Ambassador 4: Coming Home

by Jansen, Patty

  I reached the boat first. Federza climbed in after me and we were just helping Lilona when there was a shout. Reida pointed at the island where some sort of flying drone had taken to the air. He and Evi and Telaris raced for the boat. The engine roared into life. We took off across the open water.

  The drone followed us.

  The boat was built for sedate ferry services in the canals. It had low sides so that people could easily get in and out. It had a flat bottom so that it could operate in knee-deep water. At speed, with whatever small waves the wind whipped up, the flat bottom slapped on the surface, throwing up a spray of water each time it hit. Without a decent keel, it was as wobbly and unstable as hell.

  At one side, Federza was yelling, “Faster, faster,” and Evi was yelling at Thayu to keep the boat steady so he could aim.

  Whatever was that thing?

  We were losing ground on it. At this rate, it would overtake us even before we got to the next point, and solid ground where we had a chance to shoot it.

  Even Thayu was looking over her shoulder.

  Then we rounded the point, and the wind got stronger. There were more waves here. Each time the bottom of the boat slapped onto the water, a huge spray washed over us. Thayu slowed down briefly so that we could move closer to the front to weight to boat down. She tried to stay as close to the reeds as possible, but there were snags like washed up tree trunks that we couldn’t afford to hit and that she wouldn’t be able to see.

  Evi and Telaris were now shooting at the drone, hitting it, too, but it had a shield and the hits glanced off. Very soon it was going to reach us.

  The thing carried a laser burner, Evi informed us. Farmers used these things to clear fields of vegetation, minus the shielding. It would need to come straight over the top of us before it could fire.

  Thayu zigzagged over the water—

  And we hit a choppy wave, just as the bow of the boat slammed into the water. The wave broke over the side. Flooded the boat. Water washed over my shoes and the lower half of my legs. The boat slowed so abruptly that Telaris toppled over the bow, face first, into the water. I watched him fly out as if in slow motion, throwing an object in the general direction of the boat. Evi reached out to catch it, but it was too far to the right—Evi almost made the boat tip over—and it fell in the water. It had been his gun, I realised.

  The boat barely still floated in its swamped condition, so I jumped over the side, sinking in a mixture of mud and rotting leaves that released a smell of farts. We were a good distance from the sandy southernmost point of the island. There was no way we get there before the drone reached us.

  Evi had jumped after his partner’s weapon. Telaris had scrambled to his feet and was wading to where it had fallen. Thayu still stood at the back of the boat, yelling, “Get down everyone, get down now!”

  Reida, who had Telaris’ second gun, took up position and aimed at the drone that was rapidly approaching.

  Even Federza had produced his weapon, which I had never seen. He yelled, “Take cover.”

  I pulled Lilona’s arm hard enough to make her topple over the side of the boat. I pushed her down behind the rim of the half-sunken boat and let myself sink in the water. The rim was too low to offer any protection, so I took a deep breath and dived below the surface. It was dark and extremely muddy down here and I could see nothing, just feel the movement of Lilona’s legs, whatever she was doing.

  A sharp snap echoed through the water. Someone jumped into the water next to me. A much bigger big splash followed, further away.

  I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. When I surfaced, it was quiet and the sky was empty.

  Thayu, Evi and Reida stood watching the wreckage of the drone that lay in the water, producing thick clouds of steam and smoke. Telaris sat on his knees in the water on the other side of the boat. Federza and Lilona stood behind me.

  Thayu said, “Uh-oh. Time to get out of here.” She was staring at the shore.

  At first I saw nothing, but then I noticed some pinpricks of light moving through the reed beds.

  Could even hear their footsteps, when the wind carried sound our way, and the wind was unusually squally tonight.

  Evi and Telaris tilted the boat so that the water sloshed out. The bag that contained Federza’s pretty shirt drifted out with the water. The owner went after it.

  “Come on, hurry up,” Thayu said.

