A siren sounded.
“ Sabin here. Take hold, take hold, take hold. Alien contact. We are manuvering after sending signal to alien craft. Stand by. ”
God, truth from a Phoenix captain.
Bren wedged himself back in among the rest. Kept his breathing calm and steady.
“Sabin-aiji has sent a signal to the foreign ship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. His breath seemed inadequate. And the braking hit. The signal had gone. Three blinks of the ship’s powerful docking spots.
Braking let up. “ Mr. Cameron .” Jase’s voice. “ Mr. Cameron to the bridge .”
“Aiji-ma. Nadiin-ji.” He groped for the padded edge of the cabinet and moved, not sure of his safety, but he answered the summons, as far as Jase’s position, against a padded wall. “Jase.”
Sabin was there, too, braced with her back against the same surface.
“Mr. Cameron.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Atevi are hearing that advisement below, too?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bren admitted.
“Efficient. Keep it that way. Don’t get in my way. Stand by to answer questions.”
Sabin left the takehold position, walked off, resuming her continual tour. Jase stayed close to him.
“Scary,” Bren muttered.
“You noticed,” Jase said. “We’ve signaled it. We’ve changed our position in case they fire on our signal.”
“Which also tells them we fear hostile action.”
“Shouldn’t we?”
“By our logic. They should figure we thought of it and preferred to talk, not shoot. One hopes they think that way.”
A small moment in which he could scarcely believe he’d just argued with Sabin on her bridge and urged the ship to take an aggressive response—but there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. There simply wasn’t, within anything he could think of.
And even in that gut-deep human and atevi dislike of turning their backs on an enemy, in their choice to deal with the situation rather than go on in, ignoring the presence, there was animal instinct at work… a good instinct, an instinct viable in every situation that two similarly wired species could jointly think of, but that didn’t say definitively that no other answer had ever evolved in a wide universe. It only said their behavior was statistically likely to be understood, based on a sample of two and based on the limits of the translator’s own imagination.
“Likely this maneuvering will drag on now for hours,” Jase said. “It might be an opportunity to persuade the dowager below. Tell her it’s for comfort. Comfort, at least.”
“This is the woman who sleeps on stone several times a year. Who rides mountain trails in thunderstorms. Who took on Cajeiri as a ward. I don’t think we’ll persuade her easily, Jasi-ji.”
“Days, Bren. It could be days working this all out. With terrible forces, if we have to move. Hard on the whole body, even in shelter. Tell her that.”
“One will pose the question.” He made the short trek to the security cabinet, quickly, economically.
And met a row of dark and light faces all with the same wary, determined expression.
“Jase-aiji suggests this maneuver will be extremely long, even days, and that for comfort and dignity—”
“No,” Ilisidi said abruptly. “We will not go below.”
“Nand’ dowager…”
“Interesting things happen here. Not there. If I were reckless of staff safety I would send after hot tea,” Ilsidi said. “I forego the tea. In that, I have taken my personal precautions and my staff is settled in safety. We are very well. Gin-nandi is very well.” This with an all but unprecedented nod toward Ginny Kroger, who gave a nod in turn—a unity of appalling, infelicitous two, give or take the ship itself—a welding of Gin’s notorious obstinacy to the dowager’s, which was legendary. Somehow there had been basic converse in his absence.
“I convey the respects of the ship-aijiin,” Bren said with a little bow. “And urge you all make yourselves comfortable, but sit warily, aiji-ma, nandi. One hopes this matter will work itself out peacefully.”
He caught Banichi’s eye, and Jago’s, and they extracted themselves from shelter, with relief, he was sure. He left, with them in attendance and within easier reach of information at the moment—atevi presence re-expanded onto the bridge.
He found Jase where he had been, next the take-hold just outside their shelter.
“The dowager declines. Gin declines. I used the word ‘days.’ They’ve formed an alliance.”
Jase didn’t look at him. Jase’s eyes, like Sabin’s, roved continually over the aisles, where techs sat waiting for response. “We have what facilities we have up here,” Jase murmured. “We can’t change them. But if she grows weary, offer my office, my cabin, my bed, for that matter.”
“One will do so, nadi-ji, with thanks.”
“For yourself as well. I want you rested, paidhi-aiji.”
“One understands that as well.”
Jase reached to his ear and handed him the communications unit, warm from his skin. “Use that. I want you current with our information flow.”
“One concurs.” He positioned it in his own ear, beginning to receive the very limited cross-chatter of station with station, Sabin’s low-key orders, the ordinary life’s pulse of the bridge. Jase secured another unit for himself, meanwhile, from one of the endmost consoles, adjusted it, became available.
“I am now in direct touch with ship’s communications,” Bren muttered to Banichi and Jago. “Make clear to the dowager Jase’s offer of his own cabin, which would afford more comfort and security. Tell Cenedi first: he may have more luck in argument.”
“A very good idea,” Banichi said, with a side glance at Jago—their information had simultaneously gone to Cenedi and to five-deck. And one hoped the dowager would hear reason.
A desk, a chair and a bed within easy walk of the bridge, it turned out, was an acceptable idea. There was not only Jase’s cabin and Jase’s office, but Ramirez’s and Ogun’s, unoccupied, ample room; ample means by which experience could be available and out from under foot, and the dowager was not opposed.
The station, meanwhile, answered an earlier time-lagged query. “ The spook’s been out there for years. It may be robotic. We instruct you, ignore it .”
“What grounds to believe it’s robotic?” Sabin fired back. “Be advised we are taking measures for contact.”
That was all the communication that could flow in that exchange. There followed, from the station, a few further queries. “ What kept you ?” was one particularly significant, along with: “ Who’s in command at Alpha ?”
“Fuel load wasn’t ready,” was Sabin’s immaculately honest answer, along with, “Local control, local politics, but negotiable.” That could cover anything, including armed conflict. “What changes here? What’s our fuel situation?”
There was the prime question.
Meanwhile galley served more tea and sandwiches, and Narani and the dowager’s staff sent up delicacies for the dowager and for humans on the bridge—weary bridge crew, crew who’d stayed far longer than their own shift, while below, crew chafed to be out of confinement in quarters. Officers of the next shift sent wary inquiries, briefing themselves, a busy, busy flow of conversation on several channels, C1 to C12. One had never appreciated how much went on, not even counting the flow of atevi communications aboard, which was another several channels.
The dowager took possession of Jase’s quarters. Bren meanwhile stuck close to the bridge, eating a sandwich while wandering between the atevi settled into the executive corridor and the human crew in constant activity on the bridge.
Jase had suggested, not for the first time, that they might take advantage of the moment now go to shift change. Bren’s own knees began to protest he’d stood long enough; and he had no doubt Sabin’s older bones had to be aching far worse than his as she kept up that slow, mostly silent patrol, occasionally commenting into the communications flow.