The air of Kefk hit like an ammonia-tainted wall. Haral coughed even on the ramp; Pyanfar sneezed and felt the sting of her eyes in spite of the antiallergents. Haral had put on her portside finery, dark spacer blue with a collection of gold earrings, a set of bracelets, an anklet with a bangle, a belt with silver and gold chains that rattled right along with a monstrous black AP gun and a belt-knife. Pyanfar wore the red silk trousers, gold bracelets and belt and gold-earrings aplenty; a knife and a pocket-gun besides the AP slung low on her hip.
“We look a right set of pirates,” Haral had said before the lock sealed them out. “It’s the pirates outside worry me,” Tirun had retorted to them both, there in the lock.
And Khym had said other things, while Geran and Hilfy fretted and gnawed their mustaches sparse-“Huh,” Geran had said, with exhaustion and worry in her eyes. “I’ll go with you-“
Haral: “My job.”
And Tully later: “Where she go-where go, Py-anfar?”
She avoided answers with Tully. “Out,” she had told him in that unwanted encounter in the downside corridor. “I got business, Tully. I’m in a hurry.”
“Careful,” he had said, anxious-looking. Frightened, doubtless from the time he heard that inner lock open, preparing to expose The Pride to the kifish docks. She reckoned the crew would tell him where they had gone after she was well on her way. Or better yet, when she and Haral got back.
When.
They walked the dockside, she and Haral, in a sodium-light hell of clinging smokes and ammonia-reek and a moist chill like a swamp at sundown. Kif moved, black wisps in the dimmer shadow along the far wall of this section of warehouses and factory fronts. There was no color anywhere about Kefk docks but the sickly sodium-glow, no brightness but the stark white of some argon spotlight on a round steel doorway.
“Kkkkt. Kkkkt,” the sound came to them, as they walked past kifish ships. Kif, doubtless some of their erstwhile companions-had seen them walk outside and gathered in clusters to whisper-and perhaps, Pyanfar thought, to wonder whether the two hani walking down the docks of Kefk had lost their collective minds.
(“Look at you,” Khym had cried in dismay while she dressed for this foray. “Wear that into a den of thieves? Py, for godssakes!”)
Crazy to wear that much gold into a kifish den if one had not the sfik to hold onto it. “So we look like trouble,” Pyanfar had said to Haral when they laid their plan. “A lot of trouble, by kifish lights. That’s the idea.”
Advertise their presence and hold it under kifish noses till they smelled it and looked at the gold and the weapons and remembered that The Pride’s crew had no general reputation for being fools.
Therefore they must be the other kind. Dangerous.
They were also the hakkikt’s invited guests. At least on the way to the meeting.
“Marvelous thing about kif,” Pyanfar muttered in a moment when she and Haral were well out of earshot of kif, between one gloomy ship-berth and another. “It occurs to me that these types out here on the dock aren’t any more secure than we are. We’re high on the wave and so are they and kif sail a rotted choppy sea. Always wondering when the wind’s going to shift.”
“They’re different, that’s a fact,” Haral muttered in her turn. “No lasting grudges-and, gods be feathered, nothing they won’t trade. Flighty folk. I don’t think hani ever have got the right of them. Maybe we should have brought our friend Skkukuk on this trip, huh?”
“I did think about it. But I’ve got an uneasy feeling that one’s a little crazy even for a kif. I don’t want him near guns and knives.”
“Huh. Me either, now I think on it.”
A waft of something reached them down the dock. Blood. Even through the ammonia. Pyanfar hissed and cleared her throat. “Good gods,” Haral swore in disgust. “That’s enough to kill your appetite.”
“We’re nearly-“-there, Pyanfar started to say and suddenly lost the thread of her thought as she caught sight of the kifish numerals for 28: Harukk’s berth. Kif traffic was thick hereabouts and the blood-smell grew stronger.
It worsened rapidly, the closer they walked. The steel rampway rail had a series of metal poles chained to its stanchions, and a dark object sat atop each.
“Gods and thunders,” Pyanfar muttered, “Haral, don’t flinch.”
The heads were kif. Kif came and went on that number 28 ramp, past the awful watchers; she and Haral headed that way among the rest, waiting for challenge from some guard or other.
None came. They passed the first stanchion up and Pyanfar gave the gory object atop it a cold and curious glance.
“So much for the opposition,” Haral said.
“Sure ought to keep the new converts in line,” Pyanfar muttered. Every kif that came into Harukk had to see it, victory for some, grim warning for the others.
At least, she thought in profoundest relief, none of the heads was hani.
Kif turned and stared at them as they passed, upward-bound like all the rest who had business aboard Harukk. A knot of kif who stood at the accessway clicked and hissed as they passed but made no offer to delay them.
There were, finally, guards inside the large airlock.
“Hakktan,” one said in kifish. Captain?
“Ukt,” Haral answered with a nod at Pyanfar. Yes. Pyanfar stood by with her arms folded, arrogant to the slant of her ears, and let Haral do the talking. Two of the three kif kept their hands tucked within their sleeves , doubtless concealing weapons besides the guns they wore openly. They stood blocking other traffic into the lock from either direction, while the third reported their presence to the monitor above.
The answer came, orders for their admittance. The guard at the inner hatch stepped aside; and the third guard bowed with that hands-empty gesture: “Inside,” that one said.
“Huh,” said Pyanfar; bowed and slanted her ears back when she did it. Haral stayed close as they passed the hatch to Harukk’s ammonia-smelling interior.
More kif waited in the inside corridor-one who turned out to be merely delayed traffic, who stalked on; and four tall kif rattling with weapons.
“Follow,” one said, and stalked off in the lead without looking back. Three walked behind, while two stayed. And not a word of objection about the array of weapons their visitors brought aboard. Not a word of any kind. They passed kif in these dim corridors that stank of ammonia and machinery and blood and other, unidentifiable things, and no one gave them a second glance.
Kifish manners, Pyanfar thought. Don’t notice the hakkikt’s odd guests, don’t stare, don’t give offense. The aura of fear and fierceness throughout the place was infectious. It bristled the back, set the pulse beating faster, sent fight-flight impulses coursing the nerves.
Hilfy knows this place, Pyanfar thought at sight after sight, with an involuntary tightening of her gut. Hilfy was in this awful place.
Hilfy had stood silent by Khym’s side when she had broken the news to them where she and Haral proposed to go. Khym had had his opinion of it all. Like Geran. But Hilfy’s ears just went flat and her nostrils drew taut; and: “Huh,” Hilfy had said. “Why?” With a darkness of memory in her eyes; and an estimation, and nothing else readable. ‘You know it’s a trap.”
“I know,” Pyanfar had said. “At this point there isn’t a better choice.”
Hilfy knew the ways of kif better than any. And gave her no argument. No offer to come either. The situation wanted cold steadiness and as little as possible chance of provoking the kif. And that put the job, by seniority and by disposition, on Haral Araun.
Haral walked along beside her now as warily easy as on a trek down one of the Compact’s rougher docksides-kept her ears up and her face serene during the ride pent in a lift with the pair of kifish guards.
The lift stopped; one guard exited and the rest hung back as they had done below. And it was one more long walk down the dimly lit corridor aft from the lift; then an open doorway, and a dim chamber where a handful of kif waited attendance on one seated on an insect-legged chair, a kif who wore a silver medallion, whose black robe and hood were edged in silver that shone dimly in sodium-light.
“Hakkikt,” Pyanfar said, approaching this grim magnificence. And bowed with a carefully rationed measure of respect and self-importance.
“Kkkt.” Sikkukkut flourished his thin, dark-gray hand. “Ksithikki.” Kif scurried to the corners of the room and carried back two chairs and a low table, all at a virtual run.
“Ksithti.”
Pyanfar nodded and sat down in one, feet tucked. Haral took the other. More orders from Sikkukkut, and a wave of his hand in a silver-bordered sleeve. Kif scurried after pitcher and cups with as great haste; and hurried to put a cup into Sikkukkut’s outstretched hand before it had had time to tire of waiting. A cup went to Pyanfar; a third to Haral. A kif had poured for Sikkukkut; and came quickly to pour for them from the same pitcher.
It was, thank the gods, parini. Liquor. Strong and straight and likely to go straight to the head; but it was nothing objectionable. Pyanfar sipped gingerly and tried not to think of obvious things like whether the off-taste was the ammonia in her nostrils or something in the drink.
But they were sitting in Sikkukkut’s hall, on Sikkukkut’s deck; in his starstation; in kif space; and drugged drinks here seemed as superfluous as removing their weapons, which no one had offered yet to do. Haral followed her lead and drank: Haral, whose stomach was redoubtable in station bars from Anuurn to Meetpoint and who always made her duty schedules without a hangover. For the second time she was glad it was Haral by her and not Khym.
“You turned down this invitation once at Meetpoint,” Sikkukkut said.
“I remember.” A sneeze threatened her dignity. And their lives. She fought it back with an effort that made her eyes water. It was psychological, this aversion to kif. She had taken the pills. And gods, those pills made a hazardous combination with the liquor, dried her mouth, dulled her perceptions. And her nose still prickled.
“I told you then I looked for a change of mind someday.” Sikkukkut dipped his nose into the ornate cup and drank. “And here it is. Kkkt. After an emergency on your ship. What sort of emergency, do you mind?”
Wits, get your mind working, Pyanfar Chanur. “There was a medical difficulty; but the emergency call to the mahendo’sat was a matter of convenience.” She looked straight at the hakkikt and prayed the gods greater and lesser for no sudden sneezes. Attack the matter straight on. Rob the bastard of all his carefully laid traps and surprises. “Actually it was an excuse for consultation with two of my allies-without the nuisance of a third, speaking plainly. On several matters. Your gift, hakkikt- gives me options to deal with that nuisance. That’s why I came. It may rid you of one too-since I think my annoyance and yours has one source.”
“Kkkkt.” Another sip, and a shadowed glance within the shadowing, silver-edged hood, black eyes reflecting the glare of sodium-light. “I take it then you don’t intend to kill this Tahar hani.”
“No. I don’t.”
“So you have asked for the crew as well as the captain. This would be a rather large gift on my part. They are unusual-kkt. Ikkthokktin. A mild rarity. Amusing. I don’t say I’m personally interested, but certain of my skkukun would be pleased to have one or another of them. Is it perhaps a certain-ethical reluctance-on your part? Should your desires mass more than others of my captains?”
Think. “I have reasons more than amusement.” Kifish logic. Pukkukkta. Let him lead himself astray. When outclassed in wit, create plausible complications and let the enemy think himself to death. “You have to understand, hakkikt, I’m sure you do-that Rhif Ehrran is no particular friend of mine. I don’t doubt you’ve heard from her, wanting them released to her.”
“And from Keia and even from Ismehanan-min. These Tahar hani seem to be a matter of some excitement in your faction. A sfik-item, you say. But why should I give the whole prize to you?”
“Tahar interests quite a few people, particularly hani. They’re a big family, they’ve got wide holdings in the same continent as Chanur, as well as being spacer-hani, which also makes them valuable in some quarters. No. I’m going to ask an even larger favor of you, hakkikt-trusting Moon Rising got through the station takeover undamaged. I want that crew handed over to me-and I want their ship.”
“Kkkt. Pyanfar Chanur, your audacity grows larger by the hour. First Tahar, then the crew, now the ship. Next will you ask me for Kefk? Akkht, perhaps?”
There was a hush in the room. Not a kif stirred. “You have Kefk.” Pyanfar assumed her most charming smile. “Myself, hakkikt, my ambitions are different. I want this one small ship. And its crew. For my own reasons.”
“Where are the mahendo’sat? Where is Keia? He could surely make hani reasonable to me. Kkkt. I make no assumptions when dealing with such a suicidal species. And-kkt- the emergency call and the consultation. Kkkt. Kkkt. Who is injured?”
“One of my crew. A minor business. It gave me the chance to talk with Goldtooth. Ismehanan-min. It has to do with the ship.” (Back to the trail, hakkikt!) “Goldtooth delivered me some information that makes me surer than ever where my interests lie, Rhif Ehrran and I are about to come to severe difference; it’s possible she’ll attack us directly, but I doubt it-she wants to survive. She has the means to create difficulties for me on Anuurn. When we get to Meetpoint we’ll have her to reckon with.”
“To Meetpoint.”
Pyanfar blinked. “Meetpoint. Definitely Meetpoint.”
“You assume this.”
“Where Akkhtimakt is headed. Where a certain treaty with the stsho could bring the han and all their ships in on Akkhtimakt’s side. You don’t act surprised, hakkikt. I didn’t think you’d be.”
“Only in your forthrightness. I know about the stsho treaty.”
“Then explain a kif motive for me. Why haven’t you taken Ehrran out, since her liability is about to outweigh her use?”
“Kkkt. She is attached to Kefk at the moment. Inconvenient and dangerous. Let’s wait till she goes outbound. Explain in return: why did Keia acquire this double-edged person in the first place?”
“To keep her from going anywhere else. And for the same reason you’ve used her: the sfik of the han. Roughly speaking. Hakkikt, honor to you, I don’t know how often you’ve monitored our communications, but Ehrran has quite a collection of reports she trusts will damage Chanur’s sfik on Anuurn-I’m translating this as best I can-so thoroughly that the pro-stsho party can destroy us. I don’t intend to let that happen. Now is my motive clear?”
“Labyrinthine as I expected. Kkkt. Once away from dock I can solve everyone’s difficulty at a stroke.”
“Ah, but that’s another favor I ask you: leave the Ehrran ship to me. Destroying it outright might be a present convenience to me, but a difficulty in the long run, when the tale got around, and it would get around. Among this many ships, even among your own, some would talk, to damage me and advance themselves, I have no doubt. If that rumor got out, those records of Ehrran’s wouldn’t even need to get to Anuurn. The pro-stsho party would have all the ammunition it needs to do me harm. Martyr. You know that concept?”
“I haven’t heard that word, no.”
“It’s a kind of sfik you get by dying in a way that makes a point, hakkikt. Double sfik because you’re dead and you can’t be discredited. People will die following you forever. And that makes more martyrs. Destroy Ehrran and she’ll cause us twice the trouble.”
“Kkkkkt. Kkkkkkt. Kkkkt.” Sikkukkut’s snout drew down as if something offended his nostrils. He sipped at his cup and the tongue lapped delicately around his lips. “What a concept. Kkkkkt. I think, hunter Pyanfar, the straightest course is simply to blow up the Ehrran ship in the next action, when matters are suitably confused.”
“Ah, but then I’m still left with Tahar for company, which would ruin my sfik-unless I can first discredit Ehrran. And you can’t discredit a dead hero. Bad taste. Martyrdom. No, I can put this simple hani concept in kifish without any difficulty at all: pukkukkta. Revenge. I have to deal with Ehrran in a hani way, in a way that shows other hani what we both know she is-an utter fool. And to do that, I need Tahar.”
