Chanur's Homecoming

  Geran arrived, she saw that in the conveniently reflective monitor, a shadow arriving from the main topside corridor, larger and larger until the bridge lights picked out Geran’s red-brown coloring and the glint of the gold in her ear-rims. “H’lo,” Geran said. After putting Chur to bed, and walking out of that room. With all the chance of finality. H’lo, to Hilfy, when Geran normally said nothing at all when she walked on-shift. I’m all right, that meant. Don’t doubt I’m on.

  “We’re routine right now,” Hilfy said quietly. Which was the right tack to take with Geran. No fuss. No emotional load. Pyanfar kept an ear to it all and keyed an acknowledgment to dockside’s advisement they were about to withdraw power.

  “Tirun,” Tully said.

  “I’ve got it,” Khym said, second-com, picking that up; and: “Right. I’ll tell him. Na Jik, you’ll come topside now; Tirun’s on her way.”

  “Geran,” Pyanfar said on bridge-com, “Jik’s in your charge. Best I can do.” There was the matter of Jik’s hands, which would heal of injuries in the several day subjective transit before systemfall; but recuperation and jump was not a matter she wanted to open up with Geran at the moment. “I don’t much want him on your elbow, but I haven’t got a place else to put him.”

  “I’ll watch him.”

  Enough said, then. If Geran buckled there was still Tirun on Jik’s other side. And that left Tully down at that end of the boards with Skkukuk. She might have put Khym in that seat. But Khym was getting used to the com board; he was actually worth something with it in a pinch. Putting Khym at Tirun’s confusing second-switcher post handed him a system that had a completely different set of access commands. Tully could learn a sequence from scratch; Khym, jump-muzzy and in emergency, might touch a control he thought he knew. Disastrously.

  “Yes, Harukk-com,” Hilfy said. “That data is current. Captain, they’re inquiring again on departure time and routing.”

  “It stands as instructed.”

  Uncoupling began, a series of crashes as The Pride disengaged itself from dock under Haral’s signal to the other side of that station wall, and Haral’s touch at the controls of her board. There was the low drone of Khym’s voice, making routine advisements to the dockers and station com, and Hilfy’s voice talking quietly to Aja Jin and Moon Rising.

  “Captain,” Tully said, “Tirun come.”

  “Got that,” Pyanfar murmured.

  If Tirun was on her way, that was the last and they were going to make schedule easily. So much the better with nervous kif all about. Pyanfar flicked her ears and settled her nerves, while The Pride’s operating systems made noise enough to mask the lift and rob them of other cues to movement in the ship. There were the telltales on the board—if she chose to key the matrix over to access-monitor. Her nose twitched at the mere thought of Skkukuk in proximity. She dared not take the allergy pills. She needed her reflexes. She rubbed her itching nose fiercely with the back of her hand, curled her lip, and looked up at the convenient reflection in a dead monitor as the gleam of the lift’s internal light reflected a motley assortment of silhouettes in the distance down the corridor at her back.

  Her eyes flicked to the chrono.

  2304.

  “Moon Rising reports all ready,” Hilfy said.

  “Got that,” Haral said.

  Tahar was showing off. Flouting the schedule on the short side. Which took work.

  Tahar clan was Tahar clan, even when it owed Chanur its mortgaged hide.

  The lift door had closed back there. The shadows in the reflective glass had come closer. Pyanfar slowly rotated her chair to face the last-comers. Courtesy. Tirun walked beside Jik, Jik beside Skkukuk’s dark-robed shape. They had washed Jik’s clothes for him, had not even dared have clean ones couriered over from Aja Jin, for fear of rousing kifish suspicions. And someone of the crew must have lent him the bracelet on his arm. The kif had robbed him of the gaudy lot of chain he usually wore.

  “This person,” Skkukuk said the moment he got through the door, “this person refuses your order, hakt’.”

  “He means the gun,” Tirun said.

  “We don’t carry firearms up here,” Pyanfar said patiently. With spectacular patience, she thought. “Nor do we change captains under fire.” With an internal shudder and a thought toward Jik: I hope. “Tirun will give you instructions. If you’re that good, prove it.”

