A hundred kif, a whole ship’s crew headed out toward them at some summons; or having finally made its collective mind up which side to join. New sirens wailed, high-pitched. Fire hailed about them from the flank as other kif aimed at the sudden breakout.
“Run!” Pyanfar yelled, and veered off across the dock, limping. She turned and let off her last shot where it counted, into the heaviest firepoint that was putting shots past their ears; and turned again and ran, breathless and all but blind toward a set of girders near the main freight-chute, where a conveyor went up into the station’s upper levels.
And stopped cold as she rounded the corner and saw the band of kif in front of her, APs leveled dead at her and her empty gun.
Gods-be, she had time to think, in profound self-disgust.
An AP shell landed in the full middle of the kif. Her forearm flew up on instinct to save her eyes, her legs flung her sideways and sprawling to confuse hostile aim; and she rolled to her knees staring up at a single standing kif who held his AP gun widely to the side, non-combatant beside a smoking heap that had been five of his fellows.
“Captain,” Skkukuk said as cheerfully as she had ever heard a kif speak, about the time her crew poured about her and made a defensive wall.
She struggled for her feet, almost sprawled again, but Tully, closest to her, caught her arm and saved her balance.
“I feared treachery,” said Skkukuk with a wave of his hand at the rest of the crew. “And so I followed you my own way, captain, to be of service.”
“Gods save us,” Tirun muttered.
“I would advise,” Skkukuk said, “going back to the ship. The hakkikt Sikkukkut will reward you for that prudence.”
“You’re a gods-be agent of his!” Pyanfar cried.
A flourish of dark sleeves and weapon-hand toward the smoking pile of kifish corpses. “Did I not offer you my weapons? I am skku to Chanur, no other, and I have given you your enemies.” Skkukuk turned and pointed down the docks toward their own berth. “The mahendo’sat have secured the docks a little further on. Come and I will show you a safe route.”
“Then move,” Pyanfar said numbly. “Get!”
“Keep this one from my back!” Skkukuk pointed a claw in Hilfy’s direction. “This one—”
“You gods-be filth!” Hilfy cried, and headed for him, but Pyanfar caught her arm. “Move it!” Pyanfar yelled at the kif.
The kif turned and started off in a dash for other cover. “Go,” Pyanfar said, still holding Hilfy’s arm, and hurled her free, passing her in the tracks of the kif who sped like a darting wisp of black in the smoke.
Whump! Overhead, power went up full: lights glared; the distant burr of fans reasserted itself. Kefk station was trying to live. The loudspeaker blared, inaudible in the other din.
There was a sudden fading-out of fire; as if entropy had set in—decreasing organization and increasing desire on the part of kif still involved to exit the affair with whatever gains they had: alive. Defense only, at this point.
Follow the kif. Trust the kif who had saved her skin. They were within com range of The Pride. Pyanfar reached for the pocket com in her limping jog, coughing as she went, blinking smoke-stung tears and hoping to the gods all the rest were still behind her as she tracked the light-footed kif from cover to cover. “Chur,” she gasped into the com. “Chur, it’s Pyanfar—do you hear me?”
No answer.
A dozen strides more. “Chur!”
Silence from the com. It could have gotten broken in a fall. It could have.
Skkukuk came to a sudden halt in the shelter of a set of girders just ahead, and plastered himself against it. Strobe-light flashes lit the smoke ahead, a ceiling-towering series of upward cycling lights that sent ice to a spacer’s heart.
Of a sudden the whole station shuddered. Pyanfar flailed wildly for balance and found it next Skkukuk in a thunder of rollers and hydraulics and an airshock that made the ears ache.
“O gods,” she said, braced against the column and staring into that rolling cloud as the rest of the company reached them. The great doors of the section seal had shut. The Pride’s dock, Mahijiru’s, Vigilance—Aja Jin—they were cut off.
“What—” Khym’s voice came in gasps, subdued and frightened. He leaned there gasping, his back to the girder crossbrace, Haury limp in his arms. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Pyanfar said. The whole station seemed suddenly quiet. The sirens were silenced. “Could’ve been holed—” The Pride. O gods. “We’re cut off.” She tried the pocket com again. “Chur. Chur, you receiving?”
She expected no answer. She got none. She flicked it to standby again and met Geran’s eyes by accident. “Probably can’t get through,” Pyanfar said on a gasp. “Range is marginal through that seal.”
“Ktiot ktkijik!” the PA thundered—EMERGENCY. And went on and on—Skkukuk lifted his dark, long face the better to hear, but the kifish words garbled in the echoes.
Another burst of loudspeaker sound, from another direction, likewise kifish, groundlevel.
