“Sera,” one called to her. “ISPAK board has asked to see you. Please. We will escort you.”
“I will see them here,” she said, “on the dock.”
There was consternation among them. Several in civilian dress consulted with each other and one made a call on his belt unit. Raen stood still, shivering with the chill and the lack of sleep, while they proposed debate.
She was too tired. She could not bear the standing any longer. Her legs were shaking under her. “Stand your ground,” she bade the azi. “Fire only if fired upon. Tell them I’ll come down when the board arrives. Watch them carefully.”
And quietly she withdrew, leaving Merry in charge on the dock, trusting his sense and experience. In the new azi she had little confidence; they would not break, perhaps, if it came to a fire fight, but they would die in their tracks quite as uselessly.
She touched the Warriors who hovered in the hatchway, calming them. “We wait,” she said, and went on to the lift, to the bridge, to the security of the unit which guarded the crew and the comfort of a place to sit.
Likely, she thought, they’ll arrive at the dock now, now that I’ve come call this way up.
They did not. She reached past the frozen crew and punched in station operations, listened to the chatter, that at the moment was frantic. Outsider ships were disengaging from dock one after the other, necessitating adjustments, three, four of them, five, six. She grinned, and listened further, watched them on the screens as they came within view, every Outsider in the Reach kiting outward in a developing formation.
Going home.
A new note intruded, another accent in station chatter. She detected agitation in beta voices.
She pirated their long-scan, and froze, heart pounding as she saw the speed of the incoming dot, and its bearing.
She keyed outside broadcast. “Merry! Withdraw. Withdraw everyone into the ship at once.”
The dot advanced steadily, ominous by its speed near a station, cutting across approach lanes.
They would not have sent any common ship, not if it were in their power to liberate a warship for the purpose. Swift and deadly, one of the never-seen Family warships: Istra station was in panic.
And the Outsider ships were freighters, likely unarmed.
“Sera!” Merry’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re aboard!”
A light indicated hatch-operation.
“Back off,” Raen said to the beta captain. “Undock us and get us out of here.”
He stared into the aperture of her handgun and hastened about it, giving low-voiced orders to his men.
“Drop us into station-shadow,” Raen said. “And get us down, fast.”
The captain kept an eye to the incoming ship, that had not yet decreased speed. Station chatter came, one-sided—ISPAK informing the incoming pilot the cluster formation was Outsider, that no one understood why.
For the first time there was deviation in the invader’s course, a veering toward the freighters.
The shuttle drifted free now, powering out of a sudden, in shadow.
“Put us in his view,” Raen ordered. The captain turned them and did so, crossing lanes, but nothing around the station was moving, only themselves, the freighters, and the incomer.
Raen took deep breaths, wondering whether she should have gambled everything, a mad assault on station central, to seize ISPAK…trusting the warship would not fire.
It fired now. Outsiders must not have heeded orders to stop. She picked it up visually, swore under her breath; the Outsiders returned fire: one of that helpless flock had some kind of weapon. It was a mistake. The next shot was real.
She punched in numbers, snatched a microphone. “Kontrin ship! This is the Meth-maren. You’re forbidden station.”
The invader fired no more shots. He was, perhaps, aware of another mote on his screens; he changed course, leaving pursuit of Outsiders.
“It’s coming for us!” a beta hissed.
Raen scanned positions, theirs, the warship’s, the station’s, the world. In her ear another channel babbled converse with the invader. Shuttle…she heard . One onworld… one aloft… Plead with you…
“Sera,” the captain moaned.
“It can’t land,” she said. “Head us for Istra.”
They applied thrust and tumbled, applied a stabilising burst and started their run.
“Shadow!” Raen ordered, and they veered into it, shielded by station’s body, at least for the instant.
“We can’t do it,” someone said. “Sera, please—”
“Do what it can’t do,” she said. “Dive for it.” Her elbow was on the rest; she leaned her hand against her lips, found it cold and shaking. There was nothing to do but ride it through. The calculation had been marginal, an unfamiliar ship, a wallowing mote of a shuttle, diving nearly headlong for Istra’s deep.
Metal sang; instruments jumped and lights on the board flicked red, then green again. “That was fire,” Raen commented, swallowing heavily. A voice in her ear was pleading with the invader. The shuttle’s approach-curve graph was flashing panic.
They hit atmosphere. Warning telltales began flashing; a siren began a scream and someone killed it.
“We’re not going to make it,” the captain said between his teeth. He was working desperately, trying to engage a failed system. “Wings won’t extend.” The co-pilot took over the effort with admirable coolness, trying again to reset the fouled system.
“Pull in and try again,” Raen paid. The beta hit retract, waited, lips moving, hit the sequence again. Of a sudden the lights greened, the recalcitrant wings began to spread, and the betas cried aloud with joy.
“Get us down, blast you!” Raen shouted at them, and the ship angled, heart-dragging stress, every board flashing panic.
They hit a roughness of air, rumbling as if they were rolling over stone, but the lights started winking again to green.
“Shall we die?” an azi asked of his squad leader.
“It seems not yet,” squad-leader answered.
Raen fought laughter, that was hysteria, and she knew it. She clung to the armrest and listened to the static that filled her ear, stared with mad fixation on the hands of the terrified betas and on the screens.
Pol, she kept thinking, Pol, Pol, Pol, blast you, another lesson.
Or it was for him also, too late.
ix
“So it’s you,” Moth said, leaned back in her chair, wrapped in her robes. She stared up at Ros Hald, with Tand; and the Ren-barant, the Ilit. “It’s Halds, is it?”
“Council’s choice,” Ros Hald said.
Moth gave a twisted smile. She had seen the four vacant seats, action taken before she had even announced her intent. “Of course you are,” she said, and did not let much of the sarcasm through. “You’re welcome, very welcome beside me, Ros Hald. Tand, go find some of the staff. We should offer hospitality to my partner-in-rule.”
Tand went. Ros Hald kept watching her nervously. That amused her. “What,” she asked, “do you imagine I’ve let you be chosen…to arrange your assassination, to behead the opposition?”
Of course it occurred to him, to all of them. They would all be armed.
“But I was sincere,” she said. “I shall be turning more and more affairs into your hands.”
“Access,” he said, “to all records.”
You’ve managed that all along, she thought, smiling. Bastard!
“And,” he said, “to all levels of command, all the codes.”
She swept a hand at the room, the control panels, the records. The hand shook. She was perpetually amazed by her own body. She had been young—so very long; but flesh in this last age turned traitor, caused hands to shake, voice to tremble, joints to stiffen. She could not make a firm gesture, even now. “There,” she said.