Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Handle the kif, the woman said.

  She sent it wide. In half a dozen languages and amplified via whatever ships would relay it, to all reaches of the system, continuously, since Gaohn station relays and appar­ently those of the second outsystem station and both buoys were not cooperating. She was talking to more than those insystem and those arriving; she was talking also to a certain mahen hunter, who had lost himself and gone invisible.

  Chanur is taking Gaohn Station. This solar system is under control of Chanur and its allies and its subordinates. You an' entering a controlled space. Identify yourselves.

  "Hold fire!" Pyanfar yelled, turning, her back to the sidewall, the AP up in both hands where it bore on a flat eared, white-round-the-eyes cluster of hani blackbreeches Immunes, who were framed in the corridor opening and vulnerable as stsho in a hailstorm. A shot popped past her, high; one streaked back. "Hold!" Khym yelled, and: “Hold it!" Kohan Chanur echoed, two male voices that rumbled and rattled off the corridor walls in one frozen and terrible instant where slaughter looked likely.

  But they were kids who had run up on them. Mere kid-. Their ears were back in fright. None of them was armed except with lasers and they were staring down the barrels of

  APs that could take the deck out. They thought they were going to die there. It was in the look on their faces.

  "Don't shoot!" one cried, with more presence of mind than the rest, and held her little pistol wide.

  "Are you Ehrran?" Pyanfar yelled back at them, and one of them bolted and ran.

  The others stayed still, eyes wide upon the leveled guns.

  Prisoners we don't need.

  Gods-be groundling fools.

  "Get out of here!" she yelled at the rest of them. "Out, rot your hides!"

  They ran, scrambling, colliding with each other as they cleared that hall, no shot fired.

  She turned again, saw weary faces, bewildered faces, saw dread in Rhean Chanur and the rest, spacers who had come home to fight against kif and ended up fighting hani kids. That was the kind of resistance there was. That was what they had come down to, trying to take their station back from lunatics who threw beardless children at them.

  "Gods save us," she said, and drew a ragged breath and shook her head and winced at the thump of explosion, which was Haral with their allies blasting their way through another pressure door that had been, with hani persistence, replaced with another windowed door after the last armed taking of Gaohn Station. Nothing bad would ever happen twice, of course. Not at civilized Gaohn. Not to hani, who had no wish to become involved in foreign affairs. Gaohn Station prized its staid ways, its internal peace, maintained by ceremonies of challenge and duel.

  "Gods curse Naur," she said aloud. "Gods curse the han." And shocked her brother, and surely shocked ker Huran Faha, whose shoulder-scar was from downworld hunt­ing, who knew little more of kif than she knew of hyperspace equations. Pyanfar shoved off from the wall and kept going, stepping through the ruined doorway.

  "Stop," the intercom said from overhead. "You are in violation of the law. Citizens are empowered to prevent you."

  There were no citizens in sight. Everyone with sense had gotten out of the section. Those on Gaohn that were not spacers outright, excepting folk like Kohan and Huran, and

  red-maned Akify who had lived so long downworld with Chanur she had forgotten she was Llun, were all stationers, who knew the fragility of docksides, and knew there was a Chanur ship and a flock of kif and mahendo'sat looming over them. There was a way to slow station intruders down. Anyone in Central might have sealed and vented the whole area under attack, had they been prepared. Had Gaohn station ever been set up for such a defense. But no, the necessary modifications had been debated once, after the first taking of Gaohn, but never carried through: the Llun themselves had argued passionately against it.

  There would never, of course, the Llun had thought, never in a thousand lifetimes come another invasion. The very thought of it disturbed hani tranquility, the acknowledgment of such a calamity was against hani principle: plan for an event and it might well create itself. To prepare Gaohn for defense might create a bellicose appearance that might cause it to need that defense. To provide Gaohn corridors with windowed pressure doors (which permitted visual communi­cation between seal-zones in some contamination or fire emer­gency) was a safety measure and a moral statement: there would never come the day that the station would have to take extreme measures.

  So it had fallen to Ehrran quite simply.

  And the foreign forces that were coming in had never heard of such philosophy, and cared less. How could one even translate such a mindset to a kifish hakkikt?

