Chanur's Homecoming

Chapter Five

...it went off.

The Pride made the drop into realspace and Pyanfar blinked, gasped a breath, and felt an acute pain about the heart which confused her entirely as her eyes cleared on The Pride's boards and blinking lights and her ears received the warning beeps from com: Wake up, wake up, wake up-

Meetpoint?

Her eyes found the data on the screen, blurred and focussed again with a mortal effort. "We're on," she said around the pounding of her heart, "Haral, we're on."

And from elsewhere, distant and echoing in and out of space: "Chur, do you hear me? Do you hear?"

From still another: "We've got passive signal. Captain! We're not getting buoy here. They've got Meetpoint image blanked!''

''Gods and thunders. Geran!''

"I'm on it, I'm already on it, captain."

-Hunting their partners, who could make a fatal mistake in a jump this close, looking for the first sign of signal, and themselves rushing in hard toward Meetpoint, into crowded space, where the scan's bounce-back could only tell them things too late and passive reception might not have all the data. They were blind. Meetpoint wanted them that way. It was somebody's trap.

"Priority," Hilfy said. "Buoy warning: dump immediately."

"Belay that," Pyanfar said. With two ships charging up behind them out of hyperspace, she had no wish to have herself slowing down in their path. Collision to fore was an astronomical possibility; behind was a statistical probability.

And the kif who gave them orders meant business.

Acquisition," Geran said, "your one, Haral."

"Your two," Haral said; and id chased the image to Pyanfar's number two monitor. Aja Jin was in.

"What've we got here? Geran-"

"I'm working on it. We got stuff all over the place on passive, nobody outputting image, lot of noise, lot of noise, we got ships here-"

"Mark," Haral said, "less twenty seconds."

"That's it, that's it, brace for dump."

She sent it to auto; The Pride lurched half into hyperspace again and fell out with less energy-

-gods, gods, sick as a novice-What in a mahen hell's in this system? Come on, Geran. Get it sorted. O gods- At forty-five percent of Light. With the system rushing up in their faces. Their own signal going out from that traitor buoy at full Light. Themselves about to become a target for someone. She fumbled after the foil containers at her elbow, bit through one and let the salt flood chase down the nausea. There was a meeting of unpleasant tides somewhere behind the pit of her throat and her nose and hands and the folds of her body broke out in sickly sweat. "Geran. Get me id."

"Working, I'm working."

Dump fouling up the scan; nothing where it ought to be, the comp overloaded with input and trying to make positional sense out of it before it got around to analyzing ship IDs.

"Multiple signal," Hilfy said. "Nothing clear yet. Multi-species."

"Arrival," Jik said. "Moon Rising is in."

"On the mark," Haral said. "Second dump, stand by."

Taking it down fast. The pain in her chest refused to leave. The nausea all but overcame her; but she hit the control anyway-

-down again.

-Gangling figures against white light. Captain, a voice said, and Chur was there with the light shining about her, in the midst of a long black hallway, and shafts of light spearing past her as she moved in the slightest. She turned her shoulder and looked back into the light-

-"Chur-" they cycled through again, back in realspace.

And the weakness that ran through her was all-enveloping. She fought it back and groped after another of the packets. Bit into it and drank the noisome stuff down in a half dozen convulsive gulps.

"We got signal on Moon Rising," Geran's voice reached her, indistinct; she heard Tully talking, some half-drunken babble.

"Chur," he was saying. "Chur, you answer. Please you answer.''

No sound out of Chur, then. It might still be the sedative. The machine would knock her out in stress. They had plenty of it. Pyanfar blinked again, flexed her right arm in the brace, withdrew it and shoved the mechanism aside, out of her way. Her hands shook. She heard the quiet, desperate drone of Tully's alien voice: "Chur, Chur, you hear?"

While Geran battled the comp for ID they desperately needed. Mind on business.

"We got recept on Meetpoint," Hilfy said. "Lot of output. Busy in there. I'm trying to link up with our partners, get a fix on those ships-"

"We've got to keep going," she muttered. "Got to. No gods-be choice. Blind. We got our instructions, we got-"

"Kif," Skkukuk said suddenly. "Kifish output!"

"Audio two," Hilfy said.

It was. Some kifish ship was transmitting in code. Unaware of them yet, it might be. Or close enough to have picked them up, inbound from Kefk. "Going to have an intercept down our necks any minute," she muttered, and sweated. "Akkhtimakt. He's on guard here. Or he's running the whole gods-be station-"

"Image, priority," Geran said. "My gods."

Passive scan came up with resolution, a haze to this side, to that, all in differing colors indicating different vectors and slow, virtually null-movement, relative. Big hazy ball where Meetpoint ought to be. Haze to zero-ninety-minus sixty. Haze id minus seventy-thirty-sixty. Another ball out to one ten. The only thing that made sense was the Given in the system, the Meetpoint Mass itself, big and dark and dead from its cons-old formation. And the station itself. The rest-

"Khym," Pyanfar snapped. "Interior com. Tully! audio one. Listen sharp. We don't know what we've got here. Could be humans, could be anything. Whatever we got, it's a lot of it."

"Got it," Khym said; and: "Got," from Tully.

The comp main panel between Haral and Hilfy was a steady flicker of inter-partition queries and action from this and that side of its complex time-sharing lobes. Like the lunatic tc'a: it had several minds to make up, and they were all busy.

She rubbed her chest where the pain had settled and swiped the back of the same hand across an itch on her nose.

And listened to Khym trying over and over again to raise Chur on the com.

"Chur," he cried suddenly. "Geran-I got her, she's answering! Chur, how are you?"

She was alive back there. Someone switched Chur's answer through. It was scatologically obscene.

Pyanfar drew one painful breath and another.

"Thank the gods," Haral murmured in a low voice. And from Khym: "Ker Chur, we have a problem just now-"

"That's stsho," Hilfy said. "I'm picking up something near the station. Stsho. And hani. More than one. You got data coming, Geran, Jik.-I hear that." To someone on com. And Geran:

"Gods rot it, I'm working." Then: "Yeah, just take it easy, hear?"

"I got," Jik said quietly. "They be here they don't-"

"Ten minutes station AOS," Haral said. "Mark."

Pyanfar drew another breath and flexed her hands. "Hilfy, output to Meetpoint traffic control: coming in on standard approach."

"Aye, done, standard approach data in transmission."

"Aja Jin make dump," Jik said.

"Stand by our final."

The wavefront of their arrival had not yet gotten to Meetpoint central. The robotic beacon in the jump range knew as much as its AI brain was capable of knowing anything; but the buoy was not communicating data back to them even after it had had time to receive their ID squeal.

It was certain that it was a trap. Stsho had no nerve sufficient to antagonize an armed enemy, blinding them as they came in. It was what they hired guards to do.

"No telling where Sikkukkut is," Pyanfar muttered. "It'd take him maybe another hour to get that lot away from Kefk. But he's fast."

"Kkkkt," Skkukuk said, which sound sent the hair up on her back. Not a comment except that click which meant a thousand things. "You all right back there: Skkukuk, you all right?" she asked the kif. And deliberately pleased the bastard. It was a genuine question; nourishment for him was a problem. No gods-be little vermin on my bridge, was her ultimatum; and Skkukuk had come up with his own answer. Straight simple-sugars and water, into a vein.

"Kkkkt," he said again. "Yes, hakt'." Doubtless coming to a whole array of mistaken kifish conclusions about his status, the crew's, Jik's and Tully's; that elongate, predatory brain was set up to process that kind of information constantly, inexorable as a star in its course. Claw and crawl and climb. With a sense of humor only when it was in the ascendancy and demonstrating its power.

Creator Gods, if You made that, You must've had something in mind. But what?

"Imaging," Tirun said; "priority channel four."

