The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I think maybe Tt’a’va’o.”

  “Good gods.” Tc’a. Tc’a territory, right up to Meetpoint. “What fool set that up?”

  “Kif know. I think they know damn sure.”

  “Then what are we getting into at Kefk? For godssakes, Jik—”

  “Big game. Number one big game, hani.”

  “Game. Gods rot it, human ships have fired at knnn.”

  Jik’s jaw dropped. He closed it.

  “Tully told me. Now you trade me one, partner. Tell me the gods-be truth!”

  “What you know ‘bout knnn business?”

  “Nothing else. Absolutely nothing. But a knnn ship was tracking me directly after Goldtooth gave me Tully; stayed with me when I left Meetpoint headed for Urtur. I lost it. I don’t know where it went. But it was on me. It could have been at Urtur. It might even know I went to Kshshti. Hear? We did have tc’a activity there.”

  “Damn,” Jik said. “Damn.”

  “Let me tell you something else. I don’t trust that tc’a stationmaster at Kshshti. I don’t know what it heard. I don’t like it, hear?”

  “What tc’a do?”

  “Do? It was scared witless, that’s what. Mention knnn near it and it went into gibbering lunacy. Avoid, it said. It talked about hani dying at Mkks. It talked—talked about three sets of kif to watch out for, one of them the kifish homeworld.”

  “I hear this. Not surprise. Homeworld kif wait see who win, a? They not stupid.”

  “No, they’re not stupid, just a lunatic mahe who thinks I’m going to play tag with the knnn and politics with the gods-be kif—”

  “You listen.” Jik looked her in the eyes and jabbed her in the chest with a blunt-clawed finger. “I tell you truth, tell you truth, hani and mahendo’sat be longtime friend, a? Stsho friend only to stsho, same like kif. We got Sikkukkut, got same this fellow in the loo, a? We got lot sfik, this kif Sikkukkut get some from us; he go be number one kif. Safe kif.”

  “I’m not so sure he is.”

  “I tell you this: Sikkukkut got same interest we got. He want keep thing lot same like now. Want make quiet. Sure, he lot dangerous. But you respect him, he got sfik, not need kill you. This Akkhtimakt, he oppose Sikkukkut: he got kill all Sikkukkut deal with. That be long list, a? Sikkukkut enemy all be kif; but I tell you, Pyanfar—lot people be Akkhtimakt enemy who not be kif. Whole damn Compact. Humanity. Where he stop, huh? And we already got knnn trouble. How much trouble we need?”

  “They’re all crazy.”

  “You hani, you like too much law. Kif, they got Personage. Sen-si-ble, like mahendo’sat. Make life more simple.” He touched her shoulder again. “You see why I want you ‘live? You don’t cross Vigilance, a?”

  A clank sounded from outside, the noise of the line connections being withdrawn.

  “This fancy ID system I’m not supposed to ask if you got—any chance it can fool the beacon at Kefk?”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose and gave her an anxious glance. “I not say got.”

  “Can you?”

  “Maybe I run—little ahead main group. Maybe we get beacon. One good look all I need.”

  “Maybe! Kite in there alone?”

  “A, got good kif friend, good friend Vigilance follow real close.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Hey, you no worry—you damn smart pilot, a?”

  “Sure. No worry. No worry. Gods rot it, that’s a binary system, Jik, and that’s a kif you’ve got to rely on!”

  “Got you come.”

  “Gods, what do you think I am? You’re crazy, you know that? This whole thing is crazy! You’re going to trip that zenith guardpost all alone out there—”

  “Ana be right. You got nice eyes.”

  “You—”

  “Hey, I got go,” Jik said, holding up his hands. And with a lift of brows: “A.” He reached into one of his belt-pockets and pulled out a small square packet. “Want give you this.”

  “What?” Her ears went down flat. “Gods-be, Jik, no more tricks! No more—”

  “You take.” He pulled her hand forward and slapped the packet into her palm. “Things go bad you take, run, go Meetpoint, find help.”

  “What is this thing?”

  “Record. Got same microfiche. You don’t worry.” A blithe mahen grin. “All code.”

  “Jik—”

  “I trust.” The Pride’s bow rang to a second thump; the ventilation fans died and started up with a different, more rapid sound. They were on their own. “I got hurry, Pyanfar. They take ramp soon.” He started away down the corridor and looked back. “You be smart, Pyanfar.”

