The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Your friend has left you in a precarious position. Or you’ve elected to stay and lie to me.”

  “A. No lie. Got know truth to make lie. I not know. He not talk to me.”

  “Meaning nothing can extract this truth from you.”

  “Not got. What want? I say give you Kefk. I give.”

  “Kefk is in ruins, Keia. It seems a dubious gift.”

  “You got lot sfik. You step on Kefk, go ‘way, take lot more prize, a? Akkhtimakt no got. You be rich, you fix, easy.”

  “Ah. But you still suppose Ismehanan-min is going to support us at Meetpoint.”

  “He no like Akkhtimakt.”

  “I take that for granted. You yourself serve your Personage and not me. As he does. Doesn’t this mean some agreement of action?”

  Jik drew another large breath of smoke and sought a place for the ash afterward. There was none. He tapped it and let it fall to the floor. “I serve Personage. I tell you plain I got reason want see you be hakkikt. I think this be good for all. So I serve Personage. Serve you. Balance, hakkikt. You be Personage we recognize. You got lot sfik with mahendo’sat. These be crazy times. Better kif got good smart Personage, a?”

  “Flattery, base flattery, Keia. Diversion again. I tell you I am not persuaded it was kif who began that fight on the docks. And this—”

  —in a blink Sikkukkut’s arm shot out, and guards pounced on Skkukuk, hauling him upright.

  “Kkkt!” Skkukuk’s protest was throat-deep and anguished.

  “He’s mine,” Pyanfar said tautly. Never back up, never back down, never let a kif get away with any property. “A present from you, hakkikt.”

  Dangerous. O gods, dangerous. So was flinching when that long-jawed face turned her way.

  “It remains yours,” Sikkukkut said.

  “It gained a little sfik,” said Pyanfar. “In our service out there. I’d like to keep it.”

  “Kothogot ktktak tkto fik nak fakakkt?”

  The question went to Skkukuk; and Skkukuk drew his head back as if he wanted to be far from Sikkukkut’s sight.

  “Nak gothtak hani, hakkikta.”

  “Nakt soghot puk mahendo’satkun?”

  “Hukkta. Hukktaki soghotk. Hani gothok nak uman Taharkta makkt oktktaikki, hakkikta.”

  —No. Desperately. I saw no collusion. The hani argued over possession of the human and Tahar and left, hakkikt.

  A wave of Sikkukkut’s hand. The guards let Skkukuk go and he collapsed back into a head-down chittering heap beside the table.

  “So he attests your behavior,” Sikkukkut said. “Your sfik still powerfully attracts his service. I wonder is it hope of you or dread of me so impels him.”

  “He’s useful.”

  “And as we speak, Vigilance and Ismehanan-min hasten to betray us at Meetpoint. What attraction can they find there, I wonder, that impels Ismehanan-min to abandon Keia here to my pleasure—do I not correctly recall a mahen proverb, Keia my friend, that green leaves fall in storms and the strongest friendships in politics?”

  “Long time friend, Ana Ismehanan-min.”

  “But he would let you die.”

  “Like you say, politic. Also—” Jik pinched out the smoke and dropped the butt into his pouch. “Also Ana lot mad with me.” Jik’s eyes came up, liquid and vulnerable and without the least doubt. “He know I work with tc’a. Fool, he say; Jik, you be damn fool involve methane-folk. Ana, I say, I not much worry, I long time talk tc’a. Got lot tc’a know me, long time. I want tc’a come here to Kefk—fine. Dangerous, maybe. I think now maybe knnn got interest. Maybe good, maybe bad—”

  O, deft, Jik. The methane-breather connection. That’s one thing Sikkukkut has to be afraid of. For gods-sakes don’t overdo it.

  Jik shrugged. “So, Ana be lot upset. Lot knnn interest this human thing. Lot interest.”

  Profound silence. Pyanfar found herself holding her breath and daring not get rid of it. She kept the ears still; and even that betrayed the tension every posture in the room already betrayed, kif and hani alike. Tully’s eyes darted to Jik, to her, to the kif—the solitary, sapphire-glittering motion in a gray and black world.

