Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “And what shall we first do to prevent this?” Jago asked. “Send you up undefended, Bren-ji, among officials of these strange aijiin? We protest. We very strongly protest this plan.”

  “Let us assist, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “We can move within the access tunnels. We can remove these troublesome individuals one by one.”

  He had no doubt, even given the likelihood of advanced communications and weapons. “I don’t fear for my life or my freedom aboard, not with Jase in charge. I do fear the mood of the crew. We must not spread fear about—least of all any notion that five-deck intends to seize their ship and take over command. The good will of the crew is very important. And I, nadiin-ji, I am going back up there to protect Jase’s authority. I have indeed learned a few things in your company. Prudence, among other things. Use of the communications equipment.”

  “Which they may detect, Bren-ji,” Jago said sharply. “There are very many finesses to these matters.”

  “One will gratefully take whatever instruction you can give, nadiin-ji,” he said. “I think it remotely possible that after a conference, and after reaffirming her ties to the station, Sabin-aiji may aim at getting the truth out of the Guild leadership, about the alien situation, and that would be helpful. But she remains at risk. She has refused my services and declared she is taking over the situation with the Guild herself, with armed force. One dares not fold one’s hands and wait.”

  “One protects against threats as they come, Bren-ji.” Banichi’s professional observation was low-key, consistently calm. And calming, too. Bren drew that sense into himself, belief that, against everything else unstable, he had a reasonable chance. He would not be utterly alone.

  Not alone now. In their own territory in the corridor, Asicho still dutifully sat the security station, never taking her attention from the situation, while Narani and Bindanda and Jeladi had all turned out to welcome them, to open the door to his personal quarters.

  “No time for rest, Rani-ji,” he said on the way through the door. “We have a situation, a successful docking on the one hand, but a very troublesome local authority. Sabin-aiji has gone ashore with ship security, ostensibly to try to deal with them, but rejecting advice. I shall need island clothes, Rani-ji, immediately without fuss, before some situation shuts down the lift system.”

  “Nandi.” Narani asked no questions. The clothes would appear, with his staff’s fastest cooperation. Doubtless, too, the dowager and Cenedi were entering on much the same endeavor, down the hall, explaining to staff and laying plans of their own, which he hoped didn’t involve armed incursion into the maintenance passages.

  But if the Pilots’ Guild should believe it could make a move on Jase and control the ship, he was very sure the dowager would move very quickly—benignly toward the crew, so be it, but all the same, no question but that Ilisidi would take all security, all decisions, all mission direction into her own hands. Ilisidi, absent Sabin, now saw no one to stop her, no one with whom to negotiate territories directly—and what came next was as basic as gravity, as fundamental as the history of the atevi associations: a power vacuum did not last, among atevi, not ten minutes. Atevi wars most often happened by accident, when signals were not quite clear and contenders for a vacancy jammed up in a figurative doorway.

  Which meant signals were already flying, humans all oblivious to the fact. Unless Jase took a strong enough stand to stand Ilisidi off in Sabin’s name—it would happen. And that meant there was a very dangerous imbalance of powers developing, if he didn’t get himself up there and plant himself in a position to maintain that balance between Ilisidi, the Guild, and ship’s authority.

  And what would the Guild do if the ship they relied on as their heritage, their only lifeline to the universe, their protection and refuge, suddenly turned out to be in alien hands?

  And what would Phoenix crew do, if atevi, threatening all those traditions, moved suddenly against the Guild—which the crew increasingly didn’t like?

  Those last two in particular were questions he hoped not to have to answer before the hour was out.

  He was exhausted despite his few hours of sleep. He wanted nothing right now more a bed to fall into.

  But he did a quick change into a blue sweater and a pair of matching blue pants little distinguishable from the crew’s ordinary fatigues.

  The hair—well, that was a problem. He thought even of cutting it off, though common crew had varying lengths—well, all shorter than his. But he had it in a simple pigtail, like Banichi’s or Jago’s, and made up his mind to brazen it out.

