Chanur's Venture cs-2

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  "Tully listen in?" Pyanfar asked.

  "No."

  "Where is he?"

  A nod toward the galley. "Everyone's there."

  "Huh." She drew her shoulders up as against some cold wind and looked that way. She tucked her hands into the belt of her trousers. "Come on. Both of you. Let the damage list go."

  They followed, two shadows at her back- Cursed lot of nonsense, Pyanfar thought, screwing her courage up. Gods, where was common sense, that breaking one small bit of unpleasantness upset her more than facing down the hem?

  There was noise, chatter, Khym's deeper voice wanting something from the cabinet- "Sit down, Tully," Chur said. "For godssakes, na Khyrn - Hilfy, where's the tofi got to? Can you find it?"

  And glanced around at Pyanfar. "Captain."

  "Sit," Pyanfar said sharply, stilling voices, the tofi-search, the opening and closing of cabinets.

  Geran came and put a cup in her hand. "You too. Sit down, Khym." — as he made one last foray into a cabinet. He snatched a substitute and subsided scowling into the middle of the benches, shaking the spice into his cup and concentrating on that while others found their seats left and right of him.

  Pyanfar braced herself at the galley corner where stable footing existed in-dock, foot braced at the edge of the shifting step-up of the gimballed table section. Khym sulked, in general foul humor, and pretended full occupation. She leaned there, sipped the liquid and felt the warmth coil through a boding chill at her stomach. Others were still, not the rattle of a spoon, only a shifting as Tirun and Haral nudged Tully over and slid into the benches.

  "I'll make this fast," Pyanfar said. "I've got to. Tully, is that translator picking me up?"

  He touched his ear, where the plug was set. Looked at her with those bright, worried eyes. "I hear fine."

  She came and sat down on the jumpseat, leaned her elbows on the table, the cup between her hands. She faced all of them. But Tully most directly.

  "You'll know," she said, "we never did fix that thing at Urtur. Shut up, Khym-" before Khym could quite get his mouth open. "Tully, there wasn't a way to fix it. Hear? So we made it in. One vane is gone. Takes time to fix. Understand? Now we got a little trouble. There's a hani here wants to take you on her ship. You understand? Hani authority."

  The pale eyes flickered with — perhaps — understanding. One was never sure. Fright: that, certainly. "Go from you?" he asked. "I go? Go new ship?"

  "No. Now listen to me. I don't want them to take you. This is a mahen station. Mahendo'sat, understand? Mahendo'sat take you to the center of the station, keep you safe, fix the ship. Twenty hours.

  You understand? They're going to take you with them into the center of the station."

  "Kif. Kif here-"

  "I know. It's all right. They won't get near you. The mahendo'sat will bring you back when we're ready to move. This way we keep the other hani from taking you to their ship. We keep you safe, understand?"

  "Yes," he agreed. He held the cup in front of him, in both his hands, looking as if he had lost his appetite and his thirst.

  "Got to move fast, Tully. Get down below. Take whatever you need. Clothes. A car is coming."

  "Car."

  "No nonsense this time. You'll be under guard all the way. Not like the stsho. Not like Meet-point. Mahendo'sat have teeth."

  "One of us," Hilfy said quietly, "one of us could ride along. Make sure they understand him."

  There were a lot of unspoken questions around the table, a lot of worried looks from hands who knew what damage existed in the vane. No one was questioning.

  "Listen," Pyanfar said, moving the cup on the table out of her way. "Truth: twenty hours. We're going for a first-class job. Whole new assembly back there."

  "Gods," Geran breathed in reverence. Chur blinked; and Hilfy stared.

  "They say twenty hours. They want us headed out of here for their own reasons. Now move it.

  We've got to have him down at the dock in ten minutes, packed and out."

  "One of us ride along?" Chur asked.

  "You and Hilfy." So the two of them had always fussed over Tully. Keep them both happy.

  "Armed. This is Kshshti."

  "I'll go," Khym said.

  She glanced his way with a furrowing of the brow. Honest offer. Feckless lunacy.

  "If there was trouble," he said.

  "No."

  "If-"

  "No." She stood up and tossed the cup into the disposal. "Get it moving. Nine minutes."

  Crew hurried. Haral took Tully in tow, her hand hooked about his elbow, and headed for the bridge.

