Nebula Awards Showcase 2017

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Stsho ships were the most common victims of marauding kif, and still kif docked unchecked at Meetpoint. Madness. A bristling ran up her back and her ears flicked, jingling the rings. Hani might deal with the kif and teach them a lesson, but there was no profit in it, not until moments like this one. Divert every hani ship from profitable trade to kif-hunting? Madness too . . . until it was The Pride in question.

  “Pack it up out here,” she told her remaining crew when she reached them. “Get those last cans on and shut it down. Get everything ready to break dock. I’m going to call Tirun back here. It’s worse than I thought.”

  “I’ll go after her,” Haral said.

  “Do as I say, cousin—and keep Hilfy out of it.”

  Haral fell back. Pyanfar started off down the dock—old habit, not to run; a reserve of pride, of caution, of some instinct either good or ill. Still she did not run in front of witnesses. She widened her strides until some bystanders—stsho—did notice, and stared. She gained on Tirun. Almost, almost within convenient shouting distance of Tirun, and still a far, naked distance up the dock’s upcurving course to reach Handur’s Voyager. Hinukku sat at dock for Tirun to pass before she should come to the hani ship. But the mahendo’sat vessel Mahijiru was docked before that, if only Tirun handled that extraneous errand on the way, the logical thing to do with a heavy load under one arm. Surely it was the logical thing, even considering the urgency of the other message.

  Ah. Tirun did stop at the mahendo’sat berth. Pyanfar breathed a gasp of relief, broke her own rule at the last moment and sprinted behind some canisters, strode right into the gathering which had begun to close about Tirun. She clapped a startled mahendo’sat spectator on the arm, pulled it about and thrust her way through to Tirun, grabbed her arm without ceremony. “Trouble. Let’s go, cousin.”

  “Captain,” Goldtooth exclaimed from her right. “You come back make new bigger deal?”

  “Never mind. The tools are a gift. Come on, Tirun.”

  “Captain,” Tirun began, bewildered, being dragged back through the gathering of mahendo’sat. Mahendo’sat gave way before them, their captain still following them with confused chatter about welders and pearls.

  Kif. A black-clad half ring of them appeared suddenly on the outskirts of the swirl of dark-furred mahendo’sat. Pyanfar had Tirun’s wrist and pulled her forward. “Look out!” Tirun cried suddenly: one of the kif had pulled a gun from beneath its robe. “Go!” Pyanfar yelled, and they dived back among cursing and screaming mahendo’sat, out again through a melee of kif who had circled behind the canisters. Fire popped after them. Pyanfar bowled over a kif in their path with a strike that should snap vertebrae and did not break stride to find out. Tirun ran beside her; they sprinted with fire popping smoke curls off the deck plates ahead of them.

  Suddenly a shot came from the right hand. Tirun yelped and stumbled, limping wildly. More kif along the dockfront offices, one very tall and familiar. Akukkakk, with friends. “Earless bastard!” Pyanfar shouted, grabbed Tirun afresh and kept going, dragged her behind the canisters of another mahendo’sat ship in a hail of laser pops and the reek of burned plastic. Tirun sagged in shock—a curse and a jerk on the arm got her running again, desperately: the burn ruptured and bled. They darted into an open space, having no choice: shrill harooing rang out behind and on the right, kif on the hunt.

  A second shout roared out from before them, another flash from guns, multicolor, at The Pride’s berth: The Pride’s crew was returning fire, high for their sakes but meaning business. Station alarms started going off, bass-tone whooping. Red lights flashed on the walls and up the curve till the ceiling vanished. Higher up the curve of the dock, station folk scrambled in panic, hunting shelter. If there were kif among them, they would come charging down from that direction too, at the crew’s backs.