  “Yes,” Sikkukkut said. “There would be interest on their part. And it has also occurred to me that we have a source of information here among us. At this table. Tully—you do understand me, Tully.”

  O gods—she saw Hilfy’s minute flinching; the tension of muscles in her, in Tully, in Haral—Look this way, Tully—

  “I understand,” Tully said at his clearest, looking straight at Sikkukkut with never a look or a pause for advice. “I not know, hakkikt. I not know route. I not know time. I know humans come quick.”

  A long moment Sikkukkut gazed at him as she glanced between them. A visible shiver began in Tully’s arms, his hands upon his knees. “You and I have met before on this matter,” Sikkukkut said. “But how fluent you’ve become.”

  “I be crewman, hakkikt, on The Pride. I belong captain Pyanfar. She say talk, I talk.”

  Gods help us, be careful, Tully.

  “Where will they likely come?”

  Now Tully looked her way, one calmly desperate look.

  “Do you know?” Pyanfar asked, pretense, not-pretense. He continually baffled her. “Tully, gods rot it, talk.”

  He looked back toward Sikkukkut. “I not know. I think humanity come Meetpoint. I think Goldtooth know.”

  “Kkkkt. Yes. I think so too. So does Akkhtimakt, who stripped that knowledge from your shipmates. Who has what that courier carried, information that—doubtless—has sped to points in mahen space. Truth, finally, arrives from the least likely source. You amuse me—Tully. You endlessly amuse me. What shall I do with Keia?”

  “Friend,” Tully said quietly, evenly. His best word. Almost his first word. His fallback word when he was lost.

  “But whose?”

  There was silence. Long silence.

  “I think that Keia will be my guest a while. Go back to your ships. I shall release your crew, Keia—in time. I wouldn’t impair your ship’s operation. And I’m sure your first officer is quite competent.”

  Jik reached for another smokestick. No one interfered. He slid a look Pyanfar’s way. Go.

  “Right,” Pyanfar said in a low voice. “I take it we’re dismissed, hakkikt?”

  “Take all I have given you. You’ll board by lighter. The dock access is not useable.”

  “Understood.” She rose from the insect-chair, in the murk and the orange glare; and signed to her crew and to Tahar. Jik sat there lighting his second smoke and looking as if that were the most ordinary of companies to be left in.

  O gods, Jik. What else can I do?

  * * *

  “The hakkikt promised all,” Pyanfar said to the guard, her ears flattened and her nose rumpled. “I want the wounded hani. Savuun. Haury Savuun. You’ll know where she is. You’ll bring her.”

  It pushed—about as far as they could push. “Yes,” the kif in charge said, stiff—all over stiff. The hostility was palpable. Not hate. There was no hate in question. It was assessment—what the foreigners’ credit was with the hakkikt. When to kill. When to advance and when retreat in the hakkikt’s name. A kif did not make two mistakes.

  Yes. It turned and gave orders to that effect.

  It was a silent trip after that—down through Harukk’s gut to the hangar-bay; and no relief at all until they had gotten down near the large boarding-room, and Haury arrived on the other lift—dazed, wobbling on her feet as they brought her out, but limping along with kifish help. From Haury a lift of the head, a momentary prick of the ears and widening of hazed eyes that betrayed confusion, then a taciturn expression, a wandering sweep of the eye that took in friends and guards and the boarding-lock. Gods knew what she had expected being brought down the lift. But only the tautness about her jaw still betrayed emotion—a hani long-accustomed to kif, grim and quiet. Eternally playing the game that kept a kif alive.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Dur Tahar sai
d when Haury and her guards came up close. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” Haury said in a hoarse whisper of a voice. That was all. She gave Pyanfar one long uncommunicative look; and took her sister Tav’s help in place of the kif’s. There were bandages about her ribs. Plasm on her wounds. The kif had done something for her at the least. . . with what courtesy was another question.