  How could a kif who planned across lightyears compre­hend the Llun, let alone the groundling Naur, and the mind of the han, which decreed all on its own that hani would be let alone?

  ... .a kif who planned. . . .

  ... .a kif who let loose a mahen hunter ship and a hani force to accomplish a task for him which he- -could not do himself? -did a kif ever believe force insufficient?

  Could a kif be so subtle?

  Gods-rotted right a kif could be subtle. But not down any hani track. A kif wanted power, wanted adherents, wanted territory-

  -Sikkukkut knew, by the gods, that Goldtooth was not done, and being capable of tricks like short-jumping himself, he knew what Goldtooth might have done at Meetpoint, a trick that she had only discovered when they pinned Jik down and wormed it out of him.

  Knnn and gods-knew what had come in on Sikkukkut at Meetpoint, and what would Sikkukkut have done back there? Stayed to contest it? Run home to Kefk and Mkks, or Akkt?

  One wished.

  But that was not Sikkukkut's style. The wily bastard would have put more and more of the mahen puzzle together, the same as they, Jik's determined silence notwithstanding. Since Kefk, there was less and less left that Sikkukkut had to know.

  That intrusion which had nearly run them over on their outbound course had been attack coming in again at Meetpoint, that was what it had to be, with the methane-breathers com­ing in the Out range as methane-breathers were crazy enough to do; and right before Sikkukkut launched his own pet hani toward Anuurn, he had been couriering messages right and left to other ships. . . .

  . . . .Sikkukkut was planning something, and he had that babbling traitor Stle sties stlen aboard: the stsho would have told him anything and everything about Goldtooth he knew to tell.

  Small black creatures stayed active during jump. They were from the kifish homeworld. So could the kif? Were they plotting and planning all the way, was that the secret to kifish daring and fierceness in their strikes, that they came out of hyperspace clearheaded and focused, revising plans such as hani and mahendo'sat and humans and anyone else would have to make well beforehand?

  My gods, my gods.

  She slogged along after the others, her own group lagging farther and farther back. Flesh had its limits. Even Hilfy flagged. Her pulse racketed in her ears like the laboring of some failing machine. There was that pain in her chest again, her eyes were blurred.

  We may not have even this time. We shouldn't be here. I should turn this back, get back to the ship, prepare to defend us-

  -with what, fool? This vast armament you have?

  -turn kif on kif? Can you lead such creatures as that, can you even keep a hold on Skkukuk if you can't get control of Gaohn?

  Jik, gods rot you, where are you?

  Another doorway. An AP shell took it out, just blew the window out, leaving jagged edges of plex. The youngsters and then the rest waded on through the wreckage that loomed in her vision like an insurmountable barrier, the gun weighing heavier and heavier in her hand. Kohan had gone ahead with Rhean. Khym was still with her. So were all her own crew. "Looks like we got rearguard," Haral gasped, a voice hardly recognizable. "Gods-be fools not watching their own back­sides. Groundlings and kids."

  "Yeah," she murmured, and got herself through the door, walked on and wobbled in her tracks. A
big hand steadied her. Khym's.

  The PA sputtered. ' 'Cease, go back to your ships immedi­ately. Vigilance has armaments to enforce the decree of the han. It stands ready to use them. Do not endanger this station."

  "Ker gods-be Rhif s safe on her ship," Geran said.

  "Patience, we got the Light up there over her head, she's not going anywhere."

  "We got a kifish ship coming into dock," Haral said. "There's trouble when it comes. Gods know what that fool Ehrran will do."

  Another agonizing stretch of hallway. The first of them had gained the stairwell. There was much yelling of encourage­ment, inexperienced hani screwing up their courage before a long climb that meant head-on confrontation with an armed opposition.

  They were out of range of the pocket-coms. Too much of the station's mass was between them and the ships at dock.

  "M'gods." Footfalls came up at their backs, a thundering horde of runners. Pyanfar spun, on the same motion as the rest of the crew, on a straggle of hani in merchants' brights, with a crowd behind them all the way down the corridor, a crowd a lot of which was blackbreeches, strung out down the hall as they filtered through the obstacles of the shattered pressure doors. "Over their heads!" She popped off a shot into the overhead, and plastic panels near the shattered door disintegrated into flying bits and smoke and a thundering hail of ceiling panels that fell and bounced and paved the corridor in front of the onrush.

