Visitor: A Foreigner Novel by C. J. Cherryh Page A

there weren’t sufficient supplies left to transfer to the ship to keep them alive on a long voyage, that they needed time to rebuild the station facilities, and that what Braddock wanted from
Phoenix
was the ship to stay there while they did rebuild that supply. There
were
certainly supplies to take when
we
arrived. We loaded them on, filled the tanks . . .”
    Jase nodded. “It’s what Braddock maintained all the way back here. That he’d had firm agreement from Ramirez that the ship would stay and defend the station while they rebuilt the tanks. So the station let the ship refuel. But Ramirez refueled and then ran out on them.”
    “That’s fairly well Williams’s story, yes.”
    “Honestly,
we
don’t know enough to deny it. Having seen the damage to the station,
we
knew our weapons wouldn’t stand a chance against whatever did that. Senior captain
must
have realized the same. If Braddock refused to accept that, insisted on
Phoenix
fighting an unwinnable battle . . . I can’t say I wouldn’t have made the same decision.”
    “Maybe. But there was another option, one
you
might have suggested, had Ramirez actually asked advice from anyone, especially the two individuals he’d specifically trained for the circumstance.”
    “Try to talk to the kyo?”
    Bren nodded, and Jase sighed.
    “I must admit, I have wondered whether or not I’d have thought of it. Whether Yolanda and I’d have had the skill to try it, young as we were. But we’ll never know, so I try not to dwell. Ramirez was in command the entire time, and when the word came to pull out, we believed, we
believed
completely, that there were no survivors. Timing was what you might expect for a search for survivors and refueling. You’ve seen the log. Tapes of the rescue boarding just cut out, once they were in, and the senior captain’s personal log is cryptic, to say the least. Thank God for that single reference to their flashing light contact attempt. Without that—”
    Without that one key, he might never have made the connection between the lights with which the kyo ship had greeted them, and Ramirez’ choice to ignore the same signal and run. It had given him his first insight into the kyo’s actions.
    “As for Braddock’s claims the station’s food supply was pretty well flat . . . we can’t argue that, because we don’t know. Braddock could have been lying, stalling to keep us there to protect him while he rebuilt the station. Not because the food wasn’t there for a viable evacuation, but because Braddock wanted to preserve his little kingdom. There’s no denying what Braddock did
this
time is exactly what Ramirez told the crew he did last time—he refused to evacuate. With the kyo rightthere, with plenty of food stores on the station, he refused to evacuate.”
    That much was true.
    “If you’re asking what I
think—
I think his motivations were the same then as now. I think he knew that if he boarded the ship he put himself in the hands of
Phoenix
captains. As noisy as he was about being in command of the ship, I think he knew the old Pilots’ Guild, which was his
only
justification for his position, was going to die as a separate entity the instant he crossed the threshold. I think he was willing to hold those people hostage until he got concessions, primarily a continuation of his own power and prestige, in writing, first from Ramirez, then from Sabin, while we were sitting there with the kyo looming over us. I think that was exactly it. I think he knew that evacuation was inevitable this time, given our interaction with the kyo, the promise we made them to evacuate the station. I think he forced that boarding party on us because he wanted to know how many crew we had, and whether he stood a chance of seizing control of the ship. I think he didn’t
want
his people or himself shunted off to the old colonist quarters of the ship, for which you can’t entirely blame him—the plumbing down there’s as old as the