"Your two," Haral said; but that change was already there, the hazy ball of Meetpoint separating into a whole globe of points. So did one of the other patches of haze. Another remained indistinct.

"We got a lot of company," Haral said.

It was a swarm for sure. A monstrous swarm sitting around Meetpoint station, like insects around a corpse.

"Migods," she murmured.

Another blur materialized. About ten minutes Light off station nadir. Unresolved yet, and small. It could get a lot wider.

"There's another one," Haral said; on the second Geran and Jik both came in on com.

"Got that," Pyanfar muttered, her mind half there, half on what the comp was bringing up, color-code spotted into the station-mass that said stsho/hani ID.

More IDs. There were stsho and hani in the station imaging, there were mahendo'sat and kif outlying. But not a single methane-breather in the output, which could mean that imaging had ignored them; or that no methane-breather was outputting; or that the methane-breathers had gotten the wind up them at some time earlier in events and lit out for their own territories.

"Captain," Geran said.

"I got it, I got it."

"Not a methane-breather anywhere," Haral muttered. "I don't like this."

"Got to be Akkhtimakt out there," Tirun said. "Looks like we got a real standoff here."

"Mahen ships out there," Pyanfar said. "Goldtooth, I'll bet you that, eggs to pearls. And too many ships. Gods, look at that."

"Humans," Haral said in a low voice. Not on bridge-com; voice-only.

"Yeah."

Tully knows it. Got to know it. He's not deaf. Not blind either.

"Pyanfar," Jik said. "Give com."

"In your own hell I will. Sit still."

Stsho and hani sitting there dead at dock with kif in full view, kifish ships with the advantage of position and startup time and the mass of Meetpoint's dark dwarf to pull them in?

But so had those other blotches on scan, mahen and alien. Standoff for sure.

We got troubles, gods, we got troubles.

"Hilfy: to both our partners; stand by hard dump, at the 2 unit mark; gods-be if we're going into that. Hard dump and brake, We're going to sit."

"You got damn kif come in here behind us, upset ever'thing!" Jik cried. "Give com, dammit, I talk!"

"Sit still while you got ears!"

"Aja Jin's outputting," Hilfy said. "Jik. Translate."

Faster than the mechanical translation.

"They make ID. Say hello to Ana. Say got kif coming behind us."

"Gods rot them." Monitors flicked and shifted. They were being inundated with com input, faster than their operators could handle it. Transcriptions were coming over. Kifish com. Hani ships were standing out from station. Stsho were in panic. Their wavefront had gotten to the station but not to the outliers they had seen on passive. Three more minutes for Akkhtimakt's kif to notice them. Seven for the unidentifieds that might be mahendo'sat. Eight for the ones farthest out, who might be human. And double that for response time. "We're going to have kif up our backsides."

"You going have damn kif break through system, they don't stop, you hear? Pyanfar! Give com!"

"Shut it up. Haral! Dump us down."

Haral hit the switches. The Pride shed V in a single lurch to a lower state; space went inside out-

. . . another lurch. The universe spun once about. . . . . . . .revised itself.

Instruments cleared. Broke up again with a heartstopping jolt and cleared, some ship too near them and themselves displaced off their nav-fix as the field popped them down the gravity-slope.

The rate was far less. Easy from here. Two more blips reappeared: Moon Rising and Aja Jin matched them and came down again widely spaced from them and a little to the rear.

"Reacquire," Geran said.

"Com output to my board," Pyanfar said; and when the light went on: "All ships: this is Pyanfar Chanur, The Pride of Chanur. Take precautions; all station personnel, go to innermost secure areas. Maintain order. All ships drop to low-V for your own protection.-We have limited time. This is The Pride of Chanur and allied ships urging all ships to maintain position and take no action. The hakkikt Sikkukkut is inbound with a large number of ships. Take precautions-"

"Sheshe sheshei-to!" Jik cried. And Geran:

"Priority, Priority!" Geran cried, as the scan-monitor went red all across the top, with a breakout behind them like plague in the jumprange.

"Gods-be!" Pyanfar cried; and hit the alarm.

Useless. With ships coming up their backsides and under their bellies at V that could cross a planetary diameter in seconds. The informational wavefront was on them at C and the ships a fraction behind it-

Instruments jumped and went crazy. Her heart slammed in her chest, and the first firing of panicked neurons said they were dying-the second, that they had not died and the encounter was over in nanoseconds.

It passed like a storm. It was inbound to Meetpoint with a dopplered flare of output, like devils screaming down on the damned, Meetpoint with minutes left and mortal reflexes hopeless of mounting any response-

"O gods," she said for the third time. It came out with what felt like the last of her breath.

"Give com," Jik yelled. "Give-"

''Stay in your seat!'' Tirun snarled back.

"Priority, com," Hilfy snapped. "Tully!"

And hard on that a stream of alien language, Tully's voice, rapid-paced: "... to all ships," the words turned up on monitor, translator-function. "This is # Tully ###, ask you # stay #####-"

Total breakup. Whatever he was speaking, it was not in the comp-dictionary.

"Damn," Jik said. "Ana!"

While a mass of kifish output raced ahead of them, Sikkukkut, howling down on the station, nadir-bound, past a stationful of stsho who could not fight; and a cluster of hani ships who might try. And die doing it.

"Gods curse that bastard," Pyanfar muttered, and something hurt deep in her gut, diminishing that pain about her heart. "Gods curse him. Haral. To my boards. Hilfy: tell our partners stand by. Haral: course to Urtur."

"Aye," Hilfy said.

"Do it," Pyanfar said, "Haral."

A code flashed to her screen. Priority four. Personnel emergency. From Tirun's hand.

"Pyanfar!" Jik's voice. She spun the chair, saw Jik unbuckled and rising to his feet as Khym scrambled for his and Skkukuk moved faster still.

But Jik stopped. Stopped still. So did everything else when she held up a hand. "Pyanfar, you got give me com-"

"Aja Jin's outputting code," Hilfy said. "Inputting to code faculty, Haral."

"Jik," Pyanfar said, "I don't want my crew hurt. Don't want you hurt. You're about to give me no choice. You hear me?"

"Damn fool hani, that be Mahijiru, Ana be wait signal-he get your message, he go from here. He got go from here. I give you message. You send: say Sheni. He understand, give you same co-operation. / tell truth, Pyanfar."

"Directive to that ship can't go out from here," she said, ears flat. All but deaf. Her heart was pounding. "You trying to fry us good, Jik? Mahen ships are dead-stopped out there. They're caught, same as hani are. We haven't got a choice here and Sikkukkut isn't just real pleased with us to start with. Khym. Skkukuk. I think you better get Jik off the bridge."

"No! Pyanfar! Damn fool, you need me. Need me here. You send message!''

"I can't trust you. I'm going to ask you to leave. Quietly. Right now. Or you sit in that chair."

Jik's hand tightened on the chair back. Not going to move, she thought; it seemed forever. Khym would never delay so long. Time spooled itself out the way it did in jump. She had to think of her own ship; and of the gun in her pocket. I'll use it, Jik; I'd use it if you made me, for godssakes, don't, don't make me, I've got my ship to protect-

He moved to put himself in the chair. And she let go the breath she had forgotten, and spun her chair back again.

The translations were multiplying on the screen. Aja Jin was spilling out everything, a flood of com-sent explanations, coded and headed out toward the mahen ships. Tully was still sending on their com, never having stopped. It was a guess what he was sending. Saying everything they could not, dared not, in a code no one could crack.

Treason against the hakkikt. Perhaps against them.

Or against humankind itself.

But what did the hakkikt expect, sending them in first, to paralyze the system-when his own arrival hard upon their own would send ships running like leaves in the wind?

She switched that to Jik's monitor. Silent comment.

It's getting done, Jik. And it may kill all of us.

