Chanur's Homecoming (10 page)

Sikkukkut leaned his long chin on his fist, the silver-bordered sleeve fallen back from a thin and muscular arm, the light gleaming on his eyes. "I well tell you, hunter Pyanfar, you will have the chance to make good what you say." The forefinger lifted. "You will have everything you ask."

O gods, the thought hit her then. Too easy. Too fast. Too complete.

"You will take Aja Jin and Moon Rising and you will take Meetpoint.''

"Hakkikt-"

"You claim a great deal for yourself. Can you deliver more than words? Or perhaps-will you defect to my enemies?''

"To Ehrran?" Her ears went flat. It took no acting at all. "No."

"You encourage me." A second finger lifted beside the first. "So I will give you Keia. On condition."

"That being, hakkikt?"

"He will go aboard The Pride. In your charge."

"He's the best pilot-"

"I know his skill. I know Kesurinan's, which is considerable. But she has less recklessness. I tell you how I will arrange things and you will accept them for your own good, hunter Pyanfar. Keia would betray your interests, left free to follow those he serves. Instead I give him to you, and you will use him wherever it profits you, but most of all where it profits me. I insist on this point. Do you understand me?"

Her ears twitched again, and it was not acting either. "You're very clear. And you may be absolutely right. I agree."

"I may be right. How generous of you. Is that the word-generous?''

"I'm taking your orders. Those who know me would be shocked to hear that. I'm a bastard, hakkikt, and a graynosed old bastard at that, and I'm not in the habit of taking orders, but I'm taking yours." You don't back me up, son. You don't treat me like one of your rag-eared lot. "You impress me and your opinions make absolute sense to me. You give me Jik here, I'll keep Kesurinan in line. And him. I know what you're saying, and yes, you're right. You want me to take Meetpoint, I can't do that. Even with Jik for a wedge. But if you're coming in behind me and want the stsho all dithered--" Which is what you plan, isn't it, you son? "-I can by the gods keep them busy."

Sikkukkut sipped at his drink. "You'll have to be more than that, skku of mine. I have a ship to spare. Do you know what a single hunter-ship can do to an inhabited world?"

O my gods.

"No warning would travel faster than that ship. It would strike and go. And hani would be removed from the question. The power I give you would be removed, skku of mine. Always remember I can take it away. I can remove Anuurn from consideration as an inhabited world. Do you understand me?"

"Entirely." Bastard. Thanks for the warning. Haura, bastard. You know how long Akkht itself would survive a move like that? Let's talk about life in the Compact. Let's talk about wiping out species. "When do I go?"

"I have a packet for you. You'll have it. With the person of my friend Keia. Treat him gently." Sikkukkut's nose twitched. "And under no circumstances set him free. I have uses for him myself: he's a loan, not a gift." Another lap at the cup. And a wave of Sikkukkut's hand, at which several kif near him stirred forth from the shadows, passing in front of one of the lights and casting long shadow over the table.

The shadow enveloped her, enveloped Jik as they laid hands on him and gathered him up with soft clickings and chatter among themselves. Jik lolled limp, in a way that said he was not shamming: his arm swung down, his head fell back when they lifted him, and there was no muscle tone in the arm they grasped-kifish fingers bit deep when they swung him up to carry him.

"Your leave," Pyanfar murmured, set her drink down, and stood up. She bowed, as carefully and formally as ever before the leadership in the han. She kept her ears up and her face calm as she glanced aside to their handling of Jik, and looked again to Sikkukkut for instruction.

He waved his hand again. A second time she bowed, and walked out the door, into the dim corridor outside, into the presence of lesser kif who gave way to someone of her evident status, who edged out of her path, lowered their faces and made themselves shadows against the walls and the conduits.

Her knees were going to be weak. The ammonia smell dizzied her: she had not sneezed, thank the gods, she had snuffled once or twice and covered it; but of a sudden her stomach felt queasy and her heart which had exhausted itself in terror, labored away in slow, painful beats.

The nightmare was not going away. They were bringing Jik, she had to pick up her three companions, mahe, hani, and kif, on her way out; and she had to get down that dock and observe whatever the kif sent her in the way of instructions.

Had to.

"I got him," she said curtly to Kesurinan when the kif brought her companions to her in the exit corridor. "He's staying in my custody."

