Good advice, mum. Really good advice. Just keep going.
It saved a lot of thinking. Autopilot. Too stupid to kill. Too ignorant to see a defeat staring you in the face.
Sometimes you just ended up beyond the crisis-point not knowing how you’d lived.
Narani had said something about breakfast. Bren found his mind at one moment far, far distant, with a space station that ought to have died and hadn’t—and local at the next moment, with a captain who shouldn’t have died, and had; and then planetbound, with his staff’s warning about Assassins’ Guild activity on the station, and Eidi, who he believed had faithfully carried his messages.
And not to forget that incongruous ceremony for Valasi, a funeral years late for a father Tabini had probably had a hand in assassinating.
And the chance that Ginny Kroger was working for Shawn Tyers, who’d landed in the Presidency after years of spy-chasing in the Foreign Office.
No. It was a chase around far too many bushes. Ramirez had been in lousy health since the Tamun mutiny, had been downright frail for months. It took no outside agency to explain why a man with one foot in the grave—so to speak—tipped right over at a bad moment.
He hadn’t had that much sleep.
“Nandi,” Algini said from the doorway. “Jase-paidhi.”
God, he thought. What else?
He’d slept in his clothes, doubtless to his staff’s distress. He got up and took the call.
“Bren,” Jase said.
“I’m here.” He already knew it wasn’t good news. Jase sounded exhausted. Far from exuberant.
“The council has voted,” Jase said, and chose a slow, considerate ship-speech. “We’re going out to the other station. Imminently. I moved to delay for a month. I argued. I was voted down.”
The ship was leaving dock. Leaving the planet.
Chasing after a problem they all, some less willing than others, had in common.
Deserting them.
“Without consultation? Jase, I still haven’t been able to get through to Tabini.”
“The proposition’s going to the crew in general council. In about an hour. Ogun’s wasting no time at all.”
With the crew suspecting a double-cross, fast movement on some course of action was the best thing. In that sense it was a good thing the council had decided—but the decision was far from the balanced outcome he wanted.
“I’m not upset they’re going. But they’re moving without a response from the aiji. He may agree, but he has to give his agreement. I know he’s stalling, but there are other issues down there. This is dangerous stuff, and it’s going to create ill will.”
“I know. I argued that point. Ogun listened, and he and Sabin still voted together. Departure’s imminent… granted the crew agrees. And they will. All they have to do is send essential personnel to stations and flip the master switch. They’ll run tests. But the ship’s in running order. There’s not going to be that long a delay. Then there’s no more debate.”
“Are you going? Or are you staying here?”
A small pause. “I want to stay. It would make some sense. You and I can work together. But on this one, I’m not sure whether Ogun will vote with me, either. I’m not sure he wants someone here who cooperates that easily with you and Tabini. I know Sabin wouldn’t like my being left as liaison. But I’m damn little use in operations. I’m putting our conversation into the log, by the way.”
If Jase was speaking his own dialect, overhearing was always a possibility, and he hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t say in captain’s council.
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll be talking to Ogun and Sabin, if I can, trying to argue them into leaving me here. Here, I’m useful. It’s the best outcome I can think of.”
“It shows good faith to Tabini, for one other cogent argument.”
“That’s a point. I’ll use it. I’ve got to go, Bren.”
“Thanks. Thanks for the advisement.”
Thanks for the advisement.
Was he surprised? Not that surprised.
Breakfast was all but on the table. He’d upset Bindanda if he let it go cold. He saw the maidservant hesitating just beyond the door, an earnest young face, too good sense to interrupt the paidhi in a phone call: she advised him simply by her waiting presence.
“Yes, nadi-ji,” he said. He was cold. “My indoor coat, if you please.”
She hurried to the foyer closet and brought it back. He slipped it on, unrumpled, morning ritual, calming to jangled nerves. One day and the next. Routine. The cosmic carpet was about to go out from under them, but they observed the amenities. And he’d gotten about two hours’ sleep.
Banichi and Jago had likewise turned up for breakfast, black-uniformed, informal and comfortable—armed. They always were. And they probably hadn’t slept either.
“We may have to send a courier down to Shejidan,” Bren said. “Can we hurry the shuttle? Immediate launch? There’s reason to ask.”
