Shadow of Freedom

Chapter Fourteen

Captain Valentine MacNaughtan of the Saltash Space Service scowled in irritation as the distinctive signal of a private com request chimed in his earbug. In Captain MacNaughtan’s opinion, this wasn’t the best imaginable time for a friend to be comming him. Not with the entire star system going rapidly to hell and five Manticoran light cruisers decelerating steadily towards the space station for which he was ostensibly responsible.

He kept his eyes on the display in front of him, ignoring the signal while he wondered what the hell Governor Dueñas thought he was doing. MacNaughtan had been as stunned as anyone by the almost casual obliteration of Vice Admiral Dubroskaya’s battlecruisers, but that lent a certain emphasis—a lot of emphasis, actually—to his present concerns. Although Shona Station’s megaton mass dwarfed any battlecruiser ever built, it was also far more fragile…and stuffed full of civilians, not just people in uniform. It seemed self-evident to that station’s CO that keeping ships which could shred battlecruisers from doing the same thing to Shona would be a good idea, yet he was beginning to think he was the only person in the entire star system that thought had occurred to.

Dueñas, you miserable asshole, he thought scathingly. You don’t have a frigging clue, do you? I really don’t want to see what you screw up for an encore, but I’ve got a nasty feeling I’m going to. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Grandpa, what did you think you were doing?!

The question had all sorts of jagged personal edges at the moment, since Captain MacNaughtan’s grandfather had been the President of MacPhee whose brainstorm had led to the Office of Frontier Security’s being invited into Saltash in the first place. The old man had lived to regret it, but by and large, MacNaughtan didn’t see where he’d had a lot of choice. Saltashans prided themselves on their stubbornness, and they’d been all set to reprise Old Earth’s Final War on Cinnamon, even though the stubbornest had to admit their original quarrel had arisen out of an almost trivial dispute over fishing rights, of all damned things! Well, MacNaughtan’s grandmother had always claimed that no one else in the entire Ante Diaspora history of the human race had been able to hold a grudge, cherish a feud, or cling to a lost cause like the Scots. Except, perhaps, she’d added thoughtfully, the Irish. Apparently some things changed even less than others.

MacNaughtan didn’t know about that. He wasn’t a student of history, and he’d had other things to concern himself with here in Saltash. Like dealing with the consequences of Frontier Security’s arrival. While he was willing to concede even OFS was preferable to a sterilized planet, there were times he wasn’t certain just how preferable it might be. His was one of the families which had managed to cling to a position of at least some power and privilege even under the new management, which was how he’d come to command Shona Station in the first place. But that also meant his family was in a better position than most to realize just how cynical the Sollies’ exploitation of his home system actually was.

It wasn’t that systems like Saltash provided enormous amounts of cash to the League compared to even the smallest Core system. Not individually, at any rate. Yet there were so many of them, each of them one more revenue-producing node in Frontier Security’s “benevolent” little empire, that the aggregate cash flow was stupendous. And the amounts the League extracted from Saltash in the form of “service fees” and “licensing fees” were more than enough to choke off any domestic economic growth. MacNaughtan knew Saltash was better off than many—probably the majority—of the protectorate systems, and Cinnamon had escaped the kind of grinding poverty that was the fate of all too many other worlds in the Verge. But he wasn’t certain stagnation was a lot better than penury, and he was certain that Frontier Security apparatchiks like Damien Dueñas had absolutely no interest in changing the situation. It was working just fine for them the way it was.

Or it had been until today, at any rate. Unfortunately, Dueñas wasn’t the one who was going to pay the heaviest price. Or who’d already paid it, for that matter. MacNaughtan hadn’t known Dubroskaya well—she hadn’t been in-system long enough—but she’d sure as hell deserved better than she’d gotten! And the MacNaughtan clan had been around long enough for him to know that with Dubroskaya dead, Dueñas was going to heap all the responsibility for what had happened here on her, if he could. It was amazing how convenient dead scapegoats who weren’t around to dispute what had happened could be.

