The Pride of Chanur

  “This pair we got,” Tirun muttered. The double image was closing with them, less and less interval, with their own impetus added to the kif’s oncoming velocity. The knnn was on the return now, streaking out of the vicinity of the debris-track. Mahijiru and Aja Jin were farther and farther away, obliged to lose velocity before they could make way on the kif’s heading, too close to traffic for jump pulses to assist.

  “Which one?” Tirun asked.

  “Take the best target,” Pyanfar said. “I can’t tell.” Hani jumpships were on the near-scan now, several of them, hammering toward intercept with the kif, but not in time for The Pride. No place for a freighter, a race with the swift hunterships, even cargo-dumped. No way to win.

  “Now!”

  The kif ripped past them, zenith, and they fired. Screens broke up. Explosion slammed The Pride askew and red-lighted the boards. Pyanfar reached in an adrenalin timestretch, fought the pitch and wobble. In the screen’s clearing a new rapid image bore down on them, a high knnn wail in com.

  It went past them, zenith. Pyanfar spun The Pride one hundred eighty degrees in a tail roll, anticipating a kif turnover and return pass, hoping to get a shot off. Mahijiru and Aja Jin would come; were coming; might get back in time. The Pride fired back as the guns came in line: the kif had proceeded into turnover as their respective momentum separated them, and fire came back, broke up screens, red-lighted remaining clear boards.

  “Got one,” Geran yelled. “Look at that bastard wobble. By the gods we got him!”

  Fire from the other kept up. The interval was still increasing between them, but at a slower rate. It would be coming back. . . soon.

  “Goldtooth,” Pyanfar said, punching in the com, “rot you, hurry it a bit, someone out there hurry it.”

  The knnn was pulling about in a tight turn, one of those maneuvers a knnn could survive and hani could not. It zigged into the interval, into the line of fire.

  “Good job,” Goldtooth’s voice reached The Pride. “Got—”

  Com broke up. Scan suddenly went berserk, all the sensors blind. . .

  . . .jump field. Gods, a jump field—in crowded space.

  “Captain!” Tirun yelled, far away and suddenly close as the field let them go. Tully cried out, a miserable wail.

  Something was there—where nothing had been; a massive presence, a vast blip on scan as it cleared, a monster located to starboard zenith. They were off their heading, displaced. Everyone was. Comp was flickering wildly trying to compensate. Pyanfar keyed into the system, trying to get sense out of it. Gods, the newcomer was huge. Scan had the other blips, that were the kif and the mahe and the hani and the solitary knnn—

  “Captain.” Haral’s voice. Com went on broadcast again, a wailing chorus which overburdened the audio, noise vibrating above and below hearing, wounding the ears.

  The huge blip broke apart, fragmented, not debris, but discrete parts of which one stayed central and the rest sped outward.

  “Knnn,” Pyanfar breathed. “Traveling in synch. Gods help us all.”

  “Hani—” Com crackled through the static, a familiar, kifish voice. “Pyanfar Chanur—”

  The knnn ships moved together, a cloud of them, headed for the kif; and all at once the kif’s outgoing velocity began to show increase—Akukkakk had way and he was throwing everything he had into it. Retreating. Unable to boost up: the knnn were too close, and closer yet.

  The solitary knnn ship zigged and darted and joined the chase.

  “Chanur!” Goldtooth said.

  Pyanfar watched the screens, frozen in place. Hani voices came over com, panicked, questioning. The chase on scan gathered more and more velocity.

  Of a sudden came another output, a signal which made no sense to comp: scan started blinking on the ship-sized object the knnn had left behind, asking operator intervention.

  An alien voice came over com, Tully-like and frightened.

  Pyanfar cast a glance at Tully, who clung sweating and jump-shocked to the edge of the com counter, whose eyes stared wildly as the voice kept going.

  “## ship,” translator rendered the transmission from the newcomer. “## ship ## you.”

  “Com!” Pyanfar yelled at Haral and got it. Her heart pounded against her ribs. “This is the hani ship The Pride of Chanur. You’re in hani space. Friend, hear?”

