“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 innocent relative caught in the last uprising, sided with Tabini, and with us, and all the while he was holding out to let Tabini beat his relatives. Then he got power over his own house, which set him up to make a try at overthrowing Tabini-aiji in the next round. Classic politics. But he’ll rest uneasily now that we’re back. And he’ll be desperate for information, which he can’t get too easily since he himself closed us off from the uplink station. That’s why we want to move fast and continually change the data. They surely know you have one remaining shuttle that’s still capable of getting us down there. They have to have formed some plan to go into action the moment Phoenix comes back, as we have, and in case that shuttle tries to land. That plan has to include neutralizing the dowager and the heir, it could mean getting boats in position to try to bring the shuttle down, which I hope is technically unlikely, and slow-moving. And our plan, quite plainly has to center on establishing a countermovement, finding out where they are, and killing them.”
“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.”
“You’re that sure they’ll rally.”
“If they don’t, for that, they never would. And I believe they will, so long as they’re alive and have resources. They’ll be there.”
“It’s the best chance for our situation,” Sabin said. “If you can reestablish relations with the atevi government—stabilize their situation—maybe get a new government installed, one that’s pro-space—get supply moving up here. Do you have a plan?”
Back to that nasty question. “As you say, captain. We stabilize the situation for starters. Vindicate Tabini-aiji. Vindicate him, even if he’s dead. It’ll make a difference in the shade and shape of any government that follows him. Beyond that—I can’t guarantee the outcome.”
“The boy?” Sabin asked. “The heir? Or the dowager?”
“Cajeiri might succeed. He’s Ragi, like his father. With the dowager as regent. Although the hasdrawad, their house of lords, has refused her claim before—frankly they were afraid of her in those days, because she was too closely tied to the eastern provinces. That perception of her had somewhat changed in recent years… but I don’t know where her province has taken its stand in this current situation. So I don’t know which the hasdrawad would choose—a regency, with Ilisidi behind the scenes, or a strong government, with Ilisidi in power, with Cajeiri still as heir-apparent.”
“Still, all our eggs in one basket, taking them down there. I know, I know, everything’s what she decides. But if he were up here, with Lord Geigi… ”
“Geigi’s Maschi, ruling an Edi population.” And at Sabin’s unenlightened stare: “He’s not Ragi. We absolutely can’t afford the perception of the boy under any influence but his own family’s. We can’t have him viewed as a puppet for Lord Geigi, or, God forbid, for human rule.”
“God,” Sabin muttered. “All right. All right. We go with it.”
“Best we can do is work fast,” he said. “If we get down in one piece, we’ll still have to reconstitute the maintenance facilities for the shuttles and locate all the personnel, who may be in hiding—or worse. At very worst, we’ll have the pilots and the shuttle we bring down. We’ll have one good window to get down, and—forgive me for expressing opinions in operational matters—we should use an approach over the sea to the west, where I trust there’s not going to be atevi presence armed with missiles.”
“Agreed,” Ogun said. “And that is what we planned. The course is laid in. You say we’re assured of the runway at Jackson.”
Sabin tapped a stylus on the table and frowned. “As it happens,” Sabin said, “your Lord Geigi’s called up the shuttle crew all on his own, and the dowager’s already shifting baggage and personnel aboard, while we sit here. We know you’ve contacted Mospheira. We assume you have landing clearance.”
Could he claim he was surprised, either at the blinding rapidity of events or by the fact humans knew everything Geigi did? “Then I’m asking your support,” he said. “The station’s technical support for the operation. And for whatever follows. We may need to call on you, maybe even for a limited strike from orbit. It’s nothing I want to think of, but it could become necessary.”
“You’ll have it,” Sabin said. Ogun, for his part, nodded. Of Jase, there was no doubt at all.
“Well, then I’d better go catch my shuttle,” he said, with this time a glance at Jase, who’d not said a word—who gave him a direct and worried look now as he stood up to leave, as the senior captains rose. To them all, Bren gave a little bow, the atevi courtesy. But he paused for a second look at Jase, who edged around the table to intercept him—didn’t say a thing, just looked at him, and he looked at Jase, the one of the captains who’d go down to the planet with him in a heartbeat.