And if anything else goes wrong, he’s going to hang the responsibility for that on anyone he can, too. Which puts me right in the line of fire, and—

His earbug chimed again, louder, and he growled a silent mental curse as it added a priority sequence to the signal.

He looked around for a moment, then crooked a finger at Commander Tad Rankeillor, his executive officer.

“Take the throne for a minute, Tad,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the command chair where he should technically have parked his posterior. “Apparently I have to take a call.”

“Hell of a time for it,” Rankeillor grunted. The SSS wasn’t all that big on spit and polish, and MacNaughtan and Rankeillor had known one another since boyhood. “Tell Maura I said hi.”

“It’s not Maura,” MacNaughtan said, hovering on the edge of a grin despite the catastrophe looming its way towards them. He and Maura had been married for less than six local months, and Rankeillor had been his best man.

“Sure it isn’t.” Rankeillor rolled his eyes.

“Not her combination,” MacNaughtan said, and Rankeillor’s eyes stopped rolling and narrowed.

“Who the hell else would com you at a moment like this?”

“If you’ll take the damned deck, I’ll find out!” MacNaughtan said tartly, and Rankeillor nodded.

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re relieved.”

“I stand relieved,” MacNaughtan replied. Spit and polish or not, there were some formalities and procedures which simply had to be observed.

Rankeillor moved closer to the master plot, and MacNaughtan stepped back a few paces, far enough to stay out of everyone else’s way, and punched to accept the audio-only call.

“MacNaughtan,” he said tersely.

“Captain, it’s Cicely Tiilikainen,” a voice said, and he felt his shoulders stiffen.

Tiilikainen had been stationed in Saltash longer than any of its previous governors or lieutenant governors. If Valentine MacNaughtan had been inclined trust any OFS bureaucrat, it would probably have been Tiilikainen. As it was, he at least mistrusted her less than any of her predecessors. To be honest, however, that wasn’t saying a great deal, and his eyes narrowed as he wondered why she was on his private circuit rather than one of the official com channels.

“Yes?” he responded after a moment, some instinct prompting him to use no names or official titles any of his watch standers might overhear.

“I’m on your private combination because I’m pretty sure this is a conversation neither of us would want to make part of the official record,” Tiilikainen said, as if she’d read his mind. “The Governor and I just had a…disagreement.”

“And?” MacNaughtan said warily. Getting into the crossfire between Frontier Security bureaucrats was not something a prudent Saltashan did.

“And I told him where he could put any further cooperation from me,” Tiilikainen told him flatly. “I never did like this brainstorm of his, and I wish to hell I’d argued harder when he first came up with it. But I didn’t, and now it’s come home to roost with a vengeance. You know what happened to Dubroskaya.”

“Yes,” he said, although it hadn’t been a question.

“Well, Dueñas still refuses to back down. He even refused to authorize Myau to evacuate her ships.”

“What?” MacNaughtan’s brows knit, and he glanced at the plot showing the thick shower of life pods descending towards Cinnamon atmosphere. “But—”

“Myau did that on her own…after I gave her a heads-up.” MacNaughtan could almost see Tiilikainen’s tart, sharp edged grimace even over the audio-only link. “I suggested to her that it would probably be best to initiate direct contact with this Zavala before our esteemed Governor got around to complicating things for her. She still may take it in the ear, but at least she didn’t have any orders not to abandon—yet—and she can make a pretty damned good case for having to make a quick decision without any guidance from her civilian superiors. Officially, at least.”

“I see. And you’re comming me to do the same thing?”

“More or less.” He heard the sound of an exasperated exhalation. “You’re not in the same position Myau was. You can’t just evacuate the station, and I’m damned sure he’s going to be ordering you and MacWilliams—and that jackass Pole—not to release the Manties. He’s got this notion Zavala won’t push it, won’t dare to take any action that could get civilians hurt.”

“Which you think he will?” MacNaughtan kept his voice down, but his expression tightened.

