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“You have no authority to be anywhere, and you damned sure don't have it to give orders to my staff!”

“You may say that, Mr. Tillington, but I do have the authority, I hold a commission from two governments as well as the approval of the Senior Captain, and I sincerely hope you are the only one hearing this. For your personal good, Mr. Tillington, and in the interest of handling the question of my authority quietly and with dignity, please come and discuss the situation with me in private.”

“I don't
go
to that side of the line.”

“Mr. Tillington,
Stationmaster
Tillington, contact with the kyo is a matter requiring experience and expertise. I have dealt with these people before. I have every confidence I can bring this meeting to a safe conclusion, given—”

“They're here because of the Reunioners, because
Sabin,
here, failed to take out the damn Reunioner records, and she's standing here trying to run my staff! Call
her
to your damned office!”

“Mr. Tillington, you are wrong. And there's no sense carrying on this discussion long-distance. Return the com to Captain Graham, and I strongly urge you take his suggestions at this point. I've given you a response that should hold the status quo with the visitors for the next few hours, granted they follow pattern, and I am extremely tired. I would ask we let tempers cool and take up the technicalities of my status here tomorrow. Can we set a time and place to meet, sir?”

“You hide over on the atevi side. Fine! You operate from there. You keep the hell off the human side of the station! You don't belong here, you're not wanted, and you're not needed here! The hell with you!”

There was some little disturbance in Tillington's background. Bren didn't break the contact—figuring that Tillington's shouting would have informed Jase they were getting nowhere. He hoped that Jase would take over the com.

But the connection broke. Possibly Tillington had indeed thumbed it off.

He clicked off, from his end. He waited.

And waited, figuring that whatever had happened, Jase would manage it better without him calling into the middle of it. He laid the com on the table to wait, and took a sip of cooling tea, noting that Jago had come back into the room during the final exchange, and that she was standing attendance by the tea service, beside the servant.

Jago gave him a lifted brow. Likely her hearing had picked up the louder bits.

The com vibrated, and he picked it up and pressed the button. “Bren here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cameron.”

Not Jase. Sabin herself.
Second
-senior captain.

“Captain Sabin. A pleasure. I regret the circumstances. I fear I didn't do well with Mr. Tillington.”

“His choice. Your transmission is going out as requested. Tillington's left Central. Senior Captain is aware.”

Ogun
knew Tillington had left. Tillington had held on to the station controls very possibly as Ogun's ally. And now he left in high temper. Gone to Ogun? Maybe.

“I'm a little concerned that he's upset.” Understatement, but everything they said was passing through the system, accessible by techs in that room. He
could
order Tillington's arrest if he thought it necessary. He had every confidence Shawn would back him if he did that.

But at possible political cost to Shawn, and maybe exacerbating the situation Tillington had stirred up on the Mospheiran side of the station.

So Ogun had pulled the rug from under Tillington.

And Ogun had been in contact with Sabin. Had at least gotten her advisement.

Sabin was probably running on high adrenaline herself, and there was some chance she was a little upset that her supposed ally in the aishidi'tat had put a conference with Ogun at the top of his agenda. But he didn't think so. She was canny and practical, in a major way.

“I'm relieved,” he said. “I just had a very productive discussion with Captain Ogun on the kyo situation. I think we can work this problem out very quickly with Mr. Tillington. I'd like to meet with you directly at your convenience; and I need to talk to Mr. Tillington in a calmer frame of mind. Has the kyo ship had time to respond?”

“They're about three hours lagged. Just had a repeat of their new transmission, identical to the last. Interval identical. They won't have gotten our transmission yet. We'll be keeping the same schedule, with your message.”

“Possible their message is related to the shuttle docking?”

“Not timed to it, but very possibly they observed the shuttle approach.”

“Well, we're here, we're available to you at any hour. It's my sense they're going to continue their own speed for a while. And that they're going to repeat that statement of theirs at the same interval for a while.”

“It's my sense that they're observing, mapping, and taking notes as they come.”
Sabin's voice was grim.
“It would be odd if not. But we don't know how long they've been out there.”

“I agree with you, Captain. I'm going to go off call for a few hours and get some necessary sleep to get my head clear. But I remain available for any other change in that transmission, any trouble or change from any source. Are communications to Central secure?”

“Not that secure, unfortunately.”

“I understand.” From whom it was
not that secure
remained a question—whether it was one of Tillington's techs still on duty, or Ogun himself that Sabin was worried about. “I'm going to ask Lord Geigi to bring his shift on now and possibly stay on extended watch, the Mospheiran crew having been on, I understand, a very extended session. Let them get some sleep. Will that be acceptable, to give you and the human staff some rest?”

“Acceptable and very welcome at this point, Mr. Cameron. We will order a shift of control to the atevi stationmaster as soon as we have his signal, and the head of staff
will
implement that shift, or we'll work down the list until someone will. We only ask to be notified of any change in the kyo transmission.”

“Absolutely, Captain.”

“Sabin out.”

The contact clicked out.

Geigi would be in control of operations from now on until Tillington was replaced.

That was an immense relief.

But had he done an entirely good job? He didn't think so. He'd just sent a very upset Tillington off to his Mospheiran allies to complain, granted that was
all
Tillington did. He entertained a somewhat uncharitable wish that Tillington would call down to Shawn's office tonight to lodge a complaint. Or protest to Sabin.

Neither, however, would lead to a good solution. It would be far better to have Tillington accept the change that was coming, and he hadn't set that up at all smoothly. One could only hope that Tillington and Jase had been inside the office with the door shut, and not out on the floor when Tillington had lost his temper.