  “Go on, you’ll miss the ramp.” She pocketed the microfiches and picked up the pocket com. “Haral. Stand by to let Jik out. His people still outside?”

  “Still there. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, captain. They’re all right.”

  “Huh. Good.” She broke the contact and walked back the other way, not without a misgiving glance at the washroom door.

  More thumps from the bow. The dockers were working fast. Anxious to get them out, one guessed.

  Pyanfar headed for the lift. A cold lump had settled in her stomach, indigestible.

  Gods, gods, and Jik himself never told all the truth. Not ever the part that told what he would do.

  Chapter 7

  It was chaos in the bridgeward corridor as Pyanfar headed out of the lift. Tully was there with Hilfy, doing final latch-check on doors, which meant Khym was busy somewhere and not doing that. Tirun came running to catch the lift door with a covered bowl in either hand.

  “Hurry it,” Pyanfar yelled as Tirun darted past.

  “Aye,” Tirun said.

  “And don’t go in with it!”

  The door shut. Upship, Chur was at her cabin door, with Geran; she had a new and tightly wrapped bandage round her middle. There was a crash from lowerdecks, another seal in place. “You sure about this,” Pyanfar said in passing.

  “Absolutely,” said Chur.

  “Captain,” Geran said in courtesy, and Pyanfar left them both behind, headed bridgeward in long strides.

  Haral was at her post, the only one as yet, but Chur and Geran were trailing in at Pyanfar’s back. The boards were lit and The Pride’s initial systems were all up, with ready-lights on the rest. Pyanfar threw herself into her own chair and powered it about.

  “Captain.” Haral acknowledged the command transfer with a dip of her many-ringed ears, never a turn of her head or a missed beat in the routine switch-flicking of power-up. Pyanfar shoved the com plug into her own left ear and leaned, fished the microfiche packet out of her pocket and shoved it in the security bin.

  “That it?” Haral said.

  “That’s the latest bit of trouble. Gods, I’m tired of mail-carrying. Gods give that Ehrran—”

  Khym showed up, from the galleyward corridor, his hands full of food-packets, his face all cheerful.

  —sons, the ancient curse went. Pyanfar swallowed it and listened to the com. The voice out of central was mahendo’sat, likewise the docking chief talking to them on the outside line. One could believe the universe safe and sane; and then a kif spoke up from down the row, giving them its outbound time.

  Khym reached past her to clip the concentrates at her elbow. Three packets, one of water. “Thanks,” Pyanfar muttered. And to Haral: “You mark what Jik’s trying?”

  “Uhhhn.”

  “That’s not on the plan. Something recent. Real recent. Didn’t want to use that system in front of the kif, that’s what, and Sikkukkut wasn’t going to use his—eggs’ll get pearls Harukk’s got that equipment too and Sikkukkut won’t use it.”

  “That where Jik was, you think? Push-and-shove with the kif? Trying to get them to—”

  “Might’ve been. Gods know. Gods know if Ehrran knows what he’s up to.”

  “He’s got to fill her in. If she comes in alone with the kif—”

  Clang-thunk! The accessway was loose. Crash! The grapples from Mkks s
tation retracted. They had their own grip on Mkks and they were against the docking boom: that was all that held them now.

  “He didn’t want to tell us,” Pyanfar said. “He wasn’t going to. You get all that business down there on tape?”

  “Hhhuun, yes. Want it logged?”

  Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. “It’s enough to give Ehrran our skins. No. But don’t erase it either.” She looked across the dividing console, met Haral’s gold-eyed hani stare. Different than Jik’s. Uncomplex in honor and greatly complex in loyalties. “Stow it in my personal file, huh? You don’t need to be part of it.”

  Haral’s ears went back. Offended. “Aye. If you want it that way.”

  “I do. Who heard?”

  “Me.”

  “Huh.” Pyanfar looked to the controls and brought her board up. A seat hissed under weight. She half-turned and saw Tully settle in next to Chur. “Tully.”

  “Captain?” Tully turned his head, not using com and the translator.

  “You crew, huh?”

  “I—” Tully misunderstood the question and fished up a small syringe from the chairside pocket. “I sleep at jump, wake at Kefk. I work.”

