Explorer (20 page)

“We’re instructed to come ahead and hard dock at the masthead,” Sabin said. “Ordinary procedure. Guild authority says, quote, that there’s been an observer lurking out there for years doing very little. Unquote. It’s waked up on our approach, made its first active assay of the station in a long time. They’re receiving that output, too. Passive input and long-range optics would be just as efficient observation for its ordinary operations. It was sitting out there listening, it heard us pass, and heard station answer—and woke up. We’re not sure why whoever it is needed first to come alive and betray their presence if they don’t mean to talk. If it’s targeting, and if there’s something on its way, it’s likely going to have fired on the expected path toward docking. Which we’re behind. There’s no reason, either, why they wouldn’t just fire at the station if they were going to—take it all out. What’s
your
best observation of the situation, Mr. Cameron?”

Good question.

“How many pings?”

“Single.”

“Single output. Last time, three blinks. If it
was
the same entity.” He dealt with atevi so exclusively he
began to think the numbers themselves had significance. And one couldn’t assume that. Daren’t assume it. “A, they’re a robot. B, they’re more interested in watching than in destroying. C—they’re wanting our attention and they want to see if we’re smart enough to have learned anything in ten years.”

Sabin nodded slowly. “Captain Graham would agree. Next question. A’s possible. Why B?”

“Why B? To see what kind of traffic this place gets . . . one ship, two, a hundred . . . and where those ships come from, and where they go.”

“The atevi planet,” Jase said in a low voice. “They’ll have that pegged, at least what vector we’ve come in from. Long range optics can do way too much once they start looking.”

“How long can have they been here?” Bren asked. “Were they here, for instance, when
Phoenix
did her last lookover and left toward Alpha? Is that possible?”

“Good question,” Sabin said. “I don’t know. If they were, they weren’t in our pickup. But I wasn’t on the bridge that day.”

“C, captain. C.
Have we learned anything?
I advise we go toward them. Slowly. Go toward them.”

Sabin shot him a dark and frowning look, then turned her back and started away from him.

He wedged himself past a seat, past her, and firmly blocked her path. “On review of the log, captain, my conclusion. My
best
advice. Issue a signal.
Approach
them. It’s exactly what the Guild hasn’t tended to do. It may be the one thing you ought to do. Be forthcoming.”

Sabin turned, glanced from him to Jase. And around them, not a single tech had taken eyes from their work to see argument around the senior captain.

“I agree with him,” Jase said in a low voice.

“Then what?” Sabin asked. “Do we have a conclusion for this adventure? Perhaps we rush over there and stir up something we don’t know how to deal with.”

“Your predecessor stirred something up, got a signal, refused to respond, left on a diversionary track, and they didn’t take one of those maneuvers kindly. Atevi say—and I asked them—that Ramirez gave a hostile appearance in his behavior, simply by remaining mute. Then by leaving and trying to deceive. So let’s at least do
something else.”

Sabin looked at him. Poised, on the brink.

“So maybe they’re going to ignore us,” she said. “By station’s information, they’ve ignored the station for years.”

“Imitating Ramirez? Imitating
his
actions?”

“After blowing hell out of the station,” Sabin muttered.

“Maybe preparatory to blowing hell out of us if we just cruise over to the station, dock, and sit.”

“So we’re going to go over to the alien ship and do
what
?”

“Play it as we meet it, captain. It’s why we’re here. I’m not afraid to board them, myself, if that’s what it comes to.” Not afraid was a lie, but it was an offer he saw no recourse but to make. “Get me over there. I’ll do it.”

“The hell you say. Get you there, but we’re all there in the same ship.”

“Don’t ignore the contact we just had. My best advice. We were touched. They asked a question. Give back the same. Three blinks. Same frequency, same pace as before. You want to bet it doesn’t have a record of the last encounter? Or that there’s no cultural logic behind that output? I’d rather bet on that course of action than on going into dock right now.”

Sabin stood still, at least, gazing dead at him. “You’re crazy.”

Bren shook his head. “An opportunity. An opportunity. What do we do? Go in there, tie ourselves down at dock and diminish our range of responses? Including getting out of here, captain, as I understand is still a possibility right now.”

