“Maybe that’s the safest thing we could all do.”
“But—”
“I’m listening.”
“But—you know the mahendo’sat are going to save their own hides. Ehrran’s left him. We can’t speak for the han. We got kif going to go head-on against each other with the humans on their backside. If both of them get busy, if the mahendo’sat hit them in the back—neither Akkhtimakt nor Sikkukkut can stand for that chance. They’re in a mess. They can’t leave the mahendo’sat armed at their backs. They’re kif, and Goldtooth’s going to attack and they know it. My gods, we got one kif making a threat against Anuurn. What’s Akkhtimakt going to threaten, huh? Or is he just going to turn around and send a ship apiece at every mahen world and station?”
Haral’s ears were all but flat. She was still listening.
“Ask Skkukuk,” Tully said suddenly.
“Ask him what?” Hilfy asked.
“He kif. Ask what kif do.”
“He’s not on Sikkukkut’s level. If he’d outthought him, we’d have Skkukuk to worry about.”
“Kif mind. Lot dark. I go ask.”
“Man’s got a point,” Haral said. “But no way we talk to the kif. Better we talk to the captain. Py-an-far, you understand me, Tully?”
“You think I’m right?”
“I been in space forty some years, kid, I never been real close to kif on their terms. You have. And you speak main-kifish. Which I still don’t, not real well. But I’ve had a look at our passenger, ’bout enough to get an idea or two. And between the mahendo’sat and that kif, I’m real anxious. We got that other bomb aboard. And sorry as I am for him, he scares me worse’n Skkukuk.”
“Jik,” Hilfy murmured. And took another sip that failed to warm her gut.
“He’s got a lot on him,” Haral said, “and much as we owe him and he owes us—first, he’s hurting; second, he’s been hurt, by the kif and by his own partner and by us on top of it all; and thirdly, he’s mahendo’sat and seeing his whole species in danger, and maybe he’s got more information than we’ve gotten out of him. What’s he going to do?”
The cold got worse. For one uneasy moment Hilfy could not even look at Tully. For one uneasy moment he was like Jik, alien and full of strange motives and unpredictabilities. And she was female and he was not, with all the craziness on that score. No place for him to be sitting. Listening to us. Gods, what if he was only waiting, all this time? He’s alien. Isn’t he? Same as Jik. And we’ve been through so gods-be much—and I don’t know what’s in his mind right now. My friend. My— She gave a mental shiver, looked at the time. “Gods,” she said, “we better get topside. Tirun—”
“Yeah,” Haral said. And: “You want me to talk to the captain?”
“She listens to you more than me.”
“Hey,” Haral said. And fixed her with a lazy, flat-eared stare. Reprimand for that small remark. Hilfy dipped her ears.
“Kif,” Tully said.
“No,” Haral said. “We let that son sleep. You stay here. Rest. Understand. You go down that hall to talk to that kif, I’ll skin you. Hear?”
“I understand,” Tully said. His mouth had that set it got in unhappiness. “Not right, Haral. I sit here.”
“Argues,” Haral said. “Huh.”
“He wasn’t juniormost on his ship,” Hilfy said. “I know that. He’s not a kid, Haral.”
“Who is, on this ship? Tully. You want to come? Talk to the captain?”
He had a few bites left. He made it one, drank the cup dry, and got to his feet, still trying to swallow what he had.
* * *
“How’s it going?” Pyanfar asked quietly, leaning shower-damp and exhausted over Tirun’s chairback. Khym had come back to his post, far from skilled enough to relieve Tirun, but there, at least for support. Tirun looked back at her with flagging ears and a desperate weariness. Tirun had not had a chance at the showers. That was evident.
“No answers yet,” Tirun said. “Na Jik’s asleep, I think. Stopped stirring around down there after I heard the safety-web go.” She tilted an ear generally downships and down below. “We got our routine instructions, I just fed it into auto. All the kif are on schedule, Sikkukkut’s pair’s in final just now and the stsho’re sweating it.”
