Destroyer (9 page)

“Or he may not,” Ilisidi said, “if he is not yet prepared. He may let opposition concentrate on us.”

“True,”
Geigi said.
“But we have not heard news lately. The Kadigidi have never since dared claim he is dead. But they may advance such a claim in desperation, Sidi-ji, now that you have arrived.”

“Well,” Ilisidi said, as taken aback as Bren had ever seen her. She stood there staring at nothing in particular, and Cajeiri stood by, looking to her for answers. As they all did. “Well,” she said again.

Jase, meanwhile, had been carrying on a running translation for Sabin, who stood, likewise looking at Ilisidi.

“Where,” Ilisidi asked Geigi sharply, “where is Tatiseigi?”

Cajeiri’s great-uncle, lord of the Atageini, sharing a boundary with the Kadigidi.

Cajeiri’s mother, who owed direct allegiance to the Atageini lord, Tatiseigi. Damiri was, very possibly, traveling with Tabini, if he was alive. She could have sheltered with her uncle, but apparently she was missing right along with Tabini, still loyal, and a constraint on her great-uncle.

“How many provinces are now joining in this rebellion?”

“There
is a head destined to fall,” Ilisidi said placidly. “And Tatiseigi? His man’chi?”

“The Northern Association holds?”

It was worth a deep, long sigh of relief. Atevi didn’t have borders. They had overlapping spheres of influence and allegiance. Within the
aishidi’tat
there were hundreds of associations of all sizes, from two or three provinces, likewise hazy in border, give or take, commonly, the loyalty of two or three families within the overlap. And if the Northern Association had held firm, rallying around Tatiseigi of the Atageini, the Midlands Association, to which the neighboring Kadigidi belonged, would be rash to make a move against Cajeiri’s mother’s relatives.

And
Cajeiri
arriving back in the picture gave Uncle Tatiseigi a powerful claimant to power from
his
household, which would bring all sorts of pressure within Tatiseigi’s association . . . God, it had been so long since he had traced the mazes of atevi clans and allegiances, or had to wonder where the Assassins’ Guild was going to come down on an issue.

Tabini missing. Assassinations. Havoc in the
aishidi’tat
.

One thing occurred to him, one primary question.

“Where are the shuttles, aiji-ma? Have they survived this disorder?”

“Excellent question,” Ilisidi said, and relayed it to Geigi. “Where are the shuttles?”

“We have one shuttle docked at the station,”
was Geigi’s very welcome answer.
“But we have no safe port to land it. The rebels hold the seacoast. We fear it may suffer attack, even if we attempt a landing on Mospheira.”

God. But they still had one functional shuttle.

One.

“Aiji-ma,”
Geigi said,
“I have maps. I have maps, and letters, which I can send to you for more detailed information, if the station and the ship will permit.”

Jase had translated that. They suddenly had Sabin’s full attention. “Jules,” Sabin said to her conversant, “Lord Geigi wants to transmit documents.”

“He should send them,” Bren said, “aiji-ma.”

“I shall get them together,”
Lord Geigi said, when she ordered the transmission.
“And I shall be there to meet you when you dock, aiji-ma.”

“A cold trek and pointless,” was Ilisidi’s response. “Order my staff and the paidhi’s to prepare our rooms and never mind coming to that abysmally uncomfortable dock. We shall meet you in decent comfort, Geigi-ji, as soon as possible. If you think of other matters, include them with your documents. I am handing this phone back now.”

“Yes,”
Geigi said, accepting orders, and the contact went dead.

Bren stood still, numb, and glanced at Jase.

“I translated,” Jase said, with a shift of the eyes toward Sabin.

“We have a problem, it seems,” Sabin said. “We have a shuttle, a ship full of more mouths to feed—we do have our own ship’s tanks, which should suffice to feed us all and the station, not well, but adequately, so at least we won’t overburden their systems. And we have our additional miner-bots, slow as that process may be.”

