“Mahen ships are AOS of our number-two message,” Tirun droned placidly, their relativity-timekeeper, while disaster went on shaping up around them. “Going to be a while on Kesurinan’s. It may not make it.”
The Goldtooth-human aggregate went green. Retreating. Faster and faster.
Jik swore. In mahensi. “All way doublecross. Pyanfar. You, me, Ana. Damn, damn!”
“Shut it down.”
“Kif—damn, kif do this thing, you don’t go in fight, don’t go in, Pyanfar.”
“That, you got. No way are we going into that.”
While the recent past unfolded on the screen, the computer struggling to make sense of it and sending out image that had two shades of the same kifish color on the ID monitor.
“Gods-be fool kif’ve hardly dumped,” Haral muttered at her side. “Carrying sixty-five of light. Gods, look at that.”
“I’d rather not,” she said back. And felt sick at the stomach. Felt a tremor in all her limbs. “Bastard’s got enough V to hyper out of here, right up Akkhtimakt’s tail.”
“Dangerous,” Haral said. Meaning collisions on the other side, where they would drop down into the well at Urtur not knowing the trim and the precise capacity on the ships ahead of them. It was asking for it.
And the godscursed mahendo’sat were leaving system. Abandoning them. There were other conclusions, but none of them were enough to pin hope on. Knowing Goldtooth, whose priorities were all mahendo’sat.
That’s one more I owe you, Goldtooth, you bastard.
We got hani ships at station. We got three hundred thousand stsho who can’t defend themselves.
She reached after the last of the food packets by her chair and got it down; her mouth tasted of dry fuzz and copper. She was aware of loose fur rubbing between her skin and the chair leather; of hair sticking to the console-rim where it had rubbed from her arm; sweat had soaked her trousers and made the leather of the seat moist wherever she touched it.
Once at Urtur Akkhtimakt might turn about and come back with V on his side. Even if it took four months. But beyond Urtur was hani territory; the conflict might keep going.
Four months out and back, again and again and again. Years of maneuvering as the ground-bound saw it. Mere weeks in the time-stretch of ships that made virtually no system-time at all. Years of fighting, with ship-crews caught in virtual stasis, unaged.
How does anything survive in that kind of lunacy? What have we got at the end of it?
Gods fry him, what game is Goldtooth playing now? Him and the humans. All running. What in a mahen hell good are they?
What doublecross are the humans planning?
What did Tully tell them?
“Priority,” Hilfy said. “Message from Sikkukkut: quote: Dock and hold the station.”
Got our orders, do we? Kiss the hakkikt’s feet, do his work, move at his order. Go in there like a bunch of gods-be pirates?
I wish I were dead before this.
“Advise Aja Jin and Tahar,” she said.
“Aye,” Hilfy said. And a moment later: “They acknowledge: final message: Going on your signal.”
We’re worrying about what Goldtooth’s doing. What Akkhtimakt’s doing. We forget one important thing: Sikkukkut’s no fool. He’s had time to think this thing through. He’s got something planned. He’s thinking ahead of Akkhtimakt. Gods, what’s the next move?
“Put us in,” she said.
“Aye,” said Haral. And began to lay course. They were moving in approximately the right vector. Haral hit the directionals and they started hammering off the V, turning, bringing the mains to bear on it. Those cut in, a one-G push, sudden and solid against the downward G they had from the rotation, a steady discomfort.
“Chur all right back there?” she asked. “Khym?”
“Chur’s asked,” Khym said, “What we’re doing. I’ve tried to explain. I think she’s drugged. She says she wants free of the machine. I said no, we had enough trouble.”
“We got enough trouble,” she muttered, and punched in all-ship. “Chur, we’re all right. We got our hands full up here, huh? Just don’t worry your sister.”
“Aye,” Chur’s voice came back to her. She had been Geran’s partner at that board. Now she lay listening while scan tried to track a Situation multiplied by fives and worse. “Geran, I’m . . . going to sleep . . . gods-be machine.”
“G-stress,” Pyanfar said.
Is it? Gods, cousin, hang on.
“We’re headed into station,” Geran said. “Hear that, sister of mine?”
