“Fala,” she said, “all channels input. Stats. Percent. Who’s who. It’s too quiet for what they’re showing.”
“Aye,” Fala said. Stats be feathered, the number of contacts flickering through com told her it was way down. And not due to the kifish presence: they were an hour out from station, light. The station had an hour yet to wait before Meetpoint learned they were here, and what was here with them and what maneuvers they were performing. An hour before station could react. But not before something might react that was lying silent and closer.
“Arms live,” she said to Tarras, heard the acknowledgment, saw another set of lights come on her own board. They were now breaking the law. Several laws. Lane violations, safety violations, the disarmament treaty, the Station Immunity Act …
“Captain,” na Hallan said faintly. “When you’ve a moment.”
“Query, aux one?”
“I’ve got something. I recorded it—I think I did …”
Frightened neo. He didn’t know how to give a report or switch images. Tiar had her hands full. “Fala,” she said, “advise station we’re inbound for dock and take the feed from Hallan.”
It popped over from Fala’s number one: matrix-corn, raw transcript.
Chanur advise Paehisna-ma-to mistake No’shto-shti-stlen
Hilfy you kill violent right
all wrong not-low bring choice
stations death ambassador now change
listen kif stsho on Meetpoint
kif now is all governor
tc’a know guilty party …
Chanur advises Paehisna-ma-to ((she is) mistaken (about?)) (of the error of?) No’shto-shti-stlen. Hilfy, killing a violent (person) will be right. All unlawful wrong (deeds) bring choice/change. Stations (because of) death of the ambassador now are changing. Listen, kif, to the stsho on Meetpoint. Kif, now the governor is falling. The tc’a know the guilty party (incomplete statement.)
Killing a violent person will be right? Aunt Pyanfar?
“What is it?” Tiar asked. “What’s she talking about?”
“Gods-be thing’s in kifish records too. They sleepwalk, most of them. —Give me the hakkikt!”
“Aye,” Fala said, and the click and hiss of kifish communications came through strongly in her earpiece.
“Nakgoth na sti!” she said. “Hilfy Chanur nak, nakgoth na sti, hakkikt-tak skkhta.”
“The tc’a are most difficult to persuade to lie,” the voice came back, cultured and fluent. “In fact, they can’t.”
“Hakkikt, with profoundest regard to your wisdom, this isn’t Pyanfar. This isn’t right!”
“Right?” Vikktakkht asked. “What is ‘right?’ Tell us ‘right,’ Chanur captain. We are Pyanfar’s allies. Has there been cause for her to change sides in this?”
Kif would. On a puff of contrary wind. Intellectually Vikktakkht knew that hani were otherwise. In his gut, in a chancy situation, he might not. “Give me a moment,” she said, looked desperately at the screen, and made a reach and unbelted, dizzy as she was. She snagged the nutrient pack beside her chair, bit a hole in it and got a swallow down as she was getting up.
“Captain?” Fala said. “We’ve got a station message.”
“You can’t have a station message. We’re time-lagged.” Another swallow.
“It says—”
“It’s a gods-be lie-in-wait. Transmitted to our call number from the buoy. They know who we are. They’ve prepped the buoy with a false system schema. What do they say?”
“It’s—” Fala half turned, as she hand-over-handed her way to Fala’s station, where the translator main keys were. “They’re saying … in the name of the stsho government …”
… and the han and the hani you are required to dock immediately and open to inspection. You are in violation of Compact Treaty and will be subject to severe criminal penalties if you do not obey instructions. We will accept a single ship in approach with weapons deactivated.
The ship Chanur’s Legacy is cleared for lane 1280. Acknowledge.
“We’re getting the system detail,” Tiar said. “What now, captain?”
“We’re getting their word what’s in this system, that’s what we’re getting. Chihin, look alive, Hallan, we’re on live-scan only, don’t believe a thing station images tell you. Fala, give me the raw data on the tc’a.”
“It matches—”
“I don’t care what it matches, I want to see it, now!”
The kid was rattled. She shouldn’t have yelled. Fala made a false start on the order and a second one and got it.