“Captain!” Haral caught her arm and pointed, where four brightly-garbed mahendo’sat had broken from cover and begun to run their way, close at hand.
Desperately.
“Gods be,” Pyanfar said, “Jik—Jik, you gods-be earless—What’s going on over there?”
Jik came panting up and caught her arms, at the end of his breath. “You come—got go—other way. Got no go ship, no go ship—”
“What happened over there?”
“Got trouble. Got Vigilance—I think she blow dock. I think she go—go Meetpoint.”
“Where’s Mahijiru? What’s Aja Jin doing, for godssakes? You got contact? Clip a vane off her! Stop her!”
Jik blinked and gasped. “I lose contact Aja Jin—Mahijiru power up. Mahijiru—Vigilance—go.”
“He’s after her.”
“He no shoot, no shoot. Pyanfar, I not know what he do—Get off dock, we got get off dock! My partner—he—he not shoot!”
“You mean he’s going with her? He’s going out with Vigilance?”
“A,” Jik gasped, shaking at her. “We got—problem—”
“Kkkt,” said Skkukuk. “Understatement. The hakkikt will not be pleased with mahendo’sat or hani today.”
“Shut up!” Pyanfar snarled; and Skkukuk lowered his head between his shoulders.
“Look about you,” said Skkukuk.
“Uuhhhnn,” Haral said; and Pyanfar looked.
Shadows appeared throughout the smoke-haze, robed shadows converging on them from all sides, with caution and deliberation. And leveled rifles.
“These will be the hakkikt’s,” Skkukuk said. “Since they aren’t shooting. They will get us back to your ships. Or not, at the hakkikt’s pleasure. Kkkt. I trust you did not offend him in your interview.”
“Beware of Goldtooth,” Pyanfar muttered distractedly. “Beware of Ismehanan-min.”
“What say?” asked Jik. “What talk, Pyanfar?”
“Not me. Stle stles stlen. The stsho warned me at Meetpoint. From the start. I paid a lot for that advice. A whole lot.” She shoved her empty gun into its holster and stared bleakly at the narrowing circle of kif. “Everyone stand easy. Let’s just hang onto the guns if we can.”
* * *
“Kkkkt. Parini, ker Pyanfar?”
“Appreciated, hakkikt.” Pyanfar reached out a sooty, blood-caked hand as an attendant brought a cup to her side, there in Harukk’s dim hall.
Back to starting-point. The blood and stink of the docks still clung about them. They bled from wounds. The hakkikt elected to have his nose offended; or delighted in the sweat and discomfort of the opposition.
All of them were there—Hilfy, Tully—seated at Sikkukkut’s low table, on insect-legged chairs: Haral; Dur Tahar; Jik; the others of all three crews, hani and mahendo’sat alike, were back in the shadows along the wall, among armed kif—except Haury Savuun. The kif had taken her over objections as violent as they dared m
ake. To no avail. It was surely mockery that set Hilfy and Tully as guests at Sikkukkut’s table; with Dur Tahar: and unsubtle mockery that set Skkukuk to crouch on the floor near the hakkikt’s chair, robed knees up near hooded head, arms tucked out of sight, a very, very quiet Skkukuk, as small as he could make himself.
Sikkukkut sipped his own cup. It was not parini. Dark eyes glittered. “Should I wish a dockside destroyed in future,” Sikkukkut said, “I will only invite my friend Pyanfar. First the stsho, then the mahendo’sat, and now the kif. You are an expensive guest.”
“I’d like to contact my ship.”
“Of course you would. Kkkt. Chur Anify has stayed aboard. Wounded, you say. But perhaps still capable at controls. Who knows? While, Keia, the complement you left on Aja Jin is—virtually complete. Except yourself and the four with you. You and Ismehanan-min withdrew your crews from the docks simultaneously with those of Vigilance. To put it directly—why?”
“A. Because—” Jik fished in his pouch for something and came up with a smoke and a light. He carried the stick to his lips and lit the lighter.
“No,” said Sikkukkut definitively, and Jik paused and looked his way, fire burning and smokestick unlit. “No,” Sikkukkut said again.
Jik froze a moment as if undecided, then deftly snapped out the lighter, palmed the smokestick and returned both to the pouch.
“Well?” said Sikkukkut.
“Number one sure thing Vigilance got make trouble.” Jik hooked a thumb toward the company over by the wall, and gestured loosely toward Tahar immediately at his right. “Ehrran go out, they think maybe they get hands on Tahar. Want bad. No good try. Pride don’t let. Things go bad quick, shooting start, those hani they get recall order. Pride crew, they try find captain, a? Try cross dock—they same time save Ehrran hides all by accident. They run like hell, board ship. When I see Vigilance crew go off dock, I get quick nervous.”
