Phoenix Contacts the Kyo and Evacuates Reunion Station Residents

Phoenix’s encounter with the Kyo transformed a dangerous confrontation over the human station into the first workable exchange between the two sides, and ended with the removal of the Reunioners from Kyo territory. The evacuation was neither wholly negotiated nor wholly imposed: Phoenix carried it out partly by force and partly with the population’s agreement, taking the library as well as the people. The episode also became an unexpected education for Cajeiri, who entered a diplomatic situation far beyond what Tabini had intended when sending his heir into space.

Causes and First Contact

Phoenix reached the Reunioners only to face the Kyo, who were bent on destroying the human station because they regarded it as an invasion. The danger was sharpened by a mutual lack of diplomatic precedent. No one on Reunion knew how to open communication with foreigners; the Kyo, for their part, had no concept of negotiating with outsiders. The encounter began, then, not from a shared language or established protocol but from a crisis in which each side lacked even a familiar way to approach the other.

What made communication possible was the unusual company aboard Phoenix. Humans and Atevi were cooperating; the ship carried a skilled translator and diplomat, Ilisidi as a revered elder, and Cajeiri as the heir to the Atevi ruler. Its personnel had also spent a year living with Atevi. The presence of two species working together astonished the Kyo, offering a practical demonstration of cooperation before either side had settled what the other wanted.

A Channel Through Cajeiri

The first opening came through a Kyo who had come to communicate with Cajeiri. That contact mattered because it gave the Kyo a particular person to address rather than leaving the exchange at the level of an unknown human station and an apparent invasion. The Kyo were willing to ask questions, and from that small beginning both sides discovered what the other wanted.

Cajeiri’s place in the encounter was more than ceremonial. As the aiji’s young son and heir, he became a point of communication with the Kyo authorities while Ilisidi supervised his wider education aboard ship. The episode brought political contact, translation, and the presence of two cooperating peoples together in the same negotiation; no single one of these circumstances alone had previously supplied either side with a way forward.

Evacuation and Its Consequences

The agreed outcome was that the Reunioners would be removed from Kyo territory. Phoenix carried out that decision through a combination of force and the population’s consent. The library was stripped, the Reunioners were taken away, and Phoenix departed for the Atevi world. The agreement therefore resolved the immediate conflict over the station without erasing the coercive circumstances of the removal.

For Cajeiri, the mission yielded an education beyond what Tabini had envisioned. He dealt with Kyo authorities, became acquainted with the ship-aijiin and several young Reunioners, and continued his other studies under Ilisidi’s personal supervision. The episode’s resolution thus carried more than the population out of Kyo territory: it left the young heir with direct experience of alien diplomacy, while the cooperation between humans and Atevi had already shown the Kyo a model that made questions—and eventually agreement—possible.