Ambassador 4: Coming Home

by Jansen, Patty

  Sheydu nodded. “That concurs with my assessment. They’re not superpeople. They might be strong and good at physical combat, but they have no skills in negotiation.”

  “They’re made to blindly obey,” Veyada said. “Like the Aghyrian crew themselves.”

  “They’re not that good at fighting either,” Reida said. “I haven’t even done that much training but I bet I could could wrestle them to the ground.”

  “Now don’t you go and take unnecessary risks, young man,” Sheydu said. “The plan is we go in quick, do the job and out quick, before anyone sees us or before we run into trouble. No wrestling matches.”

  Reida nodded, leaning forward on the table. Absolutely loyal.

  So the plan was deceptively simple. Go to the dig site, overwhelm the guards, preferably without killing them, and destroy the relay which Reida had shown was inside the ruins of the former ship.

  Deyu then wanted to know why I was so obsessed with not killing the guards. “I mean, they’re Tamerians, not really people at all.”

  I was going to reply, but Sheydu cut in. “Young lady, that is how the Aghyrians think about us, and once you start down that road, there really is no end to it.”

  Deyu had the grace to look ashamed, and I met Sheydu’s eyes. Had I just been mistaken about them all along and did they understand me better than I thought?

  “Killing people is a last resort,” she said. “But when it needs to be done, it needs to be done.”

  There were nods around the table. It was just that the parameters for getting killed in Coldi society were so much more sensitive than on Earth or even in gamra society. Shooting first, ignoring a writ, or being deemed troublesome by a higher authority were all likely to get you killed, and of course once the sheya instinct came into play, laws no longer applied and all bets were off.

  I handed the meeting to Sheydu, who spoke in brief sentences about weapons we would take—full armour and two guns for everyone, including me—and explosives she would carry. Her backup was Deyu, who nodded bravely, but looked terrified.

  Thayu reported that the military astronomers had already started calculations to find the most likely spots where the ship would jump. They were compiling lists of relays that needed to be destroyed with urgency that would be drip-fed to the ships that needed them. The expectation was that this process would need to run half a day at least for calculating time, for crosschecks, for matching of items in the giant database of space junk.

  She added, “But I expect the checking to go out the window when they get pressed for time. It’s more important that they try to stop the ship than that they avoid taking out operational satellites.”

  Then Veyada reported on legal implications of conducting an attack on the island.

  He reported, “Being on the island proper, and none of us being citizens of Barresh, we’re all far outside our mandate. If the council wants to prosecute us for a hostile act, they can. If gamra hears of it, they will drag us to court.”

  I told them that Ezhya would send a backdated message to temporarily take us out of gamra duty if something went wrong. I presumed that if something went wrong in space as well, he had people on the ground to send it.

  Veyada said, “All right, that takes us off the hook with gamra, but the Barresh Council will have classified the site as heritage property and there are conservation laws dealing with this listing. Barresh takes their history very seriously. They have arduous application processes if you simply want to see the site. Never mind blow a hole in it. We could apply to have the offending object removed, but that would probably take the best part of a year to clear the Heritage Committee, the Public Safety Committee and the Committee for Protection of Agricultural Habitat.” He counted off on his fingers.

  I stared at him. “Fuck all that. Let’s go throw some bombs.”

  Nods. Coldi were people of action. They disliked endless talk. For all that the two people were on related branches in the tree of humanity, their personalities were vastly different.

  I said, “We’re going to be facing Tamerians.”

  Reida rubbed his hands. “I’m looking forward to that. Those guards were useless pricks.”

  Again, there were nods all around. If the Coldi absolutely had to acknowledge that someone else had created them, they wanted to push home the fact that they were more adaptable and stronger than other people

  “Later, we might need to deal with people who financially support Tamerians.” Like councillors, like Delegate Akhtari. We should get off our backside and move these Tamerians out of town.

  “I will shoot them personally,” Sheydu said. “They have no idea what they’re playing with.”

  Her bravado was uplifting, but ultimately false. The people who supported the Tamerians were powerful gamra identities and would be unlikely to put themselves in a situation where they could be shot.

  It was an occasion for full battle gear, with the rare added condition that none of us needed to hide the fact that we were armed.

  I went with Thayu into the bedroom to get changed. I shed my wet clothes in the little bathroom that was attached to our bedroom, wondering if I’d ever wear them again.

  You’ve wondered that so often in the last few years. Thayu came in. She was in her underwear, a short body-hugging singlet and a pair of loose shorts, both brown. Her metallic hair hung loose over her shoulders. “Need to get a hair tie.”

  I reached for her as she passed me. Her skin was warm and made me shiver.

  “Hey, you look out of sorts.” She sounded cheerful but I didn’t miss the serious undertone.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more dangerous.”

  “Going into you president’s office and searching through his records wasn’t dangerous? Going to Asto wasn’t dangerous? Defending the hub wasn’t dangerous? Going into the ship?”

  “You know what I mean. Those things were dangerous, but rarely affected a lot of other people if something went wrong.”

  She nodded. She did know.

