Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Panic set in, facing that obdurate desperation, that look in his eyes, which met hers and asked, O gods, with a desperate pleading for his own place. If she never got him back alive . . . if she lost him out here; if, if, and if. She saw all the crew in the same mind, all thin-furred and haunted-looking, ghosts of themselves, but with weapons in hand and ears pricked up and eyes alive though flesh was fading.

  "We've got to hit fast," she said, and saw Chur come round the corner from crew quarters, leaning against the wall for support, Chur with a rifle slung at her side. "You-" she said, meaning Chur. "And you," meaning Tully, who was provocation to any hani xenophobe and a class one target. "You-"

  "Tully and I hold the airlock and cover the rest of you, right." Chur's voice was a hoarse whisper, befitting a ghost. "Got it, cap'n. Go on."

  That was the way Chur worked, conspiracy and wit: Chur cheated at dice. So would Geran. For cause. Pyanfar drew a ragged breath, threw a desperate look at Geran Anify and got no help: silence again, now that Chur was back in business. "Then for godssakes keep Tully with you," she said, and jabbed Tully with a forefinger. "Stay on the ship. Help Chur. Take Chur's orders. Got?"

  "Got." With that kind of Tully-look that meant he would argue to go with them if he thought he could. Language-barrier worked on her side this time, "Be careful."

  "Gods-be sure. Come on," she said to the others, and shoved off the wall she was using to lean on for a moment, and trotted for the airlock.

  Alert began to sound, The Pride's, crew call: not their business, though muscles tensed as if that alert were wired to Chanur nervous systems. There was the thunder of steps in the corridors, additional crew running to the lift behind them as they reached the airlock corridor. More footsteps behind. She looked back. Skkukuk appeared, coming from the other direction. "Orders!" she yelled at him, get!" and he van­ished in the next blink of the eye. Then: "Sirany!" she yelled at the intercom pickup, her voice all hoarse, "open that lock-" because it was not Haral up there, Haral was beside her; and she had to depend on strangers to get their signals straight.

  The airlock hatch opened. She threw the safety off the illegal AP, and inhaled the air as a wind whipped into their faces: The Pride's pressurization was a shade off; and that wind out of Gaohn smelled of things forgotten. Of hani. Of cold and hazard, too, and the chill reek of space-chilled machinery. She jogged through the lock and into the passage­way, yellow plastics of the access tube and steel jointed plating, and sucked up a second wide gulp of the air her physiology was born for. Something set into her like the stim, a second wind, a preternatural clarity of things in which the whole tumble of events began to go at an acceptable speed.

  "These are hani," she said, drymouthed and panting as they ran along the tube, trusting her crew around her as she trusted her own reflexes, knowing where each would dispose themselves, that Chur was where she had said she would be, that she had Tully under control, that Tirun, hindmost with her lameness, would be watching everything they were too shortfocussed to see up front, that Haral was at her side like another right hand and Hilfy and Geran were with Khym in the middle, Khym being the worst shot in the lot, and not the fastest runner, but able to lay down barrage fire with any of them if it got to that. Hani, she reminded them as she came off that ramp and headed aside for cover of the gantry rig and the consoles. Down the row another crew was hitting the docks about as fast: that was Harun. And Sif Tauran arrived: Pyanfar spun around to stare at Sif in some confusion, saw Fiar coming at a dead run down the ramp. "We're offshift," Sif panted. "Captain says get out here and help."

  "Come on," she said, seeing Fiar's youth, the grudging frown on Sif-sent along for Tauran's honor, then. Another Battle for Gaohn. Everyone wanted in on it.

  Fool, Sirany, this is hani against hani, don't you see it? No glory here-

  There were others arriving on the docks and running up the curved flooring toward them. Some of Shaurnurn, a trio each of Faha and Harun, not whole crews, but parts and pieces. That meant that those ships were still crewed, enough hands aboard to get them away if the kif came in; enough to make them a visual threat if nothing more. She had not ordered that. Perhaps Harun or Sifeny Tauran had. It was sane. It was prudent. She still wished she had the extra personnel on dockside, with their firepower. No other crew had the APs or even rifles: it was all legal stuff. Most of them that had run the long course from Meetpoint looked exhausted already; it showed in their faces, in the dullness of coats and the set of the ears. And Harun and the rest had only come from four jumps back.