  It sounded chancy. Gods made humans and stsho that way, that jump made them crazy. So they ran ships in and out of jump unconscious. Lunatics. “No fear, huh?”

  A primate grin, quickly compressed to a hani smile. “I scared.”

  “Huh. Us too.”

  “Hurry it up!” Haral said over shipwide com. The voice echoed through the bridge and corridors. “Tirun, move it.”

  “Vigilance lodge a protest?” Pyanfar asked, swinging round.

  “Aye,” Haral said, and wrinkled her nose and laid her ears back. “I’d give this voyage’s profits to’ve been in range of one of that pair in that lock.”

  “Huh.” Profits. She laughed. But humor died. “It was a stupid thing. Stupid, that’s what it was. Like a gods-rotted—”

  Khym was on the bridge and Pyanfar swallowed that ancient comparison down too. Called up the outbound schedule. “Log that Ehrran business. Right down to the exit from the lock.”

  A hesitation. A key pushed. “I already had it separated.”

  “I’ll lay it out for the rest of us—put Geran wise to it, huh?”

  (Gods, Khym back there, coming and going in all this business between her and Haral, between mahendo’sat in the lower corridor, and not a question out of him, not a What’s going on? or a Why? The world was out of shape. But she and Khym had both said a lot of things in the dark. Last watch.)

  She glanced aside. Khym settled into observer one, between Hilfy’s as yet vacant post and Geran’s seat, flicking switches. He brought com live there, backup now to Hilfy. Geran would sit Chur’s post at scan one; Tully observer two; Chur moved to second scan; and Tirun, with below-decks cargo ops and second-bridge shut down, was left observer three, when she got to it, as auxiliary switcher, comp operator, engineer, and if things went amiss, backup at armaments. When she got to it.

  Pyanfar punched in lowerdeck monitoring. “Tirun. You all right down there?”

  “I’m coming,” said a breathless, moving source. The sound of running feet in main corridor below. Pyanfar broke the contact. Hilfy took her post. Pyanfar caught the reflection in the monitor, against the light from Khym’s boards.

  Back in place. Home again. A ready light came on her board from Hilfy.

  A mahen voice sputtered in her ear: “Clear when ready. You got clear, Pride of Chanur.”

  Hilfy acknowledged the station communication Khym had brought through, taking over. “Thank you, Mkks.” Routine and cool. Thank you, Mkks. Pyanfar’s blood went cold.

  Aft, the lift worked. That would be Tirun.

  “Geran,” Haral said, “put Vigilance on the guard-it list right along with the kif.”

  A moment’s silence. “You serious, huh?”

  “Real serious. Jik says.”

  “Uhhhhn.” No further comment. That got done. Their scan operators were onto it.

  “Aja Jin to Pride, you got number one depart, go, go.”

  Running footsteps in the topside corridor behind.

  “Gods rot,” Haral said into the mike, “sister, we’re going, move, move, move!”

  Footsteps reached the bridge, a body dropped into a chair and Haral hit the ungrapple program.

  Clank-bang. They were under power then, a little queasiness as The Pride came off station and gave herself that little bit of thrust that got her outbound.

  Nothing showy. The Pride could move. It was not a fact they cared to advertise to the kif or to any other watchers at Mkks. Haral brought The Pride about at leisure and took her time. They might have been hauling eggshells.

  “We got an update on the entry projections,” Pyanfar said. “Jik’s got a—”

  Then: “Priority,” said Hilfy, that dreadful word from a post with bad news.

  It got switched. “—same advise you,” from Mkks central’s ice-clear voice, “we got tc’a go outbound. Navigation caution.”

  “Gods rot!” Pyanfar exclaimed.

  “—Tell it power down and wait,” Hilfy was saying over com. “Mkks station—”

  Com transcripting was all over second monitor, kif protests, protests from Jik and Vigilance. . . .

  “Got a blip,” said Geran. “Confirm something outbound from the methane-sector—”

  “That’s a kif away,” Haral said, overriding. “Scan two. Comp, get that tc’a figured.”

  “I’m on it,” Tirun said. “Stand by, Geran.”

  Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and snatched helm function to her board while Haral sorted priorities. Thank gods for full crew: com was babble from three prime sources and a dozen unauthorized outputs; Geran was on station scan output and Chur tried to sort out blips exploding off Mkks station about them like seeds from a pod.