“Why should I risk my ships for the sake of your pukkukkta?”
“Sfik. I’m your ally. I can put a stop to a problem. Balance, hakkikt. Equilibrium in the Compact. It’s one thing to climb a mountain, it’s quite another thing to build a house there.”
Kif stirred about the room. Sikkukkut was frozen still with the cup in his hand. Too far, gods, one step too far with him.
But: “For a hani, you have a fine grasp of politics,” Sikkukkut said, and sipped at his parini, a delicate lapping of a long, black tongue.
“Hakkikt, hani may be new in space, but politics is the air we breathe.”
Sikkukkut’s snout wrinkled. “So you want the small matter of seven more hani and a well-armed ship, the behavior of which in our midst you guarantee. And you want the Ehrran ship to deal with too. Kkkt, hani, you amuse me. You may have the Tahar crew and Moon Rising. Kgotok skkukun nankkafkt nok takkif hani skkukunikkt ukku kakt tokt kiffik sikku nokkuunu kokkakkt taktakti, kkkt?”
Something about turning over a thousand kif as well. There was the sniffle of kifish laughter about the room. “So,” said Sikkukkut. “What else did Ismehanan-min have to say when he met with you?”
Gods. To the flank and in. “Beyond the warning about affairs at home, the business about Akkhtimakt moving on Meetpoint. That, mostly. And warned me about the stsho treaty with the han. Which I’d suspected.” Turning over that much truth made a knot of foreboding in her gut, but some coin had to go on the table, and it was the thing most likely Sikkukkut already knew-with former partisans of Akkhtimakt in his hands.
“Kkkt. Yes. And the humans are coming in. Did he say that?”
“He said they were headed this way.” ‘Another lapping at the cup. A flicker of dark eyes. “Be more specific.”
“He wasn’t specific.”
“Tt’a’va’o,” Sikkukkut said. “Go on.”
Pyanfar blinked again. Surprise took no acting. Dissembling outright fright did. The little she had drunk reacted with the medicines and hummed in her blood. “Tt’a’va’o,” she said. “I know the stsho are panicking. The mahendo’sat can’t restrain them. This alliance with Akkhtimakt is the worst thing they could do for themselves, but it’s the stsho’s only hope of getting armed ships, which the han can’t provide in numbers. The kif are a known quantity. The stsho are most afraid of what they least understand. And they think- mistakenly, I think-that they know how to cheat a kif, playing one against the other.”
There was a whisper, a stirring of robes.
“Kkkkt. This place is a mine of information. All sorts of things pour into my ears. Where will the humans come next?”
“The stsho think Meetpoint. They would. I don’t know.” She took the slightest of sips. And took a risk that chilled the blood. “The tc’a may have some part in that decision.”
Sikkukkut’s snout moved. Score one. Fear. “Your estimation? Or the mahendo’sat’s?”
“I got the impression that’s the case. I don’t like it, hakkikt.”
“You say you don’t know the human’s course. Kkkt. You do have one resource.”
“My human crewman? Hakkikt, the mahendo’sat might know. Tully doesn’t. I get the impression the human ships are improvising their course-going where they can go. And Tully left humanity-months back. He hasn’t got any more idea than I do where the humans are going-less, in fact, I’ve talked to Goldtooth.”
“Kkkt.” Sikkukkut gazed at her long and thoughtfully. “Interesting. Interesting, this human. Friend of yours. Friend of mine. I would not take a gift amiss-since you expect my generosity.”
“I’m still hani, hakkikt. We have our differences. I can’t give up a crewman. But pukkukkta’s a fit gift to give a hakkikt, isn’t it? Pukkukkta\ something we have in common. And if I win-Chanur’s going to do some re-arranging back home. Pukkukkta for certain. You want no more hani-stsho treaties, hakkikt, I’ll give you that with my compliments. Common motives. Wasn’t that the way you described a good alliance?”
“You have aspirations on Anuurn.”
“Oh, yes. On Anuurn and in space.”
Another long silence. A dry sniffing. “The prisoners are inconsequence.” Sikkukkut waved his left hand and set the cup aside into a hand that appeared to take it on the instant. “Go. I have taken time enough with this.”
Pyanfar stood up, bowed; Haral did the same. “And the ship,” Pyanfar said.
“Details.” Sikkukkut waved his hand again. “See to them. Skktotik.”
* * *
Kif arrived at the lock. With deliveries.
“They can by the gods wait,” Tirun said; and Hilfy turned and looked at her, her heart pounding. Tirun was senior; Tirun called the decisions now On The Pride and sat in Haral’s chair. And Hilfy only looked at her, having known Tirun Araun long enough to know with Tirun there was impulse and there was what Tirun had the sense to do in spite of impulse. Don’t back up, don’t show fear-
“Gods be,” Tirun muttered with fury in her eyes. “Hilfy- they’re pushing, these kif are: I don’t like their timing; but it’s a real soft push right now. We got to take that delivery.”
“Sure as rain falls we can’t back up from them,” Hilfy said. “I’ll go down there.”
“Take Khym with you.”
“Rather have Geran.”
“I want a second pair of eyes up here at the boards. Take Khym.”
“Right.” Hilfy punched the all-ship, on low volume. “Geran. Tully. You’re needed on the bridge. Na Khym, go to lower main.”
And she felt a quiver in her stomach as she got up from the board. Raw terror. Pyanfar was out with Haral and the kif wanted in at the lock with an innocuous delivery of a cage full of stinking vermin and a mini-can of grain.
Compliments of the hakkikt.
From Sikkukkut, who had kept Pyanfar and Haral aboard a worrisome long time.
Geran reached the bridge before she had gotten across the deck to the weapons locker. “Kif below,” Tirun said at her back, talking to Geran. “We got visitors.”
A chair sighed with Geran’s weight as Hilfy heaved the weight of an AP about her hips and gathered up a light pistol for herself and one for Khym. Her hands were shaking. She looked up as Tully arrived on the bridge. “Sit scan,” Hilfy said as he looked her way. “Help Geran.”
“Py-anfar got trouble?” Tully asked. There was panic in his eyes. Raw nightmare. “What do?”
“Sit down! Don’t ask me questions!” She had not meant to snarl. Instinct delivered it; terror; vexation. Men. It was not a man’s kind of fight-yet. And all she had for help down there in lowerdeck was a man not hers. Pyanfar could handle Khym. Pyanfar could knock reason into his thick skull, and Pyanfar was off with the kif in gods knew what trouble- and na Khym knew that.
Gods, gods. She snapped the locker shut as across the bridge Tully slipped into the chair by Geran’s side, an extra pair of eyes and hands in crisis-that, at least. Skilled and illiterate. And mortally scared.
“Stay put!” Geran was saying to someone on com; and Hilfy guessed who. Chur had surely heard that bridge-call.
Hilfy hit the topside-main at a run, the heavy gun knocking at her leg, the light pistols in either hand as she headed for the lift downside.
“This way,” their guide said, deep in the gut of the kifish ship, down reeking halls, down sodium-lighted corridors and through one and the other ominously scalable door.
On the far side of this last doorway were cross-barred cells.
“Wait outside, captain?” Haral said.
“Aye,” Pyanfar said, and Haral stepped to the side by the outside of that door and set her hand on her gun-fast; and firm; and she blessed her first officer’s good sense as Haral got away with it.
But the kif performed a like maneuver: one of their dark guides went in and beckoned her on; while the others lingered to take up guard with Haral outside.
Move and countermove.
A species old in assassinations and treachery; and the hani species recent from the age of walled estates and bright banners and yes, by the gods, treachery of its own, House and House, with never poison in the cup but connivance and betrayal and duel aplenty. Pyanfar drew a deep breath of the tainted air as she walked in, searching it for information; and saw a touch of color in this black and gray hell, behind crossed bars. Huddled in a corner, the merest glimmer of rust-brown, a lump of hani bodies rested together in their misery.
Hilfy-
In this place. Here. No sane hani ever built a place like this, this cage for thinking creatures, this place of horrors and torment.
She was supposed to be daunted by this place. Sikkukkut arranged it. No word of explanation-just guides who came to take them down to see what happened to hani here.
“-orders of the hakkikt,” the guides had said in the corridor outside the hakkikt’s hall, and showed them into a lift and down and further astern in Harukk’s huge ring. To recover the prisoners, they promised. And the message was clear: dare my hospitality to the depth, hani; or tell me you’re afraid. Tell me that in front of my captains and my sycophants, and we’ll know where hani fit in our ranks and in our future plans. We’ll know how we have to deal with you-how much you can take and how much you can hold onto. Are you like Ehrran, hunter Pyanfar? Where is yow flinching -point?”
Useful to know that-when we meet in space, when your nerve and mine guide ships and time their reflexes-
Where are your reactions, hunter Pyanfar-so that I can predict them?
She walked halfway to the bars and stood there. There was a small movement from the knot of hani in the corner of their cell. A tension and then a furtive fix of slitted eyes: if they had been resting at all, the opening of the outer door had gotten their attention. And now her presence did.
Chanur, their enemy, resplendent with silk and gold and weapons, standing beside their kifish guard in the heart of this prison.
“Stand behind me,” Hilfy said when she and Khym got to the lock-she turned and looked up at him, great towering hulk that he was. “Cover me. Don’t shoot toward the access; you can blow us all to vacuum. You hearing me, na Khym?”
“Yes,” he said, and the ears flicked, so she knew he heard. But the eyes were dark. And that was trouble. So was his silence on the way down the corridor.
“You make a mistake you can kill her-hear? This is probably a little thing, the stuff we were supposed to get for that gods-be kif-“
“I’m not crazy,” Khym said, and bristled about the shoulders. “But they’re from Sikkukkut. He’s trying something.”
He was thinking. “I’m sure of it,” Hilfy said, and hit the com button by the lock. “Open her up, Geran.”
“I’m on monitor,” Tirun’s voice came back. “Careful, cousin. And don’t take any stuff either.”
The Tahar gathered themselves up. Blood had caked on their fur, in their manes. The senior—Gilan, her name was- had taken a kifish bite on the left shoulder and the awful wound glistened under plasm that had kept her from bleeding to death. It was not the only such wound. Canfy Maurn had a hand wrapped up in a rag and by the blood on it, it was a bad one.
“Get them out,” Pyanfar said to the kif, with no doubt the kif was going to do that, and fast. “You’ve got your orders.”
“Kkkt.” The kif lifted his long jawed face, contemplating mayhem. “I take no orders from you, hani.”
“Captain, you earless bastard, and I’m sure the hakkikt won’t miss you much.”
“Ssss. My orders are only the hakkikt’s. Don’t push, hani.”
The airlock opened. A group of kif stood there, black knot against the orange-lit accessway, the foremost two holding a large metal cage in which dark things darted and squealed. Hilfy sucked a deep breath of the cold air that wafted in. It tasted of something obnoxious, beyond the expected ammonia-taint.
“You can set it down right there,” Hilfy said, with the pistol in her fist aimed at the kif in general. “We’ll take it aboard.”
“But we are ordered to observe courtesy,” said the leftmost kif, stepping over the threshold with his end of the cage.
“Hold it!” Hilfy brought the gun to both hands and remembered the danger of firing. Angle them against the wall. Make the shots true. Panic wobbled her hands.
A living red-brown wall shifted into Hilfy’s way, brushing the gun aside. “She said stop,” Khym rumbled, and faster than seemed likely made a grab for the kif.
“Look out!” Hilfy cried. The cage went flying up into Khym’s way, clanged and hit the floor in a multiple squealing as Khym smashed it underfoot. Khym swung a fistful of robes and a live kif into the airlock wall as the rest surged forward. “Khym, get out of the way!”
Khym just lifted another kif onehanded and threw him at the corner, and grabbed a third. Hilfy uptilted the pistol and used the butt on a kifish snout. Escaping vermin squealed and screamed underfoot. She trod on something tough that threw her off-balance as the kif grappled for her gun. Suddenly her attacker vanished backward as Khym got it by the scruff and flung it for the hatch-not a true throw. The kif hit the wall and sprawled out, fell on a second cage on the accessway floor and drew squeals and panic from the contents as it collapsed.
A kif down the accessway leveled a gun.
“Khym!” Hilfy howled. “Gun!”
He froze in the lock dead center.
And the hatch shut as fire hit it from both sides.
Hilfy wilted against the inner wall, and Khym still stood there. -
“You all right?” Tirun asked them over com. “Hilfy, Khym, you all right?”
“Good gods,” Hilfy breathed. Tirun had heard-the veteran spacer had hit the hatch control from the main board. Khym still stood there with his ears flat. He turned with an appalled look on his face.
“It’s a trap,” Hilfy said hoarsely to Khym and Tirun both. “They meant to take the ship. The captain and Haral are over there in Harukk and they’re trying to take The Pride.”
The kif glared and moved to the barred door, reaching inside its black robes to find a small key-tab. “You,” it said to the Tahar crew, “file out. You go into this hani’s custody. If there should be difficulty-I will shoot one of you. I’ll choose at random.” It inserted the key. The door went back.
“Chanur’s taking you out,” Pyanfar said.
“Captain’s here,” Gilan said hoarsely, the other side of the open door.
“She’s on my ship. Come on, Tahar.”
Gilan Tahar blinked dully, laid one hand on the doorframe and walked out, the wounded arm dangling, her step unsteady. Her crewmates followed: Naun and Vihan Tahar; Nif Angfylas; Canfy Maurn and Tav and Haury Savuun; Haury looking as if she were doing well to walk at all, holding her ribs and limping on a bloodstained leg. Ears were torn; skin had been gashed. Haury wobbled against the bars and Tav steadied her, keeping her own body between her sister and the kif.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said, low and harsh-Fast, move it- don’t hold us up and don’t try anything fancy, Gilan Tahar. She gestured toward the door that led out; and a sense of overwhelming oppression closed about her. Haral was out of sight, beyond the door. The metal bars, the cruelty of the place afflicted her to the soul, infectious and bewildering. Kill occurred to her and hunt, and her claws flexed out on reflex. It was the fear-smell, everywhere about the ship, endemic among the kif.
The guide-guard turned and walked to the door, silently directing her, out of this place with the prize she had gained. A handful of hani lives,. A promise-a kifish promise.
“The hakkikt will get my report,” she said, not to let the chance pass. “He’ll ask, kif.” She walked out, relieved to find Haral still there, hand on gunbutt, at a standoff with the kifish guards. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
Hilfy came panting onto the bridge and leaned on Tirun’s chair back as Khym arrived, as Geran and Tully turned at their places. “We lose any of that accessway?” she asked Tirun.
“It’s still sound,” Tirun said. “Pressure checks up. We’re in contact with Jik and Goldtooth on open channels-captain’d skin us if we used that code-“
“What do they say?”
