Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 90
Cuthbert looked like he was expecting an impending assault on the city any second. He closed the blinds of the panoramic windows, then paced in front of them like a restless predator, still reading messages on his comtab and firing off his own into the Mnemosyne.
“I don’t think we’re in danger here,” she said. “Rhodia is a hundred million kilometers away. And Papa said the cities on Acheron are safe from ballistic missiles because they’re never in a fixed place.”
“And the Rhodians have the best ballistic missile defense system in all of Gaia,” Cuthbert said. “This city is ten kilometers across, Miss Ragnar. If someone wants to hit it, there’s a way.”
And how will you protect me from a nuclear strike? Solveig thought. The Acheroni didn’t even let your security detail bring sidearms into the city. But she recognized that falling back on his basic job functions made Cuthbert feel like he had a little bit of control over the situation, so she kept the thought to herself.
They watched the news feeds as the other members of the Ragnar delegation trickled into the suite: Solveig’s assistant, Anja; Gisbert’s bodyguard, Fulco; and his assistant, Inga. Gisbert himself was still passed out in his suite, and Solveig had no desire to send Cuthbert to try and get him to his feet because she knew he’d be worse than useless in his current state.
He’s going to wake up with a beast of a hangover and find that the world has shifted under his feet while he was out, she thought.
Even with instant transmission of information across millions of kilometers, the networks could only report what they got from the scene, and after a little while, the images on the screen started to become repetitive to the point where Solveig could begin to predict the angle changes of the limited variety of high-altitude shots.
The information text scrolled across the bottom of the screen: RHODIAN FLEET ON FULL ALERT STATUS, MINISTRY OF DEFENSE EXPECTED TO INVOKE ALLIANCE TO DECLARE SYSTEM-WIDE MILITARY EMERGENCY.
“Are we going to war with Rhodia again?” Anja asked. She looked shaken and afraid, completely unlike her usual put-away professional persona.
“We aren’t,” Cuthbert said. “Not as far as I know. We don’t even have a fleet anymore. But it looks like someone is at war with them.”
He nodded at the screens, which were showing the footage of the dark, roiling mushroom cloud rising into the sky above Rhodia again from several different angles.
An incoming message chirped on his comtab. He scrolled through it, then softly muttered a curse.
“What is it, Cuthbert?” Solveig asked.
He looked at her, and in the moment he appeared even younger than he usually looked, all wide-eyed anxiety.
“The Alliance has just announced a full blockade of Gretia, effective immediately,” he said. “They’ve halted all incoming or outgoing traffic until further notice. All inbound ships are ordered to hold station or make for alternate destinations.”
“They can’t do that,” Fulco said. “That will bring the economy to a halt. Ours and theirs.”
“Ours more than theirs,” Solveig said. “They can still trade with the rest of the system. We can’t trade with anyone off-planet.”
“Well, they just did that.” Cuthbert pointed at the display, where the summary of the Gretian blockade announcement had begun to scroll across the screen, framing the foreboding footage of the nuclear detonation and the burning arcology.
“So does that mean we can’t go home?” Anja asked.
“Not unless they lift the blockade by the time we’re done with the Hanzo talks. Looks like we may be here a little longer than intended,” Cuthbert replied.
Good, Solveig thought. That will give Papa’s anger some time to cool.
Solveig immediately chided herself for her selfishness. Somewhere on Rhodia, tens of thousands of people were dead, wounded, or missing, and her first reaction after the initial shock was relief at the prospect of not having to return home soon to face her irate father.
As if our family fight is more important than the fate of two planets. Gods help me if I am starting to think like Papa after all.
She walked over to the bar and picked up her wineglass again, but the visuals unfolding in front of her had made her lose all taste for the indulgence. She poured the contents of the glass into the bio-recycler. Getting drunk wouldn’t help her go to sleep any better. She’d just feel as bad as Gisbert in the morning.
“What do we do now, Miss Ragnar?” Anja asked. Solveig looked up to see that everyone in the room was looking at her.
Now you act like I’m in charge, she thought.
She looked past them all and at the window, where Cuthbert had left a small crack in the alignment of the blinds. The scene outside was unchanged, brightly lit city streets busy with late-night crowds. If there were nukes headed for Acheron and Coriolis City, the blinds wouldn’t shield them, and nothing would matter anymore. And if there weren’t any nukes, then it didn’t matter either, not in the moment.
“Let’s act as though all the worlds will still be turning tomorrow,” she said. “We have talks to resume in the morning. If the blockade isn’t lifted when it’s time to go home, we figure it out then. But for now, we should probably all go to sleep and go ahead as if nothing has changed.”
She could tell that they weren’t entirely convinced of the wisdom of her suggestion, but nobody else had any alternatives, and she was glad to see that things were at the point where not even Cuthbert wanted to contradict her openly.
They all filed out of her suite again one by one. The last to leave was Cuthbert, and from the anxious look on his face, she was almost convinced he’d take up station just