Chanur's Homecoming (39 page)

Requesting that same message that she had anticipated and just sent.

Braking continued. Fighting diminished. There were still casualties. Solid mass became drifting clouds. Scan attempted to track misaimed projectile-fire and confused itself with the sheer magnitude of the problem till Geran gave it a Disregard on non-intersect-potentials.

They reached lower and lower V. "Take it," Pyanfar said, and Haral slewed The Pride around to use the mains on acquisition in a new vector.

Headed for Anuurn.

Vid came up. Haral had been too busy for that till now. The homestar, Ahr, shone brilliant yellow. Lifebearer. Hearthfire to the species. And the paler, nearer light that was Anuurn.

Home again.

With a straggle of battered, stress-damaged merchant ships slewing about in disordered break out of the rigid formation they had kept so long and so far, Harun and little Faha, Pauran, and last and limping, Shaurnurn, reporting damages, talking to each other over com.

"This is Sirany Tauran." Sirany had gotten herself an output channel. "Affirmative on the linkup, inquiry affirmative, all ships. They're all right. Chanur's clean and clear. Thank the gods.''

"Gods look on us all. Here and otherwise." Harun was talking, Harun always the leader in that group.

"We've got that," Faha said, and other acknowledgments came in.

While the slaughter went on, while a hard burn shoved at them and made breathing difficult, and a lightspeed message proliferated through ship relays.

"We've got contact with Gaohn," Hilfy said. "They ask for a report."

"They know by now," Pyanfar muttered. "But answer them. Send: The Pride of Chanur to Gaohn. We claim navigational priority. Clan business. End message. Put a call through to Kohan. Ask him how things are down there."

On Anuurn. At home. On that small shining sphere in all the wide dark.

It would take a long time. Question and answer went slow at this range. Conversations were all one-sided.

"Where in a mahen hell is Vigilance! Did we pick up Ehrran's ID anywhere?"

"Affirmative. Affirmative," Geran said, all business. "Five ships are putting out from Gaohn. We got a pickup on Ehrran. They're moving now. Make that six ships. They're not talking.''

"I'll bet she's not. Where's Ayhar? Gods rot it, where's Banny Ayhar and Prosperity!"

The burn stopped. Her vision cleared, her voice no longer had to force its way out of her throat. A wave of giddiness came on her. Depletion. Fight-flight reflexes let go and the body had dues to pay. She clamped her jaws against nausea and fumbled after a packet, dropped one and got another. Bit down on it and swallowed and swallowed, which was the only thing else she could do but retch. Going to faint. O gods. I don't do this. "Haral-Sirany. I'm not-"

"Cap'n? Cap'n?"

She drifted. Lay still under a ceiling which was not the overhead of the bridge. Blinked at it and at Khym's anxious face.

"You fainted," he said.

"Gods rot." She drew her hands up to locate her head, which seemed drifting loose and all fuzzed. "Who's running the ship?"

Ker Sirany. We're inbound for Gaohn. It's all right, Py. We did it."

"Jik. ..."

"The kif jumped, such as could. A lot surrendered. They've attached to the other kif. To Chakkuf. Skkukuk's been talking to them, telling them- Hilfy says-that they'll do well to hold still."

"Where's Jik?" Fear set her heart to hammering. "Did he jump, gods rot it, did he jump out?"

"We aren't tracking him. It got- pretty confused, Py. Not Geran's fault. Sirany says so. We-lost some ships. His ID just cut out."

"He's lying. Gods-be, that bastard's pulling another one." There was an obstruction in her throat. She wanted to break something. Anything. There was dark around her vision, a pain all through her gut. ''We need him.'' All quiet and hard to get past that knot. Oh, Jik, Jik. Another gods-be doublecross.

What do I do now? What am I going to do?

"Cap'n?"

It was not a voice she expected to hear. Not loose and wandering around in places like her cabin. She lifted her spinning head and looked at the worn, wan hani clinging to the doorframe. "Chur? F'godssakes-"

"I'm doing all right," Chur said.

"Huh," she said. "Huh." And fell back into the pillows. It was all she could manage at the moment. The whole cabin was going into slow rotation. It felt like tricks with the G force, a little acceleration this way and that way, but if she asked was that going on she would look the fool. It was her head. Her equilibrium.

Gods. Sikkukkut. Where? When?

