I found Hart a half hour later, on the other side of Phoenix Station, in a reception for his boss, Ambassador Abumwe.
“She got the Meritorious Service Award,” Hart said. He was on his second glass of spiked punch and he was never one who held his alcohol very well, so he was on his way to being a little tipsy. He was also dressed in a formal diplomatic uniform. I thought it made him look like a doorman. But then I had just spent the better part of the year in sweatpants, so who the hell was I to say.
“What did she do that was meritorious?” I asked.
“She kept her entire staff alive while Earth Station was being attacked, for starters,” Hart said. “You heard about Earth Station?”
I nodded. The Colonial Union was pretty good at keeping bad news from reaching the civilians of the colonies, but some pieces of news are harder to hide than others. For example, the news that the Earth’s sole space station was destroyed by unknown terrorists, killing thousands including the cream of the Earth’s diplomatic corps, and that the Earth blamed the Colonial Union for the attack and severed all diplomatic and economic ties.
Yeah, that one was a little hard to hide.
The Colonial Union’s official story about it, said only that it had been a terrorist attack; the rest of it I had filled in from former shipmates and friends like Hart. When you live at the bottom of a gravity well, you only tend to hear the official story. The people who actually move between the stars, on the other hand, hear a lot more. It’s hard to sell the official story to people who can see things for themselves.
“Some people saved themselves,” said Harry Wilson, a friend of Hart’s who he’d just introduced to me. Wilson was a member of the Colonial Defense Forces; his green skin gave him away. That and the fact that he looked the same age as my kid brother, but was probably something like 120 years old. Having a genetically modified, not-quite-human body had certain advantages, as long as you didn’t mind being the same color as guacamole. “Your friend Hart here, for example. He got himself to an escape pod and ditched from Earth Station as it was literally blowing up around him.”
“A slight exaggeration,” Hart said.
“No, it actually was literally blowing up around you,” Wilson said.
Hart waved him off and looked back over to me. “Harry’s making it sound more dramatic than it was.”
“It sounds pretty dramatic,” I admitted.
“Space station blowing up around him,” Wilson said again, emphasizing the last part.
“I was unconscious for most of the trip down to Earth,” Hart said. “I think that’s probably a good thing.”
I nodded toward Ambassador Abumwe, who I recognized from pictures, and who was on the other side of the reception hall, shaking hands with well-wishers in a receiving line. “How was the ceremony?”
“Painful,” Wilson said.
“It was all right,” Hart said.
“Painful,” Wilson repeated. “The guy who gave out the medal—”
“Assistant Secretary of State Tyson Ocampo,” Hart said.
“—was a fatuous gasbag,” Wilson continued. “I’ve met a lot of people in the diplomatic corps who were in love with the sound of their own voice, but this guy. He and his voice should just get a room.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Hart said to me.
“You saw Abumwe’s face while that dude was going on,” Wilson said, to Hart.
“Ocampo,” Hart said, clearly pained that the assistant secretary of state was being referred to as “that dude.” “The number two man in the department. And there was nothing going on with her face,” Hart said.
“She was definitely wearing her ‘please shut the hell up,’ face,” Wilson said, to me. “Trust me, I have seen it many times.”
I looked over to Hart. “It’s true,” he said. “Harry has seen the ambassador’s ‘shut up’ face more than most.”
“Speak of the devil,” Wilson said, and motioned slightly with his head. “Look who’s coming this way.” I glanced over and saw a middle-aged man in a resplendent Colonial Union diplomatic uniform, followed by a young woman, heading our direction.
“The fatuous gasbag?” I asked.
“Secretary Ocampo,” Hart said, emphatically.
“Same thing,” Wilson said.
“Gentlemen,” Ocampo said, coming up to us.
“Hello, Secretary Ocampo,” Wilson said, very smoothly, and I thought I saw Hart relax maybe a tiny bit. “What may we do for you, sir?”
“Well, since you’re standing between me and the punch, perhaps you would be so kind as to get me a cup,” he said.
“Let me get that for you,” Hart said, and nearly dropped his own glass in the process.
“Thank you,” Ocampo said. “Schmidt, yes? One of Abumwe’s people.” He then turned to Wilson. “And you are?”
“Lieutenant Harry Wilson.”
“Really,” Ocampo said, and sounded impressed. “You’re the one who saved the daughter of the secretary of state of the United States when Earth Station was destroyed.”