Kif Strike Back (14 page)

She stared at him a long, long moment. "That what you've come to say?"

"I find you of interest."

"Gods, thanks."

More wrinkles. "You are ingenuous. You have enemies at home."

Her ears sank. "What's that got to do with here and now?"

"Much to do with the future. Will you sell me this human?"

"No."

"What will you do with him? Tell
 
me.
  
I confess to curiosity."

"I don't know I'll do anything. He's crew."

"Hani perplex me. But you've promised, haven't you? You'll give me Kefk."

"Jik said as much. Does it take a private deal with me?"

"I offer you pukkukkta on all our enemies."

"Revenge I don't need."

"Do you not? Tc'a sing your name. I have heard it."

The hair stood up on her back. "Fine. I imagine they gossip a lot of things."

"Pukkukkta." The dark lips drew back and exposed keen incisors with their v-form gap; one arm flourished outward, with a flare of dark sleeve. "Hani, there will be a day you want it."

"What by the gods does that mean?"

But Sikkukkut had turned and walked away, a diminishing blot on the light. He stopped and turned half about, always graceful. "You'll have to let me out, of course. Friend."

"Tirun. We got a visitor leaving. Let him out."

"Aye," the answer came back. Sikkukkut walked on in serene dignity and Pyanfar tautened the skin at her back to smooth the fur. Muscles resisted and turned the motion into a shiver.

"Gods," Haral muttered.

"See he gets off," Pyanfar said; and Haral strode off down the corridor in that direction, where the kif had disappeared around the corner, headed for the lock.

Her hair did not unbristle until Haral reappeared and walked back to join her.

"You record that, Tirun?" she asked of the empty air.

"I got it," Khym's voice came back. "I wasn't Mahn's backroom lawyer for nothing."

She drew a whole breath and spat out a laugh. It was as if some thunderstorm had blown through The Pride's corridor and the sun had come out again.

But then Haral froze, looking down the corridor beyond her shoulder.

Pyanfar turned abruptly. Hilfy stood there with a pistol in hand.

"What do you think you're doing?" Pyanfar yelled.

"I heard the hatch," Hilfy said. Too quietly.

"We handled it. Get back to quarters, huh?"

"Aye," Hilfy said. The safety clicked back on. Hilfy pocketed the gun and disappeared around the corner.

"Why did I yell?" Pyanfar muttered to Haral, to no one in particular. "I didn't have to yell, gods rot it."

"She's all right," Haral said.

"Sure."

But she did not get the cold of it out of her gut until she had gotten back to the bridge and into the galley.

"What he want?" Tully asked, worried-looking, half-rising from the table; but Pyanfar pushed him down again, her hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing but nuisance."

"He give money. Want me."

"He knows I wouldn't take it." She sank down onto the bench and reached for her abandoned cup. So what did he want?

Khym took the cup before her hand got there and slid a hot one into her hand.

"Good," Khym said.

She looked up at her husband, puzzled.

"Good," Khym said again, meaning just, she thought, good job. She doubted it. But she sipped the gfi and looked up at him. She saw patience in his amber eyes. Patience he had won the hard way.

"Your cabin's taken," she said pointedly.

"Huh." He looked embarrassed at the invitation when he had realized it. Geran was there. Another male was.

Then he looked pleased in spite of himself. His ears flicked. Cods. Tc'a. Methane-breathers. She remembered the knnn that had paced them out of Meetpoint and the hair wanted to stand up on her back again.

Something he said was important. Something was worth the trip here. Him. Would-be lord of all the kif. Visiting me.

Let us assume we are allies. Remember this at Kefk.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

Revenge on all our enemies. Hani, there will be a day you want it.

"Not yet," she said. She caught the plastic-wrapped confection Geran spun her way on the tabletop. Haral and Tirun blundered back in, hunting gfi and food. She tore the plastic and swallowed the mince in hunks, guaranteed to make for hiccups. She chased it with gfi. "Gods, tofi." The spice made her sneeze.

"Slow down, for the gods' sake."

"What, slow down? We've got eight and a half hours to sleep." She stood up and grabbed Khym's arm. "Come on, husband. Suddenly I'm in the mood."

"Gods, Py "

"Who notices? Finish the gfi Come on."

VI

Eight and a half hours was not enough. The alarm went off like attack and mayhem and universal doom. Pyanfar climbed over Khym to kill it, but there was nothing for it then but to remember where she was and what there was waiting, and to pull herself and her half-conscious husband out of bed and face it.

She faced it in a plain twill pair of blue trousers, common-spacer-like, because they were headed out, and otherside of that jump was likely no time for washup or amenities. She saved her brightest silk pair for after-cleanup on the docks at Kefk.

Healthiest to think in those terms, that there would be the need of red silk trousers and all the finery.

But she did put on the ruby pendant earring, among the others, that winked and shone ferociously in the red-gold sweep of her tufted, many-ringed ear. It advised all who wanted to argue with a rather plainly dressed hani that she held a captaincy. On such a day she needed all the convincing it could lend.

"Feed the gods-rotted kif," she ordered Tirun when she found her on the bridge.

"Feed it what?" Tirun asked, and forthwith turned her stomach.

"I don't know: thaw something. Throw a steak through the door. Don't get near it. And don't carry weapons."

"Gods, it's just one kif. I can-"

"Don't go near it. How much more trouble do we need on this ship?"

"Aye," Tirun said, and swallowed all further argument.

They were all up, all functioning: Chur came out from Khym's former cabin to sit check-out on the bridge; Haral and Hilfy and Geran arrived from below; and Tully came up too, stiff and sore and pottering about the galley with Khym (gods!) and Hilfy, getting breakfast. On the bridge the com-flow started and The Pride began to drink down the information Aja Jin and Vigilance had been awake through the down-watches composing. Haral and Geran and Chur were in Charge there, while Tirun went off to kif-feeding.

