Precursor

“Do you know where he is?” Bren asked in the same language.

“I might” Jase said.

Trouble, Bren thought. He wasn’t willing to have a confrontation over Ramirez, not until he’d gotten essential perso

But he reached out and patted Jase’s arm, gripped it with some consideration of the bruises. “We just appropriated the next rooms down the row. The station can’t cut power to them except locally, without switching off the entire region, and we’ve got the switch. Everyone will have beds, room, heat, air, every comfort. No shortage of food. We packed the kitchen sink.”

“Don’t make me laugh. God, don’t make me laugh.”

“You’re safe.”

“I’m glad to have my mother out of their reach. You don’t know all she did. Helped us with food, with ru

“And still didn’t dare?”

“Didn’t dare. Because of them. Because of what Yolanda and I are. That stops them. But not now.”

“Stopped them long enough,” he said. “Made them turn you over to us.”

“Flinging us onto a planet.”

“How many can they fling down there? Is anybody else in danger of their lives?”

“I hope not. I hope not. Their story started to be that I killed Ramirez. That didn’t work. Then that Ramirez had a mental breakdown. Shot himself. No one believes that, but they have to pretend to. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Yes, I do. I’m Mospheiran, remember? Denying what’s in front of one’s eyes is a social skill. I know that transaction very well.”

“You have to live with them, that’s all. They can run the ship. But they need the techs, techs need the crew… it’s just the way it is. They’re going to try to work with the rest. And the rest will give in. Nobody but me and Yolanda wants to leave the ship. My mother… she’d rather die, but she’ll go with me. You have to understand. She’s scared. I can live down there. I wouldn’t mind living down there for the rest of my life. But this is so hard on her.”

Jase was working himself into an emotional state. It resonated, with a man with a mother bent on indirect self-destruction, and no damned messages but, You should write to her…

“We’ll get her back up here,” he promised Jase. “We’ll get this patched up. Tell her that. Tell her to give it some time, and we’ll treat her like a princess; we’ll get her back up here if we have to make her a court emissary.”

“I appreciate that,” Jase said shakily.

“Listen. Hear me in Ragi.” Meaning, with the associational web in place. “If we have no choice but this set of captains, that’s what we’ll deal with. If things settle, they may take you back.”

“I won’t go,” Jase said. “ Iwon’t go down there. I won’t take Tamun’s orders, no way in hell…”

“We do what we have to do in the short term to get results in the long term.”

“Short term, Ramirez will die. Bren, I can’t leave. Send herdown, but I can’t leave him here. They’ll find him and they’ll kill him. Get him some helpup here.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Bren said. “We’re not abandoning this post. We’re not giving up. Just get some rest.”

“The hell. Don’t patronize me.” Jase had had a painkiller, a Mospheiran brand. He was ru

“We’ll talk,” Bren said in that tone that meant, definitively, later. He and Jase had had their rounds in the last three years; they had their codes, to keep from arguments. He saw Jase’s eyelids sink, flick up, sink again. The strength that had kept him on his feet to get here was ebbing low at the moment.

“Crew won’t listen to you. To him, yes. To me. To my mother. Tamun wants to do this quietly. Won’t work.”

Awareness went out, bit by bit.

“Get some sleep,” Bren said, elicited one more twitch of the eyelids, and that was all. That last had been the drugged, trusting, truth.

And Jase listened to him. Jase still worked with him. The captains had attempted to avoid a shoal they saw in their own affairs, and had handed him a weapon, one he had no compunction about using, as Jase had none about being used.

Jase was a weapon the value of which they might not yet appreciate. Wouldn’t dare… Jase had said, because of what Yolanda and I are… Mystique: an indefinable, irreplaceable commodity.

And somewhere, either aboard ship or lost to that alien encounter, Jase had said there were eight others of Taylor’s Children. Yolanda was one. He wondered if the other six held similar loyal feelings toward their father-by-authority, and whether or not Jase could contact them.

And it was a question why Jase had never, in three years, mentioned the whereabouts of those quasi-brothers and sisters, and slid aside from questions.

He and Jase had atevi owing man’chi to them; he had led his people into this volatile situation, and he had to use all his assets.

The women were an asset. A reassurance. The captains couldn’t rule them… and wanted them off the station, out of mind, out of view, in a situation in which the captains could absolutely govern and censor the messages that reached a crew that didn’t want to remember what led to familial violence.

So the captains thought.

If they had to print messages on candy wrappers for the next decade, they were going to keep the issue alive. They could push the matter back intothe captains’ laps, eventually, and maybe not have even much of a fight about it.

Give or take Ramirez, whose principal support he still bet was Ogun.

He hadn’t given up. But all his assets seemed future ones, long-term ones. And his heaviest bet was that there wouldn’t be an accident that took them all out.

“We are very vulnerable,” he said to his security, “to accidents, if not of air pressure, still, of dark or cold and scarcity of water, concentrated as we are in this section. One hopes that no such thing would happen but if they could somehow silence us all at once, the disposition of all the crew would be to pretend ignorance. The captains’ skill is irreplaceable, and they believe they may have lost one captain. The fear of losing the captains is the most important fear they have.”

“We believe,” Banichi said, “that we can operate any lock and open any corridor. The whole station seems of one style of operation.”

“I have no doubt of you,” he said, “Nadiin-ji. Can we hold what we have? Should I pull in nand’ Gin? Or have my ambitions even this far been excessive?”

“We can hold these rooms,” Banichi said without a doubt. “And we can move to others, despite their resistance, at any hour.”

It was remarkably reassuring to hear that.

There was, damn it all, stillno word from Tabini.

It was possible that Tabini had not gotten his messages since the ones Kandana carried, and that that was the reason for the silence.

Bren resent all his prior messages to Tabini in a single gulp.

He did have one from his mother, short and to the point:

Please write. I’m worried. This is no time for temper.

Shehadn’t gotten his letters. He resent immediately, resent all his mail to everyone, and restrained the urge to dent the panel.

“Cl. Voice contact with Mogari-nai.”

“ I’ll try, sir.” In a moment more he had it, and had, in Ragi, from the Messengers’ Guild, confirmation that there had been no messages coming in, that the aiji had given orders to transmit no ordinary business with the station, either.

“Until one heard from you, nandi.”

“You’ve now heard from me,” he said. “Give my apologies to the aiji. Ramirez has met with adversity. They have appointed a new captain, Dresh, related to Tamun. Relay that information immediately.”