“You knew what she would do.” Sikkukkut sipped at his cup, flicked his tongue delicately about his lips. “Well, as we sit here at our ease, Vigilance is still outbound—on Meetpoint vector, without a doubt. Your colleague and partner Ismehanan-min is running hard behind her, not a shot fired on either side. Does that surprise you, Keia?”
“Damn sure surprise,” Jik said darkly.
“And yourself, ker Pyanfar?”
Pyanfar lowered her ears. “Hakkikt, I told you what Ehrran would do the minute she got the chance. No, I’m not at all surprised.”
That did not well please the hakkikt. She saw the tension in the hand that held the cup, the relief of tendons and veins under the dark gray skin. But the snout gracefully lifted from the cup again. The dark eyes blinked ingenuously. “What would you do, skth skku?”
Vassal of mine. Pyanfar flattened her ears further. “What’s necessary to do. The hakkikt has no need of my advice, but our motives still coincide. Pukkukkta. Ehrran plainly aims to kill us, and I don’t intend to let her have a sitting target. By your leave, hakkikt. What I said before the fighting started is still the truth.”
“Sktothk nef mahe fikt.” Safety snicked off a gun close at hand. A guard held a pistol close to Jik’s head and Jik never flinched, but picked up his wine and took a measured sip.
“Do you trust our friend Keia?” Sikkukkut asked.
“He’s still here. He was doublecrossed in this, same as us.”
“Was he, truly? Second question. Is he my friend?”
“Like always,” Jik said with a tilt of his imperiled head, and the cheerfulness faded to a frown. “Hakkikt, long time I work with Ana Ismehanan-min. He sometime crazy. I think maybe he got idea, maybe go this place—”
“Humans.” Sikkukkut leaned forward, set down the cup on the low table and rested his hands on both his knees, long jaw outthrust. “Ismehanan-min knows precisely what he is working for. Mahen interests—which have perhaps very little to do with mine. Or even yours, ker Pyanfar. I wonder what those two discussed with each other before Ismehanan-min left dock. I wonder what agreements exist. Would you know these things?”
“I’ve never found Goldtooth forthcoming on his plans.” Exhaustion threatened her with shivers; or it was the cold; or a sick dread of the narrow path they walked, and where it might turn next. The gun stayed at Jik’s head; and there was ice in her stomach and her nose ran. “He left Jik here. So he didn’t tell Jik anything. Same as me. Didn’t trust me with what he was up to.”
“But he trusted—I do dislike that concept—trusted this Rhif Ehrran.”
“That isn’t necessarily so, hakkikt. I don’t think he trusts anyone.”
“But Ehrran has a ship on her tail and at last report, she isn’t firing. Is this characteristic of Ehrran?”
“It is if she’s got a hunter-ship on her back. She’s only brave on docksides. I haven’t seen her style in space. But I know she’s no match for Goldtooth in a fight. Couldn’t be, if he’s got position on her. Fancy ship, fancy computers, lot of programmed stuff. Programs for everything. But I wouldn’t bet Vigilance’s arms systems against Mahijiru and I sure wouldn’t bet her crew. Evidently she thinks the same.”
“There’s another possibility. Ismehanan-min boarded Vigilance during his time in port.”
Her ears pricked up. It took no acting. “After or before he came to me, hakkikt?”
“After. Does it suggest something to you?”
“It might still have been on our business.” The sweat stung in her wounds. Across the chamber, against the wall, Canfy Tahar slowly slumped to the deck, not fainting, but at her limit. Tav knelt by her; and kifish guns angled toward them. They still had their own weapons: kifish etiquette. But theirs were not out of holsters; and the kif’s were.
And the gun never left Jik’s temple. He sipped carefully at his drink and ignored it. But that was calculated and dangerous too.
“I doubt it was,” Sikkukkut said. “If they are not acquaintances, who sleep in one bed, they will be by morning. Is that not a hani proverb?”
She blinked. “A hundred year child. That’s a mahen proverb. Longtime trouble from a single act. Goldtooth’s either making a serious mistake, hakkikt, or he’s still acting in your interest. He’ll be at Meetpoint. Where he’s useful. And it’s not his style to consult with his partners.”
“What of that, Keia?”
“I like that smoke now, hakkikt.”
“Answer.”
Jik’s eyes came slowly to Sikkukkut’s. “She right. I think maybe Ana got idea put self where make lot trouble.”
