“Faith.”
“Inappropriate word? Sgotkkis.”
“Call it faith.” She laid her ears back and stared at her private curse with coldest, clearest threat. “Since you don’t have an idea in a mahen hell what I’m likely to do about it. But I am still here. And my resources have not diminished.”
“Kkkkt, kkkt, skthot skku-nak’haktu.”
Your slave, captain.
“Captain,” Hilfy said. “Communication from Harukk. Quote: You have made a proposal to hani ships. You will gather these captains for my inspection on-station. End message.”
Second move. It’s going too fast. O gods.
“Acknowledge,” she said, cold as routine. While they slogged their way at a sedate pace through a system laced with kif, toward a station which was going to be under kifish occupation. “Sikkukkut’s going into dock. Cocky son’s going to bring that ship in.”
If Goldtooth and the humans have stopped short and the kif pass them by in hyperspace, we could get hit here.
Hilfy and Haral have got it figured. All of us do.
If Akkhtimakt’s set up to dive in here again—an attack could be poised at system’s edge right now. Or already inbound. Not saying whether the kif are onto that trick of stopping a jump. They could well have it. Maybe and maybe. It’s not saying all their ships can do it.
“Transmit,” she said. “Honor to the hakkikt: beware system edges. I fear more than spotters.”
“Done,” Hilfy said.
We help the bastard we’re with. While we’re with him.
We take whatever they want to do. And maintain our options. Ehrran’s lost all hers. We got hani on that station and gods know how many fluttering stsho. Keep a cool head, Pyanfar Chanur. It’s by the gods all the chance you’ve got.
“We’re getting docking instructions,” Hilfy murmured finally. They turned up on screen, where kifish ships were already well toward touch with station.
And from Chur, plaintively over com:
“What in a mahen hell’s going on?”
“Easy,” Geran said. “It’s all all right.”
“Got crew falling on their noses tired,” Pyanfar muttered. “Haral, keep it steady, standard dock. Tirun, get yourself below, take the rest of your break.”
“Aye,” Tirun said. Old spacer. And falling-down tired. A belt snicked. Tirun went away in silence, to food, sleep, anything she could get.
“Jik’s requesting to be out,” Khym said. So that voice had vanished off com. Khym had silenced him. A mahen hunter captain, locked in a lowerdecks cabin and probably trying to think how to short-circuit the latch or take the door apart.
“Jik,” she said, cutting in on that blinking light on her com section. “We’re all right. F’godssakes, be patient, get some rest, we’ve got our hands full, you got our scan image. We’re moving in on dock and that’s all that’s going on for a while.”
“Pyanfar.” The voice was calm, quiet, reasoning. “I understand. I make problem, a? You got protect you crew. I make ’pology. I lot embarrass’, Pyanfar. Long time with kif make me crazy. Now I got time think—I know what you do. We be long time ally. We be friends, Pyanfar. Same interest. You unlock door, a?”
“I tell you there’s nothing you can do up here. You got a while to rest, Jik. Take it. You may need it.”
“Pyanfar.” Thump. Impact of a hand near the pickup. Hard. So much for patience. “You in damn deep water. Hear? Deep water!”
“We got another expression.” She flattened her ears, lifted them again. “Told you. After we dock. We got enough troubles, friend. I want your advice, but I got enough to deal with right now.”
“It be war,” Jik said, and sent a chill up her back. War was a groundling word. “Fool hani! The ships go, they go ever’ damn place, not got stop, not got stop!”
“F’godssake, this is open space! This is the Compact, we’re not talking about some backwater land-quarrel!”
“No. No harus. New kind thing. Not with rule. We talk ’bout make fight all kif, all hani, all mahendo’sat, make ally, make strike here, strike there. This new kind word. Not like clan and clan. Not like go council. Here we got no council. War, Pyanfar, all devils in hell got no word this thing I see.”
Colder and colder.
“I see it too. So what are the mahendo’sat going to do about it? What have they done about it? Play games with the kif till we got ’em all at each other’s throats? Shove Akkhtimakt off toward hani space? My world? How’m I supposed to be worried about you and yours, rot your conniving hide, when you doublecrossed my whole species! You doublecrossed the stsho, f’godssakes, and that takes fast dealing! You doublecrossed the tc’a, gods help us, you doublecrossed them and the chi and maybe the knnn!”