Tully's output made no sense at all, misapplications or coded applications of vocabulary driving the translator to lunacy. What came out of Aja Jin achieved syntax. It made no sense in some of its parts. But did in others. They were onto those codewords. If Kesurinan over there had truly suspected something she might have used some alternate; it was a guess that the mahendo'sat had alternates. But Kesurinan did not suspect. That was the best guess: Kesurinan did not suspect that they had those words at least; or that Jik would have given them out against his will, to a ship that had a mahen-given translation program.

While the ship hurtled on at its reduced V and duty stations talked back and forth to each other in muted voices and the blip and click of instruments and boards.

For Jik it was already past. And there was the kif in front of him, and hani who had kept him from his ship at a moment that might prove decisive in all history.

She found not a thing to say either.

Sikkukkut's kif hurtled on toward attack on Akkhtimakt and on Goldtooth and the humans, if that was what that mass was out there. While the stsho and any other non-combatants on that station abided the outcome in helpless terror.

"Priority," Geran said. Scan went red-bordered, a group of outlier ships went from stationary blue to blinking blue of low-V ship from which passive-recept had picked up some activity. Like engine-firing.

Akkhtimakt.

Her claws dug into the upholstery. "What AOS are they on?"

"That's our message," Tirun said. "They don't know Sikkukkut's here yet. That AOS is coming up minus three. I've got ID on some of those hani ships at station. Negative on Ehrran. That's Harun's Industry and The Star of Tauran, stsho ship Meotnis; hani vessel Vrossaru's Outbounder; Pauraun's Lightweaver; Shaurnurn's Hope-"

Old names. Spacer names. The clans of Araun. Pyanfar heard them and clenched her hands on the arms of the chair.

As the color-shift on Akkhtimakt's kif went over from blue to blinking green. To purple, like the image on Sikkukkut’s ships. But a double hand of Sikkukkut's ships were shifting down, going brighter bluegreen, and two brighter still. Different assignments. Stopping in midsystem. Where they could shift vector and strike at Meetpoint Station. Or at the mahendo'sat.

"Priority," Geran said.

"I got that," she said. "Sikkukkut's got his tail guarded, he does."

"AOS on our message," Tirun said, monotone. "Akkhtimakt's present position."

"Gods." Vector, gods rot it, Geran. What's Akkhtimakt's vector? "Geran, can you get me a-"

The projection took shape. "Priority, priority," Geran said. And her answer came up two-vectored, one part of Akkhtimakt's group bound nadir, twenty ships for Urtur and ten for Kshshti. Her heart seized up and beat painfully against the stress.

"Gods and thunders."

"Sikkukkut may just chase 'em," Haral said. "Gods send he chases 'em clear to Urtur, get him by the gods out of here."

"Give me com," Jik said in a low voice. As if he had no hope of it already. "Give me com. I talk to Ana-"

But suddenly Goldtooth's image was blinking too. Imminent motion, as yet undefined in the comp. The doppler shift could tell it what it had, and comp was working on the precise figure.

"Pyanfar."

"No, gods rot it. Gods-be, that bastard's just AOS on that move of Akkhtimakt's and he's losing no time taking out of here. Whatever Aja Jin sent may not reach him before he goes. Running. Where? How far's he going?"

"Not know," Jik aid.

"Outsystem? Turn around and come in?"

"Give com. I tell him, he do! Code. God! Kif not break fast enough! Give com."

"You might not catch him. And he might not listen. And that leaves us with the kif, doesn't it? All alone; and us transmitting to his enemies in code. No thanks."

While, beside them and behind, Aja Jin kept quiet. Perhaps Kesurinan believed that that order for silence came from Jik, relayed because he was not on the bridge; or Kesurinan still trusted. Perhaps.

"Mahen ships are AOS of our number-two message," Tirun droned placidly, their relativity-timekeeper, while disaster went on shaping up around them. "Going to be a while on Kesurinan's. It may not make it."

The Goldtooth-human aggregate went green. Retreating. Faster and faster.

Jik swore. In mahensi. "All way doublecross. Pyanfar. You, me, Ana. Damn, damn!"

"Shut it down."

"Kif-damn, kif do this thing, you don't go in fight, don't go in, Pyanfar."

"That, you got. No way are we going into that."

While the recent past unfolded on the screen, the computer struggling to make sense of it and sending out image that had two shades of the same kifish color on the ID monitor.

"Gods-be fool kif've hardly dumped," Haral muttered at her side. "Carrying sixty-five of light. Gods, look at that."

"I'd rather not," she said back. And felt sick at the stomach. Felt a tremor in all her limbs. "Bastard's got enough V to hyper out of here, right up Akkhtimakt's tail."

"Dangerous," Haral said. Meaning collisions on the other side, where they would drop down into the well at Urtur not knowing the trim and the precise capacity on the ships ahead of them. It was asking for it.

And the godscursed mahendo'sat were leaving system. Abandoning them. There were other conclusions, but none of them were enough to pin hope on. Knowing Goldtooth, whose priorities were all mahendo'sat.

That's one more I owe you, Goldtooth, you bastard.

We got hani ships at station. We got three hundred thousand stsho who can't defend themselves.

She reached after the last of the food packets by her chair and got it down; her mouth tasted of dry fuzz and copper. She was aware of loose fur rubbing between her skin and the chair leather; of hair sticking to the console-rim where it had rubbed from her arm; sweat had soaked her trousers and made the leather of the seat moist wherever she touched it.

Once at Urtur Akkhtimakt might rum about and come back with V on his side. Even if it took four months. But beyond Urtur was hani territory; the conflict might keep going.

Four months out and back, again and again and again. Years of maneuvering as the ground-bound saw it. Mere weeks in the time-stretch of ships that made virtually no system-time at all. Years of fighting, with ship-crews caught in virtual stasis, unaged.

How does anything survive in that kind of lunacy? What have we got at the end of it?

Gods fry him, what game is Goldtooth playing now? Him ;, and the humans. All running. What in a mahen hell good are they?

What doublecross are the humans planning?

What did Tully tell them?

"Priority," Hilfy said. "Message from Sikkukkut: quote: Dock and hold the station."

Got our orders, do we? Kiss the hakkikt's feet, do his work, move at his order. Go in there like a bunch of gods-be pirates?

I wish I were dead before this.

"Advise Aja Jin and Tahar," she said.

"Aye," Hilfy said. And a moment later: "They acknowledge: final message: Going on your signal."

We're worrying about what Goldtooth's doing. What Akkhtimakt's doing. We forget one important thing: Sikkukkut's no fool. He's had time to think this thing through. He's got something planned. He's thinking ahead of Akkhtimakt. Gods, what's the next move?

"Put us in," she said.

"Aye," said Haral. And began to lay course. They were moving in approximately the right vector. Haral hit the directionals and they started hammering off the V, turning, bringing the mains to bear on it. Those cut in, a one-G push, sudden and solid against the downward G they had from the rotation, a steady discomfort.

"Chur all right back there?" she asked. "Khym?"

"Chur's asked," Khym said, "What we're doing. I've tried to explain. I think she's drugged. She says she wants free of the machine. I said no, we had enough trouble."

"We got enough trouble," she muttered, and punched in all-ship. "Chur, we're all right. We got our hands full up here, huh? Just don't worry your sister."

"Aye," Chur's voice came back to her. She had been Geran's partner at that board. Now she lay listening while scan tried to track a Situation multiplied by fives and worse. "Geran, I'm . . . going to sleep . . . gods-be machine."

"G-stress," Pyanfar said.

Is it? Gods, cousin, hang on.

"We're headed into station," Geran said. "Hear that, sister of mine?"

"Got it," Chur murmured. It sounded like that. But she was far from the pickup.

The mains cut in, hard acceleration. And cut out again.

"We're on," Haral said. "We're going to be inertial. Take our time getting in there."