And it hurt, somewhere dimly and at the bottom of her soul where she had put all her sensibilities-the quick lift of Kesurinan's ears, the dismay, the instant smothering of all reaction, because Kesurinan was not a fool, and knew where they were and who was listening, and then that they would have to do everything the kif insisted on to get her captain out of Harukk. Kesurinan thought she was talking to an ally.

Sikkukkut was absolutely right: the mahendo'sat would be an ally right down to the point their own species-interest took over. And then Jik would save his own kind.

So, she discovered, would she.

They made slow progress down the unstable docks-a gang of kifish skkukun carrying a stretcher with Jik strapped tightly to it; Jik's First Officer walking along by him, anger and concern in every line of her back: and with a gun on her hip. Pyanfar walked to the side and a little behind, with Dur Tahar on her right and Skkukuk at her left, Tahar inscrutable as Tahar had become in her life among kif, while Skkukuk gave few signals either-except in squared shoulders, except in less nervousness than he had ever shown; except in every subtle move that said here was a kif whose status was no longer that of an outright slave, a kif whose captain had just dealt with the hakkikt and won. He carried a weapon beneath his outer robes and gods knew what ambitions in his narrow skull. If ever a kif was pleased, this one positively basked in his change of fortunes, inhaled the chance in the air, savored the sight of the hakkikt's slaughtered enemies, his dreadful signposts-and the sight of his captain rising in that service.

Cold in all the warm places and fever-warm in all the cold ones, gods, a hundred eighty degrees skewed. Alien. The kif are that thing in doubles and triples.

Stay cold, Pyanfar Chanur. Save it. Jik's a piece of meat. Tahar an ally-of-fortune, Kesurinan's potential trouble, and this gods-be son of a kif is a convenience.

Kesurinan's not going to make trouble, not yet. She'll let us take Jik aboard.

Gods, don't let Jik come to out here.

Slowly, slowly they walked up the dock past the section seal, into that area where there were no pedestrians. Where there was no traffic at all but themselves.

And there was The Pride's berth ahead, still flashing with those warning lights. She took her pocket com out, within range of the pickup now: "This is the captain. I'm coming in."

"Aye," Haral's voice came back to her, thin with static: that formality she had used was warning, and Haral took it: I've got company, Haral; don't get easy with me.

Another eternity, walking that fragile dock: and gods help them, Tahar and Kesurinan had farther still to go. "Skkukuk," Pyanfar said, and the kif beside her was all attention. "Tell the skkukun-hakkiktu I want Tahar escorted to her ship by the quickest and safest route. Through the central corridors if they can."

"Hakt'," Skkukuk said, acknowledging the order; and walked up with the litter-bearers and gave that instruction with all the kifish modulations of a superior's relayed instructions and his own high status with that superior. Then he fell back a step or two and lifted his face in satisfaction.

She said not a word to Tahar, and Tahar offered not a word to her; that was the way of things.

Toward The Pride's open accessway, then. "Wait here," Pyanfar said to Tahar and Kesurinan, and with a special coldness in Kesurinan's direction, when they reached that gateway: her flesh crawled in that earnest look of Kesurinan's scar-crossed face. "Aye, captain," Kesurinan said, all unknowing.

And betrayed her own captain into foreign hands.

"Chanur-hakto," the foremost kif said, when they had deposited Jik on his litter in The Pride's airlock. That kif took a packet from within his robes and offered it.

Skkukuk intercepted it in one smooth move. And waved his hand, dismissing the other kif out the airlock.

"Seal us up," Pyanfar said to the air and the crew watching on monitor.

The lock shot closed, hissed and thumped into electronic seal.

"Power down," Pyanfar said.

"Aye," Haral's voice came to her. All business, even yet. Pyanfar took the packet Skkukuk offered her officiously, with the stretcher lying on its supports at her feet. Now the shivers wanted to come, but she kept her ears up and looked her own kif in his watery, red-rimmed eyes.

"Good job," she said to Skkukuk.

"Kkkkt," the kif said. "You need me, hakt'. Who else of your crew has manners?"

Her gorge rose. She swallowed and tucked the small packet into her pocket, squatted down by Jik's stretcher and patted his face gently. It was cold and there was no reaction.

"This is an ally?" Skkukuk asked.