“We have our own manufacturing module,” Gin said. “And we have some supplies. We can start assembly and programming on extant stock as soon as we dock. We can get them to work in fairly short order, and see if we can pick up the pace of their operation.”

“Good,” Sabin said shortly.

In one word, from high hopes and the expectation of luxury back to a situation of shortage and the necessity of mining in orbit, the condition of life of their ancestors. The condition of the great-grandfathers of the Reunioners, too, who had had to build their distant station in desolation and hazard, by their own bootstraps.

They had to break that news to four thousand-odd colonists, and still keep the lid on their patience. Four thousand desperate people who’d been promised the sun and the moon and fruit drops forever once they got to the home station—and they were back to a hardscrabble existence, with a revolution in progress down in the gravity well.

The gravity well. That long, long drop. Bren felt a sensation he hadn’t felt in two years, the sensation of standing at the top of a dizzying deep pit, at the bottom of which lay business he couldn’t let go its own course.

Tabini. Atevi civilization. Toby and his own family, such as he had.

“Mani-ma.” Cajeiri, ever so quietly, addressing his great-grandmother. “Do you think my father and mother are still alive?”

Ilisidi gave a snort. “The Kadigidi would wish it known if not. Evidently they dare not claim it, even if they hope it to be the case, and one doubts they have so much as a good hope of being right. Likely your father and mother are alive and waiting for us to descend with force from the heavens.”

“Shall we, mani-ma?”

“As soon as possible,” Ilisidi said, and looked at Bren. “Shall we not?”

“How long until dock?” Bren asked the captains.

A flat stare from Sabin. “A fairly fast passage. When we get there, we’re going to be letting these passengers off in small packets. Very small packets. Their quarters have to be warmed and provisioned.”

They could warm a section at a time, and would, he was very sure; but they could also do it at their own speed, which was likely to be very slow. Sabin meant she was not going to have a general debarcation, no celebration, no letting their dangerous cargo loose wholesale.

And Gin Kroger had to get at her packaged robots and get the manufactury unpacked.

“I very well understand,” he said with a bow of his head that was automatic by now, to atevi and to humans. “I think it wise, for what it’s worth.”

“Our passengers are stationers,” Sabin said. “Spacers. They understand fragile systems. They won’t outright riot. But small conspiracies are dangerous—with people that understand fragile systems. I’m going to request Ogun to invoke martial law on the station until we completely settle these people in—simplifying our problems of control. I trust you can make this understood among atevi. I trust there’s not going to be some coup on that side of the station.”

There was very little human behavior that could not be passed off among atevi with a shrug. But emotions would be running high there, too, considering the dowager’s return.

“We don’t likely have any Kadigidi sympathizers on station,” Bren said quietly. “No. But there may be high feelings, all the same, with the return of the aiji’s son, and the only general translation of martial law doesn’t mean no celebration.
No one
can lay a hand on him or the dowager, no matter whose rules they violate.”

“Understood,” Sabin said. “That will be made very clear to our personnel. I trust the dowager to manage hers.” She drew a deep breath, set hands on hips and looked across the bridge. “We’re inertial for the station. Before we make connection with the core, we’ve got to decide whether to run the dowager aboard at high speed, or be prepared to sit it out and establish our set of rules first. I’m inclined to get your party aboard first, if you can guarantee quiet once you’re there.”

“Yes,” Bren said. Absolutes made him nervous as hell, but he had laid his life on Geigi’s integrity often enough before this. “We’ll take the fast route in, straight into the atevi section. Humans may be excited to know she’s here. That’s my chief worry. They’ll want to see her.”

“No question they’ll be excited,” Jase said.

Ilisidi was popular on the station, even among humans. Ilisidi always had been. And right now people were desperate for authority.

“I’d suggest we not discuss our boarding,” Bren said. “If we get Geigi’s men positioned near the lift, we can get into our own section fast and just not answer the outside. Stationers know better than to rush atevi security.”

