Copy that, sir,” one Marine said, and saluted with the hand that wasn’t holding Jordao.
The Belter looked from him to the Marine and back again, understanding blooming in his eyes. Understanding and fear.
When it was over and he was alone in his office, Santiago Singh found that he very much wanted to send a message to his wife. Tell her how afraid he was. Tell her that maybe accepting this assignment had been a terrible mistake. That walking the line between the man he had always thought he was and the ruthless authoritarian ruler the job required of him wasn’t something he could do and remain whole. That the man who could order civilian deaths as a reprisal could not share the same space with the man who loved his wife and played with his daughter and couldn’t wait for her to get old enough so he could buy her a kitten.
But he couldn’t make that call, because the explosion had cut the Storm off from the station, until they could replace the network encryption node. Which was probably a good thing, because he suspected that everything he would have told his wife was a lie.
The truth—the one that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to admit to her—was that he could be both men at once. He’d already delivered the ultimatum to Carrie Fisk that any colony world that joined the resistance would be destroyed. He understood that, should it become necessary, he could order Overstreet to execute every person on the station that hadn’t come through the gates on the Tempest and the Storm. The Marine commander would do it. And that when Natalia and the monster arrived, he would be able to hold them and kiss them and be the man he’d always been around them. And know that he’d made them safe.
That was what terrified him. Not that the job would force him to be both of those men but that he was capable of being both. That all it would take is a bit more pressure, and Santiago Singh would be a man who loved his daughter with all his heart and who also ordered genocides.
He tapped at his desk. “Chief.”
“Sir,” came the immediate reply.
“How long until we have the network back up so I can send traffic back through the Storm?”
“It’s on the priority list. I’ve been told eleven hours until the replacement system is in place.”
“Thank you,” Singh said. “Please let me know the instant it’s done. I have priority traffic for Laconia.”
“Yes, sir. Sir? On that topic, the Storm reports traffic incoming from the Sol gate, marked highest priority. They have a courier bringing it over now.”