  But others were coming to join them, glossy of coat and in crisp blues; in vivid green; in skycolored silk: crews and captains of other ships from farther down the docks, ships which had run their own Long Course getting in, perhaps, but which were at least clear-eyed and fresh from their time on blockade. Banny Ayhar's contingents. The ships in from mahen space. Pyanfar drew a breath, blinked against dizzi­ness and an insufficiency of blood and in a second hazed glance at that one in sky-blue, recognized her own sister. Rhean Chanur, looking much as Rhean had looked two years ago; with a tall figure coming up behind Rhean amongst the girders and hoses and machinery of the dock, a male figure conspicuous amid that large crew of Chanur cousins and nieces. The man had too much gray on him to be her brother, but no, they were indisputably Kohan's features, it was Kohan's look about him, and he wore a gun at his hip, a pistol, which gods knew if he even knew how to use-

  His Faha wife was with him, Huran, Hilfy's mother. So were others of his wives: Akify Llun was one, on his side and Chanur's and not with her own kin. "Pyanfar," Kohan said when they came to close range. They stared at one another a moment, before Kohan blinked in shock at what else he saw, the thin, scarred woman his favorite daughter had become, Hilfy Chanur par Faha, who came across to him and offered her left hand to touch, because she was carrying a black and illegal AP in the other. Hilfy Chanur touched his hand and her mother Huran Faha's, giving them and her aunt Rhean and her cousins the nod of courtesy she might give any comrade-under-fire, with a quick word and an instant atten­tion back to other of her surroundings, taking up guard with crewmates who shadowed her: she signed Geran one view toward the open docks and took another herself, all while everything was in motion, crews were taking positions of vantage, so there was no time to say anything, no time at all. Kohan looked stricken, Huran dismayed. Khym coughed, a nervous sound, somewhere behind her.

  "We've got to get through to central," Pyanfar said. "Get Banny Ayhar out of there, get the Llun free-"

  My gods, they don't know what to do, they're looking at me, at us to do something, as if none of them had fought here before this, as if they didn't know Gaohn station.

  There was a time and a rhythm in leading the helpless and the morally confused; a moment to snatch up souls before they fell to wrangling or wondering or asking too keen questions.

  "Come on," she yelled at them, at all the lunatic mass of hani spacers that was persistently trying to group round her like the most willing target in all the Compact; and yelled off instructions, corridors, crews, her voice cracking and her legs shaking under her as she started everyone into motion-in the next moment she could not remember what she had sent where, when, as if her mind had wandered somewhere back into hyperspace and she had the overview of things but not the fine focus. . . .

  . . . .battles fought at ports and in countrysides on a little blue pearl of a world where foolish hani thought to prevent a determined universe from encroaching on their business. . . .

  . . . .Pyruun bundling Kohan onto a shuttle, smug­gling him aloft to Rhean, gods knew how they had managed it or at what risk; but, then, mahendo'sat had once smuggled a human in a grain bin, right through a stsho warehouse. . . . . . . .Banny Ayhar racing home with a message which proliferated itself across all of mahen space, sweeping up hani as she fled homeward: and alerting mahendo'sat as well, from Maing Tol to the mahen homeworld of Iji, so it could not then be taken by surprise by any kifish attack, try as Sikkukkut would. T
he incoming and outgoing ranges of solar systems would be mined: the mahendo'sat would have had time for that laborious action, especially up near Iji and Maing Tol, so nothing could have gotten in the back door. They would have done that, while hani ships were moving home like birds before the storm. Mahendo'sat would have pulled every spare ship borderward in defense and offense, set in motion agreements with the tc'a, so that the elaborate timetable of mahen ship movements would have functioned as a spreading communications net, news streaking from jump to jump and spreading wide with every meeting of affected ships. ...

  . . . .even to hunter captains far removed from the inner reaches, captains like Goldtooth, no longer operat­ing on their own discretion, but receiving information and reinforcements. . . .

