Kif Strike Back (23 page)

". . . . 3, 2-Priority."

Scan image came up. The knnn was moving into pattern with the tc'a. Was matching V with it-that quickly, that easily. Dead stop to course-reverse: metal could never stand it. Bodies would flatten.

Tully muttered to himself. It sounded like oaths, a steady drone of them. The tc'a and knnn began to accelerate together, the joint blip moving faster and faster away from the station vicinity.

"Gods," Geran muttered, "they're going, they're going. Plus 0, 25-Look at that!"

The other way. The knnn was heading outsystem, nadir with the tc'a either grappled or close in pattern. Colors shifted on the scope, incredible acceleration.

"Ah!" Tully said.

"It's jumped!"

"Kkkt. Kkkkt."

"Minds on business!" Pyanfar snapped. Nothing had stopped, least of all The Pride hurtling inbound to station and the chrono flicking numbers down. It was over. The tc'a was gone. Lost. And Nav-comp was flashing red lines on second monitor. "Off the mark, off the mark, gods rot it, Haral-I want that flyby. Get that equipment up, get it, hear?"

"Aye, aye, up and coming."

"We are observed," Skkukuk said faintly. "Kkkkt. The methane folk, I warned you. Pull us out of here. Kkkt. Fools."

"Shut up," Tirun said.

"There is no profit to this!"

"Skkukuk," Pyanfar snarled, "shut it up."

Silence then. The beep and click from instruments went on. Kif ships talked to each other. "-honor to the hakkikt," the station took up the refrain again, "there is no damage. We are secure. Continue in pattern. Please acknowledge."

And from Mahijiru, incoming, silence, while the knnn business unfolded on Goldtooth's timeline.

"Stand by," Pyanfar said, "Tirun, I want that approach calc. Take stats and set me up again."

"Got it, got it, I'm working."

And a little later, when station handed revised schedules down the line: "Bastards! I just had that!"

"They're not going to bump us down-schedule," Haral said. "They're going to revise the whole list of ships behind us. They want us in before the kif just real bad, don't they?"

No one answered.

"Run that schedule," Pyanfar said. "Can we do it? Are they going to route us blind to that ship again?"

"We got it, we got it," Tirun said after a moment, and a course plot came up.

Closer then and closer. Vid clarified. One full revolution of Kefk station. Two.

"Come on, Haral, I want that ship," Pyanfar muttered. "Digital-record. If we miss it on sight we'll try that."

The station revolved slowly past The Pride's dome cameras. No need of amplification. The serial numbers showed plain on the next station revolution, on a bright vane column.

Hani ship. 656 YAAV.

"Moon Rising," Haral muttered. "That's Moon Rising. Tahar!" Oaths went through com all over the bridge.

Pyanfar sat silent. Not surprised, no. It fit. It fit very well. So how large does this party get? How did Goldtooth know to meet us here? Gods, what have I got us into?

It was the red trousers, a dash of perfume enough to mask the sweating she was likely to do in hours ahead-Pyanfar took time for that, with The Pride only tentatively in dock. Shielded com line and personnel accessway connections were still all that any of their ships took from station, and station dockers made weak protest about safety and undue strain on the grapples, but they swallowed it. Sikkukkut's ships stayed ready to move; and so did they.

It was not vanity, this scrub-down: one of them ought to look and smell presentable to kifish hosts, and she made feverish haste about it. Three of them were off-shift at the moment. She had gotten Chur to rest, over protests she should go on sitting duty while her captain took showers; "Up," Pyanfar had said, and Chur disengaged herself and headed down the corridor from the bridge to Khym's cabin, wobbling as she walked. The wrapped bandage about Chur's side had gone looser, her drawstringed trousers tending perilously low on the hips. "Get her bedded down and fed,"

Pyanfar ordered Geran, laying a hand on Geran's chair-back. "See she's all right, huh?-Khym-" She paused for more assignments, reviewing what useable crew she had: the personnel-combination worked out wrong, but she took what there was. "Khym, you get the galley up, Tully, you help him, hear?"

And: "Aye," Tully said with never a flinching on his part and only an unreadable look from Khym as he got out of his chair and headed galley ward.

