Ambassador 2: Raising Hell (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller)

by Patty Jansen

  Was I truly weak, trying to play by the gamra culture? Hell, they better have a good explanation for what was going on, because to be honest I didn’t like it any better than Melissa did.

  I asked Ezhya’s female guard, “I presume your boss has something to do with this? He’s gone with her?”

  I felt dread in the depth of my stomach. It wasn’t just Melissa who wouldn’t like this; most of Nations of Earth wouldn’t like this. It was so typically something Ezhya would do. He could be such a boy when he got excited about something. I remembered the telescope. He’d said, “Don’t forget what I said,” which had puzzled me, but in hindsight shouldn’t have. He’d been talking about an arranged meeting. I drew my conclusion.

  “He’s taken her up in his craft to view the stars.”

  “Yes. They were due back before dawn.”

  A little silence followed that announcement. I glanced at the small window at the top of the wall where light blue sky was showing, definitely dawn.

  Were due before dawn.

  Ezhya never reneged on a promise. I realised that this little trip was something he hadn’t intended anyone to find out about. He did those sorts of things, too. The perks of being what, in Earth terms, would be called an absolute dictator.

  And the guard said had. He had intended to be back by dawn. But . . . clearly, something had gone wrong.

  “Mashara?” My heart was hammering. An attack by hostile forces? Ezhya’s enemies? An accident, rare as they were?

  The guard said, “The Exchange has gone down.”

  ‎

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  I SAID, “SHIT.” And then again, “Shit.” And a bit later, “Is there a record of him using the Exchange?” Goodness knew where Ezhya liked to take his private guests for stargazing. Back in the days of my first involvements with him, he’d taken me to view Asto from orbit, its mega-cities, its landscape crisscrossed with open aquifers. I’d come to treasure that trip and the wonders I’d seen: the pinkness of the desert, the livid green of the aquifer communities, the vile yellow and orange oceans, the crater with its purple mist and the crystal wastelands.

  The guard said, “The Exchange is in a state of chaos. Mashara did not think it prudent to disturb them with questions.”

  Wise, probably. “Has mashara spoken to the Yetaris Damaru?” The Barresh Exchange was unusual within gamra, as the only Exchange to be in private hands, owned by a single commercial family.

  “He was busy and not in a very good mood, but the Exchange has released a statement, which says that they are aware of problems and are working on it. They don’t expect contact to be re-established before morning.”

  Holy shit. I met his moss green eyes. “Do they know about this, um, situation with Ezhya?”

  “Not that mashara has established.”

  The implications chilled me. The top of the Asto society which Ezhya occupied was a pretty precarious position. A Chief Coordinator juggled the demands of so many loyalty networks that to satisfy his connections and provide them with work and guidance was a constant, never-ending job. In the old days, Chief Coordinators used to barely leave the command room, and certainly never left the planet. These days, Ezhya had his feeders which kept him in constant contact with his seconds and various other networks. He was said to have three feeders. I hated having even one; I didn’t like other people’s thoughts in my mind, but the feeders gave him the freedom to keep up with all his networks wherever he was. It was not just that he controlled a lot of minutiae in daily life, or that people expected the Chief Coordinator to do this, but that the Coldi had a pathological need for someone in this position.

  If Ezhya’s political rivals knew that he could not get back to the position of leadership soon, they’d pounce on the top spot.

  I lowered my voice. “No one must find out that he’s missing.” For as long as we could keep the news a secret.

  “Certainly not, Delegate.”

  “We must go and see if we can discover where he is.”

  Calm down, Delegate.

  If he’d gone to Asto, as he had with me, things might not be so bad. He’d quickly take control. Margarethe would be in a difficult position, but surely, with some care, she could be transferred to a space-enabled craft that could bring her back to us as soon as the Exchange came back online. Failing that, the Asto military had a station in orbit. No doubt she could stay there.

  I went back into the bedroom to get changed again, because no Exchange meant I could not use the hub room, and going outside the apartment meant I had to dress appropriately and take the guards, and Thayu. All on what I had thought would be a relaxed morning in which I could catch up with Margarethe and her plans.

  Margarethe. Damn, she was with him. Asto might see this as an opportunity for political upheaval, and Nations of Earth would make a big fuss in their own way, even if they only found out after the fact.

  This needed to be solved, and fast.

  Thayu was sitting up in bed when I entered, looking puzzled and only half-awake.

  Yes, she had been drinking a bit more than usual yesterday, and she usually didn’t drink at all.

  I explained quickly what had happened and her reaction was as astonished as mine had been. “The Exchange never goes out. Not for long anyway.”

  “We’re going to check it out. Get changed.”

  “Sure.” She jumped out of bed, looking more alert now.

  “Seen Nicha yet?”

  “I’m coming,” came Nicha’s voice from the door that connected our bedrooms. He was all dressed and ready to go.

