Free Invader by C. J. Cherryh

obscure communications officer in charge of the all but defunct ground-station link answer that inquiry. "
Say again
?"
    Which he rendered, and rare laughter touched the solemn faces about the table — surprise-reaction as humor being one of those few congruent points of atevi-human psychology; he was very glad of that reaction. It was an overwhelmingly important point to make with them, that humans had been as surprised as atevi; he hoped he'd scored it hard enough to get that fact told around.
    That recorded call skipped rapidly through an increasingly high-ranking series of phone patches until he was experiencing the events,
he
was waiting with those confused technicians — recovering the moments he'd missed while he was tucked away in remote places of the continent, and which, with Hanks sitting idle and unconsulted, atevi had had to experience without knowing what humans were saying.
    After the first few exchanges, the realization that the contact was no hoax must have rocketed clear to the executive wing in less than an hour, because in a very scant chain of calls, the President of Mospheira was talking directly to the ship's captain.
    "He's telling the ship's captain that he is in charge of the human community on Mospheira. The captain asks what that means, and the President answers that Mospheira is the island, that he is in charge…"
    He lost a little of it then, or didn't lose it, just whited out on a wave of acute discomfort. He caught himself with a tightness around the mouth, and knew he had to keep his face calm. "Back the tape, please, just a little. The shoulder's hurting."
    "If the paidhi is too ill —" Finance said; but stern, suspicious Judiciary broke in: 'This is what we most need to hear, nand' paidhi. If you possibly can, one would like to hear."
    "Replay," he said. The paidhi survived at times on theater. If you had points with atevi you used them, and going on in evident pain did get points, while the pain might excuse any frown. He listened, as the President maintained indeed he was the head of state on an exclusively human-populated island —
    God. It already hit sensitive topics. He was no longer sure of his own judgment in going on when he'd had a chance to stop and think; he thought wildly now of falling from his chair in a faint, and feared his face was dead white. But pain was still a better excuse than he'd have later.
    "The captain asks about the President's authority. The President says, 'Mospheira is a sovereign nation, the sta tion is still under Mospheiran governance. The ship's captain then asks, 'Mr. President, where
is
the station crew?' — he's found the station abandoned — and then the President asks, 'Why — ' " He tried not to let his face change as he played the question through and through his head in the space of a few seconds, trying not to lose the thread that was continuing on the tape.
    "What, nand' paidhi?" the Minister of Transportation asked quietly, and Bren lifted his hand for silence, not quite venturing to silence an atevi lord, but Tabini himself moved a cautioning hand as the tape kept running.
    "The President of Mospheira complains of the ship's abandonment of the colony. The ship's captain suggested that the humans on Mospheira had a duty to maintain the station."
    And after several more uneasy exchanges, in which he
knew
he'd gotten well over his head in this translation, came the conclusion from the ship: "
Then you don't have a space capability
."
    Bluntly put.
    He rendered it: "The ship's captain asks whether Mospheira has manned launch capability." But he understood something far more ominous, and there seemed suddenly to be a draft in the room, as if someone elsewhere had opened a door. He sat and listened to the end of that conversation, feeling small chills jolt through him — maybe lack of sleep, maybe recent anesthetic, he wasn't sure.
    No. Mospheira didn't have a space capability. Atevi didn't have, either. Not to equal that ship. And there was