Chanur 998 Paehisna-ma-to 86-786 No’shto-shti-stlen
586 8 798-897-22 46 567
6 57 868-897-22 1872 98
9-9 786 7 6-75 299-786t
96 76 10-69 7657 40y8
786 8=999 8/659 6-976 6-7/0
5/8 98 768-./768/865 6868/5 …
“It’s not tc’a.”
“How isn’t it tc’a?” Fala protested, and Hilfy reached past her, punched up the rough again.
“It’s not tc’a, I’ve just seen too many of them. You don’t get that many unknowns in the transcript. It’s driving the translator crazy. —Tiar, course change to that lane and transmit compliance.”
“Captain,” Tarras said, and Chihin nearly on top of that.
“I know. Did I say we were going? —Where did this gods-be thing come from? Na Hallan? Did you capture this transmission?”
“I—heard them. I think it’s what I heard. They were with us … I could hear them. But I couldn’t see them, captain.”
“Couldn’t see them. ‘Couldn’t see them’ doesn’t explain this output. Something odd’s going on with it. You can’t get a capture this clear out of hyperspace.”
“Mechanical?” Fala asked. “Could it be a patch-together? Something the buoy’s sending us?”
The kid was using her head again. Somebody using some complicated equipment might have assembled it out of other tc’a transmissions, and rigged the buoy to send it to their specific ship ID when they dropped in. But she wasn’t that sure it was an answer. The Legacy made a gentle burn and she caught at the chair back and the hand-line. “Look sharp, all stations. Don’t gawk. They’ve given us a lane down which they’ll be lying in wait, friends, let’s not get caught by it. Tarras, missile up.”
“Aye,” came the flat acknowledgment.
“Fala, vertical sort. Read it down.”
Chanur Hilfy all stations listen kif tc’a
Advise you wrong death kif now know
Paehisna- kill not- ambassador stsho is guilty
ma-to law
mistake violent bring now on all party
No’shto- right choice change Meet- governor.
shti-stlen point
Chanur to all stations; listen to the kif and the tc’a. (I?) advise you of the wrongful death (because) kif now know Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of murder of the stsho ambassador. Mistake now will bring violence on all parties. No’shto-shti-stlen makes the right choice to change the governor (on) Meetpoint …
“Third sort. Diagonal on the left.”
Gods-rotted matrix brains.
“Aye, captain.”
No’shto-shti-stlen: mistake right. Paehisna-ma-to violent choice. Advise killing brings change. Chanur you not-law now Meetpoint. All death ambassador on governor. Stations kif stsho all? listen now is party… .
“Garbage. It’s not tc’a. Hani translator, idiomatic, vertical pass.”
“Captain.” That from Hallan, quietly.
“Chain of command. Chain of command, Meras.”
Chanur to all stations: listen to the kif and the tc’a. They will advise you the death was murder. The kif now have proof that Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of the murder of the stsho ambassadorial personnel. A false move now will loose violent behaviors on all fronts. No’shto-shti-stlen made the right choice when he decided to bring in a new governor.
“It is aunt Py. Gods rot her, why in a mahen hell did she set up a hash like tha
t? Broadcast that translation to the kif. Broadcast it system-wide. And watch it! That’s not going to make certain individuals happy—” Meanwhile they were inbound on 1280 with an ambush of some kind set for them, no question. And na Hallan was sitting there with something bursting to say, for which she had no present time. “Fala, get me the hakkikt again. And find out if our passengers are in one piece.”
She oozed back to her chair, fell into it as the earpiece sputtered kifish.
“Nak.”
“Chanur nak. Pakkaktu hastakkht. 1280 lakau.”
A soft kifish laughter. “Tc’a? Mau lkkto mekthakkikta.”
Put nothing past her.
She broke off transmission for a second. “Fala, are the stsho alive down there?”
“Not happy,” Fala said. “Alive. Scared. The two in cabin 2. I’m trying to raise the holiness. I’m getting sounds, I can’t swear to else.”
She switched Tiraskhti-com in. “We’re going in there,” she said in the Trade. “I’m calling station, advising them we’re going in alone. They don’t frighten us.” They did, but you didn’t explain that to a kifish ally. You didn’t stand back here and trade ultimatums with hair-triggered kif and mahendo’sat and hope to avoid escalations.
