“No,” the kif said. What else could a kif say?
But then Vikktakkht added: “The ambassador is at Kefk. Next question.”
It was beyond bizarre. In honor, she ought to object and pull na Hallan out of this game. But Hallan did not seem to need rescue.
“Are you a friend of the mekt-hakkikt?”
Gods, that was a mistake. Kif had no word for friend.
“My alignment, you mean? With the mekt-hakkikt. Next question.”
“What are you asking my captain to do?”
“To go to Kefk, where I have allies. There, I will have custody of the ambassador. There, you may ask me one more question.”
Hallan flicked an ear in her direction. It was not a time to dispute the matter. There was silence all around them. This is a dangerous kif, she thought.
“Yes, sir,” Hallan said.
“Chanur.”
“Hakkikt?” Hilfy asked, sure that was what she was dealing with.
“You flatter me.”
“I doubt it.”
“Kkkt. You’re free to go. At Kefk, Chanur.”
There were arguments possible with mahendo’sat. None with this. A quality called sfik was life and death. And sfik in this case meant swaggering out of here on equal terms.
“At Kefk,” she said, that being the only choice. She turned abruptly and walked out, praying to the gods her crew did the same, and that na Hallan, good heart that he was, didn’t linger to push a point.
All the way the kif were estimating them, testing them with soft clicking sounds, the threat of their presence, and cleared their path only at the last moment. They lived as far as the door, and as far as outside, and no one had said anything and no weapons were out. They crossed the traffic pattern of the docks quickly now, toward the cover of the gantries and the shadows beneath the structural shapes.
“Was it all right?” Hallan asked. Now she could hear the nervousness in his voice.
“Good job,” she said. “Good job, Meras.” Because it had been. It still was. They were out of there.
But in the shadows, in those places where the girders and the double lights overhead made eye-tricking shadows, it was too easy to imagine black, robed figures.
“Kefk,” Tiar panted distressedly.
Kefk was across the border, kifish territory. If they were anxious here, doubly so there. Hani were theoretically free to use that port, theoretically safe there, the way kif were theoretically safe at Anuurn, but neither hani nor kif had tested the treaty in regular trade.
Ally of Pyanfar’s, was he? Kif could lie. Kif were quite good at it.
“I tell you what,” Chihin said. “We sell our stsho to the kif.”
“I could be tempted,” Hilfy muttered. Chihin didn’t say the contract had been the stupidest deal they had ever gotten into. Chihin was being polite.
But it was true. And there was no way out of it, at this point. To cut and run wasn’t even a remote option, that she could see, not if they hoped to have a reputation left, not if they hoped to have their trading license, not if they hoped the whole gods-be Compact would hang together. Threads were unraveling. Two, now three, mahen stations had lost their whole stsho population to violence.
And they were in it up to their—
Something popped, with that nasty sound of exploding tissue. Chihin stumbled against her, and she yelled, “Cover!” on a half a breath, trying to hold on to Chihin and drag her out of fire if she could figure where it had come from. She saw the red dot on a girder, knew it was from across the dockside, and flung herself behind a pump housing, Chihin actively trying to tuck her legs into shadow and to get up on an elbow.
“How bad?” Hilfy panted.
“Don’t know,” Chihin said. “Arm. Feels like I was punched; but it works. Sort of.” The shock was setting in, and Chihin’s supporting arm began shaking, her breathing to shorten. Hilfy had her pocket com out, made a breathless call to the Legacy:
“Tarras! Sniper fire! Get to cover.”
She was shaking now, light tremors, which was no good. She put a hand on Chihin, and risked a look out where they had been, where none of her party still was, which was good news. Everyone had made cover of some kind.
“Tarras!”
“Aye! I hear,” the welcome voice came back. “I’m calling the police!”
Police, for the gods’ sake! “Tiar, Tiar, do you read?”
“I’m here,” a breathless voice said, thin and distorted by interference.
“Don’t give position!” she said, and caught a breath of her own. “How are you doing?” she asked Chihin.