  And Hilfy was out there at that access, fourth in that line of their own guns—laying down a berserk pattern of fire. Pyanfar dragged Tirun through that line of four by the scruff of the neck. Tirun twisted and fell on the plates and Pyanfar helped her up again, not without a wild look back, at a dockside where enemies fired from cover at her crew who had precious little. “Board!” she yelled at the others with the last of her wind, and herself skidded on the decking in turning for the rampway. Haral retreated and grabbed Tirun’s flailing arm from the other side and Hilfy suddenly took Pyanfar’s. Pyanfar looked back again, willing to turn and fight. Geran and Chur were falling back in orderly retreat behind them, still facing the direction of the kif and firing—the kif had been pinned back from advance into better vantage. Hilfy pulled at her arm and Pyanfar shook free as they reached the rampway’s first door. “Come on,” she shouted at Geran and Chur; and the moment they retreated within, still firing, she hit the door seal. The massive steel clanged and thumped shut and the pair stumbled back out of the way; Hilfy darted in from across the door and rammed the lock-lever down.

  Pyanfar looked round then at Tirun, who was on her feet, though sagging in Haral’s arms, and holding her upper right leg. Her blue breeches were dark with blood from there to the fur of her calf and threading down to her foot in a puddle, and she was muttering a steady stream of curses.

  “Move,” Pyanfar said. Haral took Tirun up in her arms and outright carried her, no small load. They withdrew up the rampway curve into their own lock, sealed that door and felt somewhat safer.

  “Captain,” Chur said, businesslike. “All lines are loose and cargo ramp is disengaged. In case.”

  “Well done,” Pyanfar said, vastly relieved to hear it. They walked through the airlock and round the bend into the main lower corridor. “Secure the Outsider; sedate it all the way. You—” she looked aside at Tirun, who was trying to walk again with an arm across her sister’s shoulders. “Get a wrap on that leg fast. No time for anything more. We’re getting loose. I don’t imagine Hinukku will stand still for this and I don’t want kif passing my tail while we’re nose-to-station. Everyone rig for maneuvers.”

  “I can wrap my own leg,” Tirun said. “Just drop me in sickbay.”

  “Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, collected her niece as she headed for the lift. “Disobedient,” Pyanfar muttered when they were close.

  “Forgive,” said Hilfy. They entered the lift together; the door shut. Pyanfar fetched the youngster a cuff which rocked her against the lift wall, and pushed the mainlevel button. Hilfy righted herself and disdained even to clap a hand to her ear, but her eyes were watering, her ears flattened and nostrils wide as if she were facing into some powerful wind. “Forgiven,” said Pyanfar. The lift let them out, and Hilfy started to run up the corridor toward the bridge, but Pyanfar stalked along at a more deliberate pace and Hilfy paused and matched her stride, walked with her through the archway into the curved-deck main operations center.

  Pyanfar sat down in her cushion in the center of a bank of vid screens and started turning on systems. Station was squalling stsho language protests, objections, outrage. “Get on that,” Pyanfar said to her niece without missing a beat in switch-flicking. “Tell station we’re cutting loose and they’ll have to cope with it.”

  A delay. Hilfy relayed the message in limping stsho, ignoring the mechanical translator in her haste. “They complain you killed someone.”

  “Good.” The grapples clanged loose and a telltale said they had retracted all the way. “Tell them we rejoice to have eliminated a kif who started firing without provocation, endangering bystanders and property on the dock.” She fired the undocking repulse and they were loose, sudden loss of g and reacquisition in another direction . . . fired the secondaries which sent The Pride out of plane with station, a redirection of up and down. Ship’s g started up, a slow tug against the thrust aft.

  “Station is mightily upset,” Hilfy reported. “They demand to talk to you, aunt; they threaten not to let us dock at stsho—”

  “Never mind the stsho.” Pyanfar flicked from image to image on scan. She spotted another ship loose, in about the right location for Hinuk
ku. Abruptly the scan acquired all kinds of flitter on it, chaff more than likely, as Hinukku screened itself to do something. “Gods rot them.” She reached madly for controls and got The Pride reoriented gently enough to save the bones of those aboard who might not yet be secured for maneuvers . . . warning enough for those below to dive for security. “If they fire on us they’ll take out half the station. Gods!” She hit general com. “Brace; we’re backing hard.”

  This time things came loose. A notebook sailed across the section and landed somewhere forward, missing controls. Hilfy spat and curses came back from com. The Pride was not made for such moves. Nor for the next, which hammered against that backward momentum and, nose dipped, shot them nadir of station (the notebook flew back to its origins) and braked, another career of fluttering pages.

