The Pride of Chanur cs-1

by Caroline J. Cherryh

“Has to be.” Beyond Meetpoint in the other direction was stsho space, with a great scarcity of jump points to help them along, those masses by which The Pride or any other jumpship steered; and on other sides were kif regions; and knnn; and unexplored regions, uncharted, without jump coordinates. Jump blind into those and they would never come back again… anywhere known.

  She livened another board, bringing up jump-graphs. Urtur. That was the way they had come in, two jumps and loaded — a very large system where mahendo’sat did a little mining, a little manufacture, and licensed others. They might make that distance in one jump now; kif were not following… yet. Did not have to follow. They could figure possible destinations by dumped mass and the logic of the situation. O my brother, she thought, wondering how she would face Kohan. He would be affected by this disgrace, this outrage of lost cargo, of flight while a hani ship perished stationbound and helpless. Kohan Chanur might be broken by it; it might tempt young males to challenge him. And if there were enough challenges, and often enough…

  No. Not that kind of end for Chanur. There was no going home with that kind of news. Not until kif paid, until The Pride got things to rights again.

  “Mark fifteen to jump point,” Haral said. “Captain, they’ll trace us, no question.”

  “No question,” she said. Beyond Haral’s scarred face she caught sight of Hilfy’s, unmarred and scant-bearded — frightened and trying not to show it. Pyanfar opened allship: “Rig for jump.”

  The alarm started, a slow wailing through the ship. The Pride leapt forward by her generation pulses, borrowed velocity at the interface, several wrenching flickers, whipped into the between. Pyanfar dug her claws in, decades accustomed to this, did that mental wrench which told lies to the inner ears, and kept her balance. Come on, she willed the ship, as if intent alone could take it that critical distance farther.

  III

  The Pride came in, sluggish, nightmare arrival, pulsed out and in again, a flickering of jump-distorted instruments which showed them far out on the Urtur range, not close enough to pick up more than an indication of a stellar mass.

  Near miss. They had stretched it as far as it could be stretched. Pyanfar struggled to move in her cushion, fighting to aim the fingers of her hand, to shut down all scan, running lights, the weak locational and ID transmission, every emission from the ship, forgetting nothing in the mental confusion which went with emergence. Then she started the sequence to bleed off their velocity, an uncomfortable ride, even as nightmare-slow as they were moving on their emergence. She kept her mind focused, trying not to let her thoughts stray to the horror at the back of it, how fine they had cut it.

  Hilfy threw up, not an uncommon reaction to the shift. It did not help Pyanfar’s own stomach.

  “We’re dumping down to systemic drift velocity,” Pyanfar said on allship. “Possibly the kif stayed to sort through what we jettisoned, but they’ll be here in short order. Or they’re already here… with likely more kif here to help them. I’ll be very surprised otherwise. We’ve shut down all transmission, all scan output. No use of the main engines either. Everyone still all right down there?”

  There was prolonged delay in response. “Looks to be,” Tirun’s voice came back from lowerdeck op, which had lost most of what it was primarily designed to monitor when the holds blew. “Chur and Geran are starting a check by remote, but it looks like it was a clean separation when we blew it out. All working systems are clean.”

  The velocity dump went on. Hilfy moved about, cleaning up in shame. Haral stayed her post. Pyanfar occupied herself with feverish calculations and sorted and calculated on that one arrival image they had gotten before scan shut down, and on what they had on passive recept. She did a delicate attitude adjustment, trimmed up relative to the flow they were trying to enter, to present the least surface and the least delicate portion of them to hazard — put The Pride into synch with the general rotation of the system, one with the debris and the rock and gas which made Urtur, spread out over the orbits of ten planets and fifty-seven major moons and uncounted planetoids and smaller hazards, one of the more difficult systems for the rapid passage of any ship into its central plane. The Pride was picking up decayed signal from a mahendo’sat installation farther in… at least that station should be the origin of it, chatter meaningless not only in the distance but in elapsed time since its sending. Some might be scatter from ships operating in the system, traders, countless miners in ships of all sizes from the great orecarriers down to singleseat skimmers. In due course they themselves ought to announce presence and identity, but she had no intention of doing so. There was an excellent chance that their arrival had been far beyond the capacity of the longest scan from outsystem relay, and she saw no profit in bringing the mahendo’sat of Urtur in on a private quarrel with the kif. The kif could have arrived days ago, bypassing them in the between, which could happen with a more powerful ship — system chatter might reveal that. She kept listening to it with one ear, finished up the dump, pulling them finally into trim, counting to herself and hoping her position was what she thought it was.

