“Do we count this likely?”
“She has the ship already. She could easily invite the Guild in and turn the ship over to them without risking herself aboard the station. As likely that she means to walk in and simply shoot the Guild-aiji dead at his desk. I don’t know what she intends. She has taken Jenrette as one of her guards. I don’t know why. Perhaps because she is Guild, as I suspect he is—perhaps because she simply wishes to get him off the ship so he can’t sabotage anything. She does not trust Jase to run the ship.”
“Do you so trust him, Bren-ji?” Jago asked.
“In matters of security, yes. And he has staff that can move the ship at need. We have not linked the ship within safe access of general population. A rush of population into the mast would put us in a position where we would have to open our doors or see them die of cold; and the presence of so many would increase mass that we dare not leave dock without refueling. On the other hand, if the station administration itself refuses to vacate the station, this would be a great difficulty. Sabin did reiterate to Jase the mission to destroy all the information the station holds. The computers that hold that information, on the station, are deep, and defended by the Guild. The alternatives remain—very bad alternatives. One hardly wishes to think about the possibility of blowing up the station with all those people aboard. One refuses to contemplate it.”
“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 than 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.”