A weight depressed the end of her bed. A hand touched her leg. "Cap'n." Haral's voice, ragged with fatigue. "We got a little rest now. Ker Sirany's arguing with Gaohn, telling 'em we got right of way and they can by the gods quit quibbling. She's all right, captain. Swear she is. Never shot at anything in her life, her and her crew, I think they're a little shook. Us-we're falling-down and gone away. Whole crew. Thank gods for the Tauran, thank gods, I say."

"I say too," she murmured. Felt a touch across her brow, her ears. Khym's hand. She opened her eyes and stared at the uninformative ceiling. "Was that Chur in here?"

"Not walking too good, but she's put on weight. Turned a corner somewhen and started storing it up instead of burning it. Skkukuk's having lunch-"

"O gods." Her stomach heaved.

"We got to get those things cleared out somehow. Skkukuk says Chur got to the bridge in jump, went into some kind of hyperdrive, started telling the Tauran what to do when they came out, got us all waked up- Cap'n, somebody threw a bunch of relays on manual, got us over on backup systems, or we wouldn't have made it: those gods-be black devils had got into the works, chewed stuff up good. And somebody aimed the guns. Chur doesn't remember, but I got my guess who did it. Or we'd be on the long trip for sure."

She blinked and absorbed that. Remembered bailing out of bed and running the corridor. Was not too clear on how she had gotten into her own seat. Or how anything had happened. The mind did not function well on the trailing edge of jump.

Did not function well after too many jumps, either.

"Call to home," she remembered. "We on response-time yet?"

"Gaohn refuses to relay."

"Gods and thunders, politics, politics and we got a system full of kif-"

"They've got Ayhar under arrest, cap'n. We're still on course. We got Vigilance in our way and we got three other big freighters just hanging off and not doing anything. They'll have fire position on us if we keep coming. They warned us. Have to ask you what you want to do."

She lay there and breathed quietly a moment, ran that situation through her aching skull once and twice and a third time.

Vigilance positioning itself where it could go head on with them or strike at their tail if they docked.

You gods-be fool, / got thirty, forty kif out there!

Bring kif against the han? O my gods, my gods. That fool's going to call bets and I can't bluff, those kif back there don't know where to stop and I can't hold them else. I can't bluff, Ehrran! Don't try to call it.

"Mahendo'sat. Where are they?"

"They're braking. Holding steady relative to the kif. Keeping an eye on 'em."

"And no sign of Jik." That pain was back again. It hurt to blinding. "Gods rot the luck." He's got to be alive. Out there somewhere. Preserving his options. Saving his own people. He has no choice. And I did it, I, I gave it to him. "Ayhar arrested."

"Aye, cap'n. We inquired. We got a communication from Llun, onstation. They're real sorry, they got no choice."

Old friends, the keepers of Gaohn station. Old allies. Under a lot of pressure. "That all they said?"

"Says plenty, doesn't it, cap'n?"

There was a time they were Py and Hal and Tirun. Across every accessible dock in the Compact. Here they were, gray nosed and at wits' end and Haral was sticking by formalities. Haral had held that line ever since the day she got set upstairs, command post, being heir to Chanur; and Haral, equally qualified, being sub-sept, got the second seat. It was the System.

"Captain?"

"Yeah. It says plenty. It says every godsrotted thing wrong with us." She shoved herself up on her hand and an elbow, flung her feet for the side of the bed. Blood was moving in her veins again. Her vision cleared. "I'll have Ehrran's ears, b'gods if I don't. My own hands. In the condition I'm in, I could take that blackbreeched prig! I'll kill her!"

"We got other word," Haral said, and braced her back, setting her down with both hands. Held onto her. "Rhean sent on com-says Chanur's fallen. Kohan's exiled. Mahn's got the estate. Rhean's broken with the blockade out there. She and Anfy- coming in hard behind us with Fortune and Light. Pyruun-Pyrunn got Kohan to safety somewhere. They swear that. So it's not all lost onworld, and we got help on the way if we just hold and wait. Sirany's up there trying to keep the thing from blowing to a-"

"Mahn." She shook her head, blinked. Tried to focus on it. "My godsrotted conniving son?"

"Our godsrotted conniving son," Khym said at her back, his voice a low rumble. "And our twice conniving daughter."

"With Ehrran!"

"With their own interests, Py, when were they ever anything wider?"

"Gods. Gods!" She flung off Haral's hands and slapped Khym's interference aside. Hit the floor with both feet wide and swayed there till she had shaken the fog out of her eyes. Then she headed for the door.

The corridor.

The bridge, where Tauran crew filled the seats.

