Destroyer

“Yes,” Bren said. Absolutes made him nervous as hell, but he had laid his life on Geigi’s integrity often enough before this. “We’ll take the fast route in, straight into the atevi section. Humans may be excited to know she’s here. That’s my chief worry. They’ll want to see her.”

“No question they’ll be excited,” Jase said.

Ilisidi was popular on the station, even among humans. Ilisidi always had been. And right now people were desperate for authority.

“I’d suggest we not discuss our boarding,” Bren said. “If we get Geigi’s men positioned near the lift, we can get into our own section fast and just not answer the outside. Stationers know better than to rush atevi security.”

“You go on station with them,” Sabin said to Jase. “I want you in direct liaison with Ogun.”

“We can trickle the Reunioners on, three to five at a time,” Jase said quietly, “Drag out the formalities, mandatory orientations—rules and records-keeping they understand. The technical problems of warming a section for occupation, they well understand.”

“Register them to sponsors,” Gin put in, “to our people, who know atevi.”

It wasn’t the first time Gin had put forward that idea, and they’d shot it down, not wanting to create a class difference between Mospheirans and Reunioners. But right now it made thorough sense to do it… a sense that might reverberate through human culture for centuries if they weren’t careful.

“All that’s Graham’s problem,” Sabin said shortly, meaning Jase had to make that decision among a thousand others, and she knew what he’d choose. “My whole concern is the security of this ship, its crew, and its supply. So are your atevi going to time out on us for an internal war, Mr. Cameron? Or can you explain to them we might see strangers popping into the system for a visit at any time from now on? I’d really rather have our affairs in better order when that happens.”

“I intend to make that point,” Bren said.

“Make it, hard. We need those shuttles. That would solve an entire array of problems. In the meantime, Ms. Kroger, I need your professional services, and will need them, urgently and constantly for the foreseeable future. Captain Ogun’s got his mining operation going all-out here, but if Cameron can’t get atevi resources up to us off the planet, or can’t get them tomorrow, we’ve got the immediate problem of feeding this lot—and I’m not ready to rip the shipyard apart worse than it already is to get supply. I want Captain Ogun’s tanks, Ms. Kroger. Shielded tanks and water sufficient to handle the station population indefinitely.”

“Understood,” Gin said.

“Then everybody get moving,” Sabin said.

Bren translated for the dowager. “The ship-aijiin recommend we go below and make final preparations to leave the ship, which will be a hurried transit, aiji-ma, into a disturbed population.”

“We are prepared,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand. The dowager had acquired a certain respect for Sabin-aiji, after a difficult start—a respect particularly active whenever Sabin’s opinion coincided with hers. “We are always prepared. Tell her see to her own people.”

“The dowager states she is prepared for any eventuality.” There were times he didn’t translate all of what one side said; and there were times he did. “The aiji-dowager expects you to control the human side of this. She is prepared to make inroads into the atevi situation.”

“Go below and observe takehold,” Sabin said. “The lot of you. We’re not wasting any time getting in there, no time for more ferment on their side or ours, thank you.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren translated that. “The ship is about to move with greater than ordinary dispatch and Sabin-aiji politely urges us all to take appropriate shelter belowdecks for a violent transit. This will speed us in before there can be further disturbance on the station or among our human passengers.”

“Good,” Ilisidi said sharply and headed for the lift, marking her path with energetic taps of the cane. Her great-grandson and the rest of her company could only make haste behind her to reach the doors, while the ship sounded the imminent-motion warning.

It was certainly not the homecoming they’d pla

Amid everything else, he thought, looking across the car at Cajeiri, there’d been no special word for a boy who’d just heard bad news about his mother and father, and who remained appallingly quiet.

What did he say to an atevi child? Or what should his great-grandmother have said, or what dared he say now?

The lift moved. Meanwhile the intercom gave the order: “Maneuvers imminent. Takehold and brace for very strong movement.”

Four thousand colonists were getting that news, people unacculturated to the delicate and dangerous situation they were going to land in on the station, people whose holier-than-common-colonists attitudes were even more objectionable to the Mospheirans who were half the workforce on that station, and whose ancestors had suffered under Guild management… and who were going to have to sponsor the Reunioners if, as seemed likely now, Gin’s plan prevailed.

Four thousand people who’d been promised paradise ended up on tighter rations than they’d had where they’d come from. And the Mospheirans, who were going to have to live with them and who’d already endured hardship since the shuttles had stopped flying, weren’t going to be anywhere near as patient with their daily complaints as the ship had been.

Jerry and Gin were holding quiet, rapid-fire consultations next to him, Jerry agreeing to stay aboard the ship while Gin went to her on-station offices to take control. Banichi was holding quick converse with Cenedi.

The lift hit five-deck level and opened for them. Gin and Jerry went one way, they went another, past sentries, into the atevi section.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, prepared to take his leave and deal with his own staff. “Nandi.” For the youngster, who gravely bowed. He remained distressed for the boy, the heir, who might in some atevi minds on that station now be the new aiji of Shejidan; but none of them had time to discuss their situation or accommodate an eight-year-old boy’s natural distress—not in a ship about to undertake maneuvers. Beyond that, he reminded himself, Cajeiri’s whole being responded to man’chi, a set of emotions a human being was only minimally wired to understand. For all he knew, the boy was approaching the explosion point. Every association of the boy’s life was under assault, while atevi under him and around him in the hierarchy would rally round and carry on with all the resources the battered association could rake together. God knew what the boy was feeling, or whether he was just numb at the moment, or how he would react when the whole expectations of the station atevi centered on him.

“Go,” Ilisidi said sharply, curt dismissal, and he strode down the corridor at all speed, Banichi and Jago in close company, down to the safety of his own quarters. Takehold racketed through the corridors. Narani waited by his cabin door, but Bren ordered him to safety.

Inside, a shocking transformation. The walls were stripped of plants now, shockingly barren. Everything was barren, even the mattress, the bed he had shared with Jago for two years, lacking sheets and blankets.

He lay down nonetheless, and Jago lay down beside him, pulled the safety netting across, preparing for what could be a scary, hard pull.

“Final warning,” sounded over the general com. “Takehold where you are.”

Engines kicked in. The force dragged at them.

“How is Cajeiri taking the news, Jago-ji?” he asked Jago, staring at the ceiling. “Can one tell?”

A slight move beside him, a shrug, it might be. “Likely still thinking on it, Bren-ji,” she said.