"Verdant Vista" was the private property of Manpower Unlimited, duly registered as such under interstellar law on the planet Mesa. As an independent and sovereign star nation, Mesa was empowered to recognize the claims of its citizens or business entities and, under existing interstellar law, Manpower had the right to appeal to the Mesan Navy for protection of its private property rights. But other star nations were not required to respect those rights as they would have been required to if Verdant Vista had, itself, been a sovereign star system.
Admittedly, it was something of a gray area, with competing interpretations of the precedents. What it boiled down to, however, was that a private corporation's claim to interstellar property rights was only as good as the naval strength which backed that claim. That was why Solarian trans-stellar corporations seldom had any problems (aside from the occasional raid by outright pirates). No star nation in its right mind wanted to provoke the SLN, so they tended to sit on their own potential troublemakers-hard-when there was a Solly corporation involved.
But while Mesa maintained a navy, it was nowhere near so grand as the SLN. Indeed, it was on the small side even by the standards of single-system star nations, although its individual units had excellent hardware. Despite its nationhood Mesa was, after all, essentially a conglomerate of business interests, and navies, by their nature, are expensive propositions which do not normally show a positive cash flow.
That was why some Mesa-based corporations, like Manpower, maintained private fleets. And another reason for Manpower, in particular, to do so was that the council which governed Mesa was hesitant to use military power too openly in Manpower's special interests. There was no point actively courting negative news coverage, after all.
In this instance, however, thanks to Michael Oversteegen and Her Majesty's Starship Gauntlet, the cruiser force Manpower had assembled to back up its LACs in Congo had suffered a mischief. A rather terminal one, in fact. That was one of the odd little facts Ringstorff had been willing to confirm for them… along with the fact that Manpower had not replaced the destroyed ships. Which had become another factor in the planning of the unusual alliance of interests now moving in on Congo. If there were heavy ships in the vicinity at all, they were regular Mesan naval units, and they would be doing their dead level best to maintain a low profile, particularly in the face of such massive news coverage. That meant they would be somewhere else-close enough to reach Congo fairly rapidly, but not right on top of the system.
So there was an automatic delay built into the response loop. Lassiter would have to send a courier to summon them, and that offered a window in which the "forces of liberation" would be free to act. Better yet, it meant that when (or if) those units did turn up, they would be commanded by someone whose primary loyalty was to Mesa, not simply to Manpower.
"I need at least ten minutes just to discuss the situation with my people," Lassiter complained.
Cachat, masquerading as Abraham Templeton, did not bother to look up from his chrono. "You have one minute and forty seconds before I start the killing. You've had weeks to decide what to do, Lassiter. There's no point in any further delay."
"One moment." Lassiter reached out a finger and the display screen went blank.
Diem heaved a little sigh. "What are you going to do if he goes past your deadline?" he asked nervously.
The answer, somehow, didn't surprise him. Cachat was still looking down at his chrono. "In one minute and twenty-five seconds, I'm going to kill you. Then, at fifteen-second intervals, Ringstorff and Lithgow." He glanced at the pale-faced young woman shackled to the console next to the Mesans. "I will not, of course, shoot Berry Zilwicki. Her father is likely to take umbrage." Cachat sounded vaguely miffed about it, the way a craftsman will when he is not permitted to do his finest work.
Off to the side of the bridge, sitting where he was out of sight of the screens, Anton Zilwicki snorted. But he didn't bother looking up from the console where he and Ruth Winton were busily cracking into Manpower's secure communications systems.
"Pray to whatever gods you hold dear, Diem," Zilwicki murmured, just loudly enough to be heard. "If Lassiter's as careless and sloppy as his security, you're a dead man." He snorted again, as a new screen came up. "Bingo. We're in. And there's not even any internal encryption. God, I love carrier signals, especially when the people on the other end are idiots. Take it from here, would you, Ruth?"
Eagerly, the young princess' fingers began flying over the keyboard, and Zilwicki looked up and grinned at Diem. There was no humor at all in the expression.
"Personally, I remain to be convinced that Lassiter can even tell time."
Lassiter could tell time, of course. But, for almost a minute, he wasted it in a fit of screaming invective aimed at his subordinates in the control center of Congo's headquarters. There was no point to the shrieking, as, once it began tapering down, Lassiter's chief subordinate Homer Takashi pointed out. Sullenly:
"It wasn't our idea to hire those crazy Masadans, boss. In all fairness, it wasn't even Diem's-and Ringstorff tried to talk them out of it. If you want to blame somebody, kick it upstairs. It was the Council that made the decision."
Lassiter ground his teeth. Everything Takashi said was true. But Lassiter was the type of supervisor who fawned over his superiors and lorded it over his subordinates. He wasn't about to send a blistering message to the three Manpower top executives who were part of the Mesan task force lurking in the barren, unnamed star system thirty-six hours away through hyper-space.
"And we're almost out of time," Takashi pointed out. None of Lassiter's other subordinates would have been that bold. But Takashi had his own patrons in Manpower's hierarchy, and beyond a certain point didn't have to put up with Lassiter's temper.
Fortunately, Lassiter's tantrum had calmed him down a bit. He was still angry, but was able to think more or less clearly.
"I don't have any choice, do I?"
Takashi shook his head. "Not unless you want the big shots to hand your head on a platter to the Star Kingdom. And the Manticorans will demand it, if their princess gets killed, don't think they won't."
Lassiter had already come to the same conclusion. If Gauntlet had been commanded by some other officer…
But, she wasn't. Oversteegen, no less!
Scowling, Lassiter brought the display back on. The image of Abraham Templeton returned. The maniac was still studying his chrono, with an intentness that made Lassiter's blood run cold.
"All right, all right," Lassiter said hastily. "We agree. You can dock alongside the space station and we'll do the transfers there. Although I still think-"
"Forget it, Lassiter," rasped the religious fanatic. "There is no way I'll agree to a transfer using shuttles. That would give you too many opportunities for an 'unfortunate lapse.' You can still try to double-cross us once we're docked, of course. But I can guarantee you that I'll take out your very expensive space station as well as the Felicia, if you try it."
Lassiter had, in fact, planned to take out the Masadans during a shuttle transfer, if he could manage it without killing the princess. His security crew on the space station might not be quite up to the best professional military standards, but the technicians manning the space station's close-defense weapons were more than capable of swatting shuttles with ease.
On the other hand, it had been a long shot anyway, given the need to keep the Manticoran royal alive. So, he mentally shrugged and made the best of a bad situation. A really bad situation.