Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  "You got the message here," she said to Banny, quiet and urgent, ears up now. "You want to lose it all? Or you want to stand with me here?"

  She was talking to a captain; and a hardnosed one; and flatly forgot the ker and the respects: she threw her whole life and self into it.

  Banny's ears twitched this way and that in the deep hush. Everyone in the whole center must have heard that appeal, as if Ayhar and Prosperity were part of all that tainted Chanur. There was Harun back there. And Munur Faha. She was not alone. Even in the matter with the kif. There were senior captains to rely on. There stood Fiar and Sif, co-conspirators off the same bridge.

  She saw a sudden guardedness in Banny Ayhar's eyes, the look of an old trader and an old hand in rough places. The old woman knew when she had gotten a high sign, by the gods she caught it up; and it was suddenly spacers and stationers in the control center, spacers and Them, which was only slightly less foreign than the kif.

  "Chanur," that Llun voice behind her said, a woman's voice of some age and authority.

  But before she turned, Ayhar lifted her chin in that way that from Anuurn docks to Meetpoint, said Ally, till I find out different.

  "Cap'n, they got into Central, they got it."

  Pyanfar crossed the bridge in the wake of a cheer from both crews, to lean on Chur's seatback. "Clear?"

  "Not officially confirmed yet." Chur did not look around. Her ears backslanted as she flicked switches and punched buttons. "Gaohn station, this is The Pride of Chanur, we got an incoming lighter, we'll handle that. Appreciate word on casualties at your earliest." Pause. Flick of the ears. "Cap­tain, we got a general announcement: Remain calm. Llun has retaken Central."

  "They'll have every clan in reach of there asking casual­ties. We've got to sit and wait, I'm guessing."

  "I'd like it better if they got some operators on output. We just got that same message cycling over and over. Nobody's handling anything. We got what we got from a ship-to-ship off a Maura freighter. Somebody's got com in there."

  Pyanfar gnawed at her mustaches, spat and gnawed again. "We got no favors coming. Those with bad news get it first, that's the way of it. They're all right. Just keep after 'em."

  While Tauran crew methodically handled the approach of the kifish lighter, which was coming in toward the docking boom aft. And a certain kif was standing there with bags and Dinner packed. One hoped.

  ("Skkukuk," she had said lately, over com. "This is the captain. Just want you to know I'm back and we're quite well in control.")

  ("/ had absolutely no doubts," the kifish voice came back to her, tinny the way E-deck pickup always sounded. "/ will give you the hearts of your enemies.")

  Literally. It was not a thing she wanted to contemplate at the moment, with the possibility of casualties up in Central and the dire memory of Ehrran out there on the docks. She flinched from that every time the image came back to her, and it came time and again.

  Nothing left. Nothing, O gods.

  An Immune. With all the trouble she was, she was still an Immune.

  She listened while the sorting-out of com and the docking of a kifish lighter proceeded.

  "You want your chair," Sirany offered her a second time.

  Meaning: command of this situation. Everything that went with it. She looked at the Tauran, saw the exhaustion and the anxiousness of a woman who feared every moment she sat there and feared equally to abdicate that chair and turn it back to Chanur.

  "I'll take it," Pyanfar said. "I want to get my second up here; you mind to sit observer? Fit both our crews in here and galley: we got need of all the expertise we got."

  "I'll sit it," Sirany said, and hauled herself out of the number one place. "Two minute break and I'm back here."

  "We have touch imminent," the Tauran working that dock­ing said, never pausing: the interface between crews went through smooth as the shift of a few bodies, and never a missed beat.

  Not a jolt as the kifish lighter made its contact with the boom. Retraction whined away, a moan throughout the ship as the boom swung down and dragged lock and lock into contact.

  A hani might wish to say goodbye. Even to a kif. It was not the way of kif. The presence quit The Pride with never a word and never a report, just the abrupt communication from the lighter pilot that they were ready for undock.

  Then the lighter took off, rolled and left with all the speed it could muster, a little sputter of its engines against The Pride's hull.

  That was, she reckoned, another ambitious kif, the captain of that so-quickly moving ship out there, the one which had appropriated the responsibility for picking up the hani's kif.