  “Motherless bastards,” Pyanfar said. She punched controls, linked turret to scan. It would swivel to any sighting, anything massive. “Now let them put their nose down here.” Her joints were sore. Alarms were ringing and lights were flashing on the maintenance board, cargo having broken loose. She ran her tongue over the points of her teeth and wrinkled her nose for breath, worrying what quadrant of the scan to watch. She put The Pride into a slow axis rotation, gambling that the kif would not come underside of station in so obvious a place as the one in line with last-known-position. “Watch scan,” she warned Hilfy, diverting herself to monitor the op board half a heartbeat, to see all the telltales what they ought to be. “Haral, get up here.”

  “Aunt!” Hilfy said. Pyanfar swung her head about again. A little dust had appeared on the screen, some of the chaff spinning their way from above. She had the scanlinked fire control set looser than that and the armament did not react. The lift back down the corridor crashed and hummed in operation. Haral had not acknowledged, but she was coming. “We fire on anything that shows solid,” Pyanfar said. “Keep watching that chaff cloud, niece. And mind, it could be outright diversion. I don’t trust anything.”

  “Yes,” Hilfy said calmly enough. And then: “Look out!”

  “Chaff,” Pyanfar identified the flutter, her heart frozen by the yell. “Be specific to quadrant: number’s enough.”

  Running feet in the corridor. Haral was with them. Hilfy started to yield her place at scan; Haral slid into the third seat, adjusted the restraints.

  “Didn’t plan to do so much moving,” Pyanfar said, never taking the focus of her eyes from scan. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No,” said Haral. “Everything’s secure.”

  “They’re thinking it over up there,” Pyanfar said.

  “Aunt! 4/2!”

  Turret was swiveling. Eye tracked to the number four screen. Energy washed over station’s rim: more chaff followed, larger debris.

  “Captain, they hit station.” Haral’s voice was incredulous. “They fired.”

  “Handur’s Voyager.” Pyanfar had the origin mapped on the station torus and made the connection. “O gods.” She hit repulse and sent them hurtling to station core shadow, tilted their nose with a second burst and cut in main thrust, shooting them nadir of station, nose for infinity. Pyanfar reached and uncapped a red switch, hit it, and The Pride rocked with explosion.

  “What was that?” Hilfy’s voice. “Are we hit?”

  “I just dumped our holds.” Pyanfar sucked air, an expansion of her nostrils. Her claws flexed out and in on the togglegrip. G was hauling at them badly. The Pride of Chanur was in full rout, having just altered their mass/drive ratio, stripped for running. “Haral, get us a course.”

  “Working,” Haral said. Numbers started coming up on the comp screen at Pyanfar’s left.

  “Going to have to find us a quiet spot.”

  “Urtur’s just within singlejump range,” Haral said, “stripped as we are. Maybe.”

  “Has to be.” Beyond Meetpoint in the other direction was stsho space, with a great scarcity of jump points to help them along, those masses by which The Pride or any other jumpship steered; and on other sides were kif regions; and knnn; and unexplored regions, uncharted, without jump coordinates. Jump blind into those and they would never come back again . . . anywhere known.

  She livened another board, bringing up jump-graphs. Urtur. That was the way they had come in, two jumps and loaded—a very large system where mahendo’sat did a little mining, a little manufacture, and licensed others. They might make that distance in one jump now; kif were not following . . . yet. Did not have to follow. They could figure possible destinations by dumped mass and the logic of the situation. O my brother, she thought, wondering how she would face Kohan. He would be affected by this disgrace, this outrage of lost cargo, of flight while a hani ship perished stationbound and helpless. Kohan Chanur might be broken by it; it might tempt young males to challenge him. And if there were enough challenges, and often enough. . . .

  No. Not that kind of end for Chanur. There was no going home with that kind of news. Not until kif paid, until The Pride got things to rights again.

  “Mark fifteen to jump point,” Haral said. “Captain, they’ll trace us, no question.”

