because neither trusts the other as far as any of them can spit. Trust.' She looked rueful. 'It will be decades before we see that from these people. But a settlement, yes, by quite late tomorrow night, I'd say. And if not, we return the delegations, break orbit, and make starfall back to Corrivale where reports will be filed for the various authorities involved, and where informal quarantine will be invoked on the Thalaassa system. After that . . .' she shrugged. 'Further business will be in the hands of the local Concord Administrator. Any questions?'
Falada's protocol chief, Lieutenant Ferdinand, had some queries about the setup of the formal meeting room for the next day, which Delvecchio handled. Then she looked down the table again and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your help. I know you will all do your best to forward this process without revealing any details to non-cleared personnel.' 'Especially the negotiating teams,' said Captain Dareyev.
Delvecchio gave her a particularly dry smile. 'Especially. They will be brought to different docking bays, as usual, and all precautions should be taken to have them avoid seeing one another even at a distance until they actually enter the meeting room. All right? Then thank you, all. And wish us luck.' All stood as the Ambassador did. Slowly people began to head out. Elinke, standing up and stretching, looked around her casually, then glanced over at Gabriel and said, very softly, 'Fourteen to one, at best.' 'Think so?' Gabriel said and gave her what was meant to be a noncommittal look. She flashed him a grin and left, heading back up to her Bridge. Gabriel let the room empty in front of him, then drifted up to Delvecchio. She looked at him, still wearing that dry smile. 'Disappointed?' she said. 'You'd really like it if the warring parties turned on us, wouldn't you?' 'I'm a marine,' Gabriel said. 'Whichever answer I give you in this context could be the wrong one. But-' 'Don't be concerned,' the ambassador said. 'I understand you. But I don't think we have to worry about them threatening us. There are much worse problems to avoid.'
Gabriel nodded. After a moment, he said, 'Do you really think you can pull all this off?' 'Oh, I know I can,' Delvecchio said, looking down at the paperwork and the datacarts. 'My part of it, anyway. Everything now rests with the two negotiating teams. As long as human nature doesn't change before tomorrow afternoon, and they don't stop hating each other before then, we'll be just fine.' Gabriel shook his head in bemusement at the sheer cheerfulness of her cynicism. And she thinks I might be good at this kind of work? I think I've got a long way to go. 'And will they stop hating each other after that?' he said.
Delvecchio looked up at him mildly as she gathered up her papers. '/ won't live long enough to find out,' she said, 'but that's hardly an issue. I'll see you in the morning.'
She went out, and a few moments later Gabriel went after her, suddenly very eager indeed to see the 'bloodshed' begin the next afternoon.
Chapter Three
THE REST OF the day's schedule went haywire, which gave Gabriel the hint he needed that things were indeed in the air. For one thing, many marine staff under Hal's supervision were pulled back from other duties to be run over to Callirhoe to assist in maintenance work secondary to the mission she had just completed. The swearing started in earnest when word spread among Falada's marine complement of the action that the other ship had seen not six hours ago. It had not been hand-to-hand work-just shipboard stuff, the Star Force ship going in low to preempt the little Phorcys-based raiders who had attacked Ordinen, Eraklion's biggest open-cast mine-but the marines assigned to Callirhoe managed to make it sound like the Second Galactic War when they came aboard that night for the usual 'two-ships' social. All this meant that Gabriel's spatball team's meeting had to be postponed, and the idea of doing any further reading of transcripts that night went right out the airlock. Suit drill, though conducted as professionally as always-after all, there was no treating casually the only thing that stood between you and space-had more than the usual buzz about it. Crew morale was always a major concern for Star Force. They knew what made their ships effective-not machines, but people. So any time two Concord Star Force vessels met for the first time in a system, especially when they were carrying complements of marines, there would be a social get-together as soon as circumstances permitted it. The two captains, having conferred at some length, were fairly certain that there would be no further antics from the local system-based ships-especially with one Star Force vessel in orbit around each of the two 'offending' planets keeping an eye on them and (via a few clandestinely sown surveillance satellites) on Eraklion as well.
