lost, the situation in which they were cast.
“Company’s finally showed up to do something,” Mazian “To hand them… this.” He
lifted a hand to the screens, a gesture which included the universe. “I recorded
that message relayed from the Union flagship, that message. From Seb Azov’s
flagship. Do you understand? The code designation is valid. Mallory, those
Company men who wanted passage… that’s what they’ve done to us.”
She drew in her breath. All warmth had fled. “If I’d taken them aboard…”
“You couldn’t have stopped them, you understand. Company men don’t make solitary
decisions. It was already decided elsewhere. If you’d shot them on the spot, you
couldn’t have stopped it… only delayed it.”
“Until we’d drawn a different line,” she replied. She stared into Mazian’s pale
eyes and recalled every word she had spoken with Ayres, every move, every
intonation. She had let the man go, to do this.
“So they got their passage somehow,” Mazian said. “The question is, what
agreement they’ve made first, at Pell—and just how much they’ve signed over to
Union. There’s the possibility too that those so-named negotiators aren’t
intact. Mind-wiped, they’d sign and say right into Union’s anxious fingers,
knowing the company signal codes—and no knowing what else they spilled, no
knowing what codes, what information, what was compromised, how much of
everything they’ve handed over; our internal codes, no, but we don’t know what
of the Pell codes went… all the kind of thing that would let them come right in
here. That’s why the abort. Months of planning; yes; stations gone; ships and
friends gone; vast human suffering—all of that, for nothing. But I had to make a
fast decision. The Fleet is intact; so is Pell; we’ve got that much, right or
wrong. We could have won at Viking; and gotten ourselves pinned there, lost
Pell… all source of supply. That’s why we pulled out.”
There was not a sound, not a move. It suddenly made full sense.
“That’s what I didn’t want on com,” Mazian said. “It’s your choice. We’re at
Pell, where we have a choice. Do we assume it’s Company men who sent that… in
their right minds? Unforced? That Earth still backs us—? It’s in question.
But—old friends, does that really matter?”
“How, matter?” Sung asked.
“Look at the map, old friends, look at it again. Here… here is a world. Pell.
And does a power survive without it. What is Earth… but that? You have your
choice here: follow what may be Company orders, or we hold here, gather
resources, take action. Europe’s staying regardless of orders. If enough do, we
can make Union think twice about putting its nose in here. They don’t have crews
that can fight our style of fight; we’ve got supply here; we have resources. But
make up your minds—I won’t stop you—or you can stay and do what I think you
might do. And when history writes what happened to the Company out here, it can
write what it likes about Conrad Mazian. I made my choice.”
“Two of us,” Edger said.
“Three,” Signy said, no faster than the murmur from the others. Mazian passed a
slow glance from one to the other, nodded.
“Then we hold here, but we have to take it. Maybe we’ll have cooperation here
and maybe we won’t. We’re going to find out.—And we’re not all in on this yet.
Sung, I want you personally to go out to North Pole and Tibet and put it to
them. Explain it any way you like. And if there’s any large number of dissenters
in any crew, or among the troops, well give them our blessing and let them go,
take one of the merchanter ships here and ship them out I leave it to individual
captains to handle that.”
“There won’t be any dissent,” Keu said.
“If there are,” Mazian said. “The station, now—we move out and disperse our own
security throughout, put our own personnel in key spots. Half an hour is enough
for you to break this to your own commands. Whatever they ultimately decide to
do, there’s no question that we need to hold Pell securely before we can take
any action, either to clear a ship for some to leave, or to hold onto it.”