“Lieutenant Guillamet,” he said crisply.
“Rear Admiral Song of the Eye of the Typhoon is requesting command-to-command, Governor.”
“Of course,” he said. The monitor flickered. He straightened his tunic again and felt immediately self-conscious that he’d done it. It was a sign of insecurity, even if he was the only one who knew about it.
Rear Admiral Song appeared. Her wide mouth was set in a polite smile. The light delay was almost trivial. Evidence that the Typhoon was on track to pass through the gate. “Governor Singh,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise,” he replied.
“We’re on approach to the ring gate,” Song said, then looked away. “I’m very sorry, but given everything that’s happened recently, I have to ask you this. Can you assure me that this transit is safe?”
Singh settled more deeply into his couch. Of course it is, floated at the back of his mouth. The Typhoon can come through the gate, and there won’t be any rogue ship zipping through some other gate in the seconds before to change the safety curve. You and your crew will survive the trip and take its place as the protector of the ring space.
He swallowed the words. It was like another fine cut on his soul to admit that he wasn’t certain.
“I have had no new security alerts,” he said. “We see no ships on approach through the other gates and have no reason to suspect any interference from fringe elements. But if you would like, I will consult with my chief of security to make certain we have done everything in our ability to minimize your risk.”
“I would appreciate that,” Song said, and her tone meant, I’m sorry to ask it.
“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 Typhoon, we should be able to get started in earnest, but they’ve been breaking more than we have the decking to replace.”
“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 famil
y 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.