“And you?”
Jik drew a mouthful of smoke and let it out. “What I do, a? What do my ship? My First, she don’t fire. We make quiet, wait. I be you friend, mekt-hakkikt. Not po-li-cy fight you. Po-li-cy my side want you win. What we got, we come in, hit both you hakkiktun, a? Damn mess. Ten, fifteen week got new hakkikt, whole different game.” There was a stirring in the hall, ominous movement against the lights. Jik lifted a hand. “I not dis-courteous, a? Long time neighbor, you, me. We do fine. I know these thing, same Pyanfar know these thing. Same time I got big worry what we see here not real honest. Maybe bait. Maybe Akkhtimakt sudden smart, want bring us here, hold us here, make us fight Ana while he go do what he want.”
Safeties had gone off weapons. “Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said anxiously, with a furtive wave of his hand.
“No. Long time the mekt-hakkikt been patient with truth. He ask question, he still be patient.”
“I am still patient, Keia.” Long jaw rested on black, retractile-clawed fist. “Pay no attention to them. I am listening.”
“This got big danger. Tully say don’t trust human. What happen, a? You got fight Ana, fight human, fight maybe other mahen ship, few; then come some bastard out from Akkht, want make self hakkikt—same all time happen, you know you people real good: first time you got trouble you got some bastard want make suicide. All same take time, take ship, take you attention. Same time got Akkhtimakt settle in real good in hani space, same time far from methane-breather—you got methane-breather trouble, a? You be real close over here. But Akkhtimakt not got. Maybe he make good friend with mahendo’sat over by Iji—same join with them, come fight human when human make trouble—now where we be, a?”
“That is an elaborate possibility. Very elaborate.”
“Same. But two kif want fight, my people always help.” Another lifting of a finger. “This time you got luck. Akkhtimakt damn fool, all time push mahendo’sat, mahendo’sat never like help that bastard. A? So you got no mahen help to you enemy. Maybe change. That bastard get rule in hani space, he be whole different bastard.”
“Can it be you’re trying to maneuver me, Keia? Or do you agree in this move, hunter Pyanfar?”
“I think it a real possibility, mekt-hakkikt.” While hani captains and Tully sat and listened to this; while kifish hands rested near weapons and the two stsho retreated into a small, soiled ball, glad to be forgotten. Her heart beat to the point of hurting. Her stomach ached and weakness came and went in tides. “I see one way Akkhtimakt could go from here. One path. Mahendo’sat occupy Tt’a’va’o; you have Meetpoint. Either you’ve got Kshshti or the mahendo’sat have, by now; or they’ll be headed there like chi to a hot spot; on that, I wouldn’t predict. The third path Akkhtimakt assuredly has, open all the way behind him.” Do you see, sister captains, do you see yet what we’re dealing with, what we’re trying to do? For godssakes don’t twitch, don’t distract this kif, don’t make a slip.
“Kkkkt. One path. Yes. Why do you think I’ve favored you as I have? That area of space which lies like a peninsula amid a gulf without jump-points. That unfortunate circumstance which has made hani isolate. And kept them pinned between that gulf and mahen ambitions. Do you understand me, hunter Pyanfar? Do you know now why I have given you so much?”
“Hani space.” The pain was back in her chest. She found breathing difficult. “A pocket in which Akkhtimakt can be contained. Uncrossable space on two sides, unfriendly mahendo’sat on the third, yourself on the narrow fourth.”
“Mahendo’sat will be quite busy. I want Akkhtimakt kept busy. I know you have self-interest in that. Do you recall our debate on self-interest?”
“I have one there. Yes. A considerable interest.”
“Name what you need.”
So easy? My gods. So easy. “These captains. All these in my company. Their ships.”
“Do you include Aja Jin?”
Gods, gods. Be calm, Pyanfar. Don’t lose it all. Don’t let the voice wobble. Her nose was running. She sniffed and tried to focus. Ignored the itch. “I wouldn’t put Jik to a choice between you and Goldtooth. Not twice. With me he’s got clear reason to cooperate. With me he’ll be fighting something that’s clearly his enemy, and a threat to that whole border. Self-interest. He won’t bolt and go home till he knows hani aren’t going to collapse. I know the mahendo’sat, and everything he’s done is perfectly reasonable. So is his going with us now. You want hani ships to fight against Akkhtimakt, they will, and a lot safer with Aja Jin’s guns with us.”