A long, long stare. “You think so.”

“You asked my opinion. I base it on all the information I have. Can we
see
this ship? Do we know how it’s shaped, what it looks like, how it’s configured?”

“Not damned informative. C3. Give us image, central screen.”

A dim image flashed up. It could have been a rock. If it had color, it was brownish black, a collection of
irregularly arranged panels suspended around a core of indefinite shape, showing no lights at all at the moment.

“Does it tell you anything?” Sabin asked him.

“No,” he had to admit.

Sabin folded her arms, gazed at the screen. Then at him. “And how are you going to talk to this ship once we engage it?”

“I’ll have to find out,” Bren said.
“That’s
what I do, captain. That’s what Ramirez trained Jase to do, and Ramirez made a fatal decision when he decided to back off and wait for another try, when his translator was older and better prepared.
This
is that next opportunity. If we don’t take them up on that invitation to communicate—if there’s any symmetry about their actions—who knows? They
may
hit Alpha, the way they hit here.”

Sabin looked at him, a sidelong glance, on that last. Looked away, then. And back. “A basic rule of intelligence, Mr. Cameron—you can chase just one more certainty and one more piece of information just one fatal step too far. At a certain point you have to quit listening and go with best guesses. We don’t
know
the situation on the station, do we? And we don’t know the situation out there.”

“We need answers,” Jase said. “We’re not going to get them on the station. If we get that far.”

“Oh, I’m in favor of answers, second captain. We’re on our original course, not quite on the original schedule, so if that ship out there fired a few minutes ago, we’ll more likely be spectators to a fire show. If we do get a strike, Mr. Cameron, at the first sign of a siren, dive under the nearest console and brace, because we’ll move long and hard; and you haven’t felt movement yet. Not in this entire trip. Not in your
life,
Mr. Cameron. Right now you have time to get to a takehold and time to get granny to shelter, and I advise you do that.—Mr. Carson. Docking spot number one, three bright flashes toward our spook. Stand by for braking, Jorgensen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said. And moved, not even pausing for a glance at Jase. The ship was acting—God save them, Sabin was taking the action Ramirez had ducked.

He reached the shelter and repeated that warning in Ragi, for the company. “Prolonged strong movement. Everyone must stay in the shelter, nadiin-ji. This situation may continue a while or change suddenly.” Five-deck
would hear. Trust Asicho for that.

A siren sounded.

“Sabin here. Take hold, take hold, take hold. Alien contact. We are maneuvering after sending signal to alien craft. Stand by.”

God,
truth
from a
Phoenix
captain.

Bren wedged himself back in among the rest. Kept his breathing calm and steady.

“Sabin-aiji has sent a signal to the foreign ship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. His breath seemed inadequate. And the braking hit. The signal had gone. Three blinks of the ship’s powerful docking spots.

Braking let up.
“Mr. Cameron.”
Jase’s voice.
“Mr. Cameron to the bridge.”

“Aiji-ma. Nadiin-ji.” He groped for the padded edge of the cabinet and moved, not sure of his safety, but he answered the summons, as far as Jase’s position, against a padded wall. “Jase.”

Sabin was there, too, braced with her back against the same surface.

“Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Atevi are hearing that advisement below, too?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren admitted.

“Efficient. Keep it that way.
Don’t
get in my way. Stand by to answer questions.”

Sabin left the takehold position, walked off, resuming her continual tour. Jase stayed close to him.

“Scary,” Bren muttered.

“You noticed,” Jase said. “We’ve signaled it. We’ve changed our position in case they fire on our signal.”

“Which also tells them we fear hostile action.”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“By our logic. They should figure we thought of it and preferred to talk, not shoot. One hopes they think that way.”

A small moment in which he could scarcely believe he’d just argued with Sabin on her bridge and urged the
ship to take an aggressive response—but there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. There simply wasn’t, within anything he could think of.