“Huhhhh.” Pyanfar had an eye on the scan from her vantage; ships proceeding sedately on course. No one out there had done anything definitive. And she leaned closer to Tirun’s ear, her elbow on the chairback. “Get out of here, huh? I’ll take it.”
“Haral’ll be here.” The voice came out hoarse. “You want to go catch a bite? I c’n take a little longer, ’m not doing anything but sit.”
“Neither am I. Get. I’ll hold the boards.” She shoved off from the chair back and paused half a heartbeat considering her husband, who had never looked away from the screen in all this time. Covering, while she distracted Tirun, though the board was audio-alarmed, and her own eye had automatically held on that screen the minute Tirun looked her way. Tirun had known where she was looking—experience, decades of it. Bridge rules. But Khym covered. That was bridge rules too. She gave Khym’s chairback a pat, approval, with a little unwinding of something at her gut. Closer and closer to reliable. On the standard of the best crew going. An impulse came to her; she unclipped one of her earrings.
“Hey,” she said, and leaned next to him where her breath stirred the inner tuftings of his ear. “Huh,” he said, as if it were some intimacy.
“Hold still. Don’t flinch.” She nipped right through the edge of his ear. “Owwh!” he grunted, and did flinch, turning half about in indignation and then—perhaps he thought it was some bizarre test of his concentration—jerked his gaze right back to the boards.
She slipped the ring right into the wound and clipped it.
“Uhhhn,” he said, and felt of what she had done. Never looked around.
“Good.” She patted his shoulder, remembered then that he had once upon a time reacted with temper over that gesture of shoulder-patting. But maybe it felt different somehow. He did not object. And she went off to her own station, sat down and brought in the scan images and the com.
Sikkukkut was still on course. Ikkhoitr and its partner were docking ahead of them, and The Pride was on a course right down lane-center, neat and precise.
They were going to have some specific docking instructions very soon. The Pride and Aja Jin and Moon Rising were about to put themselves where the kif could get at them.
And where Sikkukkut could make demands of them. Jik, for instance. Jik, for a very large instance. Or even Tully. Or Dur Tahar. All of which items Sikkukkut might want back. She sat and gnawed her mustaches, wishing she dared talk back and forth with Dur Tahar over there, who assuredly knew something about kifish mentality. But absolute com silence seemed the best policy at the moment. Gods knew she wanted no questions out of Aja Jin, where Kesurinan still followed her orders. And did not ask, as Kesurinan might well have asked: How is my captain? Is he recovered? Why do I have no instructions from him?
Kesurinan believed she knew the answers to all these things, perhaps. And stayed patient. So far.
But on that dockside Kesurinan was bound to ask questions that needed direct lies. And inventive ones.
Goldtooth, gods curse you, what have you set up here?
Made an agreement with someone, have you?
Or have we got something else lurking out there, outsystem, that we’re going to find out about when our wavefront gets to them and they get themselves run up to attack speed?
Gods, gods, this is no situation to be in. What’s Sikkukkut doing? Is that son really depending on us, for godssakes? Are we the backup he thinks he has?
Fool, Sikkukkut. Can a kif mind be that tangled, to trust us now?
Or are you no fool at all?
Com beeped. “Py,” Khym said, and cut it in from his board.
“I got it.” It was station, talking to them in effusive jabber. A stsho told them that they could, if they wished
, have any free berth, but suggested numbers twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Which the lord captain of Ikkhoitr had suggested, praise to the hakkikt.
“Affirm,” she said, and with a flattening of her ears: “Praise to the hakkikt.”
“No real choice, do we?” Khym asked.
“Life and not. We got that.”
“What are we going to do?” There was the faintest note of despair there. A man asking his wife for reassurance. Tell me there’s something you can do. Tell me it’s not that bad, not that hopeless. A man lived within the small borders of his estate—never tell a man a thing: never worry him with problems he had no capacity to deal with. And no power. Old habits, Khym, gods rot it, grow up!
No. It’s crew talking to captain. That’s all. Get off him, Pyanfar.
“Feathered if I know what we’re going to do,” she muttered. No mercy, Khym. “Got an idea?”
“He’s going to ask for Jik.”