  We climbed back in. Telaris was cursing, draining water from the plasma chamber of his gun. Thayu attempted to start the engine. It sputtered and went out. It was drenched. We were drenched.

  Thayu tried again. “Come on.”

  Another sputter.

  “Come on, we don’t have all day.” She slammed her hand against the side of the jet inlet tube. It made a loud clang.

  The engine started with a whoosh and a spray of water.

  I had expected her to keep going parallel to the shoreline in the direction of the station, but she turned sharply to the left, away from the island.

  I protested. “Where are you going? You’re not going all the way to the gamra island in this thing?”

  But clearly she was doing just that. I knew that she had been taking commando-style training directed specifically at situations in Barresh, but the day that I’d punted across this stretch of water with her in the boat petrified with fear didn’t seem that long ago.

  It was a hair-raising, uncomfortable and cold ride, but we encountered no more drones or Tamerians.

  We moored at the jetty in front of our building. Gamra security came to check, but Evi and Telaris managed to palm them off. If they saw we had Federza, they might tell someone who shouldn’t know. We could no longer trust anyone.

  I was by now so cold that my legs were stiff and Thayu had to help me up onto the jetty.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t go for a swim.”

  True, but—the difference in her confidence between our first trip and now was astonishing. Sheydu loved saying, Every difficulty can be overcome with training. It was one of the Coldi proverbs. I had never realised how true it was and how Asto’s security and defence training pushed people up against the things that terrified them, and helped them overcome their fear.

  We tied the boat on the jetty, where the ferry with its timetable displayed on the back looked very much out of place.

  How they’d get a canal ferry back to the main island would be someone else’s problem.

  We were safe, for the time being. We needed to establish a secure zone. Evi and Telaris were already working on it, even though Telaris still seemed sour about dropping his gun in the water.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  THERE WERE GUARDS in front of the door to my apartment. Unfamiliar ones, in silver temperature retaining suits wearing red sashes. And there were additional security people whom I recognised as Asha’s guards, wearing silver suits, black or grey non-uniform clothing and no red sashes.

  I glanced at Thayu and she showed me the screen to her reader, which contained a message from Devlin.

  It seemed that in our absence, Ezhya had arrived and that he had been entertained in my absence by Asha and Nicha.

  We went inside and found more guards in the hall. They knew who I was and waved Thayu through—she disappeared into the hub—but were not familiar with Federza and Lilona. We looked like bandits, all dirty and wet, and the guards wanted to see their ID. They inspected Federza’s gun—a solid, civilian-style Trader weapon—and he showed them his Trader medallion. They were fine with him after they saw that. Lilona was another matter. We’d supplied them with a temporary ID, but the card had no personal history, no nothing associated with it.

  “She comes from the ship,” I told them, and then wasn’t sure if it had been a good thing to say this, because they insisted that she be taken to a room elsewhere in the apartment and they were going to guard the door.

  Eirani came scurrying into the hall.

  “Oh, Muri, I’
m so glad that you’re back.” Her eyes widened. “Whatever have you done to yourself? You’re all dirty and wet.”

  “I’ll tell you when I get a chance.”

  “You must come and put on some dry clothes.”

  I switched to keihu, which I only spoke to her when there was a security reason, so I hoped she got the message. “No time right now. Can you look after my guests, especially Lilona? Make sure that she gets dry clothes and a safe room on this floor. They will want to guard her room.”

  Her eyes widened briefly. “The room next to the office? The view is nice there.”

  “No, on the other side.” That view was exactly the problem. “What about him?” She glanced at Federza.

  “He’ll stay here, too.”

  “Can he stay in the room next to the office?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “But we’re running out of rooms, Muri.”

  Asha and his entourage had taken up residence in my usual guest quarters downstairs.

  “I don’t mind staying in the same room,” Federza said, in perfect keihu. “She needs help, anyway.”

  Eirani’s gave him a scandalised look. She very much disapproved of people sharing a room who were unmarried. “But, Muri, there is only a double bed in that room.”