  Not the foremost among the ships out there. She knew that much by now. It was about the third-subordinate, not in contention for primacy in Sikkukkut's favor; so it was taking a calculated risk, maybe to do in its passenger, maybe to listen to him, depending on how things developed. And right now there were probably some very worried captains on the number one and two kifish ships. There were worried cap­tains everywhere among the kif out there, Sikkukkut's highest captains sweating sudden adjustments in hierarchy: they had just gained a lot of Akkhtimakt's ships.

  Good luck, my skulking shadow. Good luck. To both of us.

  She drew a deep breath and flipped switches.

  "We pulling out?" Haral wondered, beside her.

  It was what she ached to do, get The Pride out of station, away from dock where it was less a target. "Want to get our people back." There was a cold lump at her gut. / want to hear something out of Central, gods rot it. What kind of a hash have they got going up there? Station's stable. No damage alarms. They can't have shot it up too bad.

  Kohan's too reckless. Gods, don't let him have rushed in there.

  Hilfy, now, Hilfy can cover herself.

  "I don't credit that answer," the Llun said quietly. "Not tip off our enemies. I don't see any enemies here, ker Hilfy Chanur. I see alien ships moving out there, I see this station in jeopardy, I hear talk about a threat to the planet. I'm wondering where it comes from. I'm wondering what else we don't know about."

  Hilfy kept her ears up, let them dip a bit in displeasure, brought them up again. Kohan was there, Kohan stripped of his title and his courtesies, the whole clan-gods, the whole clan must have deserted Kara Mahn's takeover and exiled themselves with their lord rather than submit to the Mahn and his sister. The powers of Chanur were most likely here: like Rhean. Like Jofan, who must have connived at getting herself and Kohan and the rest up to Rhean.

  She was never prouder of her clan and her kin. "Ker Llun," she said, quietly, steadily, "I can tell you this. It's not numbers that'll win this one. We can't match numbers with what's out there. We haven't got the ships or the guns. Best thing we've got on our side right now is a mahendo'sat we've lost track of out there and the deep-spacers. My aunts are three of them. Ayhar here. Harun and Faha and Shaurnurn and Pauran and Tauran. And all the rest. Whatever men and kids are onstation, we'd be safer to get them off, out of here: every ship that hasn't got the guns to fight-take the men and the kids far as they can run into mahen space, and we just hope to the gods they'll get the word in a few months that Anuurn's still here. If it's not-there'll still be hani. That's what we're fighting for. The worst place in the whole system to be right now is one of our armed ships; second worst is the space stations; third is the world down there. You've got to turn the spacers loose, ker Llun, it's not Chanur I'm talking about, I'm not asking favors; I'm asking you turn the spacers loose and let us have a chance." She held out an arm, turned a shoulder, where kif had left scars that would last all her life. "That's the kind of treatment kifish guests get. Never mind what they do to the ones who aren't hostages."

  "Are you," the Llun asked in a slow and level voice, "are you that now, Hilfy Chanur?"

  "Hearth and blood, Llun. We're our own."

  "We're on that ship." A young voice, talking out where seniors were silent. It wavered and all but died. Then Fiar Aurhen par Tauran edged her way pa
st two captains and faced the Authority of Llun, flat-eared and with her voice pitched too high. "They're r-right. They ran clear from Kshshti-"

  To station-bound Llun, Kshshti was only a place on a map, remote from all experience. Mkks was beyond their imagin­ing. For a moment Hilfy felt a profound terror, the gulf between them uncrossable.

  "We got a mess out there," Banny Ayhar said in her rumbling voice, and sniffed and hitched her pants up before she flung an arm out to gesture. "F'godssakes, you got your house afire you ask them as have buckets, Shan Llun! You don't lock 'em up and call 'em traitors! To a mahen hell with the gods-be han deputies and the notebooks and that trash! You can't call any referendum from the kif and they don't have any study committee! You godsforsaken fools, you listen to the likes of Ehrran till they take your station over and you don't listen to them that's had their shoulders to the dike. Look at 'em, you say! They got mud on 'em, must be they brought the flood! And you never seeing they've been prop­ping up the gods-be timbers!"