  So much for kifish psych.

  But the son moved. Jik was still looking at her.

  “How my ship?” he asked, very quiet, very civilized. She would not have been that restrained, under similar circumstances.

  “Hilfy, give his station that comflow on receiving only.”

  “Aye,” Hilfy said. “It’s in.”

  “That’s scan two,” Pyanfar said, meaning seat assignment; and he gave a short, more than decent nod of his dark head and went to belt in, wincing a bit as he sat down. He spoke quietly to Geran; and Pyanfar found her claws clenched in the upholstery: she released her grip, carefully; and turned her seat around again.

  2313.

  “We’re on count,” Haral said. “Aja Jin reports ready. We’re on.”

  “Standby.”

  “We going to show the hakkikt punctuality?”

  She considered the potential for provocation. Considered the kif. And considered another possibility as she put their engines live. There was another set of switches by her hand, safety-locked by a whole string of precautions which they had a program now to bypass. Input three little codes and that set of key-slots would light. And The Pride would have a last chance to take out a space station full of kif, a handful of innocent methane-breathers; a doublecrossing allied ship that held one of two plans for a mahen hegemony over the Compact; a kif who was very close to having a kifish hegemony, and who with cold intent, threatened the whole hani species. Half the whole problem in the Compact was sitting right here at this station, with the solution within reach of her hand; and for one ship to take out half the problems in the immediate universe was not a bad trade, as trades went.

  It also assured by default the immediate success of their rivals, whose intentions were also mahen and kifish hegemonies, maybe a human one, a methane-breather action, and the immediate collapse of the stsho and then the han into the control of one or the other hegemonies. Which meant years of bloody fighting. Not taking into account humanity, which was already at odds within its own compact, and whose ships they knew were armed.

  Take out one set of contenders here or make Jik’s throw for him and play power against power.

  She was not even panicked in contemplating that sequence of bypasses. She felt only a numb detachment: she could give it, and only Haral would know; Haral would look her way with a slight flattening of the ears and never pass the warning to the crew. Just a look that said: I know. Here we go.

  Perhaps Haral was thinking the same thing about now, that it was one last chance, while their nose was still into the station’s gut and they were an indisputable part of station mass. Haral went on flicking switches, the shut-down of certain systems no longer necessary, along with the check of systems-synchronization and docking jets.

  2314.

  “We break on the mark,” Pyanfar said in the same tone in which they threw those checkout sequences back and forth. “Advise them down the line. Advise station.”

  “Aye,” Haral said. “Hilfy.”

  “I got it,” Hilfy said.

  The minute ticked down.

  2314.46.

  “On mark,” Pyanfar said. “Grapple.”

  Clang. The station withdrew its grip.

  Thump. They withdrew their own as the chrono hit 2315; and Pyanfar hit the docking jets. Precisely. And hard. G shifted, momentum carrying them in a skew the jets corrected, and more so, as The Pride left the boom and the hazard of collision with the kifish ship down-wheel from them.

  Another G shift, no provision for groundling stomachs, as she sent The Pride axis-rolling on a continual shove of the docking jet
s.

  “Show those bastards,” Haral muttered beside her. As The Pride finished her roll with never a wasted motion, precisely angled the jets and underwent outbound impulse.

  “Aja Jin’s cleared on mark,” Geran said. “Precisely.”

  Pyanfar flicked her ears, rings jingling, and her heart picked up.

  Show these bastards indeed. That was a fancy new engine rig The Pride carried, the ratio of those broad jump vanes to her unladed mass was way up since Kshshti; and any kif who saw The Pride and Aja Jin move out in close tandem, would remark the peculiar similarity between their outlines, give or take the cargo holds which were firmly part of The Pride and which were stripped off the hunter-ship’s lean gut and spine.

  “Tahar’s away.”

  Routine out to startup. The mains cut in on mark; Aja Jin was on the same instant, and Tahar, playing the same insolent game.

