Chanur's Homecoming

by C. J. Cherryh

  Kifish transmissions everywhere; and Chakkuf and Nekkekt and Sukk were doing their job, the point of a spear that had to drive straight into Urtur before it stopped, revectored, and ran up the V sufficient for a jump out of this hell. That was the worst of it, that dead-relative-stop they had to do to line up that next jump, or slew through hyperspace askew from their target and depending on the next star to pull them in, loss of realspace-time, loss of everything if they miscalculated. . . .

  Those hunter-ships were aware of their schedule, were able to make up that time and distance on sheer power, and rendezvous again, elsewhere. They claimed. It was their idea. A merchant pilot would have laughed, disbelieved it: and suffered a chill up the back at the thought of ships that could do that, knnn-like, as far off their capacity as they were off that of an insystemer.

  She had no doubts. Clearly the kif would not have shown them everything they had.

  And, gods, she would have given anything to find that fire answered, Akkhtimakt in Urtur system, resisting. He was not. That meant he was elsewhere. The terror reasserted itself, habitual and consuming.

  “Chur,” she heard Hilfy say. “Time you woke up. Chur—”

  Persistently. She cut in on that channel herself. “Chur, gods rot it, answer, we’re coming up on braking.”

  No answer.

  “Geran,” Pyanfar snapped. “You got backup, we’re stable; get back there.”

  There was a snap from a released restraint. She did not look around to see. Did not try to talk to Khym, had no doubts of his safety, or Tully’s. They were no different from other crew, probably had reported in to com monitoring, as the Tauran would report, from crew quarters, going through frantic prep for shift change while they had this small inertial stretch for the generation systems to recharge. The machine was keeping Chur quiet. That was what it was. It was supposed to. That was all it was.

  “No gods-be hope of Akkhtimakt being here,” she muttered to Haral.

  “We ever expect it? Hope to all the gods those first ships of Sikkukkut’s cut ’em good. We got station output, no buoy, no ship-com. No tc’a, f’godssakes, tc’a miners don’t notice kif stuff. They’re not talking either. Something big’s been through here like thunder. Something that bothered them.”

  “And a knnn comes in at Meetpoint. I want out of here. I want out of here real bad.” Pyanfar took another swallow at the bag, another listen at com off Chur’s cabin. There was the sound of the door opening. Geran’s voice desperately calling Chur’s name. She swept an eye over scan. All the ships behind them had dumped down. “We’re all on. How’re you doing, Haral?”

  “I’m holding up.” The voice was hoarse as her own.

  Then: “Chur’s coming out of it,” Geran said over com. “Tell the captain.”

  “I got that,” Pyanfar said, punching in. “How is she?”

  “Weak,” the answer came back, which was not the answer she had wanted, not with what they had coming.

  If Geran admitted that much, it was bad back there.

  Pyanfar took another drink, emptied the noxious liquid into her mouth, and swallowed hard. She threw com wide to all-ship. “We’re stable. We’re doing all right, high over the soup. If the two kif have jumped past us back to Sikkukkut, he’s welcome to ’em. . . .” She cut it off. “Gods,” she said to Haral. “Gods, I hope. What in a mahen hell’s keeping our backup crew? Query ’em.” The weakness came and went in waves. Her muscles had no strength left. They had a while yet to run before they reached their turn point. The Pride would query for a Confirm; but if it got no Abort it would make that final dump on its own, reorient, find its own reference star and head out to Kura, would do it if they were all dead or incapacitated, taking its log records and everything it had into hani space, to brake at Anuurn and wait to be boarded . . . by hani, pray the gods. The chance that the automatics could do all that flawlessly was about fifty-fifty; but it was their third-backup, failsafe to feeble living muscle and overtired brains. Haral had run all that calc, even had it plugged into one contingency course-plot for Kshshti to Maing Tol; and one for Tt’a’va’o as well, all while she had been tied up with the kif. Brain-bending, meticulous checks, run fast and by the gods accurately. And Haral like the rest of the crew, like Geran back there trying to keep her sister alive, had far overrun her physical limits.

  “Tully’s on his way up,” Hilfy said. Internal-com was not her proper assignment; but it was a fair bet Sifeny had not understood him. “Na Khym’s up and headed out upper sec. Tauran crew is on its way.”

  “Thank gods,” Pyanfar murmured. Things started to sort out. She could just about hold on that long. “Skkukuk.”

  “Hakt’.”

  “You’re offduty.” No, gods, no, can’t send him down the lift with Tauran crew coming up, they might shoot him. “Soon’s Tauran crew hits the bridge, you can go to quarters. See you at Kura.”

  “Kkkkt. Yes, hakt’.” Exhausted as the rest of them. “Hakt’, there is not adequate resistance here. Chakkuf has advised subordinates of this. Akkhtimakt has gone elsewhere. The two advance ships will have gone on. I queried regarding those courses. Our escort does not know.”

  “Thanks,” she said. Calmly. There was no course but what they were following. It was academic information. That was all.

  While all the agreements that held the Compact together had been shattered.

  “On the other hand there a possibility both may have turned and gone for Kita,” said Skkukuk. “Akkhtimakt, defilement on his name, might circle back to Akkht. If he had Akkht he would be formidable again. Homeworld could not stand against him if it were not aware that he is severely challenged.”

  “And not to Kura? Leave Akkhtimakt free to go to Kura?”

  “We are that contingency, mekt-hakt’. Certainly the hakkikt has sent a message to Akkht. But that we are not aware of the course of these ships indicates that they are not part of our business.”

