Текст книги "Forge of Heaven "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

8

BLOODY HELL, was Brazis’s opinion of the entire damnable situation. He sat at his desk and punched physical keys on one of two secure consoles that could direct and redirect the taps. He more than canceled the security hold on Procyon’s tap code: he keyed through a general permission, any relay, any contact, anybody that could possibly get hold of him, all over the station, was open to Procyon’s code.

They had a complete blowup on the Gide affair. Gide was in hospital by now, and Procyon, who’d been an eyewitness, hadn’t answered since the incident.

In desperation he tapped in on Drusus, waking him from off-schedule sleep. “Drusus. Procyon’s in trouble. I need someone who can physically recognize him to get out on the street right now, find him, and walk him home.”

“Yes, sir,”Drusus answered muzzily. “But I’m supposed to go on at noon.”

“Don’t quibble. Auguste can handle it. Just go. Fast. Procyon may be injured. Fifth level, sector 4, section 15, headed toward Blunt, for a start. He’s not answering his tap. The finder works only intermittently. He’s taken some sort of damage. There was apparently an explosion.”

“Explosion, sir?”

“Don’t ask. Just go.”

The whole Project stood on its ear. Interfering with Marak’s taps wasn’t what he’d like to do, especially now, and he knew Marak was outraged and they would have to calm that situation down, but Drusus knew Procyon socially: Auguste didn’t. Drusus knew Procyon’s body language—stood a chance of finding him on a crowded walk, which his other sources hadn’t done in half an hour of trying. He had three reliable men out looking, now contacting Procyon’s sister, Procyon’s parents, Procyon’s known friends, to advise them where to call if he needed help and contacted them—but Procyon didn’t know any of those agents, and neither did the sister, who might deliberately misdirect them, thinking to protect her brother.

His best hope now was that Procyon might not run from Drusus.

“Sir.”

He read the incoming signal. Jewel. Tap-courier, assigned to tail Governor Reaux. He’d just asked her to approach Reaux, who’d gone to the hospital where they’d taken Gide.

“I’m with Governor Reaux now, sir.”

Shift of mind. Fast. “Are you secure?”

“Yes, sir. I’m at the hospital, in a secure area. He’s anxious to talk to you.”

“Good. How is Gide?”

“Alive.”Jewel had amped, at the risk of a painful whiteout. Reaux’s living voice came through at near ordinary volume. “Where’s Stafford? Have you got him?”

“I’m trying to find him at this very minute. He didn’t have anything to do with this attack. We’re afraid he’s injured or worse, that he’s been snatched.”

“Who did it? Who attacked the ambassador?”

“It assuredly wasn’t us, Governor.”

“It assuredly wasn’t my office. And I’m sure Earth didn’t try to assassinate its own representative.”

“Stranger things have happened, Governor, in recorded history. But let’s assume mutual innocence. That leaves us dealing with radical groups, yours or mine. My office is scrambling to find out about the ones on our list. In the meantime, I have a physical search out after Mr. Stafford, in case he’s gotten away on the street. He may be injured, and it’s possible your police search is spooking him to run. Call off your dogs. Let me find him. I have various people searching.”

“I have an armed ship out there asking questions I can’t answer. I have inquiries from Kekellen.”

“I have no doubt. Count this office a third alarmed source, equally perplexed. What’s Mr. Gide’s condition?”

“A glancing wound to the ribs. Shock. Hysteria. Some inhalation damage. It’s not the physical wound, understand. That’s relatively minor. But his containment was breached. He can’t go back to his ship. Ever. He insists Stafford set up the attack. The security guards are both dead—hit with neuronics, I’m told. They didn’t have a chance.”

“Stafford has no weapon. Penetrating the mobile unit can’t be a handheld proposition. Neuronics isn’t a street weapon. We’re climbing the ladder to more than the usual criminal element, Governor.”

“An armor-piercing shell. We found its launcher in the bushes, no prints, bioerase strong in the area, no trace left for the sniffers.”

“All professional skills. Well-financed skills.”

“How can I be sure they weren’t yours?”

“Not mine. Not Procyon’s, I assure you. I have no interest at all in blowing up the ambassador. Procyon doesn’t even know how to fire a gun, let alone a launcher. Any evidence within the mobile unit?”

“Slagged. Slagged, completely, likely a command from the ship. If Gide hadn’t gotten out of it—”

“Kind of them, though I can understand it. So they’d have killed him if he were still lying there unconscious. Neat and tidy, isn’t it?”

