Chanur's Venture cs-2

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Trash. Abandoned machinery. Burn-scars on the paints. Arid cold, which the Meetpoint docks always were, too much size and too little free heat from the dull, dead Mass about which the station orbited.

  There were abundant kif-not far away, black shapes in robes. Skkukun, likely, quasi-slaves on Ikkhoitr.

  Expendables and dangerous as a charged cable.

  And there were stsho, fragile-looking pale figures huddled over against the far side of their own docks, scurrying like pale ghosts, out of doorways and shelter, the dispossessed owners of Meetpoint. A mass of them surged toward the foot of the ramp, indecisively retreated, bolted again toward them in utter chaos, a crowd all spindle-limbed and gossamer-robed in opalescent whites and pearl, stsho of rank, with their feathery, augmented brows, their moonstone eyes struck with panic. They gibbered and wailed their plaints, their effusive pleas for protection-And they came to one collective and horrified halt, and gasped and chittered for dread. Of the kif, perhaps.

  Or perhaps it was the first sight of Tully that did it.

  "Stay close," Pyanfar muttered to Tully. "Not friends."

  "Got," he said under his breath. And kept close at her elbow as they descended, Jik trailing behind her; and Tahar; and Harun and all the rest. Kif waiting below formed a black wedge as they went down into that mass of stsho, and the stsho gave way before that like leaves before a wind, gibbering as they went, down a dock on which many of the lighted signs, indicating ships at dock, showed stsho names. Too timid to break dock, helpless in the advent of armed ships sweeping in out of Kefk inbound vector, which was unhappily also the outbound vector for the nearest stsho port, at Nsthen-they could do nothing in their unweaponed state but cower and wait, while their appointed kifish defenders did the smart thing and ran like the devils of a mahen hell were on their heels.

  "Lousy mess," Pyanfar said; and hitched the rifle she carried to a more conspicuous attitude, while they walked along an aisle of kif with Ikkhoitr's black-robed captain, and stsho retreated and stared at them from concealment with terrified, moonstone eyes.

  Then a kifish name showed in lights above a berth: and the ramp of Harukk gaped for them.

  She hitched her gunbelt up and tried to calm her stomach. Her nose had begun to prickle and she searched after another pill in her pocket, never minding the timelapse. Metabolism did peculiar things after jump. She was strung tight and getting tighter, on the raw edge of fatigue.

  Walking up that ramp was very much not what she wanted to do, if her body had had its choice in the matter; but brain began to assert itself as cold terror ebbed down to a different kind of wariness.

  Gods, we got to think, Pyanfar Chanur, we got to think about all those stationfolk, dithering stsho though they be, and gods help any hani and any mahendo'sat-the hakkikt's just taken himself another spacestation, and this time he's got his blood up and he's got a point to make. Gods help 'em all, think, think, get the mind wide awake.

  Gods-be pills make you sleepy, curse 'em.

  I haven't got the strength for this. I'm not any kid anymore. The knees are going to go. I'm going to fall down right on this godsforsaken rampway, and if I do it's all unraveled, we're all going to die and the gods-blessed Compact is going to go all to pieces because I can't keep my knees from wobbling and my gut from hurting and my eyes from fuzzing.

  Ten more steps, Pyanfar Chanur, and then ten more, and we get to rest a while, we can lean on that lift wall, can't we? They won't notice.

  Down the corridor, the bleak, black, ammonia-reeking corridor past Harukk's airlock; and Jik and Kesurinan walking side by side behind her- No knowing what signals they've passed, gods rot the luck-Tully, where's Tully, f'godssakes-

  She caught sight of him, shouldered back by Skkukuk as she entered the lift with Ikkhoitr's captain and Jik and Kesurinan and Tahar. "Tully!" she snarled, and he dived forward and made the door before it closed on the first group, leaving the others for a second lift, and gods only hope they ended up in the same place.

  Herself and Jik and Tully and Skkukuk, with Tahar and the kifish captain and his lot: the lift let them out in Harukk's upper corridor, in a chill, damp closeness and the stink of ammonia and incense.

  They'll die if we foul it up. All these people on Meetpoint. My crew. Us on this ship. How do you reason with a kif?