“One will learn, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano?” Banichi had his earpiece in, and listened, and gave a little inclination of his head. “Tano will inquire during breakfast.”
“The ship’s going,” he said to Banichi and Jago. “They’re holding a vote of the crew, but I have a notion it’s going to pick up and go. One has to ask still how much of a presence they’re going to leave here. We need technical people to continue with the ship-building and train atevi personnel to manage it. So now we learn, one supposes, whether Ramirez-aiji meant us to have a starship at all, or whether it was all show, to get his ship fueled. That’s why we need a courier. The ship is about to power up, preparatory to leaving. And the aiji doesn’t answer me. Has there been any response from the Guild?“
“Nothing,” Banichi said. “No answer at all. Which is unprecedented, Bren-ji.”
So was all of it. Currents were moving. Big ones. “If Tabini won’t answer our messages, then we have somehow to rattle his doors. If we do it in error, if we disturb what’s afoot—well, that’s a risk. The aiji knows us, that we’re apt to try something. And I think now we have to take that risk.”
“One understands,” Banichi murmured. The two of them took their seats at table, fortunate three. Silver dishes were arranged. Servants stood by to serve, and began with tasty cold jellies in the shape of the traditional eggs. Bindanda had been very clever, and the quasi-eggs were very spicy, and good.
“Excellent,” they agreed, and complimented Bindanda’s handiwork as the next course proved to be a vegetable and nut pate surrounding stuffed mushrooms with small split-nut fins. Bindanda put the station’s synthetic cheese loaf far in the shade.
Could one even think politics over such a breakfast?
Bren did, and he was sure Banichi and Jago did.
Nor were they quite out of touch with Tano and Algini, having their quasi-fish in the informality of the security station.
Banichi murmured, quietly, urgently, at a hiatus in the serving, “A shuttle has just launched. This would be the freight shuttle.”
His heart beat fast. “Early, isn’t it?”
“A little early,” Jago said.
“A courier to us?” It made a certain sense, when he was trying desperately to decide who of his staff to send down to Tabini.
It was about damned time, was what.
“One has no information,” Banichi said. “Possible that we’ll hear before docking.”
“Possible that there’s a security force aboard?” Bren had his voice down, trying to preserve propriety, but a shuttle: that was a two-edged prospect. “I wish very much that Tabini would consult, nadiin-ji.”
Understatement, twice over. Tabini had tacitly demanded one simple thing of Ramirez in return for his support of the ship: control of the station. The ship maintained an iron hand over personnel’s comings and goings, and over communications, but atevi were set at key physical points of the station. And to Bren’s observation, both powers thought they ran things, while Mospheirans though
t they ran the business operations and the commerce, such as there was—they did that fairly undisputed.
And everyone had tacitly agreed not to challenge each other, under Ramirez’s command.
Now Ramirez was gone, taking all his secrets with him. And now they had their heaviest-lift shuttle arriving, nearly on routine, but just a worrisome little bit early—while the ship-crew was voting to pull the only starship out of the agreement and go off on a mission to stick their fingers into the most sensitive situation possible.
It took a degree of control to appreciate the next course, and to make small talk with his staff and the kitchen.
And at the time when they often set about their day’s business, Banichi and Jago had another revelation from the security station.
“They’re reporting only routine.”
He had a very strong feeling, all the same. He hated like hell to be taken off his guard.
“Do you know, I think we should arrange to meet the shuttle when it docks, nadiin-ji. I think perhaps we should prepare the third residency, in hopes of putting the aiji’s official answer in a somewhat better mood. If we’re wrong, we can always power the apartment down again. Tell the station and the ship we’re doing some maintenance in there.”
“A very good idea,” Banichi said.
It took a long time to warm up an apartment once it was mothballed—not quite the chill of space, but certainly the walls grew cold and difficult to warm.
“One assumes, at least,” Bren said cautiously, as they entered the study, “that Tabini has taken my advisement and Geigi’s utterly seriously. If it turns out to be several hundred of the Guild, I trust they’ll take care with the porcelains.” Heavy lift as well as antiquity made the decor in the adjacent apartment extravagantly expensive. “But it occurs to me, nadiin-ji, that the dowager is available to him, if it weren’t for Cajeiri.”