  “Captain,” Tirun cried, “Captain, the knnn—”

  The translator response droned in her ears. Pyanfar stared at the screen, at a narrower and narrower gap between the knnn and the fleeing kif. “Tully,” she said without looking around. “Haral—give him com. Give it to him.”

  The translator voice went out, cut. She flung an instant’s look back, at Tully, who had gotten himself together, who had the mike in hand and talked a wild-eyed rapid patter at these creatures who had arrived in knnn synch, in a ship which had come in hauled like so much freight, unable to communicate with the knnn—

  “Captain—”

  She looked about again. Knnn closed with Hinukku, surrounded the kif, became one mass about it, as they had been massed about the Outsider ship at its arrival.

  “Gods,” Tirun muttered.

  “They’re trading,” Pyanfar said incredulously. “Like at Kirdu—gods, they’re making a trade. An Outsider ship—for Hinukku. For Akukkakk.”

  “Pyanfar!” Goldtooth’s voice came over com. “You got sense these bastard?”

  “Human ship,” Pyanfar said, punching in her still-active link. “The knnn just dropped a live cargo on us. Tully’s kind. They’re still going, by the gods, the knnn are still going, outbound.”

  “Kif ship leave station,” Jik cut in. “He go.”

  A solitary kif, of the crippled three at station. . . it was so: a lame kif without a tail, headed out on the course of the other lame kif, inching his way into retreat. “Right down the incoming strike track, that’s their course,” Pyanfar said, fairly shaking with excitement. “By the great and lesser gods, they’re pulling out, they’re going to run.”

  There was a sudden and major vacancy on scan, the characteristic scatter-ghost of a ship departed into jump—where the mass of knnn had been, enveloping Hinukku. A vast ghost, a ripple in space-time; and hard after it—a smaller ghost, their own knnn. Vanished.

  The two remaining kif kept going, realspace and realtime, headed for the far dark and sending out a steady signal, telling of disaster.

  Running for their lives.

  “We got,” Goldtooth said. “Got, Pyanfar.”

  “Got. Gods know what we’ve got.” She heard Tully still chattering back and forth with the newcomer, heard lilts and tones in his speech she had never heard. She looked back at him, who had all but usurped Haral’s com board. He saw her. His face was wet. “Friend,” he said to her in her own language. “All friend.”

  Gods knew what there was to say to the newcomers that the translator could convey without foulup. Gods knew how to cope with a dozen other Tullys equally confused and upset as he had been in his arrival.

  “They come,” she said slowly, distinctly. “Tell them they come to station.”

  “Come, yes.”

  She spun about again, toward the screens, started putting on thrust for a stationward course. Other ships were proceeding on that heading, the hani jumpships who had never slackened speed; hani who had kin on station; hani who had crew from station or who had dropped landing parties on the docks to try to assist the Llun.

  Anything might be happening there, even now, with kif elsewhere in rout.

  A hundred Outsiders plated in gold could not have interested her at the moment.

  “Captain—” Geran said; and of a sudden new data came up on the screens, and a familiar steady signal came over audio. “Station’s broadcasting again, captain.”

  She heard the mahe advise them of the obvious, heard the alien chatter from the Outsider, who must have picked it up, and the voices of hani sending anxious queries to station.

  “Station is entirely secure,” the
answer came back. “This is Kifas Llun speaking; resistance has ended and the station is entirely secure.”

  Pyanfar kept up the thrust, reckless of the lights which advised of damage. That rotted number one vane was hit again; gods knew what else was gone, but the fine control was still there; and likewise their ability to brake: no limping in; no lanes established yet: they were all see-and-avoid.

  Other signals came in. Harn Station was back on output; and then Tyo, reporting minor damage, minor casualties.

  Hilfy, Pyanfar kept thinking; and Chur.

  And Khym: at the bottom of her thoughts, Khym, for whom she had no hope.

  But that was what he had come looking for, after all.

  A sweat prickled on her nose. Breath came hard under the acceleration. The mahe traveled with them, and for its own reasons and in its own purpose, the Outsider ship came, outstripping slower insystem haulers for whom that voyage was the work of hours.

  By the time they could get there, Gaohn Station might have some reckoning of the casualties.