  Lately we’d been doing things with three of us in a rather unusual association. Nicha was my zhayma. I couldn’t really take a second zhayma unless she was part of a completely different loyalty network, and Thayu was of the same network—but that’s how it seemed to have worked out: three zhaymas. Fortunately, despite its unusualness, the arrangement worked fine. Brother and sister were very good with each other.

  Then I had to tell Nicha what had happened. He listened quietly, his face grave as if he’d been waiting for this news. Thayu finished getting dressed before I had finished combing my hair. Eirani came in to plait it, which I could do myself, but it wouldn’t look much good. While she was doing this, I asked her about the status of Ezhya’s guards, but I was informed that they had gone out. She didn’t know where.

  She said, “I do not understand, Delegate, why those guards have to be in here. Outside, yes, but what risk do they think we pose to their bosses? All we have in here is brooms and cooking utensils. They upset the kitchen staff—”

  “Did you see them leave the apartment?”

  “This morning, yes, while I was taking delivery of the laundry.”

  “How many of them?”

  “I counted seven.”

  So it was just Ezhya and Margarethe who had gone.

  That was at least something. If there were seven guards, those fighting machines would likely form a complete association with their own leader. One at the top, two below that and four at the bottom. Did this mean I needed to worry less about the guards now that they were unsure about where their boss was? Complete associations, three people, or seven, or fifteen, were more resilient to stress from outside.

  Eirani fussed over the crumpled state of my jacket, which I’d left on a bench. I told her it didn’t matter, I just wanted to get going, but she went to find another one, and I knew in my heart that it did matter at gamra, and I was no longer a junior Delegate and so I had to look the part. She came back with another jacket, and insisted on re-plaiting my hair because “I was still addled from the party and didn’t do a very good job. I’m sorry, Delegate.” I sat through her ministrations, teeth gnashing, but I knew she was right, a
nd I just had to put up with it.

  When we were just about to leave, the front door opened and Ezhya’s guards marched in, in perfect formation: the tall woman in front, two men behind her and the other four behind that. They all wore full uniform: a silver temperature retaining suit with a maroon sash and belt. Each carried several weapons, mostly guns in arm brackets, but some had sticks or knives.

  The woman leader halted.

  Regarded us. She looked at Evi and Telaris who stood next to me like dark sentinels. Both were tall and well-trained, but they were not a blip on these guards.

  Nicha and Thayu had taken up subservient positions. A person’s bodyguards were considered a special small branch of the important person’s association, and their ranking in society was only marginally below that of the person they protected.

  “The Delegate is going out.” Telaris was the first to speak into the uncomfortable silence.

  “Need any assistance, mashara?” the tall woman said.

  Given her ranking, that was the oddest imaginable request.

  Telaris hesitated.

  “We are going into town,” I said, breaking protocol by butting into a conversation that would normally be conducted between guards.

  Her eyes flashed to meet mine. “To the Exchange by any chance?”

  Thayu inched closer to me. I was pretty sure she’d passed the Inner Circle exams, but she had never seemed comfortable around Ezhya’s guards and right now her behaviour even suggested that she thought I needed protection from them.

  “Yes, we are.” Then I said in an impulse. “Is there anything you would like me to ask?”

  “No.”

  An expression of distaste flickered over her face.

  “Let’s go then,” I said, and we filed past them out the door. No one spoke.

  From the apartment’s front door, we went to the end of the gallery, down the stairs, through the atrium and out the arched entrance to our building.

  Once we had enough room to walk next to each other, I met Thayu’s and Nicha’s eyes in a What the hell was that about? look. I said, “They seem . . . unstable.”

  Nicha nodded. “Not good. They’re facing some pressure, somewhere.”

  Thayu said, in a low voice, “Do you think it was wise to leave them behind in our apartment?”

  “What harm can they do? They can’t communicate, they can’t go back home. Ezhya’s unit across the hall has been taken by the Asto delegation to gamra and I can’t see why they’d want to go into town and create trouble there.”

  “You do realise that Natanu ranks higher than my father?”

  I presumed Natanu was the tall and menacing woman.

  “Yes.” Well, I hadn’t given it so much thought, but I guess I should have realised that. Thayu and Nicha’s father was in the second layer, under Risha and Taysha, both of the Palayi clan. Risha was his immediate superior.

  She continued, “With Ezhya absent, either my father or Natanu is going to want to test the other sooner or later. Ezhya is the pin that holds all those networks in place. If he’s taken out and not immediately replaced . . .” She shrugged. “Something like this hasn’t happened before, so it will be interesting, especially since we have a couple of people in high positions right here in our house.”

  “Where is your father?”

  “He got up early this morning and left.”

  “To the orbiting ship?”

  “Oh no. He would never leave your house without formal thanks.”

  Formal thanks? That man truly baffled the living daylights out of me.

  “He’s likely to come back to the apartment some time today and may run into Natanu and her association. There may be trouble. We may want to be home for when that happens.”

  Then again, we might not. What could I do as puny human when these Coldi powerhouses decided to have a fight? I seemed to remember someone telling me that rank fights never involved weapons, but I wouldn’t want to swear on that.

