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"Yes, Sir," Abigail replied. There was, after all, nothing else she could say.
"Linda," he said to the exec, "in addition t' briefin' Ms. Hearns, I want you t' give some thought t' exactly how many Marines we should send down with her."
"Are you expecting some sort of trouble, Sir?" Commander Watson asked, and he shrugged.
"I'm not expectin' anythin'," he said. "At the same time, we're a long way from home, we've never had any previous contact of our own with Refuge, and I'll feel more comfortable sending someone along t' keep an eye on Ms. Hearns. I'm confident in her ability t' look after herself, of course." He smiled briefly at Abigail. "At the same time, it never hurts t' have someone along t' watch your back, at least until you're certain you know the local ropes. Besides," he smiled more broadly, "it'll be good experience for her."
"Yes, Sir. Understood," Watson acknowledged with a slight smile of her own. Just as if she were a na
"Once we've dropped her and her contact team," Oversteegen went on, "I'd like t' have some fairly obvious reason for takin' Gauntlet out of Refuge orbit. I don't want t' make too big a point out of how careful we're bein' not t' intrude upon them any more than we have to."
"Well, as you just pointed out, Sir, we're the first Queen's ship to visit Tiberian," Watson said. "And everybody knows how compulsive the RMN is about updating our charts at every opportunity. It'd make perfectly good sense for us to do a standard survey run, wouldn't it?"
"Exactly the sort of thing I was thinkin' about," Oversteegen agreed.
"I'm sure we could draft a note from you to the planetary government explaining what we're doing, Sir," Watson said with a smile. "In fact, Ms. Hearns' official reason for visiting the planet could be to deliver the note in person as a gesture of courtesy."
"An excellent idea," Oversteegen said. "I'll explain that we're lookin' into Star Warrior's disappearance in conjunction with our Erewhonese allies. That'll give Ms. Hearns an openin' t' pursue any avenues of inquiry which suggest themselves. And if we're prepared t' spend the time surveyin' just t' update our charts, it should make things seem routine enough t' help put them as much at ease as possible with our presence."
He leaned back in his chair and gazed at Abigail for a few seconds, then shrugged.
"You may believe I'm overly concerned with tiptoein' around the Refugians' sensibilities, Ms. Hearns. It's certainly possible that I am. However, as my mother has always been fond of sayin', you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It will cost us very little t' avoid stepping on any exaggerated sensibilities these people may have. And t' be honest, given the fact that they've deliberately sought isolation in this system, I feel we have an added obligation not t' intrude any more deeply upon them than we must."
Abigail managed not to blink in surprise, but it was difficult. He seemed completely sincere. She would never have expected that out of him, and his apparent sensitivity to the Refugians' attitudes and concerns only seemed to underscore his insensitivity to her own reaction at being so casually shuffled off into a stereotyped niche in his brain.
"At any rate," he went on more briskly, "as soon as the Exec has briefed you and selected your landin' party, we can get you down there t' begin talkin' t' these people for us."
"Oh, shit. Are you serious? A cruiser?" Haicheng Ringstorff stared at George Lithgow, his sensor officer and second-in-command.
"That's what it looks like," Lithgow replied. "We can't be positive yet—all we really have is the hyper footprint and an impeller signature, but both of them are consistent with a single heavy cruiser or battlecruiser."
"A heavy cruiser is bad enough to be going on with, George," Ringstorff said sourly. "Let's not borrow trouble by thinking any bigger than we have to!"
"I'm only telling you what the sensor data says." Lithgow shrugged. "If whoever it is is headed for Refuge—and it looks like they are—our i
Ringstorff smiled thinly. Lithgow had said "we," but what he really meant was "you." Which was fair enough, he supposed, given that Ringstorff was the man officially in charge of the four-ring circus the entire Tiberian operation had turned into.
He leaned back in his chair and ran irritated fingers through his thick, dark hair. Ringstorff was tall for an Andermani, with broad shoulders and a powerful physique, and there were still traces of the Imperial Marine colonel he once had been. But that had been long ago, before certain minor financial irregularities in his regiment's accounts had come to the IG's attention. In light of his excellent record in combat and numerous decorations, he'd been allowed to resign without prosecution or even an official investigation, but his career in the Empire had been over. Which had worked out for the best, perhaps, because for the past twenty-five T-years, Haicheng Ringstorff had found much more profitable employment for his skills.
In many ways, his present mission promised to be the most profitable yet. Which it damned well ought to be, given the monumental pain in the ass it seemed determined to turn into!
"What's the schedule on Tyler and Lamar?" he asked Lithgow after a moment.
"Schedule? For these lunatics?" Lithgow snorted.
"You know what I mean," Ringstorff said irritably.
"Yeah, I guess I do," Lithgow admitted. He pulled a memo pad out of his pocket and punched keys, obviously refreshing his memory, then shrugged. "Tyler is due back sometime within the next seventy-two standard hours," he said. "If he and Lamar stayed in company with each other, we can expect both of them in that same window. If they split up, Lamar could be up to another full standard day behind him."
"Shit," Ringstorff muttered. "You know, the whole reason for picking this system was that nobody ever came here."
"That was the theory, anyway," Lithgow agreed.
"Yeah. Sure!" Ringstorff made a disgusted face and thought some more.
"The Four Yahoos might be a little easier to control if we could tell them why we're here and why we're supposed to lie so low," Lithgow pointed out rather diffidently after a moment.
"Not my decision," Ringstorff grunted. Not that Lithgow didn't have a point. But Manpower of Mesa was not in the habit of taking "captains" who were little more than common Silesian thugs into its confidence. For that matter, Ringstorff and Lithgow were the only two members of the hidden depot ship's Mesan crew who knew exactly why they were here. There were times the information restrictions made Ringstorff want to strangle people with his bare hands, but over all, he had to agree that they made better sense than usual in this case.
If everything went well with the main Manpower operation, the captains and crews of the four ex-Solarian heavy cruisers operating out of the carefully hidden base in Tiberian's outer asteroid belt would never know the real reason they'd been here. In that case, both they and the ships might well be useful to Manpower again, somewhere down the road. But if they were needed to support the current operation, then the odds were that once they'd performed their required function, Ringstorff would be instructed to use the remote-controlled nuclear scuttling charges carefully hidden aboard their ships to be sure there were no embarrassing witnesses.
Personally, Ringstorff would shed no tears if he got those orders. The universe would be a better place without Tyler, Lamar, or their two colleagues. Blowing up the ships would be wasteful, however, so preserving their crews' blissful ignorance—and thus obviating the need to eliminate them—was clearly the better option. But still . . .