  Chapter 14

  The Pride opened accesses while Mahijiru eased into dock beside her, and Jik’s Aja Jin stood watch toward that quarter of the system out of which some stray kif might still come. . . not expected, but they took precautions.

  The Outsider ship came in more slowly still, permitted docking, but having to accomplish it without understanding the language, the procedures, and without compatible equipment: “Beside us,” Pyanfar had told them simply. “You got vid? You see four grapples: airlock placed in center, understand? You go slow, very careful. You have trouble, you stop, wait, back off: small ship can come from station, help you dock. All understood?”

  “Understand,” the answer had come back through the translator. And the Outsider arrived, cautiously. . . wondering, doubtless, at the holed carcasses of kif ships nearby; at the signs of fire which pitted the adjacent section of the station torus.

  Someone on the dock got a direct line hooked up. “Captain,” Geran cried, her eyes shining amber. “Captain, it’s Chur and Hilfy. They’re there, both of them!”

  “Huh,” Pyanfar said judiciously, because there was a docking Outsider chattering in her other ear at the moment; but relief jellied her gut, so that she heard very little of the Outsider’s babble at all. She looked at her crew, and at Tully, whose eyes had lighted at the news.

  “They’re safe,” he asked, “Chur and Hilfy?”

  “We’re going out there,” Pyanfar said, thrusting back from the controls. “All of us, by the gods.” She stood up, remembered the tape they had duped on the way in and pocketed it. “Come on.”

  They came, off the bridge and long-striding down the corridor, Tully too, rode down the lift and marched out the lock. If there was ever a time for running for joy, it was that last walk down the rampway; but Pyanfar held herself to a sedate walk, down the ramp, into the wide, fire-scarred dock where hani stood with weapons.

  Chur and Hilfy and some of the other Chanur—o gods, Hilfy, with a bloodstained bandage round her side and leaning on Chur who had one arm in a sling. They smiled, in shape to do that, at least. Chur hugged Geran one-armed, and Pyanfar took Hilfy by both shoulders to look at her. Hilfy was white about the nose, with pain in the set of her mouth, but her ears were up and her eyes were bright.

  “We got them,” Hilfy said hoarsely. “Got behind them at the dockside while others came through the core and pushed them out to us. And then I think they got some kind of order, because they went frantic to get to their ships. That was the big trouble. One got away. The rest—we got.”

  “Khym.”

  Hilfy turned with some evident stiffness, indicated a figure crouched against the far side of the dock, small with distance. “Na Khym got the one that got me, aunt, thank the gods.”

  “Hit them hand to hand, he did,” Chur said. “Said he never could shoot worth anything. He came across that dock and hit that kif, and gods, five of them never more than singed his fur. I don’t think they ever saw a hani of his size—gods, it was something. They bailed out of cover and we got the leftovers.”

  Pyanfar looked, at once proud and sad, at that quiet, withdrawn figure. Proud of what he had done—Khym, who had never been much for fighting—and sad at his state and his future.

  Gods, if they could only have killed him—given him what her son had not had the grace to give. . . .

  Or perhaps Kara had sensed he could not kill him; that Khym Mahn backed to the wall was a different Khym indeed.

  “I’ll see him,” she said. “We’re going to get you two to station hospital.”

  “Begging pardon,” Hilfy said, “station hospital’s got its hands full. Rhean’s got someone hit bad; and Ginas Llun—she’s none too good either; and a lot of others.”

  “Hilan Faha,” Chur said, “and her crew—they’re dead, captain. All of them. They led the way in for the core breakthrough. They insisted to. I think it was shame—for the company they’d kept.”

  “Gods look on them, then,” Pyanfar said after a moment.

  “The Tahar—” Hilfy said bitterly, “got Moon Rising out and ran for jump. Ran for it. That’s what they’re saying on station. But the Faha wouldn’t go with them.”

  “That’ll be the end,” Pyanfar said. “When that tale gets back to Enafy province, Kahi Tahar and his lot won’t show their faces in Chanur land or elsewhere.”

  “Hani,” a mahen voice bellowed, and here came Goldtooth and crew, a dozen dark-furred, rifle-carrying mahendo’sat flooding toward them, towering over them. Goldtooth grabbed Pyanfar’s hand and crushed it till claws reminded him to caution. He grinned and slapped her on the shoulder. “Got number one help, what I tell you?”

