Explorer

“It is, Danda-ji.”

“And this, nandi,” Narani said, offering his pistol, which he took, no question in this, intending no hesitation to use it. He tucked that into his right jacket pocket.

Then Jeladi gave him a cloth-wrapped bundle which proved to be quite heavy, and a glance proved the contents— brochures , Banichi had translated it, and brochures there were: illustrated brochures, beautifully printed, a sunset by the sea, the north shore of Mospheira—Mt. Adams and a ski resort, with Jase’s—one assumed—description: Safe Haven, and text below, which gave details of their mission and instructions for boarding, with a photo of a representative cabin—Gin’s, as happened. Below that, it said: Comfort and Safety. Captions, actually appropriate to the pictures, and Gin’s hand somewhere in the mix.

“Three hundred more we have sent to the ship-aiji, nandi. One hopes they suffice.”

“Very fine, very fine, nadi-ji.” He found a place inside his jacket for a dozen brochures, and gave a little bow to the non-combatants of his staff. “Extraordinary accomplishment, nadiin-ji.”

“Fortunately posed, one humbly hopes, nandi. One hopes the illustrations convey only desirable elements.”

“Rani-ji, indeed, and my compliments.”

He tucked the packet under his arm, bowed, and went out into the corridor, where Jago and Banichi were in the last stages of preparation, black leather and non-reflective black plastics, and no few pieces of armament, besides breathing-masks and a black bag of gear.

“Gin-nandi is ready with her mission,” Banichi reported. “Shall we carry the packet, nandi?”

He yielded it, and Jago put the brochures into the bag, while he patted his pocket to be absolutely sure of Jase’s precious key.

“Cenedi,” Banichi said, “will run the security station for the duration, paidhi-ji.” Rare. They couldn’t ask for better than that. “Jase-aiji has lent his key?”

“I have it.”

“He has also lent a pilot. And Gin-aiji promises assistance. We shall go down to the life pods, Bren-ji, and cross to number 80 access, which is next to the section Becker-nadi indicated.”

“Excellent.” He hadn’t tracked such operational details: he trusted Banichi for those, and any help they could get came welcome, in his opinion. They were trusting the word of a traitor; and if Banichi had been arranging pilots and plans, Jase had been the only translator awake—which said how much sleep Jase had gotten, and how much Banichi himself had gotten. The air felt colder and colder, a chill coming on, bringing him almost to the point of shivers, but Jago had zipped up the bag and slung it to her shoulder, and they were off down the corridor at what atevi called a brisk pace, and what humans called a hurry.

Going down to the pods. A pilot, not the starship sort, but qualified to run station-tenders and such. And Gin had to have one of her robots in action, or another pod. Details floated around him in a null-g soup of items and lists turned into substance full of surprises, details unreal to him. Their operations up to this point had been shaping pieces of a plan, a list of things that had to be cleared out of the way, not an inclusive list, but his staff had gathered up things he had had no skill to put together, and gotten Jase and Gin involved. Now they headed down the corridor with a bag of guns and brochures and cutting tools.

No begging off at this point. No changing directions. Haste was written all over the operation—haste, on little rest and less sleep, and people of unknown number and disposition on the station, and entities of uncertain patience expecting performance on promises. He recalled a dusty brown hillside near Malguri, smoke and, overhead, the pulse of an open-cockpit plane dropping bottle-bombs.

From there, to this, light-speed; and maybe things no more subtle than the bottle-bombs. Guns. Explosives. God, he hoped that key worked as advertised.

And minimal communications. Television, which would have delighted Cajeiri, was not possible. Transmissions of any kind became a liability, to be rationed out, used in case they had to report disaster and alert Cenedi to a cascading problem.

Three of the dowager’s young men met them at the section end and simply fell in with them, young men carrying small bundles, equipped with guns and knives and spare ammunition in appalling quantity. Three of them and three of the dowager’s, auspicious numbers; but they were now six, his nerves informed him— six , counting himself. Infelicitous six hit the pit of his stomach as they reached the end of the corridor. Six was an impossible number for the mission. It wasn’t the end of the plan, he was instantly convinced of it; and as they passed the section door, out to the small area, indeed, one of Gin’s staff met them—Barnhart, it was, with a packet under his arm and a com unit tacked to his jacket.

Fortunate seven, now: Gin’s promised assistance took the form of one of her engineers in the party, to read the charts, if nothing else, to solve technical glitches having to do with human logic and human traps.

“Mr. Cameron.” Barnhart gave a little bow at the lift, Mospheiran and having no trouble falling in with atevi habits. “Honored to be here.”

“Mr. Barnhart. Welcome in.”

They were a comforting number as they bundled themselves inside the lift—down, was the direction this time, relative down from the ship’s metal heart, down where gravity grew uncertain and then left them prey to inertia of the car itself. Bren clutched the safety bar, ru

Down to cold, ungravitied places—cold stung the skin, cold so bitter it felt like heat as the lift let them out facing a blank wall and a sign. Emergency Evac 12 , it said, and Lifepod , with overlapping yellow arrows. Other signs saying pressure hazard and volatiles present .

They’d had their drills. He knew he was to follow the internal corridors to Lifepod 2, which this wasn’t. This was somewhere down on the ship’s cargo-carrying belly, where five-deck didn’t go, in drills. And this pod might not have opened in the last three hundred years, since Taylor’s age—it bore the patina of mechanical age, the cold surface other gloved fingers had recently touched, and left marks in the frost their breath recoated.

Now the pod hatch opened and he went through that portal, with five atevi and a Mospheiran engineer, into a dim, cold interior where atevi had to duck their heads. Metal walls seemed to drink in light and not give it up. Drifting plastic webs—he belatedly realized these were the evacuation pod’s safety restraints for far more persons than their number. The hatch shut, and two ship’s crewmen, shadowy and underlit in LEDs, moved beyond the webbing. Nine for the transit, he said to himself. Nine, fortunate as seven, thrice three. Jase’s men. Jase’s invisible, numbers-reckoning hand on this mission that they’d laid out: Jase wouldn’t let atevi go out with eight.

Across a dark leap, not on the mast, but on the station cylinder itself, on the edge of the damaged section, was service port 80, a number one hoped to attribute to station administration and not to their effort.

Gin thought they could do it because, she said, there weren’t many defenses on the inside of the station’s curve and from that angle; and because, second point, lifepods had automated firesafe signals that were supposed to protect them from station trim jets and other hull-vicinity hazards—Gin swore that signal would protect them from anything more lethal the station defenses emitted on automated targeting. A lifepod was, in ship’s and station’s systems, always sacrosanct.