Sikkukkut’s long nose drew down somewhat. It was not a pleasant expression. He folded his long fingers beneath his outthrust jaw. “Kkkkt. Shall I observe, Keia, that your position is uncomfortable? That I presently have ships proceeding toward jump, to warn my enemies. That this whole diversion on the docks—diversion, Keia!—was perhaps created to give those two ships time to get away.”
“They be kif who fight, hakkikt.”
“They are worms who lacked initiative until someone moved! Don’t tell me kifish motives! Don’t play the innocent with me, mahe, or you will find me other than civil!”
Pyanfar flexed claws and tried to think past the pounding of her heart. Hunter-vision tried to take over. She forced the black edges back. “She was in port with him.”
“Him,” Sikkukkut said sharply. The kif turned his attention in her direction, went off one hunter-fix and onto her. “Who?”
“Goldtooth was at Meetpoint at the same time as Rhif Ehrran; same time as you, hakkikt. I’m wondering who was talking to whom back then. You talked to Goldtooth. He intimated that much. But who met with the stsho? And who met with whom in stsho offices?”
“No,” Sikkukkut said, as if he had turned a thing over in his mouth and decided to eject it, delicately, his eyes burning and full of estimations. “No. I don’t credit the stsho with that much nerve.”
“Then,” said Pyanfar, “the stsho at least thought they were on the inside of this business. They thought they were ahead of the hunt. Or lead
ing the hunters where they liked.”
“Suppositions are a shaky bridge, ker Pyanfar. Particularly when the waters are deep. You wish to distract me. You see—I know friendship. I put it with martyrdom—in the category of terms useful to know. Friendship—is also subject to rearrangement of loyalties. At the most disadvantageous moments. Believe me that I understand the exigencies of allegiance-trading and advantage. Let’s operate within them. Shall we? Let’s consider what prompted this attempt on my life. . . since that’s surely what it was. Let’s consider how it incidentally created the timing for escape—Vigilance uses its guns as it parts our company and breaches an entire dock to hard vacuum, a dock conveniently free of mahen or hani casualties. Not of kif. But remarkably your crew and the crews of Mahijiru, Aja Jin—Keia; and of course Vigilance—were not on that dock when it decompressed.”
“We weren’t in a favorable situation ourselves, hakkikt!”
“Be still, ker Pyanfar, and let my old friend Keia do this explaining. Let him tell me how Aja Jin was so fortunate in its timing. Do you want your smoke, Keia? Take it. Perhaps it will facilitate your thinking.”
“A.” Jik reached again into the pouch, kept his movements measured: I am not in a hurry, they said. You do not force me.
And that sudden patience on Sikkukkut’s part raised the hair on Pyanfar’s nape. Stalk and circle. Take it. Have what you want at my hand. When I choose. If I choose. Your addiction is your vulnerability and I control it, I demonstrate it to these others and you must bear with that.
And soon with other things.
See, hunter Pyanfar, how easy and how perilous the fall from my favor.
Friendship and kinship is your addiction. I can twist that knife too.
Gods-sakes—as Hilfy let go a long, careful breath—sit still, niece.
The smoke rose, gray wisp against the orange sodium-glow; and swirled above Jik’s head, taken by the ventilation. “I tell you,” Jik said easily, and gods, there was only the faintest fear-smell: he was that steady. The strong smoke subdued other olfactory cues, deliberate stratagem, perhaps. “I tell you, I not happy. Ana be old friend. But politic make different. We be mahendo’sat, hakkikt. I know what he do. He hedge bet.” He made a gesture with the smokestick and put the lighter away. “He call me fool. Maybe I be. We not trust Ehrran either one. I know damn sure when Ehrran crew make fast withdraw from dock we got trouble. Mahijiru already got close up tight hatch. I send all crew aboard, tell get hell off dock, try get damn fool hani—” He gestured Pyanfar’s direction, and over his shoulder at the others. “They going find captain. Damn sure I got no way stop. Damn good idea anyhow. Pyanfar be val-u-able ally. Maybe do favor to hakkikt, a? Rescue Pyanfar.” Another long drag at the smoke. It leaked slowly from his nostrils. “I not like whole ship company go out from The Pride—but they go quick get off dock. This number one good idea. I don’t trust Ehrran. I run like hell, try catch these hani. No good. We get pin down. We got no hakkikt permission be on dock, a? Every damn fool out there want shoot us. Hani go through. We stuck. So got one job then—hold way open for hani, back to ship. We do. We hope Ana take care Ehrran. I think he do. He follow her. I still got hope he got good idea. Maybe help. He not like tell what he do. This maybe make friend lot nervous. Make me damn nervous now, a? I be like you, hakkikt. I always like know what my friend do.”