Again, silence, and she could nearly feel his disbelief.
There was nothing from the commander. Then: he said.
Ichiko’s AMI severed her connection to the commander’s AMI without answering.
* * *
Saoirse watched the currach with Angus and Liam approach Dulcia Bay’s opening to the sea, following the Pale Woman’s imperious, eternal gesture. She waved goodbye to them from the quay, though she doubted that they could see her as the currach lifted and fell in the large swells around Dulcia Head, the currach occasionally vanishing behind ramparts of green waves.
There was still a bell or so for her to wait for Ichiko to arrive, and so she headed back to Murphy’s Alehouse and ordered another pint, taking it out to the covered patio and sitting in the least-wet of the chairs there. The air was cool, a front coming down from dorcha, but Saoirse shrugged her coat around her and huddled on the chair with her feet on the seat. There were few customers braving the weather, most staying inside near the hearths where peat was burning, the lovely smell spreading out over the patio. Saoirse didn’t care; she didn’t really want to be inside listening to the gossip, talk, and arguments, almost all of which were about the Terrans and what Clans Plunkett and Lewis might do if the Terrans tried to force them to jail those who had attacked Ichiko’s flitter. But it would have only been worse down at Plunkett’s, so she stayed here where at least there were some friendly faces.
Ichiko would be here before she finished nursing the pint, and if for some reason Ichiko didn’t show, she’d walk out to Clan Taggart’s farm and stay there until the next currach came in from Great Inish.
But Ichiko had promised she’d be there, and Saoirse smiled at the thought as she took a sip of her stout, wiping the clinging foam from her lips.
As the time for the next bell approached, though, Saoirse saw more Mainlanders gathering on the quay down near Plunkett’s Pub, all of them looking dorcha-ward toward where First Base was cloaked in the low clouds that wrapped the mountains. They’re waiting for Ichiko’s flitter . . . Saoirse set her pint on the table and pulled her glasses from the pocket of her coat, wiping them on the hem of her shirt. With the lenses sharpening her sight, she could make out some of the faces. She frowned—seeing too many of the Plunketts as well as a few men and women in the uniform of the Lewis Gardai—and touched the device in her ear.
“Ichiko?” she breathed. “I think yeh have a reception committee on the quay waiting for yeh. Frankly, it looks ugly and dangerous to me.”
Ichiko answered a breath later. “Are you certain, Saoirse? I’m nearly there. Are you safe where you are?”
“For the moment, aye. I’m on the front patio of Murphy’s. But I don’t think yeh should land here as yeh planned. There’s a square on High Street near the Bancroft Woolery—yeh remember the Woolery? I could walk up and meet yeh there; yeh can drop off yer passengers, and then we can head out to Great Inish without going down to the quay. Yer AMI could let Minister Plunkett know where his people are once we’re on the way and flyin’.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me. I’ll see you up on High Street.” There was a click in Saoirse’s ear and the sense of another presence in her head vanished. Saoirse stared at the growing clot of people on the quay, drained her pint, and left the patio, striding purposefully out the rear door and heading up Cairn Hill Lane toward High Street.
* * *
Ichiko thought back to AMI.
AMI’s voice trailed off.
Ichiko lifted in her seat, glaring ahead as if she could see her AMI there.
AMI went silent in her head—at least the system still makes her obey commands—the controls extruded from the front panel, and Ichiko gave a sigh of relief. They were high enough that Ichiko could see the upper buildings of Dulcia just over the next ridge, with the blue expanse of Dulcia Harbor below and beyond the misty slopes of Dulcia Head. In the haze of the distance, the horizon line of the sea blended into clouds; she thought she could see the islands of the archipelago as indistinct, slightly darker shapes, but she wasn’t sure if that was actually the islands or clouds or just wishful thinking. They were passing the farmlands that formed the outskirts of Dulcia, the spidery white dots of herds of sheepers loping over lush green meadows as they fled from the noise of the flitter’s rotors.
The flitter was the largest in First Base, armed and capable of transporting thirty people, though there were fewer than that in the passenger compartment behind Ichiko, all of them craning their heads to watch the approach as they passed over a line of buildi
ngs. Ichiko took the controls; this time, at least, they reacted as they should, and she was grateful that Chava had insisted on giving her some brush-up lessons before . . . She didn’t let her thoughts drift past that point, feeling the tears threatening to blur her vision.
