Eggsucking bastard, she thought. Where’s Jik, you earless assassin?
She tried not to think of what kind of demonstration Sikkukkut was capable.
“We will have a discussion on the matter,” Sikkukkut said; and there was the subtle, soft whisper of arrival in the outer corridor. “Is that Tahar? Yes. Alone except for my escort. I wonder at this new tactic.”
Tahar hesitated in the doorway, then ventured close—a quiet step, a quiet settling into place when the hakkikt gestured her to sit at the table: a rippled-maned, bronze-pelted southern hani with a black scar across her mouth that gave her a grim and raffish look.
“So all the ships in your hand,” Sikkukkut said, looking at Pyanfar, “are in mine.”
“I am in your hand,” Pyanfar said, with as steady a voice as ever she faced down a dockside official bent on penalties. But never suggest I don’t control those ships, no, not to a kif. Status, Pyanfar Chanur. Status is all there is with him. “It’s a complex situation, hakkikt. Hani minds are not, after all, kifish. But that’s my value to you.”
* * *
“Godsawful gibberish,” Haral said from her station. The printout was ten pages long, and full of code words that only Jik and his Personage might know. Hilfy Chanur stared at the same set of papers and flipped this way and that, trying to get some idea what they applied to.
—Ghost is proceeding on the course suggested in her previous report.
Pieces and bits of information depending on other information.
—reports from inconvenience/Inconvenience? are negative.
“I think Inconvenience is another codename,” Hilfy said.
“We knew,” said Tirun, from the end of the consoles, “that that son was in connivance up to his nose.”
“Who are we?” Haral wondered. “Could we be that Ghost?”
“Inconvenience,” Hilfy suggested. “If—”
“Priority,” Geran exclaimed, atop a sound from Tully. “Priority, engine live, coming over station rim vicinity berth 23—”
Harukk’s neighborhood. Kif ship.
* * *
“I am glad to know your value to me,” said Sikkukkut carefully. “It’s always helpful to have those things explained.” His fingers moved delicately over the projections on the cup he held, restless, sensual movement. “I have held such a discussion with my friend Keia. He has tried to explain. I’m not sure with what success.”
“He’s very valuable,” Pyanfar said, her heart thudding the harder against her ribs. Careful, careful, don’t tie the crew and all we’ve got to him. “He’s a force we’d miss. Against Meetpoint.”
“You assume Meetpoint.”
“Hakkikt, I’ve expected the order hourly.”
“Is that why your ship’s engines are live?”
She grinned, honest hani grin, a gentle pursing of the mouth. “I’m quite ready to go.”
“Kkkt. Skku of mine.”
“Congruent interests.”
“And do your subordinates share your enthusiasm?”
“They’ll follow.”
“They’ve followed you here. Meetpoint might be far more dangerous.”
“They’re well aware of that.”
“What is their motive, do you suppose?”
“Self-interest. Survival.”
“They think then that your guidance will advance them.”
“Evidently they think that. They’re here.”
“You see outside my ship the results of miscalculation.”
“I noticed, hakkikt.”
“You still consider Keia Nomesteturjai a friend, hunter Pyanfar.”
“Hakkikt, when you use that word it makes me nervous. I’m not certain we understand each other.”
“When you say subordinate I suffer similar apprehensions. What is that ship of yours doing?”
“Following my orders.”
“Which are?”
“Are we to later? I’m willing to discuss it if we are.” In the hakkikt’s stony silence she sipped at the cup. “On the other hand, we were talking about Meetpoint. That is where we’re going.”
“Do be very careful, hunter Pyanfar.”
She lowered her ears and pricked them up again. But a kif might not read that hani apology; and galling as retreat was: “I retract the question then.”
“Nankt.” The kif waved a hand; a door opened and someone moved; it was a name he had called. It sounded like one. The hand flourished and took up the cup again from the table. “Well that you learn caution, hunter Pyanfar.”
* * *
“It’s holding stationary,” Geran said, and Hilfy watched the development on her own number two monitor, where the limited sweep of their scan picked up a ship which had risen to station zenith, hanging where it had a free shot at everything.
“That’s Ikkhoitr,” Haral said. “One of the hakkikt’s oldest pets.”
“If they’re not talking,” said Tirun, “and they’re not moving, that means they’re at the limit of their orders.”