“I’m afraid he is.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ll make something up.”
Nothing to do but watch it unfold. Obey instructions, take the berth.
You got it, husband. There isn’t an answer. I haven’t got a miracle to pull off. I don’t know what in a mahen hell we’re going to do and most of all I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.
Thank gods Ehrran’s headed home to warn the han. Even if she goes for Chanur in the process. Better the clan goes down than the whole world. Better a whole lot of things than that.
But, gods, Ehrran’s a fool. What’s a fool going to tell them? What’s a fool going to persuade those fools to do?
Gods, give her good sense just once and I’ll go religious, I swear I will. I’ll reform. I’ll—
Haral startled her, settling ghostlike into place beside her.
“Captain,” Haral said. “What we got?”
She turned the chair half-about, saw Tirun out of her place and Tully and Hilfy settling into theirs, ghostlike silent under the noise of operating systems. “We got our docking instructions. Give Tirun time to get herself down to quarters. We can brake a little late. Meetpoint sure as rain isn’t going to file any protest on us for violations.” She swung the chair about again and punched in com. Two veteran crewwomen in their places and two novices. But it was a routine docking, whatever else was proceeding. “Geran,” she said. “Five minutes.”
“I’m on my way,” Geran answered back from somewhere.
“Captain,” Haral said, “Hilfy’s got this idea—”
“Tahar acknowledges recept on docking instructions,” Hilfy said. “They’re on our lead.”
“—Akkhtimakt’s just lost any reason he had for restraint,” Haral said. “He’s losing. Mahendo’sat aren’t dealing with him. He’s gone off toward Urtur; there’s two moves he could make. One’s us. One’s the mahendo’sat. Things could get ugly. Real ugly. That’s what we been thinking.”
“Huhhhn.” Another body hit the cushions, hard. She heard the click of restraints. Geran was in. Heard a wild high chittering coming down the corridor, which was a kif in full career, headed for his station and trying to tell them to wait for him: a shove of The Pride’s mains would send him smashing back into the lift door with the same force as if he had fallen off a building roof.
“We hear you,” she said over general com. “You got time, Skkukuk.”
And thought about the web of jump-corridors around Meetpoint and where they led.
Gods know what’s already been launched at us. “Mahendo’sat aren’t going to sit still for it,” she said. “It’s not their style.”
“If they push back,” Haral said, “it’s going to shove that bastard right into hani space. We figure there’s a push coming here. Cap’n, Tully says human ships can drop out of hype in deep space. Do a turn. Says he thinks the mahendo’sat can do it too.”
She shot Haral a look. It was a knnn maneuver, that stop-and-turn. Or tc’a. “Friends turning up in odd places.”
“From here, cap’n, it’s a real pocket out Kura-way.”
It was: hani space was an appendix of reachable space, right on the mahendo’sat underbelly, near the mahen homestar. But the accesses in that direction were few and defensible.
“Yeah,” she said, thinking of that geometry, which thought suddenly shaped itself into coherent form, in full light. “Yeah. It might work. If they can do that kind of thing. But that’d mean those human ships aren’t freighters in any sense of the word—wouldn’t it? What’s a ship with holds need with that kind of rig, huh?”
“Sure seems like not. And a strike coming in here rams it right down hani throats. Again.”
“It does that, too. If they can do that.” Another and worse thought. “If mahendo’sat can pull this—wouldn’t be the first time they had some new rig they didn’t tell us about. Wouldn’t be the first time the kif turned up with it too. Before we did. Praise to the mahendo’sat. More gods-be careful of what their allies learn than what gets to their enemies.”
Gods, don’t let Ehrran be a fool.
Then, down the boards: “Priority,” Geran said. “Priority, we got a shift going on, we got a vector change on some of Sikkukkut’s lot. That’s Noikkhru and Shuffikkt—”
It came up on the monitor, part of the image changing color again as kifish ships finished their braking and began to slew off on new headings.
Headings at angles to Sikkukkut’s.
Chapter 6
Color-shifts multiplied on the scan.