“My honest impression? I don’t think he wants to, but this is one genuine hard-ass, Val. I don’t know how typical he is of Manties in general, but this guy isn’t going to take any crap from anybody, and the fact is that we’re legally in the wrong on this one. Worse, Zavala knows we are, and I think he’s just demonstrated he isn’t likely to spend a lot of time dithering about his next move. I don’t know what he may have said to Dueñas after I left, but if I had to guess, it would be something along the lines of give me back my nationals, and nobody else needs to get hurt. Get in my way, and a lot of people will get hurt. And since the nationals in question happen to be aboard your space station…”

Her voice trailed off in the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and MacNaughtan closed his eyes. Wonderful. This day just kept getting better and better.

“Well, I appreciate the information, Sir,” he said briskly, raising his voice just enough for anyone standing close enough to him to hear the honorific’s gender. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get back to work now. Things are a little lively here, you know, and I probably need to keep the link open for official calls.”

“I do know, and…I’m sorry. Luck.”

Tiilikainen disconnected, and MacNaughtan drew a deep breath, then strode back over to Rankeillor.

“Get hold of Bridie,” he said softly. “I need her and MacGeechan in my briefing room ten minutes ago. And for God’s sake don’t put it on the PA!”

“I’ll do that thing,” Rankeillor agreed, looking less surprised than he might have, and MacNaughtan nodded and headed for the briefing room just off Shona station’s command deck.

* * *

Lieutenant Commander Bridie MacWilliams, the commander of the SSS police forces aboard the station, and Lieutenant Eardsidh MacGeechan, her second-in-command, arrived in MacNaughtan’s briefing room in under three minutes. He wasn’t really surprised. MacWilliams was young, but he’d always known she was quick. She was also the sort who thought ahead, and she’d probably been waiting by her com with her track shoes already sealed, anticipating his call.

“You called, Skipper?” she said as she and MacGeechan stepped through the door and it closed behind them.

“I did indeed.” He smiled bleakly. “I think it’s entirely possible things are about to get really ugly.”

“Ugly as in right here aboard the station? Or as in getting even uglier in general?” MacWilliams asked.

“Maybe both, but I’m more concerned about Shona than anything else. I’ve just been informed by a reliable source that Governor Dueñas has no intention of meeting the Manties’ demand that their personnel be released to them.”

“Jesus,” MacGeechan muttered, then blushed and shook himself. “Sorry, Sir.”

“You’re not thinking anything I’m not, Lieutenant,” MacNaughtan assured him.

“Should I take it, Sir, that ‘a reliable source’ wasn’t Governor Dueñas?” MacWilliams asked, her eyes shrewd.

“I think we should just move along quickly without getting into that particular point,” MacNaughtan told her with a tight smile. “What matters right this minute is that the Manties are going to insist we hand their people over and Dueñas is going to order us not to hand their people over. Under the circumstances, I could live with telling our esteemed Governor to suck vacuum, but I strongly suspect Major Pole would be disinclined to support us in that.”

MacWilliams’ blue eyes hardened. She and Major John Pole, the CO of the Solarian Gendarmerie intervention battalion OFS had stationed here aboard Shona Station, loathed one another. Pole’s people hadn’t enforced the kind of brutal reign of terror Frontier Security had imposed—or supported, at any rate—in all too many protectorate systems, but that didn’t make him a knight in shining armor. MacWilliams and her predecessor had been forced to deal with several complaints about Pole, most from women who hadn’t responded favorably enough to his advances. Any Saltashan would have been hammered hard over the same sort of accusations. At the very least, he would have been dragged in while they were thoroughly investigated. But local police forces didn’t go around investigating the commanders of intervention battalions. That was one of the facts of life in the Verge, and it stuck in Bridie MacWilliams’ craw sideways.

Worse, as the Gendarmes’ CO, Pole set the standard. Two or three of his troopers had gotten far enough out of line that the previous OFS governor had actually authorized their prosecution, and one of them had even been broken out of the Gendarmerie and sent away for ten T-years of hard time on the gas-extraction platforms orbiting Himalaya. Dueñas had promptly turned the clock back, however…which was how MacWilliams came to hold her present position, since one of the governor’s first actions had been to sack her predecessor precisely because of those prosecutions.

