Things Fall Apart: Chapter 71

Robinson Station, Tau Ceti, 16.15.775 CW

21.7 megaseconds since the catastrophe

Jump flares and other forms of emergence from hyperspace had been a common occurrence, Tau Ceti having been a busy system. The catastrophe, of course, had altered that significantly. With the exception of Zephyr's arrival, there had been only three, all of them Thessalian freighters whose cultural oddities and stubbornness had basically left them stranded in the outer system.

Captain McCaffrey could therefore be excused if her reaction to the news of an unscheduled jump flare was a rush of adrenaline all out of proportion.

Getting herself under control, she finally said, "What do we have?"

The tech looked up to see her there at his shoulder, and visibly tried not to fidget at the attention. McCaffrey cursed herself. She was not happy with her current command performance. The combination of long periods of boredom punctuated by demands from downwell for more of one thing or another that Robinson couldn't give—or else by actual disasters—was eroding her sense of aplomb.

Still, the tech answered, "We're just getting their login now, ma'am. Thessalian Navy registry, TNS Lilio, Colonel Itamaro Josefilo commanding, under...diplomatic flag, ma'am."

McCaffrey blinked. This was something new.

"More coming in now, ma'am, addressed to 'Whatever remains of the TCTO command structure, and also Commander Elyah Singer."

Before she could stop herself, McCaffrey exclaimed, "What?!"

With a remarkable deadpan, the tech responded, "I just read 'em, ma'am. You want it routed to your station?"

That was a hint if she'd ever heard one to get out of his personal space, and wound up as she was, she couldn't blame him. "Yes, please."

She went back to her own station, donned her headset, and played the recording.

Union City, Cherryh's World, 16.15.775 CW

Singer's nap had left her refreshed enough to give her mother a much more animated version of the rest of the story, including the tale of discovering her executive officer not only shared a clone line with, but had been parented by, the new president of Revi'i. "If she's going to adopt you," Esmé said with mock asperity, "I'd better get to meet her at some point."

"I'll see what I can arrange," Elyah responded, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be on social terms with heads of state.

Well, at this point, it was normal, Elyah supposed.

They'd talked late, and slept late, and were just getting through brunch when Singer's tablet chimed an incoming call. A glance showed it was coming from Admiral Karenski. Singer sighed. "Sorry, Mom. I have to take this."

Esmé made a face at the interruption, but Elyah could tell she wasn't serious about it, and took the call. She spared only a moment's thought for the fact that she was still in her pajamas. It would serve the man right for calling her on her first visit home in forever.

She was disappointed in her expectation of some reaction to her attire, however. Instead, a puzzled looking Karenski said, "Singer, what is it about you and Thessalians?"

Singer could only blink at that. "Sir?"

"First you sweet-talk freighter captains who were all nobly getting ready to starve into accepting help from you they wouldn't take from us." That wasn't quite true, of course, and he knew it. She also knew now was not the mood for her to be technically correct at him.

"Now," he went on, "there's a Thessalian ship that's just broken jump at the boundary. For a wonder, they're flying a diplomatic flag and claim to be eager to confer with us on matters of mutual interest. They also insist that you be present at any such conference."

Singer puzzled at this for a moment before musing, "It can't be about the freighters. The inbound ship and those freighters would almost have to have crossed in transit."

Karenski nodded, then went on. "And if all of that wasn't weird enough, the request was filed in Spacer Modern, not Thessalian. I couldn't get the freighter captains to talk to us at all without us cobbling together phrases from a dictionary, since they absolutely refuse to use machine translation and no-one on Robinson speaks Thessalian. But here comes a Thessalian Navy ship talking to us in our own language and asking for you by name."

Something clicked. Singer asked, "Does this would-be Thessalian diplomat have a name of his own, sir?"

"Colonel Itamaro Josefilo."

Singer closed her eyes, shook her head, and chuckled, then said, "I'll be back upwell by this time tomorrow, sir."

"You don't have to do that, Singer. I'm already prepared to put them off so you can get more time at home."

She shook her head, "There's no way they'd even be here unless it was something pretty dire. The fact that they bent so far as to actually use our language at all, and sent one of the few people they have who speak it, tells me they've got news we need to hear."

Karenski narrowed his eyes at her. "Singer, I realize I could probably just look this up in your file somewhere, but...seriously, how do you know all this."

"Well, Admiral...long story short..."

TCTFS Vespa, Lacaille 9352 outsystem

473 megaseconds before the catastrophe

"Do they want to be rescued or don't they?!"

Captain Davison was exasperated, and his communications officer, Lieutenant Maupassant, really couldn't blame him.

The old-fashioned SOS was clear enough: a ship was floundering in the outer system after a bad jump. Thassalian jump ships were reputed to be antiquated, but Maupassant was prepared to believe at least some of that was loose talk and prejudice. Thessalian isolationism smacked too much of pride, which naturally left people looking for signs that they weren't actually all that superior.

Still, the man had asked a question. Maupassant knew his captain well enough to know it was not actually rhetorical. "I'm pretty sure they do, sir, but...well, my Thessalian's shaky, but this thing they keep sending back at us seems clear enough. They're required to only speak their own language; they're required not to accept machine translation, because machines lie—sorry, Elaine, I'm paraphrasing from them, here."

On a screen nearby, Vespa's instance of Elaine, the command AI, sniffed disdain.

"Great. Wonderful. I don't suppose we have anyone aboard who actually speaks Thessalian?"

