Defender

  “Brooks.” Sabin turned her head to appeal to the chief medic, a movement which brought nausea. She made a grab for a suction bag, and nausea replaced thought for a moment.

  Bren felt pangs of his own—the memory of that illness didn’t go away.

  “Damn you,” Sabin said behind the bag, face averted.

  “Yes, captain,” Bren said. “Damn me as you like. But I’m very sure you’d walk through fire to an objective. I suggest this is the fire, and there is an overwhelmingly important objective to be won. I came to a like conclusion once. I suggest you very well know what that objective is: their respect and their cooperation… and that you’ve been tested. Favorably tested, I might add. Do you want the objective? Do you want their cooperation, unmediated by me or by anyone else?”

  Sabin beat the nausea, dismissed the attending medic, put up a hand that trailed tubing and wiped sweat from her face. A medic started to dry it with a cloth, and she batted it away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Don’t anybody touch me.” She added a string of profanities, and breathed heavily for a moment. Bren knew. Bren utterly knew, inside and out, the war going on in Sabin’s gut, and in Sabin’s very intelligent brain.

  Sabin—slowly, this time—turned her head in Bren’s direction, not without a sideward glance toward the towering mass of atevi. Sabin’s eyes watered tears that stood in globules and blinked into small beads on her lashes. It was physiological reaction, not weakness, not—Bren was quite sure—abject fear, no fear of man, atevi, or the devil.

  “Damn you,” Sabin said. “You’re in our ship, and you’re alive on our tolerance.”

  “Captain,” Bren said, “you’re wanting supplies from our station and our planet.”

  “Your planet,” Sabin scoffed. “You’re human. Or were. Or ought to be.”

  “I am. And I still say my planet, my people, my government and my leaders. We’re not your colonists any more. And through your character, your skills, your actions over a lengthy acquaintance, you’ve won the planet’s agreement, not only in this, but in everything you could want. Everything you came to the dowager’s quarters to get, you’ve gotten—if you’re not such a fool as to let a cultural misunderstanding blow up the deal.” He knew Sabin’s temper—that it was extreme—but always under control. And he’d been on the station long enough to know two more things about Sabin, first that the crew’s dislike of her did get under her skin, and that she did make occasional efforts at humanity—and second, that there was a requisite level of honesty and bluntness in dealing with her. Do her credit, truth was one of her virtues. “My apologies, captain, my personal and profound apologies for what you’re going through at the moment. To this moment I don’t know if it was intentional. Atevi custom can be arcane. But the dowager’s attendance here—” He gestured with a glance toward the dark wall of atevi. “—Her attendance on you is an extreme statement. She’s saying she views you favorably. She respects you. She respects your strength.” Ego repair seemed in order, and there were qualities he knew Sabin respected. “Because you haven’t buckled, captain, therefore she’ll be able to cooperate with you, the same way she cooperates with the Mospheiran president and the aiji himself. There are very few authorities that she remotely respects. There’s only one authority on earth she halfway abides, but she allows a very few equals. Therefore you were at her table; therefore she sat through—let me very bluntly refresh your memory, captain—your pushing her very, very hard to see what she’d do. And you know you did that. You meant to do it. You wanted to provoke her to push back. Well, now you’ve both proved something. So can we get beyond that, if you please, and walk through that fire, and get to what both sides really want out of this voyage?”

  Sabin had been lucid, and listened to him, her mouth set to a thin line. She wasn’t ready to speak, but she was holding on to arguments as they sailed past her doubtless aching brain.

  “I’m mobile,” she said, “as long as we’re in zero-g. I’ve got my tubes. Everything floats. Give me a headache-killer. Damn you and your schemes, Mr. Cameron, and damn your atevi friends. I’m going to the bridge. Graham isn’t in charge.”

  “Yes, captain.” The chief medic made a move to bundle the tubes and the fluid-delivery apparatus—wrapped them together in plastic and tucked them toward Sabin, still pumping their stabilizing content.