  There was profound silence. The Llun's ears flickered minutely in restraint. The eyes were gold and large and black-centered.

  She waved a hand at the Llun who was taking furious notes.

  "Record that a quorum voted. The Llun have heard the vote. The Llun call civil emergency: the amphictiony is space-wide." The hand fell. "Which captain do you want in charge?"

  The silence went on several breaths. "Pyanfar Chanur," Kauryfy Harun said.

  "Banny Ayhar," another said.

  "Gods and thunders, not me," Banny said. "Pick some­one who's got some idea what's out there. Chanur's stayed alive this far. I'd go with their know-how."

  Quiet mutters then. "Chanur," Munur Faha said. And: "Chanur," from Shaurnurn and Pauran and a scatter of others.

  "Chanur," the Llun said, with another wave of her hand. "Implement the orders. Tanury: evacuation operations. Nis: communications interface. Parshai: spacer logistics. Open the boards. Get it moving."

  Hilfy stood there with her muscles cold and uncooperative. It had all changed course. She was free. The ships were. She cast a grateful look Banny Ayhar's way, but Ayhar was already moving; and beyond that consideration she knew where she belonged. Fast.

  She was into the rush for the door and collected Fiar and Sif before she recalled she owed some glance toward her father and her mother, some apology for having set herself forward: but the Llun had cornered her, they had wanted her answers, and Rhean had stood there in the silence an accused clan had to maintain. With dignity. The little dignity that Chanur had left, with its land gone.

  I'm sorry, she wanted to say. But the rush carried her through the door and there was no time to spend on goodbyes and regrets.

  Gods hope they talked Kohan into going refugee with the other men. Gods hope.

  She doubted that they could.

  Where are the rest of us, the old aunts, the kids, my sisters and cousins?

  On Fortune and Light? How many could they get aloft?

  If that's so, if we lose those ships, Chanur will die here.

  She did not wait for the lift. There were too many waiting. She joined the impatient ones that ran the stairs, all the way down again to dockside.

  ". . . earnestly hope," the voice out of Gaohn Central Control said, precise and patient, "you will remember the lives on this station; but we realize that this is not the greatest priority under the threat that exists. Therefore we do not encumber you with instructions of any sort. Take what ac­tions you see fit. The citizens of this station are carrying out all domestic safety precautions. We will not issue any further order to you until this emergency is past. Gods defend us. You'll have other priorities. End statement."

  "Thank you, Llun." Pyanfar kept the voice cool, the hand steady over the contact. "We'll be putting out as quickly as possible. Can we have all dock crews on line?"

  Gods, where had she learned such short courtesy? The kif? She got the acknowledgment and punched out of the contact. But there were no promises that meant anything. There was nothing she wanted to say, that might not get to one of the other ships and have one of those captains second-guessing her. That was not kifish manners: it was hani good sense, hani levelheadedness. So the whole gods-be system defense was in her lap. So they were sending men and children out to the far quarters of mahen space, to be sure something of the species survived. It was what the Llun ought to have done days ago, instead of waiting till disaster came in on them. Rage boiled up in her and shortened her breaths as she kept the pre-launch checks going, one and the other switches, while Haral ran those on Tirun's board. Armaments.

  There was another ship coming into Gaohn's traffic con­trol, up from the world itself: shuttle-launch, out of Syrsyn. The information trickled out of Central to Light's query: an unauthorized lift. An escape. A junior pilot and a single flight tech. The story came in from a ground station: the little Syrsyn Amphictiony had heard the warning out of space, and gotten the menfolk and the teenaged boys and girls of at least six clans all onto a commandeered shuttle, the men and the boys all drugged beyond argument, and that whole fragile, precious package presently climbing out of Anuurn's atmos­phere.

  That terrified her more than Gaohn's danger. Syrsyn was taking the monumental risk of an action she had asked them to take. And it was so small a ship, and so helpless, and a fool thing to do, under-crewed and gods knew, with no flight plan but up. Use the engines, get course after they were in space, trust someone would take them in: lifesupport ade­quate for-gods, what kind of figure? how many on that ship? Six clans' kids, the menfolk, a couple of women to handle the emergencies and keep down panic-

  Four, five hundred lives?