“They’re not happy. Jik says he’s getting some people out onto that dock-“
“Gods rot it, Tirun, Pyanfar’s with the kif-we’ve got to get in there-“
“Hilfy-“ Tirun turned around, flat-eared and dark-eyed. “For godssake you’re talking about the gods-be hakkikt! What do you want, raid Harukk? They’ve pushed, we got ‘em. What more do you want us to do? Go in shooting and get ‘em both killed?”
Hilfy let her breath flow out, leaning there on Tirun’s seat back and being the fool and knowing it. Her joints were loose, either the run topside or outright panic. “Get Tahar up here. It’s her crew the captain’s risking her hide for-and Tahar knows those kif out there.”
Tirun’s ears lifted and nicked back and forth in indecision. “Well, we can use the extra hands up here. Do it, Geran.” Another wide flick of the ears, a rumpling of her broad nose and lift of her lip. “And it occurs to me we’ve got one other mind on this ship knows those kif.”
“Skkukuk,” Hilfy said. A falling feeling hit her gut. She knew her own unreason on the matter; and it was Tirun’s command. Tirun’s say. Not hers to argue in any case.
“If we need him,” Tirun added, with another twitch of the ring-laden ears-veteran of a hundred crises, Tirun Araun, cagy and hard to take. And all the while her sister Haral was out there in trouble with Pyanfar- one forgot that the two of them had that desperately close personal bond. Tirun made one forget-doing what wanted doing with no hesitation, no self-interest between her and the ship. Hilfy looked at the old spacer and at Geran Anify, whose efficiency covered com and scan, trading functions back and forth with Tirun like a smoothly functioning machine while the world came apart about them; and for the first time in her adolescent life she truly knew the measure of her seniors, and knew what she had yet to reach-It hit like a blow to the gut, what she was, what they were; and she was not likely to live long enough to get there. But even that thought was a selfishness Tirun would never take the time for in a crisis. She saw it all in a flash like a shellburst, a moment of panic; and then she found the wobble in her knees had gone away and she discovered some scrap of something Tirun-like in a place she had never known she had it stored, down where she kept her temper.
To a mahen hell with yourself, Hilfy Chanur, and your fears and your precious wants-The ship’s got a problem.
“-Tahar’s on her way topside,” Geran said; another light flared on the com pane!, another call; Hilfy itched to reach out and intercept it, taking her station back, but Geran had it, Geran occupied her seat, Tully positioned next to her where Geran could assist him, with his eyes firmly on the scan, watching for any move out of Kefk: even something as small as a construction pusher could take them out, if it went crashing into their vanes; or if some saboteur EVA’d out through a service access and limpeted some explosive to The Pride’s big vane panels, or to the yoke. It would cripple them at the least. Make any jump out of Kefk uncertain, enough to kill them if they tried it. Enough- o gods, to force them to negotiate-
“Tirun,” Hilfy said, leaning on Tirun’s chairback. “If they damage us- they’ve got Pyanfar and Haral in reach. That may be what they’re trying. Take us if they can; cripple us if they can’t-Nothing personal on the kif s side: if you get a chance to put an uppity ally down and subordinate ‘em, you do it.”
Tirun’s ears moved. She heard. Hilfy flung herself the few paces across the deck to take the seat next to Tully, to take over scan function with eyes that could read and hands that could use the buttons.
And:
“-They were about eight kif,” Geran was saying to someone on the com. “No. No. No, captain. Let me ask my- Let me-Let me ask our duty officer, captain.-Tirun, it’s Vigilance. Ehrran’s sending crew out there to secure the docks.”
“Gods rot it-Give me that.”
“She’s just broken contact.”
They rode the lift in Harukk, nine hani and two armed kif, and the door let them out onto the access level of the ship, into the dim light and colder air of that final passageway that was open to the docks.
We’re going to make it, Pyanfar thought, which she had doubted down below, in the prison-hold. She had doubted everything until the kif got them to the lift and two got inside the lift car with them, outnumbered at least at that range and within that car; and she believed it almost entirely when she saw that door open and let them out onto the right level of the ship, in a corridor with no ambushes and no waiting contingent of kifish guards just a way out. She glanced once at Haral in the course of a look over her shoulder at the kif and the Tahar crew, and caught a flicker of Haral’s ears and eyes that worked like telepathy: same thought: We’re near, captain, maybe we got a chance of getting away with this after all.
Pyanfar turned and kept walking at the pace their guide set. This time there were stares from passers-by, curiosity at last-recalculation what kind of game was being played here, she reckoned. What kind and by whom.
“That damn fool,” Jik said over com. “She no do, she no do-“
And broke contact abruptly. That was Jik’s comment on Rhif Ehrran’s decision to go out on Kefk docks. Hilfy heard it along with the rest, and looked to her right as captain Dur Tahar arrived on the bridge at a fast pace.
“What’s this about my crew?” Tahar said forthwith, out of breath.
“We’re working on it,” Hilfy said, and got out of her seat, scan set to alarm. Dur Tahar on The Pride’s bridge deserved at least one crew member on her feet to fend her off Tirun’s neck, and Khym had just risen to appoint himself-not the best situation.
“So what’s going on?” Tahar asked, casting a look toward Command, where Tirun, in urgent communication with Goldtooth, had no time for talking. “What’s the trouble?”
“-Well, what do they say?” the gist of that conversation ran from Tirun’s side. “The hakkikt got any good reason why we just got our airlock shot up? Why we got gods-be vermin running loose all over our lowerdeck? Where’s our captain, huh? They know?”
What Mahijiru command had to say to that was inaudible.
“Captain’s out trying to get your crew released,” Hilfy said to Tahar. “Meanwhile we just got shot at. You want to take a crew post, captain? We’re up to our noses in problems. Scan would be real helpful just now. Tully doesn’t read real good.”
She expected objection of rank. Tahar lowered her ears and started for the indicated post with never an objection. But Tirun swung her chair about before Tahar could get to it. “Belay that. Goldtooth says he can’t reach Sikkukkut. Kif are being obstinate. They’re stalling. It wasn’t any accident.” Tirun got out of Haral’s chair and with a wave at Dur Tahar, hurled herself into Pyanfar’s instead. “Sit,” she said, hitting the seat’s turn-control. “Take number two, Tahar. I’ll fill you in. Hilfy- Khym. Get that by the gods kif up here. I want to talk to him right now.”
Hilfy caught Khym by the arm and moved.
No one sat in Pyanfar’s place. But it was being done. No foreign clan sat in The Pride’s seats. But they did that too-they did anything that gave them a better chance.
They pelted down the main corridor; and of a sudden there was the electric thump of the generators coming up, a vibration all down The Pride’s steel spine. Khym skidded on one foot and stopped, turning back before Hilfy grabbed him by the arm.
“That’s power-up!” Khym cried.
“That’s precaution,” Hilfy said, and hauled him about again into a run for the lift. “We’re not pulling out. Tirun wouldn’t do that. For godssakes follow orders.”
So our systems are all the way hot. So the kif know we can move. Or shoot. They can take us out. We can take Kefk Out with us, if it comes to that. That’s what Tirun’s letting them know.
“Kkkt,” the kif said, on guard at Harukk’s lock-“kkkkt:” when it saw what it faced, softly and with an edge a hani could read. Pyanfar kept her hand near her gun and flattened her ears as it looked like challenge.
Then the guard waved them on with the dark flourish of a sleeve. Pyanfar strode out into the chill of the access and turned abruptly, with a scowl for the kif and a concern that all their party made it out clear.
The Tahar crewwomen walked as best they could, Gilan on her own, Naun and Vihan doing the best they could to support Haury between them. Nif and Canfy with Tav. Haral came last, dour and grim-no bending, no show of weakness. Sikkukkut had not forgotten them; Sikkukkut would be curious what they would do, would be suspicious of connivance- would cut their throats at the first hint things were not as represented to him; or at the first suspicion hani motives had confounded him.
Come on, keep it moving-Pyanfar put impatience into a scowl at Gilan Tahar and spun on her heel the instant Haral cleared the lock, outbound and down bound for the docks.
“Kkkkt,” the kif Skkukuk said, lifting his hooded head from his nesting-spot on a clean bed in a clean cabin. “Kkkt. Young Chanur-“
“Up,” Hilfy said. She kept her gun in holster and made no move to threaten. Khym was behind her, and that was more than sufficient.
“I am weak with hunger. Hani, it is a waste-“
“Get up, kif. Move. We’ve had a little problem with’ your dinner. It’s all over the ship. Our hatch has a nice new burn-scar on it. That’s what we want to ask you about.”
“Treachery,” Skkukuk said. He stirred himself and came off the bed, using a hand to catch his balance. “Kkkt. Treachery.”
“You understand it real well,” Hilfy said. “Come on. Let’s go topside and discuss it with the crew.”
“Not my doing,” Skkukuk said, “hani, it was not my-“
“Out!” she said.
Skkukuk came out toward them. Khym grabbed himself a handful of kifish robe at Skkukuk’s nape, and Skkukuk twisted and rolled his eyes in alarm. The jaws clicked alarmingly. “I offer no resistance, I want to go to your bridge, there is no need-“
“I’ll bet you do,” Hilfy muttered, and grabbed his arm while Khym took the other side, hauling the kif along clicking and protesting. Something black and small fled down the hall and scuttled around the corner into a lesser-used corridor.
“I have given you my weapons,” Skkukuk hissed, struggling to free his arms. “Let me go! Let me go, hani fools! I am yours, I am loyal to the captain-“
“In a mahen hell,” Hilfy muttered.
They reached the bottom of the ramp, down by the gory row of heads, and Pyanfar looked back yet again with her hand laid on the AP gun she wore. The Tahar crew women did the best they could, keeping Haury Savuun on her feet and keeping moving; and Haral brought up the rear-clear enough that Haral would gladly have gone faster on this stretch, but there was a limit to what the Tahar kin could do; and there were several watching clutches of kif, down by the dockside and up above them on the ramp. “Kkkkt,” the sound came to them from above and below. “Kkkkt.”
Well, look at those fools, Pyanfar translated it to herself, and her hair bristled. She glanced a second time at the Tahar, at Moon Rising’s first officer in particular, the moment that they passed out of earshot from either end of the ramp. “Ker Dur’s safe,” she said quickly. “That’s the truth. And I got your ship back. You’re free. How are you doing?”
Gilan’s eyes seemed to pass in and out of focus, a widening and narrowing of the dark-in-amber as what she had said got through. “Captain’s with you-And Moon Rising?”
“Both in my keeping. You’re safe. We’re getting you back into safe territory fast as we can, going to turn you loose- Don’t you wilt on me, gods rot you, look alive!--We’ve got a long way to walk, Gilan Tahar. No transport on this dock / want to use.”
“Aye, captain.” Gilan’s voice was hoarse and earnest. “We’re with you.”
Kif were to either side of them. Kif clicked and muttered, in mirth at the sight they saw-
Sfik, Pyanfar thought with a sinking heart. This ragged crew of hani demonstrated-gods help them all-hani vulnerability. Not enemies, the kif don’t see Tahar as enemies to us. We’re treating them wrong. It’s a trap, by the gods, Sikkukkut’s own sense of humor, not to send them with a kifish escort. To make us take them ourselves. Hoping one of them will faint on the way and make a scene.
“Captain-“ Haral said from a few paces behind.
Kif were taking up a stance along the dockside ahead, across their path. It was walk through or detour round.
“We don’t bluff,” Pyanfar said, and put an exaggerated swagger in her step, her hand on the gunbutt. On a second thought she took the AP from the holster and flicked the safety off, carrying it barrel-down and swinging as she walked. “Out!” she yelled down the way, and gestured at the kif with a wave of the gunbarrel. “Praise to the hakkikt, you scum, we’re on his business with these prisoners and you’ll keep your noses out of it!”
There was slow movement, timed, she reckoned, just to brush against them in retreat-pushing it. But they were going to move. She kept the gun free and her finger on the trigger, reckoning Haral behind her was taking a similar attitude and backing her up.
“Hani!”
A kifish shout behind them. She stopped at once and braced wide-legged with the gun aimed two-handed at the crowd in front; and knowing Haral was turning similarly braced toward trouble behind them.
“Three of ‘em,” Haral’s voice reached her backturned ears; back brushing against her back. “Migods-! A kif’s been hit! Someone shot a-“
Pyanfar let off a warning shot over the leading kif’s heads as she spun to Haral’s side and saw one kif on the dockside deck and a second and a third in the act of falling. Sniper-fire. Her other foot hit the deck and she shouldered Gilan Tahar in a move toward the tangle of gantries and lines along the ship-berths. “Cover,” she yelled. “Rot it, out of the open, move it!”
The Tahar crew ran. She stopped and spun again to see Haral covering their retreat, with fire coming from somewhere, with kif falling and kif firing back and a chittering of kifish voices in tumult.
“Get cover!” Pyanfar yelled at Haral, and Haral fell back in haste. Fire popped across the deck and exploded off something behind them with a deafening shock and a sting of particles.
“Go!” Pyanfar yelled, turning and waving the Tahar vehemently to move-to gain what ground they could; and: “Move!” Gilan Tahar echoed the order, and lent her good arm to drag at Canfy Maurn. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
Kif firing at kif.
Akkhtimakt’s partisans, rising against Sikkukkut.
“We got a revolution on our hands,” Haral gasped, coming up beside her with her arm about Haury Savuun and Tav and Naun panting up behind. “Captain-we got-“
A shot exploded near, and Haral flung up her gunhand to shield her eyes, staggering. Pyanfar spun about and pasted a shot in the general direction of fire.
“By the gods, they fire this way, they get it-“
A volley came back, a clanging thunder, an impact that flung her backward and cracked her head against the deck. She rolled and scrambled for cover, blind.
“Captain!” Haral cried.
“Hold it, hold it,” Geran said as chaos erupted out of The Pride’s com, “I got it-Tirun, I got Jik on one and a kif on two-“
“Give me the kif,” Tirun said; and listened while Hilfy and Khym held their own kif immobilized and furious between them.
“Shut up!” Hilfy said to Skkukuk; and maybe it was that or maybe it was the news pouring out over the console speaker that hushed him.
“-Honor to the hakkikt Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin,” the voice said. “A suicide attack by rash elements has endangered your captain and her subordinate. We are presently moving in reprisal. We advise all ships in this command to exercise extreme watchfulness for external attack during this crisis. Pride of Chanur, refrain from rash action. The hakkikt will deal harshly with these adventurers.”
“Watch him,” Hilfy muttered, and dived for com. “Tully. shift down. Take number one scan-Tahar captain’s got monitor up there-“
Tully bailed out. She hit the seat and snatched up a complug, coming into the tail of Geran’s few seconds delayed retransmission of the kifish message down the mahendo’sat link. “Jik’s got that,” Geran muttered, as the kif finished and Aja Jin acknowledged on that channel.
