"Come on," said Pyanfar. She turned on the pocket com she had hooked to her belt and gestured at the door. She wore no finery this trip, none of the bright color she favored, just blue spacer breeches, same as the rest, excepting Khym, who wore plain brown.
She headed out the door without a backward look, with Khym thumping along beside her and Haral and Tirun and. Geran at her back.
"Com's live," Chur's voice pursued them down the corridor toward the lift, all-ship address that echoed everywhere. Behind them the bridge door hissed shut, sealing Chur in.
"Hurry it." Pyanfar hit the lift button and held the door open, diving inside last as the door shut and the lift whisked downward with a G drop of its own. They were rank at close quarters, unwashed since jump. Wisps of shed fur clung to bodies and clothes; copper taste filled her mouth. None of the crew was better off, none of them fit for diplomacy dockside. The gun dragged at her hip. The heavy rifle in the crook of her arm offered no comfort at all. Gods, gods, kif outside; mahendo'sat— honest mahen station guards trying to prevent trouble and protect their own folk. The last thing any of them wanted was to shoot their way past allies who were duty-bound to stop them.
The lift braked and let them out again on lowerdecks. They sorted themselves out into an order of instinctive precedence as they headed down the hall: herself and Haral; Khym with partnerless Geran; Tirun at the rear, Haral's sister-shadow, a little lame in a long run, but veteran of too many ports to let anything reach their backs.
And Khym — calamity waiting a chance, she thought; lousy shot, male-like; male-like, a worry in a crisis; and twice as strong as any of them if it came to a set-to hand to hand.
"Got a call from a mahen officer named Jiniri," Chur's disembodied voice boomed out from com. '"We got ourselves some mahen station guards out there and a lot of citizens. I told them keep clear; they're not — not listening — "
"You all right up there?"
"Fine, captain." The voice was hoarse and thin. "Fine." Stronger that time. "Watch yourselves, huh?"
They reached the bend toward the airlock. "We're there," Pyanfar said to the pickups in the corridor. "Where's the kif? See any?"
"Can't tell for sure. Haven't heard a sound in the access and I've got the gain up full. The com — they say they're out there. Mahe — mahendo'sat — out there — Me, I'd just as soon they were."
"Gods-rotted trouble. Tell them get out of it. Fast."
"Won't listen — They invoke the Compact. Say — say — Gods rot. you can guess."
Pyanfar snicked the safety off her rifle; there were two echoes and a couple of different sounds as Haral and Geran took the APs from their clip-holsters, took the safeties off and sent cartridges to the chambers. "We're set. Open us up.''
The hatch hissed open. They herded in and stopped, facing the outer door. "Seal us out and let's go," Pyanfar said.
The way behind them closed; the facing hatch shot open on an empty accessway, a yellow-lighted passage, icy cold.
Pyanfar dashed to the last point of cover where the accessway bent; Tirun took the other side with her rifle and the two of them came round the bend together, with three more guns aimed past their backs.
No kif. Empty passage. Pyanfar jogged soft-footed as far as the debouchment, where the yellow access tube gave over to descending rampway, a slope of interlocked gratings leading down to the pressure gates, and down again, a long exposed walk to the dock. People down there. Crowd-noise. A knot of about forty civilian mahendo'sat waited at the bottom of that long ramp, with a handful of mahen guards, dark, tall, primate: black-furred and one conspicuous tasunno, brown. And, gods, an anomaly in the midst of the crowd, a white-skinned stsho in drifting rainbow gossamer. The crowd surged forward with a gibbering outcry at the sight of them.
"Smell it?" Haral muttered, at her side.
Ammonia: kif scent. The dilapidated dockside was in twirl light, and a hundred doorways showed on the anti-dockward side, any one of which might hold a sniper; if the wind had! not been up her back before, that smell would have sent it.
She headed down in haste, a quick thunder of steps on the; old-fashioned steel rampway, Haral at her side. The mahendo'sat below shouted and pushed and shoved among themselves, attempting the ramp while the guards struggled to-hold the line.
One passed, came striding forward right onto the foot of the ramp as they came down to it. "You crazy, crazy!" The official-looking mahe waved her hands as they came face to face; her howl rose louder than the rest, even the stsho's agitated warble. "You go back 'board, we negotiate this trouble, not bring guns this dock! You keep back our line, let our guard do, hani captain! Hear? Go back you ship! We arrange talk; come, go between talk, you, kif hakkikt! No go down, hear! We got accommodations—we fix—"
They had it down smooth, she and Haral: she could deal with the mahe knowing her second in command was watching the crowd; and Geran and Tirun would be watching left and right, with the known space of the ramp at their backs. God knew where Khym's attention was. She ignored the waving hands, the attempt to catch her arm, and brushed the officer aside. "Come on," she said to her crew, and left the ramp, parallel to the line of guards who had their hands full with agitated dignitaries.
