‘I had to make a judgement call,’ he told her. ‘I needed to keep our witnesses out of the hands of criminal elements.’ He had been frank and exhaustive in his earlier report about the Broken Harvest and its rogue Essiel ruler. Just as well he had, or he’d be in a hole twice as deep around now.
‘You should have brought the crew aboard the Hammer and abandoned their ship,’ Laery told him.
‘I didn’t think I had the time. And I didn’t need a shooting war with some spacers and a one-woman Parthenon army just as this Essiel reached us, to be honest.’
‘At the very least you should have held the Intermediary.’
‘I had no grounds.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You have standing special powers, Havaer.’ A hiss escaped her as the medical frame tracked round to her other arm. ‘Threats to the Colonies. Especially from the damn Parthenon.’
‘I made a judgement call.’
‘A bad one.’
He nodded. ‘The problem with judgement calls is that they’re only ever good or bad in retrospect.’
‘Make sure you say that at your inquest,’ Laery snapped. Then, after a deliberate pause, ‘If there is one. It’s under deliberation.’
‘What’s my current status?’
‘Active until told otherwise. We’re too short-handed to put you on ice. On a separate subject, your information regarding this Broken Harvest organization has potential.’
‘How is that a separate subject?’ he asked mildly.
‘Since it makes us look good. Whereas your “judgement call” looks a hell of a lot like a mistake. In retrospect. Because your damn spacers aren’t turning up at our doorstep any time soon, of that you can be sure.’
‘We’ve not reached “retrospect” on that one yet,’ he said, still measured.
‘You want to wait until the first Partheni warship stutter-jumps here? Hopping past Berlenhof’s orbital defences with a brand new Int Angel at the helm?’
Glib answers fell away. ‘Does it look that bad?’ he asked.
Chief Laery regarded him from beneath hooded lids with reptile animosity. ‘Two Partheni warships are in orbit over Berlenhof right now. That look bad enough to you, Havaer? You can probably just about see the Thunderchild from my window.’
‘Sabre-rattling, surely . . .’
‘When they send two big new battleships to cast their shadows over Hugh’s planetside offices, it’s pretty much swords drawn.’ She waved her unoccupied hand idly. ‘Of course, they did bring some actual diplomats. So currently ours and theirs are working their way through lists of all the usual rubbish: trade tariffs, joint action against rogue elements and the like. But you can bet the Partheni keep pressing for the Liaison Board’s raw data. Now the Architects might be back, they’re really upping their game. “Oh, we’d love to come save your worlds again, but we seem to be lacking a key anti-Architect weapon.” They avoid mentioning that the Ints will be our only advantage over them, if – or should I say when – we finally engage in a shooting war.’
Havaer took a deep breath. ‘Permission to speak my mind on this one, Chief.’
‘Oh, do enlighten me,’ she said acidly.
‘If it comes to that, the Parthenon can put Castigar navigators on their ships. They could even go to the Hegemony for the creature-things that they use. Our Ints are good unspace pilots, maybe even the best, but they’re not unique.’
‘If it comes to that,’ Chief Laery replied, ‘the Castigar know we’ll pay more for them to do nothing than the Partheni can pay for them to put their Savants in harm’s way. Parthenon’s gun rich but trade poor. Give us any field of combat other than actual combat and we can beat the Partheni hands down. And we all just have to hope the Hegemony won’t get involved. Which is another damn headache right about now.’ She clicked her fingers, the sound like a dry twig snapping, dismissing the topic. ‘This one, face like a pederastic uncle, you spoke to him?’
She called up an image of a genial-looking white-bearded man, the high collar of a Hegemonic cult robe arching over his bald head.
‘Hierograve, on Huei-Cavor. He’d been trying to get hold of the Oumaru when Broken Harvest stole it,’ Havaer recalled. ‘Sathiel, isn’t it?’
Laery nodded, birdlike. ‘His crowd is just one more breed of parasite we’ve picked up in-system. For some reason, a whole sect of them is descending on us claiming to be delegates from the Hegemony. May or may not be true, because nobody ever got a straight answer out of the Essiel. This jolly old grandpa has quite the record, you know?’ The names of half a dozen systems appeared by Sathiel’s image, ending with Huei-Cavor. ‘I mean, the Hegemony doesn’t have hatchet-men, but if it did . . . This Sathiel’s game-plan is to turn up and take over the local cult chapter or whatever. Then he starts agitating, spreading rumours, schmoozing people in power, talking up the benefits of cosying with the clams. You know he’s flipped three whole systems? And as for ones he didn’t, let’s just say Mordant kept a finger on the scales. To make sure people were exercising their free choice as freely as they were supposed to.’