“Move and countermove,” Haral said.
Hilfy flexed her claws out and in again with an effort at control. Her stomach hurt. She felt a shiver coming on at the thought of that button near Haral’s hand. You going to tell us before you push it? Or just surprise us all, cousin?
With a mental effort she shifted her eyes back to the translation problem and got herself busy, leaving the ship over their heads to Haral’s discretion.
From Khym and Tully, not a word; silence; Chur had not cut in her monitor: Geran had gone back to Chur’s room briefly when it all started, and pushed a button on the machinery, ordering sedative, putting her sister out cold before it got to the noise of locks opening and the ship powering up. Or other things Chur might want to listen in on; and learn too much of situations that she could do nothing about. Geran quietly put her sister out, turned her back and walked back to the bridge to do her job, which she sat doing, businesslike and without a shake or a wobble in her voice or a trace of worry on her face.
Gods-be coward, Hilfy Chanur, do your own job and quit thinking about it.
* * *
It was Jik they brought into the hall—Jik, a dark, dazed figure between two kif who held him by either arm: who had to go on holding him on his feet after they brought him to the table. Jik lifted his head as if that took all his strength. Pyanfar’s stomach turned over; her ears twitched against her determination not to let them flatten, and then she let them down anyway: any hani smelling that much drug-laden sweat and pain would wrinkle up the nose and lay the ears down, even if it was not a friend held there in such condition before her eyes.
“Keia,” said Sikkukkut. “Your friends have come to see you.”
“Damn dumb,” Jik said thickly; and Kesurinan climbed slowly to her feet, stood there with her hands at her sides, a holstered pistol brushing one of them. Kesurinan had the cold good sense to go no farther than that. Tahar tensed in her seat, but she made no further move either, and Pyanfar nodded in Jik’s direction.
“You don’t look too good.”
“Lot drug,” Jik said, head wobbling. “You damn fool. Go ship. Private, huh?”
“It is the drug,” said Sikkukkut. “I forgive his discourtesies. Do you want to cede him your place in our council, Kesurinan? Or not, as you please.”
Do you repudiate your captain? Do you want his post?
Perhaps Kesurinan had no idea what was being asked. She moved and took Jik’s arm from the kif who held it, flung her arm about him and gently eased him down onto the chair.
“Kkkt. Mahen behaviors.” Sikkukkut lapped at his drink while Jik leaned on one of the upraised insect-legs of the chair his first officer had yielded him and stared through a pair of them at Pyanfar.
“H’lo,” he said. “Damn mess.”
“Godsrotted mess for sure. What’ve you been telling the hakkikt, huh? You going to go with us to Meetpoint?”
“I dunno,” he said. He shut his eyes as if he had gone away a momen
t and opened them again. They shone dark and desperate in the orange light, spilling water onto his black skin and black fur. His nostrils widened and sucked in air. “Go ship, Pyanfar.”
“You see,” said Sikkukkut, “we are moving at some deliberate speed. Kesurinan, Tahar, I tell you what I have told my other captains: follow your orders. You came here, which is very well. Now you will go to another room; and you will stay there. Until I release you. Tell them they will do this, hunter Pyanfar; and dismiss this skku of your own ship.”
“Do it,” Pyanfar said. It was protocols. Or a demonstration of power. There was no choice, not even with all of them armed. She looked at Tahar as the scar-nosed pirate got up and stared back at her with that expressionless calm that had carried her through two years of close dealing with kif. Skkukuk got to his feet on the same order.
And:
“You go,” Jik murmured on his own, speaking to Kesurinan.
“A,” Kesurinan agreed.
“Kkkt,” Sikkukkut said, not missing that little distinction, it seemed, of control in that exchange. He waved his hand: kif cleared a way and one of the ranking skkukun motioned to Tahar and to Kesurinan and Skkukuk. There was, Pyanfar noted with some relief, no question about the weapons they wore, and Skkukuk had not signaled any warning. If he had not changed sides altogether when he sat down at that table.
“Would you,” Sikkukkut said, when the others had gone, “like something to drink, Keia?”
“No,” Jik said thickly.
