Defender

To the news services, one might as well say, and from there straight to the rumor mill. Of all times C1 had been the choke-point, inconveniencing the free flow of information, it failed them now.

“ I will bring that message, nandi, as fast as I can, understanding its importance. Please remain available.”

“I shall,” he said. “Thank you, Eidi-ji.”

The contact winked out, but that was all right. The message would go as faithfully and as fast as the man nearest Tabini could bring it to him. Eidi understood the importance. He had no doubt on that score.

And now the adrenaline more or less ebbed out of him in disappointment and frustration, knowing he could not speak to Tabini and could not get an immediate resolution out of the situation. Things weren’t going to be simple, not when the changes were this high up the decision-making apparatus.

A week ago, before Tabini’s phone call, the whole world had been ru

In the small nook of his mind he reserved for private business, he did earnestly wish Toby would answer his messages and take at least one crisis off the docket. He thought perhaps if their mother was in hospital Toby might be there, and not in touch… though Toby was usually better than that, and usually checked periodically through the day, if he’d put a call in…

Well, now things were worse on that front. He couldn’t call Toby now, not in the middle of this goings-on. Every call he made to the island was going to be suspect as political in nature. He couldn’t do anythingquietly any longer.

But Toby must surely realize that the moment the news broke. Toby would learn what was going on and then figure out that it was all on him to make contact—that it had to be.

“Nand’ Gin is calling,” Tano said then, a seat removed from him at the console. “She wishes to speak to you, nandi. Will you?”

Gi

“ Bren, I’m getting disturbing rumors. Are you hearing any?”

“Ramirez has died. Unfortunately that’s no rumor.”

“ Heard that. But that’s not the rumor I’m talking about.”

Did he ask her to spill it, and risk the security of the communication?

But if it was a rumor, it was evidently loose, and a little late for secrecy.

“Something you can say here, Gin?”

“ Talk in the halls. No secrecy here.” Time for a breath. A big one. “ Talk says the lost station’s not destroyed, Bren. That it’s stillcrewed. That the captains knew it all along.”

That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. His heart stopped a beat.

No.

His deepest instinct said he and Gi

“ I will,” Gi

“Same,” he said to her, and punched out as he swung around in his chair to face an apprehensive staff. “Tano, get Jase on com. Use the beeper.” Jase carried a pocket beeper they had very rarely used… granted Jase had it on him at the moment. If he was in a security lock-down, they might have objected to the atevi beeper. “Send him a code one.”

See me. Emergency.

“Yes,” Tano said, and punched buttons. “Done, nandi.”

“Workers in Gin-nadi’s hearing,” he said then, informing his security staff, who might not have followed all that transaction in Mosphei. “Workers are carrying a rumor that the ship didn’t find the remote station destroyed, as they reported, and that crew remained alive aboard it. That this was something the captains knew.”

“Then the source is reputed to be the captains?” Tano asked.

“It would apparently go that high—if it’s true at all.” Everything they had done here to secure their mutual future depended on the ship’s assurances that the aliens that had attacked and destroyed the remote space station couldn’t possibly have gained information from the ruin—that the destruction there was complete, and that no data on the location of their own station could have gotten to the aliens.

And if that weren’t entirely true—if the conflict out there was still going on—

Banichi appeared in the doorway. “Were workers or crew the source of the rumor?” Banichi, with his earpiece evidently attuned to proceedings in the security station, was completely briefed, and had the salient question.

“I don’t know,” Bren said. “But I want to know. Jago’s out in that section. Is she aware?”

“Now, yes,” Banichi said.

There was an increasingly queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach.

Tabini unavailable, Ramirez dead, the newly-arranged captains off to their private councils, and now rumor cast doubt on all their agreements— allthe ship’s many promises and protestations, all oaths, all reassurances—

This was very, very bad news. And it wouldn’t raise trust, among the Mospheiran workers.

“We’d better get an official answer for this one, fast. Keep trying to get Jase. Contact C1 as well as the beeper—” C1 being Phoenix-com. “Put me through as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” Tano said.

“If it’s only a rumor,” he said to his staff, “it’s still serious. If it isn’t—we’ve been lied to. But we don’t assume that as first choice. It may be more complicated than that.”

Meanwhile Tano pushed buttons and tried to find Jase.

“C1 doesn’t respond,” Tano said—and thatwas more than troublesome. “I believe a recorded message is saying all communications are routed through station central until further notice.”

Not good, not good at all. Bad timing, if nothing else.

“Use the operations emergency cha

“The ship is fueled, Bren-ji,” Banichi pointed out.

Phoenix, once all but helpless, was not, at the moment.

“Gini-ji. Get Paulson.”

“Yes, nandi.” Algini moved, then signaled him the call was through.

“Hello? Paulson?”

“ Mr. Cameron?”

“Paulson.” The relief was a cold bath. “Rumor’s ru

“ You’ve heard the rumor.”

“What have you heard?”

“ ThatPhoenix lied to us.”

That wasn’t the construction he’d like to put on it. But that was certainly a Mospheiran gut-reaction—a mild one, considering the history of lies the ship had told the colony from the begi

“We don’t know all of it. We don’t even know a legitimate source, unless you’ve got better information than we do. As far as we know, it’s just loose talk that’s gotten started.”