“All right,” Chihin said thinly. “Give me a minute. We can run for it.”
“That’s a sniper. Laser targeted. Light arms, but they can cut us up piecemeal. —Tarras, I think the p.o. is the business frontage. Hang on …”
She leaned to get her gun from her belt, plain projectile weapon, with a vid display, and she drew a bead on the suspicious alley … couldn’t get vid resolution. Couldn’t go firing blindly down there: she could hit some poor mahen shopkeeper. But she sighted the structural supports where the laser spot had showed, and calculated the angle of fire across the dock. It had to be coming from that alley, that narrow nook between two freight company offices.
“Can we get an ambulance out here? Chihin’s hit—don’t know how bad… .”
A flurry of footsteps arrived out of the shadows. She rolled on her hip and saw red-brown hide, not black robes—a scared, almost too large for cover Hallan Meras.
“What do we do, captain?”
“We keep our heads down.”
He was making as small a target as he could, arms locked about legs.
“Ker Tiar’s over there,” Hallan said, nodding toward the other console.
“Good.” A movement and a crash from the Legacy’s area. A truck had started up and hit a can. It kept coming. “Tarras! Is that you in the truck?”
Fire hit it and blistered paint. The sniper didn’t think it was on his side. She let off a few shots at neutral real estate to keep the sniper pinned. A neon sign. That blew with satisfactory fireworks.
“You see the son?” Chihin asked, squirming for vantage.
“No. Stay down!”
The truck bashed the gantry console and clipped the girder, crash-clang! It reversed and hooked a bumper.
“Gods,” Hilfy groaned. Hooked solid. And it wasn’t Tarras driving, it was Fala Anify. Fire pasted the vehicle. It rammed forward and jerked the bumper half off, then it hit the gantry console where Tiar was.
“Tiar!” she yelled into com. “You drive!”
There were sirens somewhere distant, under the electric whine of the truck as it backed. Hilfy sent a few more shots into the sputtering neon display, figuring only fools hadn’t found cover by now.
And the smoke picked out the source of the opposing shots as they pierced the cloud. Chihin had her gun out, firing at the same area. The truck whined away and backward.
Bang!
Hit another truck.
“Gods in feathers!” Chihin moaned. “What are they doing?”
“They’re stuck,” Hallan said.
“Most gods-be embarrassing mess I ever …” Hilfy began, and a shot blistered paint on the girder just past their position. She leaned an elbow on the decking and put another round after her last, then fished in her waist after the spare clip. The truck was still backing and maneuvering, and she shot a distracted look at the situation as it clipped a control console and shot free, leaving the bumper clanging on the deck plates.
She sent a covering fire across the traffic lanes, and saw an open-sided pedestrian transport lumbering along the dockside, oblivious. “Gods!” she breathed. And to the com: “Hold fire, hold fire, there’s bystanders out there!”
It wasn’t the only vehicle coming. It rolled through. So did a couple of transport trucks thank the gods not carrying volatiles, and a cab. Then fire set up again, with a smell of blistered paint from the oth
er side of the console that provided them cover.
“They made it,” Chihin breathed. Hilfy looked; and ducked her eyes behind her hand.
Bang.
Into a loader arm.
“Fifty thousand,” Chihin muttered under her breath.
“Where are the gods-be police?”
Another volley hit the console.
Cars passed, wheels thumping on the deck plates, traffic oblivious to the invisible barrage of laser fire and the pop of small caliber weapons.
She leaned painfully on her elbow, a new clip in her gun, with no desire to hit a passerby.
And saw a bus coming from the other direction.
She pointed to the dark. “Hallan! Carry Chihin! Run for those shadows!”
“I don’t need—” Chihin began, and yelled as Hallan obeyed orders, grabbed her and darted, brave lad. Hilfy ran behind them, cast a look back as their bus outran their diagonal, and fire popped after them.
Good for the smoke. She pasted rounds back, four of them, and dived for the cover of a girder.
“Keep going!” she panted. “Ramp shadow!”
