“How many of them, do you reckon?”
“Station’s given us an accurate count. Seven.”
“Gods have mercy.”
“Aye.”
Pyanfar shook her head and called up the various images available to her screens. They were coming in under automatic at present, locked on station’s guidance. Vid image filled one screen, Anuurn itself, blue and marbled with cloud. Beautiful. It was always beautiful on approach, never so spectacular as Urtur, but full of life. It conjured blue skies; and grassy plains and broad rivers and vast seas; it conjured colors; and scents; and textures; and a gut feeling which was different than all other words. . . for hani.
She watched at her leisure: with The Pride under automatic there was little else to do. A sweep of their second vid camera showed their mahen escorts riding slightly aft, two sleek killers, so precise in position they might have been one single ship.
“Aja Jin advises he’ll drop back to guard as we go in,” Tirun said.
“Understood.”
“Still picking up signal from that knnn. Tried the translater on it. I get nothing but a docking matchup, aside from the singing.”
“They docked?”
“Quarter hour ago. Gods know what station’s going to do with them. No facilities except the emergency hookup. I don’t get any outside transmission on that problem.”
“Huh.”
“Not a word from anyone else in system. Unnatural quiet.”
“Kif docked?”
“All seven.”
“Thank the gods for that. You sure?”
“Station’s word on it.”
Pyanfar laid her ears back, scowled. It was too cooperative all round, kif who put into station. . . something was crooked here. Badly out of trim. It was far too late to turn about. And there was Kohan and all of Chanur below, who had no such options to turn and run. Therefore The Pride did not.
“Station requests all weapons shielded.”
Pyanfar considered a moment, reached to the board and complied. “Done,” she said, wishing otherwise. Presumably Mahijiru did the same. Aja Jin had dropped behind them now, in a defensive position at their vulnerable tails.
“Got plan?” Goldtooth’s voice reached her ears then, transferred from Tirun’s board.
“Want you with me when we go out,” she said. “You understand hani station rules. Know them all?”
“All,” Goldtooth confirmed.
“See you on the dock.”
Weapons, she meant to say: hani stations observed no weapons-rules. It was not a thing she wanted to discuss on com. She trusted that the mahe would turn up armed.
It was certain the kif would.
Chapter 11
Automation took them in at the last, trued to the cone. It was an easy dock. The grapples touched and locked on both sides. The instruction came up to access the line ports; declined, she sent back, refusing that mandated service. It was not likely, considering the circumstances, that station would quibble. No objection came back, only a pressure reading for the station itself and a recommendation to use the air shunt in the lock.
“They know it’s trouble,” Pyanfar muttered. “Tirun, someone’s got to stay aboard. You’re it; you and Geran. Sorry.”
“Aye,” Tirun muttered unhappily. No discussion. “Shall I page Geran and advise her?”
“Do that.”
“Want both of you fit. If we can’t get back, take command, your own discretion. Take the ship and get out of here, pick up crew at Kirdu—mahendo’sat or anything else; and make it count, hear me?”
Tirun’s ears went down. “You’re not planning on it.”
“Gods no, I’m not planning on it. But if. If, old friend. If we lose—in any sense—neither hani nor kif sets hand to The Pride. That’s firm.”
“That’s firm,” Tirun said. “Tully—our problem or yours?”
“Mine,” Pyanfar said. “He’s walking evidence. And more problem than you need. You’ve got that tape; you’ve got an ally in the Kirdu stationmaster if it comes to that. I don’t leave you any instructions. If something goes wrong, make up your own rules.”
“Right,” Tirun said.
The order split the sister-teams down the middle. If it came to that—Tirun and Geran would be a wounded half. But that was the way it went: she wanted Haral’s size and strength with her, and Tirun was hardly fit for a fight. Chur was the smallest of the lot, but of the two remaining, the meanest temper. Pyanfar extended her hand in rising, pressed Tirun’s shoulder. Practicalities. Tirun knew.
