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solution for the refugees, and
they’ve
been divided as to what. But is it worse than we know?”
    Jase took a deep breath. “As of five days ago, it turned decidedly worse. I talked to Sabin last night, and I have clearance to say this. From her. Not from Ogun.”
    Secrets and division between the two senior captains. That didn’t sound good.
    â€œHere’s the problem,” Jase said. “Tillington’s been agitating to get the Reunioners to go to a new construction at Maudit. You know that. But when the news got out three Reunioner kids were coming down here, the rhetoric got significantly nastier. And apparently when we called asking the kids’ time down here be extended, Tillington stepped over the edge. He’s now claiming that Sabin and Braddock made a deal so Braddock would agree to evacuate Reunion Station.”
    â€œWe had to haul him out by force. That’s ridiculous.”
    â€œThe alleged deal puts five thousand refugees, some of them with knowledge of critical systems, behind Sabin taking over the human side of the station, putting station operation entirely in Reunioner hands, and Sabin taking over as senior captain.”
    An ugly scenario unfolded instantly. If one wanted to view Sabin in Mospheiran terms, with the knee-jerk Mospheiran assumption of self-interest and territorial interests over all, Sabin had been, for the last two years, in a position to dictate life and death for the Reunioners, and five thousand refugees constituted a large potential subversive force, on that scale.
    The fact was—if Sabin had wanted, last year, to take
Phoenix
and all five thousand Reunioners and go establish another station somewhere, she could have done it with no hardship to herself and no permission from anyone. If she were aboard
Phoenix,
as she had been, nobody could have stopped her, and the world might never have seen the ship again.
    But Sabin had done as she had proposed to do. She’d lifted off all survivors from the station, even Braddock—she’d destroyed the problematic human Archive and brought the refugees—numbering vastly more than anyone thought—safely to Alpha Station.
    True, she’d put them off the ship and onto the station as beyond the ship’s ability to sustain any longer. That would have upset Tillington, but the ship would
not
attach itself as a permanent hotel for residency. None of the captains would agree to that.
    That
had suddenly made the refugees a Mospheiran problem—Tillington’s problem and Captain Ogun’s problem.
    No, Sabin hadn’t made herself highly popular with Mospheiran stationers, and hadn’t been high on Ogun’s list of favorite people before she’d taken the ship to Reunion. Ramirez, who had been senior captain, was dead. Ogun had been second-senior, Sabin third, when an alien species had come down on Reunion ten years and more ago. And there remained, behind Sabin’s voyage back to Reunion, deep questions about command decisions and why the possibility of survivors had been hushed up. Captain Ramirez’ deathbed confession about Reunion had left nothing safe or sure between Ogun and Sabin.
    But the fact was, despite the personal differences that had arisen between Ogun and Sabin, Ogun had stood by while Sabin took the most precious thing ship-folk had,
Phoenix
itself, and headed out where (one now suspected) Ogun damned well understood there was an extreme danger.
    Had Ogun ever fully briefed Sabin about what had really happened out there?
    Two hundred years ago, human beings had planted their space station in territory an alien species claimed—had evidently passed unnoticed—until
Phoenix
had poked deeper into that species’ territory and triggered alarms.
    That species, the kyo, had blown Reunion Station half to ruin—then vanished, only to pop out of the dark again when Sabin arrived.
    Monstrous expediency might at that point have said to hell with