  “Go,” said the kif on the docks, with the wave of a dark hand toward the waiting lighter-access. “Compliments of the hakkikt.”

  Praise to him stuck in the throat. Pyanfar favored the kif with a stare and stood there with hands in her belt, near her empty weapons, while both crews boarded. Haral stood with her. They went aboard together, down the short, dark tube past the hatch.

  No suits necessary in the lighter, thank the gods: nothing kifish would have fit. Pyanfar walked the center aisle into the dim, utilitarian rear of the cargo lighter, where Chanur and Tahar sat side by side on the deep benches. Up front, the kifish pilot gave confirmation to the launch crew in hisses and clicks and gutturals. Pyanfar sat down, belted in as the lighter whined in final launch-prep, sealing its hatch to the ship. The lighting, such as it was, limned the pilot and co-pilot up front in lurid orange, making shadows as they moved. The cold air stank of ammonia and machinery.

  No one spoke. They swayed and braced as the lighter moved out of the bay on the launch boom—smooth, not a shudder in the arm. Well-maintained, was Harukk. Pyanfar noted such details, recalling the balky loader The Pride had tolerated for years. No glitches in this sleek killer-ship. No little flaws even in things that had tolerance. One knew something about a captain from such detail as this, and Pyanfar stored the information away among the other things she knew of Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin, inquisitor for Akkukkak, conniver from Mirkti, prince and lord over ruined Kefk.

  The boom grapple thunked and let them free in their armored little shell as the shadow-pilot reached out a thin arm and put in a gentle thrust aft. Beyond their shadow and the glare, the massive side of a neighboring kifish ship hove up in the double viewport and spun off as the lighter accelerated and maneuvered at once, leaving the rotational plane and letting station spin bring The Pride to its approach-point.

  Arrogant, Pyanfar thought, irritated with the cavalier exit maneuver. There’s a flaw for you.

  Grandstanding for the passengers. Sikkukkut would have this pilot’s hide for that. Then, remembering the access ramp to Harukk and its awful ornaments: Literally. O gods, gods, Jik—

  Kif talked to kif as the viewplate dimmed to dark. They went inertial now, freefall. From here on out the tricky business was up to the onboard computers and Kefk’s guidance—nastiest of all maneuvers, getting up to the emergency access of a ship at dock, on computerized intercept among the vanes and projections of ships locked to a rotating body. They did not propose to use the cable-grapple and winch in, but to engage The Pride’s own docking boom and come in on The Pride’s power. That took one access code to activate the hatch and boom—one precious key into The Pride’s computers, handed to the kif. That code had to be changed immediately when they got aboard. Damage my ship, hotshot, and I’ll have your ears.

  Easier to worry about a botched dock or a code switch than worry about other things. Like no contact with The Pride. “Your ship does not respond,” the kifish officer had said when she had asked the docking request transmitted. And that meant Chur was not answering. Chur could not answer. Geran knew it and sat back there with the rest, silent and uncommunicative and with no expression at all when Pyanfar chanced to look her way.

  Chanur estate. The courtyard gate where Geran and Chur walked in one day, young and catching eyes wherever they went with their delicate Anify beauty—Chur all pleasantness and Geran sullen-silent even while Chur was asking favors of the Chanur lord and a place in Chanur’s household. “Watch them both,” the old lord had said, na Dothon, her father. “Watch them both.” Chur of the ready smile and Geran of the ready knife.

  It was the knife in Geran’s mind now. Bloodfeud. Pyanfar knew. She gnawed her mustaches with dread of what might already exist on The Pride, and fretted at the delay of using the lighter; and loathed the procedures and the kif with their dark hand into The Pride’s codes, their presence at her vulnerable downside access. Allies. Allies—while they did gods-knew-what to Jik.

  Traitor, was a word she thought, among other words for Ana Ismehanan-min. Vigilance had to be going for jump by now and Mahijiru sped after—Goldtooth knowing, by the gods, knowing he was leaving Jik in a desperate bind—but not knowing he had left Jik a prisoner. She refused to believe Goldtooth had known his gods-be fool of a partner would have not gone immediately back aboard Aja Jin with his crew, that the loyal fool would have headed down that dockside personally, hunting a hani friend, trying to get them clear of that threatened dock and clear of kifish retaliation.