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“I’m not fond of it either, let me assure you. His shell was breached, and they didn’t give a damn whether he lived or died. Can my people get access to that unit, slagged as it is?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know its status at the moment.”Reaux sounded completely rattled. Likely he wasn’t lying about his being out of touch with elements of the situation, not having the advantage of a tap, and had no idea what disposition his police had made of the unit. “I’ll try to find out.”

“I’ll try to find Stafford in the meanwhile.”

“While I have a ship out there questioning whether it can believe my office in any particular.”

“That ship has no choice but take your word for what happens here, since its precious occupants won’t come on board station, will they? They can threaten. But they won’t use the ship’s guns on Concord with the ondatsitting here, assuming they’re not stark raving crazy.”

“No, but they can use agents embedded in the population.”

Threatening Reaux’s life. “So can we, if they try. We can defend ourselves, and we extend our protection to our governor. Breathe easy. They don’t want that kind of trouble. We’re not an easy target.”

“Antonio—”Quieter. Realizing, perhaps, the enormity of the promise he’d just extended. So law-abiding. So careful, this governor. Reaux would never think of defying assassins sent after him…not to the extent of having them shot on strong suspicion.

Hisagents certainly would take care of such a problem, if he spotted it. “Is Mr. Gide conscious at the moment?”

“I think he’s under sedation.”

“Get to him. Wake him up. Talk to him. Convey my extreme sympathy for his situation and make him believe it. Suggest it was some underworld agency, hitherto unsuspected, which probably covers the situation entirely. I’ll send a personal letter to him and another to the ship out there, expressing my outrage at this situation, my intent to cooperate with them through your office, my intention to preserve peace and tranquillity on the station, all the appropriate phrases. Which also happen to be the truth, if they’re listening. Find out what the ambassador’s really been tracking. Why he came here. Our key to what we’re facing is very likely in that.”

A small silence. Then: “Antonio. Antonio, I confess I may already have your answer. Gide said—Gide told me he was tracking the possibility of banned information escaping the planet. Via the taps.”

Brazis drew a deep breath. The universe reconfigured itself. “Well, that’s an old one. What makes him suspect so? What information does he have?”

“Apparently something about First Movement tech and the Ila, something about nanoceles getting off the planet.”

“ Notthe case, I can tell you.” He was disappointed. Frustrated. “You knew this was the nature of it? And didn’t say? Setha, Setha, I’d hoped for more honesty.”

“I knew it only after I led Gide to his apartment. I didn’t count on it becoming critical information, at least…at least yet, and by no means after this fashion. I believed your young man could get through the interview if he was innocent. A misjudgment on my part. A complete misjudgment. I hope you can understand, Antonio. I thought we had time to work this out. At this point—I can only apologize for the situation.”

He could understand Reaux’s holding back information at Gide’s request. A man with a constituency to protect was honor-bound to protect those core interests against his allies as well as his enemies. Reaux had believed if he kept things quiet, he might find out something, and have a chance to sort this out.

But now he had a crime on his doorstep and the real possibility of a major blowup in international politics.

Maybe it was an intended outcome. Gide wasn’t the only Earth-based interest that might have an agent or two loose in the governor’s territory. He hesitated to suggest Earth as the culprit in assassinating its own representative, but the high-priced tech involved suggested very ample funding and concealment, far beyond the usual underworld operation.

“Setha, my friend, I understand your reticence. But now that we’re in this very delicate situation, believe me absolutely on this one: there is no First Movement tech, informational or otherwise, that has ever escaped the planet—not to my knowledge, and I sit on all the conduits. If there is anything loose, I don’t think it originated here. Whydid Gide pick this particular tap to interview about this problem? Does Earth particularly suspect him of passing information?”

“The Freethinker connection. He was a Freethinker. They don’t like that.”

“Is that where they think the problem has its base? Among the Freethinkers?”

“You know his sister visited him last night. Clandestinely. I think Gide could have found that out. I know that contact would be suspect.”

“I knew. You know. They know. I’m sure any interested party alive knows by now she went there. It wasn’t the brightest damned thing Procyon’s ever done, but it didn’t seem to be his idea. He threw her out and kept his conversation more or less honest, and I know precisely what they said. Do you?”

A pause. “My intel isn’t that specific.”

