Kif Strike Back (17 page)

"That's the latest bit of trouble. Gods, I'm tired of mail-carrying. Gods give that Ehrran-"

Khym showed up, from the galleyward-corridor, his hands full of food-packets, his face all cheerful.

-sons, the ancient curse went. Pyanfar swallowed it and listened to the com. The voice out of central was mahendo'sat, likewise the docking chief talking to them on the outside line. One could believe the universe safe and sane; and then a kif spoke up from down the row, giving them its outbound time.

Khym reached past her to clip the concentrates at her elbow. Three packets, one of water. 'Thanks," Pyanfar muttered. And to Haral: "You mark what Jik's trying?"

"Uhhhn."

"That's not on the plan. Something recent. Real recent. Didn't want to use that system in front of the kif, that's what, and Sikkukkut wasn't going to use his-eggs'II get pearls Harukk's got that equipment too and Sikkukkut won't use it."

"That where Jik was, you think? Push-and-shove with the kif? Trying to get them to-"

"Might've been. Gods know. Gods know if Ehrran knows what he's up to."

"He's got to fill her in. If she comes in alone with the kif-"

Clang-thunk! The accessway was loose. Crash! The grapples from Mkks station retracted. They had their own grip on Mkks and they were against the docking boom: that was all that held them now.

"He didn't want to tell us," Pyanfar said. "He wasn't going to. You get all that business down there on tape?"

"Hhhuun, yes. Want it logged?"

Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. "It's enough to give Ehrran our skins. No. But don't erase it either." She looked across the dividing console, met Haral's gold-eyed hani stare. Different than Jik's. Uncomplex in honor and greatly complex in loyalties. "Stow it in my personal file, huh? You don't need to be part of it."

Haral's ears went back. Offended. "Aye. If you want it that way."

"I do. Who heard?"

"Me."

"Huh." Pyanfar looked to the controls and brought her board up. A seat hissed under weight. She half-turned and saw Tully settle in next to Chur. "Tully r"

"Captain?" Tully turned his head, not using com and the translator.

"You crew, huh?"

"I-" Tully misunderstood the question and fished up a small syringe from the chairside pocket. "I sleep at jump, wake at Kefk. I work."

It sounded chancy. Gods made humans and stsho that way, that jump made them crazy. So they ran ships in and out of jump unconscious. Lunatics. "No fear, huh?"

A primate grin, quickly compressed to a hani smile. "I scared."

"Huh. Us too."

"Hurry it up!" Haral said over shipwide com. The voice echoed through the bridge and corridors. "Tirun, move it."

"Vigilance lodge a protest?" Pyanfar asked, swinging round.

"Aye," Haral said, and wrinkled her nose and laid her ears back. "I'd give this voyage's profits to've been in range of one of that pair in that lock."

"Huh." Profits. She laughed. But humor died. "It was a stupid thing. Stupid, that's what it was. Like a gods-rotted-"

Khym was on the bridge and Pyanfar swallowed that ancient comparison down too. Called up the outbound schedule,
 
"Log that Ehrran business. Right down to the exit from the lock."

A hesitation. A key pushed. "I already had it separated."

"I'll lay it out for the rest of us-Put Geran wise to it, huh?"

(Gods, Khym back there, coming and going in all this business between her and Haral, between mahendo'sat in the lower corridor, and not a question out of him, not a What's going on? or a Why? The world was out of shape. But she and Khym had both said a lot of things in the dark. Last watch.)

She glanced aside. Khym settled into observer one, between Hilfy's as yet vacant post and Geran's seat, flicking switches. He brought com live there, backup now to Hilfy. Geran would sit Chur's post at scan one; Tully observer two; Chur moved to second scan; and Tirun, with below-decks cargo ops and second-bridge shut down, was left observer three, when she got to it, as auxiliary switcher, comp operator, engineer, and if things went amiss, backup at armaments. When she got to it.

Pyanfar punched in lowerdeck monitoring. "Tirun. You all right down there?"

"I'm coming," said a breathless, moving source. The sound of running feet in main corridor below. Pyanfar broke the contact. Hilfy took her post. Pyanfar caught the reflection in the monitor, against the light from Khym's boards.

Back in place. Home again. A ready light came on her board from Hilfy.

A mahen voice sputtered in her ear: "Clear when ready. You got clear, Pride of Chanur."

Hilfy acknowledged the station communication Khym had brought through, taking over. "Thank you, Mkks." Routine and cool. Thank you, Mkks. Pyanfar's blood went cold.

Aft, the lift worked. That would be Tirun.

"Geran," Haral said, "put Vigilance on the guard-it list right along with the kif."

A moment's silence. "You serious, huh?"

"Real serious. Jik says."

"Uhhhhn." No further comment. That got done. Their scan operators were onto it.

"Aja Jin to Pride, you got number one depart, go, go."

Running footsteps in the topside corridor behind. "Gods rot,"
 
Haral said into the mike,
  
"sister,
 
we're going, move, move, move!"

Footsteps reached the bridge, a body dropped into a chair and Haral hit the ungrapple program.

Clank-bang. They were under power then, a little queasiness as The Pride came off station and gave herself that little bit of thrust that got her outbound.

Nothing showy. The Pride could move. It was not a fact they cared to advertise to the kif or to any other watchers at Mkks. Haral brought The Pride about at leisure and took her time. They might have been hauling eggshells.

"We got an update on the entry projections," Pyanfar said. "Jik's got a-"

Then: "Priority," said Hilfy, that dreadful word from a post with bad news. . '

It got switched. "-same advise you," from Mkks Central's ice-clear voice, "we got tc'a go outbound. Navigation caution."