  I hugged her and the hug turned into a passionate kiss.

  Then she said, “We will survive because we have the best people. If it comes to a conflict, Kando Luczon won’t win, because his people only support him out of fear. When we take the fear away, there won’t be any support left.”

  “I hope so.” I couldn’t face telling her what Ezhya had told me, especially about being given clearance to live in Athyl, which would be a very special kind of clearance indeed. I didn’t want to alarm her.

  I hoped that this was going to be over soon. My body didn’t handle sleepless nights as well as it once had and just looking at that bed made me feel tired and gritty-eyed.

  We went into the hall where a silent group was gathering. Everyone wore full battle gear. Telaris had even procured a military style gun. I wasn’t sure the weapon was legal, but I didn’t care. They were here to protect me, and we were going to destroy the relay, no matter what.

  We discussed how to get there. The train was not a good idea because we’d be too visible. The ferry was gone, Sheydu informed me. If it had been day, it would have been picked up by some hapless council worker, but at this time of day, I assumed Ezhya and Asha had taken it to the sand bar where military ships landed on the water without knowledge of the Exchange.

  Then Thayu came into the hall. “It’s all organised.”

  She didn’t say what, so I assumed some other type of boat.

  We left the building, a tight group of heavily armed people. Thayu walked next to me, Nicha on my other side. Deyu and Reida were in front of us, and Sheydu and Veyada behind us. Evi was at the very front and Telaris at the back. It was a perfect unit, even in Coldi eyes. Sleek, symmetrical, a full association with two extra guards, a configuration Ezhya would use often.

  We definitely weren’t going towards the station. We weren’t going to the water taxis either. I asked Thayu about that.

  “Too risky,” she said. “You never know how reliable the drivers
are. Any who come to the gamra island might well be paid for information about who they picked up, where, and where they were taken. We’re doing something different today.”

  I was wondering what that “something different” could be because it sounded ominous and not entirely without risk.

  We crossed the main thoroughfare that ran across the island from the station to the assembly hall. We didn’t talk much, but with all of us walking at a good pace, just our footsteps made enough noise to bring people to their windows to look. They were silhouettes against the light. I was sure many more watched in darkness.

  About halfway down the passage, Thayu turned to the gamra domestic staff and maintenance quarters. I still had no idea where she was taking us.

  Think agriculture, she said through the feeder.

  Agriculture. There was plenty of agriculture around Barresh. Most of it involved some type of water farming, often using enclosed field like paddies. Most local crops grew or floated in the water. The people of Barresh had farmed this area for thousands of years. They used low, keelless punts to ferry their harvest to town, but recently some larger commercial farms had started up, and they used—

  Damn it.

  You know?

  Yes. Solar planes.

  Not much later, we arrived at the place where they stood, black and silver lightweight structures such as flew over lily crops spraying fertilisers. These particular vehicles, though, did not belong to farmers but bore the logo of the island’s security.

  “I didn’t even know security had these things,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t, because ironically, they fly them at night. On battery.”

  Obviously.

  “They are ideal for night surveillance. They make very little noise and are slow enough to allow for crew to take observations on the ground.”

  Telaris groaned. “Why do these things remind me of some place I prefer not to remember?”

  Yes, one day that seemed much longer ago than it was, we had flown around a hot and horrible part of eastern Africa in one of these things, although that particular plane had been of Indrahui make. We’d crashed it in the desert, we’d attempted to fix it, we’d been caught by some very unsavoury characters. We’d been brought to the place in the desert that was a mansion, a bunker, a factory and a prison all in one. We’d . . . killed a few people.

  My stomach still churned at the thought. Do you know what happens when you repeatedly fire a charge gun at a person and their insides evaporate into steam?

  Trust me, it’s better not to know.

  Damn it, I really didn’t want to think of this right now.

  But I did I wonder what had become of Henri, the cocky Canadian-Ethiopian pilot.

  A group our size required two planes. Thayu was going to fly one, Sheydu the other. I had learned that all of Ezhya’s guards had to learn to fly, so we had a backup pilot in Veyada.

  I went with Thayu, Nicha, Deyu and Reida. Thayu didn’t like having both Evi and Telaris in the other plane, but they were both big and heavy and we had one more passenger, so we needed to have the lightest people.

  Thayu had clearly flown one of these things before. I knew she went out for nebulous “training” activities, but hadn’t been able to picture just what she did until now.

  We all climbed in by a tiny little light from Nicha’s comm. He was handing out night vision goggles at the door. Thayu, Reida and Deyu each got one, but he didn’t have enough for me. Deyu offered me hers, but I told her to keep it. Coldi night vision was notoriously poor, and they were the ones who would have to do the shooting if there was any shooting to be done.

  The seats were cramped, with a narrow space down the middle that didn’t deserve the name aisle. The plane wobbled ominously when Nicha shut the door and wriggled into the seat next to Thayu.

  We took off after the other plane and glided low over the water. Nicha instructed us to have weapons accessible.

  “We land around the point and approach from an angle that’s out of view from the dig site.”