  "Pyanfar," Khym said, working his own way out from between bench and table. "Pyanfar, listen to me."

  "If you want to sulk go to your quarters and get out of the way."

  "Is it Ehrran?"

  "I haven't time." She brushed past his arm and headed for the bridge, spun on one foot as she heard him following and brought him up short. "Use some judgment, Khym."

  "I'm trying to help!"

  She gave him one long desperate look, and watched his expression go from anger to desperation too. Anguish. She sorted a dozen jobs. All of them took skill. "You want to help, I want Kshshti data pulled from comp. Go do that." She spun about again and headed bridge-ward, for the papers she had under security.

  That had to go. It was all one package, Tully and that envelope. If Ehrran knew about Tully she likely knew he came with documents. And all of it had to go into mahen custody. Fast. She could keep the deputy off the bridge: the law gave her that.

  But since the kif hit Gaohn, since a great many changes had happened in the han-

  One took no chances. Gods knew what Prosperity would swear to. It had gotten to that.

  Distrust of foreigners. Distrust of hani who defied the conventions. Foreign ways, they said. Hani males outside Anuurn: the keepers of the home, learning there were things outside the hon, friends stauncher than other hani, outsider-ways of thought.

  She reached the bridge, opened the security bin beside Haral and took out the precious packet-committed treason by that if not before. She slammed the bin shut.

  Haral looked round at her, her scarred face quite, quite calm.

  Khyrn was there too, just watching, from the side, as staunchly downworld in his own way as Ehrran's clan.

  Worried. And silent now.

  "Got something coming outside," Haral said, whose eyes and ears were partly The Pride's from where she sat. And whose discretion was absolute. "Two minutes, captain."

  Chapter Eight

  She headed down the corridor from the lift in haste, keyed the airlock to inside-manual and looked back as Hilfy and Chur and Geran came hurrying along with Tully in their midst.

  "Car's on the dockside," Harral advised them from the general address. "You operating that on manual?"

  "I've got it," Pyanfar said, touching the pickup by the lock controls. "Just keep a sharp lookout up there."

  The four arrived, Tully dishevelled looking and disreputable in a white stsho shirt half tucked into the blue hani trousers. The shirt was far too big, the trousers too small; and for luggage he clutched a white plastic sack of the kind they used for utility — a change of clothes, toiletries, gods knew what they had thrown together for him in so short a time.

  "Got the translation tapes?"

  "Got," Tully answered for himself, patting the bundle.

  "Here." She handed him the packet. "Tuck that in too. For the gods' sakes don't give it to the mahendo'sat."

  He knew what it was. She saw the disturbed look, the doubt.

  "Go on," she said, and triggered the inner lock. It hissed open with an exhalation of cold air.

  "Chur, Hilfy, you watch it. You watch it coming back. Don't you walk it. If they don't give you a car, you call and I'll see they do. Tell them priority. Tell them Personage."

  "Right," said Chur.

  She walked into the lock with them, pushed the button for the second door on alternate-set, so that the fi
rst closed behind them. She took no chances. Not now. The yellow accessway gaped like a ribbed gullet. The chill hit like a wall. "Hurry it."

  "Pyanfar," Tully said of a sudden, and turned and balked. She put a hand on his back and propelled him ahead of her.

  "Come on, come on, Tully. It's all right." She walked by him with her crewwomen trailing after, kept her arm at his back and kept him moving down the accessway. He was cold already. She felt the stiffness in his movements as they hit the slant and headed down to the rampway. "Won't be long. Bodies will heat up the car." — Chatter to keep him distracted. She saw the gray of the docks like docks anywhere, the pair of vehicles with the strobes flashing. "Translator's going to be out of range awhile, but they'll get you hooked up again when you get to station central. There's an outside chance — a small chance, understand? — it might be more than twenty hours. Might be, might be — they might have to shift you to some mahen ship. I don't think so-"

  He balked again as they came down the last few steps, turned and gave her a panicked look.

  "Captain," Chur said from behind, sharp and urgent: she heard the engines at the same time, looked toward the sound down the dock.

  Another car, headed their way in a great hurry, from up-dock.