  “Sabin declares she will go to the bridge, nadiin-ji,” Bren said in Ragi, knowing what he was throwing into motion—and avoiding names. “She is challenging. Advise the bridge.”

  Sabin looked at him, quietly rotating toward level, toward that eye contact that human beings wanted with each other, that contact of souls, and it was a blistering, burning contact— momentary, as Sabin sought, with the help of others, to leave.

  There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. Jase might try to prove she was out of her head and seize command by virtue of the senior captain’s incapacity, but treatment and sheer dogged determination was overcoming the substance in Sabin’s bloodstream, and she was going to get to the lift, and she was going to challenge Jase, and call on her own bodyguard in the situation… Jase’s bodyguard all being here.

  That, he could help.

  “Mr. Kaplan,” Bren said. “Assist the captain.”

  Kaplan looked at him, Kaplan with doubtless the same desperate set of thoughts going on behind that distressed expression, Kaplan knowing he shouldn’t be taking orders from an outsider, in support of a captain hostile to his captain. But there was a level of trust between them, of long standing, and Kaplan did move, and the rest of the human escort did, willing to assist Sabin… least of several evils. Kaplan himself offered a hand to assist Sabin’s movement.

  And an alarm siren went off through the ship.

  And stopped.

  “This is Captain Graham. The Mospheirans are now aboard. We’re going to release the hookups and stand off, preparatory to spin-up. Take hold. Take immediate precautions.”

  Jase repeated the same advisement in Ragi and Sabin fumbled after her communications unit, struggling for composure. “C1! Captain Graham is not in charge. Put this to general address! Captain Graham is not in charge. First shift take stations.”

  Humans in the medical facility stood as if paralyzed.

  It didn’t come over the general address. Sabin’s advisement hadn’t gone out.

  C1, on a decision C1 probably hadn’t made alone, hadn’t cooperated.

  The motion warning sounded, staccato bursts, warning anyone who’d ever studied the emergency procedures not to be moving from secure places. The warning went on for over a minute, and medical personnel scrambled, securing loose lines, bits of equipment, checking latches.

  The warning stopped.

  Almost immediately a crash resounded through the ship frame.

  Lights dimmed and came up bright again.

  “We have released,” Jase’s voice said. “Stand by.”

  As if Sabin hadn’t said anything. Lights on the intercom panel strobed yellow: caution, caution, take care.

  Medics moved to take Sabin. Atevi shifted position. Bren grabbed a safety-rail, heart pounding.

  “Damn you,” Sabin shouted.

  The world moved, slowly, subtly, the same feeling as the shuttle had. Strange, Bren thought. Strange that something so massive as Phoenix could move like that, just so softly.

  “This is Captain Ogun,” the intercom said, “speaking from station offices, wishing you a safe voyage and a safe return. Our hearts go with you. Be assured that the cooperation of world and station will continue, preserving and building a safe home base for this ship and others. We have been very fortunate in our welcome here.”

  “Stand by,” the intercom said then, this time in Jase’s voice.

  Muscles tensed. Medics cradled their unwilling charge.

  “Have no doubts,” the intercom said, again in Ogun’s voice, “of our faithful keeping of this port. We will keep you in mind until you’re safely home, with, we hope, all our mi
ssing crew, and all our citizens.”

  Recorded message, Bren thought desperately. God, it was going bad. Sabin was never going to forgive the dowager, or Jase, who he was sure had just played a departure message out of context.

  Sabin damned sure wouldn’t forgive him, once Sabin knew the truth.

  But Sabin, hazed and hurting, didn’t fight any longer. She’d made a valiant effort, a heroic effort. Bren knew, in his own gut, what it cost, and wondered at an old woman’s stamina and will… even to contemplate traveling up to the bridge in her condition. Gravity was the trump card, gravity, that pulled bodies down to decks and reasserted ordinary capacities. Sabin couldn’t make it—couldn’t reach the lift. Couldn’t stand, or walk. And knew it.

