The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  “A lot of stuff that takes explaining.” Pyanfar looked in on Chur, leaned there in the doorway of a room which had a great lot of machinery sitting over against the wall; and a crowd of visitors: Hilfy and Tully and Khym still lingered. “Hey, you,” Pyanfar said, “out of there and let Chur rest, will you?” And as the file passed her in the doorway: “Chur. Cousin, you hear me?”

  “Uh?” Chur lifted her head from the pillow.

  “We just got a present, a little while to rest. We got a message where Akkhtimakt is and we’ve got time for a little R&R. You don’t be getting out of that bed or you walk back to Kshshti.”

  “Gods-be needles,” Chur said. “I hate needles.”

  “Got more news for you. You get more of them on the way. Get some sleep, huh?”

  “Trying,” Chur said, and shifted in the bed and settled as flat as the tubes and one arm strapped outward let her.

  Pyanfar shut the door and looked at the somber gathering in the hall.

  “So what is it, captain?” Geran asked.

  “Not something I much want to dump on you right now,” Pyanfar said. “But I’d better.”

  “Chur—”

  “Not about her. Us. Bridge. Everyone.”

  The four of them followed her. Tirun and Haral turned their chairs about as they walked in. Pyanfar went to her own seat near Haral and leaned on the back of it while the rest of the crew settled on chair-arms and against cabinets. “Haral, Tirun, you catch that business in the corridor?”

  “Aye,” Haral said. “Both of us. Good news on Chur. Thank the gods.”

  “Thank the gods and friends where we have ’em. Such as they are. We got anything essential running now?”

  “No.”

  “All right.” She took Goldtooth’s code-strip packet from her pocket and put that down on the counter by her seat, powered her chair about to face the crew and sat down.

  “Humans are moving out from Tt’a’va’o. I don’t know what route they took; maybe you do, Tully, but the choices from there are real limited. I’ve talked to Goldtooth. I know a lot of things.” She watched Tully’s face, saw anxiety—the least little flicker of his strange eyes. “Humans on the move. And that’s not the worst of it. Goldtooth’s been lurking about Kefk regions keeping the Meetpoint route closed and creating a real difficulty for Akkhtimakt—Jik said sometime back that Goldtooth might be up to something hereabouts. But it turns out they don’t check things out with each other real well. It seems Jik took off on his own and made the deal with Sikkukkut. Unauthorized, as it were. Or at least without consulting. Forced Goldtooth’s hand. Tully, I’ll try to use small words. Goldtooth had come in from deep space—at least from outside the Compact—with Tully aboard, off Ijir. He left Ijir to go its way—but he had a duplicate of the message packet Ijir carried. He had Tully. And he had gotten something else—some kind of message from the knnn. From the knnn, gods help us. At least that’s what Goldtooth hints. Meanwhile Akkhtimakt aimed to take Kita Point, while his agents were busy eliminating all opposition on the kifish homeworld—setting himself up as hakkikt of all the kif, that’s what he was after. And back at that stage, a few months ago, Sikkukkut was no more than a provincial boss from Mirkti—with ambitions. Sikkukkut courted his old mahen connections at Meetpoint, approached Goldtooth trying to outflank Akkhtimakt, probing for every weakness he could get—Meetpoint’s always a good place for intrigues. A real good place to pick up rumors. And right around that time rumors were running heavy—like hani deals with the stsho; mahen deals—everybody who was high up enough to get advance warnings was trying to get the best advantage against this new kifish hakkikt. Against Akkhtimakt.

  “But Sikkukkut had a spy with Akkhtimakt, gods know how or where. Undoubtedly he had some stsho on the take at Meetpoint. He knew about the courier-ship falling into Akkhtimakt’s hands. He knew—I suspect from his spy with Akkhtimakt, the same way he probably got the ring—that Goldtooth had Tully aboard. And it wasn’t too hard to figure Goldtooth had handed Tully to us at Meetpoint, when we showed up with our papers cleared with a gods-awful monstrous bribe from the mahendo’sat. Which we didn’t know about. But Sikkukkut may have.

  “Sikkukkut set us up, deliberately put us in a bind at Meetpoint. He snagged us into his reach, he snagged Ehrran, and Ayhar; and he steered us out of Akkhtimakt’s trap at Kita. Steered us right for his own front yard, step by step. And snagged Jik by having us in his net, while he was at it. By that business at Kshshti he gathered himself enough sfik to take Mkks on his own; and now he’s got Kefk. So all of a sudden momentum’s on his side and deserting Akkhtimakt. Akkhtimakt’s supporters are beginning to desert him. Fast. Kifish logic: shoot your former allies in the back and run for the winning side. Akkhtimakt’s got to be worried.