  . . . .Goldtooth had been vexed beyond measure when Aja Jin had violated the timetable by showing up at Kefk; that had been his anger, that, the reason of his fury at Jik, that the reason why Goldtooth had rushed away: his orders had dictated it. And what might he have told to Rhif Ehrran to send her kiting out of there with a message for homeworld? Look out, he must surely have told her: beware the conse­quences when the push he knew was coming rammed the kif right down hani throats. He had sent Ehrran where The Pride was supposed to be, and where Banny Ayhar was already headed, Jik would have told him, in a much slower ship but with a message he had given her, if she had lived to get to Maing Tol. Goldtooth's plan had worked till The Pride blew a vane coming out of Urtur and had to go in for repair, til Sikkukkut stole Hilfy and Tully and lured The Pride off to Mkks and then (Jik following his opportunity and a hani's desperation, and seeing only one way to make his schedule and keep his position on the inside of things) to Kefk, where things went even more grievously awry; where hani proved intractable and divided by bloodfeud, and Chur lay dying, preventing The Pride from making that critical dash home­ward by the Kura route, to warn of disaster at Meetpoint. . . . . . . .Goldtooth had given them that med equipment to make a long run possible, gave it to them the way mahendo'sat had spent millions upping The Pride's running capacity, last-ditch try at sending updated information on to Anuurn and spacer hani. . . .

  . . . .because no ship could get through the kifish block­ade at Kita; and in the end they had to rely on the slim hope of Banny Ayhar's ship. Jik had failed to convince Ehrran to veer from her stshoward course and The Pride had involved itself deeper and deeper in the heart of Jik's schemes; Ehrran had not budged till Goldtooth confronted her with more truth than Jik had yet told any of them.

  Pyanfar blinked, brought up against a brace and hung there while the dock spun in her vision. Her brain wanted to work for a change, and the white light and gray perspectives of the dock were chasing visions of dark and stars and tiny ships in wheeling succession. Her AP was in her fist. Steps thundered past her as others secured the other corner and the neighbor­ing corridor turned up empty of everything but scattered paper and a closed windowed door that said DOCKSEAL in large letters. KEY ENTRY ONLY.

  "Gods rot them all!" She fired. Thoughtlessly, because an AP was as good a key as any; and fired again through the smoke and the deafening thunder as shrapnel off her own shoi peppered her hide. "Gods-be fools!"

  The door was never armored to withstand that kind of blast. The window-seal went. She was not up to running, just walked behind the fleetfooted youngsters and the foolhardy who went racing up to step gingerly through the shattered pressure-seal window.

  She stepped through: her own crew stayed about her, and Rhean's lot, as if it were a walk up a troubled dockside, back in the days when a winebottle was the most fearsome missile and an irate taverner the greatest hazard a hani crew on dockside had to deal with. She trod on something sharp, winced and flinched, walking into a corridor her followers had already taken possession of: Fiar and Sif jogged out to the fore.

  "Slow down!" she yelled. "Rhean, hold it back!" -As the whole thing became a faster and faster rush forward; she could not keep up, had no wish to keep up there with the young and the energetic. They had to take the stairwells beyond this long corridor, they had to go up the hard way, not trusting the lifts that could be controlled from the main boards: Gaohn was too big to take quickly, except by over­whelming force. And time was on other sides. Time was, O gods, on the side of Sikkukkut. . . .

  . . . .who arrived at Meetpoint to drive his kifish opposition against the anvil of mahen territory, knowing that there were limited routes Akkhtimakt could take: down the line into stsho territory was one, where there would be no resistance-but Goldtooth and the humans had sealed that route.

  . . . .the second to methane-breather territory, but that was a deadly trap: no one wanted to contest the knnn.

  . . . .the third course lay past Sikkukkut to Kefk, which would have put Akkhtimakt at psychological disadvan­tage, though ironically not a positional one: there was no worse place for a kif on the retreat to come, than into kifish territory, a wounded fish into an ocean of razor jaws. . . .

  Think, Pyanfar, it's late to think. The enemy either has one choice more than you've thought of, or one fewer than they need.

  Sikkukkut knew that some message had gone with Banny Ayhar-knew that someone would have carried it, and where mahen forces would come-he had used the mahen push, anvil and hammer, but he never trusted the mahendo'sat, not Jik, manifestly not Goldtooth. He obviously didn't stop Ayhar.