Pyanfar came pattering out of her quarters still damp, still putting on her bracelets as she headed down the main corridor bridgeward. Tully was coming out of Chur's cabin, having brought food in, she supposed. "She all right?" Pyanfar asked.

Tully laid a hand on his side. "Hurt," he said in hani, and by his look had more to say he did not trust the translator for. He blocked her path. Gestured at the door. "See. Go see, captain."

"Huh." She lowered her ears. Tully tended to anxieties deaf to most that went on, he got the wrong of most crises. There was no time at present for them or him. But the worry was quiet this time, anguished; and Chur-"Get," she said. "Go bathe." He was the worst of them save the kif. "I'll see about Chur. Go."

"Chur-" He refused to be moved. "Bad hurt."

"Get!" She waved a half-hearted blow to be rid of him, turned and punched the door control.

Geran turned from Chur's bedside as the door hissed back, quick and quick about getting her ears up and her face composed. Chur lay there with one arm on the covers. Indeed things were not right-not right, Chur's listlessness. Not right, the tray sitting on the table, untouched by a spacer just out of jump.

"How's she doing?" Pyanfar asked and let the door shut.

"She's pretty tired," Geran said.

"Fine," Chur said,

"Sure. Sure, you are. You're not working next jump." Pyanfar caught Geran's eyes with a glance.
 
I'll talk to you later. And to herself: Gods, gods, gods. "You get food down her. Huh? I don't care if she doesn't want it."

"Right," Chur said, and stirred in bed. She propped herself up on her arms. "My side's doing a lot better. I'm a lot better, swear I am."

Pyanfar walked up to her bedside and swiped a hand across Chur's shoulder. Dead fur came away. Too much of it.

"I'll see to her," Geran said. "Captain, she's all right. She's doing all right. Just a little drained."

Pyanfar laid her ears back and wiped the hand on her trousers. "Take care of her," she said. "Chur, you stay put, hear me?"

"I'll be fine, captain."

Pyanfar stood there a moment. It was a conspiracy of silence. Chur and Geran-Chur always the busier one of the sisters, the cheerfullest, quickest wit.

-the ancient hall in the house of Chanur, in the days of na Dothon Chanur. The day the cousins had come down from their mountain home to apply to Chanur for domicile-

-Chur answering always, laughing, dissembling a rage at fate and the fall of Anify to its new lord. Geran dour and grim; and letting Chur do the talking, letting Chur make light of the awful decision to desert their own new lord to his folly. "Lord Chanur, that man's a fool," Chur had said. "And worse, he's boring." While Geran sat silent as a grave-wraith and tongue-tied in her wrath.

-Geran looking to Chur when Pyanfar spoke to her now; brief answer and a reflexive glance Chur's way-Cover for me, sister, talk for me, deal with them-

Geran had come out of her reticence once she took to space and freedom: she had found her own competence, learned to laugh, learned to deal with strangers, swaggered with rings in her ear and a spacer's easy grace.

But suddenly it was Chanur's hall again. Two sisters arrived homeless and self-exiled from the far hills; Chur doing the thinking and Geran with the knife. Conspiracy. And it was clear again who in that pair ran it all.

"Huh," Pyanfar said. "Huh." Chur beckoned for the tray on the table. Her ears were up. Geran moved the tray to Chur's lap.

"She's all right," Geran said.

Pyanfar walked out and closed the door. She punched the pocket com. "Hilfy-are we still all right up there?"

"We're all right," Hilfy's voice came back from the bridge, even while Pyanfar walked. "We got a call from Jik, just told us take it easy, he's handling what needs be; Goldtooth's on a leisurely approach and he's in no great hurry to make dock as long as things are the least bit unsettled. No one's doing much right now, they've got a little set-to in the methane side-got a couple of tc'aIchi locals in some kind of upset and the chi are running wild over there. The kif aren't talking about it. At least there aren't any more knnn in port, and things are getting calmed down over there on methane-side, it sounds as if. Gods hope."

Pyanfar overtook the voice, walking onto the bridge, and wrinkled up her nose with the pungent aroma of the kif. Skkukuk lay listless and neglected in his chair, still secured, a mere heap of black, while Hilfy and Tirun fended calls and Haral ran ops. At least his chatter had stopped.

