“You stay put down there!” Bobby yelled out into the dark, and the shout resounded like the trump of doom. “The captain’s here, and they got him alive, and Tamun’s a bleeding liar! You can talk to ’em, hear?”
There was a silence, a lengthy, anxious silence.
“Prove it’s you!”
“Tad,” Bobby shouted out, “you remember who broke the water tap and flooded the section! Would I be telling you that if it wasn’t me?”
“Bobby?” came a voice out of the dark, from well around the corner. “Bobby? Are you with them?”
“Yeah. And I’m all right, and Leo’s here and Frank and his team, and Tamun shot Ramirez with a bullet, Tad. Spread thaton the net. Shot the old man with a bullet. You can talk to Leo on the net. He’s got my rig on.”
“Tad,” Kaplan said, into the communications on the body unit. “You hear me? Frank Modan’s gotten a bad shock. Blew a hell of a lot of his rig out. There’s the lot of us trying to save the captain, but he’s in a bad way, shot in the chest. We got a tape, which is him, which I can play for you, if you’ll just plug into Cl and pass it on, and keep passing it. You’re still live, aren’t you? You’re hearing me loud and clear.”
“They’re telling the truth!” Bobby shouted up the corridor by voice. “Tell Cl just the hell doit, all right?”
“You got that recorder, sir?” Kaplan asked under his breath.
“I have it,” Jase said. “No adapter, just take it in on directional mike.”
The small sound of the recorder’s play button, the initial whisper of the leader sounded unnaturally loud in the waiting silence.
“ Ramirez here.” The recorder gave out that thread of a voice. “ Don’t believe a thing Pratap Tamun says, don’t take his orders for spit. I’m alive now only because Jase got me out. Tamun and his cousins are guilty as sin. Jase Graham to sit fourth. Jase, you get him out, hear!”
Chapter 27
“Do you read?” Kaplan asked when the recording played out. “Tad? You hear that loud and clear?”
Kaplan paused a moment, and his expression showed alarm. “There’s somebody moving up on them.— Tad! You get to us, hear! Run!—Ma’am, mister,” this, incongruously, to Banichi and Jago. “They’re moving our way, they have to! Don’t shoot!”
“I understand, Kaplan-nadi,” Jago said, a voice that was calm itself. “Banichi?”
“ Cenediis behind them,” Banichi said.
Bren said, very quickly. “Kaplan! They should stop, immediately, and stand still. Our own security is in the corridor. Tell them stand still, offer no threat!”
“You guys stop!” Kaplan said urgently into the mike. “You wait! Stand still, it’s atevi security behind you. Don’t spook anybody, just don’t move. Those guys are hell!”
Then Kaplan acquired a renewed puzzlement. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and: “I’m getting a query from Phoenixcomm. Sabin’sup there. Sheheard it.”
“What side is sheon?” Bren asked.
“Shall I ask, sir?”
Incredible, Bren thought, standing in the dark, with security units moving every which way, the dowager left in the dark at dinner, his own security hair-triggered, Ramirez struggling for breath to stay alive, and they had to ask a Phoenixcaptain where she stood on the issues.
“Ask,” he said.
“What’s the captain want?” Kaplan translated the question, and then relayed the answer. “Sir, Cl says she’s looking for Ogun, evidently he’s out of touch, and she doesn’t want anybody going anywhere.”
“He could be dead” Bren said. “Tell Cl what happened to us.”
Kaplan began to do that in rapid terms. Meanwhile light appeared at the intersection, and a handful of men in security rigs walked in their direction.
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 unexpected 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 wouldcome 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 Phoenixitself, 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?”