“This is The Pride of Chanur,” Hilfy sent back on the kifish link, unauthorized and in haste. “Harukkcom—where’s our personnel? What location?”
“I will ask authorization for that information, Chanur com.”
“They fear,” Skkukuk hissed at her back, “The hakkikt Sikkukkut is in distress-He does not have them prisoner. ...”
Hilfy twisted round in her chair and stared full into the kif’s red-rimmed eyes. “Why?”
“Because, young Chanur, he says they are in danger. He admits a weakness. He promises retaliation. This is not control of the situation. It is not his doing. He would not claim weakness even in subterfuge.”
And on the Jik-channel, suddenly over general speaker: “We got personnel out on dock, we got Mahijiru move- Where be Pyanfar, Pride of Chanur? You got contact?”
“Against what?” Hilfy asked Skkukuk. “What’s going on out there?”
“They will be Akkhtimakt’s partisans, young fool. They hope for a coup. There is likely fighting even within Harukk. The hakkikt will be dealing with that personally. He will be occupied.”
“Likely truth,” Dur Tahar said, swinging her chair around from monitor.
Hilfy rose to her feet with her pocket pistol in hand and aimed at Tahar. “That’s your recent side, Tahar, isn’t it-Akkhtimakt’s?”
Tahar laid her ears back. Her eyes showed white and she froze in the chair. “Shoot or listen to me, Hilfy Chanur. The kif’s telling the truth. But it’s local stuff-nothing’s coming in coordinated with this. Nothing I know about, leastwise. And I might have. No. It’s a local thing. We got my crew and your captain out there on the docks. The kif’s guessing but he’s guessing straight-they’re not where the hakkikt can lay hands on them right now or he would have. No, this goes right along with that assault on the lock down there. Kefk station is counterattacking-Akkhtimakt’s partisans are making their move and your captain and my crew is caught in the middle, for godssakes-listen to me and put that gods-be gun down-“
Tirun spun her chair about, still listening to something, the complug pressed hard in one ear. Her eyes flicked. “Ehrran’s just engaged the kif-Gods rot it, they’re shooting up the docks out there-“
“I’m going out there,” Khym said flatly.
“You go with the rest of us,” Tirun said, and hurled herself to her feet. “Gods be, the captain’s going to skin us, but when we get ‘em back she can skin me first. We seal The
Pride up tight and we get ourselves out there. Move it! Geran-shut her down. Put the lock on autoseal.” Tirun crossed the deck at speed and opened up the weapons locker, handed a pistol toward Dur Tahar.
“I,” Tully said, on his feet, holding out his hand. “/” Tirun slapped her pocket gun into his hand. “Use it.” “Come on,” Hilfy said to Skkukuk, and grabbed him ungently by the arm, claws out. “We put you back below.”
“Leave him one of two on this ship?” Tirun said. “No thanks. This son goes. First. First out. You lead the way, kif.” Skkukuk’s wiry body straightened. His head lifted to his full, gangling height. “Give me my gun back, hani.”
“Suppose you take one,” Tirun said, nose rumpling. “From the other side.”
“Captain-“ Haral leaned over her in the shelter they had reached along a towering gantry, in the red tracery of fire that speared the smoke and popped off the wall and the gantry structure. Haral had a piece of cloth from somewhere and was daubing away at her face with a rough earnestness while her ears rang and the fire went back and forth. It was all far away; and then it came clear, Haral’s anguished face and the pain in the back of her head. “Gods be,” Pyanfar muttered, struck the ministering hand away and tried to move. Her skin hurt. She put a hand to her middle and wiped away a dew of blood.
Metal fragments. Splinters. She was peppered with them. She felt their prickling. Felt the slickness on her fur. She blinked at the Tahar crew’s frightened faces-saw Haral looking white around the nose, and panic in Haral Araun was so out of character it shook the world.
A second shaking: this time an AP blast against the station wall over their heads, and another spatter of particles. A five-hundred-weight of severed hose plummeted to the deck close enough to kick up the wind. “Gods!” Pyanfar cried, and got over onto her knees, searching after her gun in an empty holster.
“Here.” Gilan Tahar slapped the heavy butt into her hand, and she looked from the Tahar first officer to her own, saw Haral take a careful look out from their cover, and turn a dour face back toward her.
“Pretty thick out there,” Haral said.
“A weather report, for godssakes- we got any cover further on?”
“We got ourselves pretty well set here-“
BANG! Another thunderclap, another shower of metal from overhead.
“They’re hitting the gods-be wall!” Pyanfar yelled. “The gods-be fools are going to take this whole gods-be dock for a spacewalk-“
“That’s volatiles down the dock,” Haral yelled back over the sudden thunder of fire, pointing at the cans down the way, cans with the deadly yellow combustibles sticker. “If we run that way we can draw fire on that and get fried real good, captain!”
“We sit here we got our choices too! How long’s that sister of yours going to wait, huh?”
“I’m expecting Jik,” Haral yelled.
“Well, he’s late! And we got a fool lot of crew’s going to be out here on this dock after us if they don’t get assurance out of Sikkukkut, and I don’t think he’s in any position to give them any! We got to move, cousin, cans or no cans.” She turned a look on Gilan Tahar, on a woman undone with blood loss. Gilan had gotten a bandage tied on the wound in her shoulder, but it was soaked. Haury Savuun was still conscious, by what force of will the gods only knew. “Gilan-we got a long sprint ahead. We don’t want to do any shooting- don’t want to attract any attention near those cans.” She fished in her pocket and drew out the light pistol, handed it to Gilan. “In case. But you by the gods stay with us.”
“We’re with you,” Gilan said, and the overhead erupted and another length of hose and a length of pipe hit the deck and bounced erratically the other way-as easily into the midst of them.
“Come on!” Pyanfar yelled, and headed for the next berth in a roiling of laser-riddled smoke so thick it obscured the next support girders. She sprinted for the cans with the yellow circles, remembering then that kif were at least partially color-blind.
Vermin scampered pell-mell as they charged up to the airlock, as the hatches shot open, inner and outer, as Tirun turned to hit the lock-close in the dim orange passage. Hilfy ran, skipped aside from the collapsed cage and the can-
Explosives-Hilfy surmised in horror, explosives, if the kif were willing to decompress the dock. “Go!” she yelled, bristled all over, and Skkukuk darted past with kifish speed, Khym and Geran gaining. Tirun banged into the collapsed cage and cursed; and Hilfy clutched her gun and pelted after Khym around the bend of the passage with Tully and Dur Tahar hard after her. “Tirun!” she yelled, half-turning there; but: “Go!” Tirun yelled back, running hard enough at the outset of their course-Tirun would do the best she could, lame in any run, and bring up their rear and cover their backs even if she commanded. “Get down there, get clear!”
Hilfy ran, passing Tully and Tahar, coming up behind Khym as they reached the pressure gates at the bottom of the ramp. There was a gentle, distant popping of fire.
A shot went off the inner wall. Skkukuk skipped and dodged, and dived for cover. “You get, get!” a mahe cried, rising from concealment near their ramp, waving a frantic arm. There were mahendo’sat holding positions over near the cargo-console, Jik’s people or Goldtooth’s. Hilfy sought cover immediately behind the gantry control console and the sheltering metalwork of the gantry itself, leaned there with her heart pounding in terror and glanced back to see Tirun and Tahar and Tully pelting off the hazard of that ramp. O gods, gods, get us through this-I can’t, I can’t-She flung a look the other way, thinking Khym had gone to cover in a stack of cargo-cannisters ahead.
He had not. “Na Khym!” she yelled in dismay, huddled in the solidity of her shelter, for Skkukuk dashed on, and Khym followed. “Gods be! Khym! Uncle! Stop! Wait!”
Then it all seemed clear, the direction of the kifish enemy and the direction of the fire where Pyanfar and Haral had gone, and she shook fear away to some far cold place and gave up on either survival or mortality.
Go on, Hilfy Chanur, go on, is a man crazy who knows he’s overdue to die or a kif on his way to switch sides again-Go, fool, Haral’s out there, and Pyanfar-Run till the shots come your way and then you cover and shoot till they stop. It’s all real simple, kid.
Haral’s voice, instruction-giving again.
And Pyanfar’s: Gods-be fool.
Fire hit, tracing smoke puffs on the deck where Khym ran.
Pyanfar darted behind the cans of volatiles and kept running, feeling the ache in bones and head with every jolt of her feet on the deckplates. The air was too thin and burned the lungs, the ammonia-smell cut with acrid smoke and laced with ozone. She sobbed another breath in a glance back and stopped to wave Gilan and Naur on with a pass of her hand, covering them without firing-wanting no notice they could avoid, but keeping her finger hard on the trigger. Vihan had Canfy by the arm, guiding her; Nif and Tav sprinted after, and hindmost, Haral with Haury flung over her shoulder, jogging along at what pace she could make, Haury no small woman and Haral not smallish either. “Go,” Pyanfar yelled at Gilan’s back, and ran back to intercept Haral as Haral struggled away from the explosive cans, grabbed Haury as Haral ducked out from under her body-no word of debate from Haral. Haral ran; and Pyanfar shouldered Haury to a carry and jogged on, all but blind for want of air. Fire suddenly burst on the far side of the cans-evidently kif saw the hazard marker-not hitting them. They kept going, reached a tentative shelter behind a cargo-loader. But next was an open space, and a run to scant shelter by the stress-supports. After that, another run, and another and another.
And if Jik had not reached them by now, there was something impassable in the way.
“Na Khym!” Hilfy cried, beckoning her uncle to safety, and he heard, by the gods he heard, and spun about and came sliding in by the gantry-side beside her all reeking of sweat while Geran slid in beside.
“Gods,” Geran said, pointing ahead, and there was Skkukuk still going, face on with a kif who stood frozen in his path as if it were trying to analyze the matter; then it fired, twice, zig and zag, where Skkukuk had been, but not where he was, which was coming down right onto the kif and taking it in a rolling tangle of black robes.
“Uhhn,” Khym said.
The uppermost kif’s head was bearing down and down at its enemy-gods knew what it was at. Hilfy shuddered and looked back as Tully came sliding in, -and Tahar and Tirun with him, Tully desperately out of breath and white and gasping in the kifish air. “Where’s Skkukuk?” Tirun asked. “Gone Over?”
“Gods know which one’s alive over there,” Hilfy said. “I don’t and I don’t care.” She lifted the gun then, not clear she was going to shoot, but not clear she was not going to either.
Tirun’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. “What are you into? What are you into, Hilfy Chanur?”
The fury on Tirun’s face bewildered her; and came home slowly. Hani. Home. And civilized behavior.
“It’s a gods-be kif!”
“Who’s in command out here?”
She let go the tension in her arm and lowered her ears in silent deference. Tirun let go her hand, ears flat.
“Py-anfar,” Tully said, and took her by the shoulder, hard. “Hilfy, Py-anfar-“
She threw off his hand.
“Can we for godssakes move it?” Dur Tahar asked.
“Move,” Tirun said, and led this time, until others of them outstripped her, Hilfy among the first. Like a shadow in the tail of her eye she saw the kif leap up and run into the shadows on the far dockside, saw him weave out again and into cover, and afterward, vanish.
Pyanfar stumbled, hit the deck on her knees and threw herself to save Haury’s skull-but Haral and Tav were quick enough-both of them to save Haury, and Haral to grab
Pyanfar by the belt and haul her into shelter of a metal console.
“O gods,” Pyanfar moaned, and made shift to get her torn knees under her. Her chest and gut ached, her loins were water, the knees long gone. She leaned on Haral’s arm and on Haral for a moment. “I’m too old for this-o gods-“
“Aye,” Haral panted, the two of them braced against each other, holding to each other.
And the world went to fire and sound.
“Good gods!” Geran cried; and Hilfy: “Something’s blown up! My gods-“
Smoke came rolling down the dock like a black wall, obscuring knots of miniaturized kif, throwing laser-fire into visibility before it swallowed everything. And there ahead was a cluster of red-brown amid all the black and gray, figures huddled together on dockside.
“Look!” Khym yelled, and headed that way, strung out as they were; and Hilfy grabbed Tully and ran. Sirens blew, decompression alert, the triple-interrupt pattern screaming alarms transspecies and translogic-the docks had gone unstable. An outer wall was in jeopardy. And gunfire never stopped. AP bursts peppered the inner walls and kif barred their way, backs turned toward their advance, kif pinning down that group of hani ahead.
Geran opened up and Hilfy did-braced for aim, then moved, for Khym risked their line of fire-rushed ahead firing as he went, and no matter his wretched marksmanship, there was no need to pick targets. The kif besiegers scattered, and Hilfy stumbled a step as a splinter hit her calf-recovered herself and kept going, in and out among the girders and cables. Shots still came and she fired back at opportunity, rounded the last comer of their cover and dashed across the open dock and in among the hani at Geran’s heels.
And stopped cold.
They were Ehrran crew, blackbreeches, who stood up to face them with guns and rifles leveled.
It was the second impact for a battered skull, and Pyanfar lay there retching after breath tinged with sweat and smoke and volatiles. Sound when it returned was a chilling siren above the thump of fire. She felt something stir against her, got her eyes focussed against a tendency to cross and stared over into Haral’s dazed face beside her.
“I think they got those cans,” Haral commented from the horizontal. “O gods, my head.” And started moving, swearing in soft incoherency. Pyanfar rolled on an elbow and sat up. “Gilan-“
The Tahar were all moving-sluggish, but moving. Haury proved life by turning on her side and trying to get up on her own; and Pyanfar swung round and looked where the sudden wild fix of Haury’s eyes went. Reflex pulled the trigger of a gun she had forgotten she was holding. The shell burst on a kif in mid-leap; and the remains thudded off their sheltering can-stack onto the deck hardly a bodylength distant, while three more kif scrambled for other cover.
She sat there and shook like a beardless youngster; and got her breath and shoved her heels and one hand under her. “Keep going,” she said in a voice that failed of steadiness, and looked up at the blank, unfriendly pressure-gates of a sealed ship-berth. An empty berth. Or a ship that had gone on protective internal seal. Those gates in that case could open and pour out hostile kif into their refuge at any moment. “We’ve got to keep going-“
“Haury,” Tav objected, wobbling to her knees. “Haury-“
It was so. Haury Savuun had to be carried. None of them had the wind for it. Pyanfar sank down where she was, on her heels, and Haral rested again, holding her hands locked behind a skull that was doubtless doing what hers was, a steady throbbing to the siren that told them the dock might blow to vacuum at any moment.
“They’ve stopped shooting,” Nif Angfylas said, her torn ears lifting despite her exhaustion. “Maybe-“
A shot hit the wall and they ducked and covered.
“Gods-be!” It was a new angle of fire, one forty five degrees oblique to their escape route, and high. “They got us pinned!”