  "Gods rot," she muttered, grabbed Tully by the arm and pulled him on. "Fast, Tully." The mahendo'sat in the cars got out, excepting the two drivers, one curly brown, a tasunno mahe, smaller than the others and rare this side of Iji; an officer and four others the gods-knew-what race of generations-back spacers, black and tall and bearing badges and sidearms on the usual harness. Not friendly-looking. Like one black wall. Tully balked again, looked about in panic as the moving car hummed up and braked, resisted again as two of the mahe grabbed him and pulled him toward the open door of the second mahen car.

  "Pyanfar!" he cried.

  Hilfy started forward, but Pyanfar caught her arm and held her as the number-three car door slid down and three Ehrran crew got out in haste.

  "Hold it," the senior said. "Hold it there."

  Pyanfar shrugged and faced them. She had let go Hilfy's arm, and everyone had stopped —

  the mahe trying to get Tully into the car, the Ehrran who had bailed out of their vehicle.

  "Go on," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, and moved the hand at her side. "Chur, Hilfy. It's all right.

  Sorry, Ehrran. You've been preempted. Station-master's intervened."

  "You," the foremost Ehrran said, gesturing at the mahendo'sat. "Where's the authorization?"

  The mahe officer said something in one of Iji's manifold languages, waved a hand. The rest pulled Tully into the car and Chur and Hilfy piled in after. Doors began to close. "Chanur," the Ehrran said. Pyanfar gave a second shrug, displayed empty hands. "Out of my control."

  "That's your personnel,"

  "Just to keep him quiet on the way. You'll have to take it up with station offices."

  There were limits. Cursing a captain to her face was one; calling her a liar was another. The Ehrran did neither, but it was in her eyes, that were lambent brass. The mahen vehicles snugged up the doors and began to move. Ehrran cast a wild look that way, waved an arm at her crewmates and they dived back into their own car.

  "Evidently the Ehrran haven't got a com in there," Pyanfar observed to Geran, who had stood fast by her left. "Gods be!"

  The hani vehicle swerved wildly about and cut close to the mahendo'sat, dropped back as the mahendo'sat refused to be passed on the narrow dock.

  "Cheeky lot," Geran said.

  "Won't go well out here. Gods-rotted black-breeches thinks it's Anuurn. Ought to be interesting when they get news to their captain, oughtn't it?"

  Geran turned a quizzical look her way.

  "I rather imagine they had trouble getting a car," Pyanfar said. "For some reason." Up the row there was another swerve, visible as the cars went up the curving deck, headed for the curtaining tangle of lines that would cut off the view. "Gods rot-"

  "They're crazy," Geran said.

  "Come on," she said, spun on her heel and headed up the ramp, with quickening long strides.

  "Put me through to Vigilance," she said when she hit the bridge, not out of breath, not quite, but blowing through her nostrils. Geran was still with her, equally disarranged.

  "Got that on vid," Haral said with quiet satisfaction, the while Khym stared in confusion and Tirun moved past his seat to reach com. "That maneuver going out."

  "Sharp," she said. Haral smiled and powered her chair back round to business with the damage check.

  "They don't answer," Tirun said, half turning in her seat. "No response."

  "Log that. Call the station office and file a protest."

  "Hazard to our personnel?"

  "That'll do." She drew a quieter breath, hands on hips. Looked at Khym and saw a gleam in his eye she had not seen since Mahn. She stood a breath taller, walked over to lean over Haral's shoulder. "Next thing's that repair crew. Any sign yet?"

  Kshshti docks passed in a blur of gray and brown, of dingy fronts obscured by the shielding of the car windows as the vehicle hummed along, buzz-thump-thump as the soft tires hit the joints of unshielded deck plating with manic speed in time to Hilfy Chanur's heart. She leaned to look back again as far as the shield-dimmed car window afforded: the Ehrran vehicle had fallen in behind them, no longer attempting to pass, but staying close on their tail. Tully's leg pressed hers on the left, the three of them occupying the back seat with Chur on the far side. Two of the mahen guards sat in front with the driver.

  The escort car filled much of the forward view, they ran so close to its tail: the strobe atop that lead car limned objects and the three mahendo'sat in front in unreality and blocked out the outside so that it had no color. Beside them office fronts and gantry machinery passed in a blur.

