Sengrat was always going on about something; it seemed he never agreed with any of the Council decisions. And Illart said he wouldn’t speak up during open Council; he just sat there and simmered and waited to buttonhole one of the Speakers in private, later, and tell them how wrong they were. Right now he was disputing the decision to leave their present orbit as soon as the nav officer on duty identified a good pattern for quadrant departure.
“We’ve done -what we came to Khang Kieaan for, Sengrat,” Andrezhuria said wearily. “We’ve presented our case, we have the promise of their support in the next Federation meeting. …”
Sengrat snorted. “‘Presented our case,’” he mimicked Andrezhuna’s precise, cold tones. ‘“Zhuria, wake up and smell the kava! We’ve been presenting our case for ten years now. All the moral support in the world won’t make Amalgamated Mining cede Esperantza back to us-and if they did, they couldn’t repair the damage they’ve already done to the planet. Its time to move on, make a new life for ourselves.”
“Are you saying we should have accepted Amalgamated s joke of a resettlement offer?” Gerezan, Second Speaker, inquired. “A bit late to be arguing that, don’t you think?”
Markel could tell without looking that Sengrat would have flushed a deep purple. His anger came out in the plummy resonance of his next words. “Don’t twist my words, Second! I’m not the one who’s living in the past-you three, and the Council members who follow you around like dullbots, are the ones who do that. You’re still talking as if we could get Esperantza back and settle to dirt farming. I don’t want to do that. I’m not even interested in that. Our ‘case’ against Amalgamated was settled in Federation court – “
“Unfairly,” Andrezhuria cut in. “If we can get evidence of the bribes Amalgamated paid out and the records they had doctored, we’ll have grounds to reopen it. And we will get it; the kids in my data study group are sharper than any dirtside hackers, and they’re getting through Amalgamated’s data firewalls one at a time. Until then, our mission is to keep the story of Esperantza alive. Not to let anybody forget what an injustice was done, not to let Amalgamated get away with it!”
“You’re dead wrong, my dear ‘Zhuria,” Sengrat drawled. “Our mission is to survive. Anything else comes second. And in the interests of survival, as Chief Maintenance Officer, it is my duty to point out that the Haven is long overdue for retrofit and replacement.”
“Well, I hardly think we should request permission to dock on Khang Kieaan for maintenance work,” Illart said, chuckling. “Even if we could afford it, some of the folks down there may just not feel too friendly toward us after the way we took over their planetary communications system to state our case. Sure, we got a lot of popular sympathy, but I bet the government’s going to be nervouser and nervouser the longer we hang around here. All three governments,” he corrected himself after a moment’s mental review of Khang Kieaan’s troubled political situation.
“We don’t need to request anything of Khang Kieaan,” Sengrat snapped. “We had their communications system under total control. That should have paid for all the maintenance we need.”
“Exactly how do you figure that?” Gerezan asked. “They weren’t going to pay us to run their planetary communications when they had a perfectly good working system of their own.”
“But they didn’t, ‘Zan,” Sengrat purred. The rasping tone was gone from his voice now, and Markel pulled the vid plugs out of his ears to hear better. When Sengrat’s voice softened, he was happy; when Sengrat was happy, there was trouble coming.
Sengrat’d sounded just that way, smooth and velvety and jovial, when he told Markel that Ximena was too old for him, and he didn’t want any good-for-nothing teenage kids hanging around his daughter.
“They didn’t have a working system of their own,” Sengrat went on, “not while we’d intercepted all communications to make our own ‘cast. With a little diplomacy, we could have gotten a contract from the Night Sky Lightning party granting them exclusive use ofplanetside communications … through us.”