"Gods rot!" Pyanfar exclaimed.

"-Tell it power down and wait," Hilfy was saying over com. "Mkks station,-"

Com transcripting was all over second monitor, kif protests, protests from Jik and Vigilance. . . .

"Got a blip," said Geran. "Confirm something outbound from the methane-sector-"

"That's a kif away," Haral said, overriding. "Scan two. Comp, get that tc'a figured."

"I'm on it," Tirun said. "Stand by, Geran." Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and snatched helm function to her board while Haral sorted priorities. Thank gods for full crew: com was babble from three prime sources and a dozen unauthorized outputs; Geran was on station scan output and Chur tried to sort out blips exploding off Mkks station about them like seeds from a pod.

Pyanfar kicked the rotation in, for The Pride's internal G and rolled them up in a move that got to the pre-set course the hard way. Gods, they were on a hair-breadth schedule out to that jump-point, they had everything calculated down to the instant for that tandem jump, and the situation behind them looked like feathers in a windstorm.

"Schedule's blown to a mahen hell," Haral said. "Gods blast that split-brained fool! We got a lunatic mess back there!"

"Hilfy-" From Khym, urgently.

"Priority," Hilfy said. "Station transmission, general to all ships."

Image turned up on second monitor. Violet light: a writhing serpent-shape, gold-mottled, that dipped and wove before the lens.

Methane-sector was talking to them: methane traffic control on visual output. The yellow, sticklike form of a chi raced up and down the tc'a's uplifted back, darted about its head in frenetic attentions to its- whatever a tc'a was to a chi: master; comrade; friend or pet. The tc'a wailed, the multipart harmonics of its segmented brain and speech apparatus, multiple minds, multiple viewpoints in matrix translated at the bottom of the screen.

Tc'a
     
tc'a
      
hani
     
 
hani
      
mahe
    
kif
        
kif

 
Mkks
    
Kefk
     
Kefk
     
Kefk
     
Kefk
     
Kefk
     
Kefk

give
      
go
   
go
         
go
         
go
         
go
         
go

tell
       
chi
        
go
        
go
        
go
        
go
         
go

chi
        
tc'a
       
go
        
go
        
go
        
go
         
go

knnn
     
knnn
    
knnn
     
knnn
     
knnn
     
knnn
     
knnn

A cold wind went up Pyanfar's back. "Hilfy: get comp on that. Tirun, go to com one."

"Aye," Hilfy said.

Not a word of criticism. No outcry from the crew. The tc'a ship was out ahead of them, likely to foul their schedule; a tc'a official onstation was talking about knnn, and no one sane wanted them involved. No one could talk to knnn but tc'a; and tc'a talked like that, in matrices that had to be read in all directions at once. It spoke of two tc'a presences, one at Mkks, going, perhaps-(give a chi?)-to tc'a at Kefk; while knnn were involved all across everyone's motivations, and of two kinds of kif (Kefk-bound?) and two kinds of hani (gods, did it pick that schism up?) only one lot of kif was going to fight?

"... abort this lunacy!" a hani voice said, Rhif Ehrran from Vigilance, fairly yelling over com. "Aja Jin, pull us back!"

"You want what," Jik's answer came back. "Give time Kefk know we come? Sure thing they blow us to hell, Vigilance. You stay on course, stay on course, you hear?"

"Khoihktkt mane kefkefkti-"-from the kif: The mahe's agreeing with us.

"Aunt, comp's got nothing better. The tc'a's talking about notifying knnn and says that tc'a's going with us to Kefk. Comp's not sure about the rest, but it's got a conjecture-"

"Vigilance is on," Geran said, "wanting the captain direct."

"Refuse," said Haral.

"Call on three," Khym said. "It's Harukk. Their com wants the captain."

"Refuse: get Jik."

"Belay that," Pyanfar said, biting her mustaches and reading comp's conjectures on the tc'a, not far off her own. "Jik'II talk when he can. Give me output. Compose a message to the tc'a and tell it we go and it waits."

"Aye." From Hilfy, tautly. No ship talked to methane-breathers without filling out abundant official queries afterward. There were reasons. Like methane-breather logic, which could take something fatally amiss. They were different. Very. And went berserk very easily. Tc'a were the peaceful lot.

Knnn-were something else.

"Aunt-here's the set-up; approve it before it goes."

 
hani
      
hani
      
mahe
    
kif
        
kit
        
tc'a
       
t'ca

ship
      
ship
      
ship
      
ship
      
ship
      
Mkks
    
ship

go
        
go
        
go
        
go
        
go
        
Mkks
    
wait

danger
  
danger
  
danger
  
danger
  
danger
  
danger
  
danger

"Makes sense to me," Pyanfar muttered as it came up on the screen. "Log and send it. Send to Aja Jin: quote: We're on schedule and proceeding. We've advised the tc'a of navigation hazard."

"Jik's on already," Geran said. "He's saying go with it. Still go."

"Fine." It was not the answer she had rather have had, but it was the one she expected. Go with it. Go ahead. Take the chance.

Jump with a tc'a in their midst. Tc'a navigated like snakes. They were snakes. Come in at Kefk blind with a tc'a liable to pop out of hyperspace any gods-rotten-where off-mark and the faster hunter-ships plotting to overjump them in hyper-space. ... It was asking for disaster. Collision.

"We'll shine bright enough for Anuurn to see, if we kink this one," Pyanfar said. "Someone want to calculate the size of the fireball?"

"Gods-rotted bright one," Haral said.