“Gods be feathered!” Chihin gasped, but Hallan’s shoulder cut off her wind, and he ran.
Hilfy fired another shot, darted back one way from cover and ran the other, after na Hallan.
A shot burned her arm. That was how close it was as she skidded over the deck plates in a slide for the shadow of a truck.
The far-side tire deflated with a hiss. The mahen dock workers stared back at them out of the shadow with dismay writ large on their features.
Then the police transport pulled up, with yellow-flashing emergency vehicles, ambulances, civil vehicles … repair trucks. She put the gun away, out of sight, and looked at Chihin, who had gotten a knee on the decking, na Hallan still holding on to her with both arms. Chihin shoved her gun into her belt, out of sight of the police, she had that much presence of mind, as they began swarming around the vehicles. Hilfy started to get to her feet to deal with them, safely behind the cover of the slightly tilted truck.
A shadow turned up next to her, around the truck’s back end: Haisi reached for her arm to help her up. She snatched the arm back and got up herself, glaring.
“I try warn you,” Haisi said. “I say, watch you back, I say don’t deal kif. You got be damn big hurry… .”
“Big damn help, mahe!”
“You want help? Easy deal. I help carry …”
“No!” She barred his path to Chihin, who was bleeding on Hallan. “We got enough help.”
“You number one stubborn hani.”
“Get away from my ship!”
“Also crazy.”
“I said leave! This is our business!”
“Maybe better you ask stsho, ask, You want die, you want take ride with kif? Maybe you listen somebody know who friend and not friend.”
“Police!”
Haisi cast a look over his shoulder. Police were moving in.
“You got answer their question. You got answer, Hilfy Chanur? I got.”
“Like you gave me an honest warning! —Officer, this mahe is a gods-be nuisance! I want him off my dockside! Now!”
Haisi said something in dialect, the police officer said something back, put a hand on his shoulder, and the two of them stood in close conference for a moment.
Maddening. But it was what you got, in another species’ port. The medics were looking confused, and she motioned them toward Chihin. “There’s a surgery on my ship. She goes there! Fala, Hallan, stay with her.”
“We got regu-lation.”
“I got a surgery. There. Go, gods rot it! No argument!”
“Captain?” The com had been nattering at her for the last few seconds. “Captain? Are you all right?”
“All right,” she said, glumly watching the medics confer with the police and Haisi Ana-kehnandian. “We’re coming in. Just keep monitoring.”
The Personage of Kshshti to the hani ship Chanur’s Legacy, attention captain Hilfy Chanur.
We not responsible this fool incident. We do investigation high priority. Hope you not take us do this. Hope well soon your crewmember. We do no charge medical service.
Bill for truck and loader arm attached. Also store sign and panels. You sue party responsible recover damage.
The hani ship Chanur’s Legacy, captain Hilfy Chanur, her hand, to his honor the Personage of Kshshti.
We thank the police and emergency services for their response. We assure the Personage we took all precautions against endangerment of bystanders, and urge that the party responsible when discovered be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
We accept the bill for damages and request that, when responsibility is fixed, the suit be lodged by proxy by your office and monies forwarded to us.
Like your honor we are very glad that no bystanders were injured and ask your honor to extend our personal apologies to affected residents. We did not seek or provoke this assault.
The hakkikt Vikktakkht an Nikkatu to captain Hilfy Chanur, the hani merchant Chanur’s Legacy, at dock: Our congratulations for the damage inflicted on your enemies and may you eat their hearts.
Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian, mahen ship Ha’domaren, at dock, to captain Hilfy Chanur, the hani ship Chanur’s Legacy.
You one damn stubborn hani. See what kif do if you not got respect. They try make you scare. I make guess. They tell you go Kefk, yes? Damn stupid. You go Meetpoint. You can do Meetpoint if you carry no cargo. I escort you Meetpoint.
You friend try look out for you, you all same got arrogant mouth.
You deal with kif you got kif problem. How good now?
Repeat same offer. You want ally, you ask. Number one good friend. You call say help, I do.
