Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Captain Sabin, we’re asking specifically that you observe Guild law and procedures which our office, our entire reason for being, requires us to follow. You’ll appreciate our safeguarding that fuel, to release it to appropriately constituted authority, operating in our interests and at our orders—”

  “The hell! We are the ship. That’s the plain fact.”

  “Our orders, I remind you, supersede yours, where it regards this station, and the fuel, captain, is on this station. For your convenience, and precisely to expedite this process, we have an inspection team and an escort ready to come up to the ship.”

  “Escort.”

  “To Guild headquarters, captain, where you can present your request to the Guild. This transfer of personnel would be far easier in hard dock. We have questions to ask about the encounter out there.”

  “After refueling.”

  “We understand your worry. But we have legitimate worries. We feel you’ve exacerbated the situation with your adventurism out there—adventurism which brought this situation on us. We are not disposed to be patient, captain, and we strongly suggest you hard dock and come in for consultation.”

  “Until you can present solid information about our watcher out there, I’ll keep us soft-docked. I may change my mind once we’re sure you’re in control of the station.”

  “I can assure you, captain, we’ve never ceased to be in control of this station.”

  Their advantage was leaking away, utterance by utterance. “Captain,” Bren said, and recklessly if gently interposed his hand between Sabin and the console.

  Sabin reached past that intervention and pushed a button on the console. Held it down, preventing transmission to the station, one hoped.

  “A sudden bright idea, Mr. Cameron?”

  “You’re senior entity. Demand the Guildmaster board and prove what’s to prove. And don’t let him off again once he’s here.”

  “I’d enjoy that, but it doesn’t get that fuel lock released, Mr. Cameron, and I don’t want someone to panic and dump the load. Traditionally, captains have gone to station offices.”

  “And if they hold you?”

  “Then we’ll know something, won’t we?” She released the button and spoke to Braddock, at the console. “I use my own escort, sir, under my own command.”

  Bren’s heart sank. Ignored. Absolutely ignored.

  “I’ll expect a full explanation of the situation from your side,” Sabin said to Braddock. “As for your officers boarding this ship, inspect as you like, under Captain Graham’s supervision, but I’ve no intention of transmitting ship’s log containing base location into your station records in the presence of an unexplained foreign presence, and that’s the law on this deck. Personnel link is adequate for current business. Beyond that, I assure you Phoenix remains the senior entity in this organization: we are your founders, sir, and we don’t take orders.”

  “We’re well aware of your unsuccessful maneuver to breach the fuel port.” Did one imagine a sudden, desolate chill in relations? “When we see the documents that confirm your authority to command, we’ll have more to say, Captain Sabin. Our personnel are on their way and expect entry.”

  “I’ll expect your escort momentarily, Mr. Braddock. Let’s get this business done. Sabin out.”

  C1 cut the connection. Sabin wasn’t happy. That needed no translation. She straightened, glowered straight at Bren, looked at Jase, at the lot of them. The tic was still pulsing away in her jaw. It wasn’t a good time to argue—but, Bren thought, feeling the deck had just dropped away under his feet, it was a very unfortunate time for Sabin to shove advice aside.

  “Captain Graham.”

  “I’ll be honored to go in your place,” Jase said quietly. “In that capacity, I might be more useful.”

  “Protocols, second captain, protocols say you aren’t the one to go, sensible as it might otherwise be. Main security will go with me. With weapons.”

  “Yes, captain,” Jase said quietly and Bren stepped to the background with a glance at Banichi and Jago.

  “Inform the dowager and fifth deck, nadiin-ji. The fuel port is locked with an explosive device and a sign in human language. The station demands Sabin-aiji come report in person to establish her legitimacy before the Guild chairman will release the fuel. We believe this is subterfuge. Captain Sabin is arming her primary guard to go outside the ship, but she has admitted Guild officers inside our security, expecting Jase to finesse this.”

  “Shall we assist?” Banichi asked, surely with a certain anticipation he hated to hold back.