  Kif waited for her at the other end, kif dressed in skintight suits and robes modified for freefall work.

  Sodium-light glared and tinted gray-black skins, the glitter of weapons, of wet-surfaced eyes as they waited to welcome the hakkikt's guests.

  In a hospitality both Jik and Tully had abundant cause to remember.

  Chapter Seven

  There were hazard lights blinking urgent alarm, and Harals voice protesting — "Captain-" — Plaintively, as if she had not heard the beeps and already begun to reach. There was perhaps some mercy in being human and drugged out of one's mind. .

  "Got it," Pyanfar coughed, though her throat had gone to stone in the long slow leak of time past the instruments, in the inside out of jumpspace. "Location?" One went lethargic, grew fatally tranquil in that dizzy flow where one could do nothing, nothing but watch and take a subjective day moving a finger. There was an itch at the tip of her nose just as important as their collective lives. .

  But the intellect knew what the will forgot. The mind was primed with a sequence of things she had waited two months to do. The right hand reached the control she had meant two months ago to reach and brought the field up while they still had power, long before they had gotten buoy signal. The eyes sought instruments, diverging lines that had to meet-

  The fields of Mahn, yellow in the sun, the woods, the dappled shade. .

  The vine outside the wall of Chanur, that branched like a river, from one great gnarled trunk; and generations of Chanur had climbed it, branch to branch to branch-

  "We're on." That was Geran's mumble confirming destination. "We're in the jump range."

  Location: need the vector.

  "We're alive," Hilfy murmured. "We're going to make it, going to make it-"

  — as if she were utterly surprised.

  There it was, that red line trued right on.

  "Huh." Pyanfar coughed her throat clear and blinked away the haze.

  "Of course we did," Geran said. "Have any doubt, kid?"

  There were safety procedures for a ship to follow when coming in from dust-ringed Urtur and they were not following them. They were coming into a system with C-charged dust in their company.

  Some of it would slip the smaller field of their dump and go through Kshshti system like a hard-radiation storm.

  "One more dump," she murmured, pleaded with the ship. "Stand by" — thinking of a ship she had seen die — of a ship which had had a vane shot to flinders, and jumped without a chance in a mahen hell of slowing down.

  Nothing to do then but capsule the crew and hope-

  She shoved the dump in and felt her eyes roll as the field cycled up. . come on, come on, ship, hold it-

  More failure lights blinked and held steady. Branches on the wall. . "Got to be that Y unit," she muttered to Haral, to no one in particular, and had visions of that dying ship again.

  None of that crew was alive now. Those the mahendo'sat had hauled down in their capsule and saved — they had died at Gaohn, standing off the kif.

  She moved an arm and did a third dump, watching in blear-eyed fascination as the lines on the scopes crept together and merged like silken threads, red and blue, as The Pride dragged at the interface and let the bubble go.

  Down again, and the wail of alarms calling her back to life.

  "Still over mark," Haral muttered. "That's twenty."

  "I know. We've got it, we've got it left with the mains." She shoved the jump drive off and sent The Pride into an axis roll, canceled G and threw the mains on to finish the job the drive had failed.

  There was margin left. "Kif. Are there kif? Look alive back there."

  "Scan's clear," Chur's vo
ice returned. "Kshshti positive; got the beacon. Stand by course input."

  Monitors changed priorities. The course change flashed in, very little off their present heading.

  She put the bow down and trued up.

  "That's luck," Haral said of the course they had been handed.

  "Huh," she said. "That's priority for you." Rotational G picked up again as the vector change took effect. "Find out what we lost."

  "Stand by," Tirun said.

  There was long silence, while comp ran diagnostics under Tirun's hands.

  "It didn't hold?" Khym's voice, sounding plaintive and a bit shaken. "Did we lose that vane again?"

  "Didn't hold," Geran said. "But we're all right."

  "Not leaving here real quick, are we?"

  He was trying. And getting harder to deceive. Pyanfar swallowed hard, and took the damage summary as it came flickering to the screen. "We're all right," she heard Hilfy say, which was probably into the com, for Tully. "We're through. We just had trouble with that unit. Sit still down there."

  "Blew two holes in final-backup," Pyanfar muttered to Haral, in conversation-tone.

