Lannister sat at his table and activated the slate. Moments later the connection was established and he was talking to his liaison officer.
"How was Officer Walker this morning?" the liaison asked. "Did she enjoy her visit with her mother?"
With her kids, at least. "She's in a good mood. Yes, she sends her thanks for making that call possible."
"And her healers? Did you talk to them?"
"Yes, they are cautiously optimistic about her being ready to be out of the tank for a short period, though they are firm that it has to be short."
"Of course, we can work around that. We just really need her, ready to face the public."
"What's going on?" Lannister demanded.
"You guys are heroes down here, you know that, right?" the liaison replied evasively.
"Yeah, we get one earth side news channel. My ship, my picture, flashes up at least once an hour. Officer Walker's picture, that's more like every ten minutes."
"Well, she's the real hero, isn't she? Not just anyone would have stood there and fired, knowing what it was going to cost them."
"I agree, she's a true hero. I would never take that from her. But what's going on down there, it smells of a media circus."
"Politics, you know..."
"Politics, fine, but this seems like a bit much. You want me to bring you a hero, someone to trot around and distract the country from whatever is going on down there, fine. I want the truth."
The liaison officer was looking somewhere off the screen. Lannister startled. The liaison's superior was there, on site. That was unusual to say the least. "Tell him," a voice off screen prompted.
The liaison officer nodded. "I can only say so much on an open channel. You've seen the news, the mainstream news. But have you heard what the conspiracy nuts and shock jocks are saying?"
Lannister froze. His blood ran cold. "MIAs?" he whispered. A few voices had been saying it since the war ended. The Syrian mission rosters didn't quite match. It wasn't a large number and no one could quite identify where the discrepancies were, but not all of the men sent to Syria had made it home.
The liaison officer nodded.
What did that mean for Lannister and his crew? Would they make it back to earth? Or would they be held here?
"Everyone is going to find out next week, anyway," the liaison officer said. "We could only get them to withhold that information for so long. You know how they are about secrets." The Consortium not only eavesdropped on nearly everything people said or did on the surface, they frequently took governments to task for trying to keep things secret.
"Wait! What? We asked them to keep it quiet?"
"Yeah, we did. When that gets out..."
"You will have every republican in Washington calling for impeachment."
"Possibly, but I doubt they can make it stick."
"There will be protests in the street. Every conservative in the country is going to be out for blood." Lannister just might be tempted to join them, if he were home and off duty.
"Not just the conservatives," the liaison said.
"Oh?"
"It's like this, they have a half dozen men, a couple CIA operatives and a seal team. The CIA was running a black ops. Wanted to take out Assad, well, the whole family actually. Men, women," the liaison paused, "children."
Lannister spluttered. "Children?"
"The whole family. The history in the region, the operatives felt... It doesn't matter what they felt. They were wrong. And they weren't acting under direct orders. They thought no one would find out. It'd just be friendly fire."
"What happened?" Lannister asked.
"They knew. That's what happened. The final planning was being done just as their security grid went live. They saw and heard the whole thing. That's why they moved against us. That's why they forced us out."
"And now?"
"They are intending to try them for attempted murder. And Consortium trials are public record. Evidence is public record."
"What sort of evidence?" Lannister wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"Nano surveillance, of course. The team had already deployed before the Consortium could reach them. They got some nice crisp holographic images of American soldiers drawing a bead on little children. Children of a monstrous bastard maybe, but children all the same."
"What does this mean for us and them?"
"Those men were not acting on orders from this administration. They were rogue agents."
Plausible deniability, in other words.
"Doesn't matter. When the American people find out that was the real reason they went after us, when they see that video, it's going to be the liberals in the streets."
Lannister sat back, trying to process what he'd been told.
"Look, it's like this, the president is on his second term anyway. His party is likely going to get plowed in the midterms and he's a lame duck. This isn't about political ambition. It's about peace. It's about preventing our country from tearing apart at the seams."
"I see," Lannister said. "I asked for truth and I guess I got it. You need Cheyenne to be the noble self sacrificing hero."
"Or we're all going to be tarnished with another image."
#####
"What the hell is this?" a sailor demanded. Fox recognized him but couldn't recall his name. The man was almost a head taller than Fox and broad shouldered. Like all too many big men, he was used to intimidating people.
"What is what?" Fox replied, keeping his voice even. He knew what this was about but he was going to force the man to say it.
"What the hell are you wearing?" the man snarled, pushing him against the wall of the passageway.
Fox sighed. He had expected this challenge, but not this quickly or this aggressively. "Its a uniform, Sailor." He snapped out the last, hoping to shock some sense into the sailor.
"It's one of their uniforms," the man spat.
"Yeah, it's one of theirs." Fox was wearing his new security uniform. "Captain Lannister and Captain Dowlings agreed that our security should be combined."
"No fucking way," the man raged. "We ain't part of them. I ain't taking no orders from anyone dressed like that."
"Hey, man, chill," one of the sailors said, trying to smooth things over.
That hardened Fox. The sailors would need to respect the authority of the combined security if it was to be effective. He shoved back, hard, forcing the man to step back. "You will obey the orders of your captain and all superior officers. Unless you want to spend the rest of your quarantine in their brig, understood. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," the man mumbled after some time.