  The Pride drifted then, still maintaining rotation for g, but nothing else of movement. She kept counting. Debris suddenly rang off the unshielded hull, distant battering, a few crashes and squeals of larger objects. Target dead on: she had it, a mob of rocks a little off their velocity, cold mass swarming about them, a screen between them and the kif s possible arrival. She feathered directional jets and trimmed up again. The battering diminished to an occasional patter of dust. Hilfy, standing by the com console counter, looked about her as if she could expect to see the impacts with all their sensor eyes dark; met Pyanfar’s face and looked then at Haral, who grimly sat her post and kept trying to plot their position; and Hilfy composed her own face, managed not to flinch when another rock shrilled down the forward-thrusting bow.

  Pyanfar heaved her aching body out of the cushion, staggered in walking around the dividing console to put her hand on the back of Haral’s cushion. “Put the pagers in link,” she told Haral. “Keep it channel one and see that someone’s always on it. Tie into lowerdeck op: they’ll be working down there a while yet. The kif will show, never doubt it. So we lie still, rest up. We receive signal; we don’t send; we don’t maneuver. We don’t do anything now but drift.”

  “Aye.” Haral started making the links, shunting over some of com function, an operation which Hilfy should have done. Her broad, scarred face was without disturbance at this insanity. Haral knew the game; they had done it a time or two, this prolonged dark silence, waiting out a kif or an unknown — but not in Urtur’s debris-cluttered field, not where other ships were likely and collision was possible. Haral knew. It was Hilfy for whom she offered instructions.

  Pyanfar took her own pager from the wall by the exit and went back to give one to Hilfy, who was leaning against the counter, nostrils slitted and ears laid back. Pyanfar clapped her on the shoulder and thrust the pager into her hand. “Out. Go. Everything’s about to go under automatic here, and there’s nothing you can do.” She passed by Hilfy and headed out her own way down the corridor outside, with a foul headache, a worry in her gut, and an obsessive desire for a bath.

  Her quarters, left unsecured, were not as bad as they might have been. The spring covers had held on the round bed, and the only casualty was a pile of charts now randomized. She gritted her teeth against the throbbing in her skull and picked them up, straightened the edges and slapped the unsorted pile back onto the desk, then stripped off her bloody clothes, brushed dried blood from her fur and a cloud of shed fur, too. She always shed in jump… sheer fright. Her muscles were tight. She flexed her cramped shoulders and an arm strained from fighting g, a stitch all the way into her rib muscles; and she picked up the pager again and took it with her into the bath, listening to it, which had nothing but static — set it on the bathroom counter before getting into the shower cabinet.

  The shower was pure delight, warm and soothing. She lifted her face to it, lower
ed ears, shut nostrils and squinched her eyes shut, letting the stream from the jet comb her mane and beard into order, stepped back and wiped her eyes clear, turned her back and let the spray massage the pain out of her tired shoulders.

  The pager went off, emergency beep. She spat a curse and flung the shower door open, skidded on the floor and ran out of the bath and out of her quarters naked and dripping as she was. She met Haral and Hilfy on their separate ways back and beat them to the central console.

  A ship was out there all right, some ways distant, where no ship had been previously — an arrival out of jump. Pyanfar leaned over the board, wiped a bit of water off the screen and wiped it down her chest, holding her beard and trying to avoid dripping. The newcomer was closer to Urtur than they, a good distance inward and zenith — had actually arrived a while ago: passive recept picked it up from its inherent noise.

  “Better part of an hour backtime,” Haral calculated. “I can fine it down.”

  ’Do that.”

  They watched it a while, while Pyanfar dripped a cold puddle on the decking and the counter. “Going inward,” she pronounced finally on the figures Hilfy passed her, checked against current reception. “If that’s the kif, they overjumped us and now they’ve got a bit of hunting to do. We have a wave just getting to them, but it’s got nothing for them, nothing they’re going to know from all the rest of the junk out here. Good.” She recalled her condition and straightened from bending over the board. “Mop that,” she said to Hilfy, who was juniormost. She strode off, pricklish in her dignity.