“We got humans. We got humans, Pyanfar. Same got hunter-ships, got way shove these bastard back from out hani territory, you got listen, Pyanfar. Pyanfar, I got timetable!”
Her finger was on the cutoff, claw half-extruded. She retracted it.
“Do you? Way I hear, you got something else too. Like a fancy new maneuver your ships do, just like humans.”
Silence from belowdecks then. Profound silence. Then: “Open this door, Pyanfar.”
“At dock.”
“Soshethi-sa! Soshethi-ma hase mafeu!”
Thump.
She cut him off. Looked Haral’s way. Haral studiously lowered her ears. “Not too happy,” Haral said. “Timetable. What’s he mean?”
“By the gods I bet there’s one. At our expense. Mahen gifts. ‘Got a present for you.’ Jik, turning up at Kshshti. Us, miraculously getting our papers cleared so we could turn up back here.”
“I’d sure like to know what was in that packet Banny took on, I tell you that.”
“Eggs to pearls that Jik slipped something into it. Goldtooth’s version, I got a copy on. The stuff that didn’t take a translator to dupe, at least. Which won’t be the sensitive stuff. But anything might be helpful. Downgrade the nav functions: we’ll run that packet of his with the decoder.”
“I’ll start it,” Hilfy said. “My four.”
She keyed the access up and sent the packet over, while The Pride started freeing up computer space.
Jik had held out on Sikkukkut. And on her. It was certain that he had. He had been dead silent on that gibe about mahen ship capabilities.
The archive in question blinked into Hilfy’s reach.
And they slipped closer and closer to dock.
“Might have some lurker outsystem,” Hilfy said. “I’ve been thinking about that. Might have a strike here most any time.”
“Cheerful,” Geran said. That sounded almost normal, crew bickering and muttering from station to station.
“Station’s on,” Hilfy said. “Docking calc.”
“That’s sot it,” Haral said, and sucked them into nav. “Auto?”
“Might as well. Nothing problematical here.” Pyanfar sat and gnawed her mustaches, gnawed a hangnail on her third finger. Spat. “Hilfy: send to all hani at dock, hani-language, quote: The Pride of Chanur to all hani at dock: we are coming in at berths 27, 28, 29 consecutive. Salutations to all allies: by hearth and blood we take your parole to assure your security. Industry, salutations to your captain in Ruharun’s name: we share an ancestor. Let’s keep it quiet, shall we? End.”
“Got that,” Hilfy said.
Haral gave her a look steady and sober, ears backcanted. “Think the kif read poetry?”
“Gods, I hope not.”
Five decades ago. Dayschool and literature. When she had ten times rather be at her math. Stand and recite, Pyanfar. “I hope to the gods this younger generation does.”
On a winter’s eve came Ruharun to her gates
beneath black flight of birds in snowy court.
White scarf flutters in the wind, red feather
the fletch of arrows standing still in posts
about the yard and the holy shrine where stands
among a hundred enemies her own lord,
no prisoner but of her enemies foremost
seeming. But Ruharun knew her husband
a man with woman’s wit and woman’s staunchness.
So she cast down her bow and spilled out the arrows,
on blood-spattered snow cast down defense,
bowed her head to enemies and to fortune. . . .
“Industry answers,” Hilfy said. “Quote: We got that. 27, 28, 29. We have another kinswoman here in Munur Faha. Greetings from her. We are at your orders.”
“Gods look on them.” Pyanfar drew a large breath. Message received, covered, and tossed back again under kifish noses. Munur Faha of Starwind was kin to Chanur. But not to Harun. Harun had no ties of any kind.
And Faha had a bloodfeud with Tahar of Moon Rising.
A small chill went down her back. It was response to her own coded hail. It was just as likely subtle warning and question, singling out Faha for salutations: strange company you keep, Pyanfar Chanur, a mahen hunter, a kifish prince, and a pirate. The Faha-Tahar feud was famous and bitter.
