Pride of Chanur (7 page)

Urtur Station was into the comflow now . . . bluster, warning the kif of severe penalties and fines. That was very old chatter, from the beginning of the trouble, a wavefront just now reaching them. Threats from the kif-those were more current. The mahendo'sat ship . . . harassed, made its way stationward. The kif turned their attention to the new arrivals, to other things. They would begin to figure soon that the freighters last arrived had jumped behind The Pride. That The Pride had to have tricked them and gone elsewhere into stsho territories, or had to be here . . . doing precisely what they were doing; and very probably a nervous kif would play the surmise he had already staked his reputation on. They would start hunting shadows once they reached that conclusion, having questioned a few frightened mahe. They would fan out, prowl the system, stop miner ships, ask close questions, probably commit small piracy at the same time, not to waste an opportunity. The station could do nothing-a larger one might, but not Urtur, which was mostly manufacturing and scarcely defended. No mahendo'sat ship would be willing to be stopped- but there was no hope for them of outrunning that hyped kif ship, no chance at least which an ordinary mahendo'sat captain was equipped to take.

And there was no chance that one of those ships incoming from Meetpoint would turn out to be hani, and relieve them all of that weight of guilt. Handur's Voyager was gone, beyond hope and help. Not even proximity to Meetpoint was likely to have saved anyone in that attack. The kif were nothing if not thorough: they practiced bloodfeud themselves, and left no survivors.

Kif-had somehow missed killing one another off in their rise off their homeworld and into space. They had done it, hani had always suspected, in mutual distrust; in outright hatred. They had contested themselves into space, and hunted each other through it until they found easier pickings.

Not The Pride, she swore, and not Pyanfar Chanur.

That kif who was in command out there-she was certain beyond question that it was Akukkakk of Hinukku, who had come ahead to stake out Urtur to be waiting for them-once that kif knew they had gotten through, he would be checking all his backtime records, sniffing through everything hoping to catch some missed trace of The Pride's arrival. They had left very little of a wavefront ghost to detect; but there might be something, some small missed flicker.

Running-now-had its hazards. As long as some of the kif shuttled the system at relatively high velocity, those ships could run down on them while they were trying to build theirs back from virtual dead stop. Their chances of breaking cover and running depended on the position of the kif ships, whether they had that critical time they might need to get their referent and to come up to position to jump. Blind as they had made themselves, the only way to find out where those ships were was to try something; and the only way to find out how many there were, was to keep an ear to the kif chatter and see if they could pick out individual ships.

This Akukkakk would not likely be so careless. It was certain enough they were not outputting ID signal, which itself brought protests from the station; no ID signal and no locational signal from any of them. Only from miners and legitimate residents-if those signals were what they ought to be.

So, so, so. They were in a bottle, and it was too much to hope that the kif would not ultimately coerce mahendo'sat help in the hunt for them. Station and miners could be intimidated as the kif put the pressure on. What was more, hani ships came and went at Urtur, and those ships would be vulnerable to the kif, unsuspecting of atrocity such as the kif had committed at Meetpoint. They would come into confrontation with the kif having no idea of the stakes involved here. The kif might act against them without warning, to draw The Pride out. Such tactics were not hani practice; but she had been many years off Anuurn and among outsiders, and she knew well enough how to think like a kif, even if the process turned her stomach and bristled the hairs on her nape.

And then what do I do? she wondered to herself. Do I come out meekly to die? Or let others? Her crew had no more or less right to life than the crew of any other hani ship which came straying into the trap. There were their lives involved. There was Hilfy's. And thereby-all of Chanur.

Next time home, she vowed, / get that other gun battery moduled in, whatever it costs.

Next time home.

