Jonny shook his head. "I'm afraid it is you, sir, who's misunderstanding the legal situation here. Our charter clearly states that the governor-general may requisition a berth on any outgoing ship for purposes of consultation with Dominion officials. The charter makes no provision for exceptions."
"I claim an exception anyway. If you don't like it, you can file a grievance with the Central Committee when the war's over."
"I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If you want to claim a legitimate exception, you'll have to present your case here, to Aventine's Council of Syndics."
Wrey's eyes narrowed. "What does that entail?"
Which meant the other had been on Asgard so long he'd forgotten how planet-level politics worked. For an instant Jonny was tempted to spin a genuine horror story, but quickly decided against it. Playing it straight was safer, and the truth was bad enough. "We'll first need to assemble all the Syndics—that's the easy part; they're all on the way here already. Then you'll present your credentials and your case and Governor-General Stiggur will present his. The council will discuss the situation and probably recess to make individual studies of the charter and try to find precedents in whatever Dominion records we have on file. Then they'll reassemble for a full debate, and when that's finished they'll vote. If the law seems to allow both sides of the case, a simple majority will suffice; but if the charter regulation I mentioned seems unopposed, then you'll need a three-quarters vote to grant you a one-time exception. The whole process will take—oh, maybe three to five days, minimum."
From the look on Wrey's face, the other had already added up the times. "Suppose I refuse to cooperate with this little delaying tactic?"
"You're free not to cooperate... but your ship doesn't lift until all this is resolved."
"How are you going to stop me?"
Reaching to the phone, Jonny tapped some keys, and a second later a new voice joined the circuit. "Pyre here."
"Almo, this is Jonny Moreau. How's security setup going?"
"All locked down, Governor," the younger Cobra told him.
"Good. Please inform the night manager that there's no longer any rush to service the Dominion ship. It won't be leaving for a few more days."
"Yes, sir."
"Hold it, soldier," Wrey snapped. "I am a direct representative of the Central Committee, and on that authority I'm countermanding that order. Understand?"
There was a short pause. "Governor, is his claim legitimate?"
"Yes, but this specific action seems to violate a clear charter provision. It looks like it'll be going to the council."
"Understood, sir. Servicing operations will be suspended immediately."
"What?" Wrey barked. "Just a damned—"
"Out, sir."
A click signaled Pyre's departure, leaving the rest of Wrey's outburst to expend itself in thin air. He broke off, fixing Jonny with a furious glare. "You're not going to get away with this, Moreau. You can throw your Cobras against my armored Marines all day without—"
"Are you suggesting a firefight in the vicinity of your ship, sir?" Jonny asked mildly.
Wrey fell suddenly silent. "You won't get away with it," he repeated mechanically.
"The law is on my side," Jonny said. "Frankly, Mr. Wrey, I don't see why this is really a problem. You obviously have the room to spare for me, and I've already showed you that you'll be both morally and legally in the clear if your superiors become annoyed. And who knows? Maybe they'll actually be glad I came along... in which case you'll get all the credit for such foresight."
Wrey snorted at that, but Jonny could see in his face that he'd already opted for the simpler, safer course. "All right, what the hell. You want to cut out and spend the war on Asgard, that's none of my business. Just be here when the rest of the passengers show or I'll leave without you."
"Understood. And thank you."
Wrey snorted again and the screen went blank.
Jonny exhaled slowly. Another minor victory... and as emotionally unsatisfying as all such political wins seemed to be. Perhaps, he thought, it was because no opponent was ever fully vanquished in this form of combat. They always got back up out of the dust, a little smarter and—often—a little madder each time. And Jonny would now be spending the next three months heading straight for Wrey's political domain, while Wrey himself had those same months to plan whatever revenge he chose.
So much for victory.
Grimacing, Jonny punched again for Almo Pyre. His order halting the ship's servicing would have to be rescinded.
There was a great deal of work involved in turning over his duties on such short notice, and in the end Jonny wound up with far less time than he'd wanted to tell his family good-bye. It added one more shade of pain to the already Pyrrhic victory, especially as he had no intention of letting Wrey know how he felt.
The worst part, of course, was that there was very little aboard ship to occupy his thoughts. On the original trip to Aventine a quarter century earlier, there'd been fellow colonists to meet as well as magcards of information compiled by the survey teams to be studied. Here, even with the fourteen business passengers Wrey was bringing home, the ship carried only thirty-six people, none of whom Jonny was especially interested in getting to know. And if the ship carried any useful information on the impending war, no one was saying anything about it.
So for the first couple of weeks Jonny did little except sit alone in his cabin, reread the colonies' data he'd brought to show the Central Committee, and brood... until one morning he awoke with an unexpected, almost preternatural alertness. It took him several minutes to figure out on a conscious level what his subconscious had already realized: during ship's night they had passed from no-man's space into the Troft Corridor. The old pattern of being in hostile territory evoked long-buried Cobra training; and as the politician yielded to the warrior, Jonny unexpectedly found his helpless feelings giving way to new determination. For the time being, at least, the political situation had become a potentially military one... and military situations were almost never completely hopeless.
He began in the accepted military way: learning the territory. For hours at a time he toured the Menssana, getting to know everything about it and compiling long mental lists of strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and possibilities. He learned the names and faces of each of the fourteen crewers and six Marines, evaluating as best he could how they would react in a crisis. Doing the same with the passengers actually proved a bit easier: with the same excess of free time he himself had, they were eager to spend time with him, playing games or just talking. More than once Jonny wished he'd brought Cally Halloran along, but even without the other's knack at informal psych analysis, he was soon able to divide the passengers into the old "float/freeze" categories: those who could probably deal with and adapt to a crisis, and those who couldn't. Heading the former were two executive field reps Jonny soon learned to consider friends as well as potential allies: Dru Quoraheim, a pharmaceutical company executive whose face and dry humor reminded him vaguely of Ilona Linder; and Rando Harmon, whose interests lay in rare metals and, occasionally, Dru Quoraheim. For a while Jonny wondered if Dru had latched onto him to use as a partial shield against Harmon's advances, but as it became clear that those advances were entirely non-serious he realized the whole thing was an elaborate game designed to give the participants something to concentrate on besides the mental picture of silent Troft warships.
And when his survey was complete... it was back to waiting. He played chess with Dru and Harmon, kept abreast of the ship's progress, and—alone, late at night—tried to come up with some way to keep the war from happening, or at least to keep it from happening to Aventine. And wondered if and when the Trofts would move against the Menssana.