Visitor: A Foreigner Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

plotting a government takeover.” A slight smile. Another sip. “Even better for Mospheiran consumption would be an image of Braddock being carted off in cuffs. Tastefully, of course.”
    The engineer wasn’t damned bad at politics. She never had been.
    “So,” she said, “the first Reunioner landings will be a minor issue. Kyo will be the big news, and
you
get to explain that.”
    “Happily. By comparison. I hope.”
    “I’m asking the question—just for my personal consumption, mind: I promise I’ll never quote you—
Are
you that confident we’re going to come out of this encounter all right?”
    “Hell, no,” Bren said, on a humorless laugh.
    “How are you reading this approach?”
    “I can’t. It’s exactly what the kyo did at Reunion—but slower, at greater distance, with more communication. I’ll tell you frankly what worries me more than any question of whether or not the kyo want real estate. We both know the kyo are at war, which is a fact we’ve deliberately kept need-to-know. The last thing we want to do is get entangled in the kyo’s military problems. We don’t know for certain where their enemies lie—or who’s winning, or even why they’re at war. It’s possible they’re looking for an outpost or even a refuge, and we
don’t
want either in this solar system.”
    “Understood. Agreed. But your estimate is that they’re here to talk? That that’s Prakuyo out there? Are you optimistic?”
    They’d used to share a brandy on occasion, aboard the ship, when Gin had had her quarters down the corridor from the dowager’s door, and his; and in dealing with Gin on that voyage, he’d been able maintain a sense of what was human. At least, Mospheiran human. They had been able to share jokes, share frustrations and worries, of which there had been no shortage, in two years of voyaging, half of it in eerie isolation, in the depths of the ship; and half of it in a ship overflowing with unscreened passengers.
    Gin had been there, waiting for word, when they’d dealt with the kyo the first time. She’d shared those hours with the rest of the ship, the fear of the kyo changing their minds and attacking, the fear they’d have to choose who to save and who to leave to die. If they hadn’t raided station stores and gotten those supplies aboard, there’d have been no way to save the majority of the people. They could have saved a few hundred . . . at most.
    Dark hours, those.
    Gin wasn’t asking for reassurance, or promises now. She was asking,
Bren, what’s your best guess?
and he answered with a frankness he wouldn’t give to many.
    “My optimism,” he said, “centers on the fact they chose to talk at Reunion, that they
initiated
communication from the moment we came into range. They
chose
to talk. Why they chose to attack the station that first time remains a mystery, one I’d
very
much like to solve before meeting with them, but when Ramirez left a damaged but still inhabited station behind, completely at their mercy, the kyo chose to leave it alone. I believe they chose to sit and watch, waiting to see whether the ship would return, and with what reinforcements. I’m encouraged that, after four years of silence, they chose to send over a shuttle rather than blow the place to hell. I’m not totally clear on what they were doing or what prompted it: an attempt at communication, maybe; or a team trying to investigate. And when the station blew up that shuttle, after another
retaliatory
strike—if in fact it was their action—they still chose to leave the station operational, and sit back and wait for six more years, until we showed up. Then they
still
chose one more try at communication before attacking. It doesn’t explain the waiting. It doesn’t explain a lot of things. My experience says not to imagine I know the answer. My experience says we’re not dealing with our language, our concepts, our culture, our laws,
or
our instincts. But the little history we have with them