  “Captain,” Haral’s voice came over the pager, and Pyanfar crossed the cabin in two strides to reach the com by her bedside… punched it with a forefinger, comb clenched in the same hand. “Receiving you.”

  “Got some chatter that doesn’t sound good,” Haral said. “I think there are kif here, all right. What came into the system a while ago isn’t certain, but it could be mahendo’sat; and I’m getting kif voices and kif signal out of system center.

  “Doesn’t surprise me. Pity the mahe who dropped into this pond, if that’s what’s happened. But it might cover any noise we made in entry, if that’s what it is.”

  “Might do,” Haral said. “Gods, captain, no telling how many kif there may have been at Urtur to start with. They’re going to swarm all over the mahendo’sat.”

  “Gods know how much kif trouble they’ve already had here. That bunch from Meetpoint could have gotten as much as five, six days’ jump on us. Forget it. Let it rest. Our business is our own business.”

  “Aye,” Haral said reluctantly.

  “Shut it down, Haral. Until they come after us, we’re snug.”

  “Aye, captain.”

  The contact broke off. Pyanfar drew a long breath and let it go, stood in front of the unit and after a moment punched in the image they could get, from the telescope in the observation dome. Urtur was a glorious sight… at a distance, a saucer of milky light. A shadow passed the image, a bit of rock, doubtless, part of the swarm with which they traveled. She shut it down again. They rolled along blind, getting a tap on the hull now and again from debris, muted this far into The Pride’s core, as they played their part as a mote in Urtur’s vast lens. This silence was an old trick. It worked… sometimes.

  She continued her combing, and finally, pelt dried, mane and beard combed and silky again in their ringlets, changed to her third-best trousers, of black silk, with green and gold cuffing and belt, a round-the-hips dangle of real gold chains. She changed her pearl earring for an emerald, inspected her claws and trimmed a roughness. A tip had broken. Hard-skinned, the kif. But she had got him, that bastard on the dock. That was at least some consolation for the lost cargo and Tirun’s misery. For hani lives — that was yet to collect.

  She strolled out again, into controls, where Hilfy was standing lone watch. They had far more room when they were under rotation, with the ship’s g making the crew’s private quarters and a great deal of storage accessible, as well as that large forward ell of the control area itself which was out of reach during dock. Some of the crew ought to be offshift now, eating, sleeping: they arranged such details among themselves when things were tight, knowing best when they needed rest and balancing the ship’s needs against their own. Hilfy had a bruised look when she turned to face Pyanfar as she came up behind her in the semishadow of the bridge, amid dead screens and virtually lightless panels. She stood there as if there was something she could hope to do, ears pricked up and eyes wide-irised with her general distress.

  “Haral left you on watch, imp?”

  “Haral said she was going below.”

  “I thought I dismissed you.”

  “I thought it wouldn’t hurt to be here. I can’t rest.”

  “Can’t rest is a cheat on the ship. Can’t rest is something you learn to remedy, imp. It’s going to be too long a wait to wear ourselves to rags up here. Nothing we can do.”

  “Com keeps coming in. It’s them — it’s the same kif. They’re asking the mahendo’sat ships where we are and they’re making threats. They call us thieves.”

  Pyanfar spat dryly and chuckled. “What tender honor. What are the mahendo’sat doing about it?”

  “Nothing. It is a mahendo’sat station, after all; there are other ships… all over the place — there’s help for them, isn’t there? I’d think they’d do something, not just let the kif do what they please.”

  “There may be a lot of kif, too.” Pyanfar leaned forward and checked the boards herself, the little data the computer got off passive recept. A rock hit them, a slow scream down the metal; a screen flickered to static and corrected itself, an impact on one of the antennae. “I won’t tell you, imp, just how close we came to losing our referents in that jump. If that kif ship did get here ahead of us, it’s considerably more powerful than we are. All power and precious little cargo room. That tell you anything?”

  “It’s not a freighter.”

