Jase took a deep breath. “As of five days ago, it turned decidedly worse. I talked to Sabin last night, and I have clearance to say this. From her. Not from Ogun.”
Secrets and division between the two senior captains. That didn’t sound good.
“Here’s the problem,” Jase said. “Tillington’s been agitating to get the Reunioners to go to a new construction at Maudit. You know that. But when the news got out three Reunioner kids were coming down here, the rhetoric got significantly nastier. And apparently when we called asking the kids’ time down here be extended, Tillington stepped over the edge. He’s now claiming that Sabin and Braddock made a deal so Braddock would agree to evacuate Reunion Station.”
“We had to haul him out by force. That’s ridiculous.”
“The alleged deal puts five thousand refugees, some of them with knowledge of critical systems, behind Sabin taking over the human side of the station, putting station operation entirely in Reunioner hands, and Sabin taking over as senior captain.”
An ugly scenario unfolded instantly. If one wanted to view Sabin in Mospheiran terms, with the knee-jerk Mospheiran assumption of self-interest and territorial interests over all, Sabin had been, for the last two years, in a position to dictate life and death for the Reunioners, and five thousand refugees constituted a large potential subversive force, on that scale.
The fact was—if Sabin had wanted, last year, to take Phoenix and all five thousand Reunioners and go establish another station somewhere, she could have done it with no hardship to herself and no permission from anyone. If she were aboard Phoenix, as she had been, nobody could have stopped her, and the world might never have seen the ship again.
But Sabin had done as she had proposed to do. She’d lifted off all survivors from the station, even Braddock—she’d destroyed the problematic human Archive and brought the refugees—numbering vastly more than anyone thought—safely to Alpha Station.
True, she’d put them off the ship and onto the station as beyond the ship’s ability to sustain any longer. That would have upset Tillington, but the ship would not attach itself as a permanent hotel for residency. None of the captains would agree to that.
That had suddenly made the refugees a Mospheiran problem—Tillington’s problem and Captain Ogun’s problem.
No, Sabin hadn’t made herself highly popular with Mospheiran stationers, and hadn’t been high on Ogun’s list of favorite people before she’d taken the ship to Reunion. Ramirez, who had been senior captain, was dead. Ogun had been second-senior, Sabin third, when an alien species had come down on Reunion ten years and more ago. And there remained, behind Sabin’s voyage back to Reunion, deep questions about command decisions and why the possibility of survivors had been hushed up. Captain Ramirez’ deathbed confession about Reunion had left nothing safe or sure between Ogun and Sabin.
But the fact was, despite the personal differences that had arisen between Ogun and Sabin, Ogun had stood by while Sabin took the most precious thing ship-folk had, Phoenix itself, and headed out where (one now suspected) Ogun damned well understood there was an extreme danger.
Had Ogun ever fully briefed Sabin about what had really happened out there?
Two hundred years ago, human beings had planted their space station in territory an alien species claimed—had evidently passed unnoticed—until Phoenix had poked deeper into that species’ territory and triggered alarms.
That species, the kyo, had blown Reunion Station half to ruin—then vanished, only to pop out of the dark again when Sabin arrived.
Monstrous expediency might at that point have said to hell with human survivors and the Archive: save our own skins—but Sabin hadn’t done that. Sabin had calmly stood her ground with the kyo and gotten all the survivors off.
Sabin might have promised the Reunioners any sort of thing while they were in transit, just to keep peace aboard.
But Sabin hadn’t done that, either. Bren had been there. Jase had been there, second in command. So Bren knew with certainty that Sabin had never made a deal, never made promises of power—never given the refugees anything but adequate food and a way to survive.
“All right,” he said to Jase. “Lay it out for me. Who stands where in this mess? Who’s on whose side and why?”
“One.” Jase held up his first finger. “Sabin and I. We backed these three kids coming down here. Ogun didn’t want that. It wasn’t going to happen. You saw what happened to me when I landed—sick as hell for weeks when I came down. All sorts of theories as to why, with me as the living proof of why spacers don’t adapt. The medics had their notions. But taking Reunioner children down there and having them sick was not a popular idea, politically speaking. Then Tabini-aiji insisted on it. Sabin and I—and the senior medic—won the argument once atevi politics weighed in.” Jase held up a second finger. “Two. From the moment the Reunioners walked onto the station deck, Tillington has wanted to send the Reunioners off to mine Maudit and build a separate station where he never has to see them again.” Third finger. “Some Reunioners, notably Braddock, actually want to go do that. You can guess why.”
No question there. Braddock, accustomed for years to being absolute authority on Reunion, had new ambitions.
Fourth finger. “Sabin wants them landed on the planet where they’ll be swallowed up forever in a sea of Mospheirans.” Thumb. “The majority of Reunioners want to build new space onto this station and integrate with the Mospheirans, who don’t want them to be there.”
“Six,” Bren said, holding up his own thumb. “Mospheira has an opinion in this affair. Mind, I haven’t consulted on this one—I’m a long way from representing Mospheira at all, these days—but Mospheira won’t want a rival government setting up out at Maudit any more than they’ll want Mospheiran-born workers outnumbered and outvoted by Reunioners on the station. They won’t want Reunioners settling in atevi territory, which atevi would never permit, anyway. But they also know, like it or not, that five thousand Reunioners aren’t going to go away.”
“Whatever happens,” Jase said, “however we resolve the question, disposition of the Reunioners can’t wait another year. It can’t. The station had to surrender three entire sections to their residency, piecemeal, and jury-rigged. We have people living in what used to be workshops, partitioned-up, but extremely bare bones. Singles are still in barracks—that’s a minor problem. But no jobs. No cooking facilities: you get food at kitchens, just like on the voyage. There’s a flourishing black market, and theft we haven’t had to cope with on the Mospheiran side. Fights break out, and Braddock’s people swagger about attempting to say they run things, even holding trials. It’s not tolerable long-term. And Tillington’s just gone over the edge, accusing Sabin of conspiracy, stirring things up on the Mospheiran side. So this is a quiet request, just an advisement. Can you do something about Tillington—move him out, move him up or down, no preference, but get him somewhere he can’t cause more trouble? And is there any way to look at getting the Mospheiran legislature to bring the Reunioners downworld?”
Bren drew a deep breath. It was a sane proposal. With the new med, the fact there’d been no such sickness as Jase had experienced before, either in Jase or the children—yes. It became possible. That didn’t mean it was going to be an easy proposal to advance in the Mospheiran legislature. But yes, if the ship had come up with something to enable an easier transition to the planet—if it had found a way to prove the Reunioners could live and thrive down here—