  “A jacket, nandi?” Bindanda suggested. That had, he discovered, a pocket com. He shrugged it on over the pigtail and fended off Jeladi’s well-meaning attempt to extricate his hair.

  Just as Narani offered him a small-for-atevi pistol, an assassin’s undercover weapon.

  His own gun. After all these years—staff still had it oiled and ready.

  “If necessary, nandi,” the old man said. “If one should in any wise need it on floors above.”

  He hesitated. Thought no, of course not. Jase was in charge up there. He himself wasn’t a particularly good shot, nothing like his bodyguard. He was possibly more danger to their side with it than without it, relying on his wits.

  And then he thought, dare I not? Dare I not go that far, if need be? If he had to take cover and got to the service accesses—what more argument, then? What far more drastic situation could develop up there, with Guild investigators coming aboard?

  He took the pistol. Of course it was loaded—grandfatherly Narani, Assassins’ Guild himself, was certainly not shy of such things—and went out to the security station, where Banichi and Jago doublechecked a wire antenna imbedded in his collar.

  “Be quite wary of transmission near these individuals that are coming aboard, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “They may have means of noticing.”

  “I have the gun,” he said, as if Banichi and Jago, in adjusting the connections, had possibly missed it. “I don’t at all think I shall at all need it, nadiin-ji, but one supposes better to have it and never need it.”

  “Do use caution firing near conduits and pressure seals,” Jago said solemnly, and Banichi added:

  “But do so if needful. Safety systems are generally adequate and quick. Look for a door you may shut if this fails.”

  When had his security tested that theory?

  “Keep the communications open,” Jago said from his left. “In the general activity all over the ship, a steady signal will be less notable than an intermittent one. Speak Mosphei’. That, too, will be less evident. We will take this ship, Bren-ji, at any moment your safety or liberty seems in question.”

  “One will be very grateful at that point,” Bren said in a low voice. “But one fervently hopes no such event will happen, nadiin-ji.” Exhaustion had given way to a wobbly buzz of adventure. He was armed, wired, and on his own for the first time in—God, was it almost ten years?

  He thought he could still manage on his own.

  10

  A quick call on Ginny—that came first. And the simple act of getting into that section proved two reassuring points: that Jase had taken care of business and that their section doors were indeed not locked to their personal codes.

  He surprised one of Gin’s men in the corridor. Tony, it was. Tony Calhoun, robotics.

  “Mr. Cameron, sir.”

  “Doors are set, autolock from the outside, protection against our station examiners prowling about, but codes still work on the pads. For God’s sake, don’t anyone walk out and forget your hand codes. Is Gin available?”

  “Yes, sir. To you.” Tony thumped the door in question. Twice. Three times.

  Gin answered the door in two towels. “Need help?”

  “Just a heads-up. I’m up there to back Jase, if he needs it. You’re down here to back me, if you’ll do that—my staff’s monitoring. If they need a simple look-see topside, one of your people can go up, too, right? . . . Banichi may want to take act
ion, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate an intermediate if he can get one. Meanwhile my staff may need a backup translator. Can you do it?”

  “Best I can,” Gin said, holding fast to the primary towel. “Anything they need. Anything you need. Go. Get to it.”

  The airlock started its cycle, distant thump. Someone was coming aboard or going out. They involuntarily looked up. Looked at each other.

  “See you,” Bren said, and went back the half dozen steps down the hall and out to the lift, hoping that system still responded to his code, and hoping it picked up no other passengers.

  It moved. He punched in, not the bridge, but up to crew level.

  Deserted. Crew was still awaiting the next shift-change and nobody had gotten clearance to enter the corridors, not for food, not for any reason.

  Secrets, they didn’t have on this voyage, not between captains and crew. But the lockdown had to chafe, and it couldn’t any longer be a question of crew safety, not with the ship linked to station.