“Mine is, I assure you. I’ll go over that transcript again, but I don’t recall any part of it that could implicate him or her in any nonsense among the taps. Gide could have asked for the Ila’staps if they’d thought something underhanded was going on.”

“I don’t think they’d want to touch her off.”

“Touch off is a fair description. But do they think bothering Marak’sis without consequence? Tell Gide that the Outsider Chairman is as interested as they are, if they’ve got any solid information about a breach of security regarding First Movement tech. But I doubt it. It’s the oldest crock in the book. It surfaces periodically. I strongly doubt it.”

“I’ll relay that if I can. If I can find a politic way.”

“You say you’ve heard from Kekellen this morning?”

“He’s asking what Gide wants and about activity in the systems.”

“Their damned probes.” He wiped his face, trying to think. Dealing with Kekellen required an extreme mental shift, a maze of do’s and don’ts, and consequences far more alarming than an ambassador in a hospital bed. “I trust you to handle it. You’re the associated party.” Coldly put, meaning he didn’t want his own administration in any way dragged into question. Let Earther authorities answer Kekellen’s queries about these goings-on. “Meanwhile, get all your people off my man’s trail. He’s got orders to report to me to debrief. He will as soon as he can. But it’s very likely he’s going to run if you’re behind him. And, not to cast a pall on our working partnership, but I have to assure you, just for the record, that you don’t want the trouble that will follow if you do lay hands on him and don’t tell me. That’s not a threat. It’s a fact of my administration. I can’t stress enough how serious that is. If anyone has laid hands on him, I willtake action.”

“The law moves under its own direction. He’s a material witness, at very least, in something that impinges on our constitutional authority. He has to give us at least a statement to satisfy procedures. That ship out there—”

“That’s all well and good, you and your constitution. But don’t arrest him. We’ll get the truth out of him. We’ll share it, and you’ll get your statement. Chasing him is a waste of your police time, while the actual perpetrators may be running loose up there in your areas, armed. If they’re not our domestic sort, I’ll be frank about it, I’m concerned you’re the next likely target on their list.”

“I take that as a friendly wish.”

“It is. I assure you, we did not do this. We would never put a tap in reach of your authority if we had arranged this. There are people we would risk. Nota Project tap. That’s a fact you can rely on.”

A pause. “Antonio? I think I know what Gide is. A theory…a theory that I can’t support. I think Gide is from the Treaty Board.”

“The Treaty Board?” That ancient body, bestir itself out of its torpor?

Credible, though, if there actually was a security breach, and there actually were First Movement tech in question.

Reaux had reason for his hesitance to breach Gide’s confidence.

“Setha, fear of data transmission from the planet—that crock’s as old as Concord itself. I admit the Treaty Board’s not going to involve itself on a whim, but whatever Gide came here for didn’t come up through the taps, I’ll just about swear to it.” He trusted Jewel to assure her surroundings, not to tap in where she hadn’t checked for bugs or eavesdroppers, but he didn’t want to lean that hard on Jewel’s ability. “This discussion in depth isn’t appropriate for your present location. Just take extreme care for your own safety. I’m ending, now.”

“I’ll get back to you. I’ll try to talk to Gide in the next few minutes. Can this lady stay available to me?”

Meaning Jewel.

“Jewel, stay with him, wherever he wants you to be. I’m going out.”

“Yes, sir.”Jewel herself tapped out.

So Reaux wanted the tap-courier with him. He likely realized she might have other mods, too, mods in Jewel’s instance that gave her extraordinary hearing and other perceptions. Reaux wasn’t that worried about what Outsiders might overhear. He wasworried about what the ship would hear.

That said comforting volumes about Reaux’s straight dealings with him.

He’d reached the end of what he himself was willing to say. They had a geologic cataclysm in progress down on the planet, a Project tap had possibly fallen into the hands of whoever had hit Gide, Kekellen was upset, and the Earth ship was sitting out there watching it all, blaming Reaux, and writing reports that were going to racket all the way to Earth and Apex.

Bloody hell.

THE LITTLE CONFERENCE ROOM, Reaux having disposed his own security outside, was at the end of the emergency corridor, a special corridor isolated from the run-of-the-mill traffic of a sectional hospital—some kid who’d fallen off a third tier balcony while climbing in the flower gardens, a man who’d developed gastric distress at a restaurant: those patients didn’t get near this section.

