“All right, I give up,” Colonel Abel Rigney said, looking into the glass-walled State Department conference room at the two unsmiling men sitting there. “Who are they?”
Colonel Liz Egan pointed, using the index finger on the hand holding her coffee cup. “The humorless one on the left is Alastair Schmidt,” she said. “He’s Phoenix’s minister of trade and transport. The humorless one on the right is Jean-Michel Daquin. He’s the CEO and chairman of Ballard-Daquin, which is one of the largest shipping companies on the planet.”
“That’s great,” Rigney said. “And we’re meeting with them, why, precisely?”
“Because Secretary Galeano told me to,” Egan said.
“Let me rephrase,” Rigney said. “Why am I meeting with them?”
“Because they want to talk about merchant ships being pirated and what we’re doing about it, and if memory serves, that’s something you know about.”
“Fine, but why do they care?” Rigney asked. “Phoenix’s Minister of Trade and Transport doesn’t have any jurisdiction over interplanetary or interstellar trade.”
“He has jurisdiction over the spaceports.”
“Right, but his interests stop right around the stratosphere. Piracy is a problem, but it’s not his problem. There’s not enough of it to have an impact on his planet’s trade.” Rigney pointed to Jean-Michel Daquin. “Is it his ships getting pirated?”
Egan shook her head. “Ballard-Daquin is planetside only.”
“I’m back to my original question,” Rigney said. “My second original question, I mean. The one about why are we meeting them.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Egan said, very calmly, which is how Rigney knew he was close to being taken to the woodshed.
“Sorry about that,” Rigney said.
Egan nodded and pointed to Daquin. “His son Rafe is a pilot on the Chandler, which is a merchant ship that went missing a week ago.”
“Missing as in overtaken by pirates and late to its next destination, or missing missing?” Rigney asked.
“You tell me,” Egan said. “That’s actually your department, Abel.”
Rigney grunted and quickly accessed his BrainPal for the latest on the Chandler. “We sent a skip drone out when it was two days late to Erie,” he said, reading. “It’s the new policy after Earth Station went down.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Rigney said. “It wasn’t where it should have been pre-skip, and there’s no evidence of it being destroyed. We have nothing.”
“So it’s missing missing,” Egan said.
“Looks like.”
“And now you know why Daquin is here.”
“How do you want to play this?” Rigney said.
“How I wanted to play it before this conversation,” Egan said. “I want you to talk to them about what the CDF is doing about piracy. Make it informative, sympathetic, and conversational.”
“You might be better with the sympathetic part,” Rigney said. “You’re the one who ran a media empire back on Earth.”
Egan shook her head. “I was CEO,” she said. “You don’t become CEO by being sympathetic. I had PR people for that.”
“So that’s my job here?” Rigney asked. “PR flack?”
“Yes, it is,” Egan said. “Any problems with that?”
“I guess not,” Rigney said. “And you wouldn’t care if I did.”
“I would care,” Egan said. “Later.”
“That’s comforting,” Rigney said.
Egan nodded and motioned toward the two men waiting in the room. “The way I see it is that between the two of us we can answer their questions and convince them we are on top of things, and then shuffle them off as close to happy and satisfied as we can. Which will make my boss happy. Which will make me happy. And then I will owe you a favor. Which should make you happy.”
“So, a never-ending circle of happiness, is what you’re saying.”
“I never said ‘never-ending,’” Egan said. “There’s no point in overpromising. Just a little happiness. Take what you can get, these days. Come on.”
Egan and Rigney entered the conference room, introduced themselves to Schmidt and Daquin, and sat down across the table from the two men.
“Minister Schmidt, I have the honor of being acquainted with your son Hart,” Egan said.
“Do you, now,” Schmidt said. “He hasn’t mentioned you, I’m afraid.”
“I’m better acquainted with his boss, Ambassador Abumwe.”
“Ah,” Schmidt said. “Late of the unpleasantness at Earth Station.”
“Yes,” Egan said. “We were pleased that her entire team, including Hart, survived the attack.”
Schmidt nodded.
Your turn, Egan sent to Rigney, through her BrainPal. Informative. Conversational. Sympathetic.
“Mr. Daquin,” Rigney said. “I want you to know that prior to this meeting I accessed the latest information about the Chandler. I know you must be anxious—”
“One hundred sixty-five million metric revenue tonnes,” Daquin said, interrupting Rigney.