  “Not yet, Nichi-ji. Not yet.” The troubling truth was that Phoenix had relatively few security personnel on each shift—they weren’t a warship: they were a small town; and their advantage was they knew each other, but their glaring disadvantage was—they only knew each other. Sabin thought she knew the Guild better than the rest of them, and that might be true, but the move she made scared him—scared him in the extreme.

  Ilisidi had moved forward, into the aisle, with Cajeiri, with Cenedi, and her gold stare fairly sizzled.

  “We have understood. This is dangerous insolence in the absence of power, in this wrecked station. Say so to Sabin-aiji. Say that we shall lend force to her actions.”

  He foresaw refusal. But he went closer to Sabin and rendered that: “The dowager calls the station dangerously insolent, says people sitting in a wrecked station have no real authority; she offers atevi assistance.”

  “Unfortunately,” Sabin said between her teeth, “and the governing fact, we have no real fuel.”

  “If you board, ma’am, they have you and the fuel,” Jase pointed out. “And without you, this ship has no way home.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Akers seems quite undamaged and serviceable.” That was the senior pilot. “Failing Mr. Akers, Ms. Carem and Mr. Keplinger. And they surely have your canny advice, Captain Graham.” It was the sort of petty sniping that consistently flew at Jase and his appointment. “It also has you, Mr. Cameron, and the dowager and her security, and Ms. Kroger, and if the station does an explosive vent on the fuel, I’m hopeful we have machinery as adequate to recover it as it is to mine in the first place.”

  “With extreme difficulty, captain. With that ship lurking out there, that—”

  “We can’t do anything about that ship, now, can we, Mr. Cameron, without that fuel, except run to a point where we’ll be definitively out of fuel and stuck, probably a place, as you so eloquently maintain, that our alien observer can find us with no trouble at all. Meanwhile we don’t know the situation on station, which I mean to find out. And when I do, I intend to enforce common sense with information and observations I don’t intend to pass through station’s communication system. I’ll be in touch. Failing that, Mr. Collins or Mr. Jenrette will be in touch.”

  Jase frowned. “I’d ask you not take Mr. Jenrette, ma’am. He’s a resource I could—”

  “Mr. Jenrette, I say, who knows the station intimately and who’s a resource for me.”

  “His loyalty is suspect,” Bren said sharply.

  “By you, sir. Confine your speculations to the aliens. And I don’t expect innovation aboard this ship, second captain. Wait for my orders. If things go massively wrong and you have to go to aggressive measures on your own, ask C1. If you have to take this ship out of dock, call on Mr. Akers and follow his advice meticulously. If at any time we get another flash from the observer out there—advise me before you start freelancing any communications back to it; and if you can’t advise me, advise station to advise me. Above all, have a clear idea what you’re going to do if it all goes wrong. We don’t want surviving records, second captain. We do not want that.”

  “I understand you,” Jase said faintly. And they all did understand. It was self-destruction she meant. Terrible alternatives. Even Phoenix had a major stake back at the atevi planet—all there was left of humanity in this end of the universe was at risk if things went wrong here.

  Sabin sealed her jac
ket, implied preparation for cold. For passage out of the ship and into the station mast.

  “So congratulations: you’re in charge, Captain Graham. Remember we’re very immaculately Guild and we follow the regulations until we know what our options are. And that means you, sir—” A glance at Bren. “Get your tall, dark friends belowdecks right now and keep them there. Aliens never left the atevi planet. Our own crew isn’t putting their heads above two-deck to tell these inspectors differently. The inspection team will fill out their little check list, skip the log check, as per my orders, and go back to report they didn’t get any more here than I gave the Guild chief on his request. That’s the way it should work, Captain Graham. That’s the way it’s going to work. So get gran, there, the hell below, right now.”

  One definitely hesitated to translate that small speech for the dowager’s consumption. But it was time to translate, inserting proper courtesies.

