Explorer (39 page)

Becker surely saw the disaster looming. He didn’t entirely leap at the chance.

“We’ve got to tell the people,” Coroia said desperately.

“And start a panic,” Becker said. “There’s got to be orders. Central’s got to give orders, Manny.”

“They have to,” Jase said, “but they’re not doing that. We’ve warned them. But our senior captain’s disappeared on station. You had orders to come in here and scope us for whatever you could find. For
what
, gentlemen?”

“For irregularities,” Becker said.

“For a head count. For a check on who’s in command.”

“Yes, sir,” Becker said.

“So you’ve got that information, plain and clear. And
then
what was Guild going to do?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” Jase thumbed four or five buttons on his handheld. “And we’re not going to try to maintain this station up with an alien ship breathing down our necks. You wonder what that ship’s sitting out there for? It’s sitting out there because you’ve got one of its people and it claims this space, if you want my interpretation. It claims this solar system, it’s sitting there, probably taking notes on what comes and goes here, possibly communicating with others, and we’re not disposed to argue with its sense of possession. We’re getting the lot of you out of here, we’re establishing defenses back at Alpha, and we’re drawing the line there. This station is written off, to be vacated, best gesture we can make to calm this situation
down. If we can get fueled and negotiate our way past that alien craft, we’re getting you, your families, and Chairman Braddock out of here.” He showed Becker and crew the handheld. “This is your own station schematic, gentlemen, straight out of Archive. With the damage marked. Right now, give me specifics, where this prisoner is, where the primary citizen residence areas are, where Guild command is, and where our senior captain’s likely to be, if she’s been arrested. If you want your kids safe—give us facts.”

Curious sight—Jase’s machine, Becker and the detainees vying to figure out the diagram through the thick plastic grid, nudging one another for a better view, and to point out this and that feature, suddenly a case of Guild loyalty be damned. Atevi observers were curious, too, more about the human doings than about the image—not least, Ilisidi, Bren was well sure, who kept her great-grandson protectively by her side as her security kept hands very near weapons, all of them sensing what they would call the shifting of man’chiin. Atevi would understand all the impulses to betrayal, all the emotional upheaval Becker and his men might suffer . . . and would not understand what pushed matters over the edge.

“Becker-nadi has seen the threat to his household, aiji-ma,” Bren said quietly. “He and his associates conclude their Guild has failed them and failed to deal honestly with them.”

The dreadful cane thumped down. “Observe, great-grandson. Mercy encourages a shift in man’chiin. Does it not? If it also encourages fools to think us weak, then we do not lose the advantage of surprise.”

“Yes, mani-ma. Shall we now attack the station?”

A thwack of Ilisidi’s finger against a boyish skull. “Learn! These are humans. These are your allies. Observe what they do. One may assume either reasons or actions will be different.”

Jase’s attention was momentarily for the schematic Becker had in hand, the things Becker was saying . . . the paidhiin both knew, however, the urges percolating through atevi blood and bone, potent as a force of nature: the
aishi-prejid
, the essential strength of civilized association, had to be upheld,
had
to be supported by all participants, and would survive, while the opposition’s command structure was tottering, its supporters seeking shelter. Translation: a weakness had to be invaded and fixed quickly, for the common good, even across battlelines. Among atevi, the web of association, once fractured, was impractically hard to repair.

War? That word only vaguely translated out of Ragi, and at certain times, not accurately at all; but as applied to the fragile systems of a space station utterly dependent on its technicians, the atevi view might be the more applicable.

“If
we
move,” Bren added in the lowest of tones, only for keen atevi hearing, “one fears atevi intervention will rouse fear and resentment among local humans. They will see you as dangerous invaders. If we are to go in to use force, it may be best humans do it.”

“Kaplan-nadi and his team are insufficient,” Banichi muttered under his breath. “How can they improve on Sabin-aiji’s fate?”

That
was the truth: if Kaplan and crew could get directly to the ordinary workers, they would have the advantage of persuasion—but getting to the common folk wasn’t at all likely.
Sabin
had tried walking aboard into Guild hands, and that hadn’t gone well at all. Ship-folk had no skill at infiltration.