Preserve our options. Haral was reading her mind again. And inertial-time was rest-time.

She dropped her hand from the boards and sat there a moment while her muscles went weak and she was not at all certain that she could stand up. The interval between the two groups of kif narrowed further and further, changes perceptible only in the data-tags, but definitive. That would go on for the better part of an hour til someone got in position to do something. Jump and shoot, respectively. Then it remained to see what Sikkukkut would do.

Leave us to hold onto Meetpoint while he chases that bastard down?

Us to hold Meetpoint with Goldtooth loose? Goldtooth's taking his options. He won't jump till he has to, he wants to know what Sikkukkut's doing; and Sikkukkut's going to give him no options, going to follow right on his tail till he jumps. There's some small chance that Sikkukkut might leave if he can get Goldtooth out. He might rip loose everything he can pirate here and go for Akkhtimakt at Urtur. Akkhtimakt's got to go slow on the turn-around there, all that gods-be dust.

Got to. Then Sikkukkut could catch him up and hammer him good.

If we knew Goldtooth's mind. Kifish ships are going to run up his backside, make him jump for Tt’a’va’o, they got V on him, he's got no choice either.

And once Goldtooth goes, he and the humans've got a three, four month turnaround to get back here. Gods, think, Pyanfar! What are the options?

"Tirun. Take watch. All the rest of you, you're off. Get something to eat. Geran, you're cleared aft; Skkukuk, belowdecks. Take what you can get. Jik. You I want to talk to."

Seats moved, restraints clicked open. Everyone was in motion, Haral as well. Pyanfar turned her own chair and stopped. Jik still sat in his place, staring at the screens. Tirun was beside him, keeping her station. And Tully, though Hilfy had him by the elbow, lingered with a confused and sorrowful look toward the boards. Toward-gods knew, his own people starting off in retreat with Goldtooth, leaving him behind, perhaps forever, who knew? It was not a time to say anything. Pyanfar stared their way till Hilfy prevailed and they went out the door.

"Haral," she said. "Take the long break. Tirun, board to you, you go off when we get to final. Sorry about it."

"Got it," Tirun said hoarsely. 'I'm fine, captain."

That left Jik to deal with. Khym had lingered in the corridor. She saw him standing down near Chur's door, looking back toward the bridge.

In case.

"Haral," she said in deepest and most impenetrable hani: "You want to bring me up a sedative. Something our guest can take. If we have to do that."

"Aye, captain," Haral said.

"I'll be in galley."

She wanted to be clean. She wanted to go back to her cabin and run herself under the shower. The whole bridge smelled like ammonia and hani and human and mahen sweat, an aroma even the fans did not totally disperse. But there was no time for that. It was far from over.

Even on this deck.

"Get me up," Chur said, with a move of an aching arm. "O gods, prop this gods-be bed up. I'm a mess."

"That's all right." Geran sat down on the bedside and checked the implanted tubes with a quick glance, bit a hole in the packet she had brought and offered it to Chur. "Take this and you get the bed propped up."

"Unnhhn." The very thought hit her stomach and lay there indigestible. "Prop it first."

"You promise."

"Gods rot you, I'll rip your ears." Geran touched a control and the bed inclined upward. Chur flexed her legs and shifted her weight and grimaced in pain as the arm with the implants shifted down. But Geran, relentless, got an arm behind Chur's head and held the packet where she could drink.

It hit her stomach the way she had feared. "Enough," she said, "enough." And Geran had the sense to quit and just let her lie there drifting a moment, in that place she had discovered where the pain was not so bad. "Where's the shooting?" she asked finally.

"Hey, we ducked out of it."

Chur lay there a moment adding that up and rolled her head over where she could look at her sister, one long stare. "Where'd we duck to? Huh?"

"Kif are about to chew each other to rags about fifteen minutes off. We're headed to station for R & R. Maybe I'll buy you a drink, huh?"

"We take damage?" She recalled a lurch, like the thrust of the mains from the wrong angle . . . impossible to happen. Recalled a long hard acceleration, till the machine put her out cold. "Geran, what's the straight of it?"

"That is the straight of it. We're in one piece, we're going into station while the kif work it out. That's all." Too gods-be cheerful, Geran. Whole lot too cheerful. "Give me the truth," Chur said. "That's a gods-be dumb move. Sit at dock. Who knows what could come in? Huh? What's going on?"

"You want to try something solid?"

"No," she said flatly. And lay there breathing a moment, and turned her face toward Geran's stricken silence. Gods, the pain in Geran's face. "But I have to, don't I?" Her stomach rebelled at the thought. "Bit of soup, maybe. Nothing heavy. Don't push me, huh?"

"Sure," Geran said. Her ears had pricked up at once. Her eyes shone like a grateful child's. "You want the rest of this?"

O gods. Don't let me be sick. "Soup," she said, and clamped her jaws and tried not to think about it. "I rest, huh?"

"You rest," Geran said.

She shut her eyes, turning it all off.

You're still lying, Geran. But she did not have strength to face whatever it was Geran was lying about. She hoped not to discover. Her world limited itself to the pains in her joints and the misery of her arm and her back. The world could be right again if she could keep her stomach quiet and ease the pain a little. She just wanted not to throw up her guts again, and any problem more than that was more than she could carry.

It was impossible not to ask. But in a dim, weary way, with the data that came over the com all muddling in her head and promising nothing good at all, she thanked the gods Geran held back the answers.

"Jik," Pyanfar said.

Jik pushed himself back in his chair and looked at the board in front of him, its screens all dark and dead. And turned his chair then and stared at her across the width of the bridge.

A word was too much. Till she had something to offer him from her side. Time seemed to stretch further and further like the eeriness of jump. And there was no rescue and no way out of the impasse they were in. Him on The Pride's bridge. Aja Jin ignorant and silent beside them.

His allies outbound. Unless by some monumentally unexpected turn the kif all went after their enemies and left them alone.

And none of them believed that.

Down the corridor the lift worked, and opened, and let Haral out. Pyanfar got up and went to the door of the bridge and out it, to intercept her in the hall; and Haral slipped her a couple of pills. "Thanks," she said, "you sure about this stuff."

"This'll make it sure," Haral said, and fished a flask out of her capacious pocket. Parini. Pyanfar took it and gestured with a move of her jaw back the way Haral had come. Haral went.

And Pyanfar turned back toward the bridge, where Jik sat quietly in his chair, caring not to turn it when she came up on him. She walked back to the fore of the bridge, and stood there looking back. "I want to talk to you. Private." Only Tirun was left with the boards; and she herself was not up to a hand-to-hand with a taller, heavier mahendo'sat, even if he was jump-wobbly too. Fool, she thought. But some courses had to be steered. Even at risk to the ship.

"Come on," she said again. "Jik."

He got to his feet. She walked away, deliberately taking her eyes off him, though it was sure Tirun was alert to sudden moves.

But he came docilely after her, and followed her through the short corridor to the galley.

Tirun being Tirun, she would both monitor it all on the intercom and pass the word to all aboard that the galley had just gone offlimits.

She turned when she had gotten as far as the counter and the cabinet with the gfi-cups.

"Captain," Tirun said via com. "Pardon. Goldtooth's group has started shifting out, first one just went. Before AOS on Kesurinan's message. Close, but they're not going to get it. Thought you'd want to know."

"Huh," she said. "Pass that to the crew."

''Aye." The audio cut out. The com stayed live, its telltale still glowing on the wall-unit.

And Jik stood there, just stood, with a slump in his shoulders and a set like stone to his face. "Sit down," she said, and he did that, on the long bench against the wall, elbows on the table. She got a glass from the cabinet, the flask from her pocket, poured a shot of it and set it in front of him.

"No," he said.

"That's prescriptive. You drink. Hear?"