  Not a good situation. Not productive of good feelings aboard, granted there’d been one mutiny on this ship as was. And Jase hadn’t released them. Jase assuredly didn’t want common crew available for any Guild inspectors to interrogate. He could imagine the first question.

  So where were you for the last nine years?

  And the second.

  What aliens?

  Second cycling of the airlock. Bren found his heart beating faster, his footsteps a very lonely sound on two-deck.

  Sabin was leaving with her guard, very, very likely, and not taking all the Guild intruders out with her. They couldn’t be so lucky as a quick formality and a release of prohibitions. The Guild inspectors were aboard now, he’d bet on it, as he’d bet that Sabin no longer was aboard and that the ship’s security had gone with her, leaving the techs, Jase, and that portion of the crew that routinely maintained, cleaned, serviced and did other things that didn’t involve armed resistance. They were, to all the Guild knew, stripped of defenses.

  Sabin, however, wasn’t the only captain with a temper. Jase’s had been screwed down tight for the better part of a year—but it existed. Guild investigators, up there, were going to pounce on any excuse, question any anomaly; and if they found anything they were going to have their noses further and further into business.

  While a captain who didn’t know the systems had to maintain his authority.

  A decade ago, when Phoenix had come in here, had ordinary stationers rushed to board and take ship toward their best hope, the colony they’d left at Alpha? No. No more than common crew rushed into the corridors to do as they pleased. Spacers lived under tight discipline, and didn’t do as Mospheirans would do, didn’t go out on holiday when they’d had enough, didn’t quit their jobs or change their residence. They obeyed . . . except one notable time when the fourth captain, absent information, had raised a mutiny.

  Guild leadership wanted Ramirez to take the ship out and reestablish contact with their long-abandoned colony. But fourth captain Pratap Tamun had taken a look at the situation of cooperation between Ramirez and the atevi world and raised a rebellion that, even in failure, had seeded uneasy questions throughout Phoenix crew.

  Lonely sound of his own footsteps. Closed, obedient doors. Ask no questions, learn no lies.

  And what else had Ramirez’s orders been when the Guild sent him on to Alpha?

  And what did Sabin really understand about that last meeting between Ramirez and his Guild? And what did she intend to do, taking an armed force as her escort . . . some twenty men and women, her regular four, and Mr. Jenrette?

  Among other points, Ramirez’s orders wouldn’t have Phoenix assume second place to the planet’s native governments, that was sure.

  Not to take second place to the colonials supposedly running the station, also very sure.

  To take over the colony that Reunion believed would be running the station, was his own suspicion of Ramirez’s intentions—the likely mission directive from Reunion: gain control of it, run it, report back.

  Those orders hadn’t proven practical, when there’d turned out not to be a functional station or a capable human presence in Alpha system. Ramirez had had to improvise. Ramirez had rapidly discovered the only ones who could give him what he wanted were atevi, and Ramirez, one increasingly suspected, had been predisposed to think answers might come from non-humans: Ramirez had chased that assumption like a religious revelation once he found a negotiating partner in Tabini-aiji, and found his beliefs answering him. By one step and another, Ramirez had gone far, far astray from Guild intent: the mutiny had gone down to defeat, Ramirez had died in the last stages of his dream.

  So what could Sabin do now but lie to the Guild one more time and swear that Ogun was back there running Alpha Station’s colony, everything just as the Guild here hoped?

  She could of course immediately turncoat to Ogun and all of them and tell the Guild the truth, aiming the superior numbers and possibly superior firepower of the station at an invasion and retaking of the ship . . . from which she had stripped all trained resistance.

  That was his own worst fear, the one that made these corridors seem very, very spooky and foreign to him. His colonist ancestors had taken their orders from these corridors. His colonist ancestors, when they were stationers, had obeyed, and obeyed, and obeyed. Everything had gone the Guild’s way for hundreds of years.