"This is a complicated situation," she said, trying to tell a kif the truth; and then a second thought ruffled the hair down her back. Gods, this is a killer I'm talking to. With hairtrigger reflexes. "Yes. An ally." She moved her hand down to Jik's neck and felt the pulse there. "Haral. Get Khym down here. We got Jik to move. He's still out."

"On his way, captain. You all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. We got out in good shape. Open that door." She patted Jik's face again. "Hey. Friend. Come out of it. You hear me? You're all right." Friend.

He was under. Deep. She heard the lift work: Khym had either been on his way or he had run that topside corridor. And The Pride was proceeding with power-down, a series of subtle noises that her ear knew in every nuance. "Skkukuk. You'll help Khym. You'll do what he says."

"Kkkt. This is your mate."

She stood up and looked flat-eared at Skkukuk, with the ammonia-stink in her nostrils and the antiallergents drying her mouth. Something about the asking crawled along her nerves. This alien, this unutterable alien, was feeling out who was to consider among the crew, who he could displace, who he could get around and who not.

That's one job you can't work your way into, you slithering earless bastard. You keep your mouth off my husband's name. You better figure that, fast.

A thousand thousands of years of hani instinct ran up her spine. And Skkukuk read that look and took on one of his own. Caution.

Footsteps in the lowerdecks corridor. Rapid ones, more than one set.

Don't run, Khym. Dignity, Khym. In front of the kif, gods rot it, Khym.

She was still standing squared off with Skkukuk when Khym showed up in the doorway with Tully close behind.

"You're all right," Khym said.

"I'm just fine. Take Jik to sickbay. Get Tirun onto it. Skkukuk-"

The kif was still waiting. Armed. Their ex-prisoner, possessing a gun that could blow a hole in armor plate. And expecting in his aggressive little kifish soul that he had just won his freedom.

"You're offduty," she told Skkukuk. "You'll keep that gun in your quarters. You've got a lowerdecks clearance. You understand me."

"Kkkt. Absolutely."

"Move."

Everyone moved. Skkukuk got himself out of her sight, correctly reading her temper. Khym and Tully got to either end of the stretcher, got it lifted with its not inconsiderable dead weight of tall mahendo'sat, and maneuvered it out the hatch.

"Tirun's on her way to sickbay, captain." That from her niece. While the powerdown proceeded.

"Understood," Pyanfar said calmly. And stood there a moment staring at the wall. With a kif's orders in her pocket. She fished them out and broke open the brittle seal to look at the written portion.

"Departure at 2315," was the center of that detail. It was, at the moment, all she was interested in. The kif gave them time enough to get organized. Barely. With precise course instructions, aborting one that they had laid in.

"Hilfy."

"Aye," the subdued voice reached her.

"Message to Kesurinan and Tahar: stand by departure; they'll have a bit over six hours. So will we."

A pause. "Aye."

Silence after. The Pride was at rest again. The crew on the bridge could see her, where she stood. The camera was live. She looked up at it. "Things could be worse," she said glumly. "I can think of one way right off. But we got Jik in our custody, we got Tahar and Aja Jin with us, and we've got the hakkikt's orders: it's Meetpoint. His way."

A longer pause.

"Aye," Haral said simply, as if she had given a routine order.

The largest space station in the Compact.

And a forewarned one.

"Clear the boards, stand offduty; I got Jik to see to."

"Aye, captain."

She walked out of the airlock. And only then it occurred to her, like the ghost of an old habit that no longer meant anything, that she had just packed her husband and another crewman off to tend another man, knowing beyond the last twitch of instinct, if it was ever instinct, that Jik was safe with them, safe as that kif was safe to send down the corridor in the other direction, because even the kif was a rational mind and sane and sensible, while the universe quaked and tottered on al! sides of them.

She walked down the corridor and into the open door of sickbay, their little closet of a facility. Tirun had beaten her there. Khym and Tully were taking Jif off the stretcher and laying him on the table.

"He'll have some bruises," Pyanfar said. "You'd better run a scan on him. He may have more than that." She went to the med cabinet, keyed the lock with a button-sequence and sorted through a tray of bottles- hani-specific; hani drugs did strange things with some mahendo'sat. No telling what the kif had given him even if she ran a query into Library, and it was better to stick to the simple things. She pulled out an old-fashioned bottle of ammonia salts and brought that over to hold under Jik's nose.