Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  "Health," Pyanfar murmured-other salutations had loaded connotations in main-kifish. As more of the captains walked in on The Pride's lower deck and joined the conference. With one of Sikkukkut's kif to witness. Her own kif took up a wary stance with rifle in hands. Prudent; and ignorant and naive in his own kifish way, gods knew. "It's all right," she said in pidgin, and in hani: "Kerin, hau mauru." Clanswomen, there's no worry. "Haaru sasfynurhy aur?" Everyone understand the pidgin? She gave a meaningful glance up and about the edges of the ceiling. We're being monitored. So you know. "This is Tully. And na Jik. Nomesteturjai. And his first officer Kesurinan." No need for more than that. Since Gaohn, Aja Jin was famous among hani. Ears were up in respect, among these armed and vari-shaded hani, who came from every continent of Anuurn, mostly graynoses like Kaurufy Harun with younger escorts; Munur Faha being the exception, a red-gold smallish young woman with a graynosed and scarred old cargo officer beside her: that was Sura Faha, and a good and a steady old hand she was.

  She knew most of them from docksides from one side of the Compact to the other, and the sight of familiar faces ought to have been a comfort. It was a mortal jolt, that sense of disconnection, how far she had come from civilization; it was like looking at it all through a window.

  And Dur Tahar stood there to complicate it all, in a company that had individually and severally sworn to have her piratical hide, and carrying a heavier complement of weaponry than the rest of the captains, whose sidearms were all legal in the Compact.

  "This is Skkukuk," she had to say atop everything else, smooth and never stopping, with a gesture to her left hand. "He's mine. Sha mhify-shau."

  My vassal-man. She bent the language to make a word that had never existed: and called a kif a man, into the bargain, because so far as she could figure, he was not female. Mhify was a word for a woman who came to link herself to a more powerful clan. Women could do that. Men just fought their way in, with their lives at risk and in the greatest likelihood of being driven off by the clanswomen before they ever got as far as challenging their lord for his place. Male vassal, indeed. Ears flicked and flattened all around the room; and frowns grew darker.

  "He was a present," she said. "The hakkikt, praise to him-" Another glance aloft: we're not alone, friends- "I couldn't explain anything when I sent that message out; but we've got a delicate situation in progress here. I'll be honest with you: the han has signed some kind of treaty with the stsho; Rhif Ehrran may have been carrying it-she came through here. She may not have stopped."

  "Didn't," said Kauryfy, and drew a large breath, setting her hands in her belt. 'But she blasted out a warning." Kauryfy's ears went all but flat, lifted, flattened again nervously. "Said there were kif coming; and us up to our ears in aliens. Godsrotted late news. We got caught here-I gather this hakkikt isn't friendly with the other one."

  "You might say." She flicked her own ears. Careful, Kauryfy. You're no fool; don't begin now. Watch the mouth. "Glad to see us, were you?"

  "Crazy around here. Gods-be aliens. Mahendo'sat feuding with the kif. Stsho Phasing all over the place. Never know who you're dealing with from one hour to the next. Gods know who's maintaining station's lifesupport. This Akkhtimakt-not a friend of yours?"

  "No."

  "Well, none of ours either. A rotted mess, that's what we've had here. Got stuck here with Urtur shut down, just kept running up dock charges and mortgaging our hides with the gods-be stsho, and everything going crazy-Five months, five months we've been stuck in this godsforedoomed lunatic port, Chanur! Then we get the kif. Came in all peaceful, and us knowing, by the gods, knowing what he'd done over by Urtur, and these godsrotted fool stsho putting it out over the com that they'd asked him in, that it was all treaty-"

  "It was. Treaty with the han and faceabout, treaty with Akkhtimakt. All to save them from humanity."

  "Well, they got a gods-be poor bargain."

  "You got stuck here."

  "We got stuck here. That son moved in and interdicted traffic, got himself onto the station and did about what you'd figure. We went along with him while it looked like everything was going to be blown to a mahen hell and then the mahendo'sat showed and the humans came in and the kif cleared the station, we just sat still and hoped to all the gods it wasn't our problem. Now it is, I'm figuring."