Chihin called it a patch job. The mahen surgeon, operating in the Legacy’s small medical station, called it a close call and wished Chihin would check into hospital.
Hilfy called it a lucky thing it had hit the arm and missed anything irreplaceable. And she was mortally glad to get the dockers furloughed over the next watch, the station medical team off her deck, the airlocks sealed, and the situation down to manageable.
Thank the gods the station had turned a blind eye to the gun law violations.
Thank the gods no sharp station lawyer had yet suggested they’d foreknown there was a risk … or they wouldn’t have gone out on the docks armed.
To their credit they’d at least advised station that they’d been harassed. To their credit they were Pyanfar Chanur’s relatives, and they had special and real reason to worry. As they need not argue with the Personage of Kshshti, if the Personage wasn’t friendly to Ana-kehnandian’s personage, which was yet to be proved. She hadn’t liked Ana-kehnandian’s friendliness with the police.
And she didn’t like the feeling in the pit of her stomach.
It was all right on the bridge. There was too much potentially to do to let the mind settle in old tracks. There was just trained response and a bucket of water on every fire that popped up … in fact, there were gratefully few of them; but that left an old Pride hand wondering where the rest were smouldering.
And when she walked back to her quarters to wash the blood and the sweat and the ammonia smell out of her memory … when the steam of the shower was around her and sound was down to the hiss of water from the jets, then the thoughts came back, then the mind went time-wandering and couldn’t remember then from now—except the shower was fancier and the responsibility was hers. All hers.
With a crew who’d, admittedly, made only one less mistake than the sniper had made, in opting for a silent and invisible weapon on a moving target. Not an outstandingly well-informed or accurate attempt, all told.
And that was worrisome … that was just naggingly worrisome, because it didn’t add up, except to a random lunatic.
Which almost excluded the kif. Kif slept with their weapons. Kif lived and died, among themselves, by their weapons. And a mistake like that wasn’t the style of a Vikktakk
ht an Nikkatu, unless he gave orders to miss.
It wasn’t the style of a mahen hunter captain, in a mahen port, with all sorts of resources, either.
Certainly wasn’t the stsho, unless a stsho hired some other species to do the deed. Could be stsho: they weren’t connoisseurs of violence. They couldn’t judge the competency or the honesty of the guards they hired. They only paid them well enough that most wouldn’t risk their job.
The same as a stupid hani taking a cargo full of stsho trouble, for a price too good to turn down.
They were in it. That was the fact. They were in it and on the dock out there, with shots flying, they’d made mistakes that weren’t going to let her sleep tonight, that threatened to replay behind her eyelids and that stacked up ready and awaiting the idle moment, the dark, the unfilled silence. They’d deserved to lose their lives out there. Every time she thought back through it she found a new mistake—theirs, hers trying to cover them, layer upon layer of foul-ups, from the minor glitch to the decision to walk it and not take a taxi.
She scanted the dry cycle, went out damp and sat down on the side of the bed, staring at the locker, within which was a box, and within which was a ragged printout she wasn’t supposed to have, and did. Pyanfar likely hadn’t even thought about the ops file in her possession when she told her go downworld; or at least, the level of bitterness between them hadn’t gotten that high, that Pyanfar had ever asked if she had more than the printout she had officially turned in.
She’d taken it to learn from it, to understand it, and maybe, in her mind at the time, as a slice of Pyanfar to analyze and figure, when no other clues had served. She still resorted to that printout now and again, when captain Hilfy Chanur had wanted to figure out what Pyanfar had done on some point and what Pyanfar’s rules and policy had been on some obscure matter of dealing with certain ports—a compendium of experience that Pyanfar had gathered over a long number of years—some were procedures she’d laid down after certain close calls. Some were just universal good sense; and she had borrowed some inoffensive bits of it to cover the gaps in the Legacy’s own freer, easier-going rules, rules that didn’t have a lot to say about firearms or being shot at. A lot of that manual her own procedures contradicted, because a lot of it was Pyanfar’s own perfection-driven convictions, and some of it just didn’t apply in the peace Pyanfar had built.