“Captain Sabin,” he heard Jase say, amplified by the earpiece, “we should proceed on Mr. Cameron’s advice.”
“We’re on course, second captain.”
“If the spook’s been out here six years, it may have gathered something of our language—if it’s picked up any station chatter. If, God forbid, it’s gotten hold of any personnel.”
Jase’s mind was clearly working. Chillingly so—convenient as it might be to their mission to meet an opposition that could be talked to. The blink-code procedure wouldn’t carry that. Direct transmission might.
Dared they risk breaking pattern with what seemed the alien’s own chosen mode of communication?
Not wise, every experience informed him. Not wise to push the envelope.
“We should stay to the blink-code, captain, unless they initiate another mode.”
“We’ll try Mr. Cameron’s notion,” Sabin said grimly, and gave no window into her own thoughts.
Neither, one noted, did she show any inclination to answer station’s orders at the moment.
They stood. They waited.
The clock ticked down.
“ Repeat ,” the word came in from Reunion, “ do not contact the outlying ship .”
Sabin’s lips made a thin line. “I believe we’re having transmission troubles,” she remarked to all present. “C1, put me on general address.”
“Proceed, captain.”
Sabin picked up a wand mike from C1’s console. “ We have now signaled the alien craft and diverted course toward it in what our planetary advisors suggest is a reasonable approach. We remain on high alert. We are not releasing crew from cabins. There remains a likelihood of sudden movement which exceed takehold safety. In other words, cousins, we may have to get the hell out of this solar system. Stay smart, stay put, stay alive .”
Bren translated that for his allies down in the executive cabins, and for five-deck. And waited. And sweated.
“ Captain Sabin .” A deeper voice, this time, from Reunion Station. “ This is Guildmaster Braddock. If you insist on this change of course, you risk our lives. We have this information for you. This is very likely a robot. It’s sat there for years without moving or responding. We have no indication of it being controlled from outside. Optics have turned up nothing in outlying regions. We detect no transmissions and no active probes. Our experts believe it’s a failed piece of equipment dating from a second attack on us and we urge you reconsider any approach to it. If it’s dormant, it does us no good to wake it up. Abort whatever you’re doing in regard to it. If you’re on Ramirez’s orders, abort. You don’t know what you’re messing with. You may get a robotic response and it may be lethal and unstoppable. I urgently advise you pull back .”
That, Bren thought, that was interesting… not least regarding a second attack, in the ship’s absence. And interesting regarding Ramirez’s relations with his Guild, if they’d had overmuch doubt. Station hadn’t trusted Ramirez. And they’d had no way to remove him from command.
Sabin looked at him, eyebrow arched.
He looked back, looked at Jase, looked at her. “ Second attack.”
“We continue our transmission difficulties,” Sabin said without comment.
And the clock ran down toward the alien’s reply window.
“Second attack,” Jase echoed, walking near him on his right. Jase and Sabin alike showed the hours they’d been on duty. Jase’s voice was ragged.
“Things haven’t stood still here.”
“They’re right, six years of patience doesn’t sound organic. But…”
“Can’t assume an alien behavior,” Bren said.
“Can’t assume an alien machine is set the way we’d set it, either. The thing could do any damn thing.”
“There is that,” Bren muttered. “But it’s signalled us. Machine or not, it had that pre-set in its routines.”
Flick-flick-flick of the reply window numbers.
Into the negative. Ten, fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-odd.
“ Signal from the alien ,” someone said, audible in Bren’s earpiece.
Sabin and Jase moved to the nearest consoles. Bren, Banichi and Jago a massive shadow behind him, watched over Jase’s shoulder, hearing the details. The signal was a series of six lights—was there significance in six?—mirroring their action.
It made an analog of their signal, it mirrored what they sent, and it didn’t need to slow down, just point its bow their way.
Then a steady central flash. One light. Blink. Blink. Blink.
“It’s coming toward us,” Sabin said quietly. “We’re now mutually approaching, Mr. Cameron. One could say a leisurely near-collision course. It’s moving toward us.”
There were numbers involved on one of the screens. One assumed they had something to do with that movement. Bren held his breath, then decided oxygen was useful.
Deeper breath.
“I think I’ll go have a cup of tea,” he said, “and get my wits online.”
Sabin stared ice at him. Then, curiously, gave an accepting nod. “You go do that, Mr. Cameron. If the ship out there doesn’t blow us to hell, we may need your services in what you’ve gotten us into.”
“I’d advise a pause,” he said, “a conversation at convenient distance.”
“If it won’t interfere with your tea break.”
“I’ll manage, captain. I don’t want to push the body-space issue with them. Just a mostly conversational distance. This is ours to set.”
“We’re not a dock runabout, Mr. Cameron. We don’t jitter about with any ease. And we don’t pick the interval, now. They’re enroute to us .”
“Yes, ma’am. But we signal when we’d like to. With luck, they’ll do the same.”
Sabin just stared at him. Then: “Takehold in forty-five minutes, Mr. Cameron, given they don’t fire or accelerate. Go have your tea.”
He had outraged Sabin. He hoped not to do the same for the crew. He gathered his bodyguard and walked back to the executive corridor, straightening his coat and cuffs, asking himself did he need a new shirt run up—the brain was, oddly, going into court-mode, and Shejidan’s instincts rose up, ridiculous as some of them might be. He became nand’ paidhi again. He worried about his wardrobe. And with it, the signals they might be sending. It wasn’t just a tea break. It was a way of life.
He rapped gently at the dowager’s door, and discovered the dowager, in the most comfortable chair, held court with a fruit drink in hand, and Cajeiri sat on a mattress beside Gin Kroger. They’d taken the cabin apart and put it back together in a more felicitous configuration, Ilisidi sitting centermost, Cenedi and his men occupying the corner, standing.
Bren bowed. “Aiji-ma. We have now issued a set of signals which the foreign ship is mirroring. The current course will bring us to conversational distance and the ship will manuever briefly and slow down, although the possibility of violent evasion exists. Please be prepared for quick action. In the meanwhile, I shall retire to my cabin to think.”
“Pish,” Ilisidi said with a careless wave of her hand. “This is a mattress. That is a wall. We do as we can, nandi.”
“One observes so, aiji-ma.” He made a little bow. “I have secured Sabin-aiji’s cooperation and seen felicitous numbers on the bridge. One hopes for a little time, yet, aiiji-ma. Do take care.”
“If you need help up there—” Gin. Dr. Gin Kroger, who understood machines. In Shejidan that move intervening in the dowager’s conversation would have had hands reaching for sidearms, and Cajeiri looked up, mouth open.
Ilisidi simply waved an indulgent hand. “ Tea , one believes the paidhi-aiji requested.”
Oh, someone understood more ship-speak than they routinely admitted. Someone closely monitoring his doings on the bridge. Nothing was news to the dowager.