They gathered belowdecks, all of them, clean and combed, excepting Tirun, who had never gotten her turn at washing up: Tully wore a white stsho shirt belted hiplength about him, and a better pair of blue breeches—Haral’s likely, who had been sharing clothes with him. Pyanfar looked the party over; and remembering the perfume in her pocket, took it out and tossed it at Tully. “All things help,” she said. Tully unstopped it and sniffed, wrinkled his nose and looked doubtful, but when she mimed putting it on, he splashed some on his hand and wiped his beard and his throat. He coughed, and thrust the bottle into his own pocket.
“Another matter,” Pyanfar said, and took a fine gold ring from the depth of her lefthand pocket, offered it to Hilfy and had the satisfaction of seeing the look in Hilfy’s eyes. “I won’t take you anywhere ringless. If we meet some kif, or even politer company—you’d better look like where you come from, hear, imp?”
“Thank you,” Hilfy said, looked uncertain with it, and flustered; but Geran tugged her head over on the spot and bit a neat place for it, deftly thrust the earring through for her and fastened it. “Huh,” Pyanfar said, there being her niece with her first gold shining in her ear and pride glowing in her eyes. “Come on. Let’s find out what’s waiting out there.—Tirun, Geran, you keep that lock sealed for everyone but us, no matter how bad it gets to sound, no matter what they offer you. Get on the com in ops. Tell Goldtooth to get moving.”
“Aye,” Tirun said. Neither Tirun nor Geran was pleased with the onship assignment—Geran was trying to be cheerful, and not well succeeding: “Take care,” Geran said, patted Chur’s shoulder. “Luck,” Tirun said, last, and Pyanfar nodded to the others and walked with them down the corridor, leaving Tirun and Geran to get to business: she and Haral and Chur, and Hilfy; and Tully, who looked back, when none of the rest of them did, with a forlorn expression.
Pyanfar went first into the airlock, waited for Tully, hand on the hardness of the pistol she had in her pocket—as all of them had but Tully; he hurried in with them and Haral closed the inner hatch. One further insane moment Pyanfar debated with herself, then made up her mind and opened the locker by the outer hatch, took out the pistol they kept there and gave it to Tully. “Pocket,” she said when he looked anxious surprise at her. “Pocket. Don’t touch it. Don’t think about it. If I fire, you can, hear? If you see me shoot, then you shoot. But I won’t. It’s civilized here. Hani don’t take nonsense from the kif and kif know that. If the kif get nasty they find themselves more hani than they know how to run from. Promise you. You draw that at the wrong time and I’ll skin you.”
“Understand,” Tully said fervently. He thrust the pistol into his pocket and put his hands demonstratively in his belt at his back. “I take orders. I don’t make mistake.”
“Huh.” She touched the bar. The airlock’s outer seal opened for them and her ears popped with the pressure change as the cold air of dockside sucked through the access tube. Sounds outside echoed, nothing out of the ordinary. Pyanfar led the way onto the rampway plates, around the curve and down toward the grayness of the dockside, with all its metal and machinery.
The translator was out of pickup range now: Tully became effectively deaf and mute. Pyanfar looked askance at him as they walked out the arch of the farside lock, onto the dockside itself. He was sticking close to Chur and Hilfy, or they to him, while Haral brought up the rear, tall and solid and looking like business with her scars and her be-ringed left ear. H
aral had instinctively planted herself back there to guard the rear and quite possibly to head off Tully if he should lose his head. The latter was not likely, Pyanfar thought with some assurance. Old hunter that she was, she had some sense which way things would dart in a crisis, and she had Tully figured for the other direction. She directed her attention sharply ahead, where dockworkers had set up cord barriers—where a station official, Llun house or one of half a dozen other Protected families which kept the station, made her body the gateway, guard enough for a hani station, where civilized folk knew what they would touch off if they harried a warder representing her family and her family’s post.
Llun, that guard, if the set of the ears was any true indication, a mature hani in the black breeches of officialdom immemorial. The Llun drew a paper from her belt as they approached her, and offered it, not without an ears-down look at Tully: but the Llun kept her dignity all the same. “Ker Chanur, you’re requested for Gathering in the main meeting area. You’re held responsible for all the others of your party; it’s assumed the mahen ship is under your escort.”