  "Easy." She felt a shiver from Tully and patted his leg as she straightened around to look his way. "Safe, Tully. It's all right." The translator had stopped working as they passed out of range. But some words he understood on his own. "Safe, hear?"

  He nodded, glancing distractedly her way. He had his plastic bundle clutched firmly in his arms and they sat close to him to keep him warm. The white flash from the front of the car glanced off his pale skin and pale hair and turned his nervous movements into something surreal.

  "I-" he began, and the car lurched, swerved, threw them all forward and left with a suddenness that brought the rear of the escort car up in Hilfy's view as she turned her head, the car, the mahendo'sat driver fighting to turn, the guards flinging up arms to protect themselves as the car slewed into angled impact, glanced, hooked itself perversely into the escort car's torn body and kept slewing round, grating metal as a tire stripped off the rim and jolted over deckplates. Things blurred, snapped clear in a howl from the mahendo'sat, and a fist slammed them; the back of the seat flew up in Hilfy's face and she grabbed for Tully as her head hit the padding with the shock of explosion whumping through the air and the whole car tilting and slamming down again.

  "They're firing!" Chur yelled and that reality got through to Hilfy's brain, sent her hand clawing for the gun in her pocket, numb-fingered from a shock to her elbow somewhere in the spin. The car had stopped. The forward window was cracked. The driver was slumped; both guards were alive. . "Stay inside," Chur was yelling from the other side as one guard worked at the door on that side. A shock hit the car and blossomed in a fireball beyond the cracked front window and Hilfy got the gun out as the stench of ozone roiled through the door in silver smoke. The door opened on manual, slammed down as the smoke poured in and the mahe sprawled as he went out in a pop of weaponsfire through the smoke: his comrade fired from inside and another shock hit the car, fire bloomed, deafening.

  "Hilfy!" Tully dragged at her as cold air hit from the other direction, as Chur got the door open on the sheltered side and bailed out of the car. Hilfy flung a look in the other direction, pasted shot after shot at the flutter of black kif robes amid the smoke, intending to go when she
had stopped that.

  But alien hands seized the waist of her trousers and skidded her sharply backward across the slick seat even as she fired. An arm whipped round her waist and jerked her from the door backwards as she got off a last few shots. Tully tried to carry her, but she twisted free, got her feet on the ground and ran for herself, Tully beside her, Chur-

  Another shock blossomed by her, and she was flying through the air, the deck coming up under her hands and under her face as something heavy came down on her and sprawled.

  She was running then after a blank space, her legs working, not knowing how she had gotten there or where she was going until the gray of a girder came up and hit her shoulder and she spun, flailed for balance and caromed into Tully, arms about him as she decided on cover and kept falling, crawling then, along the base of the gantry over deckbolts. She gripped the hard edge of the base rim, hitched herself along, lay still then. Smoke roiled along the overhead where red alarm strobes flashed, staining girders and smoke alike. Sounds were distant, through the ringing in her ears. She felt small distant pains, saw Tally's face twisted with exertion and with pain. "Chur?" he said, twisting on his elbow to look back.

  In panic: "Chur?" And Hilfy rolled over to look through the obscuring smoke, wiping her eyes and trying to see and hear.

  "Chur?" she cried.

  The red-gray smoke gave up a momentary view of tangled vehicles and other wreckage, of running figures, of fire from various quarters. She heard the dim chitter of kif commands, flinched as a shot came their way and reached to her pocket for the gun, but it was gone.

  "Hilfy-" Tully cried, and pulled her further back as kif poured past them to take up position.

  "O gods," she breathed. "We're behind the wrong gods-rotted line!"

  Shots popped off the wall behind them and ricocheted wildly. She ducked down and in the first pause in fire she grabbed Tully by the shirt, scrambled up and ran with him while the smoke held —

  but that smoke was not dissipating as it should, the fans were not working, and it dawned on her battered skull that they were cut off, shut down: section doors had sealed.

  "Where?" Pyanfar shouted into the com as if volume could help, aware of Tirun and Khym and Geran at her back and a great silence elsewhere on the bridge. "What 'stay still'? You gods-rotted incompetent — Where around the rim?" — Babble poured into her ear. She whirled round as her eye caught movement, saw Haral's running arrival on the bridge and waved a furious hand at her crew.