Ichiko reduced the thrust on the rotors, the pitch of their noise lowering as the flitter descended and canted to one side as Ichiko looked for the intersection of Cairn Hill Lane and High Street and the market square there. Through the drizzle on the windshield, she saw the square to her right and also saw Saoirse below, waving at her from the Cairn Hill entrance. The market stalls were empty, though a few Mainlanders were sitting on the benches beneath the canopy of the sourmilk trees. The flitter settled down near the Cairn Hill entrance, scattering over the paving stones the purple-flecked sourmilk leaves discarded from the trees.
Someone knocked on the clear partition between the pilot’s compartment and the passenger section as Ichiko powered down the rotors to idle. She looked back over her shoulder to see an angry face and a finger stabbing the air as it pointed at the square—the man was one of the Clan Plunkett members, though she’d forgotten his name. “Oy, lassie! Yer supposed to be takin’ us down to the quay!”
His protest was faint through the partition; she didn’t bother to turn on the speaker to hear him more clearly; instead, she waved to Saoirse to approach. She waited until Saoirse was outside. Reflexively, she nearly ordered AMI to open the door to Saoirse’s side of the pilot’s compartment, then remembered she’d disabled her AMI and that would reconnect them. Instead, she leaned over and pushed the door contact. The gullwing lifted and yawned open and Saoirse stepped in, taking the seat alongside Ichiko as the door hissed shut behind her. Her glasses were spotted with mist. “It’s wonderful to see you, Saoirse,” Ichiko said. “Just hold on a moment; I have to get rid of my passengers.”
She tapped the button to open the doors to the passenger section and release their restraints, then toggled the transmit button to their compartment. “This is where I’m letting all of you out,” she told them. “You can walk from here down to the quay. If you refuse and stay here in the flitter, you should know I’m going to evacuate all the air from the passenger compartment. So it’s your choice. But I’m not going down to the quay and I’m not staying here.”
Deliberately, Ichiko hit the thrusters so the rotors whined as they cycled up, though not enough to lift the flitter. The Mainlanders scrambled out from the flitter, seemingly equally confused and angry as they began walking quickly toward Cairn Hill Lane. The man who’d shouted at Ichiko earlier stopped near the entrance to the square and picked up a loose cobblestone from the paving, throwing it back at the flitter. It hit the windshield with a sharp crack and bounced off, leaving behind a small white chip. Then others were doing the same, cobblestones striking the flitter like a hard rain. One hit a rotor and went flying away like a cannonball, tearing a significant wound in the nearest building. The Mainlanders ducked as bricks fell from the damaged structure.
“Buckle in,” Ichiko told Saoirse. “I’m not going to take any chances here. People are going to get hurt or killed if we stay—and I don’t want any of them to be you or me.”
Ichiko toggled on the pulse weapons and fired a burst of warning pulses into the air. That sent most of the Mainlanders running. The rotors screamed as the flitter lifted and swayed—a few of the Mainlanders remained, still tossing cobblestones at them. Ichiko looked back once to the mountains where First Base lay hidden under clouds, remembering Luciano’s orders, then shook her head. Ichiko tilted the flitter forward and they slid down above the rooftops toward Dulcia Bay. She could see the crowd gathered on the quay, who pointed up at them as they passed.
Ichiko waved at them ironically as they moved out over the harbor toward Dulcia Head and the Pale Woman stationed there.
“Were yeh really going to take the air from the passenger compartment?”
Ichiko smiled momentarily. “Of course not. In fact, I’m not sure I even could do that. But that got them all to leave quickly, didn’t it?”
Saoirse laughed, shaking her head.
“Thank you,” Ichiko said to Saoirse. “I think you saved us both a lot of trouble. But I’ve probably just put us into more. I’ve certainly done that for myself.”
Those That I Fight I Do Not Hate
THEY WERE JUST PAST Dulcia Head on the way to Great Inish, moving in and out of sheets of rain that the treated glass swept away, when a window opened in front of Ichiko with Luciano’s face frowning at her. “What the hell’s going on, Ichiko?” he said. “Your AMI relayed some disturbing comments to me, and now I see you’ve severed your connection to it. On top of that, Minister Plunkett’s screaming at the captain about your treatment of the Mainlanders you were supposed to deliver to him. And your flitter’s telling us you’re on your way to Great Inish against orders. Against my orders, damn it.”
