Explorer

But they offered this image, their version of history. They offered it, evidently passionate about it after some fashion, and they weren’t shooting. For at least six years they’d sat out here.

Enigma. Passionate in their obstinacy. Watching.

“Banichi. Jago.” He turned to his bodyguards, to impassive atevi duty-faces. “Advise us, nadiin-ji. What are these individuals saying?”

“They say,” Banichi answered, “that they have approached in minimal force and have been attacked, nandi.”

“Why have they waited?”

“To find out what ships come and go here,” Jago said. “To listen. To learn their enemy and his purpose.”

“What would you answer them, nadiin? What would you do?”

“ We are not paidhiin,” Jago murmured, “nandi. Our Guild has only certain answers.”

“On your own. What would you advise a lord in your protection?”

“We would not advise attacking them,” Banichi said solemnly. “One would advise making a further gesture.”

The Assassins’ Guild not only delivered redress, among atevi. It delivered justice. It made cold, clear judgements. And Banichi, in his sense of truth and right, had judged this one, that attack against an enigma was folly.

“Captain. Answer: our ship. Seated human figure.” Communicating non-aggression, he hoped. “Head bowed.”

The image needed building. C2 wasn’t up to the figure. C3 involved herself, built a seated figure in profile. C2 composed it with the ship. Sent. All in a matter of moments.

Bren folded his arms and waited, hoping to God it had been the right move, the right expression. Hoping it hadn’t looked like surrender. “Send again. Our ship going in. Evacuation. Destruction of the station. Our departure.” Restatement. We intend to do a job and leave with all humans .

Which might not matter to an alien fact-finding mission that had been waiting out here, aggrieved and looking for redress in a situation that had started, perhaps, with Ramirez’s intrusion into places he shouldn’t have been and that had got ten far worse in the station’s reception of what might have been an inquiry. It wasn’t a robot over there. And it hadn’t given up. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t communicated.

Maybe ten years wasn’t that much to this species. Maybe they were just stubborn. Maybe they’d set up shop and, as station thought, occasionally contacted some higher authority outside station’s view.

And if this situation had gotten to a second round six years ago—what had been the truth behind the initial damage to the station?

A reply started coming in. Echo of their own last transmission. But the ending differed. In this version, the human ship took aboard not their string of human figures—but a notably stocky horizontal form, a body.

“They want him back,” Jase said in a low voice.

The new ending: the human ship voyaged from the station back to the alien craft. Sent over the body.

Rites for the dead?

A determination to get their own back?

If the station had found the craft was occupied—he could see it—they’d have taken the body for study. They’d have tried to learn from every piece and fragment. There might not be a body in any reasonable condition. Maybe the aliens suspected that to be the case. And notably, the sequence didn’t end, as theirs had, with them collecting the station occupants and leaving.

It ended with them parked opposite that ship.

He didn’t like that.

“Refinement,” he said. “Capture their sequence. Repeat it and splice on our approach to the station, boarding passengers, destroying station, leaving.” We’ll get back your dead. Let us do our job, destroy this outpost, and go .

Jase gave that order. Sabin simply held her position, arms folded, face grim.

He waited. They all waited.

Image came in. Repeat of the former sequence: give us our dead . No mention of evacuation and departure.

“Do we have a problem, Mr. Cameron?”

That, from Sabin. And, yes, he’d say they potentially had a problem.

“We well may. They aren’t getting beyond that demand. Give us our dead . Nothing beyond that. They won’t negotiate until we do that. I think it’s pretty clear.”

“Hope the station’s got fuel for us,” Sabin muttered between her teeth. “Agree. Tell them we’ll do it. What we’ll really do is go in, get our business done, see what the situation is, and prepare to run for it. If we have fuel. If we don’t, we can’t board the station population. Then we see about negotiating our way out of this.”

An unthinkable dilemma, then. Destroy the station—destroy the Rosetta Stone. But that did no good if they couldn’t get themselves out. If they couldn’t avoid leading a vengeful alien presence back to the atevi planet…

“No matter what we do, we’re going to have to negotiate this, run or stay, captain. They can track us. Wipe out the Archive, yes, but that’s not all that’s at risk. Everything back at Alpha is at risk.” A terrible thought came to him, that in some measure, Phoenix itself could survive, alone, fugitive that it might be. And Sabin was the ship’s protector, nothing less, nothing closer to her bedrock loyalties. “They’re talking, captain. We can solve this. But we’ve got a hellacious puzzle here. Station was hit ten years ago. If that’s the truth. We don’t even know for sure that this ship represents the ones that did it. We do know this ship’s been involved for six years. That they came here and sent in a probe. And station blew it up.”

“Four years making up their minds sounds like a committee decision to me.”

“It may, captain. It well may. It may be a hundred planets making up their minds for all we know, and do we want to take that on?” He wanted to undermine any notion of survival on their own. And took his chance. “Can we say where in this whole universe is safe to run to, if we make a mistake here? We start by cooperating with them, far as seems reasonable.”

Sabin gave him that patented stare, straight in the eyes. And he gave his own back.

“And if you’re wrong, Mr. Cameron? What you propose means approaching them after they’ve got what they want.”

“Can we defend, if they launch an attack while we’re at the station?”

Lengthy stare. “Point of fact, no. We’ll be as vulnerable as the station.”

“Then I’m right, captain. Last thing we ought to do is run without satisfying these people.”

“People,” Sabin scoffed. While Banichi and Jago stood at his shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am. Whatever shape they come in. Whatever their faces look like. The outline’s of a person.”

“And the minds, Mr. Cameron?”

“There’s thought. There’s insistence. There’s forbearance. There’s regard for their dead. There’s an inclination to communicate. That’s all a foundation.”

“As I recall, you and the atevi lived side by side for quite a while before you went at each others’ throats. The War of the Landing, you call it.”

“We learn. We come here, my bodyguard and I, the dowager and Gin and I, with all that experience—at your service, captain.”

“What, then, Mr. Cameron?”

“Is station going to cooperate with us?”

“I’m not a prophet.”

“Station hasn’t sent us anything else.”

“Not another word,” Jase said.

“C1,” Sabin said. “Replay the sequence as Mr. Cameron suggests.”

“Yes, ma’am,” C1 said, and it went out.

Lengthy wait then.

“Sequence showing us going to the station,” Bren said. “Let’s not get deeper in. Let’s just go do what we can, captain. Let’s try it.”

Sabin gave him a cold, speculative look. Then: “Give me general address.”

“Confirmed,” C1 said, and Sabin took up a mike.

“ Sabin speaking. We’ve conducted a short conversation with the alien craft. Seems it sent a probe to the station and had it blown up. It thinks station has one of their dead. We want answers. We’re going to go over there with a reasonable expectation the alien craft is going to stay off our backs in the meanwhile, and we’re going to find out what the fuel situation is before we make any farther decisions. So we’re going to takehold in a few minutes, cousins, and we’re going to move very, very slowly about this, so as not to alarm the neighbors. Don’t take anything for granted. Second shift is now in charge. Likely next shift change will not be on schedule, but technical crew, continue to brief yourselves on cha