He took it then, and took a sip and shuddered visibly. Sat there looking nowhere. Thinking of friends, maybe. Of Goldtooth, outbound and not to return for months.

Of his ship, so close and himself helpless to reach them.

"Take another," she said. He did, shuddering after that one too, and that shudder did not stop. Liquor spilled out onto his hand, pooled on the table as he set the glass down. He put the hand to his mouth and sucked at the knuckle where it had spilled. His eyes glared at her.

She sat down, opposite him. If Tirun wanted her, there was the alarm. Her own aches could wait. She was prepared to wait. For whatever it took.

It was a long time before he moved at all, and that was to lift the glass and take it all down in one long stinging draught. He shuddered a third time, set the glass down empty and she filled it.

Got a crate of the stuff in storage. Pour it all down him if we have to.

"Hao'ashtie-na ma visini-ma'arno shishini-to nes mura'ani hes." Whoever he was talking to, she did not follow it. Something about dark and cold. It was that dialect he spoke with Kesurinan. "Muiri nai, Pyanfar."

"Mishio-ne." I'm sorry.

'Hao. Mishi'sa." -Yes. Sorry. "Neshighot-me pau taiga?" What the hell good is it?

'None. I know that. Species-interest, Jik. I warned you of that. Now you can try to break my neck. It won't get you our access codes. What it will get you is a lot of grief. You don't want it; I don't want it. We're old friends. And you know down that one way's a lot of trouble and no good at all and down the other's a hani whose interests might be a lot the same as yours in the long run."

For a while he said nothing. After a while he picked up the glass again and took a tiny sip. "Merus'an-to he neishima kif, he?"

Something about damned kif, himself, and bargains.

"I want my people safe, Jik."

"You damn fool!" His hand came down on the table, jarring the liquid. "Give me com."

"So you can doublecross me again? No. Not this time. Too many lives here."

While pacifist stsho ran in gibbering terror in the corridors of their station and discovered there were species which could neither be hired nor bribed nor prevented from being predators. "Humans," she said; "and mahendo'sat. If Tully's right, if Tully's telling the truth, and I think he is-there's one more doublecross in the works. The humans will betray Goldtooth. Hear? And you know and I know Sikkukkut's got to do something here. Your partner's going to push and herd the kif into fighting. He thinks. But in the meanwhile who does the bleeding? They'll herd him right away from mahen space. Right? Where does that leave? Stsho? Tc'a? Goldtooth's defending that. That leaves hani space,-friend. You don't push me right now. My people have got me between them and that, and don't push me, Jik!"

"You-" Jik fell silent a moment, coughed and rested there with his mouth against his hand as if he had lost his way and his argument. "Merus'an-to he neishima kif. Shai."

Bargains and the kif again. Then: I. Or something like that. He spoke mahensi. As if he had forgotten that he was not on his own ship. Or as if, exhausted as he was and wrung out, he lacked the strength to translate. He had that glassy look. Jump healed, but it took it out of a body too. And he had gone into it hurt, in body and spirit.

He was still reasonable. Still the professional, getting what he could get. She counted on that.

"I have to go in there to Meetpoint," she said. "I got to get what I can get. I won't doublecross you. Won't do any hurt to the mahendo'sat. I swear that, haur na ahur. But I don't want you against me either. I don't want you trying to get at controls, I don't want you trying to get at my crew. And everything you tell me's going to be a lie. Isn't it? Con the hani again." She fished her pocket and laid the two pills on the table. "You take those when you want 'em. Nothing but sleeping pills. I got enough troubles. You got enough. You're strung. You know it. I want you to go out of here, mind your manners with my crew, get some sleep. That's all you can do. All I can do for you. Like a friend, Jik. But first I want to ask you: have you held out on me? Conned me? You got anything you think I better know? 'Cause we are going in there. And we're going to get blown to a mahen hell if this is a trap. And Sikkukkut just might not go with us, which would be a real shame."

He shoved the glass up against her hand. "You want talk? Take bit."

She had no business taking anything of the sort, straight out of jump, with a ship to handle in what was going on out there. But it was cheaper than argument. She picked up the glass and took a sip that hit her dehydrated throat and nasal passages like fire, and her stomach like an incandescence. She set the glass down and slid it across the table to touch his hand again. He sipped a bit more and blinked. Sweat moistened trails down his face and glistened on black fur; the dusky rim around his eyes was suffused with blood and they watered when he blinked. And after all that liquor on an empty stomach and straight from injuries and jump, he showed no sign of passing out.

"I want stay on bridge," he said. "Py-an-far. Same you don't trust me, this know. All same ask."

"I can't shut you up. I can't have you distracting my crew. I can't risk it. I'm telling you. I can't risk it. You want your ship to survive this? You help me, gods rot you, cooperate."

He lifted his face then, his eyes burning.

"Survival, Jik. Is there anything we'd better know? Because we've got two kif out there fighting over everything we've got, and gods rot it, I hate this, Jik, but we got no gods-be choice, Jik!"

His mouth went to a hard line. He picked up the glass and drank half the remainder. Shoved it across to her. "I deal with that damn kif, set up whole damn thing." His hand shook where it rested on the table. "Drink, damn you, I don't drink without drink with."

She picked it up and drank the rest. It hit bottom with the rest and stung her eyes to tears.

"We got make friend this damn kif," he said, all hoarse. "I don't know where Ana go, don't know what he do. We, we got go make good friend this kif. This be job, a? Got go be polite." A tic contorted his face and turned into a dreadful expression. "Pyanfar. You, I, old friend. You, I. How much you pay him, a?"

A chill went up her back and lifted the hair between her shoulderblades. "I won't give you up to him. Not again."

'No." He reached across and stabbed a blunt-clawed finger at her arm. "I mean truth. We got to, we deal with this damn kif. You got to, you give him me, you give him you sister, we got make surround-" His finger moved to describe a half-circle in the spilled liquor. "Maybe Ana damn fool. Maybe human lot trouble. We be con-tin-gency. Con-tin-gency for whole damn Compact. We be inside. Understand?"

"I don't turn you over to him again."

"You do. Yes. I do job. Same my ship. Same we got make deal." His mouth jerked. "Got go bed this damn kif maybe. I do. Long time I work round this bastard." He shoved the glass at her again. "Fill."

"I'm not drinking with you. I got a-" -ship to run. She swallowed that down before it got out. "Gods rot. You got to get something real on your stomach." She filled the glass and got up, jerked a packet of soup out of the cabinet and tore the foil, poured it into a cup and shoved it under the brewer. Steam curled up. It smelled of salt and broth, promised comfort to a stomach after the raw assault of the parini. She took a sip

herself and turned around to find him lying head on arms. "Come on," she said. "I'll drink this one with you, turn about. Hear? You take the pills."

He hauled himself off the table and took a sip of the cup. Made a face and offered it back.

One and one. She gave him the next sip. "Just keep going," she said. "I got a sick crewwoman to see about back there." Her stomach roiled. She still tasted the parini and she never wanted to taste it again in her life. But it was to a point of locking a friend into a cubbyhole of a prison and letting a kif loose as crew to walk the corridors where he liked. That was the way of things.

He was right. He was utterly right, and thinking, past all the rest of it.

They might have no choice at all.

"Come on," she said. "While you can walk. Going to put you to bed myself. Pills in the mouth, huh?"

"No." He picked them up and closed his fist on them. "I keep. Maybe need. Now I sleep. Safe, a? With friend."

He gathered himself up from the table. Staggered. And gained his balance again.

She motioned toward the number two corridor. The back way toward the lift, that did not pass through the bridge, past delicate controls.

He cooperated. He went with her quietly, when he had every chance to try something. But that would be stupid, and gain him nothing, in a ship he could not control.

He had also told her nothing, for all his talking.

That in itself said something worrisome.