  “Part two: Jik. Jik’s got this idea mahendo’sat are a lot better off with their old familiar neighbor from Mirkti as hakkikt over all the kif. And Jik got Ehrran in on it; and he got us. Never mind Mkks’ safety. That wasn’t all he was after in those negotiations at Mkks. And Ehrran’s on a lot more than Tahar’s track now if she’s got half sense—she’s up at the top of this little information pyramid. She’s got access to highlevel strategy—and if she’s not a total fool, and if she knows anything about this, it’s a lot more than Tahar got her to come to Kefk. Treaty law, yes. Jik’s got credentials clear from the top, I’m sure he has. And what he specifically said to her that got her out of Mkks and headed this way—gods know. I have an idea the whole urgency behind Ehrran’s search for Tahar has a whole lot to do with the han’s negotiations with the stsho and the fear of the kif getting a leader. I think they wanted Tahar dead. Wanted to eliminate any possibility of her advising and helping a hakkikt predict what hani would do. Xenophobia again. But in this case, xenophobia with a real good reason. I’m guessing Ehrran’s real and immediate motive in going along with this lunatic expedition is because she knew she hadn’t a spit in a hurricane of getting back to Meetpoint and hani lanes in one piece if she didn’t tag close by Jik—and learn what he was up to. Meanwhile Akkhtimakt supposedly held Kita, remember.”

  “Supposedly?” Haral said.

  “I think Jik gods-be knew where Goldtooth went when he left Meetpoint: straight for deep stsho-tc’a space; right for a rendezvous with someone who was going to guide the humans in. And then he was supposed to go—probably from Tt’a’va’o (the tc’a connection again!) to Kefk—harassing Akkhtimakt, making him divide his efforts between holding Kita and trying to keep the Kefk lane open, while Goldtooth set himself to keep it shut. So Meetpoint’s had a two-way stranglehold on it, trade cut off by the kif at Kita; and by Goldtooth at Kefk. Goldtooth’s plan was to bring Akkhtimakt down by weakening him—lessening his credibility—all the while playing another game designed to soften up this whole gods-be zone from Kefk to Meetpoint because he knew humans were going to come through in this vicinity. If he could link up a mahen-human trade route right past kifish borders, he’d ruin Akkhtimakt’s credibility once and for all. Devastate him.

  “Meanwhile the kifish homeworld is in complete chaos with hunter-squads and assassinations, trying to handle Goldtooth and hunt humans and balance its attentions between two rival hakkiktun. And the kif get information what’s going on at Kefk; and some of that information goes to Mkks. . . to kif, but not to mahen authorities—unless the tc’a talked, and they may not have, to unauthorized mahendo’sat. No, Sikkukkut knew exactly where Goldtooth was all the time. But I’m not sure Jik did, when he accepted Sikkukkut’s deal to move on Kefk. I don’t think Jik even knew for sure whether Goldtooth was alive. So when he was offered a deal that might provide a hakkikt that mahendo’sat could deal with—he took it. It’d take him to Kefk. It would let him link up with Goldtooth, if Goldtooth was still alive. I think mahen information broke down at that one really critical point; and now Goldtooth’s in danger—because I think Sikkukkut sees a lot more of Goldtooth’s thinking than Goldtooth thinks he sees—a lot more even than Jik may be aware of. Sikkukkut�
��s drawn Goldtooth into the open now. Sikkukkut’s got him accessible; and Goldtooth’s come in, on his own, real close to Sikkukkut. Not playing coy at all. You see?”

  “We got trouble,” Haral said. “Gods, we got trouble.”

  “Oh, it gets worse, cousin. Jik used some kind of credit at Mkks to get that tc’a to go with us. The knnn are definitely into it. They’ve already sent one message to Maing Tol—that packet that we sent on with Banny Ayhar, if you can believe Goldtooth that far. I don’t know what else Jik did at Mkks, but I’m betting he gave the tc’a stationmaster our navigation data and got a tc’a to run cover for us and make sure Kefk fell without a shot. The knnn may consent to it. Or the knnn may have taken exception to it. Gods-rotted sure they took the tc’a. We don’t know how they think. Or what they want. But humanity, remember, is cutting real close to the knnn’s territory in getting here, if they haven’t cut right through it: gods know where the knnn think their zones extend—if they even understand borders. And Tully says humans have fired at knnn ships.”