Maupassant held up a hand as he looked away, thinking. Davison was used to him by now, and let him think. Aloud, Maupassant mused, "I could swear I was just talking to someone about this the other..." he snapped his fingers, "...Got it! Singer. An ensign, one of the relief comm officers. Got a gift for languages, likely to wind up on a contact team sooner rather than later. She didn't so much take up Thessalian as its progenitor language, Esperanto, an old Earth conlang. There's occasional fads for it. Anyway, as near as we can tell given they don't really talk to us that often, modern Thessalian is still compatible."

"Well, get her up here, then!"

Singer walked onto Vespa's bridge with some trepidation. She'd been there before, just never on Alpha Shift. She couldn't imagine why she was being called there now. There were at least six other comm officers ahead of her before she'd be needed just to sit comms on Alpha, and at least twenty people ahead of her in the overall chain of command. The chances of her needing to sit in the hot seat were slim and none, and she liked it that way.

Still, here she was, and Maupassant was waving her over, vacating the comm station. By way of briefing, he said, "Thessalian ship in distress. Talk to them."

It was brusque and uninformative, and at the same time told her most of what she needed to know. Maupassant was cranky because Davison was—both visibly and to her empathic senses—cranky, and all of it was because the Thesallians were probably clinging to their linguistic superiority complex.

"Yes, sir!"

She picked up the headset and throat mic and, hoping her accent was not too atrocious, hailed the other ship and asked its status. The delay was a bit longer than the distance would allow for, but the response, when it came, was not just boilerplate rejection of contact.

"Vespa, this is kapitano Josefilo. Our engines have failed and our engineers are dead." The word he used was kapitano, not estro or ŝipestro, from which she denoted his rank was that of an army captain, not a naval commanding officer.

"What assistance do you require, kapitano?" She hesitated to offer anything specific. She doubted they would accept most of the obvious solutions.

But here, Josefilo surprised her. "Our science officer, while not competent to make the repairs herself, believes the damage could be repaired."

After a moment's thought, she decided to take full advantage of the fact that Maupassant and Davison would not immediately understand her, although of course, they had no compunction against machine translation, so she could still get into trouble. But she ventured, "You would accept engineers from our crew?" She tried not to sound too incredulous. The need to keep track of a grammar structure she had not recently practiced helped.

And then, the person on the other end surprised her by sliding suddenly into Spacer. "Our CO believes a quick death from the Most High's wrath, if that's what comes of such a decision, would be less painful and thus preferable than starving to death."

On reflection, later, she realized how much he'd risked, doing that. Even if he was also on a hush-mic, even if his people eschewed machine translation, if someone read his lips... Well, maybe he had a subvoc mic, so he didn't have to move his lips.

In Thessalian, she replied, "I will confer with my superiors and call you back. Vespa clear on your final."

Looked at in hindsight as she told the tale to Karensky, so many megaseconds later, she had to admit she had done more than confer. She had taken the initiative to present an entire plan: a small engineering party, and as the only live translator, herself to go aboard.

Like the rest of the party, she'd been required to agree to non-disclosure of what they saw, a concession Davison agreed to with surprising grace. Only later, looking it up, did Singer realize this was standing policy for the rare times Thessalians allowed themselves to be interacted with in person.

The repair party remained fully suited the entire time, returning to their shuttle to sleep rather than being offered quarters aboard. They ate only their own food, met only Josefilo and the ship's executive officer, who never bothered to introduce herself and barely spoke to them, and got the job done

Before leaving, Josefilo had managed a moment with Singer to say, in neither Spacer nor Thessalian, but New Chinese, "We get to go home because of you. No one else here will ever say it, but I will: I owe you one."

Singer had not really known how to respond to a debt of that magnitude, even as the creditor, but knew that to brush it off would also be insulting. Instead, she said in the same language, "Don't be offended, please, if I tell you I hope you never have to repay it."

Karenski heard out the tale without more than an occasional nod to show he was paying attention. When she was done, he asked, "Suppose he's here to make good on that?"

Singer shook her head. "Not as such, sir. The timing doesn't work out for him to have known I was here ahead of time. Even if they used a single long jump to get here, they must have left before word from David's Star would have reached them of...well, any of it." She paused, then said, "Unless, that ship is like Zephyr. Something newer, faster."

"Could be, but hard to tell. We don't have a lot to compare it to. Their arrival, though, was definitely jump flare, not surfacing from time compression. Mind if I run the question past Espinoza?"

"Not at all, sir. But even if so, that can't be his only reason for being here. You said he's under diplomatic flag. That means the Most High—their leader—would have dispatched him personally."

"Maybe she knew his side of the story you just told me. It's not like we have a lot of other ties between us."

She shuddered at that thought. Apparently, Karenski saw it. "Was that camera wobble or is it cold where you are?"

"Neither, sir. Somehow, the idea that the all-powerful despotic leader of a people the Tau Ceti Treaty Organization barely talks to might know my name gives me the collywobbles."

"You're getting popular all kinds of places, Singer. Just don't go gunning for my job, yet."

"Not on a bet, sir."

"All right, then. See you in a few shifts. Clear."

The connection cut. Singer looked up to see her mother staring at her.

"What?"

"I don't understand why it took this catastrophe to put you in command, child. You just described solving a problem, as an ensign, that your superiors couldn't figure out. They should have handed you the keys and retired on the spot."

Singer made a face at Esmé. "I didn't want to be in charge. I still don't. I just wanted to talk to people."

"We see how that ended up!"

They both snorted in unison, then sat for a second in silence before Esmé said, "Sounds like you should go pack."

Singer stood. "I'm afraid so. I'm sorry, Mom. I honestly hoped we'd get another day, at least, before something new blew up."

Esmé smiled fondly, if a little wistfully, at her child. "Go upwell and talk to your friend. I don't know a lot about Thessalian politics, but I'm prepared to believe you when you say this isn't just a social call."