“Skipper,” she said now, “I think we have limited options here. I’ve got around five hundred cops for the entire Station, most with nothing heavier than side arms, and even after detachments, Pole’s got the better part of two companies of gendarmes on-station. I don’t have an up-to-the-minute count, but he’s got to have close to three hundred people up here, and they’ve got a lot heavier equipment than mine do.”

“Two hundred and seventy-three as of this morning, Ma’am,” MacGeechan put in. “Not counting three on sick call in the infirmary.” MacNaughtan and MacWilliams both looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he shrugged. “I just thought it was something I should be checking on, given the situation. Just so we could have a better feel for how we might…integrate our own people with his if we had to, you understand.”

“I believe I do, Eardsidh,” MacWilliams told him with an off-center smile. “I believe I do.”

Then her smile faded and she turned back to MacNaughtan.

“Sir, I think Major Pole will obey his orders—his legal orders, of course—from Governor Dueñas. And I can’t see anything aboard Shona Station which could reasonably be expected to prevent him from doing so.”

She’d chosen her words carefully, MacNaughtan noted. All of them could honestly testify that no one had even so much as suggested that they might attempt to resist the governor’s instructions.

“I don’t either,” he told her. “On the other hand, as you’ve pointed out, your people are much more lightly equipped than Major Pole’s gendarmes. Under the circumstances, I feel you and Lieutenant MacGeechan would be best employed using your personnel for crowd control, public safety, and to back up Commander MacVey’s damage control crews, in case they should be needed. My feeling is that we also ought to immediately begin evacuating civilian personnel from Victor Seven in order to facilitate any movements Major Pole may feel it’s appropriate for him to make.”

“Yes, Sir.” MacWilliams nodded.

Victor Seven was the station habitat module which had been assigned to the gendarmes ever since their original dispatch to Saltash. Actually, they’d assigned it to themselves, since it had originally been intended as the station’s VIP habitat and was still the largest, most luxuriously appointed module Shona Station boasted. It had also been refitted to contain the Gendarmerie’s brig facilities, which were separate from those of the Saltash Space Service’s police forces. No one had been especially happy about the notion of confining the Manticoran merchant spacers in Victor Seven; the general feeling had been that Saltash was already on thin ice, and the Gendarmerie was not famous for the consideration with which it treated individuals in its custody. Under the circumstances, however, MacNaughtan couldn’t pretend he was unhappy to have them in Victor Seven, because aside from a few dozen service personnel with duty stations in the area, the only people in Victor Seven were going to be gendarmes and the Manties.

“It’s a pity,” MacNaughtan continued, “that our own lack of personnel and equipment means your available manpower’s going to be fully employed maintaining security throughout the rest of the station. But while we won’t be able to reinforce or support the Major, I want every effort made to at least guarantee the integrity of the station in general and to ensure that he and his people are relieved of any responsibility which might distract them from Governor Dueñas’ orders. I trust that’s clear, Commander MacWilliams.”

“Yes, Sir.” MacWilliams smiled thinly at him. “Lieutenant MacGeechan and I will get right on that.”

* * *

“Let’s raise the station, Abhijat.”

“Yes, Sir,” Lieutenant Wilson replied, and Jacob Zavala sat back, watching the tactical plot while he waited.

DesRon 301 had settled into orbit around the planet Cinnamon. Traffic control hadn’t assigned them a parking orbit, for some reason, but HMS Kay’s astrogator had managed to find one. It wasn’t as if there was an enormous amount of orbital traffic to pick a way around, after all.

Captain Myau’s destroyers remained in orbit around Cinnamon’s moon, and Zavala was perfectly content to leave them there. A handful of civilian vessels had moved nervously away from the planet as the squadron entered orbit, but aside from that things seemed reasonably calm. Maybe that was because the majority of the star system’s shipping was out rescuing the survivors of Oxana Dubroskaya’s squadron.