  “I’m sure we have a spare bed somewhere that can be taken up. Arrange it.”

  “Yes, but why not the room next to the office? It’s much nicer.”

  “Someone will shoot at the window. This is an extreme security situation. No one is allowed to set foot in that room except these two people. No one is allowed to look into the room from outside. No one will be entering this apartment while they are here.”

  Eirani’s mouth formed into an O. “Well, then, I better get going. Come.”

  She scurried off, and Lilona and Federza followed her. Thank goodness for Eirani. I upset her with my requests sometimes, but she always came around and did as I asked.

  The sound of Coldi voices came from the living room, where I was greeted by the most unusual sight ever: three grown men, two of whom were extremely powerful, sat on their knees on the carpet tickling a baby.

  And by the look of things, Ayshada was loving all this attention. Nicha had told me that he could grab things and squeeze but couldn’t yet coordinate his eyes with what he ended up grabbing. In this case, that was Asha’s finger in one of his little hands and Ezhya’s nose in the other. He had his thumb up one of Ezhya’s nostrils and the rest of the hand balled into a fist as if trying to grab, but not comprehending what he was grabbing. Ezhya made cooing noises as he probably was used to making to his own baby daughter. It was a strangely relaxing and reassuring sight.

  I said from the doorway, “I can see that someone has the world in his hands.”

  They turned around, with Ezhya gentle extracting his nose from the baby’s grip.

  He started laughing.

  I guess I was a bit of a sight: muddy, dripping wet—in fact Jonisa, one of my newer members of domestic staff, was mopping up the water in the hall right now and complaining to Reida about the state of his clothing, because he was the only one she dared complain to. Evi and Telaris were shedding their equipment and lots of mud and sticks in the hall, but she didn’t dare complain to them. They were much taller than she was, much broader, and very, very black.

  Reida was saying, “We save everyone’s butts, and I come home and what do I get? Complaints that I make the floor dirty!”

  Nicha stifled a snort of laughter. I went to shut the door.

  Asha and Ezhya rose. Nicha picked up his son. Faces turned serious.

  On my way back to the sitting area, I grabbed a dishtowel from the cupboard, spread it over the carpet and sat down. “Better not make the couch dirty.”

  Ezhya nodded.

  Asha nodded.

  “You brought a couple of other people into the apartment,” Ezhya said. It was not a question, but it carried the sense of: Is this going to be a security issue?

  “Federza is with us,” I said.

  Ezhya’s eyebrows flicked up. No doubt he remembered the last interaction between the two of them, where he had pulled Federza up by the front of the shirt and spoken some choice words to him. That had been over the Aghyrian claim, an issue that had been thoroughly forgotten and pushed aside by the current situation.

  “He’s one of Akhtari’s cronies.” Amazing how, now that Joyelin Akhtari was off the scene, people came out with harsh opinions of what they really thought about her. What if everyone had voiced those opinions earlier? Maybe something could have been done.

  “At one stage he might have been with her, but he’s not, anymore.”

  Both men gave me sharp looks. Changing one’s loyalty was not something Coldi did easily or often, and usually it was accompanied by big changes in the person’s living circumstances. Often, also, it was just a rearranging of loyalty lines within the same camp. Like Veyada and Sheydu had come to me, but were still well within Ezhya’s camp, and would always remain so.

  Simply changing one’s political allegiance without far-reaching, and often violent, outward changes was unheard of in Coldi society.

  “We’ll see,” Ezhya said. No, they wouldn’t fully trust Federza’s change of mind. Ever. Except Federza had largely acted in his position all along. Acting was also something that was considered a dubious activity in Coldi society.

  “How much do you know?” I asked both men.

  “My daughter briefed me,” Asha said. It was, too, the first time I had heard him publicly refer to her as such. “That’s why we’re both here.”