Becker and crew, evidently the best the station had, hadn’t moved with great subtlety. The very concept of subtle force seemed, in this human population, lost in the Archive—along with the notion of how to deal with outsiders.

But to risk Banichi and Jago . . . even if fifth-deck atevi
wer
e the ship’s remaining skilled operators . . .

“We
can move very quietly,” Jago said. “We can find this asset.”

“If you go aboard, nadiin-ji,” Bren muttered back, “you can’t go without a translator.”

“We know certain words,” Jago objected in a low voice.

“You know certain words, but not enough,” Bren said. “If you go, I shall go, nadiin. Add my numbers with yours. I can reassure those we meet. I can meet certain ones without provoking alarm and devastation, which cannot serve us in securing a peaceful evacuation.”

Banichi listened, then moved closer to Cenedi, and there was a sudden, steady undertone of Ragi debate under the human negotiations.

“Nadi,” Bren said to Jago, who had stayed close by him. “Are we prepared for this move?”

“Always,” Jago said.

Oh, there was a plan. He’d personally authorized them to form a plan, but he had a slithering suspicion that, in another sense,
plans
had existed, involving the same station diagrams, from the first moment the aiji-dowager had arrived in the mix.

And meanwhile they had a handful of Guild operatives now crowding one another at the grid to point out the architecture of their own offices, pointing and arguing about the location of a prisoner none of them claimed to have seen—while crew who’d become spectators took mental notes for gossip on two-and three-deck. Openness? An open door for the crew? Jase certainly came through on that notion, and crew listened, wide-eyed, occasionally offering advice.

Jase had to be hearing everything, two-sided jumble, atevi and human. His skin had a decided pallor, exhaustion, if not the situation itself.

He listened.

And took his handheld and pocketed it. “Mr. Kaplan. Mr. Polano.”

“Sir,” came from both.

“Reasonable comforts for these men. Unauthorized personnel, clear the area. Nand’ dowager.” A little bow to Ilisidi, who, with Cajeiri, had been listening to Banichi and Cenedi with considerable interest. “Mr. Cameron. Same request. I’ll see you in my office, Mr. Cameron, if you will.”

Jase looked white as the proverbial sheet. Crew didn’t argue any point of it. Bren translated the request: “One believes the ship-aiji has reached a point of extreme fatigue, nandi, and wishes to withdraw.”

“With great appreciation for the dowager’s intervention,” Jase said with a little bow. Weary as he was, court etiquette came back to him. But he retained the awareness simply to walk away, not ceding priority to Ilisidi, a ruler in his own domain.

“Go,” Ilisidi said to Bren, with a little motion of her fingers.

While several Guild officers, having vied with one another in spilling what might be their station’s inner secrets, hung at the gridwork watching Jase’s departure. With alien presence and crew resentment both in their vicinity, their stares and their thoughts, too, following the ship’s captain who went away in possession of all they’d said.

They looked worried. And that lent the most credibility to the information they’d given.

“My picture’s missing,” Jase said indignantly, when Bren walked into his upstairs office. “Of all damned things for them to take.”

“Galley,” Bren said. And dropped into a chair. “I nabbed it.”

Jase gave a shaky sigh. “I’ll want it back.”

“You’re done in, Jase. Get some rest. Turn things over at least for two hours, while we analyze what we’ve got.”

“I can’t let the dowager take independent action.”

“
You’ve
dissuaded her. Ship-aiji, she says. She accepts that notion. But in the way of things, if you have atevi allies, they’re going to act where it seems logical. We have to face the possibility we won’t get Sabin back. We
might
even have a worse scenario, that Sabin completely levels with the Guild and sells us out. The dowager wanted to know whether you can lead. I think she’s satisfied.”

Fatigue showed in the tremor of Jase’s fingers as they ran over the desk surface. “I wish I was.”

“Get some rest, Jase, dammit. Take a pill, if that’s what it takes. I wouldn’t like to predict our situation without a strong hand at the helm—so to speak, Jase. I truly wouldn’t. And you’re it.”

