Explorer (26 page)

He wished he’d made a visit there before he left.

He’d get together with Toby when he got back. He’d drag Jase down planetside to take that fishing trip. They wouldn’t bait the hooks. Just bring a week’s worth of sandwiches and a case of beer.

It wasn’t enough sleep before Gin came across the corridor.

“I hate to wake you,” Gin said—the door opening had already roused Banichi and Jago, who had sorted themselves out and got up immediately. Bren found a harder time locating his wits, but he straightened the chair and set his feet on the floor.

“Sabin’s talking to the station,” Gin said. “They’re asking questions like what did we just do out there with the alien? What took us ten years getting here? Sabin’s stonewalling them. Says since they didn’t help out with the alien confrontation, she sees no reason to talk to them about what we said until she gets there.”

There might have been a better answer, but he couldn’t think of one yet. It certainly set the tone between ship and Guild. He was very much concerned about Sabin’s short fuse, and Jase’s, not inconsiderable, both of them running on no sleep whatsoever.

“I’m going,” he said, standing up, and, too incoherent to explain his wants, held out his hand for the earpiece. She gave it to him, and he stuck it in, immediately hearing the minor traffic of the consoles. “They haven’t changed shifts.”

“No. Overdue, but she’s keeping her own people on. I think she’s getting just a little punchy, if you want the brutal truth.”

“What’s our ETA?”

“Not sure. About an hour. We’re headed for the slope.”

A lot like skidding on ice. That was how he conceptualized maneuvering in space. Sometimes you were facing one way and going another, and if you got onto a gravity slope you slid very damned fast, accelerating
without doing a thing. He could almost understand Sabin’s viewpoint: she hated planets, wasn’t fond of stars, didn’t at all mind the dark, empty deeps.

Reunion was situated high up on a gravity slope. Stations had to be. And a station was a scary place to navigate, so he gathered. High toehold above a deep plunge. Like wi’itikin coming in for a cliffside perch, a lot of tricky figuring best done by computer brains, humans not having the wi’itikin’s innate sense—or wings, if something went wrong.

He was fogged. He managed a thank you to Gin.

“Ignore them,”
he heard Sabin say to someone.
“I’m busy. They can rant all they like.”

Sounded like high time he got to the bridge. “Go rest,” he said to Gin, and headed out the office door with Banichi and Jago in close attendance. His face prickled. He wished he’d thought to bring his shaving kit topside. He’d foolishly believed the dowager’s sack lunch was excessive.

The bridge looked no different than when he’d left. Those at work took no special note of his return.

Jase, however, walked over to him as he stopped to survey the scene.

“How’s it been?” Bren asked.

“Station’s not pleased with us,” Jase said. “Senior captain’s not cooperating with them. They want us to do a hard grapple at nadir of the mast. We won’t. Fueling port’s zenith. That’s where we’re going.”

“They want us
away
from it. That’s not encouraging.”

“The fuss is,” Jase said. And held a little silence with a glance across the bridge at Sabin, who wasn’t looking at them. He gave a hand-sign, the sort that Banichi’s and Jago’s Guild exchanged on mission. It was a warning. “Angry,” he said in Ragi. “Overdue for rest. I lack the skill to bring us in, and I lack the rank to argue with the Guild. Which she
is
doing.”

That was good news. “I need your advice in what’s coming. I need you sane and rested. Is there any reason you can’t go off-duty and take an hour?”

“She won’t. I won’t.”

“What are we? Kids in a schoolyard, egging each other on? Take a break, Jase. If she won’t use common
sense, at least you’ll be sane.”

Jase shook his head. “She’s pushing herself. She won’t trust me to handle the smallest things. And if I want her to pay attention to my advice over the next handful of hours, I can’t fold, now, can I?” They were old friends, and there was adamancy, but not anger, in the argument. “And matters are too critical right now to worry about my state of mind or the fact my back’s killing me. We’re dealing with the Guild. You want non-reason in high places? We’re dealing with it.”

“What do you read in them?”

“I’m not the expert.”

“In ship-culture, in Guild mentality—you very much are.” He changed to Ragi. “Your professional opinion, ship-paidhi.”