“He still has his wits,” Sikkukkut said, turning his head slightly to Pyanfar. “And he still has all else he was born with, by my strict order. In consideration of an old friendship, kkkt, Keia? But you don’t then order Aja Jin, hunter Pyanfar. Nor order this one. He makes that quite clear, doesn’t he?”
“He’ll do what I ask him. As an ally.”
“If he does what you ask, as an ally, do you then do what he asks?”
“I have in past. I think he owes me one.”
“Merchants. But Keia professes not to be a merchant at all. I don’t think he will trade. Will you, Keia?”
Silence. Long silence.
“Stubborn. He is very stubborn.” Another lap at the cup. “Tell me, Chanur-skku, what am I to think about that ship of yours?”
“That we’re ready to go to Meetpoint, hakkikt.”
Sikkukkut’s long jaw lifted. It was not a friendly gesture, that shift of the head that stared more nearly nose-on: that was threat, the eyes glittering cold black with the sulfurous highlights of the lighting. “Ismehanan-min went to Meetpoint, skku of mine: now, I am not patient of this. By now there is a ship of mine over the station axis with its guns aimed at your ship. And we are at impasse.”
“Hakkikt, when I go back to my ship I’ll power down. My crew has its orders until then.”
“That’s a very stupid bluff, hunter Pyanfar.”
“I’m not bluffing. We can all die here. You’re not dealing with a kif, hakkikt. I’m hani. Remember?”
There was a stir all about the hall. Clicks and subsequent red gleams of weapons ready-lights. And Jik pushed his hands against the insect-leg and lifted his head slightly.
“Your ship isn’t moving on mine,” Pyanfar said, “since you don’t want your station damaged. And mine won’t move. Leaving dock isn’t what I ordered them to do. I told them if I die here, or if they’re attacked from your side, to cycle the jump vanes.”
Chapter 3
There was stark silence in the hall.
“Cycle the vanes,” Sikkukkut repeated, and rested his hands on the legs of the insect-chair. “That would be a curiously futile gesture for them.”
“What should I care,” Pyanfar said, “if I were dead? But never doubt that my crew is prepared to do that.”
“Martyr,” Jik said in his hoarse voice, and hauled himself by his arms on the chair to face Sikkukkut: he rested there leaning on the upraised arch of the chair legs, head on forearms and a grin on his face. “She hani. She tell crew blow us all to hell, they do it. You deal with damn fine hani crew. Same be lot brave for you. You got use right.”
More profound silence. Then Sikkukkut lifted his cup and lapped at it delicately. “Bravery. This is another of those words which sounds kifish until one looks more deeply at the mindset. I distrust it. I distrust it profoundly.”
“Just consider it,” said Pyanfar, “a longrange survival plan. But don’t consider it.” She waved her hand. “What I’m truly interested in, what I’m sure we’re all interested in, is what we do about Meetpoint, hakkikt. You want Jik’s cooperation; I can get it for you.”
“I remind you that you failed miserably with Goldtooth. We assume that you failed there. In certain moments I wonder.”
“In certain moments I wonder, hakkikt; and I still don’t know what he’s up to. I’m more concerned what the humans are up to; and I can tell you plainly—” she held up a forefinger, claw extended—“Tully doesn’t know. I’ve questioned him closely on it, and I know when that son is lying and when he isn’t. He was a courier who didn’t know his own message; Goldtooth used him and dumped him, which is a little habit of Goldtooth’s that I want to talk to him about. Goldtooth doublecrossed Tully, doublecrossed Jik. Doublecrossed me. And to confuse it all he gave me help, in the form of medical supplies we needed. I don’t know how to read his signals. I’m being perfectly frank with you. I can tell you that Ehrran and I aren’t friendly; and she’s dealing with the stsho, which I trust even less. That’s where I stand. I want Jik back. Under my command, hakkikt.”
“Damn,” Jik said. “Hani—”
“He’s honest,” Pyanfar said. “If you do that favor to him, at my request, he’ll be caught in a moral tangle his government won’t like at all. But we don’t need to tell them that, do we? And we don’t need to leave Goldtooth alone to represent the mahendo’sat. Jik supports your side. And if you lose him, hakkikt, you’ll have no chance in a mahen hell of getting the mahendo’sat to make any treaty. Give him to me. I can handle him.”