“Got it,” Chur murmured. It sounded like that. But she was far from the pickup.
The mains cut in, hard acceleration. And cut out again.
“We’re on,” Haral said. “We’re going to be inertial. Take our time getting in there.”
Preserve our options. Haral was reading her mind again. And inertial-time was rest-time.
She dropped her hand from the boards and sat there a moment while her muscles went weak and she was not at all certain that she could stand up. The interval between the two groups of kif narrowed further and further, changes perceptible only in the data-tags, but definitive. That would go on for the better part of an hour till someone got in position to do something. Jump and shoot, respectively. Then it remained to see what Sikkukkut would do.
Leave us to hold onto Meetpoint while he chases that bastard down?
Us to hold Meetpoint with Goldtooth loose? Goldtooth’s taking his options. He won’t jump till he has to, he wants to know what Sikkukkut’s doing; and Sikkukkut’s going to give him no options, going to follow right on his tail till he jumps. There’s some small chance that Sikkukkut might leave if he can get Goldtooth out. He might rip loose everything he can pirate here and go for Akkhtimakt at Urtur. Akkhtimakt’s got to go slow on the turnaround there, all that gods-be dust. Got to. Then Sikkukkut could catch him up and hammer him good.
If we knew Goldtooth’s mind. Kifish ships are going to run up his backside, make him jump for Tt’a’va’o, they got V on him, he’s got no choice either.
And once Goldtooth goes, he and the humans’ve got a three, four month turnaround to get back here. Gods, think, Pyanfar! What are the options?
“Tirun. Take watch. All the rest of you, you’re off. Get something to eat. Geran, you’re cleared aft; Skkukuk, belowdecks. Take what you can set. Jik. You I want to talk to.”
Seats moved, restraints clicked open. Everyone was in motion, Haral as well. Pyanfar turned her own chair and stopped. Jik still sat in his place, staring at the screens. Tirun was beside him, keeping her station. And Tully, though Hilfy had him by the elbow, lingered with a confused and sorrowful look toward the boards. Toward—gods knew, his own people starting off in retreat with Goldtooth, leaving him behind, perhaps forever, who knew? It was not a time to say anything. Pyanfar stared their way till Hilfy prevailed and they went out the door.
“Haral,” she said. “Take the long break. Tirun, board to you, you go off when we get to final. Sorry about it.”
“Got it,” Tirun said hoarsely. “I’m fine, captain.”
That left Jik to deal with. Khym had lingered in the corridor. She saw him standing down near Chur’s door, looking back toward the bridge.
In case.
“Haral,” she said in deepest and most impenetrable hani: “You want to bring me up a sedative. Something our guest can take. If we have to do that.”
“Aye, captain,” Haral said.
“I’ll be in galley.”
She wanted to be clean. She wanted to go back to her cabin and run herself under the shower. The whole bridge smelled like ammonia and hani and human and mahen sweat, an aroma even the fans did not totally disperse. But there was no time for that. It was far from over.
Even on this deck.
* * *
“Get me up,” Chur said, with a move of an aching arm. “O gods, prop this gods-be bed up. I’m a mess.”
“That’s all right.” Geran sat down on the
bedside and checked the implanted tubes with a quick glance, bit a hole in the packet she had brought, and offered it to Chur. “Take this and you get the bed propped up.”
“Unnhhn.” The very thought hit her stomach and lay there indigestible. “Prop it first.”
“You promise.”
“Gods rot you, I’ll rip your ears.”
Geran touched a control and the bed inclined upward. Chur flexed her legs and shifted her weight and grimaced in pain as the arm with the implants shifted down. But Geran, relentless, got an arm behind Chur’s head and held the packet where she could drink.
It hit her stomach the way she had feared. “Enough,” she said, “enough.” And Geran had the sense to quit and just let her lie there drifting a moment, in that place she had discovered where the pain was not so bad. “Where’s the shooting?” she asked finally.
“Hey, we ducked out of it.”
Chur lay there a moment adding that up and rolled her head over where she could look at her sister, one long stare. “Where’d we duck to? Huh?”