  Eyes dilated all round the bridge. Ears flattened.

  “So here we are,” Pyanfar said. “We moved into Kefk and caught Kefk by surprise and a high dice roll, and Kefk did the kifish thing and bellied down to the deck fast as they could spit. Sikkukkut takes everything on the table.

  “Except for one thing. Akkhtimakt’s got one recourse. The stsho hire mahen guards for top security, right? The stsho don’t trust hani for anything but the lowest level guard jobs, and they trust kif for bully jobs. But. But. Mahendo’sat are trying to get the humans into the Compact, same way they bullied the stsho into admitting hani once upon a time. Now we have a common border with mahendo’sat that kept us satisfied with trade in that direction for a long time; and we’ve got a natural barrier on the stsho side, with a gulf our ships can’t jump. Hani haven’t been bad neighbors for the stsho. It’s a lot different with humanity. Humanity wants through stsho space. Wants through tc’a and knnn space. Through kif space, if it can’t get the other routes. That’s got the stsho worried. Real worried. And meanwhile, on Anuurn, we’ve got a division: we’ve got hani who took to space and we’ve got hani who’re gods-be near as xenophobic as the stsho. Old-fashioned hani who don’t know the stsho. They aren’t capable of knowing the stsho—gods, they aren’t capable of imagining the stsho. But stsho money gets to them and buys votes in the han. Sets up new hani authorities of a mindset the stsho approve. That takes care of one border problem. Hire hani guards, then. Displace the mahendo’sat from every security post they hold on stsho property. Get them out. That takes care of the in-office stuff and gets rid of the mahen stranglehold; and gets mahen fingers out of stsho lines of communication. But there’s one more thing the stsho need to stop the humans, something the nonspacing faction of the han can’t provide them and no stsho can possibly handle gtstself. Armed ships. In numbers.”

  “O my gods,” Tirun said.

  “You’ve got it, cousin. The humans are headed either for Meetpoint or for Kefk. Goldtooth planned it that way. Put pressure on the stsho to get closer to the mahendo’sat. Make ’em deal with humanity. Bring Akkhtimakt down hard when he can’t stop the human advance right under kifish noses. But the plan’s backfired, partially thanks to Jik and thanks to us. By taking Kefk, Sikkukkut just piled a pressure on Akkhtimakt that’s forcing Akkhtimakt to do something he’d never ordinarily do—he can’t handle Sikkukkut and the mahendo’sat and the humans without more help than he’s got. So Akkhtimakt’s headed to Meetpoint to deal with the stsho. Same as the han is. The han’s just ended up on Akkhtimakt’s side.”

  There was profound silence. Sound whispered from a loose complug; the ducts hissed.

  “Well, we got a real problem, don’t we?” Haral said.

  “Well, it’s the han!” Geran said. “It’s the likes of Ehrran, it’s the likes of Naur and all of them back home, the gods-be fools!”

  “We end up,” Pyanfar said, “alone on this side with the mahendo’sat. And the kif. We’re headed for Meetpoint. That’s where the hakkikt will take this party for sure. If he’s sure humanity’s going there and not coming here to take Kefk. That’s the one thing he’s got to be scared of—the one thing that could sink him, destroy everything he’s built—and Goldtooth might do it to him. He wants to know that. He desperately wants to know that, and Goldtooth isn’t talking. If you want other possible motives for Goldtooth coming tamely in to dock—try the possibility that he’s got help coming. A lot of it. That has to worry Sikkukkut. He daren’t move til he has some way to cover himself and he daren’t stay here and lose his momentum with his own followers. Goldtooth’s got him worried bad, and Goldtooth wants to keep it that way.

  “One other thing you can figure: Ehrran. Ehrran’ll turn on us the moment we hit Meetpoint space. At the least, she’ll run for home—straight for the han to try to get a policy decision. And she’ll take them everything in those records. Everything. Our troubles may come to a head at home before we can possibly get there; if we can get there at all. And there’s no way we can get word to the House and Kohan what’s coming. No way we can warn them—unless we break and run for home ourselves. I’m not about to tell Chur what’s up: she can’t stand this right now. But the rest of you had better know. You’d better think about it real hard. We can tear out of here at first excuse and go home. We can lay course straight from Meetpoint, run for all we’re worth the second we hit that system, while everyone else is busy. And we can face whatever we have to back at Anuurn. We can’t outrun Vigilance. But we might get there in time to meet charges. Tie it up in the han. Organize a fight—when, gods help us—it may have already been lost out here.

