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 ultimatims. 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.
He dodged a massive tray of unbaked rolls in the hands of a man who gave him only a busy, passing glance.
Then the man came to a dead stop and gave him a second glance, astonished.
A year aboard—and he knew the staff, knew the faces. They knew him by sight. Not at first glance, however. That was good.
And without an exact plan—he suddenly found at least a store of raw material. He waved cheerfully to the man with the tray and, spotting the chief cook over by the ovens, walked casually toward him.
“Hello, chief.”
“Mr. Cameron.” Natural surprise. Hint of deep concern. “What’s going on up there?”
“Well, we’ve got a little problem,” he said. People around him strained to hear, a little less clatter in their immediate vicinity, quickly diminishing to deathly hush. He didn’t altogether lower his voice, deciding that galley crew just slightly overhearing the truth was to the good—gossip never needed encouragement to walk about.
So he began the old downhill skid of intrigue. He wasn’t Bren Cameron, fresh off the island and blind to the world. He was, he reminded himself, paidhi-aiji—the aiji’s own interpreter, skilled at communication, skilled at diplomacy between two species—and used to the canniest finaglers and underhanded connivers in Shejidan. “Everything so far is fine, except station has locked the fuel down tight and wants Sabin in their offices and their inspectors on our deck, as if the senior captain had to account to them .” That wasn’t phrased to sit well with a proud and independent crew, not at all. “So do you think I could get a basket of sandwiches to take up to the bridge as an excuse to be up there, to find out what’s going on?”
The chief cook, Walker, his name was, listened, frowning. “What do you think’s going on, sir? What in hell do they want, excuse my french, sir?”
“They want us to say yessir and take their orders, and I don’t think the captains are on their program. I don’t officially speak for Captain Graham—but I’ll take it on my own head to go up there and find out if he has orders he doesn’t want to put out on general address. If you could kind of deliver a small snack around the decks and at the same time pass some critical information to crew in lockdown, it might be a good thing—tell the crew back the captain, tell them don’t mention atevi or the planet at all if these Guild people ask, no matter what. If they’ve got any pictures that might give that information, get them out of sight. And don’t do anything these people could use for an excuse for whatever else they want to do. Senior captain’s taken all our security with her, trying to make a point to the Guild on station. Captain Graham’s kind of empty-handed up there, worried about them taking over the ship.”
A low murmur among the onlookers.
“Taking over the ship,” he repeated. “Which is what we’re going to resist very strongly, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Graham is worried: Captain Sabin is risking her neck trying to finesse this, and Captain Graham’s attitude is, if they even try to claim her appointment as senior captain of this ship isn’t official without their stamp of approval, gentlemen, there’s going to be some serious argument from this ship. Captain Graham’s worried those investigators may make matters difficult up on the bridge. And I want some excuse to go up there and look around and make absolutely sure the bridge crew’s not being held at gunpoint right now.”