Precursor (66 page)

Then very tall figures bearing lights appeared behind them and came their way, too.

“Tell the captain,” Jase said to Kaplan, “I’m acting on Ramirez’ orders, fourth seat, by his appointment. Ask her if Tamun’s up there with her.”

“Yes, sir.” Kaplan relayed that. “No, sir,” he said when he heard the reply. “Sabin doesn’t know where he is, either.”

“Tell her I request she find Ogun, don’t let Tamun near the buttons, and keep the hatch sealed until we can get word out. Tell Cl to broadcast Ramirez’ message. If they didn’t copy it, we can play it again. Tell Sabin to get the power on! The captain can’t take this.”

Kaplan relayed that, too, and said, “Sabin says stand by.”

An unexspected siren blast, brief and loud, made the atevi wince; and a second later the lights flared up to noonday brightness and the ventilation fans came on. They had a number of station security uncertainly exposed to view, and Cenedi and half a dozen of his own men were on the far side of the humans.

Ramirez’s message suddenly, loudly, recycled through every wall unit.

“Is the captain’s message going out?” Banichi asked, to be sure.

“Indeed, Banichi-ji. Advise everyone things are going moderately well.”

“Going very well,” Banichi said, “since I believe by now Lord Geigi and his men are growing impatient, and will take to the dock.”

“Lord Geigi is
here?
” Bren asked in shock. “Himself?” He realized no one had ever told him to the contrary, and he had assumed, since they said Geigi’s men, that they were a loan. The roundish, sometimes outrageous lord of the coast… indeed, Lord Geigi
would
come out on a wild venture like this, especially in ’Sidi-ji’s wake.

The dowager never, ever traveled without resources.

And on the docks… Bren thought, with the shuttle exposed to danger, and, my God, the
ship
, that Holy Grail of all human activity. The ship they had seen on approach, not far from the shuttle dock…

“The ship, Jase. The access is there, isn’t it? Same dock as the shuttle?”

“Adjacent,” Jase said. “Same area. If Sabin holds the hatch, they can’t get in, but if she thought human lives were threatened…”

“We’ve got to get down there. Up there. We can’t have Geigi threatening
Phoenix
, whatever else. The crew will think the worst.”

“His objective is the dockside,” Banichi said calmly. “And the safety of the shuttle.”

“Misunderstanding is all too possible in this situation. Banichi, they mustn’t go yet. Get word to them to hold.”

“We have no reliable contact with them,” Banichi said, “except by
Phoenix
itself, and we should not, Bren-ji, advise them Geigi is there. We cannot betray Lord Geigi. We will cost atevi lives and endanger the aishidi’tat.”

“We have to get up there,” Bren said. “We have to stop this before it blows up.”

Banichi offered no argument to that. “Cenedi. A potential associate holds the ship, Sabin-aiji; Ogun-aiji cannot be found. Ramirez-aiji is here, wounded and weak. Geigi, if he moves, will possibly create confusion of forces up on the dock.”

“Three quarters of an hour until Geigi moves, unless these humans move against the shuttle.”

“Ten minutes by lift for us to get up there,” Jase said. “Nadiin-ji, we must go, we must go
now
, to hold the docks open and prevent misunderstanding.” Negotiations were going on among Bobby’s group and Kaplan’s, in jargon and shorthand, a desperate, profane babble of argument. “Kaplan is in contact with Sabin. Shall we advise her we’re coming?”

“Tell her
we’re
coming, so she expects atevi.” Bren made the critical judgment, a commitment they had to take. “Don’t say a thing about atevi already up there. Don’t mention Lord Geigi. —Ginny. You’re going to have half a dozen security and a few of the atevi in your section, with Ben and Kate to translate. They’ll keep you safe. We’re going upstairs to try to defuse this before it blows.”

“I don’t like this,” Kroger said. “I don’t like this in the least. Let
me
talk to Sabin.”

“Do, if you can get through. Advise her to just keep that hatch shut. We’re trying to sort it out.”

“You will not go, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “Make no such plans.”