Another shot exploded and Pyanfar tucked her head into her arms, lifted it with a sinking feeling-the opposite quarter, that time. “They got us crossed,” she yelled at Haral. “Get that gods-be sniper ahead highline, and watch your head! I think he’s on the second level walkway!”
She scrambled for the firepoint at the other corner of their shelter, and felt a presence close behind-Vihan Tahar, looting the dead kif’s body for weapon and cartridges. Vihan ducked in close at her shoulder while Haral took the other side of the console that offered their tiny triangle of shelter from incoming fire. Smoke roiled up and drifted in blinding clouds. Whatever had gone up had gone in a hurry-it smelled like fuel; but a lake of it still burned on the dock, sending a hellish glare up to the smoke-palled overhead. No fans working up there. The air ducts had gone sealed, not to encourage the fire.
It did not encourage breathing either. Her nose ran. She wiped her eyes with a gritty hand and checked the AP’s cartridges. Down to six. No reloads. “We don’t waste any fire,” she said to Vihan, at her back. “Anything compatible on that kif?”
“Got two rounds,” Vihan said, pressing them into her hand. “His gun’s in pieces.”
“Get over there and see if Haral needs them worse; I got-“
Fire came back; Pyanfar took a chance shot the moment she saw the brighter flare of a rifle aimed their way, and dived aside, shouldering Vihan to the ground.
Thunder broke and particles showered. Pyanfar bobbed up again and restrained herself from spending another round. “May have got the son-I can’t tell-“
Kif moved, a number of black distant figures cavorting in rolling smoke, about a lake of golden fire. Sikkukkut’s? Akkhtimakt’s?
BOOM! from the other side. She spun about and plastered herself flat against the console with Vihan and Naur crouching tightly by her; and rolled a glance at Haral, who had pressed herself mirror-image to the far corner of the console. “Get him?”
“Dunno,” Haral said, and wiped watering eyes with a bloody fist. “Gods-be smoke-“
Pyanfar looked up, where the smoke got lower and lower, obscuring most of the gantry now, lowering a black, asphyxiating ceiling over their heads. “They by the gods got to get those fans going soon.” A cough threatened. Her own eyes were pouring water and her throat was raw.
“We got four berths to go to next dock,” Haral said.
“We got a gods-be blockade up there,” Gilan said. “We got kif between us and any way out of here. Snipers got your own people pinned for sure. Sikkukkut’s losing this one-“
“Console-“ Pyanfar said suddenly; and twisted onto her knee, found the storage panel at her back with the kifish lettering that said EMERGENCY.
She ripped it open and hauled out the first aid kit. Plasm foam. A few plastic bandages. She shoved the contents in Gilan Tahar’s direction. No injectables. No class two supplies. No oxygen.
A second glance up. There was a console call-post up over their heads, if anyone wanted to stand tall enough to try for it. And tell the kif in central their precise position when it got to that. But the sirens warned of more imminent disasters. The smoke worsened.
She thrust herself onto her knees and risked her head standing up, a quick snatch at the mike and jab at the recessed channel buttons. The connection failed. “Captain,” Haral cried in anguish as she tried the input again.
“Gods-be short gods-be cord-Pride, hello, Pride, do you receive?”
“Try Mahijiru!” Haral shouted from a crouch a little below her shoulder. “And get your head down!”
“Captain,” a hani voice came back, hoarse and weak and static-riddled. “What’s going on?”
“Chur? Chur? Where’s Tirun? We need help-“
Something whistled past her head and blew at her back; and something seized her about the legs and got her down, hard, Haral wrapped about her as a second burst blew the corner off the control console and roiled up a stinging smoke. Somewhere in the murk overhead, bending metal shrieked and groaned in protest, something huge giving way-
“Gantry’s going!” Nif Angfylas cried. “Migods, the gantry’s going down-“
Pyanfar rolled, as the metal-sound rose to a shrill grinding. She was not the only one to grab for Haury; Tav Savuun had her sister’s other arm-there was general collision of well-meaning help; and in the smoke above, the gantry’s dissolution progressed one shrieking degree at a time, impelled by inexorable station-spin and its own steel mass. Cables dropped down and writhed like snakes.
“Run!” Pyanfar yelled, struggling to stand and pull Haury with her. Her knees wobbled as she drove against the weight. “Run!”
“Where’s my aunt?” Hilfy Chanur yelled at the Ehrran over the noise of fire, of a horrendous crash from somewhere down docks. “What’s their position? Have you seen them?”
“Out there!” the seniormost Ehrran crew woman yelled back with a wave at the stinging smoke. “How should I know?” The Ehrran’s mouth fell open as Tully came panting up with Tirun. “My gods-you fools!”
Hilfy shot out an arm: Tully evaded the Ehrran’s grasp with a suck of gut and a spin onto the off foot-and Hilfy flung herself with a hard body-check into the path of the Ehrran officer.
“You bastard whelp-“ The Ehrran raked a left hand full of claws into her shoulder, and out of nowhere a heavy blow shot past Hilfy’s shoulder and the Ehrran rocked back with a curse.
Tirun’s arm. Tirun, ears flat and with an AP gun in the other fist.
“Go!” Pyanfar yelled, seeing the gantry hit and bounce and thunder like a perversely living thing, now toward the kifish positions and now toward their own, broken and in several places achieving independent motion. Smoke skirled and billowed in the shock.
And for a precious moment there lingered that random violence on the docks as great as the kif and bouncing the kif’s way.
“Go!” Pyanfar yelled. Tahar crew grabbed Haury by one arm and the other, and they limped along. Pyanfar spent one precious shot toward the far side of the dock to keep kifish heads down: Haral fired another of their diminishing few rounds and Gilan Tahar let off a third as they ran and lurched their way behind the cover the careening wreckage gave them.
“Come on!” Tirun shouted at the Ehrran officer. “Save it for later, Ehrran-we got troubles down there! You want to talk about it later, fine. Let’s get the rest of us off that dock down there!”
“That’s Tahar!” The Ehrran pointed at Dur Tahar. “By the gods, Chanur-“
“Save it,” Tirun yelled. “Settle it later, hear? You’re talking to a ship’s chief officer, woman, and we got hani lives at stake!”
“I don’t regard any Chanur patents. You got a man out here carrying arms, you got a non-citizen alien and a known fugitive with weapons-“ The Ehrran raised her gun. “You’re under arrest, you, all of you!”
“You gods-be lunatic,” Khym roared, and waded forward. A shot went off and he spun half-about-
-“Gods!” Hilfy cried. Muscles jumped and she launched herself at the same time as Geran and Tirun and Tully.
But Khym had never stopped; he made his spin full about, landed a sweeping blow and the Ehrran went flying across the dock. Hilfy’s own particular target had her mouth still open when Hilfy hit her and sent her knee up into an unprepared gut-straightened the Ehrran up with a gunbarrel under the chin and shoved her back. “AP,” Hilfy snarled, in case the Ehrran crew woman had any doubts what was at her jaw. “Drop yours-drop it!”
The woman rolled her eyes and a gun thudded to the deck. Hilfy shoved her loose. Ehrran were scattering, in full flight, two delaying to pick up their senior, unconscious on the deck. Tully was picking himself up off the deck, bleeding at the nose and wobbling, but he still had his gun in hand, and the last Ehrran lit out running. Hilfy sucked wind and aimed the AP into the running midst of them-
Her finger froze. Her hand shook. None of them fired. None of them did. The blackbreeches crossed the open area, plunging through a group of oncoming mahendo’sat who had appeared out of cover.
“Mahend’ nai casheni-te!” Tirun yelled at them. “Hai na Jik!”
“Pau nai!” the shout came back, with waving of arms. Wait!
“Blast you, help!”
Fire spattered the dock. The mahendo’sat dived back pellmell
“Gods-be!” Tirun yelled, not her voice but a hoarse, cracking sound; and they dived for cover on their side.
“You all right, Khym, you all right?” Geran asked.
“Uhhhnn,” he muttered, hand on his upper arm. Blood leaked through. His eyes were dark and dreadful to see. “Let’s move.”
“Come on,” Tirun said; and leapt up. Down-docks. Into the fighting. The only way any of them chose to go.
“Where’s Tahar?” Hilfy yelled, suddenly missing the captain as they started to run. “Tirun-Tahar-“
“Go,” Tully yelled, waving his arm to indicate direction, gasping for breath as he tried to keep pace. “Tahar go!”
Ahead of them.
Pyanfar stopped and turned and sent another shot toward the inner wall of the docks, covering the three carrying Haury Savuun, putting herself and another of their last rounds from the AP gun between Haury’s all-too-exposed person and the chance of another shot.
A shot came back low and exploded off the downed gantry in a hail of fragments. A second shot went past her: hit the back wall. She staggered and flung herself to the minimal cover they had, wiping a haze from her eyes.
“We got to keep going,” she said, shoving Nif aside to drag at Haury’s limp arm one-handed. “We got no more choice, we’re out of cover-“
“Where’s Jik?” Haral gasped, as they kept moving, as a shot whumped off the far wall and something blew up behind. “Gods rot that earless son, where is he?”
Where’s Tirun? Pyanfar translated that. Haral did not ask that, neither of them wondered that aloud.
And from overhead, everywhere, thundering through the public address: “... Ktogot ktoti nakekkekt makthaikki. . . . kothoggi gothikkt nakst . . . sotkot naikkta . . . hakkikktu . . . skthsikki . . . nak sogkt makgotk Kefku. ...”
“Sikkukkut’s-claiming-victory,” Naun Tahar gasped, laboring along with Canfy Maurn against her.
“Good luck to him,” Pyanfar gasped, and grabbed Canfy from the other side as Canfy stumbled.
And stopped, blinking tears in the smoke. A lone figure sprinted toward them, hani and armed.
“Gods,” Pyanfar cried, “that’s Dur! Tahar!-where’s the rest?”
Dur Tahar yelled something back, and came sprinting through the fire-zone into Gilan Tahar’s path-cousin and cousin in the stinging smoke, Gilan and Vihan, the distant kin, in hasty embrace-A glance round as Pyanfar struggled up with Canfy in tow and Haral came running, glancing at every third stride to the darkened farside where sniping went on unabated.
“Where?” Pyanfar yelled at Dur Tahar. “Gods rot it, where’ s my crew?”
“Ehrran-“ Tahar gasped, and whirled and caught her by both arms, “they tangled with Ehrran-Pyanfar-“ Tahar gasped a second mouthful of air. “Come on-“
Pyanfar scanned her up and down in hopes of AP rounds; there was nothing, nothing but the smallish gun in Tahar’s grip against her arm. Her heart sank. “Tahar, where’s Jik? You seen Jik or Ismehanan-min?”
“Gods-be mahendo’sat’re off across the docks holding their own positions-I don’t know.”
“Captain!” Haral sang out, and Pyanfar looked beyond Tahar’s shoulder to more oncoming figures, red-brown hides and one white shirt that shone through the smoke like a natural target.
“Gods rot it!” Pyanfar screamed at the lot of them, “we got snipers! Run!”
Her heart was up in her throat as her own crew came charging up through the smoke. Tirun, Geran, Hilfy, Khym and Tully, all of them armed; Khym bleeding down his arm, Hilfy from the calf, Tirun limping along hindmost and grimacing in pain.
“What kept you?” Haral yelled at her sister.
“Hey,” said Tirun, panting to a halt in front of Haral, swinging a gesture back at the smoke-hazed dockside. “What’d you want? Next time you arrange a party, Hal, for godssakes give us the address!”
“Let’s get out of here!” Pyanfar yelled, and waved an arm. “Get the injured on their feet, let’s get out of here!”
Khym gathered Haury Savuun up in his arms, leaking blood on both of them, and Tirun and Geran flung an arm each around Canfy Maurn as they gathered breath and wits and headed through the smoke and the din of sirens-the deep bass sirens of dock-emergency alternate with loudspeakers that clicked and hissed and thundered with kifish threats and instructions.
A sudden glare of sodium-light broke through the smoke-haze at the left, close, a light alive with shadows as robed figures came pouring out of a ship-access.
A hundred kif, a whole ship’s crew headed out toward them at some summons; or having finally made its collective mind up which side to join. New sirens wailed, high-pitched. Fire hailed about them from the flank as other kif aimed at the sudden breakout.
“Run!” Pyanfar yelled, and veered off across the dock, limping. She turned and let off her last shot where it counted, into the heaviest firepoint that was putting shots past their ears; and turned again and ran, breathless and all but blind toward a set of girders near the main freight-chute, where a conveyor went up into the station’s upper levels.
And stopped cold as she rounded the corner and saw the band of kif in front of her, APs leveled dead at her and her empty gun.
Gods-be, she had time to think, in profound self-disgust.
An AP shell landed in the full middle of the kif. Her forearm flew up on instinct to save her eyes, her legs flung her sideways and sprawling to confuse hostile aim; and she rolled to her knees staring up at a single standing kif who held his AP gun widely to the side, non-combatant beside a smoking heap that had been five of his fellows.
“Captain,” Skkukuk said as cheerfully as she had ever heard a kif speak, about the time her crew poured about her and made a defensive wall.
She struggled for her feet, almost sprawled again, but Tully, closest to her, caught her arm and saved her balance.
“I feared treachery,” said Skkukuk with a wave of his hand at the rest of the crew. “And so I followed you my own way, captain, to be of service.”
“Gods save us,” Tirun muttered.
“I would advise,” Skkukuk said, “going back to the ship. The hakkikt Sikkukkut will reward you for that prudence.”
“You’re a gods-be agent of-his!” Pyanfar cried.
A flourish of dark sleeves and weapon-hand toward the smoking pile of kifish corpses. “Did I not offer you my weapons? I am skku to Chanur, no other, and I have given you your enemies.” Skkukuk turned and pointed down the docks toward their own berth. “The mahendo’sat have secured the docks a little further on. Come and I will show you a safe route.”
“Then move,” Pyanfar said numbly. “Get!”
“Keep this one from my back!” Skkukuk pointed a claw in Hilfy’s direction. “This one-“
“You gods-be filth!” Hilfy cried, and headed for him, but Pyanfar caught her ann. “Move it!” Pyanfar yelled at the kif.
The kif turned and started off in a dash for other cover. “Go,” Pyanfar said, still holding Hilfy’s arm, and hurled her into free, passing her in the tracks of the kif who sped as a darting wisp of black in the smoke.
Whump! Overhead, power went up full: lights glared; the distant burr of fans reasserted itself. Kefk station was trying to live. The loudspeaker blared, inaudible in the other din.
There was a sudden fading-out of fire; as if entropy had set in-decreasing organization and increasing desire on the part of kif still involved to exit the affair with whatever gains they had: alive. Defense only, at this point.
Follow the kif. Trust the kif who had saved her skin. They were within com range of The Pride. Pyanfar reached for the pocket com in her limping jog, coughing as she went, blinking smoke-stung tears and hoping to the gods all the rest were still behind her as she tracked the light-footed kif from cover to cover. “Chur,” she gasped into the com. “Chur, it’s Pyanfar-do you hear me?”
