Defender

If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.

“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”

“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”

Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.

“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”

If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.

That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.

“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”

“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”

“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”

“One can carry a message,” Jago said.

“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let himsuggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”

“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.

“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”

“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.

“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To directtheir response.”

“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.

“Do youthink there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.

“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.

Something, at least, had changed.

There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who mighthave a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.

Touchy enough, his relationship with the third paidhi—touchy as Jase’s, who was her ex-lover, and who hadn’t gotten along with her.

Or maybe secrets had driven the wedge.

And secrets had been going on for years.

“I’ll try phoning Jase,” he said to Jago, and got up and did that.

“ Mr, Cameron,” C1 said. “ Hold on. You’re on priority to Captain Graham.”

Well, thatwas improved.

“ Bren?” A moment later.

“Jase, we’ve got a shuttle inbound. Anyone notice?”

A small pause.

“ If you’ve called to say so,” Jase said, being quick, “ I take it there’s some concern.”

Chapter 10

Time enough to prepare. Time enough to advise allies about a conjecture of a conjecture.

Time enough to open the aiji-dowager’s former residency, set a vase with hothouse flowers on the foyer table, and arrange a welcome with a small flourish.

For once, Bren said to himself, he had gotten the edge on Tabini.

At least he hadn’t been caught with the ship just pulled out and that armed starship facing the shuttle with a disproportional balance of power. The crew had voted. The foregone conclusion was concluded. The ship would move.

But Jase had presented a possible intervening fact—and Ogun, quite unexpectedly, had given a series of small preparatory orders, maintenance checks, numerous of them. And inventory of ship’s stores. Dared one suspect cooperation?

The action of an alliance—in which Ogun might be better informed than any of them?

Ilisidi, if it was the dowager en route, had been figured out, anticipated, and factored in with astonishingly little fuss, considering all that was at stake—Ilisidi, if it was she, having a considerable lot of credit with the ship’s crew as well as the station.

No publicity yet. The shuttle wasn’t talking about passengers and the ship, busy with its mysterious inventory, hadn’t inquired.

Not even certain, while Bren anxiously fidgeted away the final minutes, that it wasn’t simply flour and electronics.

But they were ready when the call came that the freight shuttle would use bay 1, which was perso

Time to put coats on, gloves in the pockets this time, servants from Geigi’s household and his to give a final touch to the third residency.

Bay 1 was ma

And they had an entire delegation—himself, lord Geigi, and Jase, with their respective security riding up in the lift, while station operations went through the customs routine, as if there might be simple workers to process.

Bren thought to the contrary.

Definitely political. Incredibly expensive in terms of fuel and wear on the equipment and the cargo the shuttle oughtto have been carrying, on its regular schedule… but the aiji in Shejidan used what he had to use, and had with increasing certainty gotten his messages.

They waited in the warm territory of the third deck while the docking approach was in progress. Jase met them there, with his own escort, and brought communications tied to the ship.

“Ogun certainly thinks it’s her,” Jase informed them. “Whether he’s had a communication or not, I don’t know, but there’s every indication there’s a passenger.”

They took the lift up into the cold and zero gravity of the core, exited into that vast dock where light never seemed enough.

There they floated, hovering near the residual warmth of the lift shaft. Gloved fingers made patterns in the frost on the handgrips.

The doors down in Bay 3 were capable of receiving anything the freight shuttle could hand them—objects the size of a railway car, easily, and the big cradles were capable of receiving, maneuvering, offloading contents to various sorting areas.

As it was, if they needed more confirmation, workers had rigged the hand-lines for perso

And they waited. Freezing.

Bren personally tried not to look up, or down, or whatever it was. For the sake of his stomach, he mostly stared at the railing near them and the yellow safety-ropes the workers deployed between them and the shuttle hatch. Jase cheerfully drifted slightly sideways to him, Kaplan and Polano and Colby loosely maintaining position along with him: lifelong spacers, confident of the lines.

“High-ranking,” Jase said. “Definitely. There’s been an advisement to customs for a wave-through. You’re right, Bren. I think you’re entirely right. The perso

Jase moved out along the safety line. Bren followed gingerly, with Jago and Banichi, and likewise Geigi and his company.

They were most of the way there when the shuttle’s perso