The hospital, citing its own regulations, had objected to admitting Mr. Gide because he had a penetrating wound of unknown origin. They’d delayed half an hour admitting him, until Dortland prevailed. Then they’d hurried him into the isolation ward, ironically treating the Earth ambassador as a contamination case—the sort of case they’d have preferred to shunt down to the 5th level emergency room at the Institute. Outsider hospitals had special resources to deal with bleeding wounds and clean out illicits if they were in question.

Terrifying. A cut was all it took to endanger a life, or ruin one: a sore, a cut, even a drink of water, a risk stupid kids continually brushed up against, if they went down on 5th, where he had it on good authority his own foolish daughter was at this very moment. Suspicion, motive, and an open wound combined to get even a man of Gide’s importance surrounded in plastic containment, every swab and piece of bandage contained and sent off to a lab for analysis. Gide was bleeding and he was not from Concord, and that meant, no matter his status, that the medical system handled him as a contagion, with a biosquad swabbing down the apartment and the area of the incident, not letting even investigators in until more was cleaned up than was going to help any investigation—but for the station’s safety, that had to be the priority. The hospital authorities were trying in vain to find the elusive Mr. Stafford, who might also have been contaminated and now he had to pry Biohazard off Stafford’s trail, far harder than calling back the police chase.

But he tried. He made the call to Ernst, to let Ernst argue with the police and Biohazard alike.

Then he explained to the supervising nurse that he intended, was absolutely determined, to visit Mr. Gide.

Regulations insisted Gide’s doctors and nurses wear full suits. Regulations made his visitor, even the governor of Concord, sign a waiver before they let him and two of his bodyguard suit up in ridiculous-looking clear plastic affairs with flimsy filter masks. Jewel Sanduski stayed at the entry station: to bring her in would leave a record of her presence and who had brought her, not to mention that she would tacitly convey everything they said straight to Brazis, and Reaux shuddered to think of the fallout if news of her presence got to the ship. She had heard and likely relayed all the conversation he’d had with the nurses about Gide’s condition. What else she might hear, waiting back near the nurses’ station, he had no idea, but with the ship on its own agenda, Brazis warning him of threats against his life, and Stafford having gone God knew where, he wanted a pipeline to Brazis, one that couldn’t be recorded by any snoopery, and she remained that conduit.

With his two bodyguards trailing, he cycled through the airlock barrier of the isolation ward and walked, rustling with plastic, down to number 10. Suited attendants were on watch there, unadvised, and they had to get permission to open that door.

Until the lab reports came back, the physician of record had said, Gide was stuck here. Gide had been belligerent about being put in isolation. Consequently the doctors had tranked him, reportedly with enough juice to fell a dockworker. It was not, the doctor assured him, going to be a productive interview. No, they could not just give him a restorative, not until the lab work came back, not until they had done a thorough health workup. But yes, if the governor insisted, on his own responsibility, he could go in and try to talk to Mr. Gide.

The attendants opened the door. It was the sphinx-face Reaux saw lying against the pillows, the sphinx, but human now, with white hair standing up in two odd-angled spikes, a pasty-pale complexion that held a faint blotchiness. Though tranked, Gide regarded him, slit-eyed.

“Mr. Ambassador?”

A blink. “Get me the hell out of this room.”

“As soon as the external wound heals over, Mr. Ambassador. A few cracked ribs and a shallow shrapnel wound—it’s only the possibility of contamination they’re worried about. There’s a rule about bleeding wounds…”

“Only the contamination! As if spit and piss couldn’t carry a contamination.” Another blink. Several more. Tranked or not, Gide was waking up, and angry. “Where’s Stafford?”

“We don’t know at the moment.”

“I’m not surprised.” Gide moved, thin-lipped with pain, actually moved in a coordinated way, and jammed the pillow double beneath his head, fighting to keep his eyes open.

“Stafford may be another casualty.”

“Dead?”

“A possibility. I can only apologize—”

“Apologize! I’m banned,do you understand?” Rage got past the sedation, justified rage. “I’m banned for life, thanks to your so-called security! My God!”

“I can only express regret…”

“I can never see my family again! I can never so much as approach Earth!”

“For them, emigration is a—”

“Emigration! The hell! The hell,sir! I’m not bringing my family out to this hellhole! God knows what damned thing they sent inside my containment with that shell!”

“I’m terribly sorry. But I can assure, for what it’s worth, there’s nothing lethal on Concord. Nothing of that sort.”