She frowned, cut off the recording, which had come to the point at which she had come in. The present transmissions were few and terse. Someone should be up here directly and constantly monitoring the comflow and the rest: Hilfy was right on that score. But they were not a fighting ship and they had no personnel to spare for such. Six of them, with ordinary duties and a prisoner to watch: there was course to plot, there were checks to be run after their jump under stress, systems they had to be sure of; and there was the chance that they might have to move, defend themselves and run at any moment, which meant three crewmembers had to be mentally and physically fit to take action at any instant, whatever the hour. The automations which ran The Pride in her normal workaday business had nothing to do with their situation now, systems overstressed from a jump the ship was never designed to make, makeshift security on an alien and possibly lunatic passenger. Gods. She double-checked the pager operation, which was transmission activated, advised the crew on watch that she was taking over monitor for a while, to give them rest from the responsibility.

"He's all right," Geran reported on the Outsider. "Resting awhile."

It was good, she thought, that someone could.

She went finally to the galley, up the curve; the reason of that large ell in the control section-no appetite in particular, but her limbs were weak from hunger. She heated up a meal from the freezer, forced it down against her stomach's earnest complaints, and tossed the dish into the sterilizer. Then she walked back to her private quarters to try to rest.

She fretted too much for sleep, paced the floor pointlessly, sorted the stack of charts into order and sat down and plotted and replotted possible alternatives, which she already guessed, against odds she already knew. At last she shoved all that work aside and used the console by her bed to link in on the Outsider's terminal, via main comp and access codes. It was active again: she heard the Outsider's voice as well as saw the symbols called up by the translator keys. He was using them one after the other, and when she keyed in on com as well, she could pick up Chur's voice in the room, quiet assistance- sounds which might go with pantomime. Occasionally there was a pairing of symbols the machine did not do-Chur's interference, perhaps, trying to get a point across. Pyanfar cut off com and the translator reception, stared at the dead screen. The chatter from Urtur system continued from the pager at her belt, subdued and depressing in content. Mahendo'sat ships were being advised by their own station not to run, to submit to search if singled out by the kif, to hug station if they were already there and hope for safety.

A hani voice objected a question.

Hani!

Pyanfar sprang from the bedside, the walls of her cabin immaterial before her vision of that station with a hani ship at dock; with kif able to move on it at will. The hani spoke . . . had spoken long ago, in the timelag. Whatever would happen . . . had long since taken place. Time as well as space lay between The Pride and that hani ship and the kif, and there was nothing she could do, blind, from a dead drift, to help it.

"Gods!" she spat, and hurled the desk chair forward on its track with a crash. It was a Faha vessel in port; Faha's Starchaser, and that was a house and a company allied to Chanur. Her brother Kohan's first wife was Huran Faha. Hilfy's mother, for the gods' sakes! There were bonds, compacts, agreements of alliance. . . .

And Hilfy.

The mahendo'sat at Urtur Station urged the hani ship to keep calm. The mahe had, they avowed, no intention of becoming involved in a kif quarrel, and they were not going to let a rash hani involve them.

The hani demanded information; kif hunted a Chanur ship: the Faha had been listening and fretting under restraint this long, and wanted answers-knew this was going out over com, as the station knew what the Faha were doing, making vocal trouble, making sure information got out into the dark where Chanur ears might pick it up.

O gods, o gods. There was an ally, doing the best for them that could be done at the moment . . . and they were both helpless to come at the enemy.

Pyanfar pulled the chair out again, sat down, lost in listening for a while. There was no further information. They had gotten that spurt on the station's longrange or on Starchaser's . . . information like a beacon fired off into outsystem, deliberately. If they had it figured The Pride was here . . . then so did the kif.

There were echoes, repetitions of the message: com was sorting them out, transmissions of differing degrees of clarity, and the hair prickled on Pyanfar's neck, sudden, grateful realization: ships all over the system had begun relaying that message, letting it off like multiple ripples in still water, massive defiance of the kif-and the kif had not ordered silence ... on this timeline. They could not enforce such a demand, at the present limits of their aggression at Urtur: but those limits could change. The information was going out like a multiplied shout . . . had gone out, long ago, and was still traveling.

She found Hilfy for once where she was supposed to be, in her own quarters, asleep. She hesitated when the sleepy voice answered the doorcom hail, no more than hesitated. "Up," she said into the com. "I've somewhat to tell you."