“Kif are about to chew each other to rags about fifteen minutes off. We’re headed to station for R & R. Maybe I’ll buy you a drink, huh?”
“We take damage?” She recalled a lurch, like the thrust of the mains from the wrong angle . . . impossible to happen. Recalled a long hard acceleration, till the machine put her out cold. “Geran, what’s the straight of it?”
“That is the straight of it. We’re in one piece, we’re going into station while the kif work it out. That’s all.”
Too gods-be cheerful, Geran. Whole lot too cheerful.
“Give me the truth,” Chur said. “That’s a gods-be dumb move. Sit at dock. Who knows what could come in? Huh? What’s going on?”
“You want to try something solid?”
“No,” she said flatly. And lay there breathing a moment, and turned her face toward Geran’s stricken silence. Gods, the pain in Geran’s face. “But I have to, don’t I?” Her stomach rebelled at the thought. “Bit of soup, maybe. Nothing heavy. Don’t push me, huh?”
“Sure,” Geran said. Her ears had pricked up at once. Her eyes shone like a grateful child’s. “You want the rest of this?”
O gods. Don’t let me be sick. “Soup,” she said, and clamped her jaws and tried not to think about it. “I rest, huh?”
“You rest,” Geran said.
She shut her eyes, turning it all off.
You’re still lying, Geran. But she did not have strength to face whatever it was Geran was lying about. She hoped not to discover. Her world limited itself to the pains in her joints and the misery of her arm and her back. The world could be right again if she could keep her stomach quiet and ease the pain a little. She just wanted not to throw up her guts again, and any problem more than that was more than she could carry.
It was impossible not to ask. But in a dim, weary way, with the data that came over the com all muddling in her head and promising nothing good at all, she thanked the gods Geran held back the answers.
* * *
“Jik,” Pyanfar said.
Jik pushed himself back in his chair and looked at the board in front of him, its screens all dark and dead. And turned his chair then and stared at her across the width of the bridge.
A word was too much. Till she had something to offer him from her side. Time seemed to stretch further and further like the eeriness of jump. And there was no rescue and no way out of the impasse they were in. Him on The Pride’s bridge. Aja Jin ignorant and silent beside them.
His allies outbound. Unless by some monumentally unexpected turn the kif all went after their enemies and left them alone.
And none of them believed that.
Down the corridor the lift worked, and opened, and let Haral out. Pyanfar got up and went to the door of the bridge and out it, to intercept her in the hall; and Haral slipped her a couple of pills. “Thanks,” she said; “you sure about this stuff.”
“This’ll make it sure,” Haral said, and fished a flask out of her capacious pocket. Parini. Pyanfar took it and gestured with a move of her jaw back the way Haral had come. Haral went.
And Pyanfar turned back toward the bridge, where Jik sat quietly in his chair, caring not to turn it when she came up on him. She walked back to the fore of the bridge, and stood there looking back. “I want to talk to you. Private.” Only Tirun was left with the boards; and she herself was not up to a hand-to-hand with a taller, heavier mahendo’sat, even if he was jump-wobbly too. Fool, she thought. But some courses had to be steered. Even at risk to the ship.
“Come on,” she said again. “Jik.”
He got to his feet. She walked away, deliberately taking her eyes off him, though it was sure Tirun was alert to sudden moves.
But he came docilely after her, and followed her through the short corridor to the galley.
Tirun being Tirun, she would both monitor it all on the intercom and pass the word to all aboard that the galley had just gone offlimits.
She turned when she had gotten as far as the counter and the cabinet with the gfi-cups.
“Captain,” Tirun said via com. “Pardon. Goldtooth’s group has started shifting out, first one just went. Before AOS on Kesurinan’s message. Close, but they’re not going to get it. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Huh,” she said. “Pass that to the crew.”
“Aye.” The audio cut out. The com stayed live, its telltale still glowing on the wall-unit.
And Jik stood there, just stood, with a slump in his shoulders and a set like stone to his face. “Sit down,” she said, and he did that, on the long bench against the wall, elbows on the table. She got a glass from the cabinet, the flask from her pocket, poured a shot of it and set it in front of him.