  Kauryfy's face underwent subtle changes, the tightening of her nose, the slight and timely tightening of a muscle by one ear-a wealth of signals a kif might miss. I'm trusting you only halfway; and there's a lot I'm not going to say out loud,

  "Yes," Pyanfar said, with a like set of signals back again,and thrust her hands into her belt. So humans arrived here out of the dark. Couldn't be a coincidence of timing. They were short-jumped and parked out there. By the gods they were waiting. Goldtooth knew they would be. "It is our problem. The whole Compact's coming apart, and the han's policy has got us in a mess. I need you. Hear? Never mind the aliens. The hakkikt is going to ask you where you stand. And I'm telling you: we've never been worse off than we are right now. You can believe me or you can believe Ehrran; that's the sum of it. I'm trusting she messaged you more than just the news. Must've had plenty to say about us."

  There was prolonged silence. Ears moved, flattened, halfway lifted.

  "It got here," Munur Faha said. "We got it from the Stsho and we got it when she kited through. Urtur-bound."

  "Gods fry her," Tirun said.

  "There's a real strong reason," Pyanfar said, "she doesn't want to see us again. That's a han matter. Meanwhile we've our own business to tend to. Yours and ours. Very critical business."

  "Specifically?" Kauryfy said.

  "Settling things among ourselves. This isn't over. Far from it. I want you to take my orders."

  Kauryfy's pupils did a quick tightening and re-dilating. Her mustaches drew down. "Known each other a few years, haven't we?"

  "There was Hoas."

  Kif dust-up, back in the small-time pirate days. Another flicker of Kauryfy's eyes.

  "Yeah," Kauryfy said, and looked from her to the kifish shadow that stood at her back; and back again. "Well, we got along then."

  "I'll go with it," said Haurnar Vrossaru, in her deep northlands accent.

  "Same," said Haroury Pauran, dark as some mahendo'sat, and with one blue eye and one gold. She thrust her hands into her belt and scowled, looked aside at young Munur Faha, who sullenly lowered and lifted her ears: "Aye," said Munur. She was Hilfy's cousin, remote. "I'm with you."

  That left two. Vaury Shaurnurn gnawed at her mustaches

  and turned her shoulder to the lot of them: the other (that would be Tauran, by elimination, of The Star of Tauran) turned and looked Shaurnurn's way. And then Tahar's.

  "Kin of ours died at Gaohn," said Tauran.

  "Here is here," Tahar said.

  And: "Kkkkt," from Skkukuk, who had antennae for trouble. That long jaw lifted. So did the gun. And the other kif stiffened.

  "Pasiry died at Gaohn. Your allies shot her in the gut. She bled to death while we were pinned down."

  "Here is here," Pyanfar said. "Argue it later. For godssake, ker Vaury. I'll tell it to you later, where we got Tahar. Right now we've got an appointment. An important one. In Ruharun's name, cousin."

  They were not kin either. Far from it. Vaury Shaurnurn looked her way with ears flat. Cousin. Listen to me, ker Vaury. Believe nothing I say, do everything I say, make no false moves. Cousin.

  She stared Vaury Shaurnurn dead in the eyes and thought that thought as hard as she could. Vaury's ears lowered and lifted again. "Cousin," Vaury said ever so deliberately. "We've been in and out of the same places, haven't we? Never been other than courteous with me; all right. That's all I'll say. All right." Vaury gave a glance at Tully, up and down. "This the same one?" The glance lingered at the AP at Tully's hip and traveled up again to his face. "Same human as at Gaohn?"

  "Tully," Pyanfar said. "Yes." She looked aside to the stranger-kif. "Who this visitor of ours is, is another matter. Ikkhoitr crew, I'm t
hinking."

  "Ikkhoitru-hakt."

  "Captain." The hair bristled down her back. "Honored, we are. I'll trust your people are going to escort us over to Harukk.''

  Ikkhoitr's captain turned and stalked down the hall in that direction, kifish-economical. And without hani courtesy.

  "Kkkkt," Skkukuk said, warning.

  It was not friendly, that captain's move. He was, kifish-like, on the push, looking for chinks and advantages; and one little lapse into hani courtesies had achieved unintended irony. She had ordered him.

  She had invoked the hakkikt. And being kif, he dared not demur or hesitate. She had scored on him, who had come in here looking for fault, fluent and deadly dangerous.

  Gods hope he had failed to find it. Or that kif did not have the habit of lying in certain regards.

  "Skkukuk says watch him," she muttered to the others. "Tirun, you stay aboard. Hear?"

