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

by Patty Jansen

  “Shit.” It wasn’t really appropriate language by a gamra delegate in public, but the word slipped from my lips before I could stop it.

  Everyone stared at me.

  Into the silence, I said, “Anyone else who wishes to swear is entitled to do so now.”

  * * *

  “So—what?” Thayu said in a low voice after we left the room. “The Athyl Exchange is out, as well as Beratha, Miran and likely Kedras? A total system failure. Why?”

  I shrugged, remembering with unease how I used to feel a certain amount of fear when going through the Exchange. Since when I was a student and first had the system explained to me, it had never ceased to amaze me how blasé people got over such an intricate, precise and deeply vulnerable system. “Whatever has caused it, this is unlikely to be fixed in a day.” I said in a lower voice, “You know what worries me? If Ezhya had gone to Asto, he would have already let himself be heard. He’d have broadcast an official statement using the military’s installations. So he has not gone to Asto, and he didn’t stay in orbit around Ceren because otherwise he would have come back here.”

  “I agree. By not mentioning Ezhya, they assume that Ezhya is with us. They don’t even want to draw attention to the fact that he’s not in Athyl.”

  “What can we do?” I asked, and lowered my voice further. “I mean—what can we do that inflicts the least damage on Asto and on Ezhya’s position?” There was no way that we could let the news out that he was missing from Barresh as well. “How long can we keep quiet before real trouble hits?”

  Nicha said, “When the Exchange went down, they’ll have felt his absence immediately, because his feeders would have fallen silent. It seems that he’d given some advance orders or some regular routines are still running. I don’t know enough about that part of his position. Given the general outage, most people will understand the situation, but if it goes on for too long, there will be friction. The most rebellious ones will have already started asking questions.”

  And damn, there had already been signs of trouble with zeyshi, because they were always at the forefront of this sort of trouble.

  I asked, “Would Ezhya’s guards be able to help?” They’d have a high interest in keeping Ezhya’s position safe, since without him, they’d lose theirs, too.

  “Likely.”

  “Has your father come back yet?”

  “No, but I know that he went to the shuttle, to communicate with the main ship.”

  “I’d like to speak with him.” I wondered how much information I could get out of him, especially if he, as Thayu suggested, would have interest in claiming the top job.

  Eirani came walking through the hall, wheeling the dinner trolley out of the living room. “There is food on the table, Delegate. I don’t suppose anyone wants something to eat. No one ever does in this house. Everyone is always too busy.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, Eirani, we do want your wonderful food. You’ve done very well.” I turned to Nicha. “Come on, let’s get everyone up here. Let’s have a proper breakfast. I’m hungry.”

  Nicha said, “Yeah, me, too.”

  “It smells wonderful,” Thayu said to Eirani.

  Since their public dislike of each other when Thayu first moved in, the two women seemed to have settled on an atmosphere of forced politeness.

  I had barely taken a step in the direction of the living room when there was a commotion down the hall, raised voices.

  “. . . but I’m not going anywhere!” That was Melissa.

  Someone replied, but I couldn’t hear what was said.

  I frowned at Nicha, but he shook his head.

  “You start on breakfast,” I said. “I’ll go and see what’s going on there.” I rushed down the hall.

  Melissa stood at the top of the stairs, thunder on her face. With her was the last of Ezhya’s guards, the one who hadn’t been in the hub room. Melissa’s expression cleared when she saw me.

  “Cory, what is this ‘you are not allowed to leave’? Since when can’t I leave this apartment? Since when do I have to listen to these thugs? How am I supposed to do my job like this?”

  “Mashara?”

  The guard turned around and immediately snapped into a subservient position, his arms down his sides, palms facing backwards. “Our excuses, Delegate. Mashara is much obliged.”

  For what? What the hell was going on? Why was he even displaying that behaviour to me? If I had a ranking in Coldi society, he would be my superior.

  My heart was hammering. Damn, this little association of dangerous highly-strung and armed people was unravelling fast.

  I calmed my voice as much as I could. “The lady is coming up to the dining room for breakfast. She is not leaving the apartment. Why don’t any of you who don’t need to be in the hub join us? Have any of you eaten anything since last night?” And that wasn’t right either. I should extend this invitation to their leader, the tall woman Natanu.

  His shoulders slumped, and he looked down. “Excuses, Delegate.”

  “Do go and have something to eat. Tell your associates that I will expect them.”

  “I’ll communicate the order.” He started off down the corridor.

  Shit.

  Melissa looked at me, her eyes wide. “What’s up with him? He tried to stop me leaving the room!”

  I was sure there was a bit more to it than that, but I let it rest. “Listen, I’m afraid they’re all upset, so please try to be understanding. The Exchange is out and Ezhya is out of contact. They’re rattled, unsure what to do.”

  “And that involves harassing me?”

  “Well . . .” The way she had behaved last night had probably made her a focus point, someone they needed to watch. “They’ve been harassing me, too.”