"We got a request," Chur reported, "from Aja Jin. They want conference when you can."

"Fine," Pyanfar said, martyred. "Fine. I'll get to it."

"Checks are running fine. We just take Aja Jin's course the way it stands?"

"We take whatever they give us. I'm not quarreling with their comp." She leaned over Chur's seat and took a look at station output. It was mahen language again. Mkks began to have the feel of normalcy in its operations.

Any kif on Mkks who valued his Life, she reckoned, was headed for Sikkukkut's ships. She thought of others of the noninvolved, non-kif, wishing they could have evacuated the entire station. But that was impossible. Mahendo'sat and stsho had to stay and trust the few conventions of non-involvement and neutrality even kif observed in the Compact. Tc'a and chi were safe. Indisputably. And they protected the other, oxy-breathing residents by their own immunity and their insanity.

"What's our count?"

"Hour three minutes to undock," Haral said.

"Good gods, they're going with it, are they?"

"That mahe's a stubborn bastard."

"We on count?"

"We're catching up."

She put her own board live. Ran a survey of systems and recent com messages.

From Aja Jin: You got no problem, you come in on coordinate number one good. ...

Another optimist, she thought. "Put in a call to Jik."

"Aye," Geran said. And a moment later. "He's not answering."

"What, not answering? We're in countdown. Remind him who's asking, huh?"

Another delay. "Captain, his first is on if you want to talk to her."

She punched it in. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. Have we got a problem?"

"This Soje Kesurinan. Not got problem. Fix good."

Unease ran up and down her spine. There was a don't ask implicit in the mahe's tone.

(So what for godssakes is the matter?)

"Want me to come over there?"

"No need. All fine, honored captain."

"Pride out." She punched it off. Gods, likely every kif on Mkks had access to that com transmission. She caught Haral's worried look.

"He's not there," Pyanfar said.

Haral's brow wrinkled.

"I'm betting," Pyanfar said, "he's not aboard. Geran, get me Rhif Ehrran."

"Aye." Geran made the call. "She's on, captain."

That quick. So he's not there, and Rhif's at the boards.

"Ker Rhif. Letting you know we're back online."

"We have your count. We assume it's accurate."

"It's accurate. Do we have a sequencing yet?"

"Can't this be processed at some other level, Chanur? Or is this a social call?"

"Just wondering, Ehrran." She broke the contact without the protocols. Looked at Haral.

"He's with the kif or he's loose on the docks somewhere."

"Gods-rotted lousy time to take a walk,"

"I figure he knows what he's doing." She got back to the messages. A Mkks consortium lodged protests. A mahen prophet babbled something about retribution and visions. A self-claimed psychic saw humans descending on Mkks in their thousands and bringing some invention that would make antimatter, obsolete-"Good gods, Geran, you screen this stuff?"

"Sorry, captain. That's the good ones. We got crazier. Thought you'd like the local temperature, huh?"

"They're scared. Can't blame them for that." She tried not to think about it. "Where's Vigilance's complaint about visiting kif?"

"They never logged it with us."

"Huh." That bothered her. She bit at a snagging underclaw and watched the readout run past. Khym arrived with gfi for everyone on the bridge, regulations fractured. But it was her rule, and she broke it with a grateful sigh.

"I reckon," Geran said, "they expect us to take a lot of this data during system transit."

"They better." She sipped the gfi and looked up again as breakfast arrived, Hilfy with a tray of rolled sandwiches. "Thanks, imp."

Hilfy glanced at her in a strange, ears-back way as if the little-girl word had jarred. Perhaps it had. Pyanfar noted that as Hilfy turned away and served the rest, with Khym and Tully. Tully's moves this watch were full of winces. Besides the usual spacer's breeches he wore a white, stsho-made shirt, likely the last he had. It covered the wounds. His mane and beard were combed and neat. His eyes, always light arid unnerving-quick, darted and danced in a kind of desperate counterpoint to Hilfy's quiet. He smiled. He looked happy. It had the look of desperation.

Fear of them? she wondered uncomfortably; and then caught Tully's look at Hilfy's back, that one glance in which the smile died and something else showed through until Hilfy pricked up her ears in a semblance of good humor-

-for her, she thought; he wore the cheerfulness for Hilfy's sake; and the inside-out of it shivered through her nerves. He moved like a woman walking round some man on the edge of his control. Don't jostle, be pleasant, have your temper elsewhere. Hilfy might see it or might not.

Human instinct?

Or were they tied together, one holding onto sanity because of the other-and Hilfy further gone than she suspected?

"Captain?"

Pyanfar blinked and gulped down a large part of the sandwich, turning to the board. "Thanks." Data turned up. She swallowed the other half in two bites and punched a key. The nav-system engaged and ran the data. .

"Three quarters hour," Haral said.

"We aren't getting checkout from our friends out there."

"I'm-" Geran said; then: "We got a call from Aja Jin's first."

"About gods-rotted time. What does she have to say?"

There was a stir at her side. Hilfy slid into her seat and started checkout. Tully edged in next to Chur.

"That's Khym's seat," Chur said sotto voce. "Take the one the other side of Tirun's."

"Captain, Jik's on his way over here. So his bridge says."

"Huh." Pyanfar's eyes went to the time ticking away in the corner of main-monitor. Small alarms went prickling up and down her spine. She sipped at the gfi. "Coming up on the half hour mark and Jik pays social calls. Are those Ehrran guards still on watch in our lock?"