The kif was one more problem on her mind. One more neglected and suffering piece of protoplasm. She paused by the kif, her hand on the chairback. Skkukuk turned his long jawed head and gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes. "Kkkkt. Captain. I protest this treatment."

"Fine, fine." The ammonia reek was overwhelming. She felt pity and loathing at once. And a desire to sneezeIe. "Hilfy, Tirun, go offshift-get this kif down below, get him fed, let him wash up." She let go the buckle of Skkukuk's restraints herself and hauled on the kif's bound arm. "Up."

Skkukuk cooperated, as far as the edge of the seat. "Captain," he said.

And plummeted through her hands. Pyanfar recoiled as Skkukuk hit her legs and folded the rest of the way down onto his face in a black-robed, ammonia-smelling heap. Hilfy and Tirun rose from their chairs and Haral looked and quickly swung back to business.

"Gods," Pyanfar muttered, between dismay and disgust, and squatted down as the kif began to stir and Tirun moved to help.

-Chur. Chur lying abed, the hair peeling from her skin, Chur, of the red-gold coat, the shining mane that got second looks from every man she met-fading out. Wasting under their eyes-

She grasped the kif s thin, robed shoulder and remembered jaws that could bite wire in two. It was a shoulder hard as stone. "Watch it," she said as Tirun tried to pull him over by the hip, but Skkukuk levered himself up on one elbow and his bound hands. His hood had fallen back. He lifted his bare head in a dazed way, blinking and looking from her to Tirun. "Get him water," Pyanfar said. Hilfy stood there. It was Tirun who got up and went. "Get your hands back from it, aunt," Hilfy said.

It was, reckoning those jaws, only sensible advice. "Help me," Pyanfar said, got a grip on the shoulders of Skkukuk's robe and hauled the kif upright. "Get his feet."

Hilfy grimaced and gathered the knees up; the two of them heaved the kif into the chair he had fallen from.

Tirun came back across the bridge in haste, bringing a cup of water. Pyanfar took it and held it under Skkukuk's mouth. His tongue darted and the water level dropped to a last soft gurgle as the cup emptied. Then he leaned his head back against the headrest and blinked listlessly.

"So he warned us," Pyanfar muttered. "Get to galley- get something thawed." Tirun left again in haste; and she put an unwilling hand up Skkukuk's sleeve and felt the abnormal chill of his arm, "He's gone into shock, that's what. Gods rot, I don't want to lose him."

Hilfy looked at her in a guarded, hostile way.

"You want him?" Hilfy asked coldly.

"I by the gods don't want him dying like this. Come out of it, niece. Is that my teaching-or something you learned in other company?"

Hilfy's ears went back. Nostrils flared and pinched. And Hilfy turned and walked away to the corridor with businesslike dispatch.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To fix your gods-be kif," Hilfy snapped. "Captain. By your leave, ker Pyanfar."

"Niece-" Pyanfar muttered.

But what she had was Hilfy's back as Hilfy headed away down main corridor; and an all-but-limp kif in her custody. "Gods. Gods be." She unwound the flex which had bitten into the kif's wrists. His hands were cold and limp, and he regarded her hazily, unresponsive to a fight among hani that, might have greatly amused him "n a better day. "Kkkkkt. Kkkkt," was all the sound he made in his misery.

Shut up, they had told him when he had begun to make that noise. ,

Khym came in from the galley and stood there with his ears back. Tully came in after him, and stood observing the situation with one of those inscrutable expressions that evidenced something going on in his blond-maned head. Perhaps, like Hilfy, he wanted the kif's death. Perhaps he was afraid, or wanted to warn them of the danger in this creature, and lacked words to do it. "Get cleaned up," Pyanfar snapped at them both. "You think we got time to stare? Gods-be kif's wilted on us, that's all. Move it. The rest of us want their break. Go. Get to it. The rest of us are waiting on you."

"Food-" Tully said lamely, and pointed back at the galley.

"Come on," Khym said, and caught him by the arm and took him on through the bridge to the corridor. Tully went, with a backward look from the bulkhead doorway.