Defender

“Be assured I’m not Guild,” Jase said, flatly, in ship language. “As for Guild being on the ship… if it didn’t all transfer to the station at Reunion, if there’s any vestige of it left on the ship, the majority of us aren’t aware of it being here. I think Ramirez intended, by creating Yolanda and me—especially in appointing me where I am—that we break with the past. The whole ship has no illusions what the Guild did. We know the responsibility it bears for the way it dealt with the colonists. Guild leadership dealt badly with crew, for that matter. And for us, for us, in terms of our making our own decisions, the Guild’s become just a name on a remote record. A thing captains might still belong to as a matter of course and never think about or reference when we’re away from the leadership. What the crew wants right now is an answer why we went off and left people who probably didn’t have any choice about being left under Guild authority. In that sense, they don’t like or trust the Guild any more than you do.”

“Second question.” Bren interrupted his typing. “What happened out there at Reunion, Jase-nandi, and was it the Guild’s fault?”

“The official story,” Jase began—that story was in the reports out for years: probably even Paulson and Gi

“Two years,” Bren said.

“Travel time,” Jase said. “Round trip.”

Bren typed, in Ragi.

“One sees a difficult situation,” Geigi said. “And a dearth of answers. Jase-ji.”

“Nandi.”

“What of dangers to this station?” Geigi asked. “Is it only against eventualities that Ramirez-aiji wished the ship refueled, or does he foresee these aliens coming here?”

“I don’t know,” Jase said. “I truly don’t know, nandi. I don’tsee that our interests have diverged that far. The crew does feel obliged to you and to this place. This has become—it’s become our port. And that’s a matter of man’chi. But at the same time, there are so many unanswered questions, questions they should have known. If Ramirez-aiji left instructions beyond what he told me, those records aren’t within my authority to access. Ogunsucceeds to Senior Captain. Heknows, if anyone does. And he hasn’t told me. But the gist of it is this—Captain Ramirez did want to go back. He didn’twant to leave those people behind in the first place, but he didn’t know what he’d find here. And when he got here, of course he didn’t have the resources behind him that we have now. That’schanged. Ask the whole planet to trust him, ask you to work so hard fueling the ship—to send it back to the other station in return for some unprovable promise given here—I think he saw from the start that that wasn’t going to work. You had to have something of advantage in the exchange. And we had to have something for ourselves.”

Among the human faces at the end of the conference room, Jenrette, and Colby, who had been with Ramirez for decades, who might have been with him that long. There was wisdom in shifting the oldest staff to the newest captain on the council. There was, in Jase’s whole bearing at the moment, the burden of knowledge Jase might not have had an hour ago.

“The Guild, when it was in power here, wanted to establish this station to support the ship,” Jase said. “And when the station rebelled, it wanted to set up elsewhere, at Maudette. When the rebellion became louder and more widespread among the colonists, the Guild wanted to go farther out, to a place they’d spotted only by instrument. That didn’t work out. But there was a second choice. And there they stopped to mine and build, nandi. They called their station Reunion. Reunionof all humankind was what they meant. Reunionunder one rule.”

“Well, that’snot going to happen,” Paulson said, the first word from either of the Mospheirans in what was a deeply troubling—but not damned secret—admission. Mospheirans knew. Mospheirans had broken with the ship over that one point.

“As I said—we don’t support it, either, sir,” Jase said. “The Guild meant to build and multiply until they’d far outgrown anything that might happen here—and I suppose at the start they hoped to come back and simply absorb all the building and resource that might have developed at this planet, and have their way. They always wanted to have numerous stations, numerous colonies.”

“And they would wish to take the mainland for humans without struggle,” Geigi observed.

“They’re not interested in planets, as such, nandi. They don’t regard planets as important to them. They’ve long dismissed any attachment to any world except as a convenient way to aim and anchor their ship. The resources of a planet, if they can be gotten into space, they’re quite keen to have—but only on their terms. Always on their terms.”

“They believed they could get all they want elsewhere,” Paulson said, “if they had population enough to risk in the mining. But we threatened their authority, and rather than see our ideas create a general disaffection, they left.”

“And for this we build a ship?” Geigi asked, when that came into translation.

Jase looked as if he had something caught in his throat. “Ramirez-aiji wanted that ship built. And one also believes, nandi, that the aiji in Shejidan has been aware of the situation at Reunion and that he has other plans for that ship, himself. The aiji in Shejidan— andthe President of Mospheira.”

Geigi sat back, confounded, Bren was sure, both by the information, and that Jase laid it on the table.

Tabini knew. Tabini knew.

“And what,” Bren asked quite calmly, remarkably calmly, “what do the other captains think?”

“Ramirez knew that the aiji had plans. I think Ogun and Sabin do… but I don’t think they care that he takes the first other ship, nandiin-ji. I’ve said I don’t think they take Guild orders any longer, but I couldn’t absolutely swear to that.”

“And you don’tswear to it.”

“I said I don’t take Guild orders, nor ever will. I wasn’t bornto take Guild orders.”