“You’re a damned fool.”

The man was distraught—small wonder; and drugged, and apt to say things he wouldn’t, but Reaux found it more and more difficult to keep his equanimity.

“Have you been in contact with your ship at all, since, Mr. Ambassador?”

“Only to be apologized to. A message relayed from the doctor. They can’t take me back. Is that news?”

“Well, if it’s any comfort at all, every governor and every trade representative out here understands your distress. I was voluntary, of course, but no few enter the system accidentally, in your situation. Hardly with an explosive shell being the agent, but—”

“Fool, I say!”

His own patience was running thinner by the second. He thought of Kathy, and the risks she was running—voluntarily, down on 5th level—and this man lay here whining because he was damned to live on Concord in luxury, a future thorn in his side, no doubt politicking against him, only because his injury had happened on his watch, on his station, on his doorstep.

Depend on it, if his suspicion was right and this man was from the Treaty Board, this was not only a full-blown diplomatic disaster, this man could be a long-term resident problem, right on his station, and he could only make matters worse by antagonizing the man while he was half-aware.

“I can assure you we’re actively tracking Mr. Stafford and tracing the weapon we found outside the apartment. The attack came through the open door. Was Mr. Stafford just arriving, or just leaving?”

“Leaving.” Out of breath, Gide recovered angry rationality. Eyes rolled, an attempt to gather resources. “He took exception to a body scan and opened the door. At that point, the world blew up. Next I was aware, I was on my side and that damned Outsider had his hands on me.” A breath and a shudder. “Then your police came blundering in, exposing themselves to whatever might be there—if they’re not in quarantine, why do they have me here? And Stafford is loose in the station, and you can’t find him. But I’m in quarantine!”

“His own authority is looking for him. We’re pursuing every possibility…including the chance that some Earth-based entity with an agent here is your enemy. But there is the fact they didn’t kill you. They didn’t use force enough to kill you orMr. Stafford, who was far less protected.”

“What are you saying?”

“That it’s possible they didn’t intend to kill you.”

“Idiocy!”

“You are, however, alive.”

“I doubt my welfare was anywhere in their consideration.”

“In my personal experience of assassination attempts, sir, which has been several, the usual suspect is either some local disturbed soul with a direct line to God, or someone withinthe same system as the intended victim, who has a motive and a plan. If you’re not crazy, you don’t assassinate someone who can’t be an inconvenience to you. And you try not to botch the job. So why do you think someone would pick you in particular for a target, out of all the Earthborn officials that have ever come and gone here on a regular basis? It makes sense the motive lies in your specific business here. Though it’s possible they didn’t need to kill you, but to prevent you going further with that ship. Would there be any profit in that?”

Gide was paying attention now. “What are you getting at?”

“That’s all I can possibly guess. Our investigation is necessarily hampered by not having the least idea what authority you represent or what your future plans are.”

“I have the legislative seal. You accepted the documents. That’s all you need know. You can damned well take my word when I give it. Find Stafford. That’s your start.”

“Very well and good, Mr. Gide, if that’s the course you choose. But I’m sure Stafford, involved or not, didn’t pull the trigger. And assuming they made a serious try at killing you, I’m also sure it’s in your interest for us to find the agency responsible before you leave this hospital. You’ll have to walk our streets as a private citizen for the rest of your life.” He took a chance. “Or are you counting on being very much safer as soon as your own ship leaves?”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Whoever did this had resources much beyond a local lunatic or the average dissident. That shell was not easy to get, to hide, or to set up to use.”

“The Southern Crossdidn’t order this attack! Damn you, sir. Damn you for a complete incompetent!”

Temper. A deep breath. “Then you need to tell me the truth of what you represent, Mr. Gide, and don’t expect to set up and give orders on the basis of the documents you carry. If you’re banned and abandoned here, you become one of my citizens who I have to presume is in possession of some very touchy state secrets, and you become myresponsibility, both to protect you and to prevent any illicit use or compromise of those secrets. In that light, Mr. Gide, I suggest you make it clear to me what I’m protecting, or I’ll have to assume the worst case possible.”

Gide blinked, blinked twice, as if to question what he’d just heard—perhaps too much for the heavy sedation. But depend on it, Gide was not a stupid man—one didn’t get to the position Gide held by being a stupid man.

