Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  Jase, meanwhile, had been carrying on a running translation for Sabin, who stood, likewise looking at Ilisidi.

  “Where,” Ilisidi asked Geigi sharply, “where is Tatiseigi?”

  Cajeiri’s great-uncle, lord of the Atageini, sharing a boundary with the Kadigidi.

  “At his estate, aiji-ma. Apparently safe. The Lady Damiri is not there.”

  Cajeiri’s mother, who owed direct allegiance to the Atageini lord, Tatiseigi. Damiri was, very possibly, traveling with Tabini, if he was alive. She could have sheltered with her uncle, but apparently she was missing right along with Tabini, still loyal, and a constraint on her great-uncle.

  “How many provinces are now joining in this rebellion?”

  “Four provinces in the south, two in the east, under Lord Darudi.”

  “There is a head destined to fall,” Ilisidi said placidly. “And Tatiseigi? His man’chi?”

  “His neighbors the Kadigidi are surely watching him very closely, as if he might harbor the aiji or the consort, but he will not commit to this side or the other and they dare not touch him because of the Northern Association.”

  “The Northern Association holds?”

  “It holds, aiji-ma.”

  It was worth a deep, long sigh of relief. Atevi didn’t have borders. They had overlapping spheres of influence and allegiance. Within the aishidi’tat there were hundreds of associations of all sizes, from two or three provinces, likewise hazy in border, give or take, commonly, the loyalty of two or three families within the overlap. And if the Northern Association had held firm, rallying around Tatiseigi of the Atageini, the Midlands Association, to which the neighboring Kadigidi belonged, would be rash to make a move against Cajeiri’s mother’s relatives.

  And Cajeiri arriving back in the picture gave Uncle Tatiseigi a powerful claimant to power from his household, which would bring all sorts of pressure within Tatiseigi’s association . . . God, it had been so long since he had traced the mazes of atevi clans and allegiances, or had to wonder where the Assassins’ Guild was going to come down on an issue.

  Tabini missing. Assassinations. Havoc in the aishidi’tat.

  One thing occurred to him, one primary question.

  “Where are the shuttles, aiji-ma? Have they survived this disorder?”

  “Excellent question,” Ilisidi said, and relayed it to Geigi. “Where are the shuttles?”

  “We have one shuttle docked at the station,” was Geigi’s very welcome answer. “But we have no safe port to land it. The rebels hold the seacoast. We fear it may suffer attack, even if we attempt a landing on Mospheira.”

  God. But they still had one functional shuttle.

  One.

  “Aiji-ma,” Geigi said, “I have maps. I have maps, and letters, which I can send to you for more detailed information, if the station and the ship will permit.”

  Jase had translated that. They suddenly had Sabin’s full attention. “Jules,” Sabin said to her conversant, “Lord Geigi wants to transmit documents.”

  “He should send them,” Bren said, “aiji-ma.”

  “I shall get them together,” Lord Geigi said, when she ordered the transmission. “And I shall be there to meet you when you dock, aiji-ma.”

  “A cold trek and pointless,” was Ilisidi’s response. “Order my staff and the paidhi’s to prepare our rooms and never mind coming to that abysmally uncomfortable dock. We shall meet you in decent comfort, Geigi-ji, as soon as possible. If you think of other matters, include them with your documents. I am handing this phone back now.”

  “Yes,” Geigi said, accepting orders, and the contact went dead.

  Bren stood still, numb, and glanced at Jase.

  “I translated,” Jase said, with a shift of the eyes toward Sabin.

  “We have a problem, it seems,” Sabin said. “We have a shuttle, a ship full of more mouths to feed—we do have our own ship’s tanks, which should suffice to feed us all and the station, not well, but adequately, so at least we won’t overburden their systems. And we have our additional miner-bots, slow as that process may be.”

  “We have our own manufacturing module,” Gin said. “And we have some supplies. We can start assembly and programming on extant stock as soon as we dock. We can get them to work in fairly short order, and see if we can pick up the pace of their operation.”