  “So you know that the ship has communicated with groups other than the Barresh Aghyrians, and that this communication has been going on for many years. You know that Joyelin Akhtari is one of the main financial backers of the Tamerian project, and that Delegate Namion might be involved, too?”

  “We know.”

  “There is more,” I said. “More and worse.” I went on to recount what Lilona had told me after Thayu had left. That Kando Luczon had left behind an Aghyrian community that had settled on worlds they had found in the Renzha galaxy. That he had fallen out with them because they wanted to supplement their limited genetic material with local genetics. That he had forced people to provide crewmembers, and that those crewmembers were slaved to him or the ship. That he had no interest in peaceful discussions, not with us or with the group who had financed the Tamerians. “You do know about the relays, right?”

  They did. I guessed those were the main urgency right now.

  “I have people working on that,” Asha said. “These things are a bugger because these they’re not big and in their inactive state they’re absolutely impossible to see. We’re talking here about an active component that’s the size of a fist. The Astronomy branch is dealing with that headache.” The military astronomy branch, that would be, somewhere in that giant station that orbited Asto, that could, at Ezhya’s command, disgorge a burst of fire power the likes of which the galaxy had never seen, and that Asha still didn’t judge adequate to destroy this ship.

  Ezhya blew out a breath. Asha shook his head.

  Nicha stared at me, an expression of horror on his face while he held his son to his chest. A little hand clawed at his shirt. I didn’t know that Nicha had known any of this, or had realised the seriousness of it.

  Everyone was silent for a while. Sounds drifted in from the hall: Eirani talking, soft conversations from the hub, where Devlin and Thayu would be busy. Maybe the others, too. I suspected Thayu was conducting a second meeting to bring the rest of my association and staff up to speed with the situation.

  Then I asked, “What am I supposed to do next?”

  “I think the time for you alone to do anything that’s going to impact this situation is over,” Ezhya said. He spoke slowly, deliberately with a sense of dread to his words. I knew the gist of what was coming. He pushed his reader over the carpet to me. “This is why I’m here. This is why we’re both here.”
>
  I wiped my hands before picking it up. There were drops of water running down my arm.

  The screen displayed a document.

  In bold characters at the top, it said,

  To the occupants of the ship reported to have come from the Renzha galaxy: Intention to take defensive action, Beniz-Yaza system, Ratanga cluster.

  To local authorities: this is a notification only, from Asto’s Chief Coordinator. Not for debate or voting.

  Underneath, it said,

  The Beniz-Yaza system in the Ratanga cluster contains the home worlds of the Coldi, keihu, Mirani and Pengali people. We have lived on these worlds in their present state for many thousands of years. We will view any invasion of this system by non-declared ships as hostile. Any foreign vessel not known to the Exchange approaching the system will be eliminated. Any piece of foreign equipment in orbit in the system will be destroyed. If you want to speak to us, speak to our representatives directly. We urge that you do this as soon as possible.

  The document contained, damn it, miyu pronouns which I knew existed but had never seen anyone use before.

  The most famous use of them was in the declaration that had almost led to an invasion of Hedron by Asto—and both were Coldi worlds.

  Miyu pronouns were for declarations of large-scale war.

  I looked from Ezhya to Asha and back again. “Something else has happened, right?”

  “The ship has turned on power and fired what we think are auxiliary engines, possibly to kick up the main reactor, which is still dormant. There has been no change in their lack of response to us. We will be sending this declaration to them.”

  I doubted the Aghyrians would understand Coldi writs and the deadly seriousness that lay underneath the fairly matter-of-fact language of the text.

  “I want you to present it to the gamra assembly as soon as possible. Call an emergency sitting if there is none planned. Those willing to join us in the defence of our system will be welcomed. If it comes to an armed conflict, we will allocate privileges in accordance to their involvement.”

  I’d been afraid that he’d wanted me to do this, but what else could I say? It was yet another way in which people would say that I was a mouthpiece for Asto. “I will. There will be fireworks. The assembly will be hostile to this.”