Chanur's Homecoming

by C. J. Cherryh

  “We got signal on Moon Rising,” Geran’s voice reached her, indistinct; she heard Tully talking, some half-drunken babble.

  “Chur,” he was saying. “Chur, you answer. Please you answer.”

  No sound out of Chur, then. It might still be the sedative. The machine would knock her out in stress. They had plenty of it. Pyanfar blinked again, flexed her right arm in the brace, withdrew it and shoved the mechanism aside, out of her way. Her hands shook. She heard the quiet, desperate drone of Tully’s alien voice: “Chur, Chur, you hear?”

  While Geran battled the comp for ID they desperately needed. Mind on business.

  “We got recept on Meetpoint,” Hilfy said. “Lot of output. Busy in there. I’m trying to link up with our partners, get a fix on those ships—”

  “We’ve got to keep going,” she muttered. “Got to. No gods-be choice. Blind. We got our instructions, we got—”

  “Kif,” Skkukuk said suddenly. “Kifish output!”

  “Audio two,” Hilfy said.

  It was. Some kifish ship was transmitting in code. Unaware of them yet, it might be. Or close enough to have picked them up, inbound from Kefk. “Going to have an intercept down our necks any minute,” she muttered, and sweated. “Akkhtimakt. He’s on guard here. Or he’s running the whole gods-be station—”

  “Image, priority,” Geran said. “My gods.”

  Passive scan came up with resolution, a haze to this side, to that, all in differing colors indicating different vectors and slow, virtually null-movement, relative. Big hazy ball where Meetpoint ought to be. Haze to zero-ninety-minus sixty. Haze to minus seventy-thirty-sixty. Another ball out to one-ten. The only thing that made sense was the Given in the system, the Meetpoint Mass itself, big and dark and dead from its eons-old formation. And the station itself. The rest—

  “Khym,” Pyanfar snapped. “Interior com. Tully! Audio one. Listen sharp. We don’t know what we’ve got here. Could be humans, could be anything. Whatever we got, it’s a lot of it.”

  “Got it,” Khym said; and: “Got,” from Tully.

  The comp main panel between Haral and Hilfy was a steady flicker of inter-partition queries and action from this and that side of its complex time-sharing lobes. Like the lunatic tc’a: it had several minds to make up, and they were all busy.

  She rubbed her chest where the pain had settled and swiped the back of the same hand across an itch on her nose.

  And listened to Khym trying over and over again to raise Chur on the com.

  “Chur,” he cried suddenly. “Geran—I got her, she’s answering! Chur, how are you?”

  She was alive back there. Someone switched Chur’s answer through. It was scatologically obscene.

  Pyanfar drew one painful breath and another.

  “Thank the gods,” Haral murmured in a low voice. And from Khym: “Ker Chur, we have a problem just now—”

  “That’s stsho,” Hilfy said. “I’m picking up something near the station. Stsho. And hani. More than one. You got data coming, Geran, Jik.—I hear that.” To someone on com. And Geran:

  “Gods rot it, I’m working.” Then: “Yeah, just take it easy, hear?”

  “I got,” Jik said quietly. “They be here they don’t—”

  “Ten minutes station AOS,” Haral said. “Mark.”

  Pyanfar drew another breath and flexed her hands. “Hilfy, output to Meetpoint traffic control: coming in on standard approach.”

  “Aye, done, standard approach data in transmission.”

  “Aja Jin make dump,” Jik said.

  “Stand by our final.”

  The wavefront of their arrival had not yet gotten to Meetpoint central. The robotic beacon in the jump range knew as much as its AI brain was capable of knowing anything; but the buoy was not communicating data back to them even after it had had time to receive their ID squeal.

  It was certain that it was a trap. Stsho had no nerve sufficient to antagonize an armed enemy, blinding them as they came in. It was what they hired guards to do.

  “No telling where Sikkukkut is,” Pyanfar muttered. “It’d take him maybe another hour to get that lot away from Kefk. But he’s fast.”

  “Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said, which sound sent the hair up on her back. Not a comment except that click which meant a thousand things. “You all right back there: Skkukuk, you all right?” she asked the kif. And deliberately pleased the bastard. It was a genuine question; nourishment for him was a problem. No gods-be little vermin on my bridge, was her ultimatum; and Skkukuk had come up with his own answer. Straight simple-sugars and water, into a vein.

