“Keep going.”
“Two, they expect Ramirez. Three, they’ve had all these years to figure out things didn’t go according to plan back where we come from. So they’ll immediately ask you what happened to Ramirez and what took so long. If you say, refueling, they’ll know immediately that the station we come from wasn’t exactly waiting for your return. If you say we had to get the locals back into space and build the whole apparatus to refuel, they’ll wonder what else went on. They know the planet is inhabited. And that leads step by step to other questions, such as the reason I suspect Ramirez was courting aliens rather than go to Alpha’s colonists in the first place—I think they’re scared of finding an alternative human agency set up back at Alpha, offering opposition to them. And numerous hard-headed humans, tending to subvert the Guild vision for humanity. I’m willing to be your token colonist authority and lie through my teeth, and try to diminish those fears.”
“A whole lot of help we’ve got,” Sabin said. “Help from your alien allies, and pushy help from a self-appointed advisor.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said, “exceedingly pushy. I have a vested interest in having you in charge, not them.”
“You think so, do you?”
“You’ve told us Ramirez was up to something. I’m sure Ogun knew it. I know you knew it. I know you and Ogun aren’t precisely on the same program. But if you like the idea of turning yourself and your ship and crew over to the people that have gotten this station in need of a rescue, you’re flat crazy, and I don’t think that’s the case.”
Sabin lifted one eyebrow. And looked at Jase. “Does he talk to the aiji that way?”
“Yes,” Jase said.
“The fact is, we haven’t won. We won’t be halfway toward winning this until we’re fueled, loaded, and on our way back. Reunion could have solved all of their problems and ours simply by boarding Phoenix on your last call here. They didn’t do that. So they have another plan, involving some linkage to Alpha, and Alpha’s position is very blunt: fold operations, come under ship rule, and stop bothering the neighbors. Do you think you’re going to get what you want out of them?”
“Go entertain your aliens.”
“Advice, captain, simply advice.”
“No place for a damned atevi kid,” Sabin muttered. “No place for the whole damned lot of you. You have your assumptions. But we can’t go blazing in there laying down conditions to the Guildmaster, Mr. Cameron. Fuel first. Then we read them the rules as they’re going to be.”
“If there is fuel.”
“If there is fuel. If there isn’t, then I’ll most certainly call on Ms. Kroger to take our own measures and you’ll doubtless have a word on that, too. Meanwhile, we’re not near docking yet. Go sit down and don’t distract my crew with your predictions.”
She hadn’t asked the station about the fuel situation. She hadn’t presented any long-distance chatter, nothing friendly, nothing as ebullient as long-lost friends meeting. Was he surprised they weren’t leaping up and down and cheering on the bridge, either?
Sabin walked off.
“She appreciated the advice,” Jase said.
Bren raised an eyebrow.
“I work with her,” Jase said. “She’s on alert. She’s glad we got here, but she’s spooked. She’s not trusting anything she sees. She appreciates a cross-check of observations.”
Sabin wasn’t stupid. Thank God.
He went back to the small gathering of atevi and Mospheirans, relayed the gist of the discussion and his own speculations, in Ragi and in Mosphei’. And sat down and waited.
“Is the stationmaster still talking to us, nandi?” Cajeiri asked.
“We ride so very far from the station that we have to wait for their answers to reach us. Like seeing lightning and listening for the thunder. This distance is ever so much farther than we ordinarily consider on a planet. So the captain talks and waits; the station talks and waits. By the time the station answers the captain’s questions, the captain has had time to sit down to tea and think about it.”
“This could take all day!”
“And tomorrow, too, young sir, but remember the ship is moving, no matter how it feels. We’re going there quite steadily. So the interval between question and answer grows shorter and shorter.”
“Astonishing, nandi.”
The dowager had thwacked that respectful courtesy into the young rascal.
“It is, young sir. Astonishing to us all.” He recalled his own boyhood, sitting through adult feuds, intimately involved in the outcome and unable to read the signals passing over his head. “Translation: matters with the station are going better than we expected. There are people on the station and they can talk to us. If we’re very lucky everything will be in order and we can do what we came to do and go home.”
“But I want to see the station first!”
The dowager boxed a young ear. Gently so, but sternly. “Your elders have more serious business to consider, young sir.”
“Yes, mani-ma.”
One could understand. The dowager herself likely shared the sentiment. The atevi delegation was on formal manners, sitting and standing. Ginny and her companion were uncharacteristically quiet and solemn.
“Going too well,” Ginny said, next to him. “Worries me.”
“If it goes this easily,” Bren said under his breath, “it’s the first time in this Guild’s history.”
Ginny cast him a look. She was Mospheiran. She knew.
He sat. He waited. Eventually a station response came in and Sabin queried back, giving little information, but asking for the condition of the mast where they would dock.
Jase came to them shortly after. “The captain is ordering up food and drink for the bridge. The shift is not going to change. Would you wish anything, nandiin?”
“Hot tea,” Ginny said.
“We have our own resources, ship-aiji,” the dowager said. “But one is grateful.”
“Nand’ dowager.” Jase bowed, and went back.
The galley order arrived in due time. Bridge crew ate at their posts. Atevi and Mospheirans opened up their small picnic lunches and ate, standing and sitting, in decorous quiet.
Information regarding the mast seemed to have come in: zenith mast was undamaged: one couldn’t say as much for the nadir.
“We go on routine approach,” Sabin said.
After so much, so long. Routine. That in itself was surreal.
Bren was thinking that when a technician moved suddenly and a red blinking quarter hit at least half the screens on the bridge.
