Destroyer by C. J. Cherryh

prepare our rooms and never mind coming to that abysmally uncomfortable dock. We shall meet you in decent comfort, Geigi-ji, as soon as possible. If you think of other matters, include them with your documents. I am handing this phone back now.”
    “Yes,” Geigi said, accepting orders, and the contact went dead.
    Bren stood still, numb, and glanced at Jase.
    “I translated,” Jase said, with a shift of the eyes toward Sabin.
    “We have a problem, it seems,” Sabin said. “We have a shuttle, a ship full of more mouths to feed—we do have our own ship’s tanks, which should suffice to feed us all and the station, not well, but adequately, so at least we won’t overburden their systems. And we have our additional miner-bots, slow as that process may be.”
    “We have our own manufacturing module,” Gin said. “And we have some supplies. We can start assembly and programming on extant stock as soon as we dock. We can get them to work in fairly short order, and see if we can pick up the pace of their operation.”
    “Good,” Sabin said shortly.
    In one word, from high hopes and the expectation of luxury back to a situation of shortage and the necessity of mining in orbit, the condition of life of their ancestors. The condition of the great-grandfathers of the Reunioners, too, who had had to build their distant station in desolation and hazard, by their own bootstraps.
    They had to break that news to four thousand-odd colonists, and still keep the lid on their patience. Four thousand desperate people who’d been promised the sun and the moon and fruit drops forever once they got to the home station—and they were back to a hardscrabble existence, with a revolution in progress down in the gravity well.
    The gravity well. That long, long drop. Bren felt a sensation he hadn’t felt in two years, the sensation of standing at the top of a dizzying deep pit, at the bottom of which lay business he couldn’t let go its own course.
    Tabini. Atevi civilization. Toby and his own family, such as he had.
    “Mani-ma.” Cajeiri, ever so quietly, addressing his great-grandmother. “Do you think my father and mother are still alive?”
    Ilisidi gave a snort. “The Kadigidi would wish it known if not. Evidently they dare not claim it, even if they hope it to be the case, and one doubts they have so much as a good hope of being right. Likely your father and mother are alive and waiting for us to descend with force from the heavens.”
    “Shall we, mani-ma?”
    “As soon as possible,” Ilisidi said, and looked at Bren. “Shall we not?”
    “How long until dock?” Bren asked the captains.
    A flat stare from Sabin. “A fairly fast passage. When we get there, we’re going to be letting these passengers off in small packets. Very small packets. Their quarters have to be warmed and provisioned.”
    They could warm a section at a time, and would, he was very sure; but they could also do it at their own speed, which was likely to be very slow. Sabin meant she was not going to have a general debarcation, no celebration, no letting their dangerous cargo loose wholesale.
    And Gin Kroger had to get at her packaged robots and get the manufactury unpacked.
    “I very well understand,” he said with a bow of his head that was automatic by now, to atevi and to humans. “I think it wise, for what it’s worth.”
    “Our passengers are stationers,” Sabin said. “Spacers. They understand fragile systems. They won’t outright riot. But small conspiracies are dangerous—with people that understand fragile systems. I’m going to request Ogun to invoke martial law on the station until we completely settle these people in—simplifying our problems of control. I trust you can make this understood among atevi. I trust there’s not going to be some coup on that side of the station.”
    There was very little human behavior that could not be passed off among atevi with a shrug. But emotions would be running high there, too, considering