And even in that gut-deep human and atevi dislike of turning their backs on an enemy, in their choice to deal with the situation rather than go on in, ignoring the presence, there was animal instinct at work . . . a good instinct, an instinct viable in every situation that two similarly wired species could jointly think of, but that didn’t say definitively that no other answer had ever evolved in a wide universe. It only said their behavior was statistically likely to be understood, based on a sample of two and based on the limits of the translator’s own imagination.

“Likely this maneuvering will drag on now for hours,” Jase said. “It might be an opportunity to persuade the dowager below. Tell her it’s for comfort. Comfort, at least.”

“This is the woman who sleeps on stone several times a year. Who rides mountain trails in thunderstorms. Who took on Cajeiri as a ward. I don’t think we’ll persuade her easily, Jasi-ji.”

“Days, Bren. It could be days working this all out. With terrible forces, if we have to move. Hard on the whole body, even in shelter. Tell her that.”

“One will pose the question.” He made the short trek to the security cabinet, quickly, economically.

And met a row of dark and light faces all with the same wary, determined expression.

“Jase-aiji suggests this maneuver will be extremely long, even days, and that for comfort and dignity—”

“No,” Ilisidi said abruptly. “We will not go below.”

“Nand’ dowager . . .”

“Interesting things happen here. Not there. If I were reckless of staff safety I would send after hot tea,” Ilisidi said. “I forego the tea. In that, I have
taken
my personal precautions and my staff is settled in safety. We are very well. Gin-nandi is very well.” This with an all but unprecedented nod toward Ginny Kroger, who gave a nod in turn—a unity of appalling, infelicitous two, give or take the ship itself—a welding of Gin’s notorious obstinacy to the dowager’s, which was legendary.
Somehow
there had been basic converse in his absence.

“I convey the respects of the ship-aijiin,” Bren said with a little bow. “And urge you all make yourselves
comfortable, but sit warily, aiji-ma, nandi. One hopes this matter will work itself out peacefully.”

He caught Banichi’s eye, and Jago’s, and they extracted themselves from shelter, with relief, he was sure. He left, with them in attendance and within easier reach of information at the moment—atevi presence re-expanded onto the bridge.

He found Jase where he had been, next the take-hold just outside their shelter.

“The dowager declines. Gin declines. I used the word ‘days.’ They’ve formed an alliance.”

Jase didn’t look at him. Jase’s eyes, like Sabin’s, roved continually over the aisles, where techs sat waiting for response. “We have what facilities we have up here,” Jase murmured. “We can’t change them. But if she grows weary, offer my office, my cabin, my bed, for that matter.”

“One will do so, nadi-ji, with thanks.”

“For yourself as well. I want you rested, paidhi-aiji.”

“One understands that as well.”

Jase reached to his ear and handed him the communications unit, warm from his skin. “Use that. I want you current with our information flow.”

“One concurs.” He positioned it in his own ear, beginning to receive the very limited cross-chatter of station with station, Sabin’s low-key orders, the ordinary life’s pulse of the bridge. Jase secured another unit for himself, meanwhile, from one of the endmost consoles, adjusted it, became available.

“I am now in direct touch with ship’s communications,” Bren muttered to Banichi and Jago. “Make clear to the dowager Jase’s offer of his own cabin, which would afford more comfort and security. Tell Cenedi first: he may have more luck in argument.”

“A very good idea,” Banichi said, with a side glance at Jago—their information had simultaneously gone to Cenedi and to five-deck. And one hoped the dowager would hear reason.

A desk, a chair and a bed within easy walk of the bridge, it turned out, was an acceptable idea. There was not only Jase’s cabin and Jase’s office, but Ramirez’s and Ogun’s, unoccupied, ample room; ample means by which experience could be available and out from under foot, and the dowager was
not
opposed.

The station, meanwhile, answered an earlier time-lagged query.
“The spook’s been out there for years. It may be robotic. We instruct you, ignore it.”

“What grounds to believe it’s robotic?” Sabin fired back. “Be advised we are taking measures for contact.”

That was all the communication that could flow in that exchange. There followed, from the station, a few further queries.
“What kept you?”
was one particularly significant, along with:
“Who’s in command at Alpha?”