“I read your file,” the woman said. She held out a hand. “Tanya Barrington, Asher Dales.”
William studied her for a long moment as he shook her hand. She had a strong grip; indeed, she was stronger than she looked. He wondered, absently, what she made of him. He’d always been short and stubby, despite endless rejuvenation treatments; his hair, slowly starting to turn gray, was grim proof that he hadn’t been born on Tyre. And the long coat he wore over a basic shipsuit was proof he was hurting for money. He was too stubborn to look up some of his old friends for a loan.
And she looked at my file, William thought. That meant . . . what? A government? Or a corporation? Or merely someone with access to an information broker? It wouldn’t be hard to get a copy of his naval record, if someone had the money. Who is this woman?
Tanya reached into her pocket and produced a privacy generator. “I assume you don’t mind me using this . . . ?”
“Not at all,” William said. He hadn’t planned to record the conversation. “But we can go into a private room, if you wish.”
“That might be preferable,” Tanya said. “But we’re still going to have to use the generator.”
William nodded, signaling the bartender to make the arrangements. Tanya was young, then—young and a little naive. He found himself looking at her with new eyes as the bartender escorted them to a private meeting room. It was hard to be sure with people who’d had the standard genetic enhancements and suchlike, but he’d bet half his pension that Tanya wasn’t long out of her teens. She walked like a professional, which probably meant she had some qualifications, yet little actual experience. In hindsight, perhaps she hadn’t realized what a spacers’ bar was like before making arrangements to meet in one.
“Here we are,” he said, once the door was closed. The meeting room was very basic, but at least it was clean. He’d been in worse places. “What can I do for you?”
“To cut a long story short, we’d like to hire you,” Tanya said. “You come highly recommended.”
William narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
“Yes,” Tanya said. She reddened, slightly. “Perhaps I should explain.”
She took a breath, then began. “I was born on Asher Dales, a star system on the other side of the Gap,” she said. “It was a very simple world, really; my father, a spacer captain, only used it as a homeport because my mother had fallen in love with it. Anyway, as you can probably imagine, I was five when the Theocracy arrived. Asher Dales had nothing more than a handful of outdated orbital defense platforms, so the battle began and ended very quickly.”
“Ouch,” William said.
“My father managed to sneak a bunch of refugees off the planet, including myself,” Tanya continued. “We ran through the Gap and, eventually, made it to Tyre. There was”—she made a face—“some sort of deal between my father and ONI, which allowed my mother and me to gain permanent residency in exchange for service. I went into the local school system and, eventually, went into law.”
“And then your planet was liberated,” William said.
“Yes,” Tanya agreed. “My father played a major role in the liberation, landing with enough troops to prevent the Theocrats from tearing the world apart before it was too late. He was rewarded by being elected president.”
“I’m glad the story has a happy ending,” William said, sincerely. The cynic in him thought that the refugees would discover that their homeworld was nothing like the idealized one they remembered. “But what does this have to do with me?”
“We want . . . we need . . . to build a space defense force,” Tanya said. “And we need someone to command it.”
William lifted his eyebrows. “And you don’t have someone who can do it for you?”
Tanya shook her head. “No,” she said. “A handful of refugees did go into the navy, but the ones I contacted were unwilling to return home. Most of them have permanent residency rights on Tyre and aren’t willing to give them up. The others . . . don’t have the sort of experience we require. Our database search, when we widened it, turned up you.”
“I see,” William said. He was tempted. No, he was very tempted. He could have stayed on a command deck if he’d stayed in the navy. Leaving had been a mistake. And now there was a chance to start again. “What exactly do you want?”
Tanya looked back at him evenly. “In the short term, you will have considerable power to purchase starships, hire crews, and build a dedicated force,” she said. “In the long term, we will expect you to train crewmen from Asher Dales to serve on the ships.”
William nodded, slowly. “How much have you done already?”
“Nothing beyond arranging a handful of meetings with shipyard owners,” Tanya said. She held out a datapad. “We do have all the licenses we need.”
“I hope so,” William said. He’d dealt with a handful of shipyard owners. The decent ones tended to be anal about paperwork, while the crooked ones expected massive bribes in exchange for keeping their mouths shut. He scanned the datapad and nodded. “Have you applied to the Commonwealth for a grant?”
“Yes,” Tanya said. “But we’ve been advised, purely off the record, that the odds of getting a grant are very low.”
“I see,” William said. He scanned the datapad, again. The licenses were indeed all in order, as were the credit notes from two different banks. For a planet that had only recently been liberated, Asher Dales had put together a quite impressive sum. “Well, we’ll have to discuss terms, of course . . .”
Tanya smiled. He smiled back. She knew he was hooked. The chance to build a small fighting force from scratch, even if it was tiny compared to the fleets that had waged titanic war for the last four years, was not one he could miss. And who knew? Given time, Asher Dales