  Damn, was there anything that wasn’t going to fall apart?

  The walk from the apartment across the island to the station would have been a pleasant one had it not been for the tension.

  The leafy avenues between the residential blocks were still quiet, while Delegates woke up and had breakfast, or maybe were still having their morning baths. Evidently, those who knew about the Exchange outage either viewed this as a minor hiccup, or the proverbial calm before the storm. What had Devlin said yesterday about misaligned communication?

  What would happen if the Exchange remained off-line for a substantial period? I didn’t even want to think about that.

  By providence or design, a couple of shiny carriages waited at the train station, and Evi and Telaris commandeered one for our party. This had to be one of the much-lauded new carriages, made locally to a design from a Mirani company.

  We climbed in and sat down on the soft seats with blue covers. The walls of the carriage were clad in patterned wood. The air inside even smelled of wood. Much was said about Miran and their lengthy slide into oblivion, but they did elegance very well.

  Thayu sat next to me and dumped a bunch of electronics on the table between us and Nicha.

  “Does any of that work?” I asked her.

  “Without the Exchange, most of it doesn’t. I’m hoping to get some local network codes so we can at least use it within the city.”

  The train set off and, outside, the view of the station was replaced by an expanse of water and reeds. Nicha stared out the window leaning his chin in his hand.

  Thayu was fiddling with all her equipment, picking up this device and then that one. After much checking, she handed me a comm. “You can use that. They have the local backup running.”

  While I took the device from her, I bent over so my lips almost touched the skin on the back of her neck. “Any messages?”

  “No. Just the official statement that there’s an outage for off-planet communications and travel and that they’re working on it.”

  The train whizzed low over the water. From my window, I could see the artificial island that was the airport, where Ezhya Palayi’s craft wouldn’t be. I worried that if he hadn’t gone to Asto, he could have gotten caught somewhere in mid-space between transfers and anpar lines. In that case, we’d probably never see him again. That was too depressing a thought. No, I had to believe that he was someplace from which he and Margarethe could at least return.

  Return, with what consequences, and in what state?

  Would Melissa be right about Nations of Earth panic? Would faith in the Exchange be shaken? Would the Aghyrian section see this as an opportunity to push their alternative Exchange again?

  Moreover, there was that all-pervasive Coldi custom they called nethana. The word translated as “without meaning”. After settling on an agreement or completion of negotiations, Coldi upper-class people often went for a private dinner followed by a sex romp for fun, which was what nethana related to.

  Ezhya loved his nethana. He would try it on her. Damn.

  In my explanations to Margarethe about Coldi culture I hadn’t covered the subject of nethana yet. That it was a sign of appreciation and respect, that it didn’t mean anything, that it certainly wasn’t lewd or inappropriate. That is was not impolite to refuse, but that it strengthened relationships immensely, often in unspoken ways.

  Damn. Here was another potential for a major diplomatic situation. Given my experience with Coldi customs, I’d gone stargazing with Ezhya knowing his likely intention at the moment I accepted the invitation. I had more or less grown up knowing about the custom. I was fine with it, even with taking part.

  Margarethe was an entirely different story. I should have seen this coming, especially
with his cryptic remark to her, and told her all these things last night. However, this would have involved some blunt and sexual statements I wasn’t comfortable making to an elegant woman who was only a professional acquaintance. But Coldi held doctorates in blunt and sexual.

  Damn it, damn it.

  The train was slowing. From my window, all I could see was water and islands, but the window on the other side of the cabin showed the lush green streets of the main island of Barresh, with its large houses of the local rich families, interspersed with some commercial buildings. There had never been any space on the islands to build railways, and as a consequence all the train lines went over water and skirted the islands. Now some low-cost housing was being built over the water, too. A number of poles and cranes stuck out of the mist.

  I rose and waited at the door before it opened.

  “Don’t worry,” Thayu said at my shoulder. These days she rarely even needed a feeder to know what I was thinking. “Exchange outages have happened before.”

  I met her eyes. “Have they?” Not while I’d been in Barresh. Come to think of it, I’d always been impressed with the reliability of the Exchange system, with its backups upon backups. Everything I knew about what could go wrong gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  I interpreted her silence, while we waited for the door to open, to mean that she’d said this to calm me. I didn’t think she was so calm about this either. I knew her better than that. The last time the Barresh Exchange had blinked was before the equipment had been upgraded, and that was a long time ago. Before I was born. A long time before I was born.

  And then the unbidden thought came into my mind: would it have something to do with that flash I saw yesterday?

  I had to push such thoughts away, focus on the immediate. No good panicking over what I couldn’t change.

  We went out of the carriage, onto the platform, up the stairs to a flat area that used to be the location of the airport, but where in the last few years a market had sprung up with purpose-built shops. It was an expensive place, and serious shoppers went to the proper markets on the other side of the island, but this one served tourists, and so the merchants were only just arriving for work, whereas the old markets would have been in operation since before dawn.