"You no go!" the mahe cried, trying to get in front of her again. The black face contorted in anguish. "No go!"
Pyanfar shoved with the rifle, sideways-held, which drew a collective gasp from the crowd. "Private business," she said. "Get your people out of the way, I'm telling you—Go! Get! Get cover!"
"Not bring guns! Go, go you ship, not do, not do!"
And from the stsho, who eluded the guards to rush, up and wave white arms in her face: "You break Compact law. Complaint, we make complaint this barbarous behavior—We witness—"
"Move it!"
A second shove. The stsho recoiled in a wild motion of gtst spindly limbs, retreating in a flood of gtst gossamer robes and a warble of stsho language, headed full-tilt away from the scene. "Ni shoss, ni shoss, knthi mnosith hos!—"
"Maheinsi tosha nai mas!" the mahe cried; and mahendo'sat guards turned from crowd-control to facing hani rifles with their riot-sticks, as the mob discovered they were not at all interested in getting closer. There was a low sound of dismay und the docks grew astoundingly quiet.
"Move them," Pyanfar said, gesturing with rifle barrel still averted from the mahen official. "Hasano-ma. Authorization from your Personage. Hear?"
The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face.
"You've got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast."
"Captain!" Haral hissed. "Your left."
A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery—kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. "You stop! Stop! You break law!"—as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards.
The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians.
Law. The Voice's protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo'sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port.
Not in this hour, that was sure.
Pyanfar's ears flattened. She let them stay that way. "Well?" she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. "We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?"
The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym's; hers. Haral's and Geran's were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun—Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that w
as sure.
The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. "I have message, hani."
It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.
Tully's. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.
"Is the human alive?"
"At present."
Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. "Tell Sikkukkut I'll talk about it."
There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. "You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours."
It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. "We can deal here," she said. "Now."
"This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?"
She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. "All right," she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif's neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. "All right. We'll add it up later, kif."
It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks.
Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings.
"Captain." A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. "No go—"
"Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?''
The Voice fell behind. "You crazy," the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. "You crazy go that place!"
II
Kif fell in and walked as an escort about them, their black robes like a moving wall in the dockside twilight. A dry paper and ammonia smell rose about them, mingled with the; scent of pungent incense and oil. Weapons rattled as they went, rifles and sidearms as illegal as their own.
They had docked in the same section as Harukk, without a section door to pass. The twilit deck stretched out in the! upward-tending horizon of all station docks, up to a towering section seal that blinked red lights: hazard, hazard, hazard-precaution against riot and catastrophe. Mkks braced itself.
On the rows opposite the docks, in that space usual for services and bars such as spacers used, doorways filled with kif who lounged there with hateful eyes and whispers. Windows glowered with neon, with sodium- and argon-light; the girders overhead were palled with smoke no ventilation coped with, a haze about the glaring suns of the dock's floodlamps.
"Gods-rotted mahen hell," Haral muttered, striding along at Pyanfar's side. "The place is all kif."
The kif cluttered and clicked among themselves in some obscure accent. Not main-kifish. Pyanfar knew words enough of that, and lost this entire.
They passed other doors from which came different, grass-eater smells; and strange moans and wailings: animals, kept and pent here. Hunter-kind that hani were, it turned Pyanfar's stomach. Kif fed on live food. While it lived.
Even on their own kind, in defeat. So rumor had it.
The kif in the lead tended toward the inner wall and a side corridor; they followed into that narrower passage, among armed kif who loitered in small clusters along the wall and stood away from it as they passed.
"Kk-kk-kk," one said, insulting them. Khym broke step: "No," Pyanfar hissed; and Geran grabbed his arm. They went further, with kif closing in at their backs and in front of them. The safeties were already off the guns and had been off, since the airlock. But there was nothing to win here. Not even for the kif.
Doors opened for them, on a room sodium-lit and reeking of kif-stink. The distinctive chatter and. clicking of kif came out to them; and a high wail that was not kif died in a sudden squeak.
"Here," their hooded guide said, beside that open door, extending a wide-sleeved arm. "The hakkikt will welcome you."
"Huh," Pyanfar said, and stepped inside, into the murk, slid sideways of the door and sideways still as Haral and the rest followed, in amongst a crowd of kif, in amongst deeper shadows and that old-paper scent and scent of ammonia and incense so strong they blinded the nose to other cues.
There were chairs, tables: seated kif, standing kif.
And standing at the far end of the long room, amid the hellish glare and drift of incense, two paler figures, one pale-skinned, one red-brown.