  “Or we can stay and fight with the mahendo’sat, when it comes, against Akkhtimakt and whatever force the han may have set to assist the stsho at Meetpoint. You can guess what captains they might have talked into it. And where that ends then, I don’t know. But I do know this beyond a doubt: if Akkhtimakt should win—he’ll own Meetpoint, he’ll move in on the stsho with no one to stop him, once he’s past their security systems; and gods know what the knnn and the humans and the han will do in their separate craziness. But I don’t decide this one. On this one you tell me.”

  “What do you think we ought to do?” Haral asked.

  “I’ve told you.”

  “Tell us plain.”

  “Aye,” Tirun muttered. “You’ve seen through this much of it—how much else do you see?”

  Pyanfar drew a deep breath, pressed her hands against her eyes. Time went in loops. Anuurn sunset. The old vine on the estate wall. Hilfy playing in the dirt.

  A ship at Meetpoint, dying because it happened to be hani, and in the wrong place—

  Tully, crouching naked on her deck, writing numbers in his own blood—

  Chur, handing them a white plastic packet, as she lay bleeding on a Kshshti dock—a kifish den. Jik’s ridiculous smoke—playing sfik-games with the kif.

  “I’d go with the mahendo’sat. Maybe I’m a fool. Maybe it’s the worst kind of a fool—but being a fool hasn’t stopped Ehrran from dealing left and right, has it? We can’t do worse. We can’t do worse than the han’s done. Maybe that’s a fool’s arrogance too. Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Maybe it’s Anuurn’s last chance. Last chance for hani to do anything independent in the universe—sounds funny, too gods-rotted high for us; but that’s the plain truth. I’m not sure where we’ll end up, or what we’ll do to Chanur back at home, or how they’ll survive this. Or what we’ll be even if we win—on Sikkukkut’s side. But I don’t want to see what happens when Akkhtimakt laps up the stsho like an appetizer. That’s what I think. If you think the same, we get our minds on short-term business and we ride the waves the best we can. If it’s go home, you tell me and we go that way long and hard as we can, while we can.”

  “I’m on your side,” Haral muttered. “The stsho go down—we haven’t seen trouble yet.”

  “Same,” Tirun said; and: “Same,” said Geran. “No question.”
/>   “Same with me,” said Hilfy quietly. “No choice, is there?”

  Pyanfar found her claws clenched on the upholstery and carefully drew them in. “I owe you an apology for this,” she said. Understatement. But her voice threatened not to work. She bestirred herself to the side and picked up the code-packet from the counter and handed it to Haral. “Mahen codes. We just got made official. As of now, we’re guilty of everything in Vigilance’s files. I just don’t want to spook Vigilance out of our company too fast. So we go on doing what we’ve been doing and we don’t give any hints, if by some wild chance Ehrran hasn’t guessed what Goldtooth’s up to, and what Jik’s done. Gods help us, if we were really lucky, Ehrran would catch some common sense and side with us, and drag the han over to our side, out of the mess it’s in. But that’s about the last hope I entertain.”

  “She’s snake enough to twist two ways at once,” Tirun said.

  “Inside out if I had my choice,” Geran said.

  “Meanwhile,” Pyanfar said, “while we’ve got some time, we don’t have much, and work goes on. Hilfy, Tully, Khym, they’re sending over some stuff for the kif. I’d like to get rid of him, but I don’t see a way to do it without creating a problem with Sikkukkut, and we don’t need that. On the other hand, whatever he is, he’s stood about what he can. I want him transferred to a regular cabin, I want the room safed, understand. We’re going to have some sort of live stuff to take care of. Skkukuk can do his own vermin-herding. I want it decontaminated. Never mind the docking-check on this watch, except the filters, the ops and the lifesupport; we’ll catch the little things next. Someone looks in on Chur now and again in Geran’s off-watch; you arrange that, Geran. Don’t wear yourself out. Tirun, call down to Tahar and tell her we’re still working on the problem. She’s probably chewing sticks down there. I haven’t got time to talk to her. Tirun and Geran, Hilfy and Haral when you’ve got time, I want this code-strip fed in and checked against the translator. And when you get all that done, I want a regular dinner set up, none of those gods-be sandwiches.”