  “Good,” Sabin said shortly.

  In one word, from high hopes and the expectation of luxury back to a situation of shortage and the necessity of mining in orbit, the condition of life of their ancestors. The condition of the great-grandfathers of the Reunioners, too, who had had to build their distant station in desolation and hazard, by their own bootstraps.

  They had to break that news to four thousand-odd colonists, and still keep the lid on their patience. Four thousand desperate people who’d been promised the sun and the moon and fruit drops forever once they got to the home station—and they were back to a hardscrabble existence, with a revolution in progress down in the gravity well.

  The gravity well. That long, long drop. Bren felt a sensation he hadn’t felt in two years, the sensation of standing at the top of a dizzying deep pit, at the bottom of which lay business he couldn’t let go its own course.

  Tabini. Atevi civilization. Toby and his own family, such as he had.

  “Mani-ma.” Cajeiri, ever so quietly, addressing his great-grandmother. “Do you think my father and mother are still alive?”

  Ilisidi gave a snort. “The Kadigidi would wish it known if not. Evidently they dare not claim it, even if they hope it to be the case, and one doubts they have so much as a good hope of being right. Likely your father and mother are alive and waiting for us to descend with force from the heavens.”

  “Shall we, mani-ma?”

  “As soon as possible,” Ilisidi said, and looked at Bren. “Shall we not?”

  “How long until dock?” Bren asked the captains.

  A flat stare from Sabin. “A fairly fast passage. When we get there, we’re going to be letting these passengers off in small packets. Very small packets. Their quarters have to be warmed and provisioned.”

  They could warm a section at a time, and would, he was very sure; but they could also do it at their own speed, which was likely to be very slow. Sabin meant she was not going to have a general debarcation, no celebration, no letting their dangerous cargo loose wholesale.

  And Gin Kroger had to get at her packaged robots and get the manufactury unpacked.

  “I very well understand,” he said with a bow of his head that was automatic by now, to atevi and to humans. “I think it wise, for what it’s worth.”

  “Our passengers are stationers,” Sabin said. “Spacers. They understand fragile systems. They won’t outright riot. But small conspiracies are dangerous—with people that understand fragile systems. I’m going to request Ogun to invoke martial law on the station until we completely settle these people in—simplifying our problems of control. I trust you can make this understood among atevi. I trust there’s not going to be some coup on that side of the station.”

  There was very little human behavior that could not be passed off among atevi with a shrug. But emotions would be running high there, too, considering the dowager’s return.

  “We don’t likely have any Kadigidi sympathizers on station,” Bren said quietly. “No. But there may be high feelings, all the same, with the return of the aiji’s son, and the only general translation of martial law doesn’t mean no celebration. No one can lay a hand on him or the dowager, no matter whose rules they violate.”

  “Understood,” Sabin said. “That will be made very clear to our personnel. I trust the dowager to manage hers.” She drew a deep breath, set hands on hips and looked across the bridge. “We’re inertial for the station. Before we make connection with the core, we’ve got to decide whether to run the dowager aboard at high speed, or be prepared to sit it out and establish our set of rules first. I’m inclined to get your party aboard first, if you can guara
ntee quiet once you’re there.”

  “Yes,” Bren said. Absolutes made him nervous as hell, but he had laid his life on Geigi’s integrity often enough before this. “We’ll take the fast route in, straight into the atevi section. Humans may be excited to know she’s here. That’s my chief worry. They’ll want to see her.”

  “No question they’ll be excited,” Jase said.

  Ilisidi was popular on the station, even among humans. Ilisidi always had been. And right now people were desperate for authority.

  “I’d suggest we not discuss our boarding,” Bren said. “If we get Geigi’s men positioned near the lift, we can get into our own section fast and just not answer the outside. Stationers know better than to rush atevi security.”

  “You go on station with them,” Sabin said to Jase. “I want you in direct liaison with Ogun.”

  “We can trickle the Reunioners on, three to five at a time,” Jase said quietly, “Drag out the formalities, mandatory orientations—rules and records-keeping they understand. The technical problems of warming a section for occupation, they well understand.”