  It was quiet on the bridge. No chatter, none of the talking back and forth between stations that was normal, all of them kin and all of them knowing their jobs well enough to get them done through all the back-and-forth. They were not all kin on this trip. And none of them were in the mood. Only she looked over at Haral, the way she had looked a thousand times in The Pride’s voyages; it was reflex.

  Haral caught it and looked back, a little dip of one ear and a lift of her jaw, a cheerfulness unlike Haral’s dour business-only blank.

  Same face she might have turned her way if she had decided to blow the ship. Pyanfar made a wry pursing of her mouth and gave the old scoundrel the high sign they had once, in their wilder days, passed each other in bars.

  They had a word for it. Old in-joke. Meet you at the door.

  She drew a wider breath and flexed her hands, reached across and put the arm-brace up, when they would need it.

  She had never been so outright scared in her life.

  * * *

  “Coming up,” Haral said finally. But she knew that. The numbers kept ticking off to jump. They took the outbound run with less haste than they could use, on the mark the kif gave them. There was a little leisure, a little chance for crew to stand up and stretch and flex minds as well as bodies; but no one left the bridge. Not even Geran.

  She’s asleep, Geran had said when Pyanfar offered her the chance to leave scan and take a fast walk back to Chur’s cabin while they were inertial and under ordinary rotation. So that was that. Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and offered no comforts; Geran was not one to want two words on a topic where one had said it, and she was focused down tight; took her little stretch by standing up beside her chair, and kept her eye still to her proper business; answered Jik’s rare comments with a word or two.

  “Tully,” Pyanfar said, “get ready.”

  “I do,” he said. He had his drugs with him, the drugs that a human or a stsho needed in jump. He prepared to go half to sleep in his chair, sedated so heavily he could hardly stay upright.

  Interesting to contemplate—a horde of human ships, all of them that automated. Like facing that many machines.

  Set to do what? React to buoys and accept course without a pilot’s intervention?

  Defend themselves? Attack? A horde of relentless machines whose crews had committed themselves to metal decisions and a computer’s morality, because their kind had no choice?

  Stsho did that, because stsho minds also had trouble in jumpspace; but stsho were nonviolent.

  Gods, so gods-be little he says, so little he’s got the words for.

  “Tully. Are human ships set to fire when they leave jump?”

  He did not answer at once.

  “Tully. You understand the question?”

  “Human fire?”

  “Gods save us. Do their machines—fire after jump? Can they?”

  “Can,” Tully said in a small voice. “Ship be ##.”

  Translation-sputter.

  “Captain,” Hilfy said, “he’s got to go out now. Got to.”

  His mind was at risk. “Go to sleep,” Pyanfar said, never looking around; his back would be mostly to her anyway, the bulk of the seat in the way.

  “Not trust human,” Tully said suddenly.

  “Go out,” Hilfy said sharply. “You want me to put that into you? Do it.”

  While the chronometer got closer and closer to jump.

  “Tully,” Pyanfar said. “Good night.”

  “I go,” he said.

  “He’s got it,” Tirun said. “He’s all right.”

  “We’re on count,” Haral said.

  “You give me com we come through,” Jik said.

  “Aja Jin has its orders.” They had talked through that matter already. Jik made a last try.

  And: “You got anything last minute you want to own up to?” she asked. “Jik?”

  “I damn fool,” he said.

  “Count to ten,” Haral said, and the numbers on the corner of the number-one monitor started ticking away.

  “Take her through,” Pyanfar said. They did that, traded off; and she suddenly decided on the stint at exit.

  “Got it,” Haral said. That section of the board that pertained to jump was live. “Referent on, we got our lock.”

  Star-fixed and dead-on. It was a single-jump to Meetpoint from dusty Kefk, with its armed guardstations and its grim gray station—

  —to the white light and opal subtleties of a stsho-run station.

  If that was what was still there.

  “Going,” Haral said.

  Down. . . .

  They stopped being at Kefk.

  * * *

  . . . Gods save us, Pyanfar thought, which thought went on for a long long timestretch.

  She dreamed of ships in conflict in their hundreds, burning like suns.

