Then crew arrived, with a flurry of distressed calls to the bridge; they were no more relaxed by the time they had negotiated the personnel lift, past the azi below and the Warriors with them, and into the upper level to the welcome of Merry’s armed squad.
“Just do your job,” Raen advised them. They settled in, speaking only in fragments and that when they must. “We’re not scheduled,” was the captain’s only protest. “We may not have a berth up there.”
“We’ll get one,” Raen said. She reached for the com switch herself, requested lift clearance, obtained it, priority. If traffic was in the way, it would be diverted or aborted. The shuttle’s engines were in function; it settled earthward as its stilts drew in, and engaged its moving-gear, trundled ponderously out toward the lifting area.
“Merry,” she asked of the passenger area. “All right back there?”
“Yes, sera.”
“Have Tallen up after lift. Strict security on the rest.”
They were entering position, wings extruding, gathering speed. Then wings locked, and they made their run. “Use the handholds,” she remembered to snap at the azi still standing, and they left the ground, under heart-dragging acceleration.
Pol, she thought in that vulnerable moment, Pol was on world, ship-based—could down a shuttle if he would, if she had guessed wrong; and there was ISPAK to contend with. She doubted then, whether she should not have gone back to ISPAK at once, taken it first, instead of delaying on-world.
But there was also blue-hive. Principally, there was blue-hive.
They passed the worst of lift, launched on an angled ascent that would carry them at last to intercept with station. The deck would slant for the duration. “Rest,” she bade the standing azi, lest they tire, “Half at a time. Sit down.” They settled, by their own way of choosing, but all kept weapons ready, and held to the safety grips, for the sensation of flight was new to them.
The lift had activated: she saw the indication on the board, and left her cushion, negotiated her way back to it.
Tallen. An armed azi escorted the man, and waited while he caught the handhold and exited the lift…no pleasant sensation, the personnel lift during flight, and the man was old—not as Kontrin aged, Raen thought sorrowfully, but as betas did. It was sad to understand.
“Apologies, ser,” she welcomed him. “Are your folk all right?”
“Our rooms raided, ourselves handled as we were—”
“Apologies,” she said in a cold voice. “But no regrets. You’re off Istra. You’re alive. Be grateful, ser.”
“What’s going on?”
“There are very private affairs of the Reach involved here, ser Outsider.” She gestured him into the corner by the passenger compartment, where they could stand more comfortably, and waited until he had braced himself. “Listen to me: you were not well-advised to have cut off my warning. You’ve Mundy back; you’ve information, for. what it’s worth. But you’ve killed the others. You understand that. It’s too late for them. Listen to me now, and save something. Your spies have not been effective, have they?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do, ser. You do. And the only protection you have is myself, ser. The betas surely can’t offer you any, whatever their assurances to the contrary.”
“Betas.”
“Betas. Beta generation. The children of the labs, ser. The plastic civilisation.”
“The eggs.” Comprehension came to his eyes. “The children of the eggs.”
“They’re set up to obey. We’ve conditioned them to that. Do you understand the pattern you see now? Your spies haven’t helped you. You’ve dropped them into the vast dark, ser, and they’re gone, swallowed up in the Reach.”
“These—” he looked about him at the guards. “These creatures—”
“Don’t,” she said, offended. “Don’t misname them. The azi are quite as human as the betas, ser. And unlike the betas, they’re quite aware they’re programmed. They’ve no illusion, but they deserve respect.”
“And you go on creating them. You’ve pushed a world to the breaking point. Why?”
“I think you suspect, ser Tallen; and yet you go on feeding them. No more. No more.”
“Be clear, Kont’ Raen.”
“You’ve understood. You’ve been gathering all the majat goods we and the betas can sell you, swallowing them up, shipping them out. Warehousing them—against a time of shortage, if you’ve been wise, taking what you could get while you could get it. But to do that, you’ve been doing the worst thing you could have done. You’ve been feeding the force that means to expand out of the Reach. And worse, ser, much worse—you’ve been feeding the hives. This generation for industrialisation, the next for the real move. And you’ve fed it.”
He turned a shade yet paler than he had been. “What do you propose, Kont’ Raen?”
“Shut down. Shut down trade for a few years. Now. The Reach can’t support these numbers. The movement will collapse under its own weight”
“What’s your profit in telling us?”
“Call it internal politics.”
“It’s mad. How do we know what authority you have to do this?”
She lifted a hand toward the azi. “You see it. I could have handled this otherwise. I could have pulled licenses. But that wouldn’t have told you why. I am telling you now. I mean what I say, ser: that your continued trade is supplying a force that will try to break out of the Reach. That a few years of deprivation will destroy that hope and make a point to them. We’re not without our vulnerabilities. Yours is the need for what we alone supply. But you’ve been oversupplied in these last few years. You can survive a time of shut-down. I assure you, you can’t come in and takethese things: trying to take them would destroy the source of them…or worse things…” She looked directly into his eyes. “You would stand where we do, and be what we are.”
“How can I carry a report to my authorities based on one person’s word? There’s another of your people in Istra. We’ve heard. This could be an attempt to prevent our contacting—”
“Ah, he’d tell you differently, perhaps. Or perhaps he’d shrug and say do as pleased you. Hisreasons you’d not understand at all.”
“You play games with us. Or maybe you have other motives.”
“Invade us. Come in with your ships. Fire on betas and innocent azi, break through to Cerdin and take all that we have. Then where will you be? The hives won’t deal with minds-that-die; no, they’ll lead you in directions you don’t anticipate. I give you a hive-master’s advice, ser, that I’ve withheld from others. Is it not so, that your desperation is because you need us? Your technology relies on what we produce? And do we not serve well? You’re safe, because we know well what we do. Now a hive-master says: stop, wait, danger, and you take it for deception.”
“Get my agents out.”
She shook her head. “It’s too late. I’ve given you warning. A decade or two, ser. An azi generation. A time of silence. Believe me now. We’ll get you to your ships. A chance to run, to get out of here with what lives I can give you.”
He stared at her. The ship was already coming into release from Istra’s gravity, and there was a feeling of instability. She beckoned him toward the lift.
“Believe me,” she said. “It’s the only gift I can give. And whatever you do, you’d best get down to your people, ser Tallen. They’ll wonder. They’ll need your advice. See it’s the right advice. My men will let you free, and you’ll do what you please on that dock.”
Tallen gave her a hard and long look, and sought the lift; the guard went with him.
Raen hand-over-handed her way back to the cushion, scanned instruments, looked at the crew. “Put us next the Outsider ships. If we need to clear a berth, we’ll do that”
The captain nodded, and she settled, arms folded, with station communications beginning to hurl frantic questions at them.