  Or he didn't try because he wanted it to happen.

  Gods, could Jik have told him? No. No. He surely wouldn't. Not to someone that smart and that canny. They cooperated with limits. It was convenient for both sides. For separate reasons.

  But why did Sikkukkut value me from the beginning? Why did he and the mahendo'sat both value me enough to keep us alive and set me here, with this much power?

  Is Sikkukkut a fool? He was never a fool. Neither is Jik. Nor Goldtooth.

  If Sikkukkut lost too many ships fighting for power, my gods, he'd find some other kif gnawing up his leg the moment he looked weak. That's what the mahendo'sat are doing to him, whittling away at him. It's the kif’s chief weakness, that aggressiveness of theirs. Does Sikkukkut know that? Can a species see its own deficiencies?

  Look about us at ours, at this pitiful spectacle, hani against hani, spears and arrows flying in the sun, banners aflutter-

  I see what keeps us from being what we might be.

  Can he?

  Can-?

  "Look OUT!" someone yelled; and fire spattered from the end of the corridor.

  "Any word?" Chur asked. She had left the rifle in lowerdecks. To carry the thing was more strength than she had, and there was no enemy aboard. She arrived on the bridge with Tully close behind her and clung to a seat at her regular post. It was a strange captain who turned a worried face toward her. "I'm taking orders," Chur breathed, to settle that, and clung to the chair with her claws, the whole scene wavering in and out of gray in her vision, her heart going like a motor on overload. "Any word on them?"

  "Ehrran's threatening to back out of dock and blow us all. Light's threatening to blow Vigilance where she sits. We're supposed to have a kifish ship in here picking up-that. Skkukuk. I've told him that's all we want it to do." There was a fine-held edge to Sirany's voice, an experienced cap­tain at the edge of her own limits. "Handle the kif."

  "Aye," Chur said, and crawled into the vacant chair be­tween scan and com and livened the aux com panel. With Tauran crew on either side of her. Tully sat one seat down. Other seats were vacant. Fiar's and Sif s.

  Handle the kif. Indeed.

  Skukkuk thought of himself as crew. He was loyal. Geran had said that much with a grimace. And Chur had gotten her own captain's instructions to the kif on open com. That and the encounter belowdecks was all she had to go on, while the kif waited below in lowerdeck ops, for transfer arrangements to be finalized. But she had been in the deep too long to panic over the unusual or the outré.

  One of the black things skittered through the bridge and vanished like a persistent nightmare, long, furred, and mov�
�ing like a streak.

  On scan, one of the kifish ships nearest had just flared with vector shift.

  Skkukuk's tight-beamed request for transport had had time to be heard and was evidently being honored.

  "Tully," she said, leaning to look down the board where he had settled in. "We don't know when the humans come, right? You record message: record, understand? We send it to system edge, wide as we can, and constant-" She remem­bered in dismay she was not dealing with Pyanfar. "Your permission, cap'n."

  "What?" the snapped answer came back. She had to explain it all again. In more detail. And: "Do it," Sirany said. "Just keep us advised what you do. You got whatever you want."

  She drew a larger breath, activated com output and set about explanations, alternately to kif and to human and to The Pride's interim captain. Then there was the matter of commu­nicating with their mahen allies out there, whose disposition and intentions were another question: not many of the mahendo'sat ships had stayed insystem, but such as had were out there face-to-face with the kif, and nominally linked to the hani freighters who were also holding position out there in that standoff. So far they were letting the kifish ship move out where a kifish message with The Pride's wrap on it had indicated it should go.

  Blind acquiescence was asking a lot, of both mahendo'sat and hani. And even of the kif.

  But things had to stay stable. More, they had to sort themselves out into some kind of defense, both internal and external. The next large group of ships to come in, at any given moment, could be Akkhtimakt's kif in a second strike, which would swing the whole kifish allegiance in the other direction; or it might be Sikkukkut, having disposed of Goldtooth; or Goldtooth and the humans. Or either without the other. Gods knew what else. Panicked stsho, for all they knew. Or tc'a.

  Far better that whatever-it-was should meet an already existing wavefront of information designed to provoke discus­sion instead of indiscriminate fire.