Sabin leaned to look more closely at that intrusion; Jase did.
Bren stood up and in the same instant saw Sabin pass an order he couldn’t hear. He walked back across that intangible line, back into aisles where screens still blinked red without explanation.
Jase met him, while Sabin stayed in close conference with the senior navigator.
“Armaments have been called up,” Jase said in Mosphei’. “Something out there just pinged us. Not from the station.”
“Damn,” Bren breathed.
“Damn, for sure. Maybe a mining craft. But it could also be targeting. We’ve been spotted by something.”
Triple damn. He’d just been settling into the comfort of their success and now they might not exist another hour.
Not that he hadn’t asked himself for the last year what they ought to do if this happened.
“Any evidence of mining operations?”
“It’s a big solar system. We haven’t gotten any word from station about other activity. More to the point, the origin isn’t in a region where we’d expect mining.” Jase was scared too. It was in his eyes.
“Moving source, or something that’s been there, all along?”
“Seems stationary. Our wavefront apparently just reached round-trip, us to them, them to us. Whoever it is. We’ve got continual signal now, and it’s not showing motion.”
“Did we ping them back?” All the while he was
thinking about Ramirez’s response, the dead-ship silence. “What’s Sabin ordered?”
“We’re waiting in silence,” Jase said, that damnable word, silence, that governed their whole situation. That governed the Pilots’ Guild’s approach to the universe.
Deep breath. “No. Broadcast a hail. Noisy as possible. No more tight focus.”
“Your advice is noted, Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. She could come up silently. She had, almost at his elbow. “It’s one option. But we’re closer to station than to it. I’ve queried station. They’ll answer. We’ll brake early. If it’s a missile response we get, that creates a targeting problem.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I’d prepare a broadcast in the event we need it.”
“We can broadcast Mary Had a Little Lamb and whatever’s out there won’t know the difference.”
That happened to be true. On the verbal level. “Send a pattern response. Three blinks. As they did the first time they met Ramirez. Something that at last sounds like an attempt at communication.”
“We’ll consider that option. Meanwhile, gentlemen, we’re doing a take-hold.”
“It’s going to be evident when we brake, captain, won’t it, and maybe they’ll take it for a hostile act if the engines show activity . . .”
“We have to brake to dock, Mr. Cameron. They may want to critique our approach path, too, but in the meanwhile we hope station has an answer for us, what that noise source is. Advise granny, there. Siren will sound.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and walked back to the dowager. “One should prepare, aiji-ma, for a maneuver of considerable strength and suddenness. I would advise the safety cabinet at this time rather than the seats. Some other presence is out beyond the ordinary limits of station activity. One suspects a hostile presence.”
“Are we going to fight?” Cajeiri asked, rising.
“Hush, wretched boy.” Ilisidi leaned on her cane and rose stiffly, to take his advice. “Prudence should lead valor. Have you never heard that?”
“Gin,” Bren said. “Inside. We don’t know if there’s going to be emergency action, but they don’t want loose bodies flying about.”
“I’ll skip that experience,” Ginny said, and ordered Jerry into the L-shaped enclosure.
They still had a view: the screen at the end of the safety compartment, on a padded wall, showed the bridge, and in a window overlaid on that image, the image from space—the station. They likewise had audio, Sabin’s low voice, and the flow through C1.
“What are they saying?” Cajeiri wanted to know.
“The captain is giving technical instructions, young sir,” Bren answered, setting his back against the padded wall, hoping at the same time that their whole mission didn’t come to a sudden end.
Siren sounded.
Then Sabin’s voice overrode the chatter, loud and clear, on general address: “We’re beginning a series of small maneuvers preparatory to station approach. Stand by.”
Lie. Damned lie. Bren drew a sharp breath, all but exploded out of the safety zone, out where, if they hit the brakes, he could go splat against the other bulkhead, or up on that nice big viewing screen, untidy objection quashed. But he stayed put. He didn’t go argue the point, on the bridge, in front of all the techs, that truth to the crew might be a good policy. It was reflex, was what it was. Given a situation, given a choice between truth and shading it—it was still the same choices.
One hoped to God Sabin’s current maneuver with the ship was the right one. Braking wasn’t exactly what Ramirez had done. Not quite. And could it look hostile?
“What have they said, paidhi-ji?” Ilisidi asked him.
“The ship-aiji claims this is all preparatory to docking. This may even be partially true, aiji-ma. But it is also maneuvering so as to confuse a possible enemy. Whom they refuse to contact. And one does not believe this silence is wise, either regarding the crew, or the watcher out there.”
The ship braked. Hard and fast, as he’d suspected. He braced himself. Held his breath.
The invisible hand lifted. Let them breathe.
“Shall one not advise the ship-aiji of this opinion, nandi?” Cenedi asked.
“I intend to, nadi-ji.” He was more and more set on arguing his point. Ramirez had been wrong. Silence had been wrong.
Another gentle nudge.
And silence continued from the speakers.
“Are we there yet?” Cajeiri asked. “Nandiin, are we—?”
Hard braking.
“Mr. Cameron to the bridge.”
Sabin was calling him?
He didn’t hesitate. He simply turned to the side against the padding and dived out into the open bridge, already planning his next hand-hold, on the end of the third row of consoles. He made that, and the ship stayed inertial. He made his next move halfway down the aisle, where Jase and Sabin both stood, not using handholds at this particular moment.
Safe. Free. If one believed it.
“Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said, and to someone elsewhere: “Put the transmission through to station fifteen.”
Station fifteen was the console nearest. That screen display changed and became a set of numbers and geometrical figures. It looked like navigational problems.
“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?”
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