  Now he was here, without escort, lonely, loud steps in this lower corridor; and he very surely wasn’t what Reunion envisioned Alpha to be. The ship’s common crew had mutated, too, learning to love fruit drinks and food that didn’t grow in a tank.

  But now they confronted authorities so old in human affairs that even a colonist’s nerves still twitched when the Guild gave its orders and laid down its ultimatums. They scared him. He didn’t know why they should: he hadn’t planned they should when they left Alpha, but here at the other end of the telescope, Guild obduracy was real. Here it turned up from the very first contact with station authorities. That absolute habit of command.

  And Sabin pent up all four shifts of her own crew rather than trust them to meet the Guild’s authority face to face. Jase himself hadn’t given the order to release the lockdown.

  Get fueled. Get sufficient lies laid down to pave the gangway. Get them aboard and then tell the truth. It wasn’t the way he’d like to proceed.

  It wasn’t the way Jase would like to proceed: he believed that the way he believed in sunrises back home.

  But he had no answers, no brilliant way to handle the situation that might not end up triggering a crisis—and right now he feared Jase was very busy up there.

  He needed to think, and the brain wasn’t providing answers. Blank walls and empty corridors drank in ideas and gave him nothing back but echoes. No resources, no cleverness.

  Was the Guild going to give up their command even of a wrecked station in exchange for no power at all, and settle down there in the ‘tween-decks as ordinary passengers? Not outstandingly likely. They’d want to run Alpha when they got there. They’d assume they ran the ship, while they were aboard.

  A damn sight easier to believe in the Guild’s common sense in the home system, where common sense and common decision-making usually reached rational, public-serving decisions—and where the government didn’t mean a secretive lot of old men and women bent on hanging onto a centuries-old set of ship’s rules that didn’t even relate to a ship any longer.

  Insanity was what they’d met.

  The Guild might even have some delusion they could now take on that alien ship out there, because Phoenix had its few guns for limited defense. Take Phoenix over, tell the pilots, who’d never fired a shot in anger, to go out there and start shooting at aliens who’d already seen Guild decision-making?

  Not likely.

  If the Guild had any remains of alien crew locked up in cold storage, they might be able to finesse it into their hands—claiming what? Curiosity?

  That wasn’t going to be easy. Not
a bit of it.

  But they had an unknown limit of alien patience involved. Whatever had blown the station ten years ago argued for alien weapons. He believed in them.

  And while Phoenix had been nine years making one careful set of plans that involved pulling the Guild off this station—bet that the Guild had spent the last nine years thinking of something entirely contrary.

  Steps and echoes. He was up here—down here—from relative points of view—trying to shed the atevi mindset, trying to think as a human unacquainted with planets had to think, up on the bridge—

  Oh my God. The planet. Up on the bridge.

  That picture on Jase’s office wall. The boat. The fish.

  There were no atevi in the photo, just a sea and a hint of a headland beyond. But the evidence of that picture said Jase had been on a planet, which indicated a very great deal had changed from the situation Phoenix had expected when it came calling at the station. More, it led to questions directed at Jase, and questions led to questions, if Jase didn’t think to shove that picture in a desk drawer before he let the Guild’s inspectors into the most logical place on the ship for them to want to visit: the sitting captain’s office.

  Clatter of light metal. A cart.

  A door working.

  Food service cart. He knew that sound.

  Galley was operating.

  “I’m walking down to the galley,” he muttered to his listening staff, and he turned down a side corridor and did that . . . first acid test of his anonymity. Try his crew-act on cook and his staff. Test the waters.

  Maybe borrow that food cart—a viable excuse to move about the ship during a common-crew lockdown.

  He’d walked considerably aft through the deserted corridors. And down a jog and beyond wide, plain doors . . . one had to know it was the galley, as one had to know various other unmarked areas of the ship . . . he heard ordinary human activity, comforting, common. Men and women were hard at work as he walked in on the galley, cooks and aides filling the local air with savory smells of herbs and cooking, rattling pans, creating the meal the crew, lockdown or not, was going to receive.