No answer.
A dozen strides more. “Chur!”
Silence from the com. It could have gotten broken in a fall. It could have.
Skkukuk came to a sudden halt in the shelter of a set of girders just ahead, and plastered himself against it. Strobe-light flashes lit the smoke ahead, a ceiling-towering series of upward cycling lights that sent ice to a spacer’s heart.
Of a sudden the whole station shuddered. Pyanfar flailed wildly for balance and found it next Skkukuk in a thunder of rollers and hydraulics and an airshock that made the ears ache.
“0 gods,” she said, braced against the column and staring into that rolling cloud as the rest of the company reached them. The great doors of the section seal had shut. The Pride’s dock, Mahijiru’s, Vigilance-Aja Jin-They were cut off.
“What-!’ Khym’s voice came in gasps, subdued and frightened. He leaned there gasping, his back to the girder crossbrace, Haury limp in his arms. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Pyanfar said. The whole station seemed suddenly quiet. The sirens were silenced. “Could’ve been holed-“ The Pride. O gods. “We’re cut off.” She tried the pocket com again. “Chur. Chur, you receiving?”
She expected no answer. She got none. She flicked it to standby again and met Geran’s eyes by accident. “Probably can’t get through,” Pyanfar said on a gasp. “Range is marginal through that seal.”
“Ktiot ktkijik!” the PA thundered- EMERGENCY. And went on and on-Skkukuk lifted his dark, long face the better to hear, but the kifish words garbled in the echoes.
Another burst of loudspeaker sound, from another direction, likewise kifish, groundlevel.
“Captain!” Haral caught her arm and pointed, where four brightly-garbed mahendo’sat had broken from cover and begun to run their way, close at hand.
Desperately.
“Gods be,” Pyanfar said, “Jik-Jik, you gods-be earless- What’s going on over there?”
Jik came panting up and caught her arms, at the end of his breath. “You come-got go-other way. Got no go ship, no go ship-“
“What happened over there?”
“Got trouble. Got Vigilance-I think she blow dock. I think she go-go Meetpoint.”
“Where’s Mahijiru? What’s Aja Jin doing, for godssakes? You got contact? Clip a vane off her! Stop her!”
Jik blinked and gasped. “I lose contact Aja Jin-Mahijiru power up. Mahijiru-Vigilance-go.”
“He’s after her.”
“He no shoot, no shoot. Pyanfar, I not know what he do-Get off dock, we got get off dock! My partner-he-he not shoot!”
“You mean he’s going with her? He’s going out with Vigilance?”
“A,” Jik gasped, shaking at her. “We got-problem-“
“Kkkt,” said Skkukuk. “Understatement. The hakkikt will not be pleased with mahendo’sat or hani today.”
“Shut up!” Pyanfar snarled; and Skkukuk lowered his head between his shoulders.
“Look about you,” said Skkukuk.
“Uuhhhnn,” Haral said; and Pyanfar looked.
Shadows appeared throughout the smoke-haze, robed shadows converging on them from all sides, with caution and deliberation. And leveled rifles.
“These will be the hakkikt’s,” Skkukuk said. “Since they aren’t shooting. They will get us back to your ships. Or not, at the hakkikt’s pleasure. Kkkt. I trust you did not offend him in your interview.”
“Beware of Goldtooth,” Pyanfar muttered distractedly. “Beware of Ismehanan-min.”
“What say?” asked Jik. “What talk, Pyanfar?”
“Not me. Stle stles stlen. The stsho warned me at Meetpoint. From the start. I paid a lot for that advice. A whole lot.” She shoved her empty gun into its holster and stared bleakly at the narrowing circle of kif. “Everyone stand easy. Let’s just hang onto the guns if we can.”
“Kkkkt. Parini, ker Pyanfar?”
“Appreciated, hakkikt.” Pyanfar reached out a sooty, blood-caked hand as an attendant brought a cup to her side, there in Harukk’s dim hall.
Back to starting-point. The blood and stink of the docks still clung about them. They bled from wounds. The hakkikt elected to have his nose offended; or delighted in the sweat and discomfort of the opposition.
All of them were there-Hilfy, Tully-seated at Sikkukkut’s low table, on insect-legged chairs: Haral; Dur Tahar; Jik; the others of all three crews, hani and mahendo’sat alike, were back in the shadows along the wall, among armed kif-except Haury Savuun. The kif had taken her over objections as violent as they dared make. To no avail. It was surely mockery that set Hilfy and Tully as guests at Sikkukkut’s table; with Dur Tahar: and unsubtle mockery that set Skkukuk to crouch on the floor near the hakkikt’s chair, robed knees up near hooded head, arms tucked out of sight, a very, very quiet Skkukuk, as small as he could make himself.
Sikkukkut sipped his own cup. It was not parini. Dark eyes glittered. “Should I wish a dockside destroyed in future,” Sikkukkut said, “I will only invite my friend Pyanfar. First the stsho, then the mahendo’sat, and now the kif. You are an expensive guest.”
“I’d like to contact my ship.”
“Of course you would. Kkkt., Chur Anify has stayed aboard. Wounded, you say. But perhaps still capable at controls. Who knows? While, Keia, the complement you left on Aja Jin-virtually complete. Except yourself and the four with you. You and Ismehanan-min withdrew your crews from the docks simultaneously with those of Vigilance. To put it directly-why?”
“A. Because-“ Jik fished in his pouch for something and came up with a smoke and a light. He carried the stick to his lips and lit the lighter.
“No,” said Sikkukkut definitively, and Jik paused and looked his way, fire burning and smokestick unlit. “No,” Sikkukkut said again.
Jik froze a moment as if undecided, then deftly snapped out the lighter, palmed the smokestick and returned both to the pouch.
“Well?” said Sikkukkut.
“Number one sure thing Vigilance got make trouble.” Jik hooked a thumb toward the company over by the wall, and gestured loosely toward Tahar immediately at his right. “Ehrran go out, they think maybe they get hands on Tahar. Want bad. No good try. Pride don’t let. Things go bad quick, shooting start, those hani they get recall order. Pride crew, they try find captain, a? Try cross dock-they same time save Ehrran hides all by accident. They run like hell, board ship. When I see Vigilance crew go off dock, I get quick nervous.”
“You knew what she would do.” Sikkukkut sipped at his cup, flicked his tongue delicately about his lips. “Well, as we sit here at our ease, Vigilance is still outbound-on Meetpoint vector, without a doubt. Your colleague and partner Ismehanan-min is running hard behind her, not a shot fired on either side. Does that surprise you, Keia?”
“Damn sure surprise,” Jik said darkly.
“And yourself, ker Pyanfar?”
Pyanfar lowered her ears. “Hakkikt, I told you what Ehrran would do the minute she got the chance. No, I’m not at all surprised.”
That did not well please the hakkikt. She saw the tension in the hand that held the cup, the relief of tendons and veins under the dark gray skin. But the snout gracefully lifted from the cup again. The dark eyes blinked ingenuously. “What would you do, skth skku?”
Vassal of mine. Pyanfar flattened her ears further. “What’s necessary to do, The hakkikt has no need of my advice, but our motives still coincide. Pukkukkta. Ehrran plainly aims to kill us, and I don’t intend to let her have a sitting target. By your leave, hakkikt. What I said before the fighting started is still the truth.”
“Sktothk nef mahe fikt.” Safety snicked off a gun close at hand. A guard held a pistol close to Jik’s head and Jik never flinched, but picked up his wine and took a measured sip.
“Do you trust our friend Keia?” Sikkukkut asked.
“He’s still here. He was doublecrossed in this, same as us.”
“Was he, truly? Second question. Is he my friend?”
“Like always,” Jik said with a tilt of his imperiled head, and the cheerfulness faded to a frown. “Hakkikt, long time I work with Ana Ismehanan-min. He sometime crazy. I think maybe he got idea, maybe go this place-“
“Humans.” Sikkukkut leaned forward, set down the cup on the low table and rested his hands on both his knees, long jaw outthrust. “Ismehanan-min knows precisely what he is working for. Mahen interests-which have perhaps very little to do with mine.-Or even yours, ker Pyanfar. I wonder what those two discussed with each other before Ismehanan-min left dock. I wonder what agreements exist. Would you know these things?”
“I’ve never found Goldtooth forthcoming on his plans.” Exhaustion threatened her with shivers; or it was the cold; or a sick dread of the narrow path .they walked, and where it might turn next. The gun stayed at Jik’s head; and there was ice in her stomach and her nose ran. “He left Jik here. So he didn’t tell Jik anything. Same as me. Didn’t trust me with what he was up to.”
“But he trusted-I do dislike that concept-trusted this Rhif Ehrran.”
“That isn’t necessarily so, hakkikt. I don’t think he trusts anyone.”
“But Ehrran has a ship on her tail and at last report, she isn’t firing. Is this characteristic of Ehrran?”
“It is if she’s got a hunter-ship on her back. She’s only brave on docksides. I haven’t seen her style in space. But I know she’s no match for Goldtooth in a fight. Couldn’t be, if he’s got position on her. Fancy ship, fancy computers, lot of programmed stuff. Programs for everything. But I wouldn’t bet Vigilance’s arms systems against Mahijiru and I sure wouldn’t bet her crew. Evidently she thinks the same.”
“There’s another possibility. Ismehanan-min boarded Vigilance during his time in port.”
Her ears pricked up. It took no acting. “After or before he came to me, hakkikt?”
“After. Does it suggest something to you?”
“It might still have been on our business.” The sweat stung in her wounds. Across the chamber, against the wall, Canfy Tahar slowly slumped to the deck, not fainting, but at her limit. Tav knelt by her; and kifish guns angled toward them. They still had their own weapons: kifish etiquette. But theirs were not out of holsters; and the kif s were.
And the gun never left Jik’s temple. He sipped carefully at his drink and ignored it. But that was calculated and dangerous too.
“I doubt it was,” Sikkukkut said. “If they are not acquaintances, who sleep in one bed, they will be by morning. Is that not a hani proverb?”
She blinked. “A hundred year child. That’s a mahen proverb. Longtime trouble from a single act. Goldtooth’s either making a serious mistake, hakkikt, or he’s still acting in your interest. He’ll be at Meetpoint. Where he’s useful. And it’s not his style to consult with his partners.”
“What of that, Keia?”
“/ like that smoke now, hakkikt.”
“Answer.”
Jik’s eyes came slowly to Sikkukkut’s. “She right. I think maybe Ana got idea put self where make lot trouble.”
Sikkukkut’s long nose drew down somewhat. It was not a pleasant expression. He folded his long fingers beneath his outthrust jaw. “Kkkkt. Shall I observe, Keia, that your position is uncomfortable? That I presently have ships proceeding toward jump, to warn my enemies. That this whole diversion on the docks-diversion, Keia!-was perhaps created to give those two ships time to get away.”
“They be kif who fight, hakkikt.”
“They are worms who lacked initiative until someone moved! Don’t tell me kifish motives! Don’t play the innocent with me, mahe, or you will find me other than civil!”
Pyanfar flexed claws and tried to think past the pounding of her heart. Hunter-vision tried to take over. She forced the black edges back. “She was in port with him.”
“Him,” Sikkukkut said sharply. The kif turned his attention in her direction, went off one hunter-fix and onto her. “Who?”
“Goldtooth was at Meetpoint at the same time as Rhif Ehrran; same time as you, hakkikt. I’m wondering who was talking to whom back then. You talked to Goldtooth. He intimated that much. But who met with the stsho? And who met with whom in stsho offices?”
“No,” Sikkukkut said, as if he had turned a thing over in his mouth and decided to eject it, delicately, his eyes burning and full of estimations. “No. I don’t credit the stsho with that much nerve.”
“Then,” said Pyanfar, “the stsho at least thought they were on the inside of this business. They thought they were ahead of the hunt. Or leading the hunters where they liked.”
“Suppositions are a shaky bridge, ker Pyanfar. Particularly when the waters are deep. You wish to distract me. You see-I know friendship. I put it with martyrdom-in the category of terms useful to know. Friendship-is also subject to rearrangement of loyalties. At the most disadvantageous moments. Believe me that I understand the exigencies of allegiance-trading and advantage. Let’s operate within them. Shall we? Let’s consider what prompted this attempt on my life . . . since that’s surely what it was. Let’s consider how it incidentally created the timing for escape-Vigilance uses its guns as it parts our company and breaches an entire dock to hard vacuum, a dock conveniently free of mahen or hani casualties. Not of kif. But remarkably your crew and the crews of Mahijiru, Aja Jin-Keia; and of course Vigilance- were not on that dock when it decompressed.”
“We weren’t in a favorable situation ourselves, hakkikt!”
“Be still, ker Pyanfar, and let my old friend Keia do this explaining. Let him tell me how Aja Jin was so fortunate in its timing. Do you want your smoke, Keia?-Take it. Perhaps it will facilitate your thinking.”
“A.” Jik reached again into the pouch, kept his movements measured: I am not in a hurry, they said. You do not force me.
And that sudden patience on Sikkukkut’s part raised the hair on Pyanfar’s nape. Stalk and circle. Take it. Have what you want at my hand. When I choose. If I choose. Your addiction is your vulnerability and I control it, I demonstrate it to these others and you must bear with that.
And soon with other things.
See, hunter Pyanfar, how easy and how perilous the fall from my favor.
Friendship and kinship is your addiction. I can twist that knife too.
Godssakes-as Hilfy let go a long, careful breath-sit still, niece.
The smoke rose, gray wisp against the orange sodium-glow; and swirled above Jik’s head, taken by the ventilation. “I tell you,” Jik said easily, and gods, there was only the faintest fear-smell: he was that steady. The strong smoke subdued other olfactory cues, deliberate stratagem, perhaps. “I tell you, I not happy. Ana be old friend. But politic make different. We be mahendo’sat, hakkikt. I know what he do. He hedge bet.” He made a gesture with the smokestick and put the lighter away. “He call me fool. Maybe I be. We not trust Ehrran either one. I know damn sure when Ehrran crew make fast withdraw from dock we got trouble. Mahijiru already got close up tight hatch. I send all crew aboard, tell get hell off dock, try get damn fool hani-“ He gestured Pyanfar’s direction, and over his shoulder at the others. “They going find captain. Damn sure / got no way stop. Damn good idea anyhow. Pyanfar be val-u-able ally. Maybe do favor to hakkikt, a? Rescue Pyanfar.” Another large drag at the smoke.