  “No question,” she said. Beyond Haral’s scarred face she caught sight of Hilfy’s, unmarred and scant-bearded—frightened and trying not to show it. Pyanfar opened allship: “Rig for jump.”

  The alarm started, a slow wailing through the ship. The Pride leapt forward by her generation pulses, borrowed velocity at the interface, several wrenching flickers, whipped into the between. Pyanfar dug her claws in, decades accustomed to this, did that mental wrench which told lies to the inner ears, and kept her balance. Come on, she willed the ship, as if intent alone could take it that critical distance farther.

  EXCERPT FROM FOREIGNER

  C.J. CHERRYH

  I

  The air moved sluggishly through the open garden lattice, heavy with the perfume of the night-blooming vines outside the bedroom. An o’oi-ana went click-click, and called again, the harbinger of rain, while Bren lay awake, thinking that if he were wise, he would get up and close the lattice and the doors before he fell asleep. The wind would shift. The sea air would come and cool the room. The vents were enough to let it in. But it was a lethargic, muggy night, and he waited for that nightly reverse of the wind from the east to the west, waited as the first flickers of lightning cast the shadow of the lattice on the stirring gauze of the curtain.

  The lattice panels had the shapes of Fortune and Chance, baji and naji. The shadow of the vines outside moved with the breeze that, finally, finally, flared the curtain with the promise of relief from the heat.

  The next flicker lit an atevi shadow, like a statue suddenly transplanted to the terrace outside. Bren’s heart skipped a beat as he saw it on that pale billowing of gauze, on a terrace where no one properly belonged. He froze an instant, then slithered over the side of the bed.

  The next flash showed him the lattice folding further back, and the intruder entering his room.

  He slid a hand beneath the mattress and drew out the pistol he had hidden there—braced his arms across the mattress in the way the aiji had taught him, and pulled the trigger, to a shock that numbed his hands and a flash that blinded him to the night and the intruder. He fired a second time, for sheer terror, into the blind dark and ringing silence.

  He couldn’t move after that. He couldn’t get his breath. He hadn’t heard anyone fall. He thought he had missed. The white, flimsy draperies blew in the cooling wind that scoured through his bedroom.

  His hands were numb, bracing the gun on the mattress. His ears were deaf to sounds fainter than the thunder, fainter than the rattle of the latch of his bedroom door—the guards using their key, he thought.

  But it might not be. He rolled his back to the bedside and braced his straight arms between his knees, barrel trained on the middle of the doorway as the inner door banged open and light and shadow struck him in the face.

  The aiji’s guards spared not a word for questions. One ran to the lattice doors, and out into the courtyard and the begin
ning rain. The other, a faceless metal-sparked darkness, loomed over him and pried the gun from his fingers.

  Other guards came; while Banichi—it was Banichi’s voice from above him—Banichi had taken the gun.

  “Search the premises!” Banichi ordered them. “See to the aiji!”

  “Is Tabini all right?” Bren asked, overwhelmed, and shaking. “Is he all right, Banichi?”

  But Banichi was talking on the pocket-com, giving other orders, deaf to his question. The aiji must be all right, Bren told himself, or Banichi would not be standing here, talking so calmly, so assuredly to the guards outside. He heard Banichi give orders, and heard the answering voice say nothing had gotten to the roof.

  He was scared. He knew the gun was contraband. Banichi knew it, and Banichi could arrest him—he feared he might; but when Banichi was through with the radio, Banichi seized him by the bare arms and set him on the side of the bed.

  The other guard came back through the garden doors—it was Jago. She always worked with Banichi, “There’s blood, I’ve alerted the gates.”

  So he’d shot someone. He began to shiver as Jago ducked out again. Banichi turned the lights on and came back, atevi, black, smooth-skinned, his yellow eyes narrowed and his heavy jaw set in a thunderous scowl.

  “The aiji gave me the gun,” Bren said before Banichi could accuse him. Banichi stood there staring at him and finally said,

  “This is my gun.”

  He was confused. He sat there with his skin gone to gooseflesh and finally moved to pull a blanket into his lap. He heard commotion in the garden, Jago yelling at other guards.