Chapter Twenty: Singh
Santiago Singh spent a very unpleasant few days dealing with the fallout from his newly announced security protocols for Medina Station. One by one, every bureaucrat and functionary called him to express their concerns over how the crackdown might negatively impact morale and efficiency on the station. However the conversations were phrased, what he heard in them was always the same. The new rules will make people unhappy. They won’t work as hard. Sabotage will increase. Are you sure we want to do this?
His responses, however he put them, were also of a piece: I don’t care if people are unhappy about the new rules, if they fail to do their jobs, they will be fired, sabotage is punishable by imprisonment or death, yes, I’m sure.
In High Consul Duarte’s seminal book on logistics, he’d pointed out that of all the methods by which one can exert political and economic control over another state, occupation by military force was the least effective and the most unstable. The justification for occupation of Medina Station was that, as the checkpoint of all thirteen hundred colony worlds, it minimized the need for any further military action and let the imperial government move on quickly to economic trade and cultural pressure, which were much more stable long-term strategies for exerting control. And in fact, demonstrating to the people of Medina that the Laconian takeover would lead to better lives for all of them was the test case. If Singh could convince a station full of people bred for anarchy that imperial rule was desirable, the still-nascent colonies beyond the gates should be a piece of cake.
He understood all of this well enough. But it didn’t change the fact that he’d had to spend his afternoon explaining to stupid, angry people why attempting to assassinate the governor of the station carried consequences.
When he cut the connection on what he hoped was the last of those complaints, he yelled out for someone to bring him coffee or tea or whatever else passed for a potable on that festering armpit of a station. No one replied. Because Kasik was dead and he hadn’t yet brought himself to assign anyone new to his duties. As if by keeping the dead man on the roster, some part of him still remained that history hadn’t erased.
For a moment, the buzz of activity and conversation, irritation and confrontation that he’d cultivated since the incident slipped away, and he saw Kasik spitting raspberry jam that was really his brain and his blood and part of his tongue—
Singh lost a few seconds. When he became aware again, he was on his knees next to his desk, vomiting into his trash can. From the state of the bin, he’d been at it for a while. The smell and look of the mess set off a new round of vomiting that only ended when his stomach clenched up painfully on nothing and a thin trickle of bile bit at the back of his throat. Delayed shock. Trauma reaction. It was normal, he told himself. Anyone would go through it.
“I’m so sorry, Kasik,” he said, face suddenly covered in tears for a man whose first name he couldn’t even remember.
The comm unit on his desk politely beeped. “Leave me the fuck alone,” Singh yelled at it.
“Admiral Trejo is here for you, sir,” a carefully neutral voice replied.
“Here?”
“In the security lobby, sir.”
Singh cursed under his breath, soft but vicious. He grabbed the liner out of his trash can and stuffed it into the recycler. The air probably still smelled of sick. He turned the air recyclers as high as they would run to cut it.
“Put him through in one minute, please,” Singh answered, then used the sixty seconds to wash his face and rinse out his mouth. Trejo had returned to Medina. It could have meant a number of things, but all of them meant he wanted to have a face-to-face conversation instead of trading messages through the comparatively glacial security apparatus that surrounded official communications. And that meant talking about sensitive issues.
“Sonny,” Admiral Trejo said as he walked into the room. “You look a fright.”
“Yes, sir,” Singh agreed. “I’m afraid that recent events have shaken me a bit more than I expected. But I’m getting it secured. Shipshape and ready to sail, sir.”
“Have you slept at all?” Trejo asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.
“Yes, sir,” he said. And then, because it felt like lying, “Some, sir.”
“It’s hard losing someone. Especially someone you worked with closely.”
“I’ll be fine, sir,” Singh said. “Please, take my desk.”
Trejo’s smile was sympathetic as he sat. He took the offered desk. “I have good news for you, at least. I passed along your findings on the gamma-ray bursts through the rings, along with your recommendation about using a ship with an ultrahigh magnetic field projector stationed in the slow zone to control access and passage. Naval high command was very intrigued. They took it all the way to the top.”
The top meant only one person on Laconia. “I’m very flattered it got so much attention, Admiral.”
“He agrees with you,” Trejo said. His voice had a flatness that Singh didn’t entirely understand. His green eyes flicked up to meet Singh’s gaze and they stayed there. “They’re sending out the Eye of the Typhoon. It’ll take a bit for her to outfit. She wasn’t scheduled to come through for another four months, but you’ll have her with all deliberate speed. She’ll have Medina Station defense as her official mission, but holding the ring system using your new data will be part of her parameters.”
“Rear Admiral Song has that command, as I recall.”
“Yeah, that’s Song’s boat,” Trejo agreed. “But you’re still governor of Medina. You’ll have operational command over the defense of the station, and that includes determining when and if our new ring strategy is appropriate.”
“Yes, sir,” Singh replied.
“It’ll be heady stuff, knowing an admiral has to dance to your tune, Sonny. Just remember that this posting won’t last forever. Don’t make any enemies you can’t unmake.” There was a weight to Trejo’s words, like they carried more than just what they said. They landed on Singh’s chest like a gentle rebuke.
“Understood and appreciated, Admiral,” Singh said. “Will the Tempest remain here until the Typhoon arrives to take over?”
“No. We are moving up the timetable, per your analysis. The Tempest is leaving through the Sol gate in four hours. Unless you’ve reconsidered your position?”