Though wherever the trap was, their scan hadn’t bounced off anything out there. And the kif hadn’t seen anything they were telling about.
“Captain,” Chihin said, “na Hallan thinks there’re more ships out there.”
“Where? Vector, Hallan.”
“Up,” came the faint answer. “They were there, captain.”
“Tc’a?”
“I heard them. I could hear them over the com. I heard something.”
Gods-be spookiness. Chur was spook enough. When you had a neo wandering around in jump, the gods knew what you got. More ships? Messages at the buoy?
The buoy was the intersection, the place where ships dropped toward the local sun. The buoy recorded presences, and hadn’t recorded anything but them and the kif.
Nothing, at least, that that buoy was programmed to confess to the Legacy and its kifish companions.
But would aunt Py set up a message that ambiguous?
“More of her gods-be mail,” she muttered. “Filtered through a tc’a brain. They’ve dived down like a fish breaching. They’re up there.”
“Hovering in hyperspace?” Tiar said.
“You can’t do that,” Hilfy said. “You can’t change vector in hyperspace, either.”
But knnn did it.
“I’d hate to pay their fuel load,” Tarras said.
Tc’a did take on fuel, in realspace. Tc’a did pay bills, like the rest of them. There were surely constraints of physics on what they did in hyperspace. But one had to remember that ships didn’t entirely enter hyperspace, didn’t leave the interface, please the gods they didn’t …
“Message to station,” Hilfy said, “we have tc’a ships in the vicinity. A navigational caution is in order.”
Let the mahendo’sat hunter ships lurking out there worry about that one. Tc’a didn’t obey lane restrictions. Not on Kshshti docks. Not in the regulated space around a station.
And the gods knew, you didn’t shoot at one. Never shoot at anything, aunt Py had used to say, that you can’t talk to.
“Let’s get us a little more V, Tiar, full 1 G sustained.”
Sustained 1 G push, and one hoped the stsho aboard had taken advice and remained in their beds. Things tended to go rapidly to the aft bulkhead under these circumstances.
“Kkkt,” came over her earpiece. “This amuses. We are going with you, Chanur.”
You didn’t tell a kifish hakkikt mind his own business, either. Thank the gods it was only Tiraskhti that moved. And she’d never thought she’d live to say it, but that sleek hunter moving with them was a welcome sight.
And all those kif out there … if anything happened to the hakkikt, there would be a twenty-way sort-out after the leadership of that fleet. Station surely knew that. Station surely knew that it would be very dangerous to deprive the kif of a leader, if it didn’t want a firefight in its territory.
But one had to ask oneself why station was staying silent—besides the fact it didn’t yet know, and wouldn’t, for some few minutes, that they had a kif inbound.
She punched the intercom. “How are you both faring, excellency?”
“Wai,” came the breathless answer. “Wai, the dreadfulness of ships! We are most uncomfortable! I fear for the holiness! I fear for the Preciousness! I fear for our lives!”
“We’re going to cease acceleration, your excellency, in just a few moments.—Tiar, establish with Tiraskhti helm, we don’t want to surprise them, just stay in link with their pilot.—Fala, I’ll take your board, get downside, see if gtsta needs attention.—Go inertial, Tiar, at your discretion.”
“Stand by.”
The weight that had been pushing them slantwise into their cushions became ordinary, regular orientation revised up and down. “I’m going,” Fala said; and Hilfy keyed over to basic com functions on her own board. “Station, this is Chanur’s Legacy, inbound on your instructions. Inform gtst excellency No’shto-shti-stlen that we return delighted with our success in gtst instructions.”
That was stshoshi. That for the representatives of the han, who would not bother to learn the language of their trading partners.
But after the due round-trip time-lapse, mahendi came back: “You stay lane, Chanur ship. Same ask kif ship Tiraskhti. Stay lane. Legal matter here. No gun.”