  Hani were staring at this mahe-hani familiarity. Her crew was. Pyanfar laid her ears back in embarrassment, recalled then what they owed Goldtooth and his unruly lot and pricked the ears up at once. More, she linked arms with the tall mahe, and gave the gawkers on dockside something proper to stare at. “Number one help,” she said.

  “Got deal,” said Goldtooth. “Got friend Jik repair, same you get at Kirdu. Chanur fix, a?”

  “Rot you—”

  “Got deal.”

  “Got,” she admitted, and suffered another slap on the shoulder. She looked at Tully, thinking of Chanur balance sheets, debits and credits. Looked at him looking at her with those odd pale eyes full of worship. Behind him an accessway had opened. His own kind had come, gods, a bewildering assortment, pale ones and dark ones and some shades in between.

  “Tully,” she said, signed with her eyes that he should look, and he did.

  He froze for the instant, then ran for them, hani-dressed and hani-looking, ran to his assorted comrades, who were clipped and shaved and clothed top and bottom in skintight garments shod besides. Hands reached out to him; arms opened. He embraced them all and sundry and there was a babble of alien language which echoed off the overhead.

  So he goes, Pyanfar thought with a strange sadness—and with a certain anxiety about losing a valuable contact to others—to Llun, by the gods, who would be eager to get their own claws in; and Kananm and Sanuum and some of the other competitors in port. Pyanfar shed Goldtooth’s arm and crossed the dock toward the knot of humans, her own companions following her. Tully brought his people at least halfway when he saw her, came rushing up and grabbed her hand with fevered joy.

  “Friend,” he said, his best word, and dragged her reluctant hand toward that of a white-maned human, whose naked face was wrinkled as a kif’s and tawny-colored like a hani’s.

  The captain, she thought; an old one. She suffered the handclasp with claws retracted, bowed and got a courteous bow in return. Tully spoke in his own language, rapidly, carrying some point—indicated one after another of them and said their names his way—Haral and Tirun, Geran and Chur and Hilfy; and the mahendo’sat at least by species.

  “Want talk,” Tully managed then. “Want understand you.”

  Pyanfar’s ears flicked and lifted, the
chance of profit within her reach after all. She puckered her mouth into its most pleasant expression. Gods, some of them were odd. They ranged enormously in size and weight and there were two radically different shapes. Females, she realized curiously; if Tully was male, then these odd types were the women.

  “We talk,” Goldtooth interposed. “Mahe make deal too.”

  “Friend,” Pyanfar told the humans in her best attempt at human language. Tully still had to translate it, but it had its effect. “I come to your ship,” she said, choosing Tully’s small hani vocabulary. “Your ship. Talk.”

  “I come too,” Goldtooth said doggedly, not to be shaken. Tully translated.

  “Yes,” Tully rendered the answer, grinning. “Friend. All friend.”

  “Deals like a mahe,” Pyanfar muttered. But that arrangement was well enough with her. She suddenly conceived plans—for the further loan of two mahe hunter ships on a profitable voyage.

  “Captain,” Haral said, touching her arm and calling her attention to a cluster of figures coming out of the dockside corridor.

  Llun were on their way—Kifas Llun herself in the lead of that group, come to answer this uncommon call at Gaohn Station, a score of black-trousered officialdom trailing after her.

  They would demand the translator tape, that was sure. Pyanfar thrust her hands into her waistband. “Friends,” she assured Tully, who gave the approaching group anxious looks, and he in turn reassured his comrades.

  “Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, “Chur, no need for you to stand through this. Go to the ship. Geran, you go and take care of them, will you?”

  “Right,” Geran agreed. “Come on, you two.”

  No protests from them. Chur and Hilfy started away in Geran’s keeping and Tully delayed them to take their hands one by one as if he expected something might keep him from further good-byes.

  Gods, she had no desire to deal with the Llun or anyone at the moment. Her knees ached, her whole body ached, from want of sleep and from strain. She felt a span shorter than she had come across that blink from Kirdu. They all must. Tully too. She wanted—