Zavala’s lips tightened again at that thought, but it wasn’t one he was prepared to dwell upon. Right now, he had to concentrate on other things, and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t grateful for the distraction. On the other hand, the “other things” had the potential to turn into an even more horrendous mess than the massacre of Dubroskaya’s battlecruisers. After all, there’d been only eight thousand or so human beings on those warships; there were a quarter million human beings on Shona Station.

Which is the reason—as that pain in the ass Dueñas clearly understands—we can’t use Mark 16s as door knockers this time around, he thought grimly. And if there really is an intervention battalion in there, it’s going to be one hell of a trick to pry our people loose without getting a lot of other people a lot more personally killed. Unless the station CO’s another Myau, at any rate. And what’re the odds of that if he’s got a stack of gendarmes breathing down his neck?

“I’ve got the station commander for you, Sir,” Lieutenant Wilson said, and Zavala looked up from the plot.

“Thanks,” he said, and turned to his com.

* * *

“I’m Captain Jacob Zavala, Royal Manticoran Navy,” the smallish, dark-skinned man on the com display said. He was quite unlike the dominant genotype here in Saltash, but despite his diminutive stature and polite tone, no one was likely to take any liberties with him once they got a good look at his eyes, MacNaughtan thought.

“Am I addressing the commanding officer of Shona Station?” the Manticoran continued in that same courteous yet unyielding voice.

“I’m Captain Valentine MacNaughtan,” MacNaughtan replied. “I’m the senior Saltash Space Service officer aboard.”

That weasel-worded evasion of responsibility shamed him, but there was no point pretending otherwise, and this Zavala no doubt understood that. For purposes of shifting blame, Governor Dueñas would be delighted to embrace the legal fiction that MacNaughtan genuinely commanded Shona Station. If MacNaughtan had ever been foolish enough to forget he simply reigned over the station administratively while OFS actually ruled everything in the star system, he would have been replaced with dizzying speed.

Zavala’s eyes flickered, and MacNaughtan felt his face try to heat at the other man’s obvious awareness of that reality. But the Manticoran simply nodded.

“I believe I understand your position, Captain MacNaughtan,” he said. “Unfortunately, you and I are in something of a difficult situation at the moment. There are illegally detained Manticoran nationals aboard your station. I fully realize they were detained—I’m sorry, ‘quarantined’—on the orders of Governor Dueñas, not those of the Saltash Space Service. The problem is that I’ve been ordered to retrieve them, and Governor Dueñas has been…less than cooperative, shall we say? In fact, he’s flatly refused to release them. And the reason this is unfortunate is that I’m going to have to insist on recovering them. In fact, my orders are to do precisely that…by whatever means may be necessary. I’m afraid Vice Admiral Dubroskaya’s squadron has already discovered what that means.”

If those blue eyes had flickered before, they were rock-steady and laser-sharp now, MacNaughtan observed with a sinking sensation.

“I informed Governor Dueñas I would be sending a boarding party aboard your station within fifteen minutes of making Cinnamon orbit,” Zavala continued. “My pinnaces are en route now. I have no desire to inflict additional casualties—especially not civilian casualties—but my orders are clear and I intend to follow them. That means my personnel will be coming aboard Shona Station very shortly. I don’t suppose Governor Dueñas has instructed you to release the people I’ve come to reclaim into my custody?”

“I’m afraid he hasn’t,” MacNaughtan replied.

“May I ask what instructions, if any, he has given you?”

“I’ve been informed that he declines to release your people from quarantine,” MacNaughtan responded in a very careful tone. “Aside from that I have no specific instructions in regard to this matter.”

“Should I assume that means you intend to refuse to cooperate with my boarding party?” Zavala’s voice was noticeably colder, and MacNaughtan drew a deep breath.

“Your personnel aren’t in the Saltash Space Service’s custody,” he said. “Their security and medical treatment are an Office of Frontier Security responsibility under the terms of OFS’ management of traffic here in Saltash. Governor Dueñas made that point to me rather firmly when his medical staff determined that a quarantine was appropriate. As a consequence, I can’t release them to you, however cooperative I might otherwise wish to be.”

