Doors opened. Armored, masked security, Kaplan, Polano and Pressman among them, by the badges, dragged their prisoners out, four net-wrapped men, stripped of armor and weapons—men who looked far smaller and less threatening, in disarranged blue fatigues stained with sweat.
“Have medical look them over, inside and out,” Jase said. “Then tank the lot and have a look at their communications.”
“Yes, sir,” the head of the second team answered, and bundled the problem out of view of the bridge, lift-bound.
“C1,” Jase said quietly.
“Sir?” Crisp and proper.
“Once they’ve cleared the lift, I’ll go down and address the crew on two-deck. And for bridge crew,” he said, raising his voice, turning to make it carry. “Well done. Good job, cousins. Continue measures in force, pending further orders. We’ll go to shift change very soon now, with thanks.”
Relief went through the bridge crew on the gust of a sigh. Arms went to safety, a scattered, soft sound.
“Restore the boards for next shift and we’ll carry on, cousins. That’s all. I don’t know how this is going to affect the senior captain’s situation, but we’ve got the ship rather than losing it. And if they’ve got the fuel, we’ll figure a way to work this. It’s clear they’re not going anywhere. Resume operations.”
Crew began putting weapons away, clearing the safety covers from consoles. The bridge began to normalize operations.
Jase’s face had been flushed with anger. Now the sweat broke out and the flush gave way to pallor. Bren remarked that. But Jase didn’t offer to go to quarters, and Bren himself didn’t move. His legs felt like posts. The adrenalin charge was trying to flow out of him, fight-flight instincts having incomplete information from the brain, which said, with complete conviction, You can’t quit. It’s not done . They had an alien threat at their backs and station had slammed a stone wall down in front of them.
“Prisoners are secured in medical, captain.” That from C1.
“Assembly on two, C1, all shifts.”
“Yes, sir,” C1 said, and Jase said, from every speaker in the ship, and likely within hearing of the make-shift brig:
“ Captain Graham will address crew on two-deck, all attend, all attend. Three minute warning. ”
“Mr. Cameron,” Jase said.
“Captain?”
“You’ll do me the honor, Mr. Cameron. You can explain the atevi position. I know ours.”
Chapter 11
Two-deck’s corridors were crammed in every direction, a crowd from two-deck and likely from the crew section of three-deck converging on the lift from the moment they got off, crew standing, galley staff prominent in whites at the left, upcoming bridge crew in blues on the right, a scattering of security thrown in at random. Faces, Bren noted, were tense… every man and woman in the corridors having heard as much as Cook’s staff had had to give.
“C1,” Jase said. “Route my comm to two- and three-deck intercoms.” Intercom immediately came live. Jase’s next utterance went out over the speakers, making the voice omnipresent, distant as he was from the remoter rows of cousins and crew. “ You know by now the senior captain’s gone to station, and that station sent on some investigators. They pushed. They’re in medical. They’ll be in the tank until we get the captain back .”
A cheer. That curiously rattled Jase. A cheer hadn’t been in his plans. Or his self-concept.
“ Mr. Cameron’s here in support of ship command. ’Sidi-ji does support us. ”
Second cheer. Jase was further rattled. He never had been a great speaker. He didn’t have the killer instinct and he never knew when to quit. He slogged on, gathering force, if not eloquence.
“ So we’re going to get the captain back ,” Jase said. “ But we’re not helpless, meanwhile. We’ve got fuel to maneuver if we have to and remember we’ve got the only pilots who actually know how to handle this ship, never mind what anybody on station may have studied up in some simulator. They can’t give us orders .”
Third cheer. Which threw Jase completely off his pace.
“ I’m no great shakes at the boards ,” Jase said. “ And I’m not the senior captain by a long shot, which I know. I also know everybody aboard wants to be out there on deck doing something, and everybody wants to get onto the station, some of you with cousins to find; and everybody wishes station was what it used to be, but it isn’t, and we can’t, and I can’t. So I’ll tell you what my policy is, which is, first of all, no more secrets, so long as we’re in this mess .”
Maybe Jase drew breath. Maybe he wanted encouragement here, but he didn’t hear it. The crew just stood still and silent. “ So while I’m acting senior, I’m taking questions, and crew who wants to go onto the bridge and see for a fact what’s going on, come ahead, never mind that protocol, just walk softly around working crew. If you’ve got a question, I want to hear it, in my office, in an orderly fashion. If you’ve got a complaint, I want to hear that, too, and I’ll deal with it best I can in time-available. We’ve clearly got a situation working. The Guild leadership isn’t cooperating, we haven’t heard from the senior captain, and I’m not turning this ship over to them, I’m not giving them their people back, and I’m not handing over the log. Meanwhile we’ve got an alien ship out there that’s got its own agenda, possibly missing personnel of its own, and we’ve got to finesse that, too. We’ve got to stay alert, and we’re going to get out of this somehow, cousins. Hell if I know how at this exact moment, but we got to Alpha and back, and we’ve built an alliance there, and our station, with Captain Ogun, is going to back us, not them, when we go back. If we go back under any circumstances but us in charge of our ship, there’ll be serious trouble at the station where this ship left its kids and old folk, among others, and I’m not going to see that happen, or come dragging in, telling Captain Ogun we’ve brought him a problem. We settle it here, cousins. Any questions ?”
Uneasy quiet. Maybe certain ones wanted to ask questions. Maybe others wanted to make observations. But no one moved.
Then somebody called out, “Taylor! Taylor’s son !”
Taylor. Senior captain. Dead for centuries. But the genetic bank of those days produced the ship’s special children. The special ones, born to be outside the Guild, outside politics, outside precedent.
“Taylor!” someone else shouted, and others took it up. “ Taylor !”
Jase didn’t want that. He stood there a moment, not moving, then lifted the com unit again. “ So get to work ,” he said. “ Shift change, cousins .”
Jase clicked the com off at that point, pale around the edges, sweating, maybe feeling all the hours he hadn’t slept. And there was a cheer from the crew.
“Good job,” Bren said under his breath, in the same moment a handful in bridge blues came through to the front, third shift pilot and backup in the lead.