“Someone has to negotiate between the dowager and Sabin,” he said. One grew accustomed to gunfire, and lights going on and off, even to the notion of power cut to the whole station. He experienced no fear of those things; but of the random misunderstanding that could kill the whole enterprise and start another war… of that he was mortally afraid; and it was in his lap.

The dowager, God help them, and Lord Geigi.

And Sabin.

He attached himself to Banichi and Jago, with Jase tagging after him. “Let us go, Nadiin-ji. We have no time to debate this.”

“Go,” Banichi said; Kaplan also joined them, with all but two of the others in security gear, Tad having surrendered his to Andresson and others to Pressman and Johnson. Cenedi detailed ten men from his own force to remain on guard, communicating with them as they were moving out. Ten minutes just for the lift, Jase had said, and Bren walked fast, broke into a jog to keep up with Banichi’s long strides in the lead, and then the rest of the company began to hurry as fast as they could, down to the main corridor, to the lifts.

The buttons of the lift panel proved dead. There were no lights there. Banichi hesitated not the blink of an eye before starting to take the panel apart.

“Sabin’s going to clear it,” Kaplan said, and Bren put out a hand to prevent further disassembly.

The panel lights flashed on; the door responded tamely to a button-push as the car arrived.

“All of us? ”Jago asked.

“Best we arrive with force,” Banichi said. “Suggest, nadi, that Cl contact the shuttle crew and advise them that I am attempting to contact them.”

It seemed a very good idea. Bren relayed it to Kaplan, who called Cl on his suit-corn. Meanwhile they crammed inside the car, wedging as tightly as they could.

The car started to move. Jase was looking up at the indicators when Bren looked his way, and they both stood as very short humans amid a crush of very tall, bullet-proofed atevi. Bren drew in his breath, having time now to be scared out of his mind, time to review the choices that had put them here, and all the hazards of their position. The car seemed to move more slowly than before, or his mind was racing faster. They committed themselves increasingly to Sabin and a set of switches all under her control, vulnerable to freezing cold, absolute dark, and a bad, bad situation for them if someone stalled the car in the system.

That Tamun might have access to those switches was not something he wanted to contemplate.

The car thumped, gathering speed. They were packed so tightly the eventual shifts of attitude did little to dislodge anyone, only that their whole mass increasingly acquired buoyancy.

Please God they got there, Bren thought, thinking of Tamun, and buttons. He watched the flashing lights change on the panel, counting. It was so crowded he couldn’t move his arm to draw the gun in his pocket, so crowded he fell into breathing in unison with Jago, whose deep breaths otherwise pressed at wrong times.

Three levels to go.

Two. They had no more gravity.

The car drifted to a stop, everyone floating as the door opened to a cold so intense it gave the illusion of vacuum.

Pellets hit and sparked around them, atevi spilled out of the car left and right, shoving to get clear and sailing off in the lack of gravity. Bren fended for himself, shoved off Tano, who was behind him, and flew free, trying to do what Jago had done and catch the edge of the door to stop herself and reach cover.

He tried. But a hit convulsed his leg with shock and prevented his grip on the door edge. A coruscation of impacts flared and crackled on the metal surfaces near him.

A human voice, Jase’s, shouted, “Ramirez! Ramirez is alive! Tamun’s done!”

He tumbled, instinct telling him doubling up would relieve the pain, intellect telling him it was a way to get killed. He tried for a handhold as he drifted by a pipe.

“Bren-ji!” A hand snagged him, pulled him toward safety.

A second electrical shock blew him aside: he tumbled high above the lift exit handlines, grabbed the icy cold surface of a hose with a bare hand and swung to a stop, or at least a change of view.

He saw Jago drifting loose trying to reach him in this illusion of dizzying height. And he saw a human in concealment with a gun, aiming up at her.

He fired without thinking, jolted himself loose from his grip and hit another solid surface hard. He rebounded, flying free from that, and tumbled, trying to get a view of Jago. He couldn’t see the man he’d fired at. He couldn’t hear anything but the fading echoes of fire.

He caught an elbow about a pipe, this time high above the shuttle exit. He couldn’t see Jago, but he saw that hatch open. He saw a number of atevi exiting on the handlines, all armed, all prepared for trouble, all capable of creating it.