  The latter meant flying all the way around the island past the airport—low under the approach path I assumed—and around the northern side of the island, maybe even around Far Atok because we couldn’t fly through the channel between the two islands and we weren’t allowed to fly over the city.

  It was an eerily pretty route even in the dark. The giant trees wouldn’t come into flower until the very start of the wet season, and they were now virtually leafless waiting for that to happen. They stood like skeletons against the streetlights. Occasional houses displayed lights on the porch or in upstairs windows. Sometimes a person walked on the street. It was past midnight and even the eateries had long since closed and sent their staff home.

  It was warm in the cabin, and I grew very sleepy.

  Next thing I knew we were skimming low over the surface of the marsh and moonlit water rushed past just below the cabin.

  Damn, I’d fallen asleep.

  The bottom of the plane must have already bounced off the water once, which is what had woken me up. I pushed myself straight in my seat.

  I felt hot and sweaty and guilty, because Thayu hadn’t seen able to sleep, and I felt I shouldn’t sleep then, either.

  The plane hit the water again and slowed so much that it floated to a stop. Thayu gunned the engine to push the plane as far into the reeds as it would go. She got up and opened the door. Cool dry air came in.

  “Guess what? We’ll be getting wet.”

  I was happy that I had listened to the advice to put on my temperature-retaining suit and my waterproof boots. They were hot right now, but it would get cooler very soon, especially if we ended up getting wet again.

  The little nap had refreshed me somewhat and I felt clear-headed when I jumped after Thayu and Nicha. When Reida and Deyu were out as well, we could drag the plane even further into the reeds.

  “That won’t be going anywhere soon,” Thayu said.

  I wanted to ask what would happen if we needed to get out in a hurry, but Thayu said the planes would be picked up by island security regardless of what we did. We would not be using them to get back. It looked like everything was under control.

  The other plane had already landed, but it was too dark to see where the others were and I had to keep my attention on following Thayu as she pushed through the reeds.

  The ground was soft and wet, and walking over a thick and springy carpet of decaying leaves was a slippery affair. We didn’t want to use comm lights so the feeble light of one of Ceren’s little moons was all we had. Wearing the infrared goggles, Thayu could possibly see more than I did. She would see where the others were, and indeed when we stepped out of the reeds onto a small beach, there they were, seated on the sand, a couple of dark silhouettes barely visible to me.

  “Did you check it out?” Thayu asked.

  “I did.” This disembodied voice was Sheydu’s. “There is a lot of activity at the site.”

  “What? At this time of the day?” I asked.

  “Look here.” She held up her IR scan screen, which showed the point of the island seen from the air. The water came up as black in the projection. The beach was grey, because it still radiated heat from the evening. A bunch of lighter grey blotches represented the houses that backed onto the beach. The tent showed up as a bright and clearly demarcated grey square, surrounded by a good number of light grey dots. Some were even people-shaped.

  “Seventeen of them,” she said. “More than what Reida told us.”

  Another question: had they possibly seen us?

  “What do they all guard this place from?”

  “Isn’t that the question everyone wants to know?” Thayu said.

  “And why is that light in the tent still on?”

  No one knew the answer to that.

  Reida said, “When I was here, no one ever spoke about a night shift at all. You just would see the Tamerians arrive. Usually not more than two or three.”

  “They were not app
ointed by the council, were they?”

  “Most people assumed that they were. The rumour went that they were sick of keihu men not wanting to work at all and not doing the job properly if they did.”

  The cliché that keihu were lazy really needed to go and die in a hole. It was utter rubbish.

  “But?” I prompted him.

  “It does seem strange, looking back. Presumably, the council would have to pay the Tamerians more than the locals. Why would they do that?”

  The unspoken truth hung between us: because someone in power knew that there was something valuable at the site.

  “It puts us in a difficult situation,” Sheydu said. “We were counting on two or three Tamerians. There are seventeen. They have excellent night vision. They have an elevated position. The distance between us and them is exposed marshland where we can’t run or hide.”

  Reida said, “Everyone keeps banging on about this night vision—”

  Sheydu spread her hands. “Because compared to them, we can’t see a fucking thing at night, even with these dreadful goggles—”

  “I know, right? But we get others in with ever better night vision.”

  Sheydu let her hands drop. “Others?”

  “Leave it to me. They’re on their way.”

  “They’re what? You have a bunch of Pengali turning up? Why would they help us?”

  “Because this is their town, too, and they’ve been excluded from any decision-making.”

  And Pengali, I remembered reading somewhere, were great at rallying behind causes. Once they believed in something, they were the best rent-a-crowd, bar none. It was getting them to that stage that was the hard bit. Whatever did Reida used to do during his nocturnal trips to town, in which he frequently ended up being arrested by the Barresh guards?

  He was very closely related to the zeyshi I reminded myself, and they had developed into a powerhouse in the hugely populous Outer Circle.

  Sheydu was drawing something on her reader and showed it to us. It was a map.

  “Unless you can tell us exactly when and where these Pengali are going to show up, we’ll have to do this alone. We don’t have much time until daylight and it’s got to be done before the first crack of dawn.”