“No,” he said.
“That’s prescriptive. You drink. Hear?”
He took it then, and took a sip and shuddered visibly. Sat there looking nowhere. Thinking of friends, maybe. Of Goldtooth, outbound and not to return for months.
Of his ship, so close and himself helpless to reach them.
“Take another,” she said. He did, shuddering after that one too, and that shudder did not stop. Liquor spilled out onto his hand, pooled on the table as he set the glass down. He put the hand to his mouth and sucked at the knuckle where it had spilled. His eyes glared at her.
She sat down, opposite him. If Tirun wanted her, there was the alarm. Her own aches could wait. She was prepared to wait. For whatever it took.
It was a long time before he moved at all, and that was to lift the glass and take it all down in one long stinging draught. He shuddered a third time, set the glass down empty and she filled it.
Got a crate of the stuff in storage. Pour it all down him if we have to.
“Hao’ashtie-na ma visini-ma’arno shishini-to nes mura’-ani hes.” Whoever he was talking to, she did not follow it. Something about dark and cold. It was that dialect he spoke with Kesurinan. “Muiri nai, Pyanfar.”
“Mishio-ne.” I’m sorry.
“Hao. Mishi’sa.”—Yes. Sorry. “Neshighot-me pau taiga?” What the hell good is it?
“None. I know that. Species-interest, Jik. I warned you of that. Now you can try to break my neck. It won’t get you our access codes. What it will get you is a lot of grief. You don’t want it; I don’t want it. We’re old friends. And you know down that one way’s a lot of trouble and no good at all and down the other’s a hani whose interests might be a lot the same as yours in the long run.”
For a while he said nothing. After a while he picked up the glass again and took a tiny sip. “Merus’an-to he neishima kif, he?”
Something about damned kif, himself, and bargains.
“I want my people safe, Jik.”
“You damn fool!” His hand came down on the table, jarring the liquid. “Give me com.”
“So you can doublecross me again? No. Not this time. Too many lives here.”
While pacifist stsho ran in gibbering terror in the cor
ridors of their station and discovered there were species which could neither be hired nor bribed nor prevented from being predators.
“Humans,” she said; “and mahendo’sat. If Tully’s right, if Tully’s telling the truth, and I think he is—there’s one more doublecross in the works. The humans will betray Goldtooth. Hear? And you know and I know Sikkukkut’s got to do something here. Your partner’s going to push and herd the kif into fighting. He thinks. But in the meanwhile who does the bleeding? They’ll herd him right away from mahen space. Right? Where does that leave? Stsho? Tc’a? Goldtooth’s defending that. That leaves hani space—friend. You don’t push me right now. My people have got me between them and that, and don’t push me, Jik!”
“You—” Jik fell silent a moment, coughed and rested there with his mouth against his hand as if he had lost his way and his argument. “Merus’an-to he neishima kif. Shai.”
Bargains and the kif again. Then: I. Or something like that. He spoke mahensi. As if he had forgotten that he was not on his own ship. Or as if, exhausted as he was and wrung out, he lacked the strength to translate. He had that glassy look. Jump healed, but it took it out of a body too. And he had gone into it hurt, in body and spirit.
He was still reasonable. Still the professional, getting what he could get. She counted on that.
“I have to go in there to Meetpoint,” she said. “I got to get what I can get. I won’t doublecross you. Won’t do any hurt to the mahendo’sat. I swear that, haur na ahur. But I don’t want you against me either. I don’t want you trying to get at controls, I don’t want you trying to get at my crew. And everything you tell me’s going to be a lie. Isn’t it? Con the hani again.” She fished in her pocket and laid the two pills on the table. “You take those when you want ’em. Nothing but sleeping pills. I got enough troubles. You got enough. You’re strung. You know it. I want you to go out of here, mind your manners with my crew, get some sleep. That’s all you can do. All I can do for you. Like a friend, Jik. But first I want to ask you: have you held out on me? Conned me? You got anything you think I better know? ’Cause we are going in there. And we’re going to get blown to a mahen hell if this is a trap. And Sikkukkut just might not go with us, which would be a real shame.”
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