“You go on station with them,” Sabin said to Jase. “I want you in direct liaison with Ogun.”

“We can trickle the Reunioners on, three to five at a time,” Jase said quietly, “Drag out the formalities, mandatory orientations—rules and records-keeping they understand. The technical problems of warming a section for occupation, they well understand.”

“Register them to sponsors,” Gin put in, “to
our
people, who know atevi.”

It wasn’t the first time Gin had put forward that idea, and they’d shot it down, not wanting to create a class difference between Mospheirans and Reunioners. But right now it made thorough sense to do it . . . a sense that might reverberate through human culture for centuries if they weren’t careful.

“All that’s Graham’s problem,” Sabin said shortly, meaning Jase had to make that decision among a thousand others, and she knew what he’d choose. “My whole concern is the security of this ship, its crew, and its supply. So are your atevi going to time out on us for an internal war, Mr. Cameron? Or can you explain to them we
might
see strangers popping into the system for a visit at any time from now on? I’d really rather have our affairs in better order when that happens.”

“I intend to make that point,” Bren said.

“Make it, hard. We need those shuttles. That would solve an entire array of problems. In the meantime, Ms. Kroger, I need your professional services, and will need them, urgently and constantly for the foreseeable future. Captain Ogun’s got his mining operation going all-out here, but if Cameron can’t get atevi resources up to us off the planet, or can’t get them tomorrow, we’ve got the immediate problem of feeding this lot—and I’m not ready to rip the shipyard apart worse than it already is to get supply. I want Captain Ogun’s tanks, Ms. Kroger. Shielded tanks and water sufficient to handle the station population indefinitely.”

“Understood,” Gin said.

“Then everybody get moving,” Sabin said.

Bren translated for the dowager. “The ship-aijiin recommend we go below and make final preparations to leave the ship, which will be a hurried transit, aiji-ma, into a disturbed population.”

“We are prepared,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand. The dowager had acquired a certain respect for Sabin-aiji, after a difficult start—a respect particularly active whenever Sabin’s opinion coincided with hers. “We are always prepared. Tell her see to her own people.”

“The dowager states she is prepared for any eventuality.” There were times he didn’t translate all of what one side said; and there were times he did. “The aiji-dowager expects you to control the human side of this. She is prepared to make inroads into the atevi situation.”

“Go below and observe takehold,” Sabin said. “The lot of you. We’re not wasting any time getting in there, no time for more ferment on their side or ours, thank you.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren translated that. “The ship is about to move with greater than ordinary dispatch and Sabin-aiji politely urges us all to take appropriate shelter belowdecks for a violent transit. This will speed us in before there can be further disturbance on the station or among our human passengers.”

“Good,” Ilisidi said sharply and headed for the lift, marking her path with energetic taps of the cane. Her great-grandson and the rest of her company could only make haste behind her to reach the doors, while the ship sounded the imminent-motion warning.

It was certainly not the homecoming they’d planned. Damn, Bren thought bleakly, taking his place inside the lift car. They’d ridden from nervous anticipation to the depths of anxiety all in an hour; and amid everything else—

Amid everything else, he thought, looking across the car at Cajeiri, there’d been no special word for a boy who’d just heard bad news about his mother and father, and who remained appallingly quiet.

What
did
he say to an atevi child? Or what should his great-grandmother have said, or what dared he say now?

The lift moved. Meanwhile the intercom gave the order:
“Maneuvers imminent. Takehold and brace for very strong movement.”

Four thousand colonists were getting that news, people unacculturated to the delicate and dangerous situation they were going to land in on the station, people whose holier-than-common-colonists attitudes were even more objectionable to the Mospheirans who were half the workforce on that station, and whose ancestors had suffered under Guild management . . . and who were going to have to sponsor the Reunioners if, as seemed likely now, Gin’s plan prevailed.