They went down to the lift; and down to the lower level; and as far as Tully's cabin, far forward. Next to Skkukuk's.

Tully was not there. That meant he was in crew quarters. That did not surprise her.

"Get some sleep," she said.

"A," he said. And parked his wide shoulders against the door frame, leaned there reeking of parini and looking as if he might fall on his face before he reached the bed.

"And don't forget the safety, huh?"

The next door opened. Skkukuk was there, bright-eyed and anxious to serve.

"You don't be fool," Jik said to her. "Friend."

And spun aside into the room and shut the door between them.

She locked it. And turned and looked at Skkukuk. This man is valuable," she said. Kifish logic.

"Dangerous," Skkukuk said.

She walked off and left him there. Took out the pocket-com and used it and not the intercom-stations along the way. "Tirun, we got it all secure down here."

"Kif are pounding each other hard. We got approach contact from Meetpoint. Stsho are being extra polite, we got no trouble if the poor bastards don't Phase on us in mid-dock, I got no confidence I'm talking to the same stsho from minute to minute. Scared. Real scared. I got the feeling kif-com isn't being polite at all. Ships inbound are Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin."

''Gods. Wonderful. Sikkukkut's chief axe. You could figure."

"You going on break?"

"I'm coming up there." No way to rest. Not till they had an answer. Even if her knees were wobbling under her. She envied Jik the pills. But not the rest of his situation.

Tirun caught her eye as she walked onto the bridge and looked a further worried question at her. Tirun, who looked deathly tired herself. "No change," Tirun said. "Except bad news. Goldtooth's bunch had two chasers on his tail when he went out. Akkhtimakt's got to jump any minute now. Got to. He's getting his tail shot up. Some of those ships may not make it otherside. They got to clear out of here." Pyanfar looked. Everyone was still running for jump. The last of Goldtooth's company was gone. And a flock of stsho, fortunate in being out of range of all disasters and not being tied up dead-V at station. Not a sign of a methane-breather. Anywhere.

No hani was moving. They were caught at dock. And there was not a way in a mahen hell to get out vectored for hani space with the angle and the V Sikkukkut's two station-aimed ships had on them. Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin were going to make it in before their own three ships. Kif were going to have control of that dock, and gods help the hani who took exception to it.

"We got one more ship ID: a Faha. Starwind."

"Munur." That was a youngish captain. A very small ship. And a distant cousin of Hilfy's on her mother's side. ''Ehrran?"

"Not a sign."

"With Goldtooth or kited out of here home a long time ago. Want to lay odds which?" Exhaustion and nerves added up on her. She shivered, and a great deal of it was depletion. "Yeah. Stay on it." She indicated the direction of the galley and marshaled a steady voice. "Jik's going to rest a bit. He's plenty mad. And crazy-tired. I hope to the gods he takes those pills and settles down, but I don't think he'll do it. Pass out awhile, maybe. Maybe come to with a clearer head. Right now he's real trouble. He's not thinking real clear. Me, I'm not, either. We put his quarters on ops-com when he wakes up. Maybe let him up here, I don't know yet. It's my judgment I don't trust. I'm going to clean up, pass out a few minutes. How are you holding?"

"I'm all right," Tirun said. It was usual sequence: Haral first on the cleanup; Haral first to snatch a little rest, Haral the one whose wits had to be sharpest and reflexes quickest, their switcher; and Haral generally shorted herself on rest-time to pay her sister for it. "'Bout time, though." And before she could leave the chair she was leaning on: "Captain, Chur's wanting a bit of something hot. Geran went to the lowerdecks to fix it."

That was the best news since the drop. "Huh," she said. "Huh." With a little relaxation in tensed muscles. She shoved off and walked on down the corridor. She wanted food. Wanted a bath. Wanted, gods knew, to be lightyears away from all of this. But they did not have that choice. They could run for it and get out of Meetpoint system while Sikkukkut was busy. But he would find them; and anyone they were attached to. Their world was held hostage. Not mentioning the immediate threat to three hundred thousand gods-be stsho and a handful of hani ships.

A kif could not forget an insult.

No more than a hani forgot harm to her friends.

It was a quiet gathering down in crew quarters, in the central area where they had a microwave, and a little store of instant food: one of those amenities they had installed along with the high- V braces and the AP weapons they had acquired on the black market. A couple of little couches and a table or two in a lounge, and a common-room for sleeping, in which they could have installed partitions, but they had never gotten around to that- never much wanted it, truth be known. A body learned to sleep with cousins trekking in and out, and there was never any urgent reason to change, even in the days when they had had wealth.

Right now, Hilfy thought, it was the best reason of all; a body wanted company in this crisis. Geran came kiting in and out again with two cups of soup, gods only hope she got one into her own stomach on the way topside; Chur was evidently

awake and willing to try it eating, which was one heart-lightening event among all the bad news. Haral was sitting on the couch opposite with a bit of jerky in one hand and her mouth full, while she raked her damp mane into order with the other. Her eyes had that distracted, glassy weariness jump left in a body. Tully came out of the common bath with a towel over his shoulders, wearing a pair of Khym's trousers, a rust silk pair which he had had to pin at the waist, but Haral was out of spares and the other pair was going through the laundry. He staggered over to the cabinet and got a cup and poured soupmix and water into it, shoved it in the microwave and sat down to towel his head and beard dry. Pale, old scars stood out on white-skinned shoulders; and pinker, recent ones.

"Akkhtimakt's jumped out," came the bulletin from the bridge. And: "We got a general slow-down on Sikkukkut's side, sure enough, 'cept for two of 'em it looks like Sikkukkut's sending out to keep 'em worried, same as he did with Goldtooth's lot. Looks for good and sure like Sikkukkut's going to stay with us. Thought you'd like to know."

"No surprise," Haral muttered. "Couldn't be that lucky. Couldn't be lucky enough to get help out of Goldtooth. Sikkukkut's going to have this place stripped to the deckplates before he gets back."

"Going to do whatever he wants," Hilfy said, "that's sure."

"Lousy mess."

Tully had lifted his face from the towel and looked at them, yellow hair tousled, eyes showing lines of strain about the edges. Sometimes he seemed too tired even to make the effort of speech. Or to listen for the translator's sputtering whisper giving him its mangled version of things around him. The things hardest to get across were the delicate topics, like: How's Chur-honestly? Or: What do you think Jik will do? And: What are we going to do when the kif move into the station? He seemed to go away at times. At others he seemed desperate to say something of too much difficulty to attempt it.

Things like: My people are going. I talked to them. Even if the message didn't get there. I was that close.

/ didn't betray you.

I swear I didn't try.

The microwave bleeped Finished; and Tully got up and got his soup, with a package of shredded meat and a packet of mahen fuyas, which he and Haral thought edible and everyone else aboard loathed. He offered one of the grain-meat sticks to Haral: she took it and stirred her soup with it, and he settled down with the other packets in his agile fingers, cup in both hands and elbows on his knees, to drink a sip and sigh in profoundest weariness.

"I figure," Hilfy said, to fill the quiet, and to answer questions Tully did not ask, "Goldtooth rendezvoused here with the human fleet. That's why he kited out on us at Kefk. He and Ehrran came in here, he got stuck here, in a standoff with Akkhtimakt. Maybe he got Akkhtimakt pried loose from the station. He did that much for the stsho. But Ehrran's on her way to Anuurn. Bet."

"Godsrotted well has to be," Haral muttered. "But with Goldtooth in it we got to wonder, don't we?"