  Motion started. A bulkhead came toward their backs at glacial speed, so, so slowly, while at the same time bodies and objects moved as slowly toward the deck. Small loose items simply drifted across the room, a bundle of tubing, a handful of tissues, a towel, and Bren felt the bulkhead against his shoulder as he felt his feet contacting the deck.

  Sabin went rackingly sick. The medics contained the situation, and there went the delicate chemical balance, both positive and negative. She could not hold herself on her feet, that was the plain fact, as objects slowly acquired weight to go with their momentum. The pressure of feet against the floor equaled and then exceeded that against the bulkhead.

  The bulkhead pressure stopped. There was a very queasy moment, and then Bren became aware he was standing as he would on the station, with the ship drifting inertial.

  And themselves sideways on the inside of a torus. There were things the mind didn’t want to know or reckon with.

  Sabin was convulsively ill, and the medics, protective of her, saw a cot let down and Sabin bundled into it.

  “Mr. Cameron,” the chief doctor said, “I’ll ask you to take this occupation force out into the corridor. Captain’s orders.”

  “No, sir,” Bren said quietly. He had a dozen arguments, but only one matching Sabin’s order: “We’re here at the sitting captain’s orders, and we feel we should regard that instruction until Captain Sabin’s recovered.”

  The doctor wasn’t happy. “Watch them,” the doctor instructed a subordinate, “and don’t let them touch her. Don’t let them touch anything.”

  Oh, what a happy situation.

  But there they sat. Or stood.

  They could all end up under arrest, once the matter shook out—God forbid Sabin should die, though that would solve certain things at a stroke, and it could happen very, very fast if Ilisidi so much as flicked a finger. Bren walked over to her, bowed, and explained quickly, in a low voice.

  “Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji is furious and takes it that she was poisoned, on which I have not been so forward as to claim any knowledge…”

  Ilsidi smiled—was it a smile?—and rested a hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder. “She is alive and quite well. It was a very small dose. But we will not be constrained in movement or access, and that you may tell her.”

  There was an arrival at that point. Ginny Kroger walked in, with a handful of the station’s security guards, and the room… already crowded… became very crowded indeed.

  “Bren,” Ginny said, and gave a little bow toward the dowager. “Dowager.” She said it in Ragi, a courtesy. Only a few years ago no human but the paidhi ever addressed an ateva, and it had become gingerly matter-of-course that one should do so. “We understand there’s been a little question of our freedom to move about. We also understand the captain’s taken ill. We’re here. At your service.”

  Ginny, of all people. Bren’s heart gave a thump; and he had to ask what the hell was going on.

  Jase, he thought then. Jase, on the bridge, with freedom of communications.

  “I’d like to keep this civil,” he murmured, trying to keep it out of Sabin’s drugged hearing. “The captain pushed the dowager, hard. We’ve had a bit of a blow-up and the dowager’s willing to have it be settled, tit for tat. Given the freedom from restriction. That’s how things are.”

  “Mr. Cameron.” The doctor was irate. “I’ll thank you to take this mob out.”

  “We can move the captain to the dowager’s quarters, where we can care for her,” Bren said… not having consulted in the least, but he took a chance, high and wide. “We feel, given the nature of the reaction, that we ought to remain a resource for her… and we take our commitment to Captain Graham very seriously. We will remove her from the premises if we feel she’s in danger, damned right we will.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “You can’t enforce it,” Bren said. “Nor should. This is international politics you’re taking a wrench to, sir, and my patient is the agreement that pastes three species together and keeps your ship operational. In that capacity, I’m supported by two of your captains and both the planet’s nations. And I’m not budging.”

  “Cameron.”

  That was from Sabin. He paid attention, and walked cautiously over to the bed.

  “You damn bastard,” Sabin said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I am and please attribute the misunderstandings to me, with profound personal apologies. I know the dowager’s limited in her conversation with you, but she’d much rather have an agreement and a civilized understanding. Her presence here is both an honor to you and an expression of her wish to have an agreement.”