Ichiko looked at Luciano and past the lines of anger—or perhaps it was simple confusion—on his face. She hoped it was the latter. The background wasn’t the bridge, wasn’t his quarters, wasn’t anything she recognized. “Where are you, Luciano?”
“I’m aboard a fast transport along with a squad of marines. I’ll meet you at Great Inish, we’ll scuttle the flitter there, and you’ll be going back with me to Odysseus.” His gaze flicked over toward Saoirse. “And there’d better not be any trouble from the Inish.”
“Yeh can’t come to Great Inish, but it won’t be because of the Inish,” Saoirse told him. “The arracht; they won’t like it. They’ll stop you.”
“I don’t really care whether these arracht like the idea or not,” Luciano snapped back to Saoirse. “I have a crew member I intend to take back to Odysseus, whether she likes it or not.” His gaze returned to Ichiko. “And she’d better not do anything drastic before I get there. Am I understood?”
“Just what is it that you think I’ll do?” Ichiko asked him.
His answer was oblique. Ichiko wondered if it was because he knew Saoirse could hear him. “Look, what happened to Chava isn’t going to happen to anyone else. Not if I can prevent it.”
Exactly what did my AMI say to you? For a moment, Ichiko regretted having disconnected the AMI so she could ask directly. She started to ask Luciano the question, but Saoirse spoke up first.
“Yeh need to let me talk to Kekeki and the arracht first, or I don’t know what they’ll do if yeh try to bring this ship of yers to the archipelago.”
Luciano gave an audible sniff at Saoirse’s comment. “I don’t really give a damn what some fish might think, even a fish some people believe might be sentient. The arracht might have caused your Mainlanders problems a couple centuries ago, but we’re not in a boat and we’re armed with far more than harpoons and fishing nets.”
Beyond Luciano’s face, the islands of the Stepping Stones were approaching, and the bulk of Great Inish and the Sleeping Wolf were coming to resolution behind them. “Luciano, you should listen to Saoirse,” Ichiko interjected. “When I first took a flitter out to Great Inish—”
“I know all about that,” Luciano broke in. “And I’d remind you that this transport isn’t a flitter; it’s a heavily armed and fully shielded military vessel. So continue on to Great Inish. We should arrive not long after you do, and we can talk then.”
“Luciano . . .”
“We’re about to enter the atmosphere, Ichiko. Talk to you soon. Mercado out.”
The communication window and Luciano’s visage fell in a glittering rain of photons and vanished.
“Bakayarō!” Ichiko muttered, slamming her hand on the controls hard enough that the flitter shivered.
“What?” Saoirse asked.
“Never mind.” She sighed. “I thought I knew him, but my AMI’s evidently told him something that’s made him lose all his good judgment. This is not what I wanted. But I guess we’re going to have to deal with it. Saoirse,
how are the arracht going to react to another of our crafts trying to land on Great Inish, this one armed and with more people?”
Saoirse’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “I don’t have any idea.”
“Somehow that answer doesn’t give me any comfort.”
* * *
It was Keksyn, the Speaker to the Syna, who raised the alarm, his voice calling to all the keks at once. =The ship-syna are warning us that the sky-eki are coming to the archipelago in a large vessel. How do we wish to respond? Does the Kekeki have an answer?=
=Is it the one called Ichiko?= Kekeki thought to the keks. =We’ve met that one. That one belongs to Saoirse. We have no issue with her coming to the archipelago.=
=Not Ichiko,= Keksyn answered. =It is others from the skyship in a vessel that has weapons and several of the sky-eki within it.=
=Have the ship-syna fully entered that ship’s mind?=
=They have. We have use of them at need.=
Kekeki nodded. She lifted herself in the warm current, rising toward the surface of the water in the warren of caverns and arracht-constructed buildings in the island Saoirse’s people called the Sleeping Wolf. =Then we should let them come until they demonstrate that they can’t be trusted. Do the other kek agree? We’ll meet them at the clanfolk’s island, and we will learn more about them as we once learned about the other eki here through the Inish.=
The chorus of their answer was a song in all their heads, a bright affirmation.
=We agree=
=We agree.=
=We agree.=
Kekeki flexed her tail and the long muscles of her body, letting the warm water flow past her as she surged through the water and out into the open sea, the surface of the ocean shimmering above her with waves.
Amid the Crowd of Stars Page 30