It leaked slowly from his nostrils. “I not like whole ship company go out from The Pride-but they go quick get off dock. This number one good idea. I don’t trust Ehrran. I run like hell, try catch these hani. No good. We get pin down. We got no hakkikt permission be on dock, a? Every damn fool out there want shoot us. Hani go through. We stuck. So got one job then-hold way open for hani, back to ship. We do. We hope Ana take care Ehrran. I think he do. He follow her. I still got hope he got good idea. Maybe help. He not like tell what he do. This maybe make friend lot nervous. Make me damn nervous now, a? I be like you, hakkikt. I always like know what my friend do.”
“Your friend has left you in a precarious position. Or you’ve elected to stay and lie to me.”
“A. No lie. Got know truth to make lie. I not know. He not talk to me.”
“Meaning nothing can extract this truth from you.”
“Not got. What want? I say give you Kefk. I give.”
“Kefk is in ruins, Keia. It seems a dubious gift.”
“You got lot sfik. You step on Kefk, go ‘way, take lot more prize, a? Akkhtimakt no got. You be rich, you fix, easy.”
“Ah. But you still suppose Ismehanan-min is going to support us at Meetpoint.”
“He no like Akkhtimakt.”
“I take that for granted. You yourself serve your Personage and not me. As he does. Doesn’t this mean some agreement of action?”
Jik drew another large breath of smoke and sought a place for the ash afterward. There was none. He tapped it and let it fall to the floor. “I serve Personage. I tell you plain I got reason want see you be hakkikt. I think this be good for all. So I serve Personage. Serve you. Balance, hakkikt. You be Personage we recognize. You got lot sfik with mahendo’sat. These be crazy times. Better kif got good smart Personage, a?”
“Flattery, base flattery, Keia. Diversion again. I tell you I am not persuaded it was kif who began that fight on the docks. And this-“ in a blink Sikkukkut’s arm shot out, and guards pounced on Skkukuk, hauling him upright.
“Kkkt!” Skkukuk’s protest was throat-deep and anguished.
“He’s mine,” Pyanfar said tautly. Never back up, never back down, never let a kif get away with any property. “A present from you, hakkikt.”
Dangerous. O gods, dangerous. So was flinching when that long-jawed face turned her way.
“It remains yours,” Sikkukkut said.
“It gained a little sfik,” said Pyanfar. “In our service out there. I’d like to keep it.”
“Kothogot ktktak tkto fik nak fakakkt?”
The question went to Skkukuk; and Skkukuk drew his head back as if he wanted to be far from Sikkukkut’s sight.
“Nak gothtak hani, hakkikta.”
“Nakt soghot puk mahendo’satkun?”
“Hukkta. Hukktaki soghotk. Hani gothok nak uman Taharkta makkt oktktaikki, hakkikta.”
No. Desperately. / saw no collusion. The hani argued over possession of the human and Tahar and left, hakkikt.
A wave of Sikkukkut’s hand. The guards let Skkukuk go and he collapsed back into a head-down chittering heap beside the table.
“So he attests your behavior,” Sikkukkut said. “Your sfik still powerfully attracts his service. I wonder is it hope of you or dread of me so impels him.”
“He’s useful.”
“And as we speak, Vigilance and Ismehanan-min hasten, to betray us at Meetpoint. What attraction can they find there, I wonder, that impels Ismehanan-min to abandon Keia here to my pleasure-Do I not correctly recall a mahen proverb, Keia my friend, that green leaves fall in storms and the strongest friendships in politics?”
“Long time friend, Ana Ismehanan-min.”
“But he would let you die.”
“Like you say, politic. Also-“ Jik pinched out the smoke and dropped the butt into his pouch. “Also Ana lot mad with me.” Jik’s eyes came up, liquid and vulnerable and without the least doubt. “He know I work with tc’a. Fool, he say; Jik, you be damn fool involve methane-folk. Ana, I say, I not much worry, I long time talk tc’a. Got lot tc’a know me, long time. I want tc’a come here to Kefk-fine. Dangerous, maybe. I think now maybe knnn got interest. Maybe good, maybe bad-“
O, deft, Jik. The methane-breather connection. That’s one thing Sikkukkut has to be afraid of. For godssakes don’t overdo it.
Jik shrugged. “So, Ana be lot upset. Lot knnn interest this human thing. Lot interest.”
Profound silence. Pyanfar found herself holding her breath and daring not get rid of it. She kept the ears still; and even that betrayed the tension every posture in the room already betrayed, kif and hani alike. Tully’s eyes darted to Jik, to her, to the kif, the solitary, sapphire-glittering motion in a gray and black world.
“Yes,” Sikkukkut said. “There would be interest on their part. And it has also occurred to me that we have a source of information here among us. At this table. Tully-you do understand me, Tully.”
O gods-She saw Hilfy’s minute flinching; the tension of muscles in her, in Tully, in Haral-Look this way, Tully-
“I understand,” Tully said at his clearest, looking straight at Sikkukkut with never a look or a pause for advice. “I not know, hakkikt. I not know route. I not know time. I know humans come quick.”
A long moment Sikkukkut gazed at him as she glanced between them. A visible shiver began in Tully’s arms, his hands upon his knees. “You and I have met before on this matter,” Sikkukkut said. “But how fluent you’ve become.”
“I be crewman, hakkikt, on The Pride. I belong captain Pyanfar. She say talk, I talk.”
Gods help us, be careful, Tully.
“Where will they likely come?”
Now Tully looked her way, one calmly desperate look.
“Do you know?” Pyanfar asked, pretense, not-pretense. He continually baffled her. “Tully, gods rot it, talk.”
He looked back toward Sikkukkut. “I not know. I think humanity come Meetpoint. I think Goldtooth know.”
“Kkkkt. Yes. I think so too. So does Akkhtimakt, who stripped that knowledge from your shipmates. Who has what that courier carried, information that-doubtless-has sped to points in mahen space. Truth, finally, arrives from the least likely source. You amuse me-Tully. You endlessly amuse me. What shall I do with Keia?”
“Friend,” Tully said quietly, evenly. His best word. Almost his first word. His fall-back word when he was lost.
“But whose?”
There was silence. Long silence.
“I think that Keia will be my guest a while. Go back to your ships. I shall release your crew, Keia-in time. I wouldn’t impair your ship’s operation. And I’m sure your first officer is quite competent.”
Jik reached for another smokestick. No one interfered. He slid a look Pyanfar’s way. Go.
“Right,” Pyanfar said in a low voice. “I take it we’re dismissed, hakkikt?”
“Take all I have given you. You’ll board by lighter. The dock access is not useable.”
“Understood.” She rose from the insect-chair, in the murk and the orange glare; and signed to her crew and to Tahar. Jik sat there lighting his second smoke and looking as if that were the most ordinary of companies to be left in.
O gods, Jik. What else can I do?
“The hakkikt promised all,” Pyanfar said to the guard, her ears flattened and her nose rumpled. “I want the wounded hani. Savuun. Haury Savuun. You’ll know where she is. You’ll bring her.”
It pushed-about as far as they could push. “Yes,” the kif in charge said, stiff-all over stiff. The hostility was palpable. Not hate. There was no hate in question. It was assessment-what the foreigners’ credit was with the hakkikt. When to kill. When to advance and when retreat in the hakkikt’s name. A kif did not make two mistakes.
Yes. It turned and gave orders to that effect.
It was a silent trip after that-down through Harukk’s gut to the hangar-bay; and no relief at all until they had gotten down near the large boarding-room, and Haury arrived on the other lift-dazed, wobbling on her feet as they brought her out, but limping along with kifish help. From Haury a lift of the head, a momentary prick of the ears and widening of hazed eyes that betrayed confusion, then a taciturn expression, a wandering sweep of the eye that took in friends and guards and the boarding-lock. Gods knew what she had expected being brought down the lift. But only the tautness about her jaw still betrayed emotion-a hani long-accustomed to kif, grim and quiet. Eternally playing the game that kept a kif alive.
“We’re getting out of here,” Dur Tahar said when Haury and her guards came up close. “You all right?”
“Fine,” Haury said in a hoarse whisper of a voice. That was all. She gave Pyanfar one long uncommunicative look; and took her sister Tav’s help in place of the kif s. There were bandages about her ribs. Plasm on her wounds. The kif had, done something for her at the least . . . with what courtesy was another question.
“Go,” said the kif on the docks, with the wave of a dark hand toward the waiting lighter-access. “Compliments of the hakkikt.”
Praise to him stuck in the throat. Pyanfar favored the kif with a stare and stood there with hands in her belt, near her empty weapons, while both crews boarded. Haral stood with her. They went aboard together, down the short, dark tube past the hatch.
No suits necessary in the lighter, thank the gods: nothing kifish would have fit. Pyanfar walked the center aisle into the dim, utilitarian rear of the cargo lighter, where Chanur and Tahar sat side by side on the deep benches. Up front, the kifish pilot gave confirmation to the launch crew in hisses and clicks and gutturals. Pyanfar sat down, belted in as the lighter whined in final launch-prep, sealing its hatch to the ship. The lighting, such as it was, lined the pilot and co-pilot up front in lurid orange, making shadows as they moved. The cold air stank of ammonia and machinery.
No one spoke. They swayed and braced as the lighter moved out of the bay on the launch boom- smooth, not a shudder in the arm. Well-maintained, was Harukk. Pyanfar noted such details, recalling the balky loader The Pride had tolerated for years. No glitches in this sleek killer-ship. No little flaws even in things that had tolerance. One knew something about a captain from such detail as this, and Pyanfar stored the information away among the other things she knew of Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin, inquisitor for Akkukkak, conniver from Mirkti, prince and lord over ruined Kefk.
The boom grapple thunked and let them free in their armored little shell as the shadow-pilot reached out a thin arm and put in a gentle thrust aft. Beyond their shadow and the glare, the massive side of a neighboring kifish ship hove up in the double viewport and spun off as the lighter accelerated and maneuvered at once, leaving the rotational plane and letting station spin bring The Pride-to its approach-point.
Arrogant, Pyanfar thought, irritated with the cavalier exit maneuver. There’s a flaw for you.
Grandstanding for the passengers. Sikkukkut would have this pilot’s hide for that. Then, remembering the access ramp to Harukk and its awful ornaments. Literally. O gods, gods,
JIK—
Kif talked to kif as the viewplate dimmed to dark. They went inertial now, freefall. From here on out the tricky business was up to the onboard computers and Kefk’s guidance-nastiest of all maneuvers, getting up to the emergency access of a ship at dock, on computerized intercept among the vanes and projections of ships locked to a rotating body. They did not propose to use the cable-grapple and winch in, but to engage The Pride’s own docking boom and come in on The Pride’s power. That took one access code to activate the hatch and boom-one precious key into The Pride’s computers, handed to the kif. That code had to be changed immediately when they got aboard. Damage my ship, hotshot, and I’ll have your ears.
Easier to worry about a botched dock or a code switch than worry about other things. Like no contact with The Pride. “Your ship does not respond,” the kifish officer had said when she had asked the docking request transmitted. And that meant Chur was not answering. Chur could not answer.
Geran knew it and sat back there with the rest, silent and uncommunicative and with no expression at all when Pyanfar chanced to look her way.
Chanur estate. The courtyard gate where Geran and Chur walked in one day, young and catching eyes wherever they went with their delicate Anify beauty-Chur all pleasantness and Geran sullen-silent even while Chur was asking favors of the Chanur lord and a place in Chanur’s household. “Watch them both,” the old lord had said, na Dothon, her father. “Watch them both.” Chur of the ready smile, and Geran of the ready knife.
It was the knife in Geran’s mind now.
Bloodfeud. Pyanfar knew. She gnawed her mustaches with dread of what might already exist on The Pride, and fretted at the delay of using the lighter; and loathed the procedures and the kif with their dark hand into The Pride’s codes, their presence at her vulnerable downside access. Allies. Allies-while they did gods-knew-what to Jik.
Traitor, was a word she thought, among other words for Ana Ismehanan-min. Vigilance had to be going for jump by now and Mahijiru sped after-Goldtooth knowing, by the gods, knowing he was leaving Jik in a desperate bind-But not knowing he had left Jik a prisoner. She refused to believe Goldtooth had known his gods-be fool of a partner would have not gone immediately back aboard Aja Jin with his crew, that the loyal fool would have headed down that dock-side personally, hunting a hani friend, trying to get them clear of that threatened dock and clear of kifish retaliation.
And gotten himself caught by the kif. Alone.
Soje Kesurinan commanded Aja Jin now-an able woman: all Jik’s people were first-rate, and his second in command was no fool. Would not become one, she hoped. Gods, she hoped.
Treachery on all sides. Only the kif had betrayed no one. Only the kif had stood by their word. Like Skkukuk, back there, a forgettable lump of shadow at the lighter’s extreme rear. Skkukuk, who had never yet played them false.
Loyalty?
Your sfik still attracts his service, Sikkukkut had said of Skkukuk.
And wondered in the next breath whether it was the alternative which compelled Skkukuk’s devotion to his new captain.
Chur. Jik. The cold of the air penetrated Pyanfar’s skin and she sat numb while the G force of rollover hit and a vast white mass hove up in the viewport. Braking started in earnest as white and black alternated-as station rotation carried a kifish ship past their bow. Slower and slower. Lower and lower toward the place The Pride would occupy as the rotation carried it round. Doing it on the first pass, thank the gods. No waiting round. The access code would have gone out. The Pride would have her docking boom extended, waiting for them to make contact, continually tracking them, aligning the cone precisely with their approach.
The rim of the cone came up, gargantuan on their relative scales. The co-pilot reached and hydraulics whined, extending the lighter’s own docking-stops, a ring of partials about the bow to prevent the cone swallowing them entire. They shoved forward into the green-lit interior.
Contact and gentle hydraulic rebound as the lighter’s ring absorbed the shock and locked hard. Not a grind or grate. Perfect dock. ... Arrogant and good, Pyanfar acknowledged. But if he isn’t, a kif’s not a Harukk pilot, is he? A dozen worries gnawed at her, tumbling in suddenly as she ran out of concerns to distract her. Another whine from the lighter’s systems, a shuddering as The Pride’s years-unused boom dragged them down against the hullport, lock beeping at lock until the boom knew how much extension to leave on it.
They had stable G now, linked via The Pride’s boom to station’s rotation. She unbuckled and felt her way over Khym’s knee and Haral’s till both of them unbuckled and made room for her next Dur Tahar. “Dur,” she said, “you’re welcome aboard. Want to tell you that again. We’ve still got a little time here, I hope to the gods.”
“You’ve got your own troubles.”
“We got medical equipment. Moon Rising-“
“We’re pretty well set up to handle it. Got some nice stuff. Piracy-pays, Pyanfar. We’ll see to Haury. And the rest of us.”
She nodded, started to get up and make her way back forward as the deck rocked to final contact. The accessway whined, starting into place overhead.
Dur Tahar caught her arm. “What you did-going after my crew; staying with them-they told me how you and Haral carried Haury down that dock-“
“Yeah, well-“
“Hey.” The hand bit hard. “Chanur. You want my word? You want anything we have? You’ve got it.”