  “Kkkkt,” he said again. “Yes, hakt’.” Doubtless coming to a whole array of mistaken kifish conclusions about his status, the crew’s, Jik’s and Tully’s; that elongate, predatory brain was set up to process that kind of information constantly, inexorable as a star in its course. Claw and crawl and climb. With a sense of humor only when it was in the ascendancy and demonstrating its power.

  Creator Gods, if You made that, You must’ve had something in mind. But what?

  “Imaging,” Tirun said; “priority channel four.”

  “Your two,” Haral said; but that change was already there, the hazy ball of Meetpoint separating into a whole globe of points. So did one of the other patches of haze. Another remained indistinct.

  “We got a lot of company,” Haral said.

  It was a swarm for sure. A monstrous swarm sitting around Meetpoint station, like insects around a corpse.

  “Migods,” she murmured.

  Another blur materialized. About ten minutes Light off station nadir. Unresolved yet, and small. It could get a lot wider.

  “There’s another one,” Haral said; on the second Geran and Jik both came in on com.

  “Got that,” Pyanfar muttered, her mind half there, half on what the comp was bringing up, color-code spotted into the station-mass that said stsho/hani ID.

  More IDs. There were stsho and hani in the station imaging, there were mahendo’sat and kif outlying. But not a single methane-breather in the output, which could mean that imaging had ignored them; or that no methane-breather was outputting; or that the methane-breathers had gotten the wind up them at some time earlier in events and lit out for their own territories.

  “Captain,” Geran said.

  “I got it, I got it.”

  “Not a methane-breather anywhere,” Haral muttered. “I don’t like this.”

  “Got to be Akkhtimakt out there,” Tirun said. “Looks like we got a real standoff here.”

  “Mahen ships out there,” Pyanfar said. “Goldtooth, I’ll bet you that, eggs to pearls. And too many ships. Gods, look at that.”

  “Humans,” Haral said in a low voice. Not on bridgecom; voice-only.

  “Yeah.”

  Tully knows it. Got to know it. He’s not deaf. Not blind either.

  “Pyanfar,” Jik said. “Give com.”

  “In your own hell I will. Sit still.”

  Stsho and hani sitting there dead at dock with kif in full view, kifish ships with the advantage of position and startup time and the mass of Meetpoint’s dark dwarf to pull them in?

  But so had those other blotches on scan, mahen and alien. Standoff for sure.

  We got troubles, gods, we got troubles.

  “Hilfy: to both our partners; stand by hard dump, at the 2 unit mark; gods-be if we’re going into that. Hard dump and brake. We’re going to sit.”

  “You got damn kif come in here behind us, upset ever’thing!” Jik cried. “Give com, dammit, I talk!”

  “Sit still while you got ears!”

  “Aja Jin’s outputting,” Hilfy said. “Jik. Translate.”

  Faster than the mechanical translation.

  “They make ID. Say hello to Ana. Say got kif coming behind us.”

  “Gods rot them.” Monitors flicked and shifted. They were being inundated with com input, faster than their operators could handle it. Transcriptions were coming over. Kifish com. Hani ships were standing ou
t from station.

  Stsho were in panic. Their wavefront had gotten to the station but not to the outliers they had seen on passive. Three more minutes for Akkhtimakt’s kif to notice them. Seven for the unidentifieds that might be mahendo’sat. Eight for the ones farthest out, who might be human. And double that for response time. “We’re going to have kif up our backsides.”

  “You going have damn kif break through system, they don’t stop, you hear? Pyanfar! Give com!”

  “Shut it up. Haral! Dump us down.”

  Haral hit the switches. The Pride shed V in a single lurch to a lower state; space went inside out—

  . . . another lurch. The universe spun once about. . . .

  . . . revised itself.

  Instruments cleared. Broke up again with a heart-stopping jolt and cleared, some ship too near them and themselves displaced off their nav-fix as the field popped them down the gravity-slope.

  The rate was far less. Easy from here. Two more blips reappeared: Moon Rising and Aja Jin matched them and came down again widely spaced from them and a little to the rear.

  “Reacquire,” Geran said.