“Lord Geigi!” he called out, twice, and on the second shout, a man paused on the line and looked up, or its apparent equivalent.

“Bren-ji!” Jago called him from somewhere distant. He knew he’d made a target of himself, shouting out; he knew his security disapproved.

“He’s up there!” he heard Jase shout.

It had become altogether embarrassing. His whole company was looking for him. He pocketed the gun, fearful of losing it, the final shame; and tried to hand his way along the pipe to whatever route down he could find. It was as if he hung in scaffolding three and four stories above the docking area, in a cavernous, cold place crossed with conduits and free-drifting hoses, where the physics of gunfire had sent him… predictable for anyone who thought twice. He didn’t know whether the shooting was over; he didn’t know whether those trying to retrieve him were placing themselves in danger.

He had no communications except shouting, and he had made enough racket. He began using the tail of his coat to insulate his hands from his grip on the pipes, and finally his rattled brain informed him that, yes, physics had gotten him up here and physics could get him down far faster than hand-over-handing down frozen pipes. He screwed up his courage, ignored the perspective and simply shoved off, flying free, down and down until he could tumble toward a low-impact landing.

He had come in reach of Jago’s outstretched hand… she snagged him by the sleeve and drew him aside to a safe, warm side. Banichi was there, waiting. Cenedi, too. He was thoroughly embarrassed.

“We shall have to give you a Guild license,” Banichi said. “It was Tamun you shot.”

“Did I shoot him?” He was appalled, utterly dismayed, his personal impartiality in disputes somehow affected. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Jago said, to his very odd relief, “but Jasi-ji has
arrested
him. I believe this is the correct word.”

They hovered, a small floating knot of what, after the far cold reaches of the girders, seemed friendly warmth. Jase was coming over to them, drifting along a handline, amid many more atevi than there had been.

Conspicuous among them, a very stout ateva in a thick winter seaman’s coat sailed along far too fast for safety, free of the handline.

“Lord Geigi,” Bren said. He was shivering too badly to effect the needed rescue, but Cenedi interposed a hand and brought the lord of the seacoast to a gentle halt.

“This is
remarkable
, Nadiin,” Lord Geigi said, his gold eyes shining, and an uncommon flush to his ebon face. “This is quite remarkable. Have we won? And what are we fighting about?”

“One trusts so,” Bren began to say, and then saw three of the human workers drifting toward him.

With them came a human also in the garish orange of the dock workers, a man with a dark, completely familiar face, a man who was armed, Bren very much suspected; but there was no brandishing of threat, no hesitation in approaching them: this was a man who considered the place
his
.

“Captain Ogun,” Bren hailed the newcomer, and there was a quiet, tense meeting, Ogun with him.

“Captain Ogun,” Jase said. “Captain Ramirez has set me in the fourth seat. His authority. I’m taking third, until he’s back on line to say otherwise. Tamun’s under guard. Dresh will be, when he comes out.”

Ogun never changed expression. “You have the codes?”

“Since I was with the old man in the tunnels. I can key in,” Jase said with no friendliness in his voice. “
Trust
me that I can. I’m not proposing to keep the seat. Only to keep it warm.”

“Good sense,” Ogun said, as if words were gold, and scarce. “Tamun is out. Dresh is out. You have that third seat. You’ll have it until the Council meets. Then we’ll discuss it.”

“I’ll step down at that time,” Jase said. “Damned fast. I’ve no desire to sit on Council, let alone hold a chair.”

“First qualification of the job,” Ogun said. “Is Tamun alive?”

“Alive,” Jase said. “He’s become a Council problem.”

“A
hell
of a council problem,” Ogun said, and touched a metal collar beneath the gaudy orange suit. “Sabe. We’ve caught Tamun. Jase is third man, Ramirez’s appointment. And mine. We’ve got more atevi aboard, another important one, looks to be. They were waiting… to see what we’d do, apparently. Yes. We gave them a hell of a show, didn’t we? Now we’ve got to find beds for the lot. Sabe, pull all crew onto the ship. Council is going to meet. We need to patch what’s ripped. We need it very badly.”