  Tirun did not like it. But crew did not argue these days. Not in front of kif, even their own.

  The personnel lock cycled, letting the party out. And closed again, audible from the bridge over the steady bleep and tick of incoming telemetry and com. "That's seal," Haral said to Tirun belowdecks. "Get up here."

  "Station com's still gibbering," Hilfy said. "Gods-be stsho're going crazy. I can't make out anything except how glad they are to have the noble hakkikt back a-" She blinked, as Geran suddenly turned her head, and blinked again, seeing Chur wobbling into the bridge, Chur without her rings and dressed in a towel, the implant still in her arm and secured with tape. Her mane and beard were dull, her fur thin in pink spots where skin showed through, and her ribs showed prominent above a hollowed belly.

  "Geran-" Hilfy said, but Geran had already grabbed her.

  Haral turned her chair and took a look. ''Geran, for godssakes-"

  "Got to walk a bit," Chur said, the merest ghost of Chur's voice, but she passed a glance around at monitors and displays. "Got a mess, do we? Lock working down there- Y'don't expect a body to sleep. Geran, set me down, I've got to sit. Who's covering you?"

  "He is." Meaning Khym. "Sit."

  "You're an emergency," Haral said. "Gods rot it, sit down." As Chur wilted onto Skkukuk's seat. "We're up to our noses. Could have an attack from gods know who come screaming through here any minute, we got to be able to move, how do we move with you wandering around?"

  Chur gave a ghastly grin. "Hal, cousin, if we've got to move without the captain, I'm sitting a chair, no way I'm not. What in a mahen hell is going on out there?"

  "The captain aboard Harukk is what's going on out there. We got kifish guns to our heads and gods know what else about to come in here for a piece of stsho hide."

  "Figured." Chur drew a large breath as if breathing was hard. "Gods take 'em. What's our cousin up to?"

  "Sfik," Hilfy said. "She's got three species for an escort and a half-dozen hani captains following her moves. She's running the biggest gods-be bluff of our lives, that's what she's doing. Trying to buy us time."

  "If we got two hani walking sequential it'll be the first time since we went on two feet.'' Chur leaned her head back on the headrest and rolled it aside to look at the displays. "Not mentioning the mahendo'sat." Her breath was coming harder, and for a moment Hilfy tensed in her chair, thinking she might go unconscious; but Geran had Chur's shoulder, and Chur got her head up again. "Haral, I want a pocket com and I want ops-com run back there to my cabin. All right?"

  "You got it," Haral said. "Geran, get her out of here."

  "Hilfy," Khym said, "you want to cover me?" -preparing to get out of his seat and help. But: "I'm doing all right," Chur said, and caught hold of the arm and levered herself up like an old woman, where Geran could steady her. Then she walked, slowly, slowly, back the way she had come, past a startled Tirun Araun, just arrived up from lowerdecks.

  "What's that?" Tirun asked when she and Geran were out and down the corridor. With a look backward. "She all right?"

  "Wants to know what's going on," Khym said. "She's fighting."

  "She's got her way again," Haral said in the same low tone. "Too." And swung her chair back around.

  "Priority," Khym said suddenly, which set a lurch into Hilfy's pulse.

  "Scan-blocking," Tirun said, slipping into place while Hilfy cast an anxious look at the scan display on her number-two monitor. A vanished ship reestablished itself in the red of projected-position. One by one other ships went red, the blight spreading in an orderly way. Then:

  "That's friendly of them," Haral murmured as their own position at station vanished from the other display. "At least they're catholic when they blank the scan."

  The ramp access doors opened, above the once-teeming docks: deserted now, mostly. Bits of paper. Trash. Abandoned machinery. Burn-scars on the paints. Arid cold, which the Meetpoint docks always were, too much size and too little free heat from the dull, dead Mass about which the station orbited. There were abundant kif-not far away, black shapes in robes. Skkukun, likely, quasi-slaves on Ikkhoitr. Expendables and dangerous as a charged cable.

  And there were stsho, fragile-looking pale figures huddled over against the far side of their own docks, scurrying like pale ghosts, out of doorways and shelter, the dispossessed owners of Meetpoint. A mass of them surged toward the foot of the ramp, indecisively retreated, bolted again toward them in utter chaos, a crowd all spindle-limbed and gossamer-robed in opalescent whites and pearl, stsho of rank, with their feathery, augmented brows, their moonstone eyes struck with panic. They gibbered and wailed their plaints, their effusive pleas for protection-

  And they came to one collective and horrified halt, and gasped and chittered for dread. Of the kif, perhaps.