Zavala gazed at him for a moment, lips pursed thoughtfully. Then the Manticoran tipped back in his command chair and cocked his head to one side.

“May I assume, then, that you’re as desirous as I am to avoid any unfortunate incidents aboard your station, Captain?”

“I’m administratively responsible for the safety and well-being of the better part of a quarter million civilians, not to mention a major portion of my star system’s industrial infrastructure, Captain Zavala,” MacNaughtan said flatly. “I think you can assume no one in the entire galaxy could be more desirous of avoiding ‘unfortunate incidents’ than I am.”

“I can appreciate that. I trust you can appreciate that my people are coming aboard, one way or another. I would vastly prefer for my pinnaces to dock with Shona Station like any other small craft and for my personnel to come and go with the minimum disturbance of your routine, your civilians’ well-being, or the operation of your industrial nodes. Since both of us would obviously prefer that outcome, will you be good enough to issue docking clearance?”

“I suspect Governor Dueñas would prefer for me to refuse you clearance, Captain Zavala. Unfortunately, he hasn’t specifically told me that, and it seems evident you have more than sufficient firepower available to compel me to at least allow you access to the station. That being the case, yes, your pinnaces are cleared to dock, although I feel constrained to point out that it’s only under official protest. Understand, however,” he looked very steadily into Zavala’s eyes, “that I am responsible for those civilians’ safety. Should they be endangered, it will be my duty to intervene.”

He spoke firmly, crisply, and Zavala nodded.

“I understand, Captain MacNaughtan, and I assure you my people will have no intention of endangering your civilians. Of course, once they board, they will have to make contact with the Frontier Security personnel responsible for maintaining the medical quarantine aboard your station. Would it be possible for you to provide them with a guide or a map board to direct them to the quarantine facilities when they come aboard?”

“I can certainly see to it that they have directions,” MacNaughtan replied. “And in order to minimize the possibility of any of those incidents you and I both want to avoid, I’ve taken the precaution of evacuating both civilian and Saltash Space Service personnel from the module supporting the quarantine facilities.”

“I appreciate that,” Zavala said with a thin smile. “Hopefully this will be a relatively painless visit, Captain. We’ll certainly try to keep it that way, at least.”

* * *

“All right, people,” Lieutenant Abigail Hearns said, standing at the head of the pinnace passenger compartment. Her image appeared simultaneously on the main bulkhead viewscreens in each of the other three pinnaces, and she hoped she looked calmer than she actually felt.

“According to our last update, the locals don’t want any part of this. They haven’t come right out and said so, but we have docking clearance and their CO’s withdrawn his personnel from the portion of the station between our docking bay and our people. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we still don’t know how many of the gendarmes stationed here are currently on board and how many may be deployed elsewhere in the system, but we do know our people are in their custody and they don’t have orders to give them back.”

She saw the tension in the faces actually looking back at her aboard her own pinnace and she knew the faces aboard the other small craft of her flight were just as tense. And well they should be, since only one member of her entire boarding party had ever been a Marine. Gendarmerie intervention battalions had a well-earned reputation as thugs and enforcers, rather than soldiers, but they were at least nominally trained with infantry and support weapons, and there were almost certainly more of them aboard Shona Station than there were Manticorans and Graysons aboard her pinnaces.

“Obviously, we all hoped these people would be smart enough to recognize reality when it smacked them in the face,” she continued. “What happened to their battlecruisers should have convinced them it would be a really, really bad idea to make Commodore Zavala unhappy with them. They seem to be a little slow, however…even for Sollies.”

Her timing on the last three words was perfect, and several people laughed out loud despite the tension curdling the pinnace’s atmosphere.

“I have no intention of getting any of you killed,” she told them when the laughter had faded. “A lot of you were with me and Mateo pulling SAR in Spindle, and that’s why you lucky souls get to take point with the two of us. The rest of you know the plan, and I expect you to stick to it. We don’t want any shooting if it can possibly be avoided. We don’t want to escalate any confrontations that don’t have to be escalated. Having said that, your own safety is paramount. I don’t want anyone killed if we can avoid it, but I’d a lot rather have some Solly gendarme killed than one of you. Is that clear?”

