Waiting, he was sure, for some answer, from some quarter, not likely to rest until it did come, and now the reply-clock was thirty-two minutes into negative territory.
Bridge crew took intermittent rests, a few at each console moving about on break, or, by turns, head pillowed on arms, resting weary eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting.
“ Request you proceed with approach, captain. Explanation after you dock. ”
It wasn’t the positive fuel answer they wanted. It wasn’t, we have everything in order, proceed toward the fueling port .
“They may not anticipate the alien craft can understand our conversation,” Bren murmured—wishing that were so, wishing that the Guild had miraculously turned cooperative—or that the alien out there did understand a common language. There was no proof of either. “One might distrust this request to dock first.”
“ C1, repeat the last query .” That was Sabin’s answer, cold and calm, as if they hadn’t just waited the lengthy time for the last inadequate answer, as if she weren’t, like all of them, aching to have basic questions settled and to know for certain they had fuel. But: do it again , was the response, in essence. Do it again until we get an answer we like .
And meanwhile, be it admitted, they weren’t doing what station wanted.
Bren felt his own knees protesting. And he walked, and paced, trying to think of all possible angles, and finally went back to Jase’s office and sat down in a chair opposite Banichi and Jago’s seat on the floor.
“Station has failed to answer Sabin-aiji’s simple question regarding available fuel, nadiin-ji. She has therefore reiterated her question. This give and take of answers will take, at least, another two hours.”
His bodyguard absorbed that information, respectfully so, noting clearly that Sabin-aiji had not backed down, and showed no sign of it.
“If it should be a lengthy time, then you should nap, Bren-ji,” Jago advised him. “It seems we are not yet useful.”
It was reasonable advice. He had been observing every micro-tick of information flow, fearful of missing some critical interaction, but found no further advice to give… He didn’t like the reticence on the station’s side. If the alien didn’t understand, Sabin was right: they could transmit nursery rhymes and targeting coordinates with no difference in that ship’s behavior—and if it did understand—then they had a very different problem, at once an easier one, but one in which the station would participate, and in which, in the fuel, it might hold a key bargaining item. Most of all he didn’t like the picture he had: a third party, themselves, arriving in the middle of a long standoff, an arrival recognizably allied to the station, talking with it while signaling the alien presence out there. It looked all too much like a schoolyard squabble, politics on that primitive a level, and the imbalance of power since their unexpected arrival here could tip things over the edge.
It would do it faster if they made a wrong move. Two powers had to be refiguring the odds at the moment, and he hoped the apparently bullied party, the station, didn’t suddenly decide to shove things into a crisis with some demand for action, the rationality of which they couldn’t assess at a distance.
“ Shift change ,” C1 announced then, over the general address. “ Crew will go to second shift .”
Belowdecks had waited long enough.
“ Sabin speaking ,” came a smooth, routine murmur following that. “ Situation remains much the same. We have not received adequate answers from station. We have not received a response from the alien presence. As you move through the ship, bear in mind the location of nearest takeholds. We will specifically notify crew of any change in the level of alert .”
Sabin was continuing to inform crew. Give her that. They were going to the second of the ship’s four shifts, one that properly was her own crew. And evidently she wasn’t going to rest now.
“We might rest,” he said. Jago was right. It was only sensible. “The both of you—one wishes there were a bed, nadiin-ji.”
“The floor is adequate, Bren-ji—room for one’s feet, at least. Will the chair suffice?”
“Admirably,” he said, and they rested—Banichi and Jago in full kit, with room to stretch out, at least, himself in a partially reclined chair, hardly daring shut his eyes, because of the buzz of communication in his ear. It became a white sound, and it was too easy just to go out.
He concentrated all the same, aware from the flow of communications that Sabin, still linked, had gone temporarily to her own cabin. That there was a shift-change in progress on the bridge.
The ship still waited for response, still waited.
“ Guildmaster Braddock speaking ,” came suddenly, clearly, the station’s answer, a different voice. “ Affirmative on your last query, captain. Don’t take any action toward the outlying ship. Repeat, take no action. We estimate it’s a robot outputting its observations to some more remote presence, which may or may not be manned. Your arrival has lit a fire under the situation. Come in immediately .”
That did it. He wasn’t going to lie there after that answer, rational and sensible as it might be on the surface. He was sure Sabin would head back for the deck like a streak.
Faster. An answer came immediately. “ C1, repeat our former query as a response .”
Sabin hadn’t budged an inch.
Damn, he thought. But he approved her obstinacy. If there was any doubt about the fuel situation and they weren’t talking about the alien, he was just as glad she wasn’t taking Phoenix in to become part of a larger, predictibly orbiting target.
He heartily wished there were better answers out of Reunion. But going out there at the moment wouldn’t help matters. He had nothing to say.
“ Senior captain ,” he heard Jase say, and he tried to stay in his semi-rest, expecting Jase to concur in the response, or to report the shift change complete. “ We have a flash response from the alien. Three bright pulses .”
That was it. He flung the chair upright, and moved.
Chapter 6
He and Sabin came out into the corridor at the same moment, Banichi and Jago close behind him, Cenedi exiting the dowager’s cabin, Gin and Jerry not far behind.
“It’s not a damn group tour,” Sabin muttered, ahead of them only by virtue of her cabin’s position in the corridor. Words floated in her wake and echoed in Bren’s earpiece. “Advice, Mr. Cameron. Advice!”
“Repeat their signal sequence at the same pace as our answer. Not upping the bet. Duplication, we can hope, is perceived as neutrally cooperative. I hope it gains us time, maybe a further signal to compare.”
“Second captain. Do you copy? Implement.”
“ Implementing ,” Jase’s answer came immediately.
Bridge personnel had all changed. Every seat was filled, all the same, every head directed absolutely to console screens and output.
“If that should be a robot,” Bren said as they arrived in Jase’s vicinity, “we might try to calculate the position of any outlying installation by any significant lag in their reply.”