“Kkkkt. Merchants. Against hunters. I will give you reliable ships of my own. They will give you that chance.”
“And Jik, mekt-hakkikt. I’m going to have to make a show of power with both the mahendo’sat and the han: call it hani psychology, call it sfik, but it works that way. You need no ornaments. I do, to prove what I’ve got. I need Jik and Aja Jin; I need my human; I need your ships—” All right, I accept them. Worry about my motives, bastard.
Sikkukkut’s jaw lifted ominously. And sank again. Dark eyes glittered in the sodium-light, beneath the hood.
“Skku of mine, you look to make yourself a hakkikt.”
“I look to hold hani space, mekt-hakkikt. I’m securing my agreements.”
There was profound silence. Her heart beat hard, every thump a pain in her chest; her limbs went cold and hot and the edges of the room went in and out of focus around the one darkness that was the kif; and life or death, then and there, if the kif took suspicion, if one of the hani captains reached her tolerance, if someone moved or sneezed, they could all die.
And worlds would.
O gods, O gods of my mothers, gods greater and lesser, littlest and far away, gods of my world—hear an old reprobate: can you move a kif . . . even a little bit?
“Kkkkt. Take all you have named. Dispose of Keia as you will. On his ship or in your hands. Now. Go. You are dismissed, skku-hakkikt.”
She drew in a breath; a second one. Not skku-hakkiktu but skku-hakkikt. Not vassal of mine but vassal-prince. Her heart beat and skipped. Then she gulped air, grabbed the insect-leg of the chair and thrust herself to her feet. “Up,” she said. “Move. The hakkikt’s order, gods rot it, don’t sit and think about it!”
Hani moved as if galvanized; Jik was slower, but only to put out his smoke and to pocket the pouch.
And the stsho huddled there at her feet gibbering and wailing in pain. A chill went over her. She hesitated, turned back toward Sikkukkut, opened her mouth.
“If the hakkikt has no use for these—”
“Enough!”
She stepped past the stsho. One caught at her trouserleg. “Help,” it cried. “Esteemed hani, help, intercede—”
She walked past. She had to. The kif had made an aisle, directing everyone out.
No further risk, I can’t, I daren’t, gods, don’t let me fall on my face here and now.
I can’t do more than I’ve done.
* * *
“That’s another,” Hilfy said. “Harukk’s talking again. Encoded. Names—that’s orders to ships. Chakkuf. Sukk. Nekkekt. I can’t make anything out of it, but they could be moving-orders.”
“I don’t like this.” From Tirun.
“What’s going on?” From Chur’s channel, over the main speakers.
“You know everything we know,” Khym said.
Which summed it up well enough.
If there was a spotter, something they had constantly to worry about, it would lie more than a lighthour out, maybe three or four. And it would move when it felt like it. When its own criteria had been met. One of Goldtooth’s ships, maybe. Maybe one of Akkhtimakt’s. Or more than one. They sat here with nose to station with the chance, however remote, that some attack might come in, some mass of ships might be sitting out there dead silent and so lost in the immensity of the spherical search-zone that they were virtually invisible. Like the spotters. There was no way to find that kind of lurker either, except by that same blind luck, or its own error. The entire perimeter
of Meetpoint’s darkmass influence, at a spherical radius of one to four lighthours—was an impossible area to search for any single ship. Station obscured part of their sweep and rotation complicated matters, with station not sending, the buoys on but erratic, and the kif deliberately censoring their own scan output. There was not even a star close enough to light an object, little help that that was: the dark-mass radiated, but with a sullen, dying heat, a spot their instruments regularly scanned, looking for any anomaly that might be a ship trying to mask itself; Meetpoint’s own mass gave off a quiet white noise to their most sensitive instruments, the several system navigational buoys screamed their false information into the dark, emissions of a vast number of ships churned and dispersed in a maelstrom generated by other traffic; while their best chance of seeing a hidden ship lay in the computer’s memory of the starfield continually overlaid on its present reception. Any star occulted, anywhere about the sweep, might signal that presence, and they had had two such occultations, which buoy-information called planetesimals—
“—Library,” Haral had said on the first such: “does the Meetpoint buoy correlate its input with archives?”