Fox rounded on the other men, but his voice was softer. "Men, listen. The captain knows what he's doing. We aren't prisoners here, but there are bound to be misunderstandings from time to time. Having combined security means you will have somebody that understands our rules, our ways."
"What kind of misunderstandings?" someone asked.
A couple of the other men answered before Fox could. "I heard one of our guys attacked a healer," a voice ventured.
"I heard some of their women, ain't really women, if you know what I mean," another said.
"There's part of the ship we can't go on, doors just won't open or something. What are they hiding?"
"The news said they didn't have homosexuals, but I saw two guys kissing, just plain as day."
"Hey, guys," Fox waved them to silence. He knew about the one incident but a lot of this was news to him. "This is what I mean. Our guy didn't attack one of them, it was just a misunderstanding. With their technology, their culture, the way they dress, sometimes it isn't clear whose male or female. But look at how most women dress on our planet, it ain't so different from men either, huh?"
Several of the people were nodding. "So if there's a problem, I'll be there okay? Help explain to them how we see things? That's what we are shooting for."
"No boy better try and kiss me," one of the men muttered.
Fox scowled. Did people really still think that way? He wouldn't have thought so, but then again a lot of the sailors were from small towns in conservative areas where people did still think like that. Luckily, a fellow sailor schooled him before Fox had to. "Dude, no boys gonna kiss you. Gays don't roll like that, not even space gays."
"Besides," one of the other men joked, "you're butt ugly."
Fox left them there, playfully arguing.
#####
Dan stuck his head in the lounge. He was in a pair of shorts, a shirt and sandals, just back from his blue treatment. The lounge was mostly empty. Bakala was unloading a small push cart of food for lunch. Two workers were assisting him.
"Good day, Mr. Dan," Bakala said with a smile. "Lunch is just getting started, it will be about..." he looked at the clock, "ten minutes."
Dan gripped his stomach. "Don't think my stomach is up for it, I was hoping to grab a drink and maybe some crackers to take back to my quarters."
Bakala nodded at one of them men and they handed a small box and a can of nausea drink over.
"Thanks."
"Our pleasure," Bakala said. "Your looking better, by the way. Your skin, not so red."
"Yeah, thanks," Dan said.
Dan made his way back to his room. Kleppie and Madsen were sitting in the back talking. Jensen was gone, receiving his own treatment presumably.
"How are you?" Madsen asked. He ran his hand over his scalp and came away with hair. He scowled.
"I'm fine," Dan answered, "just wiped out. You guys should do the sensible thing and just get your head shaved you know."
"Yeah, but I don't know," Madsen said. "Something about losing it."
"Yeah, I know, but it's less depressing, to be waiting for new hair to grow than waiting to lose the old."
"You're probably right," Kleppie said.
Dan climbed into his bunk and lay down. Three days. That was nothing, three days. He already felt a new routine setting in. He had breakfast with his men and then checked in on Cheyenne. Afterwards he saw the healers. They had only so many blue stations for reducing radiation and the time had to be scheduled. His time was the last watch of the morning, about 10:30 am. Afterwards he was so wiped out by that little activity that he came back and napped most of the afternoon. Then came supper, evening with the men in their quarters and sleep, again. Rinse and repeat.
#####
"They are using you," Cheyenne's mom declared as soon as the kids had said their good-byes and left for school.
Cheyenne scowled. "What are you on about, Mom?"
"They are using you. Cheyenne, the big hero. Your picture is all over the news. It's all James talks about, how you are a big hero. Its practically around the clock, showing your picture, talking about what you did."
"She kind of is the hero, isn't she?" Janda commented to Lana.
"So what?" Cheyenne protested.
"They are trying to sell the Consortium on us. Want us to think it's all perfect between us and them. That's all they are doing. Everyone says so."
"Everyone who?" Cheyenne asked. She groaned inwardly as Mom recited names. Figures, the conservative shock jocks are already spinning this to be some sort of liberal conspiracy. Yet at the back of her mind something was bothering her, had been bothering her since Dan's visit. Dan didn't get to talk to his family. None of them did, according to him, just Cheyenne.
She was the hero, he had said. He had laughed the whole incident off but it bothered Cheyenne. She wasn't used to preferential treatment, she didn't believe in it. Fair was fair, in her book.
"Mom? I'm kind of tired," Cheyenne lied. "I will call you again in the morning, that'll be your evening, when the kids are back, okay?"
It took a couple of times of saying this to derail her mom's rant about politics and how Cheyenne was being used. Finally, she let her go.
"Am I getting preferential treatment?" she asked Janda after Mom hung up.
Janda shrugged the question off. "You are the hero. You stood out on the deck and fired the missile."
"I only did what I had to," she snapped.
"Yes," Lana agreed, "but you did it at the moment that was the hardest. That's what makes it heroic."
"Are the others going to get to talk to their families?" she asked.
"I don't know," Lana said, "that's not my call. I would think so."
Cheyenne shook her head in frustration, but it wasn't her healers she was mad at. They couldn't control her command. When she spoke again, she made small talk. Soon exhaustion claimed her, as though her body was making good on the lie she'd told her mom, and she slept.