“Prove it now. Get the truth from him. Have him say where the humans are going, what Ismehanan-min said to him before he left, and what agreements he knows of with the methane-folk.”
Pyanfar let go her breath slowly. Her laboring heart found a new level of panic.
Fool. Now you get what you bargained for. Don’t you, Pyanfar?
But what else is there to do? How do we win anything without this kif?
She looked toward Jik as he shifted his hold on the chair to face her direction. A fine dew of perspiration had broken out around his eyes, running down into his black fur; his eyes glittered in the orange light and the darkness, and there were lines about them she was not accustomed to see there. “Jik,” she said. “You heard him. You know what he wants.”
“I know,” Jik said, with no intimation he was going to say a thing.
“Listen.” She reached out and took hold of his arm where it rested on the chair; she smelled the sweat and there was the stink of drugs in it; drugs and raw terror. “Jik. I need you. Hear? Hear me?”
Jik’s face twisted, showed teeth, settled again in exhaustion. His eyes shut and he got them open again. “Get hell out. Hear?” And he meant more than get out of Harukk: she read that plainly.
“If the hakkikt fails,” she said, “what does that leave us with? Jik. Jik—” There’s a reason I can’t tell you. She tried to send that with her eyes, with the sudden force of her hand; and with her thumb-claw, dug in so hard he winced.
“Damn!” he cried, jerking back; she held on.
“Listen to me. If the hakkikt fails, where are we? That bastard Akkhtimakt—” She tensed the thumb-claw again. J-i-k. In the blink-code. “Do you hear me? Do you hear?”
He no longer pulled back. His hand twitched. “I hear,” he said in a hoarse, distracted voice. “But—”
“You’ll take my orders. Hear?” And: h-u-m-a-n-t-r-e-a-c-h-e-r-y she spelled into his flesh. The sweat ran in rivulets past his eyes, in the t
hin areas of his facial hair. “Jik. Tell him everything.”
A long moment he hesitated. She felt the tremor of muscles in his arm. The fear-smell grew stronger. The look on his face was a thing to haunt the sleep: he poured all his questions into it, and there was nothing she knew how to send back—let one kif note that hidden move of her thumb on the underside of his hand and they were both in it. But:
T-r-u-s-t, she signaled him. D-o.
He broke away from her eyes. He leaned himself on the other side of the chair, facing Sikkukkut. “Ana say—humans come Meetpoint. Truth. They go fight Akkhtimakt. Gather hani, make fight ’gainst kif. Then got—” His voice broke. “Got—hani, stsho, human, mahendo’sat, all fight kif.”
“And it’s your task,” Sikkukkut said quietly, “to see that I reach Meetpoint to engage my rival Akkhtimakt—all while being attacked by all the others. Is that what your partner told you to do?”
Prolonged silence.
“Answer,” Sikkukkut said.
“He not tell me what he do. He say—say I got go Meetpoint, wait orders.”
“To turn on me at the opportune moment. Kkkkt. And now what will you do?”
“I think he damn fool, hakkikt.” Again Jik’s voice cracked. “I think I first time got better idea, help you take out Akkhtimakt.”
“And then to turn on me.”
“Not. Not. I think Ana got wrong. I damn scared, hakkikt, he got number one bad mistake. I don’t think he do what he do, damn, I come on dock, try get Pyanfar out lousy mess, I don’t know my damn partner going to blow the damn dock, I don’t know he going outsystem, I don’t know he got deal with Ehrran and the damn stsho— What happen? I get shoot at, I get caught, I get lousy drug and beat up, you think I be damn fool, hakkikt, come outside if I know what he do? Hell, no. Maybe Ana same time got smart idea, but he don’t know I be out there, I don’t know he be going to leave the dock—lousy mess. Ehrran be the one break dock, she be the one kill you people; I don’t think he know what she do.”
“They met. They talked. We know this.”
Jik’s head dropped, his shoulders slumped. He looked up again, leaning on his arms. “I think they talk stsho deal. I think Ana not know, not know what she do— He just got move fast. He plan go, yes. Not then. No so fast. He think got time. Ehrran make him move. Maybe he think I be dead, I don’t know; maybe he think we all be on that dock, maybe he think The Pride crew be gone, maybe think ever’thing be gone to hell—I don’t know, hakkikt. I don’t know.”