  Of strange gangling beings that had walked the dock once at Gaohn, sinister in their numbers and their resemblance to a creature she had befriended (but too many of them, and too sudden, and with their Tully-like eyes all blue and strange and malevolent). They carried weapons, these strangers; they talked among themselves in their chattering, abrupt speech, and laughed their harsh alien laughter out loud, which echoed up and down the docks.

  What do they want? she asked Tully then, in that dream.

  Look out for them, he said to her. And one of them drew a gun and aimed it at them both.

  What does it say? Pyanfar asked when it spoke.

  But the gun went off and Tully went sprawling without a sound; in slow motion the tall figure turned the weapon toward her—

  Chapter 5

  . . . it went off.

  * * *

  The Pride made the drop into realspace and Pyanfar blinked, gasped a breath, and felt an acute pain about the heart which confused her entirely as her eyes cleared on The Pride’s boards and blinking lights and her ears received the warning beeps from com: Wake up, wake up, wake up—

  Meetpoint?

  Her eyes found the data on the screen, blurred and focused again with a mortal effort. “We’re on,” she said around the pounding of her heart, “Haral, we’re on.”

  And from elsewhere, distant and echoing in and out of space: “Chur, do you hear me? Do you hear?”

  From still another: “We’ve got passive signal. Captain! We’re not getting buoy here. They’ve got Meetpoint image blanked!”

  “Gods and thunders. Geran!”

  “I’m on it, I’m already on it, captain.”

  —Hunting their partners, who could make a fatal mistake in a jump this close, looking for the first sign of signal, and themselves rushing in hard toward Meetpoint, into crowded space, where the scan’s bounce-back could only tell them things too late and passive reception might not have all the data. They were blind. Meetpoint wanted them that way. It was somebody’s trap.

  “Priority,” Hilfy said. “Buoy warning: dump immediately.”

  “Belay that,” Pyanfar said. With two ships charging up behind them out of hyperspace, she had no wish to have herself slowing down in their path. Collision to fore was an astronomical possi
bility; behind was a statistical probability.

  And the kif who gave them orders meant business.

  “Acquisition,” Geran said, “your one, Haral.”

  “Your two,” Haral said; and id chased the image to Pyanfar’s number-two monitor. Aja Jin was in.

  “What’ve we got here? Geran—”

  “I’m working on it. We got stuff all over the place on passive, nobody outputting image, lot of noise, lot of noise, we got ships here—”

  “Mark,” Haral said, “less twenty seconds.”

  “That’s it, that’s it, brace for dump.”

  She sent it to auto; The Pride lurched half into hyperspace again and fell out with less energy—

  —gods, gods, sick as a novice— What in a mahen hell’s in this system? Come on, Geran. Get it sorted. O gods— At forty-five percent of Light. With the system rushing up in their faces. Their own signal going out from that traitor buoy at full Light. Themselves about to become a target for someone. She fumbled after the foil containers at her elbow, bit through one and let the salt flood chase down the nausea. There was a meeting of unpleasant tides somewhere behind the pit of her throat and her nose and hands and the folds of her body broke out in sickly sweat. “Geran. Get me ID.”

  “Working, I’m working.”

  Dump fouling up the scan; nothing where it ought to be, the comp overloaded with input and trying to make positional sense out of it before it got around to analyzing ship IDs.

  “Multiple signal,” Hilfy said. “Nothing clear yet. Multispecies.”

  “Arrival,” Jik said. “Moon Rising is in.”

  “On the mark,” Haral said. “Second dump, stand by.”

  Taking it down fast. The pain in her chest refused to leave. The nausea all but overcame her; but she hit the control anyway—

  —down again.

  —Gangling figures against white light. Captain, a voice said, and Chur was there with the light shining about her, in the midst of a long black hallway, and shafts of light spearing past her as she moved in the slightest. She turned her shoulder and looked back into the light—

  —“Chur—”

  —they cycled through again, back in realspace. And the weakness that ran through her was all-enveloping. She fought it back and groped after another of the packets. Bit into it and drank the noisome stuff down in a half dozen convulsive gulps.