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

ship. However, he’d care more about the fact that the security locks would seal him and his people off from the crew areas. You recall—you had the old admin quarters, but you still had to go through keyed locks to get near the bridge.”
    Also true.
    “That’s not the situation he wanted,” Jase said. “But we damned sure weren’t going to allow him or any of his supporters up in crew territory, seeding doubt into the crew and who knows what into the ship’s systems. So yes, I think he tried to hold the fuel hostage to avoid a repetition of Ramirez’ actions, and insisted on Sabin’s attendance in his office in order to ‘negotiate,’ even if it meant holding her hostage—we know now how fond he is of that tactic. But it didn’t work. We got her back, got the fuel, and got the people off safe. And that’s really about all I can tell you.”
    Things Jase said fell comfortingly into place. Maybe too comfortingly. He wanted to be sure.
    “I tell you what still bothers me. Ms. Williams maintains Ramirez talked to Braddock—several times and over some period of time. That it got heated. Wouldn’t the bridge crew know? At least that he was talking to
someone?
Wouldn’t they talk? That’s thirty people trying to keep a secret from family for ten years.”
    Jase frowned, thinking. “Communications doesn’t go anywhere between bridge and the rest of the ship without the communications officer authorizing it,” he said slowly. “And what goes on between chief at com and someone in a private call doesn’t go all over the bridge. It’s entirely reasonable, if the senior captain initiated that conversation from his office, that only
two
people on
Phoenix
were in a position even to know the exchange took place, let alone hear it—Ramirez, and the head com tech. Kalmanov. Who’s dead, now.”
    “How long dead?”
    “Six, seven years. Natural causes, what I know. People do die.”
    “Granted.”
    “Maybe Braddock did believe he had an agreement: with Ramirez. Maybe he concludes that the way he still says he outranks the ship’s captains. I don’t know. We don’t trust him, plain and simple.”
    “We?”
    “Ship-folk.
Phoenix
crew. And this is something maybe you don’t know. The Pilots’ Guild didn’t go ashore. It was
put
ashore. It was put ashore at Reunion because its priorities had shifted over to Reunion Station, and the captains of that day just stopped taking its orders. From the foundation of Reunion Station, it ceased to be relevant to the ship. Braddock thinks it still is.”
    “Put off. Years ago.
Generations
ago. That’s a long time to hold on to a fantasy job.”
    “He’s Pilots’ Guild.” As if that explained everything. And perhaps it did. Except:
    “And yet it took this long for the Pilots’ Guild to hold the fuel hostage to the ship’s actions.”
    “They had their little kingdom. We were the easy reason for the station to work and build, the reason for a Pilots’ Guild to hold power. We were fine when we were gone, I suspect. A problem to the station authority when we were in dock. Likely we were always in the way . . . until they wanted something from us.”
    “And what they wanted—for the first time in the history of the station—was protection. So from the founding of Reunion, the ship came in, got fueled, and went out to explore the surrounding space . . . until Ramirez, as Gin put it, stuck his nose where it didn’t belong.”
    It went to the heart of the kyo problem: how long had the kyo been watching? Not just watching Reunion, but the ship itself?
    “Pretty much. Beyond that—beyond that, I just don’t know your answers. To a certain extent, blind loyalty to the ship, adherence to its hierarchy,
does
drive us. We go where the senior captain tells us. Do what he tells us. Under ordinary circumstances, the why never comes into it much. What happened . . . made sense at the time. Once we knew there was more to the story . . . there was no one to