Kif Strike Back (15 page)

"Had a call from Vigilance a few minutes ago," Haral said. "They say they're going to pull them out at the half hour mark. I gave them thank-you and told them we'd take care of ourselves from then on out."

"Gods-rotted pointless anyhow. Gods-rotted Ehrran priggish gods-be punctilious nonsense that keeps an Ehrran ear to Chanur business, that's what they're up to. Sealed lock and they've got to set guards in it." Pyanfar's lip twitched. A thought came through. "That blackbreeched bastard knows something's interesting in our downside corridor. Never mind what passes through our lock."

"You think?" That rated a turn of Haral's head.

"Khym was on guard down there when Ehrran first came aboard. That kif Skukkuk walked up to our ship and never came off; you want to bet no one on the dock saw that? And that Rhif Ehrran hasn't been sniffing round everyone she can interview on this station? If she missed any of that, she heard me ask Sikkukkut what to do with the bastard: by the gods she knows. Knows about Sikkukkut coming here to talk, And she's waiting on me to cave in and send some explanation what we're doing with the kif."

"File's got to fill whole banks by this time."

"Doesn't it? I swear I'll give that kif to her." She gulped the last of the gfi, looked around for someone free to carry it to the galley. Tully sat beside Tirun. Khym was rattling about in galley; latches snapped and thumped.

Tully turned wide eyes on her, blue and holding that perpetual hint of panic. "Trouble?" he asked Chur, with a glance her way.

"Explain it to him." Pyanfar shoved the empty cup down the security-bin. "I'm going down to talk to Jik when he comes in."

"Want company?" Haral asked.

"Sit on things here. Who's going to do that undock?"

"Central says they've got crew moving up. Mahendo'sat."

"Fine." Pyanfar headed for the door. "Fine.-Get Tully's drugs for jump. Tully, hear?"

"I got," Tully patted his pocket. "But kif-"

"Thank the gods. Brains."

"I work jump."

"You work, huh? You work it flat on your back. You go to bed, hear? And, Chur, you're going to quarters on this, from undock out."

"Captain-" Chur powered the chair about and opened her mouth to protest.

"You heard me. You're still! not sound. Haven't got time to take care of you. Don't make me problems."

"I'm begging you this one. Captain. I'm going to be fit. It's a rough one. I want to be there."

"Huh,"
 
Pyanfar said. Thought about it a moment too long and shook her head. "Gods rot it, all right, take duty."

"I," Tully said. "I work."

Another unanswerable stare, blue-eyed this time. His mouth trembled in that way he had when he had gone his limit.

She remembered then she had put a thing in her pocket, transferred from yesterday's plain trousers. She had meant to give it to him. Now it took on a superstitious feel, like saying no to Chur. She fished it out between thumb and foreclaw and took his hand and laid it there, a small gold ring meant for human hands, not ears.

He closed his fist on the small bit of gold that had belonged to some lost friend. It meant something profound to him. "Where get?"

"Just keep it on your hand this time."

He put it on- his finger. Looked up again with fever in his eyes. Then he clasped her hand with a fierceness that disarranged joints and claws; she flexed claws out in self-protection, strength opposed to strength, and he let go. "You sit this chair, huh?" You sit here, stay steady, keep Hilfy-gods, keep her thinking. Shame her into it. Don't let her be a fool, Tully.

"I work, captain,"

"Captain. Huh." Someone had taught him that. He managed it in hani, confounding the overworked translator, which sputtered through the com at his belt. "Takes orders, does he? Huh. Tully, you watch."

She walked out.

The lift opened and let her out on the lower main. Tirun was in the corridor. She expected that.

That Tirun waited there with her back against the wall and that trouble-look on her face, she did not expect.

She slowed down, distracted from one crisis for one that confronted her, and Tirun's ears sank further, tight-folded. "Captain."

"Spill it."

"Kif won't eat the frozen stuff. He wants to talk to you personally."