Heads nodded, and she nodded back.

“Once we’ve boarded, the pinnaces will undock under Lieutenant Xamar’s command. Thanks to Captain Zavala’s discussions with the station’s personnel, we know which module our people are in, and we already know roughly what route we’re going to have to take to reach them. While we’re doing that, Lieutenant Xamar will take up station on the module. Hopefully, we won’t need fire support from the pinnaces, but if we need it, it’ll be there.”

Heads nodded again, far more grimly.

“All right. Remember your briefings, watch your backs, and come home safe. If any of you don’t come back in one piece, I’m going to be really upset with you, and you won’t like me when I’m upset. Understood?”

* * *

Eardsidh MacGeechan was acutely conscious of how alone he was as the Manticoran pinnaces mated with Shona station’s personnel tubes and the Manty boarding party swam quickly and efficiently aboard.

All of them wore skinsuits, not powered armor, he observed, but they seemed to be frighteningly well equipped with pulse rifles, side arms, flechette guns, tribarrels, and grenade launchers. He even saw a few anti-armor launchers he hoped to hell were armed with chemical or kinetic warheads and not impeller heads. They moved with grim, disciplined competence, and he reminded himself he was effectively a neutral.

The question, of course, was whether or not they knew that.

A slender (and preposterously young looking) brunette with gray-blue eyes and a skinsuit showing the rank markings of a senior lieutenant crossed the bay gallery to him. A massively built fellow who would have made at least two and probably three of her followed at her heels in an armored skinsuit, carrying a flechette gun casually at port arms while a slung rifle hung over his shoulder. He also carried a pulser in a belt holster and another one in a shoulder holster, and all of his weapons had an ominously well-used look. So did his dark eyes, for that matter. He should have looked ridiculous festooned with so much firepower; instead, he looked like a man accompanied by several old friends who were ready to help out if he needed them. MacGeechan didn’t recognize the insignia on his skinsuit, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Manticoran.

“Lieutenant Abigail Hearns, Grayson Space Navy,” the brunette said in a pleasantly throaty contralto. MacGeechan’s eyebrows rose, and she smiled. “We’re Manticoran allies. Don’t worry about it,” she advised him.

“Whatever you say, Lieutenant,” MacGeechan said. “Lieutenant Eardsidh MacGeechan, Saltash Space Service.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Hearns extended her hand and gripped his firmly. “This is Lieutenant Gutierrez, Owens Steadholder’s Guard.” MacGeechan felt his eyebrows twitch again, and she shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she repeated.

“Uh, yes, Ma’am.” MacGeechan wasn’t certain she was senior to him, but he suspected she was, despite her apparent youth. It was always a bit difficult to estimate someone’s calendar age without knowing which generation of prolong he’d received, but this Lieutenant Hearns exuded a quiet aura of competence that spoke of a lot more experience than someone as youthful looking as her ought to have.

“I suppose we should go ahead and get ourselves organized, don’t you think, Mateo?” she said, smiling up at the towering lieutenant, and he nodded.

“I’ll get right on that…My Lady.”

Hearns’ eyes flickered as if in amusement at some private joke, but she only nodded, and MacGeechan watched her watching Gutierrez as he began briskly and competently sorting out the rest of her boarding party. Then the Saltashan frowned as the pinnaces quietly unlocked from the buffers on the far side of the bay’s armorplast. He started to say something about it, then changed his mind as he saw them back out of the bay on reaction thrusters, alter heading, and drift off in the direction of Victor Seven. Surely they weren’t going to—?

His thought trailed away as he remembered what had happened to Vice Admiral Dubroskaya. Under the circumstances, it was probably just as well not to invest too much confidence in what these people weren’t going to do.

He considered that for a moment or two, and then, ever so slightly, he began to smile. If they hadn’t been gendarme pricks, he might almost have felt sorry for Major Pole’s troopers, and in the meantime…