Sabin had been lucid, and listened to him, her mouth set to a thin line. She wasn’t ready to speak, but she was holding on to arguments as they sailed past her doubtless aching brain.
“I’m mobile,” she said, “as long as we’re in zero-g. I’ve got my tubes. Everything floats. Give me a headache-killer. Damnyou and your schemes, Mr. Cameron, and damn your atevi friends. I’m going to the bridge. Graham isn’tin charge.”
“Yes, captain.” The chief medic made a move to bundle the tubes and the fluid-delivery apparatus—wrapped them together in plastic and tucked them toward Sabin, still pumping their stabilizing content.
“Sabin declares she will go to the bridge, nadiin-ji,” Bren said in Ragi, knowing what he was throwing into motion—and avoiding names. “She is challenging. Advise the bridge.”
Sabin looked at him, quietly rotating toward level, toward that eye contact that human beings wanted with each other, that contact of souls, and it was a blistering, burning contact—momentary, as Sabin sought, with the help of others, to leave.
There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. Jase might try to prove she was out of her head and seize command by virtue of the senior captain’s incapacity, but treatment and sheer dogged determination was overcoming the substance in Sabin’s bloodstream, and she was going to get to the lift, and she was going to challenge Jase, and call on her own bodyguard in the situation… Jase’s bodyguard all being here.
That, he could help.
“Mr. Kaplan,” Bren said. “Assist the captain.”
Kaplan looked at him, Kaplan with doubtless the same desperate set of thoughts going on behind that distressed expression, Kaplan knowing he shouldn’tbe taking orders from an outsider, in support of a captain hostile to his captain. But there was a level of trust between them, of long standing, and Kaplan did move, and the rest of the human escort did, willing to assist Sabin… least of several evils. Kaplan himself offered a hand to assist Sabin’s movement.
And an alarm siren went off through the ship.
And stopped.
“ This is Captain Graham. The Mospheirans are now aboard. We’re going to release the hookups and stand off, preparatory to spin-up. Take hold. Take immediate precautions.”
Jase repeated the same advisement in Ragi and Sabin fumbled after her communications unit, struggling for composure. “C1! Captain Graham is notin charge. Put this to general address! Captain Graham is not in charge. First shift take stations.”
Humans in the medical facility stood as if paralyzed.
It didn’t come over the general address. Sabin’s advisement hadn’t gone out.
C1, on a decision C1 probably hadn’t made alone, hadn’tcooperated.
The motion warning sounded, staccato bursts, warning anyone who’d ever studied the emergency procedures not to be moving from secure places. The warning went on for over a minute, and medical personnel scrambled, securing loose lines, bits of equipment, checking latches.
The warning stopped.
Almost immediately a crash resounded through the ship frame.
Lights dimmed and came up bright again.
“ We have released,” Jase’s voice said. “ Stand by.”
As if Sabin hadn’t said anything. Lights on the intercom panel strobed yellow: caution, caution, take care.
Medics moved to take Sabin. Atevi shifted position. Bren grabbed a safety-rail, heart pounding.
“ Damn you,” Sabin shouted.
The world moved, slowly, subtly, the same feeling as the shuttle had. Strange, Bren thought. Strange that something so massive as Phoenixcould move like that, just so softly.
“ This is Captain Ogun,” the intercom said, “ speaking from station offices, wishing you a safe voyage and a safe return. Our hearts go with you. Be assured that the cooperation of world and station will continue, preserving and building a safe home base for this ship and others. We have been very fortunate in our welcome here.”
“ Stand by,” the intercom said then, this time in Jase’s voice.
Muscles tensed. Medics cradled their unwilling charge.
“ Have no doubts,” the intercom said, again in Ogun’s voice, “ of our faithful keeping of this port. We will keep you in mind until you’re safely home, with, we hope, all our missing crew, and all our citizens.”
Recorded message, Bren thought desperately. God, it was going bad. Sabin was never going to forgive the dowager, or Jase, who he was sure had just played a departure message out of context.
Sabin damned sure wouldn’t forgive him, once Sabin knew the truth.
But Sabin, hazed and hurting, didn’t fight any longer. She’d made a valiant effort, a heroic effort. Bren knew, in his own gut, what it cost, and wondered at an old woman’s stamina and will… even to contemplate traveling up to the bridge in her condition. Gravity was the trump card, gravity, that pulled bodies down to decks and reasserted ordinary capacities. Sabin couldn’t make it—couldn’t reach the lift. Couldn’t stand, or walk. And knew it.
Motion started. A bulkhead came toward their backs at glacial speed, so, so slowly, while at the same time bodies and objects moved as slowly toward the deck. Small loose items simply drifted across the room, a bundle of tubing, a handful of tissues, a towel, and Bren felt the bulkhead against his shoulder as he felt his feet contacting the deck.
Sabin went rackingly sick. The medics contained the situation, and there went the delicate chemical balance, both positive and negative. She could not hold herself on her feet, that was the plain fact, as objects slowly acquired weight to go with their momentum. The pressure of feet against the floor equaled and then exceeded that against the bulkhead.
The bulkhead pressure stopped. There was a very queasy moment, and then Bren became aware he was standing as he would on the station, with the ship drifting inertial.
And themselves sideways on the inside of a torus. There were things the mind didn’t want to know or reckon with.
Sabin was convulsively ill, and the medics, protective of her, saw a cot let down and Sabin bundled into it.
“Mr. Cameron,” the chief doctor said, “I’ll ask you to take this occupation force out into the corridor. Captain’s orders.”
“No, sir,” Bren said quietly. He had a dozen arguments, but only one matching Sabin’s order: “We’re here at the sitting captain’sorders, and we feel we should regard that instruction until Captain Sabin’s recovered.”
The doctor wasn’t happy. “Watch them,” the doctor instructed a subordinate, “and don’t let them touch her. Don’t let them touch anything.”
Oh, what a happy situation.
But there they sat. Or stood.
They could all end up under arrest, once the matter shook out—God forbid Sabin should die, though that would solve certain things at a stroke, and it could happen very, very fast if Ilisidi so much as flicked a finger. Bren walked over to her, bowed, and explained quickly, in a low voice.
“Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji is furious and takes it that she was poisoned, on which I have not been so forward as to claim any knowledge…”
Ilisidi smiled—was it a smile?—and rested a hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder. “She is alive and quite well. It was a very small dose. But we will notbe constrained in movement or access, and that you may tell her.”
There was an arrival at that point. Ginny Kroger walked in, with a handful of the station’s security guards, and the room… already crowded… became very crowded indeed.
“Bren,” Ginny said, and gave a little bow toward the dowager. “Dowager.” She said it in Ragi, a courtesy. Only a few years ago nohuman but the paidhi ever addressed an ateva, and it had become gingerly matter-of-course that one shoulddo so. “We understand there’s been a little question of our freedom to move about. We also understand the captain’s taken ill. We’re here. At your service.”