Hilfy was quick to the door. It whipped opened and Hilfy hung there, disheveled from bed and grimacing in the full light of the corridor. She had not paused for clothes.

Pyanfar walked in past her, waited while Hilfy brightened the interior lighting, and held up a restraining hand, that the brightening need not be permanent or full. It was a room Hilfy had made her own, a great deal of Chanur style in this cabin, more than in her own quarters, mementoes affixed to the walls, pictures of homeworld's mountains and the broad plains of the Chanur holdings ... the Holding itself, gold stone, shaded with vines. Pyanfar looked about her, and looked at Hilfy. "Briefly," Pyanfar said, "I have to tell you a thing; and there's nothing can be done about it, I'll tell you that first. We've picked up signal from a Faha ship docked at station. They're in the middle of the kif, and they fired a message off for station that I think they meant we should hear: noisy chatter. I think they know we're out here and in what kind of trouble. But there's the kif between us, and there's no way we can do much for each other. You understand?"

Hilfy's eyes had stopped flinching at the light. She stared, amber-rimed about the black, and her ears flattened and pricked up again with effort. For a young woman and roused naked out of sleep, she acquired a quiet dignity in getting her wits collected. "Do you know which ship, aunt?"

"Starchaser. That's Lihan Faha in command."

Hilfy nodded. The ears flinched, ringless. Her face stayed composed. "They'll be in danger. Like Voyager. And they won't know it. No one would expect that kind of attack."

"Lihan's no tyro, imp, believe it. We don't play their hand; they don't interfere in ours. Can't. Nothing we can do out here."

"We could throw them a warning and run."

"I don't take that as an option at the moment. We send it from distance and the kif will have it before Starchaser has a chance. And public defiance, involving Starchaser in our leaving-the kif would be obliged to react. Revenge is part of their mindset. You have to calculate that into it. No. Starchaser's riding her own luck. I don't plan to push it for her. So go back to bed, hear?"

Hilfy stood a moment without moving. Nodded after a moment, her dignity still about her.

"Good," Pyanfar said tightly, and walked out. She heard the door close after her, and walked the upcurving corridor which led from Hilfy's quarters to her own, across the main topside corridor and down a short distance.

So she might have cost Hilfy her sound sleep, and the meal she had eaten lay like lead at her own stomach; but Faha involvement in the hazard was not something for Hilfy to find out later, like a child, spared adult unpleasantnesses. Hilfy's face stayed before her; the pager unit at her hip kept up its static babble, dying echoes of the message, occasional-spurts of closer transmission, but rarer and rarer. A stsho ship had come into the system. The kif disdained to harass it; it begged instructions of Urtur Station, anxious to scud in before the storm.

A lot of mahe in the system might have the same idea, miners who had already reckoned it time to head for port, getting themselves out of the way of the kif s hunt.

It was a vast system out there. Most of the ships in it were incapable of jump, insystem operators only. So far, everyone was keeping remarkably calm, even the hani at the eye of that storm.

Gods grant a great many ships pulled inward . . . and afforded the kif a harder target if they wanted to raid Station in search of one hani ship. That was one hope. Lihan Faha of Starchaser was too old, too wary to rush out to mismatched battle. Lihan would not expect stupidity of The Pride. The Faha would expect them to fend for themselves and above all not touch anything off prematurely. The Faha needed time: there was a chance that they could offload cargo and strip that ship down for speed, given time, shed mass without the need to lose a cargo. They would not expect help more than that.

That was logic speaking.

But it hurt.

IV

She sat and listened a time in her cabin, finally contacted Geran belowdecks and turned over the monitoring to her. "Faha," was Geran's only comment.

"Hilfy knows," Pyanfar said.

"So," Geran murmured. And then: "I'm on. I've got it."
  

Pyanfar signed off and sighed heavily, sitting on the edge of her bed, arms on her knees-finally took a mild sedative and undressed and curled up in the bowlshaped bed for a precious while of oblivion, trying not to think of emergencies and contingencies and the horde of kif prowling about the system.