By 2000, the temporary walls separating the main briefing room from its twin next door had been opened out so that one big space was available. By 2030, alternating panels of white-silver and midnight- velvet curtains had been hung up to soften the feel of the place, the lights had been lowered, and the room was full of tables and chairs and food. Lots of food. If there was anything anyone knew about marines, it was that they ate their weight in protein every day, just to prove they could. The other thing that everyone knew about marines-that they could talk the tusks off a weren-was also being proven all over the room.
'You shoulda seen it,' someone was saying to Hal as Gabriel came up beside him. 'It was just like a dirg's nest when you knock it down off the rocks. They came in real low over Eraklion's spaceward side. The Phorcyns thought they were under the radar, and maybe they were, of the ground-based stuff... but not ours. There were maybe two hundred of them-little ships, not even military, some of them-just hoppers, just private craft with guns. Are these people crazy? What kind of line are their bosses selling them that they'll go up against a cruiser with nothing but the family in-system flitter with a couple of grenade cannons strapped to it?'
'Phorcyn fanatics,' someone said. Laughter rippled through the group as they caught the play on words. The guy who was talking, a tall thin red-haired man, shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I'll tell you this: fanatic or not, they knew how to fly, that bunch. We were watching them on the repeaters in the landing craft, and they were right down and dirty with the mountain chain around that place. Thought they were going to do themselves permanent damage, some of them. But they seemed to know those mountains pretty well.'
'A little too well,' said another of the marines nearby, a slender little dark-haired woman with big dark brown eyes. 'If they'd gotten down there to take the attack to a second stage, we would have had to root them out, and that would have been entertaining.'
The man who had been talking first shrugged. 'It didn't happen,' he said, 'and our weapons were clean, anyway, if it had. I would've given a lot to see their faces, though, when they came in close on the mine and saw the ship rising up out of that big ol' hole in the ground with all her guns hot. Never tell me that Captain Devereaux can't make her boat sit up and beg! And as for all those little ships-' He broke out laughing. 'Just like a dirg's nest. They went scattering in every direction that God sent and took themselves away before something a lot worse than they were expecting happened to them.' 'Meaning us,' said the dark-haired woman, grinning.
'Yeah, well, every now and then you have to sit one out,' said the marine who had been speaking. 'We'll get the next dance, somewhere else. Hey, look-'
Noisy whistles and shrieks went up as two shapely forms walked in, in full Star Force dress black, everything from the full-length skirts to the wound sashes to the optional rakish hats. Captain Dareyev and Captain Devereaux, the latter looking somewhat abashed by the deafening welcome. She looked over at Elinke. Elinke shrugged and led her over to the first refreshment table to get her a glass of wine, but they never had a chance, being well mobbed by every nearby marine before more than a few steps had been taken. The marines always appreciated their captains even when they weren't women. A sharp set of reflexes in the center seat could save your life and those of all your teammates. But female captains had a special mystique-not entirely, Gabriel thought, having anything to do with their superior reflexes.
Even more marines arrived to congratulate the captains, and the two women smiled and let them get on with it, glancing at each other resignedly. Gabriel smiled a little too and turned back to the marine who had been talking, the one from Callirhoe. He was still talking to the brown-eyed marine, but he was slowing down somewhat. Not exactly running out of steam, perhaps, but he and a lot of his buddies, to Gabriel's eye, had that about-to-fall-over look that he had seen more than enough times in his career so far. Men who had been sitting in their shuttles, suited up, ready to be delivered to some godforsaken spot that they had never seen before, ready to take it and hold it as if it were their own, as if they would shed their last drop of blood for it-and indeed they would. Waiting for that to happen for hours on end, sometimes days. The men and women who went through that on a regular basis showed changes in their faces that Gabriel had learned to recognize without being able to describe. Tonight it looked most like weariness to him. And fear, too. But that was not something you would say out loud to a marine, not until you knew him or her very well indeed. For the meantime, these were brothers and sisters, but not yet
