Defender

But Tabini had just turned over the management of his heir to Ilisidi. Then Ramirez died—and Tabini couldn’t admit himself surprised or disarrayed, not even for a death. He’d already turned Cajeiri over to Ilisidi—and had to stand by that, or not send Ilisidi, who was the only choice that wouldn’t create dangerous stress in the Association. Geigi would have been next most logical—but Geigi was western, and that was controversial.

So from the aiji’s point of view, Ramirez had needed to stay alive.

Ramirez, who hadn’t briefed Jase, which he’d clearly wanted to do, and did rashly at the last. The captains hadn’t made provision for a successor, or for a full complement of four captains, acting or permanent, for the ship in operation. So as a group, the captains hadn’t known. Onecaptain might have acted to remove Ramirez, and Sabin would have been his immediate suspicion, but he saw no advantage she gained.

And the three day departure? He didn’t know how long it took to prep a fueled ship for a mission from scratch. He did know that the ship never had been powered down, that it ran, continually, being a residency and training site for its crew, performing tests and operations the station couldn’t provide—so in that sense it had never shut down. Maintenance was always going on. Galleys were active. Provisions were always going aboard, to what level of preparedness they had never questioned. The ship’s machinery shops and production facilities, though micro-g, were warm, powered, and in constant use, from the first days, when Phoenix’smanufacturing facilities had been the sole source of parts and pieces for station repair. They still were turning out a good portion of station foodstuffs, most of the extruded beams—there was very little difference, in that regard, from crew engaged in station manufacture and those on shipboard production, except that some operations went better in micro-g and some went better in the station, where things naturally or u

So maybe the ship-folk never had bet their lives wholly on the station or on the planet below.

Maybe the ship had alwaysbeen three days from undocking and leaving, give or take the fuel to go anywhere in particular after undocking. He hadn’t asked, and Jase hadn’t told him what—to Jase—might be an underlying fact of life.

And now, in the paidhi’s longterm ignorance of shipboard realities, Phoenixcould just break away and go on a moment’s notice. Three days might be the captains’ notion of a leisurely departure. And the whole affair that had untidy strings and suspicious tags dangling off it—might not be the strings and tags of conspiracy, but rather of hastily revised plans, plans that had had to be changed in frantic haste… because the whole thing had been shoved into motion prematurely by Ramirez’s failing health.

Well, hecouldn’t solve it. His staff didn’t know the answer. As to whether Ramirez had explained the situation fully to Tabini, the aiji-dowager never gave up a secret, either, until she could get good exchange from it.

The simple fact was that they were going, and the dowager was going, and he was going, a headlong slide toward a cliff—beyond which he had insufficient information even to imagine his future.

And that meant he had to set his own private life in suspension; and it wasn’t tidy. It never had been tidy, or convenient, or well-packaged; and now was absolutely the worst time. He didn’t want to call the hospital and tell his mother— Oh, by the way, I’m leaving the solar system for a couple of years. Good luck. Regards to Toby…

He could send to Toby. He needed to. But he didn’t know what to say: Sorry you’ve been in the position you’re in and sorry I can’t help, but I’ve been kidnapped…

That was close to the truth, as happened, and he imagined Toby would be terribly sorry he’d hung up once he knew. Toby would be all sympathy for his brother, and he hadn’t any expectation the spat they’d had was a lasting one—well, bitter because it touched on very sore topics—but Toby wouldn’t think twice on his own misfortunes once that letter reached him.

But it wasn’t a letter he wanted to write cold, either. He wanted to say the right thing, which he hadn’t managed to do in the last few letters, or phone calls.

So what was there to do, then, while his staff packed and put together a suitable supper?

He answered memos from various departments, some incredibly mundane, one with a proposal for a new franchise for paper products, with a clever internal recycling option. On an ordinary day he might have been intrigued with it and spent energy chasing down advisors.

Today, he was sure the department in question had no remote idea what was on his desk… and he didn’t care if paper recycled or piled up in masses.

He couldn’t call Paulson or Kroger with what he knew, not until there was an official a

He placed a call to Jase, on a small afterthought, wishing Jase would join him for supper, and met, not uncommonly, a wall at C1: “ Captain Graham has your calls at top priority.”

Well, not too surprising, considering: Jase wasn’t in a particularly festive mood and Jase had his hands full—besides which Jase had, at least marginally, family of his own to consider. Becky Graham was Jase’s mother—and Becky’s quarters might be where Jase had gone for an hour or two.

He hoped so. He hoped Jase wasn’t up to his ears in meetings with never yet time to stop and realize he had lost the one father he knew—the one parent, in that sense. Jase was hardly more emotionally related to Becky than he was to the long-dead hero who’d contributed the sperm—but he and Becky had each other in common, little as they ordinarily acknowledged the bond. Jase was on duty, asleep, or talking to Becky—and least of all wanting to have to justify decisions or give explanations of Ramirez’s actions to an old friend with problems of his own. Now that he thought it through, if Jase was on overload, and likely he was, it was hardly kind to add one more pressure—which was all it would be. He couldn’t move a ship’s captain back into the atevi domain where they could talk at will, as they’d used to; where staff could take care of him. He supposed Kaplan and Polano and now Jenrette did take care of Jase, in a subordinate sort of way, but when he considered Jase’s emotional resources outside that, it came down to Ramirez, Ramirez, Ramirez.

No wide attachments among the crew. No close friends among the crew except Yolanda Mercheson, who’d grown up into a partner and now, cutting through every other fact, an ex-lover. It had been a bad mistake, that liaison. It had soured a relationship and laid bare realities of their familial situation that just weren’t helpful.

And Yolanda being jealous and touchy of her professional prerogatives—justifiably jealous and touchy, since Ramirez had always favored Jase over her—man to young man. That had been hard enough; and ex-lover status seemed to put the coup de grace on the friendship. Ramirez had not only created two human beings, he’d monopolized their childhood, limited their associations, expected Jase to work miracles by his mere existence… and dropped him and Yolanda separately onto an alien world to learn to fit in. Then he yanked them off it the moment they succeeded, messed up their interpersonal relations by favoritism, having all his paternal notions fixed on Jase and being blind to Yolanda.

Then after advising Tabini he was having sudden, crisis-level health problems, he dropped dead, leaving his crew in a commotion, Jase and Yolanda bitterly wounded and generally messed up, and his allies pressed to act on a program he’d leaked to staff while he was dying. Jase was stuck in a rank he didn’t want, in a job he didn’t want. Yolanda had the job Jase did want. Not to mention Yolanda had wanted importance with the crew and never had had an emotional bond to her planetary responsibilities.