Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  . . . 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?"