Destroyer

“Understood.” Two deep breaths as he walked the corridor toward Admin, between Banichi and Jago. “We’ve only just docked. Listen, we’re in good shape, mostly. There is something to worry about out there in space, way deep and far, but I’ll let you work that out with the captains. I’m about to debrief with Ogun… I trust you’re talking to Ogun, no problems.”

“No problems at all in that regard,” Shawn said.

“I’ve got to sign off. I’ll be there in short order, if we’re lucky.”

“Got it,” Shawn said. Former boss in the State Department. Ally, in what had become the only team left standing. “I’ll clear your way in all senses. You’ll have clear air space and a place for you and your party, all honors. Count on it.”

“Thanks,” he said. And to Banichi and Jago, handing back the phone—as if they couldn’t follow most that he said in Mosphei’. “He advises we move quickly, and promises us clearance to land and a place to stay. He gave no hint of trouble on the island, but seems anxious for us to hasten our moves. He says the opposition has ships.”

“Which may attempt to interfere in the landing, nandi,” Banichi said. “We agree.”

They reached the guarded door, and the guards on duty—one of them Jase’s man, Kaplan—wasted no time letting all of them in.

Jase was inside, standing with Jules Ogun, of Phoenix, who’d stayed in command of the station and maintained liaison with Shawn and Tabini while they were off in deep space.

“Good to see you,” Ogun said, leaning across the table corner with a solid handshake—certainly more warmth than when they’d parted. “Damned good to see you in one piece, sir.”

“I understand we have a problem downstairs,” Bren said directly, “and I hear we have a shuttle in reasonable readiness, and I have the dowager’s request to launch and Tyers’ clearance to land at Jackson, if we can get it fueled.”

“It is fueled, or will be within the next two hours. We started that process when you turned up in system. Crew’s kept up their sims throughout. We’re not altogether cut off from the planet, but this shuttle is our one chance, Mr. Cameron. Damned hard to replace. But no other use for it now but to get you down there.”

“The dowager and the heir are our best chance to stabilize the government. They’re absolutely irreplaceable. And I’m going with them.” He saw the frowns. “I have to be there. They’ll need me.”

“Dangerous,” Jase said. “Damned dangerous, Bren, your going down there. You’re the outsider. You’re in particular danger.”

“I wish we had another choice,” he said. He’d come in prepared to argue up one side and down the other for his position, but no one argued, beyond Ogun’s remark, such ready agreement he wished someone would argue, interpose objections that might make him think of critical omissions in his ideas.

But, point of fact, they had two choices—launch an information war from orbit, with the broadcast and cable in the hands of the new regime, and a lot of bloodshed likely—or get themselves down there as their supporters would expect, had almost certainly expected for months. People would commit their lives to the latter expectation, might already have swung into operations that would fail without them. In the atevi way of thinking, leaders had to show up, in person, take the risks, lay down the law, make the moves so there was no doubt of their commitment.

And the longer they waited, even by hours, the more time the opposition had to arrange something in response.

“A seat, Mr. Cameron.” Ogun sat down, and Jase did, and as they settled, the door opened and Sabin came in, her coat steaming with cold and frost, straight from the core and the airlock.

Ogun rose, extended a hand to her, gave her the vacant seat next to him—senior, these two, captains under senior captain Stani Ramirez so long as Ramirez lived, and privy to far and away more than they’d ever admitted to the crew at large or to anyone else until the proof came ru

“Brilliant job,” Ogun said to them.

“Adequate,” Sabin said. “We’re alive. We’ve got the ringleaders of our problems in close lockup aboard ship and plan to keep them that way indefinitely, under the circumstances. We’re going to be dribbling population aboard the station, asking resident crew to sponsor the Reunioners and keep close tabs on them, no demands at all from our Mospheiran cousins onstation. They have no reason to love these people.”

“Anything that slows a headlong rush to realize how short supply is, here.”

“How short is it?”

“We’ve had serious tank problems and cycling hasn’t quite kept up with the nutrient balance. We could use resupply. We could use it very urgently, or we absolutely go back on basics and short rations at that. We haven’t got some of the critical supplies when we do get the new tanks in operation, and we’re even, just among the few of us, worried about the long-range stability of the station air systems. But your people are telling me there’s a big cash-in of biomass as the ship is in for overhaul.”

The spider plants. The myriad spider plants, Bren thought. Bales of them. Not to mention the recycling of ship’s waste for all those people. Could they possibly have that much bound up in them, that they could make a dent in station requirements?

But the ship had been nutrient rich for a long time. They’d carried an abundant supply, and they hadn’t offloaded any of it. They’d taken on a good extra load from Reunion Station itself on the return flight, emergency supplies to expand their capacity to serve thousands of passengers. Was that enough?

“Meanwhile,” Ogun was saying, “Mr. Cameron’s got a landing lined up with Mospheira. I take it, Mr. Cameron, you have a plan.”

No, he wanted to say, in all honesty. But it wasn’t that black and white. “We need more information than we have, sir, more than we likely can get from here. Lord Geigi knows what happened on the mainland, but he’s not in possession of enough details to give us a sure list of who to trust. So we have to go down, and go fast, before loyalties shift.”

“What did happen down there, Mr. Cameron?‘’ Sabin asked.

“In fact it looks like a long-range double cross, in the case of the scoundrel who’s launched this attack on Tabini-aiji: he played the ally, he played the i

“So should you risk the dowager?” Ogun asked.

“If there’s to be any hope of dealing with this, she has to be there. The heir has to be there. Her loyalists—and they’re more than I can trace at the moment—won’t understand her sitting safe on the ship or keeping the boy safe and asking them to go die for her cause while she protects herself with human allies. It’s not the atevi way. They’ll show up when she shows up in their circumstances, at equal risk. And they’d never respect the heir if he were held up here in safety.”