Читать книгу Breach of Containment - Elizabeth Bonesteel - Страница 17

The Corps is not here as your personal army, Governor,” Greg told Villipova, “or to teach your people self-defense. We’re here to keep you from blowing each other up.”

Greg was seated at his desk next to Herrod, the two governors on vid before them, and Greg found himself grudgingly grateful for the older man’s presence. Herrod’s habitual emotional detachment worked well in diplomatic situations like this one, when Greg was tempted to abort the entire process and tell everyone involved to grow the hell up. Herrod’s reticence reminded Greg that practical diplomacy was less about making people shake hands than it was about holding people off of each other until frayed tempers managed to settle.

His own frayed temper included.

Villipova frowned. “It’s not possible for you to do that without taking sides,” she insisted. “Oarig’s people shot down that civilian transport. It’s his fault the food both of our cities need lies frozen on the surface.”

“We weren’t shooting down anything!” Oarig interrupted. “They were out there confronting your people, who were going to hoard it all for themselves! They—”

“That’s enough,” Greg snapped. God, this finger-pointing is tedious. “Gov sent us here to keep the two of you from doing this kind of shit to each other,” he told them. “And that means it stops now. You want to hash out who did what to whom—do it afterward, when your people have supplies and safe places to live again. On the other hand”—he felt Herrod’s eyes on him—“if you’re genuinely inclined to shoot down the people trying to help you, we are going to take sides, and it’s not going to be with either one of you. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

Oarig’s lips narrowed. Villipova just looked tired.

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Greg told them. “You are going to clear all of your people off the surface. Once the crash site is clear, I’ll send down some infantry to help retrieve the remains of the cargo. They—not your people, on either side—will move the cargo into the cultivation dome. They will dispense supplies in precisely the same amounts to each dome.”

“Captain,” Oarig objected, “Baikul has far more people. We need—”

“You need,” Greg told him, “to make sure your people stand down. Because the second we get wind of either side doing so much as target practice, all humanitarian help will be suspended. We’ll drop the seed where it belongs, and we’ll be out of there. Understood?”

Oarig looked as if he might object again, but this time a look from Herrod took care of him. He nodded, and Villipova said, “Understood.”

When the comm ended, Herrod raised his eyebrows at Greg. “You think that’s going to work?” he asked.

“Why not? Being reasonable hasn’t brought them anything. They call us, looking for help, we get here and they ignore everything we say. I sincerely doubt Gov wants us to spend weeks here letting them jerk us around.”

“Not what I meant, Captain,” Herrod said easily. Everything was always easy with him these days, a marked contrast to the short-tempered officer Greg had served under for years. It set Greg’s teeth on edge. “I have no quarrel with your strategy. Only your optimism.”

He rubbed his eyes. He had not anticipated this day would go well, but it had gone so much worse than he had feared. “Commander Lockwood is pulling the infantry together,” he said. “We should be able to protect the cargo, if nothing else.”

“What about the civilians?”

“As soon as they start shooting,” Greg told him, “they’re not civilians anymore.”

Herrod’s eyebrows went up again, but he didn’t argue.

Greg waited until Herrod had left before comming Jessica. “What’s the state of the infantry, Commander?” he asked.

“Ready as always, sir,” she said.

He could hear it in her voice: she was still annoyed with him for sending Elena after the PSI shuttle. When he’d told her he couldn’t spare the infantry, she’d pointed out that fully half of Galileo’s 226-member crew were not infantry. “You could have sent a mechanic, or a pilot. You could have sent me.”

“You’re not combat-trained.”

She had sworn at him, and he had known better than to laugh. “I am combat-trained to the same degree that Elena is. Just like everyone else on this ship. And most of us know our way around piloting a shuttle, especially one of our own. How the hell is what you’re doing any different than Savosky using her for risky missions his own people can’t hack?”

It wasn’t the same thing at all. But he couldn’t figure out how to explain it to her, so he’d just ordered her to drop it. A temporary respite at best, and in the meantime, he could expect her to be short with him.

If he’d had the luxury, he’d have sent Elena after Cytheria in one of the big armored troop carriers. Instead, he’d given her Nightingale, a ship she knew, and small enough for him to give up without jeopardizing their Yakutsk mission. Herrod’s sleek new travel shuttle might have done well enough, but apart from its lacking Nightingale’s armaments, Greg would have had to explain why he wanted to borrow it. And Greg wanted, as long as possible, to hide their strange relationship with Chryse from a retired admiral who was probably still part of Shadow Ops.

Elena had balked, briefly, at the heavy plasma rifle he wanted to give her. “I’ll be on my own, after all,” she pointed out. “A hand weapon would be more than enough.”

“I wouldn’t send anyone into this mess with nothing but a hand weapon,” he replied. She’d given him a deeply skeptical look that was achingly familiar, and then lifted the gun effortlessly from his hands and slung it over her shoulder. She was still in her Budapest env suit, gray and utilitarian, still coated in dust and grime; but as she strode away from him toward Sparrow she looked as military as any other member of his crew.

She looked like she belonged.

Walking back to his office after seeing her off, he found himself unsettled and irritable, and it had taken him all those minutes to figure out what the problem was: from the moment he had seen her down on that moon, covered in compost, determined and furious and terrified for her crewmate, some knot he hadn’t realized was inside of him had relaxed, and he had felt more clearheaded than he had in a year. Which was unfair: she had chosen to leave Galileo, and she had chosen to resign her commission, guaranteeing he had no way of getting her back on board. He had understood her reasons and had even found them logical; but she had lied to him, back when they had first found out she was being transferred. They cannot separate us unless we let them, she had told him.

And then she had let them.

He did not have the luxury of getting mired in all of that right now. She would rescue Ilyana, she would leave with Budapest, and Yakutsk would find some kind of irritable peace. And he would figure out, once and for all, how to leave her behind.

“I want the infantry twelve-on, twelve-off,” he told Jessica. “No long shifts for anyone. We may need to call them all up together if the situation heats up before Meridia gets here.”

At that, her tone thawed a little, and she betrayed some of her worry. “Do you think it’s that bad?”

“I think when it goes it’ll go quickly.” He paused. “Jess—did you ever meet Commander Ilyana?”

“I don’t think so.” Jessica sounded thoughtful. “I’m sure I talked to someone on Chryse once or twice, but it would’ve just been a few words. Whether it was her or not I couldn’t say. Why?” He could almost hear her mind working. “Do you think they’d send us a ringer?”

That hadn’t been what was worrying him, but it was a good question. “I want everything we have on Ilyana,” he said. “As many images and reports as we can get. News, rumor, all of it.”

“You should ask Herrod.” The tone was back, but at least it wasn’t aimed at Greg anymore.

“You think he’d tell me?” He heard her scoff, and he thought he might be forgiven. “And when she gets here, Jess … I want her comms monitored, and I want a guard on her. Not a goon, but someone with sharp eyes. Taras can take her when Meridia gets here, but I don’t want Galileo at risk.”

“You’re thinking maybe rescuing her isn’t the best idea?”

“I’m thinking,” he told her, “that being kind doesn’t mean we have to be stupid.”