  "Gods," Haral said. That was all. And sent Kshshti system image her way, onto all the screens.

  "Not much, this place."

  "Huh."

  It was not. A dull orange sun with only moons for company, moons and a station. Small mining, sufficient for its needs. Some trading. Mostly mahendo'sat maintained it because it would be someone's, situated as it was; and best it should be theirs, when it was a connection on a route straight for Maing Tol from Kefk, inside kif space. With a shipyard facility, thank the gods.

  "Lot of traffic," Pyanfar muttered, picking up the com chatter. "Gods-rotted lot of traffic to be out here at this hole."

  "Kita," Haral reminded her.

  "Kita for sure. Word got spread uncommon fast, didn't it? Or we lost more time than we ought in that jump."

  "Huuuhn." No comment. Not here, not now. Not with Khym on the bridge.

  Twenty stars were The Pride's regular ports of call. Not Kshshti. It was not a port any hani sought.

  "Nasty little place," Geran muttered from back along the counter. "Real nasty."

  * * *

  There was time. There was time for a great many things as The Pride came limping in toward Kshshti-

  Time to hear the chatter of the station before their wavefront reached station and station's then-wave reached them: the chitter and wail of methane-breathers in confused conference, the clicking sounds of kif whose uncoded remarks were on ordinary kifish business, terse and uninfprmative. No hani voices. No sign of hani at all.

  "Station answering," Hilfy said as that wave came in. The feed was routine, coldly businesslike transmission. It might have been any approach to a mahen station, less lively than some. "Queer quiet,"

  Haral muttered. "I'd've expected a curse to a mahen hell and back again, the way we came in."

  "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Bet you to a mahen hell all of this is set up from the start. We're expected and they're not rattling this thicket, no."

  That got a look from Haral. Not a happy one.

  So they glided closer and closer to Kshshti with the noise of methane-breathers whispering over com.

  Rimstation. Border station. Kif claimed the star; mahendo'sat had built the station and held it with the tc'a and chi, whose mining had no particular profit. Nothing at Kshshti did. . except its nuisance value to kif ambitions across the line.

  "Where's that shiplist?" she asked of Hilfy. "I want names, imp."

  "I'm still trying," Hilfy said. "Station says they've got computer trouble."

  "Sure they do. Like the board at Meetpoint."

  "Beg pardon, aunt?"

  "Gods-rotted lot of malfunctions lately. Get that list. Tell them read it off by voice and cut the nonsense."

  "Don't know what we can do," Haral muttered beside her. And that was truth. The vane systems boards flickered steady disaster under Tirun's probes. It was all down. Everything.

  "We'll manage," she said, "something-" but her gut was knotted up in one unceasing panic.

  She fished the repair authorization out of safekeeping and shifted to put that in her pocket, braced for arguments with mahen officials. There would be outcries, howls, delays if she could not face them down.

  And if there was no ship for Tully, if there were the wrong kif, and no help — Not leaving here real quick, no.

  "List is in," Hilfy said.

  "To your one," Haral said and put it to the screen.

  14 Iniri-tai: Maing Tol

  9 Pasunsai: Idunspol

  7 Nji-no: Maing Tol

  30 Canoshato: Kshshti: insystem

  29 Nisatsi-to: Kshshti: insystem

  2 Ispuhen: Maing Tol: repair

  32 Sphii'i'o: V'n'n'u

  34 T'T'Tmmmi: N'i'i

  40 A'ohu'uuu: Tt'a'va'o

  49 knnn

  50 knnn

  51 knnn

  52 knnn

  10 Ginamu: Rlen Nle

  20 Kekkikkt: Kefk

  21 Harukk: Akkt

  22 Inikktukkt: Ukkur

  8 Ehrran's Vigilance: Anuurn

  15 Ayhar's Prosperity: Anuurn

  3 The Pride of Chanur: Anuurn: enroute

  "Gods," Haral muttered.

  "Party, huh?" She drew down her mouth as at a bad taste.

  "Kekkikkt. Remember that one?"

  "Couldn't forget. A whole list of good news, isn't it?"

  "Got help." She scanned the mahen section again. "Insystemers and short-hoppers. Ever hear of Iniri-tai?"