  Sabin’s scowling face was pale and beaded with sweat.

  “You think I’m tracking?”

  “I think you’re hearing things, and they come and they go, rather like talking down a pipe. Am I right? But I think you know the essentials. I think you know you can have a voyage with allies—or maybe that voyage shouldn’t take place at all. If we can’t bring the peace we’ve reached—out there—then what are we bringing, captain? If the representatives of the world and the station have to be locked belowdecks and kept out of decisions, we’re not bringing them damned much hope.”

  “Who are you going to poison next? The pilot? That will be useful.”

  “Captain, here’s a simple question. Did you back Pratap Tamun in an attempt to get information out of Ramirez? Was that where it went wrong?”

  “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “That is a fairly reasonable suspicion, isn’t it? You nominated Tamun. You generally supported him. Tamun wanted information on conditions at the station, because he was suspicious there was something withheld, and Ramirez wouldn’t give it to him. If he’d had what Ramirez knew, he could have brought the whole crew in on the mutiny—but he didn’t have it. And if he didn’t have it, maybe you didn’t have it. Now every eyewitness but one is dead. And you just appropriated him to your staff.”

  Sabin blinked slowly, sweat beaded in the lines about her eyes. The expression was somewhat bewildered. It might be she’d lost the threads of the question. It might be bewilderment of a different sort.

  “Jenrette?”

  “All the others died in the coup. So there’s Jenrette. And you wanted him away from Jase. And we know it.”

  A slow series of blinks. Sabin’s face wasn’t accustomed to bewilderment. The map of lines was better suited to frowns.

  “Damn this headache.” She seemed then to lose the pieces. And grope after them. “You’ve built a fairy castle, Mr. Cameron. And poisoned me because of it?”

  “Only incidentally because of it, because if I’d believed you were on the side of the angels, or if you’d understood my position, Captain Sabin, you and I might have talked and the level of tension on this ship wouldn’t have prompted you to restrict the dowager’s movements and insult her at her own dinner table.”

  “You were the translator, Mr. Cameron.”

  “I can’t ameliorate body language, Captain Sabin.”

  “You… and Jase Graham. Damn him.”

  “Damn us both, captain. Let’s be fair. Did you know about the situation on Reunion?”

  Sabin’s hand wandered to her head, shaded her eyes a moment, shutting him out.

>   Then dropped.

  “Where’s Jules Ogun? Does your coup extend to the station?”

  “Call him. I’m sure Jase can patch you through. What’s on the station is what we agreed on, a cooperative power-sharing, Captain Ogun, Lord Geigi, and Mr. Paulson. And considering everything that’s gone on, I’m not sure we’re not all going back aboard the station.”

  “Things onstation are what they were.” Ginny moved to the foot of Sabin’s cot.

  “Who’s that?” Focusing clearly hurt.

  “Ginny Kroger, captain. Our deep concern for what’s happening here. This isn’t the way we wanted to start the voyage.”

  “Not what I planned, either,” Sabin muttered.

  “So things onstation are secure,” Bren said. “And we can bring the ship back in to dock and try to settle this—you, your crew, the station… everybody. It does admit a certain failure on our part. Maybe we can avoid that.”

  Sabin shut her eyes. There was a lengthy silence. Bren looked at Ginny.

  “She’s pretty damn sick,” he said. “She’ll be all right, but she’s in no shape to make decisions right now. I don’t think this ship should leave port right now. We’ve been lied to, by Ramirez or by the whole Captain’s Council. We know there are records we weren’t given. We know there’s been deception on deception—whether it’s the old Guild running this show or not, no one’s sure.”

  “Guild, hell,” Sabin muttered, eyes still shut. “We never were sure. Just put a brake on it, Cameron. Don’t speculate.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and folded his hands and stopped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.

  “First off, tell the dowager she’s a right damn bastard.”

  It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. “Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent.”