At your orders, smooth and silky. It was kifish subservience, never hani; it was humor, bleak and black and thoroughly spacer. Let’s play the game, hani. You and your odd friends. Let’s see where it leads.
It took a mental shift, gods help her, to think hanifashion again, and to know the motives of her own kind. Like crossing a gulf she had been on the other side of so long that hani were as strange as the stsho.
“Reply: See you on my deck immediately.”
* * *
Grapples took. The Pride’s G-sense shifted, readjusted itself. Other connections clanged and thumped into seal. They were not the first ship in. Ikkhoitr and Chakkuf crews were already on the docks. Harukk was in final. But no kif came to help non-kif ships dock. Pointedly, they handled their own and no others. They were Industry crewwomen risking their necks out there on the other side of that wall.
“I’ve got business,” Pyanfar said, and unclipped the safeties.
“Aye,” Haral said. “Routine shutdowns, captain. Go.”
She got out of the chair and saw worried looks come her way. Tully’s pale face was thin-lipped and large about the eyes, the way it got in Situations.
Thinking, O gods, yes, that this might be the end of his own journey, on a station where the kif had won everything that he had set out to take; and where humans were still a question of interest to Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin. He had reason to worry. The same as Jik did.
Queries were coming in, com from Moon Rising as it docked, operational chatter. Aja Jin was a minute away from touch.
Still playing the game, Kesurinan trusting that her captain was consenting to this long silence.
“Stay to stations,” she said to all and sundry. “Khym, monitor lowerdecks.”
“You going down there with him?” He looked at her with his ears down, the one with its brand new ring.
She flattened her own. He turned around again without a word. “Tirun’s down there,” she said to his back and Tally’s face and Skkukuk’s earnest attention.
I would go, hakt’, that kifish stare said. Tear the throat out of this mahendo’sat, I would, most eagerly, mekt-hakt’.
“Huh.” She made sure of the gun in her pocket and walked on out, wobbly in the knees and still with the sensation that G was shifting. She felt down in her pocket, remembering a packet of concentrates, and drank it in the lift, downbound.
The salty flood hit her stomach and gave it some comfort. Panic killed an appetite. Even when panic had gotten to be a lifestyle and a body was straight out of jump. She ate because the body said so. And tried not to think about the aftertaste.
Or the ships around them, or the situation out there on the docks.
* * *
Jik was on the bed, lying back with his head on his arms. He propped himself up as the door opened, his small ears flat, a scowl on his face.
“’Bout time.”
“I’m here to talk with you.” She walked in and let the door close behind her. His ears flicked and he gathered himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, with a careful hitch at his kilt.
“You been listening to ops?”
“A.” Stupid question. But an opening one. He drew a large breath. “You do damn fine job, Pyanfar. We sit at station, same like stsho. We got kif go blow Compact to hell. Now what do?”
“What do you want? Run out of here? I got hani ships here, I got ten thousand kif on their way to Urtur, right where you wanted ’em, gods rot you.”
“Listen me. Better you listen me now.”
“Down the Kura corridor. Isn’t that the idea?”
“He be kif, not make connection you with these hani. They got be smart, save neck all themselves— Better you do own business. You don’t panic, Pyanfar. Don’t think like damn groundling! Don’t risk you life save these hani. You get them killed, you make damn mess!”
She laid her ears back. “I got kifish ships headed at my homeworld, Jik. What am I supposed to do, huh? Ignore that?”
“Same me.” Muscles stood out on Jik’s shoulders, his fists clenched. “You let kif make you plan for you? They shove, you go predict-able direction? Damn stupid, damn stupid, Pyanfar! You lock me up, take kif advice now? You let be pushed where this bastard want?”
“And where does that leave my world, huh? I got one world, Jik. I got one place where there’s enough of my species to survive. Hani men don’t go to space, they’re all on Anuurn. What in a mahen hell am I supposed to do, play your side and lose my whole species? They got us, Jik, they got us cornered, don’t talk to me about casualties, don’t talk to me about any world and any lot of lives being equal, they’re not. We’re talking about my whole by the gods species, Jik, and if I had to blow every hani out there and three hundred thousand stsho to do something about it, I’d do it, and throw the mahendo’sat onto the pile while it burned, by the gods I would!”