  In a way, I felt sorry for her. I’d left an instruction with Eirani that she would be allowed out of the room but not out of the apartment, and evidently she had intended to do just that.

  I took her to the office downstairs, sat down and let her rage. She called me names, and called the guards names, and even got stuck into Eirani, but none of those people heard any of it.

  Getting no reaction from me, she grew tired of raging. “Why do you take it all with so much patience? How can you even do that?”

  “I grew up in space. There were always gamra people around, from way back when I was eight.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  “I lived in New Zealand, Bay of Islands. My father was a scientist with the wave-energy project. He ended up pretty high in the bureaucracy, and on a whim, after my mother died, applied for the job of director of Midway Space Station. He got the job. We lived at the Nations of Earth complex. I went to school there. My father married a Damarcian.”

  “You’re probably one of the first people to have lived off-Earth for most of their lives.”

  “No, I’m not. It’s just that those who leave don’t tend to come back.”

  She nodded, in thought.

  I said, “One thing I don’t understand about your reaction to the current situation. Your stepfather is Coldi. He hasn’t taught you about all the societal links and the pyramids of associations?”

  She snorted. “My stepfather never took part in that stuff. He would never stop telling us how stupid he thought it was.”

  Something clicked for me. “He is from Hedron.”

  “He is.”

  Damn, that was a mistake on my part. The Hedron Coldi were descended from the zeyshi, a group who didn’t have the pathological need for social order. Most of them looked down their nose at it.

  “Melissa, you must understand this. Even if it’s not important to you, the stability of Asto affects us all. It aff
ects gamra, it affects my job, and your job, everything.”

  “Will you stop talking about them and their political problems? It’s about us, about Margarethe. She is missing, too.”

  “She’ll be fine. As soon as the Exchange is back up, they’ll return and no one will care about this anymore, at least not on Earth.” Considering Margarethe, I had other worries, but she wasn’t technically missing, just out of communication.

  “You’re just saying that to shut me up. There will be hell at Nations of Earth when they hear about this.”

  “How are they going to hear it unless the Exchange comes back? By that time, Margarethe will be back, and things will continue as normal.” Except, if this situation lasted too long, at Asto. “Margarethe will be fine.”

  “And how am I going to excuse this slip-up, Cory? We can’t lie to Nations of Earth. For heaven’s sake, this will be worse than the Kershaw affair. Somehow I’m starting to believe that Danziger was right: this is just going from bad to worse, from one misunderstanding to a worse one.”

  Well, there was a kernel of truth in that. Should I have warned Margarethe not to go with him? Should I have told her about this Coldi habit of nethana about which she might have found out already? Did I trust Ezhya’s understanding of our society? He had dealt with Nations of Earth on several occasions. He had received advice. Had any of it contained the information: “These people do not consider intimacy between business partners appropriate”?

  Damn. It was no good thinking about it. If it was to happen, it would have happened already.

  She asked, “So what are we going to do?”

  “Until the Exchange is back, we do nothing. After that, I don’t suspect we’ll have to do anything at all.”

  “How long is that going to take? Days? Weeks? Who knows what’s going to happen at Nations of Earth in that time?”

  “Not that long.” Oh hell, I hoped not.

  “What do I do all that time? Sit here and stare at the walls?”

  “You might go into the assembly and see what is being discussed there. There are meetings every day. The public gallery is open.”

  Melissa snorted and turned to the window.

  What a mess.

  I turned to the door, where Nicha waited as if he wanted to speak with me.

  “Anything news?”

  “We’re waiting for you in the dining room. My father is back.”

  “Sure.”

  Let’s deal with another ticking time-bomb in my apartment.

  ‎

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  MELISSA WAS too angry to want breakfast, so I left her in her room, making a mental note to ask Eirani to bring her something to eat later.

  In the living room, most of the guests in my apartment sat around a big table where the usual wide choice of dishes was spread out.

  When I first moved into the apartment, when it still belonged to Renkati, I had wondered what need I’d have for that huge table. Today, we had two tables of similar size put together.

  Asha Domiri and his guards had taken up seats on the far end, then there was an empty seat and then the first of Ezhya’s guards. The woman Natanu sat in the middle of that group, which stretched around the other side of the table. No one spoke.

  Right. We had a problem here.

  I crossed the room and boldly sat in the empty seat between the two groups. Nicha and Thayu settled opposite me.

  I asked, “Anyone else coming?”

  Eirani shook her head. “I don’t know, Delegate. I asked everyone, but some people don’t seem to be here. The lady is still angry, I think. I don’t know what I did wro—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Eirani. It’s not about you.”

  “But she got angry when I told her—”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. Please, Eirani. You may want to bring her some food later.”

  “Certainly, Delegate.”

  Six seats were still empty. Apart from Melissa, I presumed these were for Margarethe’s guards, but I hadn’t seen them since early this morning and didn’t even know if they were still in the house.