“Accepted,” Pyanfar said, taking the paper. The Llun moved aside then to let them pass, impeccable in her neutrality. A little distance away, at the next berth, a similar barrier was set up about Mahijiru’s access. “Come,” Pyanfar said to the others, and walked in that direction, took the chance to scan the official summons. “Charges filed,” she said. “Compact violations and piracy.”
“Rot them,” Chur muttered.
“We’re going to get that shelved,” Pyanfar said, looked up again and let her jaw drop as Goldtooth led a good number of mahe down onto the dock, a Goldtooth resplendent in dark red collar and kilt, giittering with mahen decorations. “By the gods, look at him.”
“Merchanter,” Haral spat. “And I’m kif.”
“Come on,” Pyanfar said to her company. Goldtooth offered his papers to the hani on guard, but the guard waved him through unquestioned; the mahe and his crew walked out to join her in the walk toward the main dockside entry, a towering dark crowd of mahendo’sat. Sidearms, openly carried, businesslike heavy pistols strapped to the right leg. Decorations, worn by more than one of the group.
“Where we go?” Goldtooth asked.
“Gathering. Ihi. Place where we sort things out. Hani law here, mahe. Civilized.”
“Got kif here,” Goldtooth muttered. “Got Jik watch our tail.”
They entered the corridor. It stretched ahead, polished, clean, uncommonly vacant. No young ones about, precious few of anyone except officials in uniform, a very few hani dressed like spacers, who watched in silence and stepped well aside.
“Too few,” one of the mahe observed. Goldtooth made a low sound, uninformative.
“Too rotted few,” Pyanfar said. She turned a necessary corner, saw the doors of the meeting hall ahead, double-guarded. She took no more thought of her companions then, of mahe or Outsider or kinswomen, flicked her ears to settle the rings in place and waved a grand gesture to the black-trousered hani who stood there.
“Chanur,” one said. The doors whisked open, and a milling, noisy crowd of hani were gathered beyond—a crowd which retreated in growing quiet as they swept into the room. Pyanfar stopped in the midst, hands in her belt, looked toward the cardinal point of the room, at the station authorities who gathered there, at Llun and Khai and Nuurun, Sahan and Maura and Quna, evident by their position and by the posted Colors in front of which they stood.
And kif, to their right, a cluster of black robes. A pair of stsho. Pyanfar’s nose wrinkled and her ears flattened, but she lifted them again as she faced the Llun, who stood centermost and prominent among the station families. She held up the paper and proffered it for a page who retrieved it and took it to the Llun senior.
“Chanur requests transport downworld,” Pyanfar said quietly. “Our claim has precedence over any litigation.”
The Llun senior—Kifas Llun herself, broad and solid and unmistakable in her gold and her dignity, unhurriedly took the paper, thrust it into her belt, and looked again at Pyanfar. “A complaint of piracy has been filed by Compact law; by treaty, this station has obligations which have precedence.”
“The rights of a family when questioned bear on treaty law and define the han. Our place is in question.”
The Llun hesitated, mouth taut. “Challenge hasn’t yet been issued.”
“Yet. But it will be now—won’t it, ker Kifas? You know it; and I know it; and there are those here flatly counting on it. Point of equity, ker Kifas. Point of equity.”
There was long silence. The Llun senior’s ears lowered and lifted. Her nose wrinkled and smoothed again. “Point of equity,” she declared. “The composition of the han is in fact in question. Family right takes precedence. The hearing is postponed until Chanur rights and Mahn have been settled.”
“No,” said a familiar, kifish voice. Among the tall, blackrobed figures there was a stirring, and Pyanfar moved her hands to her hips and close to her pockets. More of the kif moved—to the outrage of the hall, the whole kifish contingent left the rim of the meeting hall and came out to the center of it. The stsho moved with them, gangling pale figures, sorrowfully gaunt, their pastel patterns asymmetric and erratic on their white skins, their persons in disarray and their heads drooping. And one kif stood taller than the rest, his stance that of authority among them. Pyanfar pursed her lips and slowly drew them back, eyes broadfocused on all the kif, well toward a dozen of them and, gods knew, armed beneath those robes.
“Akukkakk,” she said.
