Peacemaker

Phoenix gathered resources such as it could and aimed toward the closest promising star. It saw, among its several choices, a blue world much like humans’ own ancestral Earth. The world had the signature of life—which meant they would indeed find resources there. The world had no artificial satellites. They picked up no transmissions. This informed them there was no space-faring civilization there.

They ended up in orbit about the Earth of the atevi.

They saw, below them, towns and villages. They saw technology of a certain level—but not high enough to come up to them, and their law, remote as they were then from any law but their own conscience, ruled against disturbing the world, even if they had had an easy means to land and ask help . . . which they did not.

The colonists had come prepared and trained to build an orbiting station. They gathered resources from asteroids, manufactured panels and parts and framework, enclosing themselves from the inside out and housing more and more workers. This became the core of the station. They built tethers, and began the construction of the station ring, to gain a place to stand. Barracks moved into the begi

Phoenix crew was supposed to have supported the colonists this far and then move on. The ship-folk were spacefarers by trade and nature and had no desire to live on a colonial station. But now that the colonists were safe, and now that the ship was resupplied and able to leave—it troubled the ship-aijiin that the ship now had no use and nowhere to go next. They had only one port, and clearly the station was not where they wanted their port to be. The blue planet had exactly the right conditions and everything they needed . . . but it was owned, and the ship-folk’s law said they should not disturb it.

The ship had long argued against the building of any elaborate station in orbit about the planet. They wanted the colonists to leave off any further development of the station they had, use it as an observation point and a refuge should anything go wrong, and build another, larger station out at Maudit. They should, the ship-aijiin said, leave the inhabited world alone until, perhaps, they might make contact in space some time in the future.

The colonists, born aboard this station, and with all the hardship of the prior generations, had no desire to give up their safety and build again—least of all to build a station above a desolate, airless world. They wanted the world they saw under their feet. They wanted it desperately.

The station aijiin also argued against building at Maudit. They needed their population. They needed their workers—and they wanted no rival station. They absolutely refused the ship’s solution.

The argument between station authorities and ship-aijiin grew bitter. Phoenix, now hearing these same officials claiming authority over the mission and the ship itself—decided to pull out of the colonial dispute altogether. They considered going to Maudit with a handful of willing souls and building there, then trying to draw colonists out to join them in defiance of the station aijiin—but that idea was voted down, since the colonists even at Maudit would still be in reach of that living planet, and the crew was vastly outnumbered if it came to a confrontation on the matter. By now the ship-folk did not entirely trust even the colonists they considered allies, with the green planet at issue.

The ship’s crew voted to take aboard those colonists who wanted to leave, and go. They went a year out into deep space, to a star with resources of metal and ice. There they set up a station they called, optimistically, Reunion.

From Reunion, the ship continued its exploration, through optics, and by closer inspection. The crew no longer hoped to find their own Earth, but they did hope that by increasing the human population at Reunion, then, from Reunion, establishing other colonies at planets or moons of some attraction—they could then revisit the population they’d left at the Earth of the atevi and convince them there was an alternative to landing.

Alternatives, however, did not immediately present themselves. The station at Reunion grew. But there was no suitable world. More troubling still, in one direction, they found the signature of another technological presence.

Back at the first station, from the week of Phoenix’s departure, the authorities had begun losing control. All that had stopped the colonists from going down to the Earth in the first place was the simple fact that, among the colonists or on the ship, there was nobody who knew how to land in a gravity well, or fly in an atmosphere, with weather and winds. Phoenix itself had been fairly confident that the colonists would, without the ship’s crew, have to agree among themselves to survive, and that the solution would not involve experimental ma

But the colonists had a considerable library. And in those files they found a means within their capability to build, to aim, and to operate.

They pointed it out to the station aijiin.

They demanded action.

The station aijiin gave in. They built machines that would land in undeveloped land, and explore. If those reported well, they would build a craft to land by parachute, that would carry a scientific team, such as they could muster.

Those would go first.

All went well down to the second stage. The team, composed of names still honored by place names on Mospheira, met the tribal peoples . . . and after a brief period of good report and apparent progress—they vanished, with no clue, even to later generations.

The program was shut down, and remained shut down, for a long time. But dissatisfaction grew, in claims the station aijiin had been too timid. There were other places. There was empty land, even on the island. There was a whole other shore. There were extensive forests. There were vast plains where no one at all lived. There was a very large island south of the main continent.

Station authorities tried to silence the idea. The population had increased, but the space station had not. The ship had taken away the machinery that might have let them add more room easily. And then supplies began to disappear.

Small conspiracies assembled simple life-support for small capsules, shielded against the friction of the atmosphere, and provided with only one button, which would blow the shield off the parachute in the event the sensors that should do that automatically—failed.

By twos and threes they launched these fragile capsules toward the gravity well, and parachuted down.

When colonists learned the first capsules had come down safely—and more, that they were welcomed—more and more groups fled the station. The station-aijiin attempted to find and destroy these efforts, and the desperation of the colonists only increased. Workers refused to work. Groups stole materials in plain sight, and threatened anyone who tried to stop them. And the station grew more empty, and shut down, second by section. Those manufacturing materials said openly what they were for, and a small group exercised discipline enough to keep the effort going despite the objections of station aijiin.

Their technicians deserted. Station maintenance suffered. At the very last there was no choice for the administrative and systems managers but to join the movement. They mothballed the station, set the systems to maintain stable orbit so long as they could, and parachuted their armed bodyguards and themselves to the planet.

The last sudden band of humans, who emphatically resented being there and did not want to adapt to the planet in any way, changed everything.

Atevi suddenly attacked, for no reason humans understood.