Precursor

“I’m not his keeper. I have the ship’s interests to look out for. Contact me from the planet, when you get there. We’ll talk at that safe distance, when I’m not having to protect your lives. Not otherwise.”

“Very good,” Bren said. “I’ve made the offer. You’ve made your choice. We’ll go back now.”

“I’ll send an escort with you.—Frank, walk them back.”

There was just a little hesitation, a little worry in the glance the man named Frank exchanged with his captain, but there was no disobedience.

His own estimate of Ogun was dead-on right, Bren thought; these men were worried about Ogun; these men protected their captain as the only force likely to keep a very bad choice out of power, and Ogun meanwhile thought there was some danger to them in walking the corridors, a danger that one man walking with them might abate or shame into good behavior.

And by all he’d seen of the crew’s attitude, it wasn’t any danger from the crew in general. That meant Tamun. That meant a very good likelihood of Tamun growing much less secretive about his actions.

What was it Jase had said, that the crew would know things and not mention them or do anything about them until there was just absolutely no choice about it?

“Nadiin-ji,” he said quietly to Banichi and Jago, who had remained somewhat behind him, just outside the door: and yes, there were four more men at the rear of the room, at either side. “Nadiin-ji, these reliable men have man’chi to Ogun, he relies on them, and he sends one man to protect us walking back. Whatever the threat to us in the halls, Ogun believes this one man can avert it by his presence and the threat of Ogun’s displeasure. Ogun-aiji will not join us, apprehends he is himself in danger, but insists his man’chi is only to his ship, so he will not compromise his authority even by visiting us. Our arrival here touched off action against Ramirez. It remains a point of contention.”

It was useful to Banichi and Jago to know the situation as fully as possible, predigested for atevi comprehension: he did what he could to make it understood in shorthand, and he gave a second, reflexive bow of respect to a man of pragmatic combativeness and considerable virtue.

One who wasn’t prepared, however, to cast his people’s fortunes on strangers or turn loose of his power to do something yet on his own terms.

He backed out the door, surer and surer that he had read Ogun right, and that Ogun was equally sure he was himself the next target on Tamun’s list.

The guard who joined them outside also knew the score, and had no wish to leave his captain, not for a minute.

“Ogun is in danger,” Bren said to that man as they walked down that aisle of potted plants. Then he asked the most critical question: “Do you trust Sabin?”

“Can’t say, sir.”

“Well, it’s damned certain Tamun will lead you to disaster if anything happens to Ogun,” Bren said. “Tamun will get you no repairs, no help. He’s about to offend the aiji’s grandmother, which is a bad mistake. But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re Ogun’s man.”

“Can’t discuss that, sir.”

“Cousin of his?”

“Can’t discuss it, sir.”

“From what I see, the crew in general isn’t happy with this situation, are they? Ramirez was already head-to-head fighting Tamun when we came up here. And rather than let Ramirez win that argument and take what he wanted to take from the aiji in Shejidan, Tamun shot him.”

“Can’t say that for sure, either, sir.”

“So now Tamun’s got a small but pretty damned well armed set of helpers, probably cousins, who’ve all gone just one step too far, and probably are just a little dismayed at what’s developed, but they know there isn’t a way back to good grace for them now. They can’t pin it on Jase Graham, their lie is leaking out faster by the hour, everybody knows exactly what they did, and it’s getting hotter and hotter, isn’t it?”

There was no more denial, only a silence, and he hoped Banichi and Jago were following this, at least marginally.

“So the only reason Ogun hasn’t shot Tamun is because you resourceful fellows can’t get to Tamun to blow him full of holes.”

“I honestly couldn’t say that, sir.”

“So what isthe reason against it?”

They reached the intersection; reached a point where to his immediate attention movement showed in the distance.

Two crew walked the curvature of the hall toward them. And they carried rifles.

“ Thoseare Tamun’s cousins,” their guide said as they walked. “Keep behind me.”

That deserved translation. “Tamun’s father’s sons, Nadiin-ji. Our guide proposes to go first and to watch them carefully.” It occurred to him that if all his ru

But the fragile relations of crew to crew were strained to the breaking point: fracture had already happened. Worse could yet happen. His flitting mind ran beyond his own arguments to the reasons whyOgun remained reluctant to act, why nine tenths of the crew walked in fear of upsetting the balance. Knowledge of how to run the machinery was stretched so, so thin, the Pilots’ Guild for centuries had restricted knowledge, not disseminated it. The old policy that had so alienated the colonists had come to this, an aristocracy as absolute as that in the hinterlands of the mainland.

Their guide went just before them, stopped and swung to keep an eye on the two as they passed, and still watched them as Banichi and Jago passed, wary, every line a threat.

“Don’t—” their guide began to say, and the next instant Bren felt himself yanked backward into a fall. An explosion and an electric crackle brought a grunt from someone, but Jago had his arm, jerked him toward his feet before he could form a notion what had hit him. She and Banichi both fired, the two attackers went down, but so had their guide gone down, in a corridor otherwise void of cover.

Jago steered him and Banichi scooped up their guide, slung him over his shoulder, as all of a sudden more shots crackled after them, small devices that embedded in the wall and gave off electricity.

Jago let off covering fire and the shooting stopped, more men ducking back around a corner.

Communications was working, all right: it was working far too efficiently in Tamun’s favor; and the next ten minutes could see Ogun dead, those men simply breaking through the door to the conference room and mowing down everyone in the room.

“Ogun,” Bren said breathlessly, being dragged along. “This entire quarrel has broken wide open. Ogun’s in immediate danger.”

“So are you, nadi,” Banichi said, heaving his hapless burden over his left shoulder, his sidearm in his other hand. “And you are far more valuable to us. Into the next access. Go!”

“I need you! Do you hear? Don’t risk yourself, Banichi!”

Jago hauled him violently down the corridor and toward that nearest service access, and time now was everything. Every moment he held these two separated, they were all at greater risk. She opened a refuge, and he went in as rapidly as he could, climbed up, knowing the next level was safer than this one and at least closer to home, and knowing by the continuance of light that the door below was still open.

He trusted everything to the belief they would both follow him more rapidly than he could race this climb, and in truth, in the very moment he thought it, the ladder began to shake with atevi presence. All light went out in one section. A small, intense light stabbed upward in the next second, a hand torch of some sort, and he knew who was on the ladder and who had shut the door as clearly as if he could see them both.

He climbed at breakneck pace, heedless of the pain of cold metal on his hands. He reached the next level, sweating in the icy dark, and feverishly opened that next access door at the risk of frostbite. Light and warmth met him, heat like a wall, air that didn’t burn, but that flowed like syrup into the lungs. He couldn’t get enough of it.