“We protest this decision,” the kif said to the Llun. Not whining, no: he drew himself up with borderline arrogance. “We have property in question. We’ve suffered damages. This Outsider and these mahe are in question. I claim this Outsider for kif jurisdiction; and I claim these mahe as well for crimes committed in our territories. They’re from the ship Mahijiru, which is wanted for crimes contrary to the Compact.”
“Tully,” Pyanfar said. “Papers.”
He moved up beside her and gave them to her, rigidly quiet. She offered the papers to the page, who took and read them.
“Tully. Listed by Kirdu Station authority as crew, The Pride of Chanur, with a mahen registration number.”
“The connection is obvious,” the kif said. “I charge this Outsider with attack on a kif ship in our territories; with murder of kif citizens; with numerous atrocities and crimes against the Compact and against kif law in our territories.”
Pyanfar tilted her head back with a small, unfriendly smile. “Fabrications. Is the Llun going to tolerate this move?”
“In which acts,” Akukkakk continued, “this Chanur ship and all its crew intervened at Meetpoint, with the provocation of a shooting incident on the docks, the killing of one of my crew; with the provocation of a hani attack in the vicinity of the station, in which we defended ourselves. In which attack this mahe intervened and took damage, a reckless act of piracy—”
“Lie,” Goldtooth said. “Got here papers my government charge this kif.”
“A wide-reaching conspiracy,” Akukkakk said, “in which Chanur has involved itself. Ambition, wise hani. Don’t you know the Chanur. . . for ambition? I am kif. I have heard. . . the Chanur have maintained a tight hold over the farther territories where your ships go, private for themselves and their partisans. Now they deal with the mahe, on their own; now they make separate treaties with Outsider forces, contrary to the Compact, for their own profit. Kif relations with the mahe are not friendly; we know this particular captain and his companion who hovers armed and waiting just off the station perimeter, threatening our ships and yours. This is your law? This is respect for the Compact?”
“Llun,” said Pyanfar, “this kif is disregarding the station’s decision. I don’t need to specify the game he’s engaging in. The law protects the han from such outside manipulations. These charges are a tactic, nothing more.”
“No,” said a voice from the gallery behind. A hani voice. A voice she h
ad heard. Pyanfar turned, ears flattened, pricked them up again as she saw a whole array of familiar faces on the other side of the hall. Dur Tahar and her crew; and the Faha beside her.
“This is not,” the Llun said, “a hearing. The kif delegation has its right to lodge a protest; but the matter is deferred.”
Dur Tahar walked forward, planted herself widelegged. “What I have to say has bearing on the protest. The kif’s right that the Chanur’s gone too far, right that the Chanur’s made deals on her own. Ask about a translator tape the Chanur traded to mahendo’sat and denied to us. Ask about this Outsider the Chanur claims as crew. Ask about deals worked out in Kirdu offices which excluded other hani and created incidents from there to Meetpoint.”
“By the gods, ambition!” Pyanfar yelled, and crooked an extended claw at the Tahar’s person. “Ambition’s a spacer captain who’d side with a hani-killing kif to serve her house’s grab for power. Gods!” she shouted, looking about the room at strange faces, at unknowns, insystem crews and landless on Anuurn for the most part. “Is there anyone here from Aheruun? Anyone from that side of the world, someone here to speak for the Handur ship this kif killed at Meetpoint, while they were nose-to-dock and had no idea there was any trouble in the system? Ambition—is the Tahar, who left us at Kirdu crippled and alone and came running home to use the information to Tahar advantage, who sides with the kif who hit three hani ships and a fourth ship from outside our space, a kif who’s terrorized these wretched stsho into coming here with gods know what story, a kif who’s created a crisis involving the whole structure of the Compact. By the gods, I know what blinds the Tahar to the facts—but you, you, Faha—great gods, they killed your kin, and you stand there taking the part of the hakkikt who had you boarded? What’s happened to your nerve, Hilan Faha?”
Hilan opened her mouth to answer, stepping forward, ears back, eyes wild. The kif howled and clicked, drowning whatever she tried to say, and howled until Akukkakk himself lifted a bony gray arm and shouted, turning to the Llun. “Justice, hani, justice. This lying thief Chanur was involved from the beginning, private ally of the mahendo’sat, an agent of theirs from the beginning, involved with them in attacks, reckless attacks into our territory which we do not forget.”