  And gotten himself caught by the kif. Alone.

  Soje Kesurinan commanded Aja Jin now—an able woman: all Jik’s people were first-rate, and his second in command was no fool. Would not become one, she hoped. Gods, she hoped.

  Treachery on all sides. Only the kif had betrayed no one. Only the kif had stood by their word. Like Skkukuk, back there, a forgettable lump of shadow at the lighter’s extreme rear. Skkukuk, who had never yet played them false.

  Loyalty?

  Your sfik still attracts his service, Sikkukkut had said of Skkukuk.

  And wondered in the next breath whether it was the alternative which compelled Skkukuk’s devotion to his new captain.

  Chur. Jik. The cold of the air penetrated Pyanfar’s skin and she sat numb while the g force of rollover hit and a vast white mass hove up in the viewport. Braking started in earnest as white and black alternated—as station rotation carried a kifish ship past their bow. Slower and slower. Lower and lower toward the place The Pride would occupy as the rotation carried it round. Doing it on the first pass, thank the gods. No waiting round. The access code would have gone out. The Pride would have her docking boom extended, waiting for them to make contact, continually tracking them, aligning the cone precisely with their approach.

  The rim of the cone came up, gargantuan on their relative scales. The co-pilot reached and hydraulics whined, extending the lighter’s own docking-stops, a ring of partials about the bow to prevent the cone swallowing them entire. They shoved forward into the green-lit interior.

  Contact and gentle hydraulic rebound as the lighter’s ring absorbed the shock and locked hard. Not a grind or grate. Perfect dock.

  Arrogant and good, Pyanfar acknowledged. But if he isn’t, a kif’s not a Harukk pilot, is he? A dozen worries gnawed at her, tumbling in suddenly as she ran out of concerns to distract her. Another whine from the lighter’s systems, a shuddering as The Pride’s years-unused boom dragged them down against the hullport, lock beeping at lock until the boom knew how much extension to leave on it.

  They had stable g now, linked via The Pride’s boom to station’s rotation. She unbuckled and felt her way over Khym’s knee and Haral’s till both of them unbuckled and made room for her next Dur Tahar. “Dur,” she said, “you’re welcome aboard. Want to tell you that again. We’ve still got a little time here, I hope to the gods.”

  “You’ve got your own troubles.”

  “We got medical equipment. Moon Rising—”

  “We’re pretty well set up to handle it. Got some nice stuff. Piracy—pays, Pyanfar. We’ll see to Haury. And the rest of us.”

  She nodded, started to get up and make her way back forward as the deck rocked to final contact. The accessway whined, starting into place overhead.

  Dur Tahar caught her arm. “What you did—going after my crew; staying with them—they told me how you and Haral carried Haury down that dock—”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Hey.” The hand bit hard. “Chanur. You want my word? You want anything we have? You’ve got it.”

  “You follow my lead in this?”

  “Hearth and blood, Cha
nur.”

  She nodded slowly. There were things not to say aboard, where every word they whispered might be monitored. up front; or outright recorded. Even dialect was unsafe: there might be kif translators. And there was a plenitude of things not to hint at—like plans for Meetpoint; and what they were going to do if they found hani lined up on the other side.

  Like what Moon Rising might do to her credit with the hakkikt if it ran.

  “I vouched for you,” Pyanfar said, “way out on the cliff’s edge.”

  “We’re with you, I said.”

  She looked long into Tahar’s shadowy face, as the final contact boomed home, as the hatch opened and her crew unbuckled. She calculated again that they might be recorded: she gestured with her eyes toward the overhead, saw the little lowering of Dur Tahar’s lids that acknowledged she was also thinking of it. “There’s one ship in particular I want,” Pyanfar said.

  “Meaning Vigilance,” said Tahar.