Kif Strike Back (41 page)

"He with you?" Chur asked thickly. "Gods, I thought he was loose on the ship. Been seeing things-little black things- Couldn't find anybody aboard-Gods." Chur. lay back against the seat-back and blinked, licked her mouth. "Vigilance- went, captain. I tried to get the guns to bear, tried to stop 'er. Missed my fix. Armament's still live-" She made a loose gesture toward Haral's seat. "Got back here-I don't remember-Gods-be little black things in the corridors-"

Pyanfar got up and walked over to her own post. The armament ready-light was flashing red on the boards. She shut it down and capped it and looked up as the lift door opened down the hall and their ill-assorted crew came running, kif and all. "She's all right!" she yelled out to them from the bridge, violating her own cardinal rule; and went back to Chur, only then realizing Chur had not a stitch on. "Migods," she muttered, with not a blanket to be had and two men-no, three-arriving on the bridge; and then decided no one cared. They were all crew. Even the kif Skkukuk, brought along willy-nilly. Tully came rushing over among the rest, and Chur grinned and reached up and patted his anxious face right in front of Khym and everyone.

"Let's get you back to bed," Pyanfar said. "Gods-be med-machine's blowing its fuses in there."

"Uhhnn." Chur put a hand on the chair arm to lever herself up, and fell back. "Goldtooth," she said suddenly, hazily. "Goldtooth."

"What about Goldtooth?"

"Took out after Ehrran-blasted out this message-"

"You get it?"

Chur waved her hand at the com board. "In there somewhere. In the decoding-function-"

Pyanfar started to bring it through on the spot; and stopped with her hand on the board, remembering Skkukuk standing there. She turned and waved a hand at the crew. "Tirun, take station. I want a systems checkout. Fast. Geran, Hilfy, get Chur to bed. Haral, Khym, Tully, take Skkukuk to his room, then go wash up, patch up, and get back here double-quick. We got ops to run."

Haral's ears slanted. "You're worse hurt than I am." The metal particles stung at every move; most of her exposed fur was matted with blood from pinprick punctures. Her battered skull throbbed with so many impacts she had gotten used to the pain. It was likely true she was the worse case. But: "Get," she said, because there was that message from Goldtooth in the decoder; and Haral read her by that silent way they had of thinking down the same line. Protest filed, Haral turned and made to gather up Skkukuk as she went.

"I am a valued ally," Skkukuk said, drawing himself up in offense. "Captain, I am not to have my door locked, I am not-"

Shut up," Hilfy said, facing him by Chur's side. "Move it."

"This one means harm," Skkukuk said. "Kkkt. Kkkt. Captain-" He dodged as Khym reached for his arm. "They have taken my weapons! I warn you their intentions-"

"Get!" Pyanfar said. Skkukuk flinched and ducked his head, and Haral motioned to him again. Shouldn't have yelled, Pyanfar thought. I shouldn't have yelled; the son did save my life, fair and plain.

But he's kif.

They led. him out and down the corridor, Haral and Tully and Khym together. And Hilfy and Geran turned Chur's chair about and with tenderest care bent down and lifted Chur out of it. "I can walk," Chur said. "I c'n walk, I just got tired-" But they swept her off her feet between them and carried her anyway, off the bridge and down the corridor, Chur mumbling protests all the way, only then and loudly realizing she had forgotten her breeches.

Pyanfar sank into the vacated chair and punched the recycle on the corn-system. Nothing came up. Frustration welled up, changes in the systems, every time they looked, some new gewgaw in the works. "Gods-be, what's access on the decoder?"

"That's CVA2," Tirun said from Haral's post. "To your one, I got it, I'm getting it."

It ran.

"Gods rot, it's in mahensi!" She cycled it again and sent it through the translator.

"Situation deteriorating," came the translator's droning voice. "Advise you human destination Meetpoint. Same mine.

I got talk to one Stle stles stlen. Make maybe deal. Ehrran
 
I go, same. Keep company. You clear dock number one fast, both. Got little fracas start."

"Gods blast him!"

"-Best chance I can give."

"Blast him to his own hell!-You know what you did, you smug bastard, you know where you left your partner?"

The message ended. Pyanfar cut it off with a shaking hand.

Sat there with both fists clenched, until the black edges cleared from her vision. Then she carefully punched in another call. "Aja Jin, this is Pyanfar Chanur, come in."

Not on coder program. The kif down the row, the kif in station command-were undoubtedly monitoring even the so-called shielded-line. Everything. It was not politic to be too closely associated with Aja Jin just now. Or to talk in secret.

"Captain, this Soje Kesurinan, Aja Jin You back? You got news?"

"Bad news, Kesurinan. Your captain's been detained. Him. Those with him. In the hakkikt's custody. I think your personnel are going to be released. No word like that on your captain. The hakkikt-" Keep it neutral, keep it ambiguous, tip Kesurinan off to the situation as much as she could read between the lines. "-the hakkikt sort of wants to assure Aja Jin's good behavior. After Mahijiru lit out. And to discuss the matter. You got any news on that?"

