“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.”
How’s the kid?” Ted asked Jessica.
Jessica was seated in Ted’s office, her feet on his desk, going over the history of Commander Tatiana Ilyana. The easiest thing, as it turned out, had been to find her original name: Leslie Barrett Millar, born on Achinsk, reported as a runaway at seventeen after a history of run-ins with the police at government protests. What was more interesting than her early history, though, was the reason it was easy to find: the Admiralty had commissioned a similar search on Ilyana nearly twenty years ago. Greg, as it turned out, had been right to be concerned: the Admiralty, although lacking concrete proof, believed she was a fairly accomplished spy.
Of course, with PSI having been allied with Central almost without interruption for hundreds of years, she wasn’t sure why the Admiralty would be worried about a spy. She had been thinking, lately—as rumors swirled about colonies in the Fifth Sector wanting to shift the seat of Central Gov to their territory, leaving Earth in political limbo—that Central had wasted a lot of time over the decades worrying about PSI. PSI was often secretive, and certainly standoffish to a degree that Gov seemed to find puzzling. But in every