  How many of Chanur were still ground-bound?

  Gods, get us away from this dock. Give us a chance.

  Let us get at least to system edge.

  There were no mines laid, gods-be nothing done, to fore­stall invasion. The han directed: the han had no grasp of mahen tactics, gods help them, no knowledge what the uni­verse was shaped like above their day-sky, how ships and objects incoming and dropping out of hyperspace went missilelike to a sun, and coincidentally the near planets, of the habitable kind, at velocities that made them undetectable until they arrived. And the farther out from the system center the defense was set, to prevent such strikes, the larger the sphere of defense, and the wider the gaps in it, even if a body was reasonably sure what jump point it was coming from, and whether it was sticking to standards like system zenith entry, or whether the cant of the local star and the origin-well permitted something like a nadir arrival. It was a good guess where anything incoming from Meetpoint might arrive via Kura. Which was, gods knew, the shortest route.

  But it was a lot of space. And if the kifish bastard did some fancy maneuvering at Kura they might just come in nadir.

  Or they might already be there, having short-jumped. That thought set the hair on end all down her back: Sikkukkut or gods-knew-who might be out there and by now inbound, well knowing the position of everything in the system.

  "Take the count. Mark."

  "Mark." Haral started the clock running. "Tirun. Na Khym. We're on the count."

  "We're on our way," Tirun's voice came up from lowerdecks.

  "Put Khym in his cabin? It was where he belonged.

  No. Give him that. We're not going to get out of this one the same as we got in. The last time, husband. I think this crew knows it.

  "Hilfy's just called," Geran said. "She's on her way to the ramp. With Sif and Fiar. Not a scratch on 'em."

  "Got that." A muted murmur of relief across the bridge. The lost were found. Hydraulics sounded below, as Haral opened up the lock from the board.

  / ought to wish she missed the ship. I wish she had. Gaohn's got a better chance than we have.

  The airlock sealed again. The Pride took back its own.

  "We're on count," Geran advised the new arrivals. "Get up here."

  Six minutes.

  "Captain-" From the Tauran comtech. "We got co
ntact with Ehrran's Vigilance."

  "Give it here." Pyanfar punched the button when it lit; and her gut knotted. "This is Pyanfar Chanur."

  "Captain." The voice that came back was cold and neu­tral. "This is Jusary Ehrran. Acting captain. Vote has been taken on this ship. We will act in system defense. We will go to Kura vector."

  She looked aside at Haral, at a flat-eared scowl.

  "Gods-be earless bastard," Haral muttered. Bloodfeud: there was no doubt of that. With an Immune clan. They could not decline that, or their offer of help. "Covering their gods-be ass."

  "We got no graceful way, have we? You want to leave 'em docked at Gaohn?"

  "Captain-" The tech again. "Ayhar's on. Prosperity. They're aboard."

  Bad news and good, like opposite swings of the pendulum. The whole universe was confounded. She punched in on the indicator, the first one still blinking. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. Banny, I owe you a drink."

  "You owe my whole crew drinks, you notch-eared old dockcrawler, first we get back to port.''

  "You got it, Banny. Take care, huh? I'll get you sequence in a minute here." She cut out and punched the other. While quietly, a little murmur among the crew, the rest of them arrived, Tirun and Khym, Hilfy and Fiar and Sif. There was

  sorting-out going on, Chanur crew prioritied to seats. "He's got ob-2," she heard, Geran's voice. Definitively. A murmur from Khym. A Tauran voice, quietly. And Tully and Hilfy. It was all getting arranged over there. "We got a prelim se­quence here," Haral was saying, likely to her sister Tirun. "Central's passed control over to us, we got the say." And into the microphone: "Vigilance," Pyanfar said. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. Stand by your sequence."

  "Understood," the acknowledgment came back. And: hearth and blood, she heard unsaid, under the chill, precise voice. Later, Chanur.

  "We'll cover you same as the rest," Pyanfar said.

  A small delay. "We appreciate that, Chanur." Grace for grace. The woman had some positive qualities. Then: "This is your fault, Chanur."