Free Explorer by C. J. Cherryh

know the deep-down truth, second captain? I don’t know and I don’t give a damn at this late date. Tamun turned out to have an agenda I didn’t know he had, and Stani and Jules didn’t know he had. They took my advice. It was bad advice. A bad decision approved by all three of us. And since he’s dead and the ones still with us that followed him have stepped sideways as far as they can, it doesn’t matter these days, does it?”
    “I hope it doesn’t,” Jase said. “I truly hope it doesn’t. I want us to get there, grab any survivors we can find, and get out of the neighborhood forever, as fast as we can.”
    “And if there’s other occupancy?”
    “Just get out of the neighborhood as fast as we can.”
    Sabin leaned back, cup cradled in a careless hand. “You really want your question answered, why you were born?”
    “I’m curious.”
    “It’s possibly germane. Stani had a notion of contacting the civilization he thought he’d found. But it contacted
us,
didn’t it? So much for reason and diplomacy.”
    Contacting the civilization,
Bren thought, and felt cold clear through. Jase’s instincts were right, if not his exact suspicions. Stani Ramirez had stepped
far
outside Guild rules—long before he returned to Alpha.
    “I hope not to do that,” Jase said, “contact the other side, that is.”
    “I’m glad you hope so,” Sabin said, “because where we are and what we’re doing, and where we’remeddling, can bring all hell down on our heads. The short answer is—Ramirez had a plan.
You
were to advise him in his projected alien contact, whenever the chance came. And that didn’t ever happen, did it?”
    “I’d say,” Jase said quietly, “that I never had the question posed. Ever. And if I had had it posed to me, senior captain, maybe things wouldn’t have gone the way they did.”
    “You were a green kid. You couldn’t do anything.”
    “And a year later he dropped me on the atevi planet. The point is, senior captain, he answered without me. Anything he did with the aliens was an answer. Leaving the scene was an answer. Maybe totally the wrong one. And anything we do in the future is under the same gun, with a bad start, because of things Captain Ramirez did that we may not even know about. I
need
to be on the bridge when we arrive in system. And log records that might tell us
what
he did would be extremely useful.”
    “Oh, now you want to give the tactical orders.”
    “In no way, senior captain. Advice. First thing I learned in the field: you don’t have to speak to strangers to carry on conversation. Staying’s an answer. Running’s an answer. Shooting’s a statement
or
an answer. Before the conversation gets to missiles, the ship needs a second observer. Another opinion. I may not belong in a captaincy—but I was competent enough in Shejidan that at least you don’t have a war with
that
species. You need me there. You need Bren.”
    Sabin listened, give her credit. Bren found himself holding his breath, wondering dared he say a word, when a woman who controlled their ship, their movement, and the decisions the ship would make, considered all possible options.
    “He’s right, is he?” Sabin asked Bren suddenly.
    “He’s quite right,” Bren said. “A good translator and an experienced cultural observer. The dowager’s side of this agrees with him, and you, and I assure you we have no interest in exacerbating the situation.”
    “Gratifying.”
    “It would be a good idea for me to be on the bridge when we reach our destination.”
    “No.”
    Deep breath. Reasonable tone: carefully reasonable tone. “If you should confront a situation you don’t expect, captain, you might not have time to send for us and brief us. If everything’s as you expect, you don’t need us and we’ll know that. If it isn’t, you’ll have a second immediate analysis from me and from Jase, with what
we
know about talking to strangers, granted we have no choice. My immediate advice