The whites showed at the corners of his eyes. Ears were still back, the hands still clenched.
“Why you here?”
“Because,” she said, “two freighters and a hunter can’t stop it. Because there’s a chance I can turn Sikkukkut to do what I can’t. Now you tell me about timetables. You tell me about it, Jik, and you tell me all of it, your ship caps included!”
He sat silent a moment. “You got trust.”
“Trust. In a mahen hell, Jik. Tell me the truth. I’m out of trust.”
“I got interests I protect.”
“No.” She walked closer, held up a forefinger and kept the claw sheathed with greatest restraint. “This time you trust me. This time you give me everything you’ve got. You tell me. Everything.”
“Pyanfar. Kif going to take you ’board Harukk. They try question me, I don’t talk. My gover’ment, they make fix—” He tapped the side of his head. “I can’t talk. Can’t be force’. You whole ’nother deal. They shred you fast. Know ever’thing. They know you got me ’board, a? Know you got chance make me talk. Maybe they give me to you for same reason—they can’t, maybe Pyanfar can do, a? Maybe block don’t work when you ask, I tell you ever’thing like damn fool.”
“Can you tell me? Can what they did to you, can what your Personage did to you—make you lie to me, even when you don’t want to?”
A visible shiver came over him. Hands jerked. “I ask not do.”
“Jik—you got to trust me. However they messed you up. Jik, if it kills you, I got to ask. What timetable?”
The tremor went through all his limbs. He hugged his arms against himself as if the room had gone freezing. And stared her in the eyes. “Fourteen,” he said past chattering teeth. “Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-four—First. Seventh.” Another spasm. “This month. Next. Next. We g-got maneuver—make jump coordinate with same.”
“You mean your moves are aimed at certain points at certain dates?”
“Where got th-threat. Don’t fight. Move back. Make ’nother jump-point on focus date.”
“So that somewhere,
tracking the kif, your hunters are going to coincide and home in on them.”
“Co-in-cide. A.” He made a gesture with shaking hands. “More complicate’, Pyanfar. We push. We pull. We make kif fight kif. We make kif go toward Urtur, toward Kita.”
“Toward Anuurn!”
“Got—got help go there. Back side. We not betray you, Pyanfar!”
Her legs went weak. She sank down where she was, on her haunches, looking up at a shaken mahendo’sat on the edge of the bed. “You swear that.”
“God witness. Truth, Pyanfar. You got help.” The hands clenched again. “Ana—me Aja Jin. He got chance. Got chance, damn! And he run out from this place, leave us in damn mess! Got ’nother plan. He got ’nother plan, got way push kif on kif, damn conservative.”
“Or he suspects deep down his human allies aren’t to be trusted. What if he knows that? What would he do?”
“He be damn worried. Same got worry with tc’a.” Another convulsive shiver. Jik wiped his face, where it glistened with sweat. “He maybe listen to me too much. Take my advice. I come into his section of space. He damn surprise’ see me at Kefk. I tell him—I tell him we got save this kif, make number one. True. He be confuse’, he pull out.” He slammed his hand onto the bed beside him. “I don’t send code. You understand. I not on Aja Jin, I don’t send code, he don’t attack!”
“Kesurinan doesn’t know all this.”
“I not dead. She got file to read if I be dead, but I be on friendly ship, a? She take you instruction, she think I be on bridge—she not know. She don’t send the damn code and Ana don’t move on this kif!”
There was sickness at her stomach all over again. She stared up at him. And have you told me the truth even yet, old friend, my true friend? Or have you only found a lie that’ll keep me moving in the direction you want? Or are you giving me the only truth you’ve been brainwashed into believing? Would they do that to you, your own people?
Would they stick at that, when they got into your mind to do other things?
Gods save us, I almost trust the kif more.
“The kif would have blown us, Jik, before we could help anybody. We could’ve lost it all. I don’t think it would’ve worked. We still got a chance, don’t we? Where’s our next rendezvous point? When?”