  Or perhaps it was the first sight of Tully that did it.

  "Stay close," Pyanfar muttered to Tully. "Not friends."

  "Got," he said under his breath. And kept close at her elbow as they descended, Jik trailing behind her; and Tahar; and Harun and all the rest. Kif waiting below formed a black wedge as they went down into that mass of stsho, and the stsho gave way before that like leaves before a wind, gibbering as they went, down a dock on which many of the lighted signs, indicating ships at dock, showed stsho names. Too timid to break dock, helpless in the advent of armed ships sweeping in out of Kefk inbound vector, which was unhappily also the outbound vector for the nearest stsho port, at Nsthen-they could do nothing in their unweaponed state but cower and wait, while their appointed kifish defenders did the smart thing and ran like the devils of a mahen hell were on their heels.

  "Lousy mess," Pyanfar said; and hitched the rifle she carried to a more conspicuous attitude, while they walked along an aisle of kif with Ikkhoitr's black-robed captain, and stsho retreated and stared at them from concealment with terrified, moonstone eyes.

  Then a kifish name showed in lights above a berth: and the ramp of Harukk gaped for them.

  She hitched her gunbelt up and tried to calm her stomach. Her nose had begun to prickle and she searched after another pill in her pocket, never minding the timelapse. Metabolism did peculiar things after jump. She was strung tight and getting tighter, on the raw edge of fatigue.

  Walking up that ramp was very much not what she wanted to do, if her body had had its choice in the matter; but brain began to assert itself as cold terror ebbed down to a different kind of wariness.

  Gods, we got to think, Pyanfar Chanur, we got to think about all those stationfolk, dithering stsho though they be, and gods help any hani and any mahendo'sat-the hakkikt's just taken himself another spacestation, and this time he's got his blood up and he's got a point to make. Gods help 'em all, think, think, get the mind wide awake.

  Gods-be pills make you sleepy, curse 'em.

  I haven't got the strength for this. I'm not any kid anymore. The knees are going to go. I'm going to fall down right on this godsforsaken rampway, and if I do it's all unraveled, we're all going to die and the gods-blessed Compact is going to go all to pieces because I can't keep my knees from wobbling and my
gut from hurting and my eyes from fuzzing.

  Ten more steps, Pyanfar Chanur, and then ten more, and we get to rest a while, we can lean on that lift wall, can't we? They won't notice.

  Down the corridor, the bleak, black, ammonia-reeking corridor past Harukk’s airlock; and Jik and Kesurinan walking side by side behind her- No knowing what signals they've passed, gods rot the luck-

  Tully, where's Tully, f’godssakes-

  She caught sight of him, shouldered back by Skkukuk as she entered the lift with Ikkhoitr's captain and Jik and Kesurinan and Tahar. "Tully!" she snarled, and he dived forward and made the door before it closed on the first group, leaving the others for a second lift, and gods only hope they ended up in the same place.

  Herself and Jik and Tully and Skkukuk, with Tahar and the kifish captain and his lot: the lift let them out in Harukk's upper corridor, in a chill, damp closeness and the stink of ammonia and incense.

  They'll die if we foul it up. All these people on Meetpoint. My crew. Us on this ship. How do you reason with a kif?

  Kif waited for her at the other end, kif dressed in skintight suits and robes modified for freefall work. Sodium-light glared and tinted gray-black skins, the glitter of weapons, of wet-surfaced eyes as they waited to welcome the hakkikt's guests.

  In a hospitality both Jik and Tully had abundant cause to remember.

  Chapter Seven

  The hakkikt waited for them in his audience-chamber, deep within Harukk's well-shielded ring, and, thank all the gods, there was a place to sit, a chair at a low table, the captains and Jik and Tully all offered chairs at the table with Sikkukkut, and the captains' escorts left with the skkukun, standing about in the dim sodium light and the smoke of incense. Pyanfar took the little cup of parini they offered her as she sat: her hand shook when she did it, and if the cup was not drugged, it was as dangerous on her queasy and pill-shocked stomach as if it had been. She had rather food, she had far rather food at the moment.