  “Register them to sponsors,” Gin put in, “to our people, who know atevi.”

  It wasn’t the first time Gin had put forward that idea, and they’d shot it down, not wanting to create a class difference between Mospheirans and Reunioners. But right now it made thorough sense to do it . . . a sense that might reverberate through human culture for centuries if they weren’t careful.

  “All that’s Graham’s problem,” Sabin said shortly, meaning Jase had to make that decision among a thousand others, and she knew what he’d choose. “My whole concern is the security of this ship, its crew, and its supply. So are your atevi going to time out on us for an internal war, Mr. Cameron? Or can you explain to them we might see strangers popping into the system for a visit at any time from now on? I’d really rather have our affairs in better order when that happens.”

  “I intend to make that point,” Bren said.

  “Make it, hard. We need those shuttles. That would solve an entire array of problems. In the meantime, Ms. Kroger, I need your professional services, and will need them, urgently and constantly for the foreseeable future. Captain Ogun’s got his mining operation going all-out here, but if Cameron can’t get atevi resources up to us off the planet, or can’t get them tomorrow, we’ve got the immediate problem of feeding this lot—and I’m not ready to rip the shipyard apart worse than it already is to get supply. I want Captain Ogun’s tanks, Ms. Kroger. Shielded tanks and water sufficient to handle the station population indefinitely.”

  “Understood,” Gin said.

  “Then everybody get moving,” Sabin said.

  Bren translated for the dowager. “The ship-aijiin recommend we go below and make final preparations to leave the ship, which will be a hurried transit, aiji-ma, into a disturbed population.”

  “We are prepared,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand. The dowager had acquired a certain respect for Sabin-aiji, after a difficult start—a respect particularly active whenever Sabin’s opinion coincided with hers. “We are always prepared. Tell her see to her own people.”

  “The dowager states she is prepared for any eventuality.” There were times he didn’t translate all of what one side said; and there were times he did. “The aiji-dowager expects you to control the human side of this. She is prepared to make inroads into the atevi situation.”

  “Go below and observe takehold,” Sabin said. “The lot of you. We’re not wasting any time getting in there, no time for more ferment on their side or ours, thank you.”

  “Aiji-ma,” Bren translated that. “The ship is about to move with greater than ordinary dispatch and Sabin-aiji politely urges us all to take appropriate shelter belowdecks for a violent transit. This will speed us in before there can be further disturbance on the station or among our human passengers.”

  “Good,” Ilisidi said sharply and headed for the lift, marking her path with energetic taps of the cane. Her great-grandson and the rest of her company could only make haste behind her to reach the doors, while the ship sounded the imminent-motion warning.

  It was certainly not the homecoming they’d planned. Damn, Bren thought bleakly, taking his place inside the lift car. They’d ridden from nervous anticipation to the depths of anxiety all in an hour; and amid everything else—

  Amid everything else, he thought, looking across the car at Cajeiri, there’d been no special word for a boy who’d just heard bad news about his mother and father, and who remained appallingly quiet.

  What did he say to an atevi child? Or what should his great-grandmother have said, or what dared he say now?

  The lift moved. Meanwhile the intercom gave the order: “Maneuvers imminent. Takehold and brace for very strong movement.”

  Four thousand colonists were getting that news, people unacculturated to the delicate and dangerous situation they were going to land in on the station, people whose holier-than-common-colonists attitudes were even more objectionable to the Mospheirans who were half the workforce on that station, and whose ancestors had suffered under Guild management . . . and who were going to have to sponsor the Reunioners if, as seemed likely now, Gin’s plan prevailed.

  Four thousand people who’d been promised paradise ended up on tighter rations than they’d had where they’d come from. And the Mospheirans, who were going to have to live with them and who’d already endured hardship since the shuttles had stopped flying, weren’t going to be anywhere near as patient with their daily complaints as the ship had been.

  Jerry and Gin were holding quiet, rapid-fire consultations next to him, Jerry agreeing to stay aboard the ship while Gin went to her on-station offices to take control. Banichi was holding quick converse with Cenedi.