  "Stop, stop!" the cry came back, with waving of hands, some of the merchants in full retreat coming up against the press behind, and a dogged few coming through, holding their hands in plain view. "Sfauryn!" one cried, naming her clan, which was a stationer clan: merchants, indeed, and nothing to do with Ehrran.

  "We're Chanur!" Tirun yelled back at them, rifle leveled. "Stay put!"

  The press had stalled behind, tide meeting tide in the hallway, those trying to advance through the broken doors and those in panic retreat. The few up front hesitated in the last doorway, facing the guns.

  "Ehrran has Central!" the Sfauryn cried.

  "You want to do something about it?" Pyanfar yelled back.

  "We're trying to help! Gods, who're you aiming at? Peo­ple all over the stations are trying to get in there!"

  "Gods-be about time!" Her pulse hammered away, the blood hazed in gray and red through her vision. "If you can get the phones to work, get word to the other levels!"

  "Llun's with us-Llun've got portable com, they got some rifles- It's Llun back there behind us, Chanur. They don't want to get shot by mistake!"

  "Bring 'em on," she cried. Gods, what days they had come on, when Immune blacks meant target in a fight. She leaned on the wall and lowered the rifle. Blinked against the haze. Rest here awhile. Rest here till they had the reinforce­ments organized. Llun! honest as sunrise and, thank the gods, self-starting. They had been doing something all the while, one could have depended on that.

  But they could still get shot, coming up behind the spacers up front. Someone in spacer blues had to get up there and warn the others in the stairwell that what was coming on their tail was friendly. "Who of us has a run left in her?" she asked, and scanned a weary cluster of Chanur faces, ears flagged, fur standing in sweaty points and bloodied from the flying splinters.

  "Me," Hilfy gasped, "me, I got it."

  "Got your chance to be a gods-be fool. Go. Get. Be careful!"

  To a departing back, flattened ears, a lithe young woman flying down that corridor while the shouting reinforcements got themselves organized and came on.

  The tide oozed its way through the shattered door, over the rattling sheets of cream plastics that had been the ceiling. It swept on, past a bedraggled handful of heavy-armed hani that hugged the wall and waved them past.

  "Time was," Pyanfar said, and hunkered down again as the last of them passed, the heavy gun between her knees, Haral and Geran and Khym already down, Tirun leaning heavily against the wall and slowly sliding down to her haunches, "time was, Id've run that corridor."

  "Hey," Khym said, tongue lolling. He licked his mouth and gasped. "With age comes smart, huh?"

  "Yeah," Haral said, and cast a worried look down the corridor, the way Hilfy had gone. Hilfy with a ring in her ear and a gods-awful lot of scars, and a good deal more sense than the imp had ever had in her sheltered life. Hilfy the veteran of Kefk docks and Harukk's bowels. Of Meetpoint and all the systems in between and the circle that led home.

  "Kid'll handle it," Pyanfar said. "We hold this place awhile. Hold their backsides. Got to think. We got Vigilance out there. We got kif to worry about."

  Station poured out a series of conflicting bulletins. Events were too chaotic for Ehrran to coordinate its lies. "They're still threatening to destroy the boards up there," Chur said. And: "Unnn," from Sirany Tauran. There was nothing for them to do about it. But there was a steady pickup of infor­mation from Llun scattered throughout the station, static-ridden, but decipherable. It gave out a name. "They've met up with the cap'n," Chur cried suddenly, on a wave of relief, and pressed the com-plug tighter into her ear to try to deter­mine where that meeting was, but Llun was being cagey and giving out no positions. "They're saying they've linked up with Chanur and the rest and they're headed with that group."

  There was a murmured cheer for that. ("Good?" Tully asked, leaning forward to catch Chur's eye. "Good?"