“You follow my lead in this?”
“Hearth and blood, Chanur.”
She nodded slowly. There were things not to say aboard, where every word they whispered might be monitored up front; or outright recorded. Even dialect was unsafe: there might be kif translators. And there was a plenitude of things not to hint at-like plans for Meetpoint; and what they were going to do if they found hani lined up on the other side.
Like what Moon Rising might do to her credit with the hakkikt if it ran.
“I vouched for you,” Pyanfar said, “way out on the cliff’s edge.”
“We’re with you, I said.”
She looked long into Tahar’s shadowy face, as the final contact boomed home, as the hatch opened and her crew unbuckled. She calculated again that they might be recorded: she gestured with her eyes toward the overhead, saw the little lowering of Dur Tahar’s lids that acknowledged she was also thinking of it. “There’s one ship in particular I want,” Pyanfar said.
“Meaning Vigilance,” said Tahar.
“Meaning Vigilance.”
“No argument from me.”
“Huh.” An orange glare flooded in from overhead as the lighter hatch whined open. She turned and reached for the ladder without a courtesy to the kifish crew, as Haral scrambled up it ahead of her, where the pale circle of The Pride’s hatch was mated up to the dark access-clamps. Haral whipped a wad of kifish cloth from her pocket, grasped the space-cold lever and yanked. The hatch retracted in a puff of unmatched airpressure, a breath of clean cold wind. Haral looked down from the top of the ladder, in a bath of white light; Pyanfar waved her on, protocols be hanged; and Haral clambered up and through.
Pyanfar scrambled after, feeling the ladder shake as someone else hit it in haste. She came up in the brilliant white light of The Pride’s emergency airlock, turned round with Haral to pull Tirun through, and Geran next, and Tully, and Hilfy, and Khym with his arm bleeding again after the quick plasm-spray the kif had given it. She forgot, she outright forgot and had straightened to see to Khym when she heard something else hit the ladder and saw a shadow scramble up to them.
She bent and offered her hand: Haral was not about to. Skkukuk’s dark, bony fingers hooked to hers and he sprang up into the hatch with kifish agility, head up and wide-eyed.
So the captain helped him with her own hand. Skkukuk’s eyes glittered and his nostrils flared in excitement, and she felt a frustrated disgust. The hatch whined-down and thumped into seal under Haral’s pushbutton command. The inner hatch shot open on the E-corridor. “Geran,” Pyanfar said on the instant, turning. “Get!”
“Aye!”
And the smallish woman headed out of the lock at a dead run ahead of them. “Seal us!” Pyanfar yelled at the crew in general, leaving security to them, and lit out on Geran’s heels, headed for topside, for-gods help them, whatever there was to find up there on the bridge.
She heard the hatch seal. Lights came on in the corridor ahead as the monitor picked up the sound of Geran’s running footsteps and stayed on to the sound of hers.
The E-lift was in place, automatically downsided by the hatch-open command. The lift door opened instantly to Geran’s push of the call button, and Pyanfar skidded in after and emergencied the door shut as Geran punched the code to send them on their way, up and then sideways as the car shot down the inner tracks for the main lift shaft.
Geran was panting. Her ears were laid flat, her eyes showing white at the corners. She was close to panic and she would not look Pyanfar’s direction, staring only at the sequencing marker-lights as the lift ran its course up, up-ship and up again to the main lift-shaft and the corridor to the bridge.
There was no time for comfort now. And no use in it.
They hit the main-corridor running-a small, dark thing squealed and eeled away down a side passage, and another scuttled ahead of them in panic-gods, what is it?-Pyanfar let it go, her mind on one thing and only that; and one quick glance into the open door as they passed Chur’s borrowed room-showed where Chur was not. The bed was empty, sheets flung back, tubes left hanging, the lifesupport machinery flashing with malfunction lights. Pyanfar spun on one foot and ran all-out after Geran, on and pell-mell onto the bridge, where a thin, red-brown figure lay slumped in Hilfy’s chair, head-down on the counter. A pistol lay by Chur’s shoulder. Her arm hung limp over the chair arm.
Geran brought up, hand against the chair, and lifted Chur’s head-used both hands to prop her back against the seat. Chur’s jaw hung slack. Pyanfar reached to offer what she could of help, her own hands shaking.
Chur’s ears twitched, the jaw shut, the eyes opened half, and she made a wild lunge for the counter and the gun.
Pyanfar caught her. “ ‘S all right, it’s all right,” Pyanfar said, bracing her up and putting her face where the wild fix of Chur’s eyes could register who it was. “It’s us.”
“Gods,” Geran said, and sank down to her knees on the spot, against the chair. Her ears were back. She was shaking visibly as she clung to the chair arm. “Gods rot it, Chur- What’re you doing here?”
Chur’s ears twitched and slanted her sister’s way as she turned her head. “Everybody get out?” she asked, the faintest ghost of a voice.
The lift was cycling. “They’re on their way up,” Pyanfar said. “Even got Skkukuk back, worse luck.”
“He with you?” Chur asked thickly. “Gods, I thought he was loose on the ship. Been seeing things-little black things- Couldn’t find anybody aboard-Gods.” Chur. lay back against the seat-back and blinked, licked her mouth. “Vigilance- went, captain. I tried to get the guns to bear, tried to stop ‘er. Missed my fix. Armament’s still live-“ She made a loose gesture toward Haral’s seat. “Got back here-I don’t remember-Gods-be little black things in the corridors-“
Pyanfar got up and walked over to her own post. The armament ready-light was flashing red on the boards. She shut it down and capped it and looked up as the lift door opened down the hall and their ill-assorted crew came running, kif and all. “She’s all right!” she yelled out to them from the bridge, violating her own cardinal rule; and went back to Chur, only then realizing Chur had not a stitch on. “Migods,” she muttered, with not a blanket to be had and two men-no, three-arriving on the bridge; and then decided no one cared. They were all crew. Even the kif Skkukuk, brought along willy-nilly. Tully came rushing over among the rest, and Chur grinned and reached up and patted his anxious face right in front of Khym and everyone.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Pyanfar said. “Gods-be med-machine’s blowing its fuses in there.”
“Uhhnn.” Chur put a hand on the chair arm to lever herself up, and fell back. “Goldtooth,” she said suddenly, hazily. “Goldtooth.”
“What about Goldtooth?”
“Took out after Ehrran-blasted out this message-“
“You get it?”
Chur waved her hand at the com board. “In there somewhere. In the decoding-function-“
Pyanfar started to bring it through on the spot; and stopped with her hand on the board, remembering Skkukuk standing there. She turned and waved a hand at the crew. “Tirun, take station. I want a systems checkout. Fast. Geran, Hilfy, get Chur to bed. Haral, Khym, Tully, take Skkukuk to his room, then go wash up, patch up, and get back here double-quick. We got ops to run.”
Haral’s ears slanted. “You’re worse hurt than I am.” The metal particles stung at every move; most of her exposed fur was matted with blood from pinprick punctures. Her battered skull throbbed with so many impacts she had gotten used to the pain. It was likely true she was the worse case. But: “Get,” she said, because there was that message from Goldtooth in the decoder; and Haral read her by that silent way they had of thinking down the same line. Protest filed, Haral turned and made to gather up Skkukuk as she went.
“I am a valued ally,” Skkukuk said, drawing himself up in offense. “Captain, I am not to have my door locked, I am not-“
Shut up,” Hilfy said, facing him by Chur’s side. “Move it.”
“This one means harm,” Skkukuk said. “Kkkt. Kkkt. Captain-“ He dodged as Khym reached for his arm. “They have taken my weapons! I warn you their intentions-“
“Get!” Pyanfar said. Skkukuk flinched and ducked his head, and Haral motioned to him again. Shouldn’t have yelled, Pyanfar thought. / shouldn’t have yelled; the son did save my life, fair and plain.
But he’s kif.
They led. him out and down the corridor, Haral and Tully and Khym together. And Hilfy and Geran turned Chur’s chair about and with tenderest care bent down and lifted Chur out of it. “I can walk,” Chur said. “I c’n walk, I just got tired-“ But they swept her off her feet between them and carried her anyway, off the bridge and down the corridor, Chur mumbling protests all the way, only then and loudly realizing she had forgotten her breeches.
Pyanfar sank into the vacated chair and punched the recycle on the corn-system. Nothing came up. Frustration welled up, changes in the systems, every time they looked, some new gewgaw in the works. “Gods-be, what’s access on the decoder?”
“That’s CVA2,” Tirun said from Haral’s post. “To your one, I got it, I’m getting it.”
It ran.
“Gods rot, it’s in mahensi!” She cycled it again and sent it through the translator.
“Situation deteriorating,” came the translator’s droning voice. “Advise you human destination Meetpoint. Same mine.
I got talk to one Stle stles stlen. Make maybe deal. Ehrran I go, same. Keep company. You clear dock number one fast, both. Got little fracas start.”
“Gods blast him!”
“-Best chance I can give.”
“Blast him to his own hell!-You know what you did, you smug bastard, you know where you left your partner?”
The message ended. Pyanfar cut it off with a shaking hand.
Sat there with both fists clenched, until the black edges cleared from her vision. Then she carefully punched in another call. “Aja Jin, this is Pyanfar Chanur, come in.”
Not on coder program. The kif down the row, the kif in station command-were undoubtedly monitoring even the so-called shielded-line. Everything. It was not politic to be too closely associated with Aja Jin just now. Or to talk in secret.
“Captain, this Soje Kesurinan, Aja Jin You back? You got news?”
“Bad news, Kesurinan. Your captain’s been detained. Him. Those with him. In the hakkikt’s custody. I think your personnel are going to be released. No word like that on your captain. The hakkikt-“ Keep it neutral, keep it ambiguous, tip Kesurinan off to the situation as much as she could read between the lines. “-the hakkikt sort of wants to assure Aja Jin’s good behavior. After Mahijiru lit out. And to discuss the matter. You got any news on that?”
“They jump,” Kesurinan said after a moment. “Confirm. You got word captain’s status?”
“Just that the hakkikt, honor to him, wanted to talk to him. Alone. I left him in good health.”
Honor to him.-We’re being spied on, Kesurinan, remember that, we’re in real trouble. Don’t press me with questions.
A long pause on the other side. “You got suggestion, captain?”
“I suggest if you’ve got a good explanation what Mahijiru’s up to with Ehrran, it sure might help.”
“/ get,” Kesurinan said. The strain came through the accent and the corn-garble. “/ do number one quick.”
“If you learn anything let us know double-quick. I think your captain’s situation is extremely delicate. I don’t think he knows what the hakkikt, praise to him, wants from him. If you can come up with that it might help. Understood? We’ll use what good influence we have.”
A second long pause. “Yes, understand. Thank you, Chanur captain. Thank you call us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, heartfelt, and broke the transmission. Propped her throbbing head on her hands and winced helplessly at touching one of several lumps on her skull. It bled. She felt the dampness and looked at the stain on the fur between her pads. She began to shiver. “I’m going to wash up,” she told Tirun. “Can you carry on a while?”
“Aye,” Tirun said without turning around. On the boards rapid checks were going, searches after surreptitious exterior damage which, if not the kif, Ehrran might have done to them.
Or Mahijiru. She could not believe in Mahijiru’s desertion. Could not believe Goldtooth had turned on them.
But it was politics. Like han politics, like the scramble for power that put herself and Ehrran at odds. In this case it was two partners who violently disagreed on how to deal with the kif-Jik who wanted compromise, and Goldtooth who played some other game, involving knnn; a game in which the stakes were perhaps too high, too unthinkably high, to put friendship anywhere in the equation.
The affairs of rulers, of Personages. Hani had never tolerated any divine right but the right of clans to decide their own affairs; or the rights of groups of clans to hold a territory: and hani never by the gods bent the knee to anyone but kin and house lord.
Honor to him. Honor to a prince of pirates who tortured her friends and laughed inside when a hani had to mouth politeness to him.
I’d pay him any pretty speech he likes for Jik’s life; and I’ll pay him something by the gods else, the first chance I get.
Likely he knows it too.
He wanted me before he wanted the mahendo’sat. Offered me alliance back at Meetpoint. He couldn’t trust the mahendo’sat’ sat. He knew that. He knew how a hani could be snared: he appreciates what Chanur could be and do-the way the han appreciates it, oh, yes, the han wants our hides on the wall. The han saw it before the kif did . . . what we were capable of after we took out Akkukkak, after we contacted humans. They saw it coming . . . if we were ambitious. And they thought we were. And they pushed us to it.
She walked off the bridge, paused for a moment at the door of Chur’s room, where Hilfy and Geran had settled Chur in again.
“Gods-cursed needles,” Chur said to her.
“Sure. You tear loose of that again I’ll have a word with you.”
“Goldtooth’s message.”
“Ambiguous as ever.” She saw the glance Hilfy and Haral gave her. “I don’t know what he’s up to. “They would not have told Chur about Jik and his companions, not spilled any more bad news on her than they could avoid. “Stay put, huh?”
“Where’s he going?”
“He thinks he’s going to Meetpoint. So’s everyone else we know. Big party going to happen.”
“We?”
“Oh, yes. You can lay bets on that, cousin. We’ll be there.”
Chur blinked, turned her head to the side, where Geran was taping tubes at her elbow. “Captain’s not telling all of it, is she?”
Geran pursed her mouth. Said nothing.
“Conspiracy,” Chur muttered. And shut her eyes, exhausted.
“She did a good job,” Pyanfar said, reckoning Chur could hear that.
“Yes,” Geran said.
Pyanfar lingered there a moment, studied the three of them. Chur; Geran; Hilfy. None of them the same as they had been, excepting Chur, excepting maybe Chur. Geran’s movements were quiet, economical, delicate; her manner was wry cheerfulness, and it was a mask. Chur sensed it, surely, knew the killing rage buried under it, Geran of the knife, Geran the silent one. Geran who smiled with the mouth nowadays and not with the eyes. And Hilfy. Hilfy had gone to whipcord and hairtriggered temper. No more young Hilfy; no more young at all. Hilfy had gone fine-honed and when she was quiet there was always a shadowplay behind the eyes, where things moved Hilfy Chanur did not talk about. There was sodium-fire and dark; and no bath took away the ammonia-stink and the blood.
But Hilfy had sat there in that all listening to her tread the narrow line with this kif, the same as Geran had sat there consumed with worry about her sister and never betrayed it; and Tirun had done her job down to the line same as Haral, where they were needed.
And sitting there side by side in that dark council hall- Tully, answering the kif calmly; and Khym, whose self-control had never broken, two males who had held their anger quiet inside and waited for orders from their captain. Crew. Same as the rest of them. The best. The Pride. Something the kif would never own.
“Huh,” Pyanfar said, summation, and walked away down the corridor.
To be concluded in CHANUR’S HOMECOMING