  “Aiji-ma,” Bren said to her, “officials of this human Guild are very soon coming aboard to inspect the ship’s credentials. Sabin-aiji suggests we go below immediately. Officials are arriving at any moment. We must not be seen.”

  “We are here to rescue these ingrates, whose station is in grievously unrepaired condition, who appear to exist in armed standoff with an offended enemy they have no power to talk to, let alone reach, and this incompetent Guild wishes to us to dread their displeasure?”

  “They do seem to have one thing: the fuel we desperately need, aiji-ma, which they have rigged so we cannot get at it. Sabin-aiji being requested to board the station, she will do it with armed escort of her choosing, and she is not pleased. One hopes she can carry her point.”

  “She will go. Not Jase.”

  “Not Jase, aiji-ma.”

  Complete change of expression. In such an undemonstrative species, humans might not see it. But the dowager gave him a now sweet, sidelong look—golden eyes, dark skin with its fine tracery of lines—long, long years of calculation and autocracy.

  “Well, well, we shall go below,” the dowager announced as if it were all her idea, and stamped the deck with her cane. “Now.”

  “Nandi,” Jase said, who had caught the nuances. And understood the threat of atevi taking matters in their own hands. “There will be no foreign intrusion onto five-deck. Your residence will remain sacrosanct. One swears this, nandi.”

  “One certainly expects it.” A vigorous stamp of the cane. “Enough of this standing about! My bones ache. I want my own chair.”

  “Well? Is she going?” Sabin asked.

  “The dowager is going below,” Jase said.

  “Very good,” Sabin said. “Mospheirans, too, the whole lot of you, off the bridge. Nothing left behind. And stay quiet down there, Mr. Cameron. We have enough troubles on our hands.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bren said, already determined he didn’t consider himself under that prohibition. He could change accents as easily as he changed clothes . . . and he had no intention of acquiescence in what the Guild and Sabin alone arranged.

  Banichi and Jago were still with him. He overtook the dowager and Ginny and their company at the lift, got in just before the door shut and, between Banichi and Jago, set his back against the wall, heaving a deep sigh. His inner vision was all a kaleidoscope of crew on the bridge, locked fuel port, station corridors—those urgent problems and the marching dots of their communication with the alien craft. Which had to be finessed. Somehow.

  The dowager was, at the moment, on remarkably compliant behavior. Cajeiri was, correctly sensing an armed grenade in his great-grandmother’s quiet demeanor. Ginny very wisely took her cues.

  “Damn Guild,” was Jerry’s opinion, and at a sharp look from Ginny: “Well, damn them, chief. We come all this way . . .”

  “Jerry,” Ginny said, and Ilisidi paid the matter a quiet look.

  Gran Sidi, as the stationers called her . . . Gran Sidi, the atevi force that swept into station affairs at critical moments and fixed things. And to this hour when Gran Sidi gave a look like that—silence fell among Mospheirans and ship-folk alike.

  “Sabin has something in mind,” Bren said ever so softly. “Just don’t rock the boat yet. So to speak. We’ll have our moment.”

  “Anything you need,” Ginny said, and with a meaningful glance at the atevi contingent. “Aiji.” She managed an atevi-style bow, a graceful escape out of difficult communications, as the lift reached five-deck and let them out.

  “Good,” Ilisidi said, acknowledging the communication—lordly acceptance. Ilisidi walked out, her staff with her, and Bren followed, not without a parting glance to Ginny and her team, a simple shift of the eyes toward the overhead, an advisement where he meant to go.

  Ginny understood. Ginny—who could pass for crew, herself. She returned a firm, got-the-information kind of nod.

  Ilisidi’s guards opened the door to the atevi section. Ilisidi’s guards, Ilisidi’s servants, had all turned out along the corridor, loyal support, baji-naji, come what might from the strangers proposing to enter the ship on decks above.

  The section door shut. Sealed. Ilisidi, walking with taps of her cane, issued her orders, quietly, matter of factly, while she moved among the staff. “An hour to rest, if we are so fortunate. Security will deal with necessary issues. For the nonce, we shall not contact these intruders or become apparent to them unless they reach our territory. Bren-nandi?”