"Give me com," she snarled, coming up over Sif Tauran's shoulder. Sif hesitated, throwing a startled glance her way.

"Captain-"

"Give it to her," Sirany said. "Ker Pyanfar, I'll give you your chair."

"Keep it. We got troubles." She slipped into the vacant post between Sif and Fiar. "Get me Gaohn station. Are armaments still live?"

"We're shut down, captain." Nasany Tauran, down at Tirun's post. "Reactivate?"

"Do it." The com light signaled available and she punched in on the frequency.

"Pride of Chanur hailing the station," Sif was saying. Trying to raise a response. Another light was blinking, another channel active. Sif punched it in, on a momentary pause. "That's a call from Vigilance, captain. They advise us we're under arrest."

"Tell Ehrran there's a threat to Gaohn and we're not it. Standby. That's all."

The message went.

"Gaohn station," she said on her own. "This is Pyanfar Chanur, The Pride of Chanur. Stand by to record and relay." Gaohn was hearing: that was beyond doubt: every official on that vulnerable and threatened station would be prioritied onto their transmissions. "Llun, you've just seen the first and smallest wave of our assault on Akkhtimakt's ships. The next one is incoming. Naur, there's no time for your politics. Your treaty with the stsho may have destroyed the whole species, hear me? Your relations with the mahendo'sat are tottering. Attack on our own world is possible and imminent. It is possible that no life will survive on Anuurn surface. I appeal

to you, I beg you, anyone who can get their menfolk offworld right now, do it, get us a chance, for the gods' own sake, get to shuttles and get to shelters. There are still three large groups of ships unaccounted for and one of them has threatened attack on Anuurn itself."

Static. Sputter. "Pyanfar Chanur, retreat from this course."

"Is that Ehrran? Gods rot you, is that Rhif Ehrran?"

Static and squeal. "This is Rhif Ehrran, Chanur. Take your kif and go deal with your owner."

"Is that what you're going to tell the next attack that comes rolling in here? Are you going to arrest it? You absolute and total lunatic, get that ship out there on Kura-incoming where it can do some good and stay out of my way before I blow you out of space! Deny my crew medical attention! Turn tail and run at Kefk! What do you write in those gods-be reports of yours? By the gods nowhere near not the whole story, not the part where you take stsho bribes and connive with the kif against the han! Get that ship out where it belongs!''

No response. From anyone. Not Ehrran, not Gaohn Station. Not from Anuurn itself, while lagtime ran on.

"They're Immune," Sirany said, a low voice from her other side. "You're challenging an Immune, Chanur."

"Arm. Target."

"Ker Pyanfar, they're hani!"

"They've arrested Banny Ayhar. They've arrested the courier that just risked her by the gods neck and Ayhar clan's whole livelihood getting word to the mahendo'sat and getting word back here again, bringing back the captains and the crews from Maing Tol all the way home-Where do you think those ships out there with the mahendo'sat came from? They've swept in out of mahen space, that's where! With the mahendo'sat! We got the gods-be hakkikt coming in here, we got this blackbreeched prig quoting rules from Naur and all their godscursed pets downworld-"

Sirany spun the command chair about, facing her. "I said I'd surrender this. I'll do it. I don't agree with what they're doing. But let me talk to Harun. Give Ehrran a chance to back up, for godssakes, Chanur, back off! Give 'em time to react, they have to have a way to save something!"

She clenched her hands on the leather of the chair arm, hit the control and turned it to face Sirany. No. Muscle reaction jerked her mouth. Stopped breath. Put a black ring around Sirany's taut figure. Time, for the gods' sakes, the godscursed fool, the fatherforsaking bastard-Pride, pride above the han, Ehrran's precious face- A breath then. A sane breath. "All right." Another. "All right. Let's talk to the spacing clans. Let's talk to Harun and Pauran and Shaurnurn and my sisters out of Chanur, and all the ships back there. They've arrested Banny Ayhar. The ships back there-they know what got them home. Tell them about Ayhar, tell them the rest of it, b'gods, we got it for them, the whole gods-be thing!" She spun the chair about, activated comp at that station and exhumed a log record. Accurately, first try. No one on The Pride was going to forget that date, that hour, that time.

Kshshti station: Ehrran trying to take Tully by force, kifish attack coming from two sides on the station docks, Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut, Banny Ayhar's dispatch to Maing Tol carrying a message from a threesided conference: herself, Jik, Rhif Ehrran.