  "No."

  "Pasunsai?"

  "No. Neither of them."

  "Gods rot, there's supposed to be a hunter ship here."

  "Got Vigilance," Haral said dryly.

  "Huh." She rose to the humor, but there was ice at her stomach.

  "What do we tell them?"

  She remembered what she had told them at Meetpoint, the final message. Kif on our trail.

  No explanation possible. "Something inventive. We'd better."

  "Ayhar," Tirun muttered between her teeth. And that was the second good question.

  "That scrapheap never beat us here on the Urtur route, that's sure."

  "How'd they know?"

  "Want to guess?"

  Haral made a sound in her throat, not a pleasant one.

  "Rhif Ehrran's got a lap pet."

  "What do we do?"

  "Huh. I'm thinking about it." Meaning she did not know. Meaning there was nothing they could do but bluff and Haral already knew that much. Vigilance had gathered itself a witness, that was what — footed the bill to divert a merchant carrier like Prosperity off its normal run. They had dumped cargo at Meetpoint, same as themselves.

  And knew where to intercept them. Same as Harukk had known.

  Gods, were they the only ones running blind in this business?

  "Stsho? Stle stles stlen?

  Gtst knew Goldtooth's plans.

  If gtst had talked-

  "Captain," Hilfy said. "Tully's asking to come up."

  More questions. Pointed ones. She drew a deep breath and downed the panic. "Tell him yes.

  Tell him-" — watch his step. But he knew how to move in a ship underway. He had felt the uncertainty in their dump, had understood more surely than Khym had that they were in trouble, and what kind they were in — that they had escaped dying outright. But they were lame — at Kshshti. With the kif.

  Now what, now what we do, huh, Py-an-far?

  Tully did not take long about it. Pyanfar turned her chair from his reflection overhead to the solidity standing in the doorway.

  He looked worried. He glanced about him, scanned the monitors with an eye that knew what it was looking for, that could read more off the graphics than he could understand in words.

  "Safe," she said to him. "We're safe in Kshshti. Got help here. Big hani ship."

  He nodded. He did hope. That was in the look he gave her. But something else
was in the slump of his shoulders as he turned and sought the seat Hilfy offered him, observer, beside her post.

  Quiet, thank the gods..She was ashamed of herself, remembering that he never did go to masculine extremes. Professional. It was hard to remember that, that Tully, whatever else he was, was not prone to hysterics. There, she thought, Khym. That's how. That's how it's done. You can do it-

  The way she had believed it once, having voyaged with Tully, so that she hoped-

  Khym was looking at her now, one hard, unforgiving stare.

  Sure, Khym. It's fixed.

  Tully, perhaps, had never fallen for that lie in the first place.

  And Khym had, perhaps, just seen that shiplist.

  She turned back to controls. Blinking lights and mahen chatter had no accusations.

  The metal speck that was Kshshti became a star, a globe, resolved itself into torus shape in the vid; became an aggregate of plates and flashing lights as The Pride moved in and fell into rotating pattern with the wheel. "In lane," Haral said. "Autos on."

  "Take her in." Of a sudden the hours mounted up like leaden weight. She spun about and faced the bridge as a whole, saw Khym sitting there with his elbows on the console facing the scan.

  Tully's pose was much the same. But he turned to face her, with that haunted look he had worn for days.

  "We'll get that repair done here," she said. "Kshshti can handle it."

  Hilfy looked her way. So did Khym. And Khym's stare was dark.

  Another lie? she read the backslant of one ear, the flare of nostrils.

  Her own pulse raced. She held herself in place, silent, with nothing to say to either of them.

  Lies and lies and lies.

  "When we get in," she said to Hilfy, looking straight at her, "I want a mahen courier in here. I don't care who it is. Dock manager will do. Don't shake things up, but get us someone who can get us someone else. Shouldn't be hard. Suggest we've got a cargo difficulty."

  Khym sat there. It occurred to her that in his life he had never told a witting lie. . being downworld hani, dealing with hani and believing in the han. And it had never occurred to her that in dealings off-Annum she had had many faces — one for stsho, one for mahendo'sat. She was more hani with the kif.