Explorer

God, it was getting far more convolute than a simple lad from Mospheira wanted to figure.

The plain fact was, they and the alien craft had an agreement—and a lie he had to keep covered, namely the atevi’s presence with them.

Now he was going to lie to the station. Aliens aboard? What aliens? Oh, the Mospheiran gentleman… a jumped-up colonist negotiator. Never mind the slightly odd clothes.

He wondered if Jase or Sabin was going to get the leisure to sit down for half an hour—let alone sleep. It wouldn’t improve their chances to have the ship’s captains on duty through shift after shift after shift.

Four shifts, still. Two captains. It was all fine when they were careening through folded space, puttering half-wittedly about their duties. At the moment, he desperately wished there were relief for them. Sabin wasn’t about to turn anything about this over to Jase and Jase wasn’t going to leave her alone to deal with whatever came up. He had that pegged.

Distrust. The habit of lies. And now this Pilots’ Guild, that wove its own walls out of lies.

Not easy to sleep on that thought. But he did his best. He had the two bravest individuals he’d ever known not a few feet away. He had their wit, their steadiness whenever he faltered. They wouldn’t flinch. He couldn’t. When he lost sight of everything else—they were there.

He thought of home. Of his mother’s dining room. A cufflink, gone down the heating duct. Gone. Just gone. He’d pi

He wished he’d made a visit there before he left.

He’d get together with Toby when he got back. He’d drag Jase down planetside to take that fishing trip. They wouldn’t bait the hooks. Just bring a week’s worth of sandwiches and a case of beer.

Chapter 8

It wasn’t enough sleep before Gin came across the corridor. “I hate to wake you,” Gin said—the door opening had already roused Banichi and Jago, who had sorted themselves out and got up immediately. Bren found a harder time locating his wits, but he straightened the chair and set his feet on the floor.

“Sabin’s talking to the station,” Gin said. “They’re asking questions like what did we just do out there with the alien? What took us ten years getting here? Sabin’s stonewalling them. Says since they didn’t help out with the alien confrontation, she sees no reason to talk to them about what we said until she gets there.”

There might have been a better answer, but he couldn’t think of one yet. It certainly set the tone between ship and Guild. He was very much concerned about Sabin’s short fuse, and Jase’s, not inconsiderable, both of them ru

“I’m going,” he said, standing up, and, too incoherent to explain his wants, held out his hand for the earpiece. She gave it to him, and he stuck it in, immediately hearing the minor traffic of the consoles. “They haven’t changed shifts.”

“No. Overdue, but she’s keeping her own people on. I think she’s getting just a little punchy, if you want the brutal truth.”

“What’s our ETA?”

“Not sure. About an hour. We’re headed for the slope.”

A lot like skidding on ice. That was how he conceptualized maneuvering in space. Sometimes you were facing one way and going another, and if you got onto a gravity slope you slid very damned fast, accelerating without doing a thing. He could almost understand Sabin’s viewpoint: she hated planets, wasn’t fond of stars, didn’t at all mind the dark, empty deeps.

Reunion was situated high up on a gravity slope. Stations had to be. And a station was a scary place to navigate, so he gathered. High toehold above a deep plunge. Like wi’itikin coming in for a cliffside perch, a lot of tricky figuring best done by computer brains, humans not having the wi’itikin’s i

He was fogged. He managed a thank you to Gin.

“ Ignore them ,” he heard Sabin say to someone. “ I’m busy. They can rant all they like .”

Sounded like high time he got to the bridge. “Go rest,” he said to Gin, and headed out the office door with Banichi and Jago in close attendance. His face prickled. He wished he’d thought to bring his shaving kit topside. He’d foolishly believed the dowager’s sack lunch was excessive.

The bridge looked no different than when he’d left. Those at work took no special note of his return.

Jase, however, walked over to him as he stopped to survey the scene.

“How’s it been?” Bren asked.

“Station’s not pleased with us,” Jase said. “Senior captain’s not cooperating with them. They want us to do a hard grapple at nadir of the mast. We won’t. Fueling port’s zenith. That’s where we’re going.”

“They want us away from it. That’s not encouraging.”

“The fuss is,” Jase said. And held a little silence with a glance across the bridge at Sabin, who wasn’t looking at them. He gave a hand-sign, the sort that Banichi’s and Jago’s Guild exchanged on mission. It was a warning. “Angry,” he said in Ragi. “Overdue for rest. I lack the skill to bring us in, and I lack the rank to argue with the Guild. Which she is doing.”

That was good news. “I need your advice in what’s coming. I need you sane and rested. Is there any reason you can’t go off-duty and take an hour?”

“She won’t. I won’t.”

“What are we? Kids in a schoolyard, egging each other on? Take a break, Jase. If she won’t use common sense, at least you’ll be sane.”

Jase shook his head. “She’s pushing herself. She won’t trust me to handle the smallest things. And if I want her to pay attention to my advice over the next handful of hours, I can’t fold, now, can I?” They were old friends, and there was adamancy, but not anger, in the argument. “And matters are too critical right now to worry about my state of mind or the fact my back’s killing me. We’re dealing with the Guild. You want non-reason in high places? We’re dealing with it.”

“What do you read in them?”

“I’m not the expert.”

“In ship-culture, in Guild mentality—you very much are.” He changed to Ragi. “Your professional opinion, ship-paidhi.”

Rapid blinks—total change of mental wiring. Moment of mental blackout. Then, in Ragi: “Understandable. They disapprove Sabin-aiji’s defiance of their authority. They refuse talk until we get into dock.”

“Then?”

“Then—they and we will be in closer contact.”

“They intend to board.”

“A question whether Sabin will permit that, nadi-ji. But perhaps.”

It was not good. He began to read the psychology of it through an atevi lens, and pulled his mind away from thoughts of association, aishi and man’chi , the social entity and the emotion—which, after all this voyage, began to seem logical even on human terms. Two metal motes with humans inside wanted to come together. Like magnetism. Like man’chi . But once they met—

Human politics were inside those shells. Not just two metal shells. Two grenades gravitating toward each other.

“Do they trust her at all?” he asked—meaning Sabin.

“One doubts,” Jase said, and added, in ship-speak: “She’s just ordered an outside operations team to suit up immediately after we dock.”

“Boarding the station?” They’d have to turn out the whole crew to take something as large as that—and still might be outnumbered.

“To have our hands at the refueling port.”

“That’s not standard operating procedure, is it?” Of fueling stations in the vast cosmos, there were only two he knew. And one, Alpha, ran operations from a stationside control center.

“It’s not. I know that much. The captain’s preparing to have us do it ourselves, from outside. I don’t know what she’s going to say to them. Being Sabin, she may not say a thing. She may just do it.”