Rapid blinks—total change of mental wiring. Moment of mental blackout. Then, in Ragi: “Understandable. They disapprove Sabin-aiji’s defiance of their authority. They refuse talk until we get into dock.”

“Then?”

“Then—they and we will be in closer contact.”

“They intend to board.”

“A question whether Sabin will permit that, nadi-ji. But perhaps.”

It was
not
good. He began to read the psychology of it through an atevi lens, and pulled his mind away from thoughts of association,
aishi
and
man’chi,
the social entity and the emotion—which, after all this voyage, began to seem logical even on human terms. Two metal motes with humans inside
wanted
to come together. Like magnetism. Like
man’chi.
But once they met—

Human politics were inside those shells. Not just two metal shells. Two grenades gravitating toward each other.

“Do they trust
her
at all?” he asked—meaning Sabin.

“One doubts,” Jase said, and added, in ship-speak: “She’s just ordered an outside operations team to suit up immediately after we dock.”

“Boarding the station?” They’d have to turn out the whole crew to take something as large as that—and still might be outnumbered.

“To have our hands at the refueling port.”

“That’s not standard operating procedure, is it?” Of fueling stations in the vast cosmos, there were only two he knew. And one, Alpha, ran operations from a stationside control center.

“It’s not. I know that much. The captain’s preparing to have us do it ourselves, from outside. I don’t know what she’s going to say to them. Being Sabin, she may not say a thing. She may just do it.”

Aliens waiting in the wings and the captain outright preparing to commandeer a fuel supply from the people they’d come to rescue, who at the moment weren’t cooperating—at least their officials weren’t. He’d thought his heart had had all the panic it could stand in the last few hours. He discovered a brand new source.

“And we haven’t gotten word from them yet that there is fuel.” That was the prime question at issue, and Jase slowly shook his head.

“They’re not talking about that and we’re not asking. If they can’t fuel us, we have a choice to make.”

“If we run,” he said, “there’s every chance that ship out there can track us out to Gamma and hit us there. Isn’t there?”

“So I understand. Starring down a gun barrel while we scrape what we need together out of space isn’t attractive.”

“We can get the alien remains out of the station and negotiate. I
don’t
recommend running. We have a reasonable chance so long as we seem to be cooperating with that ship out there.”

“That’s your advice.”

“To keep all sides talking while we spend the next few years gathering fuel. Running’s only going to make matters worse. We’ll have none of the passengers we came here to get, we won’t have destroyed the Archive, and we still won’t have any fuel.”

“I’d tend to agree with you.”

“Most of all—most of all we have to get some sort of calm.”

“Calm.” Jase’s laugh held stress, not humor.

“Whatever situation has existed here for six years has been destabilized by our arrival. And we don’t know what’s gone on here. We have to ratchet down the stress on this situation. And she—” Meaning Sabin. “—has to be reasonable, right along with the Guild. First and foremost, we have to show good faith with that ship out there. That’s a priority, even ahead of the fuel, toward getting us out of here and keeping the Archive to ourselves, with all that means.
Hang
the fuel situation. We can solve that with Gin’s robots.”

“Over years.”

“Over years and I’d rather not. But that ship out there represents a more critical situation. We get locked into a push-pull with the Guild and we can lose sight of what’s going on at our backs.”

“We have guns.”

“We have guns, they have guns—we also have a potential chance to
settle
this mess before it comes home with us, Jase.”

“
I
agree with you,” Jase said, leaving hanging in the air the implication that the other captain was at issue. “And I’m asking you, Bren, stay up here. Be cooperative with her, whatever it takes. The situation needs you
and
the dowager with your wits about you, and it needs us all with as much maneuvering room as we can maintain with Sabin, if we’re going to have to negotiate our way out of this. She’s not a diplomat. You’ve given her information.
Don’t
assume she’ll use it diplomatically.”

“I’d better talk with her,” he said, “before we go much closer.”

“She’s several hours less rested.” Jase gave him that look. A plea for extreme caution.

“We have the chance now,” he said. “It’s only going to be less sleep if this goes on.”