  Pyanfar kicked the rotation in, for The Pride’s internal g; and rolled them up in a move that got to the pre-set course the hard way. Gods, they were on a hair-breadth schedule out to that jump-point, they had everything calculated down to the instant for that tandem jump, and the situation behind them looked like feathers in a windstorm.

  “Schedule’s blown to a mahen hell,” Haral said. “Gods blast that split-brained fool! We got a lunatic mess back there!”

  “Hilfy—” From Khym, urgently.

  “Priority,” Hilfy said. “Station transmission, general to all ships.”

  Image turned up on second monitor. Violet light: a writhing serpent-shape, gold-mottled, that dipped and wove before the lens.

  Methane-sector was talking to them: methane traffic control on visual output. The yellow, sticklike form of a chi raced up and down the tc’a’s uplifted back, darted about its head in frenetic attentions to its—whatever a tc’a was to a chi: master; comrade; friend or pet. The tc’a wailed, the multipart harmonics of its segmented brain and speech apparatus, multiple minds, multiple viewpoints in matrix translated at the bottom of the screen.

  A cold wind went up Pyanfar’s back. “Hilfy: get comp on that. Tirun, go to com one.”

  “Aye,” Hilfy said.

  Not a word of criticism. No outcry from the crew. The tc’a ship was out ahead of them, likely to foul their schedule; a tc’a official onstation was talking about knnn, and no one sane wanted them involved. No one could talk to knnn but tc’a; and tc’a talked like that, in matrices that had to be read in all directions at once. It spoke of two tc’a presences, one at Mkks, going, perhaps—(give a chi?)—to tc’a at Kefk; while knnn were involved all across everyone’s motivations, and of two kinds of kif (Kefk-bound?) and two kinds of hani (gods, did it pick that schism up?) only one lot of kif was going to fight?

  “. . . abort this lunacy!” a hani voice said, Rhif Ehrran from Vigilance, fairly yelling over com. “Aja Jin, pull us back!”

  “You want what,” Jik’s answer came back. “Give time Kefk know we come? Sure thing they blow us to hell, Vigilance. You stay on course, stay on course,
you hear?”

  “Khoihktkt mahe kefkefkti—”—from the kif. The mahe’s agreeing with us.

  “Aunt, comp’s got nothing better. The tc’a’s talking about notifying knnn and says that tc’a’s going with us to Kefk. Comp’s not sure about the rest, but it’s got a conjecture—”

  “Vigilance is on,” Geran said, “wanting the captain direct.”

  “Refuse,” said Haral.

  “Call on three,” Khym said. “It’s Harukk. Their com wants the captain.”

  “Refuse: get Jik.”

  “Belay that,” Pyanfar said, biting her mustaches and reading comp’s conjectures on the tc’a, not far off her own. “Jik’ll talk when he can. Give me output. Compose a message to the tc’a and tell it we go and it waits.”

  “Aye.” From Hilfy, tautly. No ship talked to methane-breathers without filling out abundant official queries afterward. There were reasons. Like methane-breather logic, which could take something fatally amiss. They were different. Very. And went berserk very easily. Tc’a were the peaceful lot.

  Knnn—were something else.

  “Aunt—here’s the set-up; approve it before it goes.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Pyanfar muttered as it came up on the screen. “Log and send it. Send to Aja Jin: quote: We’re on schedule and proceeding. We’ve advised the tc’a of navigation hazard.”

  “Jik’s on already,” Geran said. “He’s saying go with it. Still go.”

  “Fine.” It was not the answer she had rather have had, but it was the one she expected. Go with it. Go ahead. Take the chance.

  Jump with a tc’a in their midst. Tc’a navigated like snakes. They were snakes. Come in at Kefk blind with a tc’a liable to pop out of hyperspace any gods-rotten-where off-mark and the faster hunter-ships plotting to overjump them in hyperspace. . . . It was asking for disaster. Collision.

  “We’ll shine bright enough for Anuurn to see, if we kink this one,” Pyanfar said. “Someone want to calculate the size of the fireball?”

  “Gods-rotted bright one,” Haral said.

  “Vigilance advises us,” said Khym, “she’s filing a—”

  Hysterical laughter broke out in sneezes, short and wild. They were hair-triggered. Hani. Hell-bent on course for kifish zones.