Guild getting in charge of the ship was a very, very grim scenario. Not one they’d actively considered, in the bright lights of Alpha Station and the full steam ahead of their own planning. But a year later, out in the vast dark of the universe and closer and closer to Reunion, it did prompt a sober reflection—on people, on old loyalties, on their prospects.
If they got there and there was no fuel, they had that covered—in Gin and her robots. If they got there and found a still-potent Guild in charge—and Sabin much too sympathetic toward them—
“They’d want the ship, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh, damned right, they’d want it,” Jase said.
“You think Sabin seriously might lean their way? Give up her own authority? I don’t read her that way.”
“Or if she became part of theirs,” Jase said, and drew a breath. “At the start of this voyage I had some doubts about her. But this last year, this voyage—I don’t know what she thinks.”
A last year of being de facto senior captain. Of working with Ramirez’s unwanted appointee.
Of having a section of her ship in atevi and Mospheiran control, an arrangement not to her liking. If the Guild didn’t like “contamination,” what did Sabin think?
“Have you seen any shift in her opinions?”
“I can’t read her. I do think whatever went on between Ramirez and the Guild, she’s on a completely different agenda. And keeping me out of the log—that’s said something, too, hasn’t it? She never was on Ramirez’s side. Always the contrary vote, always outvoted. And Ogun put her in charge here. Why, Bren? Why in hell did he do that?”
“Admittedly putting her where she didn’t have to deal with an entire nation of atevi and diverse politics on the planet. Aboard a ship that’s dead set on its mission—a crew that’s going to be pretty hard to argue with if it gets this tape in hand, among other points. You talk about the Guild possibly taking over. But that’s not the way the crew feels about past decisions, if I have it right.”
“A two-edged sword. If Ramirez was against the Guild, if blame for this goes against him , I was born part of it. And that’s the critical detail I don’t know. I don’t know when it could blow up and I don’t know what’s going to be the issue.”
“You’ve got the tape. You could release it. You could take your position from that.”
“And that could blow wider than I intend. Stranded is a hot enough word with Mospheirans, but let me tell you, abandoning survivors at Reunion—that nearly fried the interface. And things don’t make sense. The way the lie was constructed, right from the start of the ship coming into Reunion, how do you read that? I can’t answer it.”
“Plain logic: Ramirez stopped the situation, froze the tape until he knew what he’d do.”
“Until he’d made up what his story was.”
“Ramirez didn’t know what he’d find going back to Alpha. He knew things might not be optimum. As they weren’t. Ten years getting refueled was a miracle, as was. If the crew had known, they still couldn’t change things, but they’d have sweated and fretted harder. And crew can understand that.”
“That’s logic. But it’s not emotion. There’ve been too many lies, Bren. The depth of deception in this one event has too many layers. Tamun’s mutiny was only one manifestation of the poison of lies that’s run on this ship.”
“There’s only one layer in this lie. Ramirez needed the crew to take orders without division of opinion.”
“And if the crew hadn’t ever found out there were survivors? Would he ever have told the truth?”
“He’d had the ship fueled. Priority. He’d had the ship fueled. We’re going where he prepared this ship to go. That’s a fact, isn’t it? I think he sweated the situation he knew he’d left.”
“The fact is, he told us for all those years we were the last human outpost, there at Alpha. The last hope for humanity. The sole planet for atevi. That we were all preparing a planetary defense. That we were building another starship for a counter-strike; if we had to. Then we get the facts. And this crew’s wild enthusiasm for this venture ran out in the first month of this voyage, far from civilization. Now we’re down to grim determination and the very real likelihood we’re going to find the station dead after all this effort. Things aboard are quiet. They will be quiet, until there’s some result. But if I take this to the crew—”
“You’re a captain. Equal to Sabin, on your watch. You have the authority to decide the course of this ship, the same as she does.”
“I’m a captain who knows less about the operation of this ship than the average maintenance grunt. I’m a damn linguist, Bren! That’s what I am. That’s all I am, and I’m not even competent at that.”
“You are competent. What you can do is always invisible to you. From outside perspective… you don’t have to sit a technical post. You can command the techs. You can say, go here, or go there. That’s all the captains do, that I’ve ever observed.”
“And what do I do when we come charging in to Reunion and I haven’t any of the Guild computer keys?”
“As surviving ship’s executive,” Bren said in Ragi, “might one not say—the keys weren’t passed?”
Jase stared at him. Outright stared. Maybe took an internal moment to translate that twice. But Jase had been in Shejidan, and knew the atevi court, and the use of daggers and plots. The paidhi-aiji was steeped in that culture. And at a pinch, could more than think in Ragi.
“The full range of alternatives,” Bren said, again in Ragi. And in Mosphei’: “A question. Merely a question.”
“Too much unknown,” Jase said in Ragi. And in ship-speak: “And I’m human, and I’m holding a bomb, in this record. And I respect Sabin. I do respect her. I didn’t start this voyage that way, but I do.”
“Granted. Not incompatible considerations.”
Maybe Jase needed a dose of Ragi. Maybe he added, not subtracted, possibilities and solutions. But it remained an uncomfortable situation.
“You respected Ramirez,” Bren reminded him, in Ragi.
“And by all you say, nadi, who knows? Maybe he was about to execute the plan you used to think he had. He released the Archive to the planet. He wasn’t that worried about contamination. Or he’d reconciled himself to us. Maybe he really did refuel the ship as a defense. He planned for another starship… but that’s going to be atevi-run. The aiji’s help could provide him his widest ambitions. A developed planet, all those resources. Maybe he wasn’t, in his own plan, going back until he’d prepared a base that wouldn’t fall under Guild control.”
Worth considering, at least. Jase steepled his hands, thinking, and thinking. “He deployed me, and Yolanda.”
“Yet put you back in space, but not her.”
“It’s a damned circle, Bren. Everything runs in a circle.”
“He wasn’t getting any younger. The Tamun blow-up took his health. He didn’t plan, perhaps, to be overheard in what he told you.”