  Eirani went around the table pouring tea.

  A few conversations began in different corners. Asha asked his son about the weather—which, by the way, had behaved remarkably well, with the notable absence of the heavy afternoon storms that were typical of Barresh. Natanu asked Thayu about trains into town. I observed that conversation, noting Natanu’s proud posture and Thayu’s slumped shoulders and the way she kept her gaze below Natanu’s chin.

  It was all very polite and reserved, three groups, with just the top tier of each of the Coldi associations taking part in the discussion. The others—lower-ranking guards in both groups—were silent and avoided eye contact with other people. Asha’s guards kept glancing across the table, as if Ezhya’s guards could pounce on them any minute. None of them ate much.

  I had intended to have an open discussion about the situation and what we might do, but that had been a silly Earth thought. A discussion would never work in this atmosphere of distrust.

  Asha was the first to get up from the table, and his guards followed him out of the room like little ducklings. He didn’t say where they were going. Ezhya’s guards went back to the hub room after asking me if that was all right.

  When they were gone, I heaved a big sigh and leaned my elbows on the table.

  “This is not going to be easy,” Nicha said.

  “No. Do you think they’ll come to blows?”

  “If we do nothing, likely.”

  Thayu said, “I suggest that you go across the gallery to Ezhya’s old apartment and tell the Asto representatives to make room for one of these groups. We can’t have them both here and expect nothing to happen.”

  Nicha said, “But where are Delegate Ayanu’s loyalties? She isn’t part of Asha’s network.” And she wouldn’t have any relationship to the guards either.

  “If there is going to be trouble, she’s just going to have to move out to the temporary accommodation.” Like the Asto delegation would be impressed with that. They were arrogant and entitled at the best of times. “Whatever we do, we need to do something.”

  Thayu and Nicha both nodded, but said nothing. Thayu blew steam off her tea.

  “Are you two affected by all this? I mean—your loyalty networks?”

  Nicha shook his head. “We’re bound to you.”

  In the beginning, I’d been uncomfortable with him talking like that, but that was simply the way Coldi people saw things: where they belonged in a network at any one time.

  Thayu said, “I have two networks on Asto, but neither are related to the people here.”

  I thought for a bit. “The fact that we’re outsiders, does that make us more acceptable as keepers of the peace?”

  Thayu said, “To stop rivalry between Ezhya’s guards and our father? That’s not going to go away until Ezhya returns.”

  Nicha shrugged. “Short of Ezhya returning, the only other thing that’s going to keep this sort of rivalry at bay is to have the command key back in the Inner Circle.”

  I’d heard of this mysterious command key. It was supposed to be a sequence of orders programmed into the main command hub in the Chief Coordinator’s quarters in Athyl’s Inner Circle. Apparently the sequence was unique to the current leader, biologically-keyed to work only at his say-so.

  “You say ‘have it back.’ Where is this command key?”

  “Ezhya has it. Natanu has a copy.”

  That Natanu who was spoiling for a showdown with Asha and his guards. Oh shit, I could see where this was going.

  “Don’t look like that. She can’t use it unless
she enters the command room, and even if she manages to get to Asto and if she tries to enter, the Inner Circle guards will have orders to kill her. The key is an aid to keeping things running and a protection of the hub when the Chief Coordinator is away. It’s not a tool for taking over power. Each Chief Coordinator develops their own.”

  “Wouldn’t it be smart, then, to store a copy on-site?” I asked. Frankly, I had no idea if this command key was a physical thing or merely a file on a computer. Coldi rarely spoke about these matters.

  “Not if the Chief Coordinator is not on-site. It belongs to him, not the Inner Circle. In fact, if it were available freely, his competitors in the Inner Circle could use it to inflict much damage on him.”

  “But a supporter could use it to strengthen his rule?” I wasn’t sure anymore if there was such a thing as a supporter in the Asto system, especially if the system was under stress.

  “In theory, yes, but I can’t think of anyone who could use it. The Inner Circle would be in lockdown. Anyone who lives in the Inner Circle would be considered a threat to the position and would be kept out of the hub by Ezhya’s backed-up orders. Anyone from lower ranks could never even enter the Inner Circle.”

  “But if they did, they could use this key?”

  “In theory, maybe, but how would they get the key?”

  The system baffled me. Why have this key if no one could use it?

  “Surely, there is a backup plan in case something happens, if the Chief Coordinator is sick or unable to work.”

  “Yes. The backup is that one of his seconds takes over.”

  Permanently. Ezhya’s seconds were Risha and Taysha.

  I understood that Asha’s superior, Risha Palayi, was quite old. I hadn’t had any involvement with him. Taysha I’d had more involvement with than I’d ever wished to have. I’d horse-traded with him for Thayu’s contract, and I did not want to be reminded of this rude man.

  If there ever was a fight between the two, I had no doubt Taysha would win that tussle, and then his ascent to power might upset Thayu’s networks, too, not to mention my relationship with her.