"Probably a lot. They'd need to suborn or tie up the security fleet and have a lot of money. Or sneak a sympathizer onto my station staff, which doesn't need as much unity but I think is less likely to work."

"Why less likely?"

"We have a vetting process, and anti-hacking features and other things like that."

"Nobody's on the station who doesn't work for you?"

"No, except when we get supply deliveries twice a month."

"What's security like on those?"

"Drones load everything off the delivery ship and into the loading bay, and two of the technicians count and inspect it all. Locked doors on the bay until inspection is done. There's sensors to check for stowaways, rogue drones, and so on. Inspection usually takes a full shift."

"Sounds like you have made it pretty hard to blow up your stargate. Are you worried something else will happen?"

"Worried it'll get attacked anyway. I'm under pressure to drop security - it's rather expensive. Worried the environmentalists will convince one of my current employees to help them, or already have. Worried they can make enough of a political bloc to make my superiors replace me - we are a democracy."

"You don't think your vetting process could catch people who'd be convinceable?"

"It's just a c-level because it's not a really glamorous job and we have too few candidates to keep denying some. Not exactly top secret military levels of scrutiny. And we're limited by law to how deep we can dig into their pasts."

"So it's more of a background thing than a personality thing anyway."

"Yes, more of a background check."

"Yeah, I'd definitely worry about sabotage from inside one way or the other if the environmentalists have that much traction - it's surprising to me that they do -"

"I think we attracted all the environmentalists from a dozen worlds. There's a lot of tourism and research, even if fuel mining is still the most profitable human activity on Cloudbank."

"Would you be able to fix things if sabotaged?"

"Depends on what's hit. Main reactor - no. Not unless we cannibalize a ship and open up the whole station and it'd be a huge deal and take years. If we could even do it at all. If both our discontinuities get hit, literally nothing will fix it ever. Most of the rest, probably fixable."

"Are the environmentalists looking to make a point or practically cut off traffic?"

"Well, that's a bit complicated. This is speculation on my part. I think mostly they want to make a point. But they think they don't get taken seriously by out-system representatives - Cloudbank's population is low enough it doesn't have its own government. And governments move slowly, and the public masses don't always see the big picture and there's a history of government injustice so they get frothing mad when they're told 'we're working on it' or 'this is for the best, trust us'. So they don't want to appear to only be trying to make a point, they want to be taken utterly seriously, so they have to actually threaten to destroy mining ships and actually go out and try to ram hunting vessels going after whales, actually hack into GPS systems and so on, to feel like they're getting anything done. It's stupid and destructive and kind of unavoidable in modern society."

"Could you channel their complaints some way that makes them feel like you're paying attention? Run ads where you read letters from environmentalists and talk about what's being done and nonviolent steps they could take?"

"That... Could work. It might backfire if more people criticize it than approve... But then they'd be discussing, not being violent, at least. Progressives would say I'm pandering to a vocal minority... It would be politically risky, but doing nothing is probably just as risky."

"Yeah, I'm afraid I don't have a version of the advice package that comes with a warranty."

"Few things can be truly taken back, I understand. Risk is in everything."

"Yeah."

"So. Get to know my employees better, watch out for them feeling angry and discontent and being inclined to side with the environmentalists. And run a media campaign to try and show that the government is taking their concerns seriously, so their energy goes into talk and not shows of force. If I can, actual policy changes would help. "