"They jump," Kesurinan said after a moment. "Confirm. You got word captain's status?"

"Just that the hakkikt, honor to him, wanted to talk to him. Alone. I left him in good health."

Honor to him.-We're being spied on, Kesurinan, remember that, we're in real trouble. Don't press me with questions.

A long pause on the other side. "You got suggestion, captain?"

"I suggest if you've got a good explanation what Mahijiru's up to with Ehrran, it sure might help."

"I get," Kesurinan said. The strain came through the accent and the corn-garble. "I do number one quick."

"If you learn anything let us know double-quick. I think your captain's situation is extremely delicate. I don't think he knows what the hakkikt, praise to him, wants from him. If you can come up with that it might help. Understood? We'll use what good influence we have."

A second long pause. "Yes, understand. Thank you, Chanur captain. Thank you call us."

"I'm sorry," she said, heartfelt, and broke the transmission. Propped her throbbing head on her hands and winced helplessly at touching one of several lumps on her skull. It bled. She felt the dampness and looked at the stain on the fur between her pads. She began to shiver. "I'm going to wash up," she told Tirun. "Can you carry on a while?"

"Aye," Tirun said without turning around. On the boards rapid checks were going, searches after surreptitious exterior damage which, if not the kif, Ehrran might have done to them.

Or Mahijiru. She could not believe in Mahijiru's desertion. Could not believe Goldtooth had turned on them.

But it was politics. Like han politics, like the scramble for power that put herself and Ehrran at odds. In this case it was two partners who violently disagreed on how to deal with the kif-Jik who wanted compromise, and Goldtooth who played some other game, involving knnn; a game in which the stakes were perhaps too high, too unthinkably high, to put friendship anywhere in the equation.

The affairs of rulers, of Personages. Hani had never tolerated any divine right but the right of clans to decide their own affairs; or the rights of groups of clans to hold a territory: and hani never by the gods bent the knee to anyone but kin and house lord.

Honor to him. Honor to a prince of pirates who tortured her friends and laughed inside when a hani had to mouth politeness to him.

I'd pay him any pretty speech he likes for Jik's life; and I'll pay him something by the gods else, the first chance I get.

Likely he knows it too.

He wanted me before he wanted the mahendo'sat. Offered me alliance back at Meetpoint. He couldn't trust the mahendo'sat' sat. He knew that. He knew how a hani could be snared: he appreciates what Chanur could be and do-the way the han appreciates it, oh, yes, the han wants our hides on the wall. The han saw it before the kif did . . . what we were capable of after we took out Akkukkak, after we contacted humans. They saw it coming . . . if we were ambitious. And they thought we were. And they pushed us to it.

She walked off the bridge, paused for a moment at the door of Chur's room, where Hilfy and Geran had settled Chur in again.

"Gods-cursed needles," Chur said to her.

"Sure. You tear loose of that again I'll have a word with you."

"Goldtooth's message."

"Ambiguous as ever." She saw the glance Hilfy and Haral gave her. "I don't know what he's up to. "They would not have told Chur about Jik and his companions, not spilled any more bad news on her than they could avoid. "Stay put, huh?"

"Where's he going?"

"He thinks he's going to Meetpoint. So's everyone else we know. Big party going to happen."

"We?"

"Oh, yes. You can lay bets on that, cousin. We'll be there."

Chur blinked, turned her head to the side, where Geran was taping tubes at her elbow. "Captain's not telling all of it, is she?"

Geran pursed her mouth. Said nothing.

"Conspiracy," Chur muttered. And shut her eyes, exhausted.

"She did a good job," Pyanfar said, reckoning Chur could hear that.

"Yes," Geran said.

Pyanfar lingered there a moment, studied the three of them. Chur; Geran; Hilfy. None of them the same as they had been, excepting Chur, excepting maybe Chur. Geran's movements were quiet, economical, delicate; her manner was wry cheerfulness, and it was a mask. Chur sensed it, surely, knew the killing rage buried under it, Geran of the knife, Geran the silent one. Geran who smiled with the mouth nowadays and not with the eyes. And Hilfy. Hilfy had gone to whipcord and hairtriggered temper. No more young Hilfy; no more young at all. Hilfy had gone fine-honed and when she was quiet there was always a shadowplay behind the eyes, where things moved Hilfy Chanur did not talk about. There was sodium-fire and dark; and no bath took away the ammonia-stink and the blood.

But Hilfy had sat there in that all listening to her tread the narrow line with this kif, the same as Geran had sat there consumed with worry about her sister and never betrayed it; and Tirun had done her job down to the line same as Haral, where they were needed.

And sitting there side by side in that dark council hall- Tully, answering the kif calmly; and Khym, whose self-control had never broken, two males who had held their anger quiet inside and waited for orders from their captain. Crew. Same as the rest of them. The best. The Pride. Something the kif would never own.

"Huh," Pyanfar said, summation, and walked away down the corridor.

To be concluded in CHANUR'S HOMECOMING

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