Ilisidi had been on the station, understood the station, had met with the living captains, and knew Ramirez face to face.
More, she had authority. Vast authority.
And it was very, very possible, if Tabini had to choose someone for a quick personal assessment of the situation— outranking both the paidhi and lord Geigi—Ilisidi would be a very astute observer. Very powerful. Surrounded by close, armed security.
If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.
“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”
“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”
Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.
“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”
If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.
That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.
“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”
“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”
“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”
“One can carry a message,” Jago said.
“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let him suggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”
“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.
“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”
“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.
“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To direct their response.”
“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.
“Do you think there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.
“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.
Something, at least, had changed.
There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who might have a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.
Touchy enough, his relationship with the third paidhi— touchy as Jase’s, who was her ex-lover, and who hadn’t gotten along with her.
Or maybe secrets had driven the wedge.
And secrets had been going on for years.
“I’ll try phoning Jase,” he said to Jago, and got up and did that.
“Mr, Cameron,” C1 said. “Hold on. You’re on priority to Captain Graham.”
Well, that was improved.
“Bren?” A moment later.
“Jase, we’ve got a shuttle inbound. Anyone notice?”
A small pause.
“If you’ve called to say so,” Jase said, being quick, “I take it there’s some concern.”
* * *
Chapter 10
« ^ »
Time enough to prepare. Time enough to advise allies about a conjecture of a conjecture.
Time enough to open the aiji-dowager’s former residency, set a vase with hothouse flowers on the foyer table, and arrange a welcome with a small flourish.
For once, Bren said to himself, he had gotten the edge on Tabini.
At least he hadn’t been caught with the ship just pulled out and that armed starship facing the shuttle with a disproportional balance of power. The crew had voted. The foregone conclusion was concluded. The ship would move.
But Jase had presented a possible intervening fact—and Ogun, quite unexpectedly, had given a series of small preparatory orders, maintenance checks, numerous of them. And inventory of ship’s stores. Dared one suspect cooperation?
The action of an alliance—in which Ogun might be better informed than any of them?
Ilisidi, if it was the dowager en route, had been figured out, anticipated, and factored in with astonishingly little fuss, considering all that was at stake—Ilisidi, if it was she, having a considerable lot of credit with the ship’s crew as well as the station.
No publicity yet. The shuttle wasn’t talking about passengers and the ship, busy with its mysterious inventory, hadn’t inquired.
Not even certain, while Bren anxiously figeted away the final minutes, that it wasn’t simply flour and electronics.
But they were ready when the call came that the freight shuttle would use bay 1, which was personnel.
Time to put coats on, gloves in the pockets this time, servants from Geigi’s household and his to give a final touch to the third residency.
Bay 1 was manned and ready.
And they had an entire delegation—himself, lord Geigi, and Jase, with their respective security riding up in the lift, while station operations went through the customs routine, as if the
re might be simple workers to process.
Bren thought to the contrary.
Definitely political. Incredibly expensive in terms of fuel and wear on the equipment and the cargo the shuttle ought to have been carrying, on its regular schedule… but the aiji in Shejidan used what he had to use, and had with increasing certainty gotten his messages.
They waited in the warm territory of the third deck while the docking approach was in progress. Jase met them there, with his own escort, and brought communications tied to the ship.
“Ogun certainly thinks it’s her,” Jase informed them. “Whether he’s had a communication or not, I don’t know, but there’s every indication there’s a passenger.”
They took the lift up into the cold and zero gravity of the core, exited into that vast dock where light never seemed enough.
There they floated, hovering near the residual warmth of the lift shaft. Gloved fingers made patterns in the frost on the handgrips.
The doors down in Bay 3 were capable of receiving anything the freight shuttle could hand them—objects the size of a railway car, easily, and the big cradles were capable of receiving, maneuvering, offloading contents to various sorting areas.
As it was, if they needed more confirmation, workers had rigged the hand-lines for personnel. They had instructions from C1.
And they waited. Freezing.
Bren personally tried not to look up, or down, or whatever it was. For the sake of his stomach, he mostly stared at the railing near them and the yellow safety-ropes the workers deployed between them and the shuttle hatch. Jase cheerfully drifted slightly sideways to him, Kaplan and Polano and Colby loosely maintaining position along with him: lifelong spacers, confident of the lines.