''Like what happened here?'' That bothered her. The whole arrangement of things bothered her. The lack of methane-breathers. And Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut, if they both wanted to be fools, could go on trading that position till the suns all froze. Every few shipboard days, every few ground-bound months, one side could do a turnaround at Urtur or Tt’a’va’o or Kefk or wherever, and come in and strafe the other who had taken possession of Meetpoint. Or Kefk. Or wherever. If ships got to trading positions like that, time-dilation got to stretching lives wider and wider; no in-system passages. No slow-time. Just run and run and run as long as a ship could take it and a body could take the depletion. A merchant ship did its jumps with a lot of slowtime and dock-time in between; and a tradeoff like that could do as much timestretch in a month of their own perception as a trader did in a decade. Before flesh and bone and steel had gone their limits. "Wonder is he didn't come in on Kefk."

"Kefk's got two guardstations. Kefk's got position on him."

Tully stared at them both. He had lost that, probably. But of a sudden the problem had found itself a cold spot in

Hilfy's gut. She took a sip of her cup to warm that cold and licked the soup off her mustaches.

"Sikkukkut's got something in mind. He's sure not going to sit here."

"There are fools in the universe," Haral said. "What if he isn't? What if he's not sitting still here? What if he's got something else in mind?"

But Goldtooth was out on the Tt’a’va’o vector. Methane-breather territory. Logical choice: the stsho feared the humans like plague. Stsho would deal with Ehrran; they would deal with the kif before they dealt with Goldtooth and his human allies. They would go with the known villains.

Stsho had no armaments. No capability for that kind of stress. Stsho would run if they could. Evade it all.

Tc'a and chi and-gods save us- knnn-they're not here, they're always here. Where are they? Knnn aren't afraid of anything. They won't run. Avoid, maybe; run in panic-not the knnn. Ever.

"Methane-breathers," Hilfy said. "Gods rot it, Haral. It's a trap. Sikkukkut's and Goldtooth's both."

Haral's ears flagged and lifted again, and a thinking look got through the exhaustion in Haral's eyes.

"Hilfy." Tully held his cup between his knees and his brow furrowed with worry under its fringe of pale wet hair. "Goldtooth not go Tt’a’va’o."

"You mean you know that?"

"I think. He come-turn, go whhhsss, like Tt’a’va’o Not."

"You mean he faked a jump? Stopped out there in deep space? You think he can do that?"

Tully might or might not have gotten all of that. "Mahe," he said. "Human do."

"Stop a jump short?"

"Same."

"Good gods."

"Makes sense," Haral said. "If they've got the stuff to do that. If they got it from humans- He waits here to fake a run."

"And Ehrran runs for good and real and leaves hani here to catch it when Sikkukkut came through? Gods-be, she's got a treaty with the stsho!"

"Give her credit. What could she do-if Akkhtimakt was here first. Goldtooth wanted Akkhtimakt intact. He's shoving the two kif into a fight, by the gods, that's what he's doing!" Haral rubbed her graying nose and it wrinkled up again. "Let them weaken each other before he throws the humans at them and before the mahen forces come in here. That's what he's up to. Let Jik hang; let Jik keep at least one gods-be kif halfway tame if he can while Goldtooth sets it up so he can take out both kif. That's what the mahendo'sat would really like. Throw the humans at 'em. Let the humans get shot up. That's why he left Jik behind at Kefk."

"No mahen workers left here onstation, I'll bet on that."

"Gods-rotted sure. Goldtooth could have had the word out long before this. Routed everything out of here. Cleared it all out when the stsho broke that treaty."

"Eggs to pearls Goldtooth's left a spotter here."

"No contest."

"It's still insystem," Hilfy said. "It's still in position to get whatever happened here, maybe there's more than one of them, huh? Maybe a couple of spotters, one drifting out slow, going to fire up when it's outside normal pickup, just sneak out of here. And if Goldtooth's out there in the deep and those fool kif that were tailing him jump all the way to Tt’a’va’o-"

Haral's ears lifted. The exhaustion melted from her eyes and replaced itself with a hard, hard look. "Keep going."

"Goldtooth might wait for news. Before his turnaround. If he makes one. He may have put more than one or two spotters on the outside of this system. He's used up all his credit with Sikkukkut himself, he's out there in the dark with the humans, with the tc'a that Jik was working with, he's got some credit with the han, maybe some with the knnn. What if he decided there wasn't any choice and he just lets the kif fight it out?"

"Maybe that's the safest thing we could all do."

"But-"

"I'm listening."

"But-you know the mahendo'sat are going to save their own hides. Ehrran's left him. We can't speak for the han. We got kif going to go head-on against each other with the humans on their backside. If both of them get busy, if the mahendo'sat hit them in the back-neither Akkhtimakt nor Sikkukkut can stand for that chance. They're in a mess. They can't leave the mahendo'sat armed at their backs. They're kif, and Goldtooth's going to attack and they know it. My gods, we got one kif making a threat against Anuurn. What's Akkhtimakt going to threaten, huh? Or is he just going to turn around and send a ship apiece at every mahen world and station?"

Haral's ears were all but flat. She was still listening.

"Ask Skkukuk," Tully said suddenly.

"Ask him what?" Hilfy asked.

''He kif. Ask what kif do."

"He's not on Sikkukkut's level. If he'd outthought him, we'd have Skkukuk to worry about."

"Kif mind. Lot dark. / go ask."

"Man's got a point," Haral said. "But no way we talk to the kif. Better we talk to the captain. Py-an-far, you understand me, Tully?"

"You think I'm right?"

"I been in space forty some years, kid, I never been real close to kif on their terms. You have. And you speak main-kifish. Which I still don't, not real well. But I've had a look at our passenger, 'bout enough to get an idea or two. And between the mahendo'sat and that kif, I'm real anxious. We got that other bomb aboard. And sorry as I am for him, he scares me worse'n Skkukuk."

"Jik," Hilfy murmured. And took another sip that failed to warm her gut.

'He's got a lot on him," Haral said, "and much as we owe him and he owes us-first, he's hurting; second, he's been hurt, by the kif and by his own partner and by us on top of it all; and thirdly, he's mahendo'sat and seeing his whole species in danger, and maybe he's got more information than we've gotten out of him. What's he going to do?"

The cold got worse. For one uneasy moment Hilfy could not even look at Tully. For one uneasy moment he was like Jik, alien and full of strange motives and unpredictabilities.

And she was female and he was not, with all the craziness on that score. No place for him to be sitting. Listening to us. Gods, what if he was only waiting, all this time? He's alien. Isn't he? Same as Jik. And we've been through so gods-be much-and I don't know what's in his mind right now. My friend. My- She gave a mental shiver, looked at the time. "Gods," she said, "we better get topside. Tirun-"

"Yeah," Haral said. And: "You want me to talk to the captain?''

"She listens to you more than me."

"Hey," Haral said. And fixed her with a lazy, flat-eared stare. Reprimand for that small remark. Hilfy dipped her ears.

"Kif," Tully said.

"No," Haral said. "We let that son sleep. You stay here. Rest. Understand. You go down that hall to talk to that kif, I'll skin you. Hear?"

"I understand," Tully said. His mouth had that set it got in unhappiness. "Not right, Haral. I sit here."

"Argues," Haral said. "Huh."

"He wasn't juniormost on his ship," Hilfy said. "I know that. He's not a kid, Haral."

"Who is, on this ship? Tully. You want to come? Talk to the captain?"

He had a few bites left. He made it one, drank the cup dry and got to his feet, still trying to swallow what he had.

"How's it going?" Pyanfar asked quietly, leaning shower-damp and exhausted over Tirun's chairback. Khym had come back to his post, far from skilled enough to relieve Tirun, but there, at least for support. Tirun looked back at her with flagging ears and a desperate weariness. Tirun had not had a chance at the showers. That was evident.

"No answers yet," Tirun said. "Na Jik's asleep, I think. Stopped stirring around down there after I heard the safety-web go." She tilted an ear generally downships and down below. "We got our routine instructions, I just fed it into auto. All the kif are on schedule, Sikkukkut's pair's in final just now and the stsho're sweating it."