  “Com output to my board,” Pyanfar said; and when the light went on: “All ships: this is Pyanfar Chanur, The Pride of Chanur. Take precautions; all station personnel, go to innermost secure areas. Maintain order. All ships drop to low-V for your own protection.—We have limited time. This is The Pride of Chanur and allied ships urging all ships to maintain position and take no action. The hakkikt Sikkukkut is inbound with a large number of ships. Take precautions—”

  “Sheshe sheshei-to!” Jik cried. And Geran:

  “Priority, Priority!” Geran cried, as the scan-monitor went red all across the top, with a breakout behind them like plague in the jumprange.

  “Gods-be!” Pyanfar cried; and hit the alarm.

  Useless. With ships coming up their backsides and under their bellies at V that could cross a planetary diameter in seconds. The informational wavefront was on them at C and the ships a fraction behind it—

  Instruments jumped and went crazy. Her heart slammed in her chest, and the first firing of panicked neurons said they were dying—the second, that they had not died and the encounter was over in nanoseconds.

  It passed like a storm. It was inbound to Meetpoint with a dopplered flare of output, like devils screaming down on the damned, Meetpoint with minutes left and mortal reflexes hopeless of mounting any response—

  “O gods,” she said for the third time. It came out with what felt like the last of her breath.

  “Give com,” Jik yelled. “Give—”

  “Stay in your seat!” Tirun snarled back.

  “Priority, com,” Hilfy snapped. “Tully!”

  And hard on that a stream of alien language, Tully’s voice, rapid-paced: “. . . to all ships,” the words turned up on monitor, translator-function. “This is # Tully ###, ask you # stay #####—”

  Total breakup. Whatever he was speaking, it was not in the com-dictionary.

  “Damn,” Jik said. “Ana!”

  While a mass of kifish output raced ahead of them, Sikkukkut, howling down on the station, nadir-bound, past a stationful of stsho who could not fight; and a cluster of hani ships who might try. And die doing it.

  “Gods curse that bastard,” Pyanfar muttered, and something hurt deep in her gut, diminishing that pain about her heart. “Gods curse him. Haral. To my boards. Hilfy: tell our partners stand by. Haral: course to Urtur.”

  “Aye,” Hilfy said.

  “Do it,” Pyanfar said, “Haral.”

  A code flashed to her screen. Priority four. Personnel emergency. From Tirun’s hand.

  “Pyanfar!” Jik’s voice. She spun the chair, saw Jik unbuckled and rising to his feet as Khym scrambled for his and Skkukuk moved faster still.

  But Jik stopped. Stopped still. So did everything else when she held up a hand. “Pyanfar, you got give me com—”

  “Aja Jin’s outputting code,” Hilfy said. “Inputting to code faculty, Haral.”

  “Jik,” Pyanfar said, “I don’t want my crew hurt. Don’t want you hurt. You’re about to give me no choice. You hear me?”

  “Damn fool hani, that be Mahijiru, Ana be wait signal— he get your message, he go from here. He got go from here. I give you message. You send: say Sheni. He understand, give you same cooperation. I tell truth, Pyanfar.”

  “Directive to that ship can’t go out from here,” she said, ears flat. All but deaf. Her heart was pounding. “You trying to fry us good, Jik? Mahen ships are dead-stopped out there. They’re caught, same as hani are. We haven’t got a choice here and Sikkukkut isn’t just real pleased with us to start with. Khym. Skkukuk. I think you better get Jik off the bridge.”

  “No! Pyanfar! Damn fool, you need me. Need me here. You send message!”

  “I can’t trust you. I’m going to ask you to leave. Quietly. Right now. Or you sit in that chair.”

  Jik’s hand tightened on the chair back. Not going to move, she thought; it seemed forever. Khym would never delay so long. Time spooled itself out the way it did in jump. She had to think of her own ship; and of the gun in her pocket. I’ll use it, Jik; I’d use it if you made me, for godssakes, don’t, don’t make me, I’ve got my ship to protect—

  He moved to put himself in the chair. And she let go the breath she had forgotten, and spun her chair back again.

  The translations were multiplying on the screen. Aja Jin was spilling out everything, a flood of com-sent explanations, coded and headed out toward the mahen ships. Tully was still sending on their com, never having stopped. It was a guess what he was sending. Saying everything they could not, dared not, in a code no one could crack.