A crackle of kifish followed, with no time-lag: Tiraskhti. “In the name of the mekt-hakkikt, we will follow the treaty and we will enforce the treaty. Parau’a mekt-hakkikta rassurrn na uunfaura, uunfaura sassurrn ma …”
Hani, by the gods.
And from below-decks: “Captain, gtsta is saying something about tc’a and the sun and ker Pyanfar. Something like the stars speaking with one voice …” She could hear the babble from elsewhere, something about star-drives and resonances and talking with the fields … “Otherwise gtsta looks all right. Should I release the netting?”
“No!” She amended that more quietly. “Tell gtsta where we are, tell gtsta the situation, tell gtsta it’s a safety measure, and get your agile young bones up here as fast as you can.”
There still wasn’t a guarantee there wouldn’t be shooting; but the opposition would have to be crazier than the holiness. The opposition had Meetpoint. The opposition had the Treaty and the Compact itself to hold hostage—because if the opposition didn’t start shooting, the opposition held Meetpoint, and Momentum continued on the side of Paehisna-ma-to; while if they started shooting, the mekt-hakkikt’s own side would have broken the Treaty. And it all came unraveled from there—even if they had the force to take Meetpoint without damage, which, with a mahen fleet hidden out there—they didn’t have.
Not a nice situation, she said to herself. Not at all a nice situation, Hilfy Chanur. Why did you take the gods-be contract?
“Berth 22, Legacy,” station deigned to say.
“Are we going to take their computer input?” Tiar asked.
“No,” Hilfy said. “What’s one more law? You and Chihin, just figure us in. We’ll take their 22. They’ll probably have guards. Lots of guards.”
“Kif?” Tarras wondered.
“I’ll bet you they aren’t. I’ll bet there was a reason old No’shto-shti-stlen had gtetself nose-deep in kif. And I’ll bet there were casualties. On the other hand—”
“On the other hand.”
“On the other hand, stsho aren’t prone to commit themselves until it’s absolutely safe. So cancel the last bet. There may not have been. There may not have been a shot fired here. It’s not the han’s style. Or Llyene’s. Leave that to Paehisna-ma-to. Well, well—”
She was playing with the optics. Scan wasn’t showing the ambush, which in Meetpoint’s sparse system didn’t leave many points of cover—like keeping the station between them and the opposition, hence the lane a
ssignment; like keeping some of them lying off in the system fringes, like between their ships and system exit, to nadir of the star.
But ships in dock caught the wan sunlight quite nicely, besides all those working-lamps and warning-lights that kept outside tenders and pushers from going splat! into a station structural part or a ship at dock. Optics was a major function on her board; and she had already been watching and capturing images.
“Ah. There’s Ha’domaren… . Not out there where he could get hurt, not our Haisi.”
“Gods rot him,” said Tiar.
“Couple of kif we don’t know. Tc’a ship shows up as a seen-before, at Urtur.”
“My heart won’t take the surprise,” Tiar said.
“Oh, here’s one. Ehrran’s Honor.”
“Ehrran!”
“We do have a han presence here, friends. Can we assume it’s that faction which hates us with a passion? We have Paehisna-ma-to’s pet hunter captain. We have assorted mahendo’sat, we have—Padur’s Victory.”
“Blast them if they’re in on this!”
“Could be coincidence. They were coming this way, for probably honest reasons. But I’d sure like to know who was at Hoas while we were at Urtur.”
“What about the Sun?” Hallan asked.
“I wish I could tell you not.” But there it was, in evidence between two other hani ships, Nai’s Splendor, and Doran’s Golden Hope. Sahern’s Sun Ascendant, plain to see. “Lslillyest, a good clutch of stsho ships, none of which I know, none of which library knows, which indicates they’re not traders, they’re from deep inside stsho space … do I guess, the capital at Llyene, if they’ve set No’shto-shti-stlen aside?”
“Politics,” Tiar said. “Gods, there’s something three days dead here.”
“We could get out of here,” Chihin said. “We could tell the kif we’ve had our closer look, goodbye, good luck.”
“They’ll outlaw us. They’ll have their evidence, a cargo not delivered, right on the books. Chanur will lose this ship, Chanur will lose Momentum with the mahendo’sat.”