“Point,” Gide said, close-lipped. “Get these two idiots out of here. This is for your ears only.”

“Gentlemen.” Reaux motioned at his escort.

They withdrew. The door shut itself.

“I’m with the Treaty Board,” Gide said, and shifted up among his pillows—a move that occasioned a wince. “Career diplomat, specialty in the arrangements at Concord.”

“Hence the fluency in our language.”

“I never intended it to be this useful.” Gide had a sense of humor, it seemed, however deeply buried. “You say you have a working relationship with the local Outsider Chairman. Is that true?”

He had an Outsider tap-courier in the outside office. Which he didn’t intend to admit. “An operating relationship, to smooth jurisdictional boundaries. That’s all. I assure you I don’tleak restricted information in that direction.”

Gide stared at him. A clammy sweat had broken out with his slight exertion in shifting more upright, and it might be pain that drew down the corners of his mouth. Or distaste. Or a battle against the tranquilizer, which didn’t seem to be as heavy as the doctor indicated. The eyes were very sharp, very focused at the moment. “You and I have no choice but to get along, governor, or it might go very badly for your administration. We clearly have a mutual problem.”

“I’m listening.”

“I may be banned, but I amstill an agent of the Treaty Board. I become, in fact, your local agent, in a local office, whether either of us likes it or not. As to the reason for my presence here—finance is moving here to fund activities and recruitment for a First Movement cell.”

“Here?”

“Your Freethinkers, sir. Your tame Freethinkers.”

“In the absence of exact evidence, Mr. Gide—”

“The black market in illicits is involved in the finance of this cell, and we rather think it’s on Orb that the actual manufacturing facility exists, labs we’re watching very closely, labs capable of producing very sophisticated illicits. Leadershipis what Concord has to offer the Movement. Leadership that has existed since the last days of the War—leadership operating right under the noses of the ondatobserver as well as ours.”

“Here?”He had had a lifelong penchant for questions that made him sound like a fool. But Gide was talking all around the critical point, deliberately, and deliberately obscuring as much as he gave out. Leadership? “Are you talking about the Ila herself, sir?”

“It’s either a good time or a bad time for you to have close associations with the Outsider authority. It all depends on what you do with that situation, Governor Reaux.”

Him, with Jewel Sanduski in the outer office.

And from, an instant ago, him asserting authority over Gide, now Gide seemed prepared to unfold his tent and camp right in the heart of his authority, an entity outside local law, and impossible to get rid of. He didn’t know what to do.

“Let me have it clear, Mr. Gide. You think the Ila is in indirect contact with the Freethinker movement, passing information to them via the taps? And that some rogue lab on Orb is financing a cell here?”

“Yes.”

It was too incredible.

“I’m assured,” Reaux said, “that such information absolutely does not get out of Planetary Observations, sir. The Project Director reminds us this theory has surfaced every few generations, never substantiated in fact. Whatever you think of our information-gathering abilities, we’re constantly on the alert for such a move, however it would come, by some such technology as that pot you questioned, by any other means. We would be aware of any such breach of security.”

“You can’t even find Stafford after a thundering great explosion. Do I think you couldn’t be unaware of something clandestine operating under your nose? I want out of this place. I want office facilities and staff…”

“Staff, Mr. Gide?”

“You are required to cooperate, sir. My authority and my credentials haven’t terminated. It wasn’t my intent to establish an office of the Treaty Board here, but, de facto, it now exists, as a result of this attack on me.” Gide’s tone was brittle, his jaw alternately trembling and set hard among several chins. “I assure you, Governor, my credentials give me sufficient authority to form such an office, to engage security, to arrest and to bind for trial, in equal legal standing with the local governments and treaty-mandated offices, includingMr. Antonio Brazis, including you, sir. I’ll require a residency—the one you afford me is adequate. Office space– I’llchoose my own personnel, thank you, starting with my own security, in an office near yours. I’ll expect…Mr. Dortland, is it…?”

“Yes.”

“…Mr. Dortland to present me a list of possible hires, perhaps some from your staff, but by no means entirely. I’ll want clericals…I assure you, sir, my authority does not depend on the ship’s being at my disposal, and they may bar me from entering, but by damn, I can hold the ship here indefinitely or require they take enforcement action, if I’m not satisfied with the level of cooperation I’m receiving from your administration or from Mr. Antonio Brazis’s various imperial domains. You’ll respect those credentials, sir, or there will be consequences.”