Meaning did the buoy-system ever check itself to see if a cold, silent object it spotted was a known planetesimal? Affirmative. It did. But it reported it out as a planetesimal even while it was relaying a query: it was defaulted that way. The AI of the buoy knew nothing else to call it. The stsho who built it built no contingencies into it: or they had made them and did not put that information into the navigational ephemeris.
If something was out there hours out it had not seen recent developments in any of its timelagged reception: depending on its line of sight, it might only now be watching Harukk arriving at station . . . in the confused, digital way of distance-scattered passive. It might not know what ship; or be sure how many were out here.
And gods only knew what would trigger it.
Hilfy wiped her eyes, shifted the com plug, and kept focused. For their very lives.
“Abort linguistics search,” Haral said suddenly, out of profound silence. “We need the room in nav.”
Hilfy hesitated. And did it. Haral started running calc and never saying what it was for; but if Haral aborted one of Pyanfar’s orders it was desperate. She pulled out the print she had, which was all gibberish. Lost. Utterly.
Then com beeped:
“Harukk-com to all ships at dock: praise to the hakkikt, stand by departure.”
“What are they doing?” Khym exclaimed. “They can’t be putting out!”
“We’re going live,” Haral said sharply. And started throwing switches. Systems thunked and started coming up.
“We keep those connectors?” Tirun asked, businesslike, while Hilfy sweated in panic and punched buttons on her own: “Harukk-com, this is The Pride of Chanur.”
“This is Harukk-com, praise to the hakkikt, report your status.”
Her mind blanked. She sorted wildly, found the standard reports, shot them over. “Praise to the hakkikt,” she muttered, “status on our personnel.”
“Returning,” the kif said. “We are in receipt of your data, Chanur-com. Provide data on your subordinates.”
She shut the channel down to hold. Kifish courtesies, abrupt and rude by any other standard. She punched in on Haral, whose information-request light was flashing priority. “They say they’re coming back. Harukk wants stats from the rest.”
“Subordinates,” Haral said. “Get the stats on all those ships.”
Haral was right, gods, entirely right: it was kifish, it was a matter of protocols, claim everything the captain claimed, have all those stats in hand, permit no ship they claimed to report on its own. Her fingers stabbed at buttons, opened com to the mahendo’sat, to Tahar, to every other hani berth.
Claim it or lose it.
* * *
Down to the docks again, herself and all her company, and no kif but Skkukuk with them. Pyanfar drew one great breath of burn-tainted air and drew a second, and ventured a glance about her as others overtook her at the bottom of Harukk’s ramp. Jik and Tully, Harun, Tauran, Vrossaru, Faha— The faces blurred and hazed: she went lightheaded in the change of air. “Did what we could,” she muttered. “We got a chance. Whatever we got to argue among ourselves we do it on the way. Jik, Jik, my gods—” She bit it off, with the sight of the kif in the tail of her vision and remembering Skkukuk’s interested ears. “Come on. Let’s move it. We got to clear this dock.” The departure light was flashing on the wall over their heads, Harukk preparing to move out. Across the dock, stsho huddled in forlorn panic—foolhardy of their kind. The prudent were locked in other levels, hidden deep in station interiors.
Where kifish crews searched for records and raided central in search of names and data.
“We’re ready to move,” Harun said. “We’ve been ready, waiting the chance for months. And we’ve got questions, but I’m not going to ask any. Any way we can get out of this godsforsaken place I’ll take the ticket.”
With an ears-down, troubled look. No fools in this group. Oldest to youngest.
Though Munur Faha looked at her with her anxieties plain and the whites showing round her eyes.
What are you doing? What kind of deal are you making? You were lying but how often and where and for whose sake?
As for Dur Tahar, she walked along in her own world, her scarred face grim, never looking at other hani. Scars were everywhere about her. Inside and out.
Skkukuk brought up the side and clicked and muttered to himself; Tully walked along with his hand on his gun the same as the kif.
And Jik asked Kesurinan quiet, rapid questions, the two of them talking dialect as they walked.