"Huhhhh." Pyanfar had an eye on the scan from her vantage; ships proceeding sedately on course. No one out there had done anything definitive. And she leaned closer to Tirun's ear, her elbow on the chairback. "Get out of here, huh? I'll take it."

"Haral'll be here." The voice came out hoarse. "You want to go catch a bite? I c'n take a little longer, 'm not doing anything but sit."

"Neither am I. Get. I'll hold the boards." She shoved off from the chair back and paused half a heartbeat considering her husband, who had never looked away from the screen in all this time. Covering, while she distracted Tirun, though the board was audio-alarmed, and her own eye had automatically held on that screen the minute Tirun looked her way. Tirun had known where she was looking-experience, decades of it. Bridge rules. But Khym covered. That was bridge rules too. She gave Khym's chairback a pat, approval, with a little unwinding of something at her gut. Closer and closer to reliable. On the standard of the best crew going. An impulse came to her; she unclipped one of her earrings.

"Hey," she said, and leaned next to him where her breath stirred the inner tuftings of his ear. "Huh," he said, as if it were some intimacy.

"Hold still. Don't flinch." She nipped right through the edge of his ear. "Owwh!" he grunted, and did flinch, turning half about in indignation and then-perhaps he thought it was some bizarre test of his concentration-jerked his gaze right back to the boards.

She slipped the ring right into the wound and clipped it. "Uhhhn," he said, and felt of what she had done. Never looked around.

"Good." She patted his shoulder, remembered then that he had once upon a time reacted with temper over that gesture of shoulder-patting. But maybe it felt different somehow. He did not object. And she went off to her own station, sat down and brought in the scan images and the com.

Sikkukkut was still on course. Ikkhoitr and its partner were docking ahead of them, and The Pride was on a course right down lane-center, neat and precise.

They were going to have some specific docking instructions very soon. The Pride and Aja Jin and Moon Rising were about to put themselves where the kit could get at them.

And where Sikkukkut could make demands of them. Jik, for instance. Jik, for a very large instance. Or even Tully. Or Dur Tahar. All of which items Sikkukkut might want back. She sat and gnawed her mustaches, wishing she dared talk back and forth with Dur Tahar over there, who assuredly knew something about kifish mentality. But absolute com silence seemed the best policy at the moment. Gods knew she wanted no questions out of Aja Jin, where Kesurinan still followed her orders. And did not ask, as Kesurinan might well have asked: How is my captain? Is he recovered? Why do I have no instructions from him?

Kesurinan believed she knew the answers to all these things, perhaps. And stayed patient. So far.

But on that dockside Kesurinan was bound to ask questions that needed direct lies. And inventive ones.

Goldtooth, gods curse you, what have you set up here?

Made an agreement with someone, have you?

Or have we got something else lurking out there, outsystem, that we're going to find out about when our wavefront gets to them and they get themselves run up to attack speed?

Gods, gods, this is no situation to be in. What's Sikkukkut doing? Is that son really depending on us, for godssakes? Are we the backup he thinks he has?

Fool, Sikkukkut. Can a kifmind be that tangled, to trust us now?

Or are you no fool at all?

Com beeped. "Py," Khym said, and cut it in from his board.

"I got it." It was station, talking to them in effusive jabber. A stsho told them that they could, if they wished, have any free berth, but suggested numbers twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Which the lord captain of Ikkhoitr had suggested, praise to the hakkikt.

"Affirm," she said, and with a flattening of her ears: "Praise to the hakkikt."

"No real choice, do we?" Khym asked.

"Life and not. We got that."

"What are we going to do?" There was the faintest note of despair there. A man asking his wife for reassurance. Tell me there's something you can do. Tell me it's not that bad, not that hopeless. A man lived within the small borders of his estate-never tell a man a thing: never worry him with problems he had no capacity to deal with. And no power. Old habits, Khym, gods rot it, grow up!

No. It's crew talking to captain. That's all. Get off him, Pyanfar.

"Feathered if I know what we're going to do," she muttered. No mercy, Khym. "Got an idea?"

"He's going to ask for Jik."

"I'm afraid he is."

''What are we going to do?''

"I'll make something up."

Nothing to do but watch it unfold. Obey instructions, take the berth.

You got it, husband. There isn't an answer. I haven't got a miracle to pull off. I don't know what in a mahen hell we're going to do and most of all I don't know how we're going to get out of here.

Thank gods Ehrran's headed home to warn the han. Even if she goes for Chanur in the process. Better the clan goes down than the whole world. Better a whole lot of things than that.

But, gods, Ehrran's a fool. What's a fool going to tell them? What's a fool going to persuade those fools to do? Gods, give her good sense just once and I'll go religious, I swear I will. I'll reform. I'll- Haral startled her, settling ghostlike into place beside her.

"Captain," Haral said. "What we got?"

She turned the chair half-about, saw Tirun out of her place and Tully and Hilfy settling into theirs, ghostlike silent under the noise of operating systems. "We got our docking instructions. Give Tirun time to get herself down to quarters. We can brake a little late. Meetpoint sure as rain isn't going to file any protest on us for violations." She swung the chair about again and punched in com. Two veteran crewwomen in their places arid two novices. But it was a routine docking, whatever else was proceeding. "Geran," she said. "Five minutes."

"I'm on my way," Geran answered back from somewhere.

"Captain," Haral said, "Hilfy's got this idea-"

"Tahar acknowledges recept on docking instructions," Hilfy said. "They're on our lead."

"-Akkhtimakt's just lost any reason he had for restraint," Haral said. "He's losing. Mahendo'sat aren't dealing with him. He's gone off toward Urtur; there's two moves he could make. One's us. One's the mahendo'sat. Things could get ugly. Real ugly. That's what we been thinking."

"Huhhhn." Another body hit the cushions, hard. She heard the click of restraints. Geran was in. Heard a wild high chittering coming down the corridor, which was a kif in full career, headed for his station and trying to tell them to wait for him: a shove of The Pride's, mains would send him smashing back into the lift door with the same force as if he had fallen off a building roof.

"We hear you," she said over general com. "You got time, Skkukuk."

And thought about the web of jump-corridors around Meetpoint and where they led.

Gods know what's already been launched at us. "Mahendo'sat aren't going to sit still for it," she said. "It's not their style."

"If they push back," Haral said, "it's going to shove that bastard right into hani space. We figure there's a push coming here. Cap'n, Tully says human ships can drop out of hype in deep space. Do a turn. Says he thinks the mahendo'sat can do it too."

She shot Haral a look. It was a knnn maneuver, that stop-and-turn. Or tc'a. "Friends turning up in odd places."

"From here, cap'n, it's a real pocket out Kura-way."

It was: hani space was an appendix of reachable space, right on the mahendo'sat underbelly, near the mahen homestar. But the accesses in that direction were few and defensible.

"Yeah," she said, thinking of that geometry, which thought suddenly shaped itself into coherent form, in full light. "Yeah. It might work. If they can do that kind of thing. But that'd mean those human ships aren't freighters in any sense of the word- wouldn't it? What's a ship with holds need with that kind of rig, huh?"

"Sure seems like not. And a strike coming in here rams it right down hani throats. Again."

"It does that, too. If they can do that." Another and worse thought. "If mahendo'sat can pull this-wouldn't be the first time they had some new rig they didn't tell us about. Wouldn't be the first time the kif turned up with it too. Before we did. Praise to the mahendo'sat. More gods-be careful of what their allies learn than what gets to their enemies."

Gods, don't let Ehrran be a fool.

Then, down the boards: "Priority," Geran said. "Priority, we got a shift going on, we got a vector change on some of Sikkukkut's lot. That's Noikkhru and Shuffikkt-"

It came up on the monitor, part of the image changing color again as kifish ships finished their braking and began to slew off on new headings.

Headings at angles to Sikkukkut's.