“Gods,” Pyanfar muttered, and put in the general take-hold. Alarm’s rang up and down the corridors. In case. “Message to our partners: hold steady, keep course; Khym, advisement to Chur: Take precautions, we got kif moving gods know where. Tirun, feed scan down to Jik’s monitor; tell him we’re all right, we’re still on course, we just got something going here.”
Acknowledgments came back.
“Captain,” Haral said, “Hilfy’s got this idea—”
“Tartar acknowledges,” Hilfy said. “They’re on our lead. Aye—we got that, Aja Jin. Thanks—”
“—Akkhtimakt’s got bad troubles,” Haral said. “I think we got ’em too.”
She waited. Waited till she heard Tirun report all personnel accounted for; Tirun had made it onto the bridge. A last safety snicked into place.
They were secure for running. If they had to.
On the screens the flares continued as the doppler recept sorted it out and got information trued again.
And one and another of Sikkukkut’s ships flaring green and going into maneuvers.
Not all on the same vector. They were headed out like thistledown scattering from a pod. Everywhere.
In every direction open to them, mahen space and hani and stsho and tc’a.
“They go,” Jik exclaimed over the open com. And something else profane in mahensi. He was monitoring the situation, down there in his sealed cabin. “Damn, they go, they go—”
To every star within reach. To strafe every station and every system where there might be a hostile presence.
“Priority, priority,” Hilfy said, overriding something Geran was saying: “Harukk-com says: Pride of Chanur, proceed on course.”
“They go hit ever’ damn target in Compact,” Jik cried. There was the sound of explosion. Or of a mahen fist hitting something. “Damn! Let me out!”
“She was right,” Haral muttered. “Gods-be right. They’re going to do it anyhow and we got kif every which way. Captain, they’re going to push Akkhtimakt right down that open corridor, to Anuurn, captain, by the gods they are.”
“We got problems,” Pyanfar muttered.
While a stream of mahen profanity warred with Chur’s insistent question on the com.
“Kkkkt.” From a forgotten source behind them.
And station was ahead. Meetpoint, with three hundred thousand stsho and a handful of hani citizens. With kif closing in on them with declared intent to dock.
“Transmi
t,” Pyanfar said. “The Pride of Chanur to all hani on station: prepare to assist in docking for incoming ships. Join us. This is your greatest hope of immediate safety.”
Offer a hani an overlord, a master, a foreign hegemony—
They would spit in Sikkukkut’s face. And die for it. That, beyond doubt.
But if they heard the reservation in that message, if they keyed on the nuances of safe-shelter-in-storm and all the baggage that went with it—even if the kif did, it was no more than kif expected, even if it was something no kif dared say: until we find a better.
“Repeat?” Hilfy queried.
“Repeat.”
“Still braking,” Geran said.
And the brightness on the amber lines that was their own position crept closer and closer to their own brake-point for station approach.
“Harun’s Industry responds,” Hilfy said, “quote: We take your offer enthusiastically.”
* * *
It took a while, for ships to reduce V.
It took a while for outbound kifish ships to go their way, leaping out into the dark, toward Hoas Point and Urtur System, toward Kshshti and Kefk and Tt’a’va’o and V’n’n’u and Nsthen. Seven ships, to follow right down Akkhtimakt’s tail in a second strike after the first one; and right down the throats of Goldtooth and humans and mahendo’sat and whoever else might be coming in if they could find them.
It was, Pyanfar reckoned bleakly, both ruthless and effective.
“Kkkkt,” was Skkukuk’s comment. “Kkkkt.”
“Kkkt,” said Skkukuk. “He is challenging you all. Kkkkt. But his throat is unprotected. You are here. He thinks to daunt you. Surprise him, hakt’.”
She spun her chair about to face the kif who sat at the aft of the bridge. And there was not a hair on her unbristled. “What has he in mind for us?”
“You are part of his sfik. You increase him. Kkkkt. His move is very good. He has penned you all in with his main force. Any attempt to exit toward your territories of resource are blocked first by his enemy and then by his own ships, whose capacities you do not know. It is a fine move, hakt’. But I have faith in you.”