She let go a long slow breath. "Wonderful. Tell him we'll have a long friendly talk at our next port of call."

"I told him you're busy."

"He said?"

"That you were a fool. Captain." Staring straight ahead, not a twitch of a tightly-folded ear. "I asked who was sitting in the washroom of someone else's ship. It said hani humor is unsubtle."

"You leave it the frozen stuff?"

"I left it. Thawed. I could puree the stuff."

"Kif's got teeth." She walked off.

"Captain. I could-bribe a docker, maybe, well, get one of those small live things-"

She looked back, at Tirun standing there with a revolted look. "Reason with it."

"I tried."

"Try again." She headed for the lock, jammed hands in pockets, past the butt of a gun in the righthand one. Gods. Live food. Raw was one thing. Raw and protesting was another.

She entered the short lock corridor and hooked the, recessed button on the panel with a foreclaw. The inner hatch shot back unexpectedly and she glowered at the two Ehrran clanswomen on guard there, who faced her with an aborted leveling of rifles.

"Who you planning on firing on from this side? Escaping crew?"

"Captain." Politeness must have choked the Ehrran. And when Pyanfar walked through their midst and reached toward the com panel to tell Haral to open up the lock, an Ehrran arm shot into her way: "Captain, begging pardon, but it's a half hour-"

Pyanfar turned and looked, nose to nose with the Ehrran crewwoman. The ears wilted first, the arm dropped next, and the body went third, a backstep that got the Ehrran not quite out of her reach.

"Haral."

"Aye, captain."

"Open us up down here."

The outer hatch shot back. Pyanfar heard it, felt the chill draft. She still glared at the Ehrran eye to eye. "You,-" she said to the Ehrran. "You want to walk out there into the access and see if captain Nomesteturjai's anywhere about?"

"I'm not to leave my post."

"What? Even if I cycle the airlock? You're a lunatic."

"I don't think it's a case-"

"-about the same. A lot the same."

"What, captain?"

"Arguing with me. Get!" ,

They flinched, the pair of them; they both flinched, and then it was too late. Pyanfar took the ground they gave, backed them up against the threshold of the open hatch, and it was suddenly a case of resisting a captain on her own deck or moving from their post. "Out!"

For a moment she thought they would actually stand fast, rifles and all; and her claws came out and her nose rumpled into a grin. But-then one Ehrran's foot hit the hatch-rim and threw her off-balance. The Ehrran caught herself and backed up; the other did, and then they were both in retreat down the chill yellow accessway.

Pyanfar followed in long strides, one hand on the gun in her pocket-it was still a kifish dockside once around that bend and into the rampway. She heard the thunder of hastening feet on the plates; and when she had reached the right-hand turn she saw a tall mahen figure upward bound toward the black-breeched hani, a mahe garishly dressed in red-striped green and laden with gold chains and bracelets and a monstrous large sidearm slung at his hip.

Mahen guards, far below, held the foot of the ramp. Jik strolled up the center, and the outbound hani caught-step to avoid him and passed him in great haste.

Jik stared back over his shoulder, faced forward and came on with a shrug. "What they got?" he asked with a gesture backward,

"Both ears," Pyanfar spat. She was shaking-gods, she had been in dockside brawls and barfights and a set-to with her son and never lost her head like that. The peripheries around Jik refused to come clear: hunter-vision had set in. Her ears were plastered tight against her skull and her muscles shuddered. Jik stopped-just stopped, dead still and quiet.

Pyanfar sucked air. Spat in the access way. "You want something."

"You got time?" Judiciously and from safe distance.

A third spit. "I got time." The peripheries of her vision began to clear. She jerked a hand back toward the lock, led the way, and as they rounded the turn, she saw Tirun standing there with ears flat and a pistol in her fist.

"Haral said there was trouble," Tirun said.

"Over now. Get. Haral needs help up there. We got mahen guards outside."

"Aye." Tirun went at a run.

"Come on." Pyanfar brought Jik on through the airlock into the inner corridor, and punched the com panel. "Haral. It's all clear. Seal both hatches."