Abruptly Pyanfar's rifle tumbled from carry to her hands and rifles and guns moved with one rattle that sounded round the room in rapid sequence, a hundred-fold. Five of them were hers. The ready-lights on rifle stocks glowed like a scatter of bloody stars.
Nothing moved after that. Their backs were at the wall; and Hilfy and Tully were thrust back amid a ring of kif with rifles all about them.
"Sikkukkut!" Pyanfar yelled. "You here, hakkikt?"
One kif had remained seated in a many-legged chair. That one unfolded upward and stepped from among its legs, one hand lifted. "You amaze me, Chanur. Now what will you do? Ask me to let them go?"
"Oh, no. I'm going to stand here. We're all going to stand here like this, and no one moves, until my friends get here.''
"Your friends."
"Couple of hunter-ships. Just to keep the odds even while we trade."
The kif lowered his hand very slowly. He was utter shadow as he moved before the orange glaring lamp. The hands spread themselves, light streaming past the sleeves. A dry sniffing reached her ears. Kifish laughter. "So that was your request for an open berth. Good, hani. Very good." He gestured toward his prisoners. "Do you want to take them now?
Pyanfar did not look, refusing the distraction. She kept the gun aimed at the hakkikt's chest. "We can have a real good bloodbath, hakkikt. Let me put it in kifish terms: we've got a sfik item here. It's my ego in question. So we'll just stand here. Hours maybe. We're patient. You want to send a message? Head my friends off from docks? Fine. Or come at us. It's all over in here, then."
The kif gave a flourish of his hands and sat down in his insect-legged chair, a black lump amid the black pillars of his folk, beside the solitary wisp of white and color that was the prize. In the tail of her eye she saw a shifting there among the prisoners, and heard a sharp, hurt gasp.
"I'd stop that back there," Pyanfar said, "hakkikt. One my people over there yells, might distract me, huh?"
Sikkukkut lifted a hand. "Hunter Pyanfar, you should havebeen a kif. I tell you, I will deal with you."
They could die, they could all die, of this kif s embarrassment. Of failing him. Or of trusting him. But it was an offer. She drew a long, even breath.
"Fine. Let's wait on my friends."
"There truly are such?"
"Truly, there are."
"You have a fast ship, hunter Pyanfar."
A kif—gave points away and halfway admitted to surprise. It was, gods help them, conciliatory. Or mockery. Or some obscurely kifish thing.
"What do you want?" she asked. It had to be the right question. Or there might none of them leave the room alive. "You wanted me here. Why? What trade?"
There was long silence. "Skokitk," the kif said. Cease. "Skokitk!"
The pale figure hit the floor, a thudding tumble to its knees. The red-brown moved and crouched low beside it. Pyanfar never turned her head.
"Hilfy," Haral said. "Very carefully. Get up and get him over here." -
"No," said Sikkukkut. "This would not be wise."
"Then we'll wait," said Pyanfar. "He all right, Hilfy?"
"So far," Hilfy said, a hard, thin voice. She heard the spasms of breathing, saw the paler figure rise again, assisted to his feet. "So far."
"Let us," said Sikkukkut, leaning an elbow on the high arch of a chair leg, and resting his long jaw on his hand, "—let us settle this matter. Let us dismiss this inconsequence and talk like allies."
/> "Allies in a mahen hell."
"Mkks is neutral ground. Let us welcome your friends when they come."
"We'll wait."
"They really are coming."
"Absolutely. And your ships still have their noses set to station. Still sitting targets."
"If you had meant to die you would have killed your kin first."
"Maybe."
"So these allies will not fire on our ships, no more than you did. You intend to get out of here. So do I. Therefore your prizes are intact. And mine is."
Kit-thought. It made mazes. "What prize, kif?"
"You," said Sikkukkut. He leaned toward the upright and rose from his chair ever so slowly, a smoky drift against the glaring lights. "You are here. And your allies are. I am no merchant. Trade—does not interest me. I make other transactions. Young Chanur—you may cross the room. Do so slowly."
"Tully—" Pyanfar heard Hilfy say. "Come on."
"No," said Sikkukkut. "He is ours. You may go, young Chanur."
Silence then.
"Hilfy," said Pyanfar. Her eyes never strayed from Sikkukkut; the gun barrel never moved. "Get over here. Now."
"He—"
"Now."
There was slow and careful movement. The kif stirred and eclipsed Tully's white shape. Pyanfar never let her eyes stray, trusting Haral and the others to watch the other kif. She had her own target all picked out. She heard the quiet movement reach her side, heard Hilfy's harsh breathing.
"Give me a gun." Hilfy's voice, hoarse and strained, with mayhem in it.
"Stand fast," Pyanfar muttered. "Just stand still, imp— Don't get in front of anyone."
The Kif Strike Back cs-3 Page 3