  "Gods-be good," Chur said back. "The captain's found help.") While Tauran crew stayed busy all about them, stations monitoring scan and outside movements, keeping Tully's recorded output and her own going out on as wide and rapid a sweep of the sphere as they and Chanur's Light could achieve in coordina­tion, snugged against a rotating station, and sending with as much power as they could throw into the signal. Especially they kept an eye on Vigilance at its dock, Vigilance's image relayed to them by Light, as a kifish ship headed for them, conspicuous now among all the others and coming the way a hunter-ship could, by the gods fast. While on a link all his own from belowdecks ops, and without a need to sweep the available sphere, Skkukuk maintained communications with his fellow kif.

  ''Chanur-hakkikt skkutotik sotkku sothogkkt,'' his news bul­letin went out, and Chur winced. "Sfitktokku fikkrit koghkt hanurikktu makt." Other hani ships were picking that up, and there were spacers enough out there who knew main-kifish: The Chanur hakkikt has subordinated other clans. Something more about hani and a sea or tides or something the translator had fouled up. Skkukuk was being coded or poetic, was talking away down there, making his own kifish sense out of bulletins he got. She considered cutting him off. She thought of going down there and shooting him in lieu of ten thousand kif she could not get her hands on.

  But the captain had given her orders. Pyanfar Chanur had asked it, and asked it with all sanity to the contrary, which meant it was one of the captain's dearly held notions, and that meant Pyanfar Chanur intended her crew to keep then-hands off that kif and let him do what Pyanfar had said he should do.

  This kif had saved the captain's life. Geran had told her so.

  This kif was Pyanfar's kifish lieutenant. Pyanfar herself had told her so.

  For Pyanfar's reasons. If they were to go down, as well be on the captain's orders, where they had lived forty years, onworld and off. If Pyanfar Chanur said jump the ship they jumped; if it was on course for the heart of a sun, they objected the fact once to be sure and then they jumped it.

  It was a catching sickness. The Tauran captain was doing much the same, obeying orders she doubted.

  While one of The Pride's black, verminous inhabitants boldly sat on its haunches in the aisle by the start of the galley corridor and stared in wonder at the fools who ran the ship.

  Up the stairs, up and up until the bones ached and the brain pounded for want of air. Hilfy Chanur had gotten herself up to the fore of the band, after dispersing parts of the Llun contingent down every available corridor as they ascended, to round up other stationers and get them moving down other corridors. There was one advantage to holding the heart of a city-
sized space station, which was that one had all the controls to heat and light and air under one's hands.

  The Ehrran had that.

  But there was also an outstanding disadvantage to holding Central: that it was one small area, and that a city-sized space station had a lot of inhabitants, all of whom were converging on that point from all corridors, all passages, every clan on the station furiously determined to put the Llun back in control of systems the Llun understood and the Ehrran inter­lopers patently did not.

  If there were Llun working systems up there at gunpoint, they were doing it all most unwillingly, and Ehrran had only the Llun's word for it just what they were doing with those controls.

  Fools, aunt Pyanfar would say. A space station was a good deal different than a starship's controls; if there were even experienced spacers in the Ehrran contingent up there. Mostly it had to be groundling Ehrran, blackbreeches whose primary job was trade offices and lickfooting to Naur and others of the Old Rich and the New.

  Aunt Rhean was beside her as they climbed. Her father was just behind, grayed and older by the years The Pride had been away. And somewhere they had picked up two other men, young Llun, who had come in somewhere around level five and charged in among them in a camaraderie quite unlike men of the common clans-Immunes, free from challenge all their lives and having not a hope in the world of succeeding their own lord except by seniority, they came rushing in, stopped in a moment of recognition, likely neither one having known the other was coming, and surely daunted by Kohan's senior and downworld presence. Then: "Come ahead, rot you!" Kohan had yelled at them. And they had paired up with a great deal of shouting and bravado like two adoles­cents on a hunt. There were Llun women, armed and experi­enced in the last desperate battle for Gaohn. And it was all headed right into Ehrran's laps.

  If the captive Llun up in control had "been willing, they could at least have killed the lights and put the station reliant on the flashlights the Llun and the station merchants and some of the spacers had had the foresight to bring with them. They could have vented whole sections of the docks, with enormous loss of life. They could have fired the station stabilization jets and affected the gravity. They could have thrown the solar panels off their tracking and used some of the big mirrors to make it uncomfortable for Chanur's Light. Perhaps the Ehrran urged them to these things at gunpoint.