  “Aiji-ma?”

  “You, personally, can manage the accent and manner of ordinary crew.”

  She didn’t miss a bet.

  “Easily.”

  They had reached the dowager’s study door. Ilisidi stopped there, hands on the head of her cane, poised. “Interesting. Apprise us of any news.”

  “Yes, aiji-ma.”

  A waggle of the topmost fingers. “Let Sabin-aiji make her attempt. Let her learn what she can of the situation and perhaps return to us. Let these officers of the Guild come aboard and lay hands where they wish on the other decks. But not on ours. All these things we may tolerate, briefly, for expediency’s sake. Otherwise—otherwise, Bren-nandi, see to it. Use whatever resources you need.”

  “Yes, aiji-ma.”

  And with that statement, and with a belated backward look from Cajeiri—a worried look, it was—Ilisidi turned aside and let Cenedi open the door to her quarters—into which she and all her company disappeared.

  Her bones, Bren said to himself, did suffer with long standing. It was well past time she took a rest. But that mind didn’t rest. She was far too canny in human affairs to attempt to deal with what her human associates could far better manage. She deputed, and she sent. But she did not, one was sure, go off alert.

  He walked on from that point into his own territory, with Banichi and Jago . . . who assuredly would not approve his plans. Who had defensive skills he could never manage.

  But no amount of skill and stealth could disguise what they were.

  “Nadiin-ji,” he said to them, “Sabin-aiji, who has met these station aijiin before, believes she can maintain her authority, discover useful information and gain their cooperation to refuel the ship. She has refused them free access to the ship’s history. They persisted and she still refused. She surely knows there is some risk to her freedom to act as she goes onto the station. Her authority there on the station is yet to establish, and one hopes she succeeds. But one still fails to trust her entirely. There is that.”

  “A strong possibility, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.

  “She can’t compel their obedience.” It might be superfluous to remind his staff what drove Sabin and the Pilots’ Guild were different instincts, having nothing to do with the grouping-drive that motivated atevi, but it was still worth laying out. “We are not dealing with man’chi between her and this Guild, nadiin-ji. Each side has both merit and force to persuade the other to take their direction. But only Sabin has a ship, and I confess I wish she were staying on the ship and simply demanding they come aboard. She could compel that. She could announce her int
ent to the station population and create insurrection, but she refuses, and takes a security force to the heart of their establishment—perhaps for reasons of her own, perhaps that some sense like man’chi forbids she take the station apart in disorder. I fear they may ambush her—I fear Jenrette, for that matter. But she knows that from the beginning. I have speculations—even the speculation that she is Guild and means to spill everything she bids us conceal, laying plans to take the ship once she gets aboard.”

  “Do we count this likely?”

  “She has the ship already. She could easily invite the Guild in and turn the ship over to them without risking herself aboard the station. As likely that she means to walk in and simply shoot the Guild-aiji dead at his desk. I don’t know what she intends. She has taken Jenrette as one of her guards. I don’t know why. Perhaps because she is Guild, as I suspect he is—perhaps because she simply wishes to get him off the ship so he can’t sabotage anything. She does not trust Jase to run the ship.”

  “Do you so trust him, Bren-ji?” Jago asked.

  “In matters of security, yes. And he has staff that can move the ship at need. We have not linked the ship within safe access of general population. A rush of population into the mast would put us in a position where we would have to open our doors or see them die of cold; and the presence of so many would increase mass that we dare not leave dock without refueling. On the other hand, if the station administration itself refuses to vacate the station, this would be a great difficulty. Sabin did reiterate to Jase the mission to destroy all the information the station holds. The computers that hold that information, on the station, are deep, and defended by the Guild. The alternatives remain—very bad alternatives. One hardly wishes to think about the possibility of blowing up the station with all those people aboard. One refuses to contemplate it.”