Jase said nothing to that, and he walked on down the aisle, quietly intercepting Sabin, delicately as if he were picking up a live bomb. “Captain. A moment, if you can spare it.”

“We don’t have many moments, Mr. Cameron.”

“In private, captain, if you will. I have something to communicate.”

She grudgingly yielded, as far as the end of the console, where the general noise of fans overcame the small
noise of low voices. She hadn’t cut off her communications pickup. But if one talked to her, as to him, discreet security personnel were inevitably involved.

“I take it,” she said, “we’re about to receive a personal confidence from the dowager.”

“A message from me, captain. A further offer—with the Guild. I
am
a negotiator, if the Guild turns recalcitrant. I’m offering, in all good will—so you know your hands aren’t empty. For a start—in spite of my distaste for secrets—I don’t advise spilling everything the aliens out there said, if there’s any likelihood they didn’t overhear it.”

“They’re asking. Likely they didn’t get it.”

“That’s to the good. Second point: never mind Gamma. Get in control of whatever alien material the station’s holding. That’s critical. We can solve a fuel problem. But if they’re not put off our trail, we’re in deep trouble.”

“Oh, I am so gratified to have that advice, Mr. Cameron.”

“Fuel be damned, captain.”

“I don’t recall you got a confirmation from that ship out there that we
can
leave if we jump to their orders.”

“I can’t swear to their customs, their attitude, or their morality. But I know ours. If there’s a way not to lead them back to Alpha,
that’s
a priority. It’s common sense, captain.”

Sabin’s mouth tightened. “Priority is
options,
Mr. Cameron. Yours is one on a list. Fuel, passengers,
then
their little errand.”

“Station’s not cooperating with you.”

“Tell the second captain keep his advice. I’ve heard it. Trust me that I’ve heard it.”

“Captain, it’s
cooperation
I’m offering. To convey
your
viewpoint to station. To get what you want.”

Sabin gave a short, grim laugh. “You say. You know the dowager’s a bastard. So am I. And so, in your sweet, stubborn way, are you, Mr. Cameron. Tell the second captain I’m
fine,
and I can deal with the Guild. Now go shut the hell up and leave me to my job.”

He’d walked into this trying to get ahead of the situation. Numb as he was and remote from full-tilt feeling,
his brain uneasily advised him the paidhi was not truly functioning at his utmost, either. And he didn’t know what he’d accomplished. Sabin took advice without telling the advisor she was taking it. And one never knew what she’d do.

“What did she say?” Jase asked, in Ragi, when he drew back into range of him and Banichi and Jago.

“She is at least maintaining our secrets from the station,” Bren said in Ragi. “She refuses to accept the alien mission ahead of our own. And hopes, one believes, that there might be fuel. If the station had any time at all to prepare itself before this second incident, they ought to have thought, if
Phoenix
comes back, fuel is essential to our own safety. Therefore it would be very highest priority. Would it not be, Jase-aiji?”

“One certainly hopes,” Jase said. Meanwhile the image forward was a rotating, damaged station.

Sabin paused by C1 and gave an order. And spoke on general address.

“Sabin here. This is the situation: we have contact with the station and we’re on track for our high berth, contrary to their instructions. I’ve ordered a team to suit and connect the fuel probe from the outside. Communications with the station have been limited: considering we’re not alone here, that’s understandable. But due to numerous unanswered questions, these are my orders. We’ll refuel as a priority, and if station has other ideas, we’ll hear them afterward. You’ll have a ten minute break coming up as soon as I sign off. Do what you need to do and get back to a secure bunk. Second watch crew will maintain current assignment. Third watch will take station after docking.”

Damn, Bren thought. She wasn’t letting Jase’s crew take station. She was driving her own past a due change. Had driven herself for hours.

“We don’t know the situation on the station,”
Sabin said.
“And so long as we don’t know, we don’t let our guard down. Keep on alert. This isn’t a time for any celebration, and
nobody
will attempt to contact station communications. Evasive action remains a moment by moment possibility. I’m giving you a ten-minute break off strict precautions, but as you value your necks and the necks of those around you, don’t get sloppy.