"Aye-"-from the bridge, without comment.

SSSShhhh-t. The door went. Sealed with an electric thunk.

She looked at Jik. Her lip still twitched. She flicked her ears with a jingling of rings. "I tell you, Jik, the han's changed. It's changed. Hani used to go where they liked, do what they liked without some gods-rotted government note-taker stalking and lurking-"

"You think you make mistake, a?"

"I think I just made a gods-rotted big one. Mistake!
 
When'd it get to be a mistake to throw two lousy insolent spies off my deck? When'd it happen, Jik?"

"Maybe-" Jik cleared his throat. "Maybe you make, Pyanfar. You bring lot strangers to Anuurn. Anuurn hani- they not got used to outside. They scare. Lot scare, Pyanfar. They got hani renegade Tahar go work for kif. You know what think? I think this Ehrran got lot suspicion Chanur got too much power-"

"Too much? We got debts, friend-we got debts up to our noses, my brother's not getting any younger-he'll go down one day, and gods even know if it'll be a Chanur that takes him. My nephews are all fools." It was too much to say. Far too much already. She shrugged and looked elsewhere down the corridor.

"Chanur got space," Jik said. "Maybe Chanur bring back thing these world-hani not want, a?"

She slanted an ear back and looked at him then, this hunter-captain who was way, way up in mahen councils. Mahendo'sat had brought hani into space. Given them ships. Created, if hani ever admitted it, the very concept of the han. And Jik understood that. He understood it very well indeed. "You longtime got your hands in every nest in the Compact, mahe-" She slipped deep into the pidgin, facing wrinkle-ringed brown eyes, a sober, too-wise stare. "You know this Rhif Ehrran?"

She expected a shrug from Jik, denial, some glib answer. Instead: "Maybe Chanur enemy get organize, a? Maybe you watch you back, friend. I make big mistake at Kshshti, bring Ehrran in this thing. Big mistake."

"I believe you," she said. "Now I believe you.-What you want here, huh?"

"Want say same thing. Want make sure you not come 'cross bow with Vigilance at Kefk. I like you one piece, hani."

"Come here."

"A?"

She grabbed him by the arm. and brought him down the corridor, around the corner and down again, where the lowerdecks washroom was. She pushed the button and the door shot back.

The kif sat on a folded stack of blankets on the tiles against the far wall. Its robes were tucked close about it. It had dropped its hood. Now its head came up and it rose in one muscular glide and bowed, showing empty hands, before it looked up again.

Courtesy of a killer-kind.

"Is it ker Pyanfar?"

"It's me. This is the captain of Aja Jin."

"Sssstk." A deep nod of the head. "I am impressed. Nomesteturjai."

"Kif," Jik said,

"His name is Skkukuk. He says he's mine. A gift, from Sikkukkut."

"A.-A noikkhe?"

"Skku nik kktitik kuikkht kehtk tok nif fik pukkukk."

-Why? Pyanfar followed threads of it.

-Subordinate, weapon, for pride, revenge- " Nfkokkth shokku hakhoth nkki to skohut."

"A," Jik said.

"Well?" said Pyanfar. "You got kif," Jik said, and shrugged.

"I am starving," it said.

She shut the door, laid her ears back and looked at Jik. "What do I do with it, huh? Put it out the hatch?"

"They kill him sure."

"Well, gods rot it, do I run a charity for kif?"

Another shrug. "Sikkukkut give you crewman. Not number one important. Maybe fellow make mistake-"

"Maybe a crewman whose loyalty's in question? Maybe even one off that disabled ship?"

Jik's eyes flickered. "Maybe so. All same, he belong you. You got deal, a?"

"God's rot, you want him?"

Jik rubbed at his nose. "Tell you truth. That give you sfik away. I friend, say no do."

"You mean status with that gods-rotted kif? Sikkukkut?"

"Best thing you kill this kif.
  
Send
 
same pieces
 
to Sikkukkut."