  “Kif runner. Got a few false tanks strapped on, all shell and no mass to speak of, masking what she is. You understand? Ships like that do the kill; the carrioneaters come after, real freighters, that suck up the cargoes and do the dockside trading when they do get to some port. That’s what we’re likely up against. A runner. A hunter ship. They overestimated our capacity… overjumped us, more than likely, and incoming traffic may have been good enough to confuse the issue further. If that’s the case we’ve just used up all the luck we’re entitled to.”

  “Are we just going to sit here?” Hilfy asked. “Ship after ship is going to come into this system not knowing what they’re running into… all those ships from Meetpoint that don’t go the stsho route—”

  “Imp, we’re blind at the moment. We’ve dumped velocity… and maybe some of those hunting us haven’t; and maybe some are yet to come. You know what kind of situation that puts us in. Sitting target.”

  “If they all stay to centerward,” Hilfy suggested cautiously, “we could just jump out again… be gone before they could catch us, take the pressure off these mahe before someone else gets hurt. Maybe we could get away with it again at the next jumppoint, get to Kirdu… after Urtur, couldn’t we maybe make Kirdu in two jumps? Get out of here. After this place, there are other choices. Aren’t there?”

  Pyanfar stared at her. “Been doing some research, have you?”

  “I looked.”

  “Huh.” It was a sensible idea, and one she had had even before the jump; but there were loose pieces in this business. Moves not yet calculated. It remained to measure how upset the kif were. And why. “Possible.” She jabbed a finger at Hilfy. “First we take account of ourselves. We go down, shall we, and see what we have left of cargo.”

  “I thought we dumped it all.”

  “Oh, not what the kif want, not that, niece.” She leaned over the console, checked the pager link. “I think we can leave it a while. Come along. It’s all being recorded, all the com and scan up here. We’ll check it. Can’t live up here.” She set her hand
on Hilfy’s shoulder. “We go ask some questions, that’s what.”

  Their uninvited passenger had settled after jump — cocooned in blankets and sedated for the trip, now let go again, to huddle in that heap of blankets in the corner of the washroom. It had curled up in a knot and thrown one of the blankets over its head, showing nothing but the motions of its breathing to prove it was under there.

  “The ankle restraint is back on it,” Chur said as they watched it from the doorway. “It’s been docile all along… but let me call Geran and we’ll be sure of it.” Chur was smallest of the crew, smaller than Geran her sister, who was herself of no great stature — with a thin beard and mane and a yellowish tint to her fur: delicate, one might say, who did not know Chur.

  “There are three of us,” Pyanfar said, “already. Let’s see how it reacts.” She walked into the washroom and came near that heap of breathing blankets. Coughed. There was movement in the blankets, the lifting of a corner, a furtive look of a pale eye from beneath them. Pyanfar beckoned.

  It stopped moving.

  “It quite well understands me,” she said. “I think, Chur, you’re going to have to get Geran. We may have to fetch it out and I don’t want to hurt it.”

  Chur left. Hilfy remained. The blankets stirred again, and the creature made a faltering effort to get its back into the angle of the corner made by the shower stall and the laundry.

  “It’s just too weak,” Hilfy said. “Aunt, it’s just too weak to fight.”

  “I’ll stand here,” Pyanfar proposed. “There’s a mahendo’sat symbol translator and some manuals and modules — Haral said she put it in the lowerdeck op; I want the elementary book. Here. Gods forbid someone put it into cargo.”

  Hilfy hesitated, cast a look at the Outsider, then scurried off in haste.

  “So,” Pyanfar said. She dropped to her haunches as she had before, put out a forefinger and traced numbers from one to eight on the flooring. Looked up from time to time and looked at the creature, who watched her. It reached out of its nest of blankets and made tentative movements of writing on the floor, drew back the arm and watched what she was doing until she stopped at sixteen. It tucked the blankets more closely about itself and stared, from bleak, blue eyes. Washed, it looked better. The mane and beard were even beautiful, silken, pollen-gold. But the naked arm outthrust from the blankets bore ugly bruises of fingered grips. There had been a lot of bruises under the dirt, she reckoned. It had a reason for its attitude. It was not docile now, just weak. It had drawn another line, staked out its corner. The blue eyes held a peculiar expression, analysis, perhaps, some thought proceeding at length.