Maybe the stress had just piled up. Maybe Tillington was reaching a point where he would welcome being relieved of duty, maybe given at least a sideways promotion on Earth—

But he was beginning to believe he shouldn't recommend the man for any such consideration. An official who saw an alien warship bearing down on his station, locked his fellow stationmaster out of controls shift after shift—

Tillington wasn't the first to wish him in hell, but he had certainly been passionate about it. Maybe Tillington had been following Ogun's orders—or guiding them. Walking out like this—Tillington had been camping out in Central shift after shift after shift, sleep-deprived and not at his most rational in the first place. He might have reached his physical limit. He
might
have gotten an order from Ogun.

Morning might bring more sober reflection. He hoped so.

But at the moment—that shuttle bringing Tillington's replacement couldn't get here fast enough.

And whatever was done at Tillington's orders or by Tillington's people right now—he wanted someone keeping an eye on station systems.

The original dual setup of Central had been a remote redundancy in case of disaster, two Centrals each on a different power unit, and at a considerable remove. They'd used that, finding it a way to share control between atevi and humans.

And mad as it had seemed during negotiations for the initial setup, the system had not only worked, it had continued working during the coup, when the station had had to fend for itself—when the station had had no functional translator. In the system as it had developed, as he understood it, humans and atevi “talked” personally through the input keyboards and the displays. Nearing shift change, human Central would begin passing off working situations to atevi Central: the automations all went over at the flip of a digital switch, but the transfer of active problems required an atevi worker who didn't speak the human worker's language first to shadow what was going on and understand what had been done—or vice versa—

Those procedures Geigi said worked amazingly well.

And sharing the same job, seeing the same problems over and over, workers who had never met, and who could not speak to each other outside their keyboards, worked together day after day on a kind of interlingual shorthand that had spread somewhat uniformly through both sets of techs, tagging familiar problems with their own set of descriptive icons. Neither side would understand the other's discussion of the problem—but both sides always knew exactly what was going on.

Not infrequently, though illicitly, so Geigi had explained, pairs of techs shared pictures of family and spouses. The relationships weren't the same, across that line; but sets of techs had become people to each other, across that barrier.

And would those techs, right now, running on nerves and with their chief officer in an emotional state—be
glad
to make the turnover to their atevi partners and go home to rest? They were divided into two shifts, so they had some relief, but even so, it was sleep and work, sleep and work, with no break, under a man undergoing a meltdown . . . a man whose insistence was that atevi were siding with the Reunioners, in a plot with the two captains who were standing watch in Central, with the kyo bearing down on them. The techs had to be at their own breaking point.

“Jago-ji, advise Geigi to be ready to make the shift in Central just as soon as he can get his team there, and treat the other side very gently. Workers there are exhausted. Tillington has just walked out and left his staff upset and without direction. Tell Geigi that the kyo have begun transmitting our names now—that part is good news—I have responded, in a repeating transmission, at an identical interval, and he must wake me and also report to the Captains if there is any change in what I have left in operation. One cannot assume it is definitely Prakuyo an Tep we are dealing with, but the kyo are asking to see me, the dowager, and the young gentleman. Tell Geigi workers may be advised that this message from the kyo is a favorable change.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and left. Every detail he had enumerated would be handled, and handled quickly. He could rely on that.

But the problem inside Mospheiran Central remained far from resolved.

The servant still stood by. Bren sat there a moment, still holding the com: tired or not, there was no way he was going to sleep until he had word things were on an even keel and the switchover was complete. He looked at the servant, made a slight move of his hand, and in very short order another cup of tea arrived on the side table.

“Thank you, nadi-ji,” he said to the servant.

“Nandi,” the servant said, all earnestness. Staff knew. Staff knew enough to make
them
worry right along with him.

And he was supposed to solve it.

He felt that expectant look. He felt it and asked himself what in
hell
he could do.

The com in his hand buzzed.

“Bren?”

It was Jase.

“I'm here.”

“Just reporting in. Sabin's finally going off-shift. I'm going to stay here in Central to supervise the handoff to Geigi's crew and to officially dismiss the shift. I want to talk to Geigi for a moment after we hand over. By the time I get through here, I imagine you'll be wanting to be in bed, too, right?”

“I do think I'll make a lot more sense in the morning, but if you want to drop by tonight, I can manage.”

“No sense wearing yourself out. Things are under control. I'll see you in the morning. If anything goes amiss, I'll call you.”

“I'm going to need to talk to Tillington tomorrow, after he's had a chance to calm down. I'll try to resolve that situation. At least calm it down.”

“Good luck with that operation. —And thanks, Bren.
Thanks.
Good night. Get some rest.”

“You too,” he said.

The com clicked off. He laid it down on the side table, beside the teacup.

What he was going to say to Tillington tomorrow to calm things down he wasn't sure—and it probably wasn't going to improve with
you're being replaced.
Tillington already wished he'd take a walk in space. Maybe Ogun wished the same, though he thought he might have made a dent in that attitude.

One could hope the technician pairs in the two halves of Central would communicate a calm switchover despite the outbursts and tension from Tillington.

And that Jase, physically standing in Mospheiran Central, would advise the human techs exactly what Geigi would tell his own workers, that they were making progress with the kyo and that they all needed to keep things low and quiet.

Could he read anything at all into the timing of the change of communication from the kyo?

It did suggest the kyo ship might be aware that a shuttle had docked.