  Treason against the hakkikt. Perhaps against them.

  Or against humankind itself.

  But what did the hakkikt expect, sending them in first, to paralyze the system—when his own arrival hard upon their own would send ships running like leaves in the wind?

  She switched that to Jik’s monitor. Silent comment.

  It’s getting done, Jik. And it may kill all of us.

  Tully’s output made no sense at all, misapplications or coded applications of vocabulary driving the translator to lunacy. What came out of Aja Jin achieved syntax. It made no sense in some of its parts. But did in others. They were onto those codewords. If Kesurinan over there had truly suspected something she might have used some alternate; it was a guess that the mahendo’sat had alternates. But Kesurinan did not suspect. That was the best guess: Kesurinan did not suspect that they had those words at least; or that Jik would have given them out against his will, to a ship that had a mahen-given translation program.

  While the ship hurtled on at its reduced V and duty stations talked back and forth to each other in muted voices and the blip and click of instruments and boards.

  For Jik it was already past. And there was the kif in front of him, and hani who had kept him from his ship at a moment that might prove decisive in all history.

  She found not a thing to say either.

  Sikkukkut’s kif hurtled on toward attack on Akkhtimakt and on Goldtooth and the humans, if that was what that mass was out there. While the stsho and any other noncombatants on that station abided the outcome in helpless terror.

  “Priority,” Geran said. Scan went red-bordered, a group of outlier ships went from stationary blue to the blinking blue of a low-V ship from which passive-recept had picked up some activity. Like engine-firing.

  Akkhtimakt.

  Her claws dug into the upholstery. “What AOS are they on?”

  “That’s our message,” Tirun said. “They don’t know Sikkukkut’s here yet. That AOS is coming up minus three. I’ve got ID on some of those hani ships at station. Negative on Ehrran. That’s Harun’s Industry and The Star of Tauran, stsho ship Meotnis; hani vessel Vrossaru’s Outbounder; Pauran’s Lightweaver; Shaurnurn’s Hope—”

  Old names. Spacer names. The clans of Araun. Pyanfar heard them and clenched her
hands on the arms of the chair.

  As the color-shift on Akkhtimakt’s kif went over from blue to blinking green. To purple, like the image on Sikkukkut’s ships. But a double hand of Sikkukkut’s ships were shifting down, going brighter blue-green, and two brighter still. Different assignments. Stopping in midsystem. Where they could shift vector and strike at Meetpoint Station. Or at the mahendo’sat.

  “Priority,” Geran said.

  “I got that,” she said. “Sikkukkut’s got his tail guarded, he does.”

  “AOS on our message,” Tirun said, monotone. “Akkhtimakt’s present position.”

  “Gods.” Vector, gods rot it, Geran. What’s Akkhtimakt’s vector? “Geran, can you get me a—”

  The projection took shape. “Priority, priority,” Geran said. And her answer came up two-vectored, one part of Akkhtimakt’s group bound nadir, twenty ships for Urtur and ten for Kshshti. Her heart seized up and beat painfully against the stress.

  “Gods and thunders.”

  “Sikkukkut may just chase ’em,” Haral said. “Gods send he chases ’em clear to Urtur, get him by the gods out of here.”

  “Give me com,” Jik said in a low voice. As if he had no hope of it already. “Give me com. I talk to Ana—”

  But suddenly Goldtooth’s image was blinking too. Imminent motion, as yet undefined in the comp. The doppler shift could tell it what it had, and comp was working on the precise figure.

  “Pyanfar.”

  “No, gods rot it. Gods-be, that bastard’s just AOS on that move of Akkhtimakt’s and he’s losing no time taking out of here. Whatever Aja Jin sent may not reach him before he goes. Running. Where? How far’s he going?”

  “Not know,” Jik aid.

  “Outsystem? Turn around and come in?”

  “Give com. I tell him, he do! Code. God! Kif not break fast enough! Give com.”

  “You might not catch him. And he might not listen. And that leaves us with the kif, doesn’t it? All alone; and us transmitting to his enemies in code. No thanks.”

  While, beside them and behind, Aja Jin kept quiet. Perhaps Kesurinan believed that that order for silence came from Jik, relayed because he was not on the bridge; or Kesurinan still trusted. Perhaps.