Grail - Elizabeth Bear [106]
Whatever he experienced, he met it with dignity.
And as it was true courage, and not the storybook kind, Dust found that he admired that. Admired it, and had no understanding of how to define it. Storybooks were what he was created for. And from what he had created himself, and this entire society that surrounded him. Princes and knights-errant and all.
Rightly considered, histories, too, were storybooks. Of a sort.
“You go on ahead, Chief Engineer,” Benedick said. “Make sure all is in readiness for us. Chelsea and I will have no problems with the prisoner.”
Nova could have done the same, but he must have been counting on Jordan’s physical presence having an effect on the Captain. Jordan’s wings unfurled the rest of the way; her eyes tilted upward and her arms streamlined along her body. A kick, a flick of pinions in the lessened gravity, and the tiger-colored Engineer was gone.
It was a sign of her youth that she accepted an order—however politely phrased—from a Conn she outranked, without question or modification. At least she hadn’t called him sir.
If I were her Angel, there would be none of that. If I were her Angel, she would not bow so willingly to any Conn who ordered it. She would be a power, a force to be reckoned with. I would give her wings in metaphor as well as truth.
Dust almost crooned after her, but that would be unwise.
Chelsea made a noise as if she wished she could turn her head and spit. “There won’t be any of that on a heavy body.”
“Wings,” Jsutien said. “One more thing we won’t need where we’re going.”
Chelsea took his elbow. “Come on,” she said. “The sooner we get the inside of your head looked at, the sooner we can all get lunch.”
* * *
Once Danilaw had reclaimed his pressure suit and gotten Samael to explain to him how to patch into the Jacob’s Ladder’s systems for a power boost, he called Fortune. The modifications required a little soldering but, unsurprisingly, it turned out Captain Amanda knew her way around a standard-issue pressure suit repair kit pretty well.
Administrator Jesse was on hand to take his call—fortuitously, it turned out, because the motes and probes Amanda and Danilaw had deployed from the Quercus had reported the explosion. Combined with the cessation of telemetry from the space suits, it had seemed a logical supposition that Danilaw and Amanda were dead, casualties of a treacherous attack by the crew of the derelict generation ship.
“Gain has been declared Acting Premier,” Jesse said, in that precise and mannerly way of his. “She is placing the colony on a war footing.”
Danilaw wondered what exactly that meant, and furthermore what exactly Gain thought she could accomplish against people who knew how to fight and had centuries of practice in doing it.
“Planetary defenses are engaged to prevent you from approaching the orbit of Fortune,” Jesse said. “A broadcast is being prepared warning the Jacob’s Ladder away on pain of destruction. Public opinion is running high against the aliens, Premier.”
“Our evidence suggests the explosion was caused by sabotage committed on Fortune itself,” Danilaw said. “It was an attack by us against them. The Quercus’s drive detonated.”
He paused and glanced at Amanda, who had waited just out of pickup range. She leaned forward into reception. “So Gain stepped right into the power vacuum, did she?”
Jesse’s eyes widened. “She ordered an inquest begun at once. Decisively. She stepped up the assemblage of a defense cordon, too. By last night, there was a popular vote to confirm her as Acting Premier in your absence and … presumed death.”
“Well, I’m not absent anymore,” Danilaw said. “Patch me through to the media center, would you? I