Destroyer

“Can we help him?” As if the boy was a ticking bomb. “Dare we?” Then: “Should we?”

“The aiji-dowager is his only present anchor,” Jago said, “and if his father should be dead, who knows? Who can know? What he feels, what he may feel, no one can predict.”

Emotions, again. Emotions that co

Engines kept up the push. For every force they put on the ship, they’d have to take it off again before they docked. It was going to be a long, rough ride, but he completely agreed with Sabin: if they got there an hour faster, the rumor mill on the station would have an hour less run-time to create problems for them.

And if they could only scare the Reunioners in their belly badly enough, without making them mad, they might have an edge in maintaining control of them. The former inhabitants of Reunion Station weren’t acclimated to rough maneuvers. They had to realize now this wasn’t a routine approach.

News would be spreading through the station, just one communications tech or janitor telling a cousin what was going on, and that cousin calling someone else.

Time, time, and time. It wasn’t on their side.

Chapter 3

A rush to dock, and intense security in their getting aboard—a quick, bone-chilling transit through the deep cold and null g of the mast, and on into the lift—Bren let go a desperate, shuddering breath that he realized he’d held over-long and gulped another, air burning cold and so dry it seared his lungs and set off a fit of coughing.

Himself, the dowager, Cajeiri, her security, with Banichi and Jago: they were the advance party. The rest of his own staff was still on the ship, struggling to pack up, and Jase was coming in the next batch, with Pressman, Kaplan, and a security detail, with more security due to escort them to Ogun’s offices. Atevi station security was to pick them up at the lift exit—Geigi’s men—never mind the usual hassle with customs, Sabin assured them. Just go, get the dowager and the heir safely into the atevi section, and those doors shut, with their security up and functioning. Gin Kroger was going to come in through the cargo lock, with her equipment, with another contingent of Ogun’s men to see things were in order.

Then they’d worry about telling the station at large—and the Reunioners on the ship—what was going on.

The car started moving, that motion rearranging their sense of up and down—they held to the handgrips for a few breathless moments with their luggage bashing up against the ceiling until they’d exited the core. Then the feeling of gravity crept over them, settled them gradually back to a sense of where the deck was despite the movement of the car. Their baggage observed the same slow settling, floating down past them and landing with a muffled, not quite authoritative thump. Ordinarily Cajeiri would be excited and bouncing about to test the new sensations—he so enjoyed instability. But his young face was as sober and his bearing as grimly serious as his great-grandmother’s while the car braked to a stop: Bren noted it with a sideward shift of his eyes, not even a glance to disturb the delicate equilibrium.

The mast-to-station lift let them out necessarily in a region not quite secure—a region completely deserted except for Geigi’s own bodyguard, with sealed section doors keeping the curious away—unprecedented security, as they transited the little distance to the regular lift system and got aboard for their winding passage to the atevi section.

Cenedi input their destination, their own restricted corridor. The car moved. No one said a word. The slight warmth of the air in this car finally began to creep into cloth, to penetrate finally to flesh and bone and Bren regulated his breathing, heart racing from emotional as well as physiological demands of the bone-cold passage.

What could he say to the dowager or his staff, knowing none of the answers?

What could he possibly say that could set anything to rights, if the aiji he had served and looked to serve for the rest of his life had met overthrow and disaster?

He didn’t give up on Tabini-aiji, that was one thing. He didn’t admit disaster until he had no other answer left. Tabini would have gone to ground if he was outnumbered. He’d be gathering forces for some attempt to retake his post, and knowing that Phoenix should be back in a handful of months, he might well have waited, hoping for reports, psychological advantage, vindication.

The ship was fairly well on time, as much as a ship on a two-year voyage could be. Things hadn’t been optimal at the other end, quite—but they’d been fast. So Tabini would only have waited as long as he expected to wait. And he hoped against all reason that they might get a message from Tabini once the news of their return hit the atevi countryside.

The lift stopped. The doors opened on warm air and the atevi restricted residency corridor, atevi staff lining their path on either side. There was Lord Geigi himself, with his staff, and there were the few staffers the dowager had left behind; and, most wonderful to his eyes, there were his own people, Tano and Algini foremost, joy breaking through the ordinary atevi reserve.

Tears stung his own eyes—he was that glad and that relieved to see them safe, and to be home, and he returned small bows and nods of his head, glad, so glad to be on a deck that orbited his own world, so comforted to hear the voices he’d missed for two years, so relieved to bring back his whole party safe and sound. He had gotten them this far.

“Nandi,” Tano said, his voice fairly quivering with relief. “Welcome. Welcome, nandi.”

“Indeed,” he said. “So good to see us united, nadiin-ji, whatever distressing news we hear from the planet—at least we can say we have good news. We have done all we went out to do. All of us are safe and well. And you have kept the household here safe.”

“It is safe, nandi,” Tano said, and Algini inclined his head in simultaneous agreement. “Safe and firm in man’chi.”

“Well done, very well done, nadiin.” A lord did not hug his servants, though he wanted to, each and every one, wanted, humanly speaking, to hug them and go home and wrap himself in the comfort of things that were safe and just as he had left them.

Other things, unfortunately, were far from safe. And time was ticking fast.

“Lord Geigi.” A deep bow to the portly lord of the Edi atevi, who met him and the dowager at once. “A welcome sight, an extraordinarily welcome sight, nandi.”

“None so welcome as the sight of Sidi-ji safe and all of you with her,” Lord Geigi said. “Come, come inside, as soon as you will.”

“Only a moment,” he said. His staff surely had a welcome prepared, longed to have him inside and safe, to tell him everything and to ask every question they could think of, but he could no more than go to his own door, could only take a moment in the longed-for surroundings to shed the essential baggage, to exchange chilled heavy coats for warm, soft lighter ones—tea in his own sitting-room was what he wanted. Hours to talk to his staff was what he wanted. A phone, to contact the planet. To phone Toby. To know what had happened down there, to people he loved.

He… was not the dominant issue in this transaction.

“My gratitude to all of you,” he said to Tano and Algini and the assembled staff, in his own foyer. “My utmost gratitude, nadiin-ji. What can one say, to equal all the hours and devotion you have given.” They were a small staff, soon to be reinforced by Narani and Bindanda, Jeladi and Asicho, with a vast amount of baggage, two years’ worth, from the ship—soon to be inundated with things to stow and launder and press, with stories to hear and stories to tell, but none so critical as what had happened out in far space and no present threat as great as what had happened on the planet under their feet, to Tabini and to the space program. “One can most gladly report success. We did far more than we went out there to do. And no matter that one hears dire things—dire news that Lord Geigi has to report to us. We will take action. So will the ship-aijiin and the station-aiji.”