Do what about it? Jeopardize his life and everything else? Pyanfar fretted and gnawed her mustaches, and walked along near the pair, her heart speeding as she saw other departure lights start flashing all down the row. Their own ships.
“Word’s out,” she said, and glanced at the hani walking on the other side of her. “We do it the way you heard it. Adjustments and amendments when we clear Urtur. We’ve got to clear Urtur. We’ll be thanking the gods for that kifish escort and I hope to gods Urtur is as far as Akkhtimakt gets, but I doubt it. We have a long run and a hard one ahead of us. We’re fast enough to keep pace with the hunters. We’ve had some modifications: say we’ve been running courier for the mahendo’sat and we’ve got a hunter-rig. There’s a lot been happening, but you heard some of it in there. What I’m worried about is getting us through systems fast enough and holding together long enough to get home in time. I can slow down; so can Aja Jin; and I can argue the kif into it; but nothing’s going to slow Akkhtimakt down, and they’re all hunters. Days can count in this. We’re bypassing Hoas Point. What’re your unladed caps on the Urtur jump and what on the brake and cross to Kura vector? Who’s low?”
A low mutter of stats and capacities. Industry was far and away the strongest; little Starwind was fast enough, engines large enough with its light mass to send her right up into Industry’s rating. Shaurnurn’s Hope put them only a little down, and Pauran’s Lightweaver only a shade under that. But The Star of Tauran was far under. Likewise Vrossaru’s Outbounder.
“You know,” Pyanfar said, “Tauran, Vrossaru. We can slow down and make your rate; it’ll cost us. You understand what we’re facing. I’m going to ask you—I got to ask—”
“We’ll get there,” Sirany Tauran said. “Our own way.”
“No. Power down. Mothball at dock. I know it’s risking your ships; so’s the trip home. Listen. My crew’s blind tired, strung out. Tahar’s little better. I can take Tahar on The Pride—” Instant glower from Dur Tahar, but no word. “Or one crew can go with me and work alternate; other with Tahar. Get us all there alive and precious days faster.”
Work alternate with a pirate? Bloodfeud and outlawry. She all but heard the scream. But:
“You can keep an eye on us,” Tahar said in a low voice. “Split shift or whole. Whatever suits you.
”
“All right,” Vrossaru said. “We’ll take you on.”
Tauran looked at Pyanfar’s direction. Thoughts went through her eyes. Aliens. Gods know what. And maybe on the other side: That Chanur ship’s got priority protection from the kif. And it’s fast. It’ll get us there alive. And we’ll be sitting where we can do some good if they’re lying, won’t we?
“All right,” Sirany Tauran said. “Soon as I can get my crew off. We got seven. You got berths?”
“We’ll find ’em.” Does she know about Khym? Pyanfar’s muscles clenched up and let go again. Gods be, we got worse problems than hani prejudices. “Thanks.” They had reached Moon Rising’s berth. And Aja Jin and The Pride beyond, all with departure warnings blinking urgently above. “We get those stats relayed ship to ship, right down the line, direct transmission. We have to share specifics with our kifish escort, no choice. Let’s get ourselves out of this port, we don’t want anything intervening and we got gods know what going we don’t know where.”
“Understood,” Harun said. “Luck to us.”
“Luck,” Faha said. “Gods look on us.” And with the appearance of a shudder, she looked at Tully and his dark-robed partner. Perhaps in that instant of afterthought she wanted to take that pious wish back. But that would have been an embarrassment. “Hearth and home,” she added, and with monumental charity: “and whatever.” With a physical effort.
Then Munur Faha started on ahead, her own ship farther on; other captains followed, Harun and Vrossaru with a backward look, Vrossaru’s ears flat in dismay.
“Tahar,” Pyanfar said: and Tahar stopped there at her own dock. So did Tully and Skkukuk. “Jik,” she said. Jik and Kesurinan stopped, too, within an easy sprint of Aja Jin’s berth. “We got it worked out,” Pyanfar said. Which Jik and Kesurinan might not have heard, they had been talking too intensely and too urgently all the way back. Passing instructions, fomenting conspiracy. Gods knew what.
But Jik left his First and came back to her, his dark face all sober. “Where I go, a?” He held up both hands. “Want back? Or you tell me go?”