  The lift hit five-deck level and opened for them. Gin and Jerry went one way, they went another, past sentries, into the atevi section.

  “Aiji-ma,” Bren said, prepared to take his leave and deal with his own staff. “Nandi.” For the youngster, who gravely bowed. He remained distressed for the boy, the heir, who might in some atevi minds on that station now be the new aiji of Shejidan; but none of them had time to discuss their situation or accommodate an eight-year-old boy’s natural distress—not in a ship about to undertake maneuvers. Beyond that, he reminded himself, Cajeiri’s whole being responded to man’chi, a set of emotions a human being was only minimally wired to understand. For all he knew, the boy was approaching the explosion point. Every association of the boy’s life was under assault, while atevi under him and around him in the hierarchy would rally round and carry on with all the resources the battered association could rake together. God knew what the boy was feeling, or whether he was just numb at the moment, or how he would react when the whole expectations of the station atevi centered on him.

  “Go,” Ilisidi said sharply, curt dismissal, and he strode down the corridor at all speed, Banichi and Jago in close company, down to the safety of his own quarters. Takehold racketed through the corridors. Narani waited by his cabin door, but Bren ordered him to safety.

  Inside, a shocking transformation. The walls were stripped of plants now, shockingly barren. Everything was barren, even the mattress, the bed he had shared with Jago for two years, lacking sheets and blankets.

  He lay down nonetheless, and Jago lay down beside him, pulled the safety netting across, preparing for what could be a scary, hard pull.

  “Final warning,” sounded over the general com. “Takehold where you are.”

  Engines kicked in. The force dragged at them.

  “How is Cajeiri taking the news, Jago-ji?” he asked Jago, staring at the ceiling. “Can one tell?”

  A slight move beside him, a shrug, it might be. “Likely still thinking on it, Bren-ji,” she said.

  “Can we help him?” As if the boy was a ticking bomb. “Dare we?” Then: “Should we?”

  “The aiji-dowager is his only present anchor,” Jago said, “and if his father should be dead,
who knows? Who can know? What he feels, what he may feel, no one can predict.”

  Emotions, again. Emotions that connected atevi in associations, that dictated who ruled, who followed. Impassivity and formality were so much the rule of polite society; but there were currents under the still surface that he could only imagine—in the boy, and in Ilisidi herself, whose grandson was Tabini-aiji, whose allies had turned against the state she had helped build.

  Engines kept up the push. For every force they put on the ship, they’d have to take it off again before they docked. It was going to be a long, rough ride, but he completely agreed with Sabin: if they got there an hour faster, the rumor mill on the station would have an hour less run-time to create problems for them.

  And if they could only scare the Reunioners in their belly badly enough, without making them mad, they might have an edge in maintaining control of them. The former inhabitants of Reunion Station weren’t acclimated to rough maneuvers. They had to realize now this wasn’t a routine approach.

  News would be spreading through the station, just one communications tech or janitor telling a cousin what was going on, and that cousin calling someone else.

  Time, time, and time. It wasn’t on their side.

  3

  A rush to dock, and intense security in their getting aboard—a quick, bone-chilling transit through the deep cold and null g of the mast, and on into the lift—Bren let go a desperate, shuddering breath that he realized he’d held overlong and gulped another, air burning cold and so dry it seared his lungs and set off a fit of coughing.

  Himself, the dowager, Cajeiri, her security, with Banichi and Jago: they were the advance party. The rest of his own staff was still on the ship, struggling to pack up, and Jase was coming in the next batch, with Press-man, Kaplan, and a security detail, with more security due to escort them to Ogun’s offices. Atevi station security was to pick them up at the lift exit—Geigi’s men—never mind the usual hassle with customs, Sabin assured them. Just go, get the dowager and the heir safely into the atevi section, and those doors shut, with their security up and functioning. Gin Kroger was going to come in through the cargo lock, with her equipment, with another contingent of Ogun’s men to see things were in order.