“We know there’s one alien ship out in the dark,” Jase said. “For all we know—there could be another. Or three or four. We know what we see. In my mind—and I don’t wholly trust my mind at the moment—agreement with them isn’t inconsequential here. Whether or not Sabin double crosses us, she doesn’t need to tell the station what the aliens out there want—not if they’ve been holding a hostage. The hostage becomes a bargaining piece, right along with the fuel. And Banichi’s talking about getting to him. Is that the deal?”

“About that, about the fuel.”

“Our technicians aren’t sure about that lock. They’re studying the problem.”

“So what are our options?”

Jase rocked back in his chair, thinking, it was clear. His eyes were red. His voice had gotten a ragged edge. “Our options are to sit here not fueling, not taking on passengers, and hoping the station’s hostage keeps the situation stable, or to give the situation a shove.”

“In what way?”

“Make life harder for the Guild. Put pressure on them to fuel this ship. Becker says the population’s about seventeen thousand—more than we thought. I hope he’s telling the truth. It’ll be tight, but we can handle that number.”

“Three things lend the Guild hope of holding out. Their control of the fuel. Us. And their hostage.”

“Four things. Their absolute control of what the station population knows. If they didn’t have the hostage, they’d have to fear the aliens. If they had to fear the aliens, they’d still have the fuel, and they’d have us—assuming we’d fight to protect them. They’re sure of that. But if they lose their lock on information—that’s serious. If they lose that, they lose the people.”

“And the station goes catastrophic in a matter of hours.
With
the fuel.”

“And the machinery to deliver it. If they lose control—things become a lot more dangerous. Everything becomes a lot more dangerous.” A tremor of fatigue came into Jase’s voice. “If we try to come in on station communications to tell the truth, their technicians can stop us cold. Anybody aboard who actually got the information, they’d tag before he spread it far.” A little rock backward in the chair. “They’ve got tech on their side, in that regard. But I’ve been thinking. There’s high tech, and there’s low tech. And
your
on-board supplies include paper.”

True. The ship didn’t regularly use that precious downworld item. Reunion wouldn’t. Atevi society, however—proper atevi society—ran on it. Paper. Wax. Seals, ribbons, everything proper as proper could be.

“Handbills,” Bren said, catching the glimmer of Jase’s idea.

“Handbills,” Jase said.

“If we do that—they’ll mob the accesses. And we can’t tell honest stationers from Guild enforcers.”

“They can’t mob us. We’re not hard-docked. Boarders will have to come up the tube, with all that means.”

“No gravity and no heat. If we
don’t
open fast, they’ll die.”

“They also can’t come at us in huge numbers. They have to board by lift-loads, and go where our lift system delivers them: the tether-tube is linked to the number one airlock. Ten at a time’s its limit, and we can override the internal lift buttons.”

“So you’re planning to do it.”

“I’m considering it as an option. I’ll write the handbills. I know the culture. I take it Banichi has an idea of his own.”

“Somewhat down your path. Getting our hands on this hostage. Knocking one pillar out from under their fantasy of safety. Safeguarding this individual before something happens to him.”

Jase nodded slowly.

“How we’re to do this,” Bren said, “I don’t know.”

“I’ll hear it when you do.”

“Meanwhile—get some sleep. Hear me?”

“In your grand plan to get hands on the hostage,” Jase said in a thread of a voice, “I take it you plan for atevi to execute this operation. And what happens when they’re spotted? This station is armed and wired for alien intrusion. Your people will be in danger from the stationers. And you’ll scare hell out of the people we want to talk into boarding the ship.”

“Both are problems. Maybe your handbills ought to just tell the truth. How’s that for a concept?”

“God. Truth. Where is truth in this mess? I’m not even sure I’m doing the right thing.”

“Get some sleep. Get some
sleep,
Jase.”

“The captain’s missing. Banichi wants to take the station. How in God’s name do I sleep?”

“Get a
pill
and lie flat. Do it, Jase, dammit! Let your staff rest.
Trust
your crew. Trust us, that we’re not
going to pull something outrageous without consulting. We’re going to win this thing.”

Jase looked at him. “Tell me how we convince near twenty thousand scared people to trust us when they come face to face with the atevi Assassins’ Guild.”