Defender

Jase didn’t deny it.

“So he put her in an untenable position,” Bren said, “made her privy to his deception of both of us. And she couldn’t share a bed with you or a pot of tea in my household, not then nor after he died. No, she’s not the most agreeable. She detested the planet. But now she feels safest not in the society she knows from birth, but inside my household, watched over by my staff—being paidhi-aiji and dealing with Tabini. This isn’t the course either of us would have predicted for her. But she hasn’t beenwhere either of us thought she was, nadi. She’s been in a very frightening territory, while you and I were living comfortably, building the future we thought was relatively safe. She knew. I doubt she slept well, these last few years.”

“The hell! She could have come to me.”

“Could she? And what would Ramirez have done, nadi? And what might happen with Tabini?”

Tabini had to give anyone pause. And Jase paused.

“His dying grieved you,” Bren said, “and set her adrift, nadi. Now I hope she’s found a harbor a little more calm than where she’s lived. But while we’ve been comfortable these last years, she’s had years to think, and to assemble the pieces Ramirez necessarily gave her. As translators, we’re not quite machines, are we? We do bring in bits and pieces of our own knowledge. And there she sat, a member of the crew, hearing all this about the contact, knowing who went, knowing now that there wasa secret, knowing it was lurking at levels we didn’t deal with—what was she to do? You’dbeen taken into a captaincy she might have expected for herself. Shewas passed over, and still sat there, in Ramirez’s company, a repository of his official secrets—and whydidn’t he appoint her to the office?”

“I’ve no idea. I wish to hell he had.”

“But she was with him, nadi, day and night; she was subject to his calls—she had all those skills. Was he going to appoint a new captain who’d have full knowledge what was going on? Who had close ties to me, and who might gain access codes? A new ship-aiji who’d be with him so often she’d unbalance the relationship with other officers? She livedin his office. Wasn’t that the point of your own jealousy? And what if that had played out among the other ship-aijiin?”

Jase had let go his handhold, so still he stayed in place, adrift. The pain and anger that had been part of his dealings with Yolanda seemed to have gone elsewhere, redirected, reflected.

“Maybe it was,” Jase said. “Maybe a lot of things were poisoned in the process, nadi.”

“Then Ramirez died and left you Jenrette… one assumes to advise you, where matters come up.”

Anger gave way to intense worry.

“He was aboard the station,” Bren said. “All the others that went aboard the station out there, I suppose, were Ramirez’s men. What bothers me—all of them just happened to die in the Tamun affair. All but Jenrette.”

“Defending Ramirez,” Jase said.

“Like Yolanda, I’ll tell you, I’m begi

“I can’t believe there was anything more in it than Tamun’s ambition.”

“He was already at highest rank,” Bren protested. “What more was there for ambition to go for?”

“Control. Authority. Real authority.”

“And what could give it to him, better than information? Jase, Jase, I’d like you to find out what Jenrette knows. I’d like you to get a copy of that tape, if you can do it, before we leave dock. Before we commit any further to this mission.”

“I can’t do that,” Jase said.

“You can, nadi. Just ask him.”

“No. You don’t understand. It’s not possible. Jenrette’s transferred to Sabin.”

“When did thathappen?”

“When we made out the staff assignments. When we divided the crew, and said who was going and staying. I wanted Kaplan with me, on my staff—I trust Kaplan. I wanted to keep him and Pressman and Polano as my aides, and most of all, I didn’t want to leave them behind on the station, where Ogun’s going to appoint a fourth captain, which was the regulation way things work. That’s where they were supposed to go: they weren’t going to be aboard, the way Ogun had drawn things up. But Jenrette and I—I don’t say we don’t get along, but everything I do, it’s obvious in his opinion whether it’s what Ramirez would do, or the way Ramirez did things: he second-guesses me at every turn, I’m not easy with him, and it’s not the best situation, nadi. When I want something done, just done, cheerfully, I ask Kaplan, but I never was going to push Jenrette out. I respect his advice. So I said why didn’t Ogun and Sabin just increase their staffs, which they could use, and I’d have Jenrette and his team andKaplan and his. That’s when it blew up. Sabin said I’d insulted Jenrette, which I was trying hard not to do. So with Sabin’s famous tact, that fairly well put the perso

God.

“And in the upshot of things, I exploded, I got my way and I kept Kaplan, and Ogun and Sabin increased staff by three, but by then there were hurt feelings, and Sabin said she wanted Jenrette’s experience, if I didn’t value it. I said I did want it, and it wasn’t like that and I wanted him to stay; but Sabin said if she was going to increase staff, she was senior on the ship and she got the pick of staff on the ship. She wanted him, and insisted he transfer, and there it was.”

Disaster. And worse. “When was this?”

“About six hours ago.”

Not good news at all. He shot Jago a look and had one back.

Appalling news, considering that Jenrette’s name had become an issue inside the residency, and Yolanda had just dropped out of Ogun’s reach, not by Ogun’s orders. And could a bug possibly get past Algini’s countermeasures? Could distant listening devices have been hearing, if nothing else, the proper names at issue?

Were they doing that now?

“Coincidences do happen,” Bren said. “Sometimes they really do happen, and merging staffs is always a mess. I can’t see how the ship could get a bug past our surveillance. But this is worrisome, besides inconvenient.”

“A breach could happen, nadiin-ji,” Jago said quietly. “In our craft, once a countermeasure exists, one i

Constant warning. Constant caution. On truly sensitive matters, they talked on the move, in the corridors: harder to pick up. Inside the apartment, they talked behind an electronic screen, in the security station, in a very small safe perimeter.

Hadn’t they warned him? And he’d talked to Yolanda in the study.

“I want that tape,” Bren said.

“You want universal peace, too, nadi, but I don’t know I can deliver it.”

“They haveuniversal peace, and they can lose the aiji’s cooperation, and ours, and the island’s, none of which will help them at all in whatever they’re up to.”

“We don’t know that they care. If they’re overhearing us, and I don’t think it’s happening, but I don’t know everything—they could be forewarned, even now.”

“I’m saying if we’re going to trust Sabin enough to bring members of the aiji’s family into it, we’re going to have to trust Sabin.” He said that sentence in ship-speak, in case. And lapsed right back into Ragi. “And right now and until we know more, we won’t drink a cup she pours. The tape.”

“It won’t be a tape,” Jase said. “That’s an expression.”

“How does it exist?”

“Deep in log archives.”

“Can you reach it? Can you get access?”

“I’m not senior. Ogun can,” Jase added. “We could ask him. We could outright ask him.”

“And, as you say, if we ask him, it could vanish in a moment. Permanently. And Sabin’s senior on the ship. I’ll take for granted she has the codes, nadi.”