  “Or, of course, that our escort has separate orders.”

  “Assuredly. Should I have mentioned that? The mekt-hakt’ is no fool.”

  She tasted bile. Her heart labored and skipped like something moribund, on its last strength. The lift-door light reflected in the monitor at her right hand. A group of figures exited, shadows in a dimly-reflected corridor. Tauran, thank the gods. And where in a mahen hell’s Tully? She was not mentally fit for problems. She knew that. For godssakes get up here, Tauran, I can’t handle anything, I’m not sure I can walk across the floor. Her chest was hurting again, a persistent pain. She violated her own rule, powering her chair about on a working station. But Tauran was there, Sirany and all the rest of her crew, and—dull shock—Tully was with them, Tully had ridden the lift up with strangers and gotten out unscathed, points to that crew’s nerves and decency.

  She unbuckled her restraints and groped after the chair arm. She was in that kind of condition. She heaved herself to her feet as Tully went off the back way to the galley, on duty; and Sirany Tauran and her crew headed for their change-off. “We got it easy,” Pyanfar said, though ops-com had been open for monitor the while. “Escort’s been laying down fire ahead of us, we got no sound out of Urtur station, we got no sound out of kif insystem. We got an hour to run before we hit our last dump and turn. We’re still missing Tahar and Vrossaru. They didn’t make the jump.”

  “Understood,” Sirany said. “I’ve been on your com feed since before we dropped. Knnn. Knnn, for godssakes.”

  “Knnn and trouble of some kind back there at Meetpoint. Whether that’s good news or bad for Tahar or for the kif I don’t know. I hope to all the gods it’s Goldtooth’s bunch, but they weren’t running IDs.” She passed a glance aside as Skkukuk unbuckled. “Kkkt,” Skkukuk murmured, and got up to his full, if unsteady, height. “Hakt’.” That was only one captain he saluted; he bowed and turned and walked off the bridge, bound below, while Tauran crew took the briefings, the critical situations, from Chanur crew on the last of their strength.

  Pyanfar straig
htened her shoulders and looked at Sirany. “You got a real good crew,” she said of Sif and Fiar.

  “Yeah,” Sirany said, but the flick of the ears said immensely pleased. And said something else she could not read. “We got it, go.”

  Time then to step out of her way and let another captain to The Pride’s boards, the codes stripped to master-unlock, even the log and their private files. Fire-codes, data-codes, the whole ship. “All open,” she said to Sirany, and turned and collected Haral, who left the boards like she was leaving a lover, with a second and a third look. She put a hand on Haral’s shoulder and shoved her galleyward, paused to shepherd Hilfy through, and Fiar too, offshift with Chanur crew; but Sif Tauran went to hang over the back of Sirany’s seat at the main boards and deliver a quiet report.

  My compatriot. My maybe-enemies and allies of necessity. My crew of men and aliens and reluctant, ambiguous hani. Clans were more absolute in the old days; the hani tongue had nothing native to express halfway loyalties. A hani had to come to the deep wide black to find it. Among kif and mahendo’sat. And humans. “Tirun,” she said out loud, and gave an irritated jerk of the chin at Tirun, who delayed with her opposite number, on her feet and physically clinging to the seat. “Come on, gods rot it, cousin, time’s running.”

  Tirun came. Geran arrived from down the corridor, bleary-eyed and staggering. “We’re relieved,” Pyanfar said. “Come on. How’s Chur?”

  “Alive,” Geran said, and her mouth went hard shut, as if that was the only word that was going to get out. But: “Going to get something down her,” Geran muttered in passing. “Going to sleep there this trip.”

  “Huh,” Pyanfar said, venturing no more than that. The two of them crowded into the same bed, that was what Geran meant: there was nowhere else in that lifesupport-crowded cabin. She said nothing about it, tried not to think of anything at all, but the bridge and the galley corridor went strange in her sight, all near and far at once.

  Dark and stars and the monstrous shape of a knnn ship bearing down on them as if they were a minnow in the deep.

  Kif ships putting down a steady barrage of fire into nothing at all, because there might be something out there. (But there might equally be helpless bystanders. Mahendo’sat. Hani. Tc’a.)

  Strangers with their hands on The Pride’s controls, delving into Chanur records—

  Kefk docks, all lit in fire—

  Three hundred thousand stsho dying in sudden vacuum, delicate, gossamer-robed bodies frozen and drifting, with horror on their faces.

  Human shapes, tall and mahen-like, pouring by the thousands into a hallway, Tully times infinity, armed and hostile—

  “Captain—” Tirun had her arm. Held onto her, as the hall went dark in her sight and the wall suddenly ended up in the way of her shoulder.

  “I’m all right,” she snarled, and shoved the hand off.

  “Aye,” Tirun said, in the tone it deserved.

  She made it as far as the galley, dropped into a seat as her sight went dark again. Someone shoved a cup of gfi into her hands and her vision cleared on it; she got it to her mouth and forced a nauseating swallow down. Grimaced then and nearly heaved. A sandwich arrived in front of her, in a hairless human hand, Tully and Khym in better shape than any of them who had been on duty since Kefk. But the mingled stink of them all was enough to turn a kif’s stomach. It was more than enough for a hani’s, and mixed with the godsawful smell of gfi and food and the ammonia-stink that had somehow gotten onto all of them. She had always run a clean ship, an immaculate ship. Now this.

  While the Compact was trying to come undone, and, gods—

  “I’m worried about the kif that went out of here,” she said. “Sikkukkut’s. Not just Akkhtimakt’s lot. The pair of Sikkukkut’s that went out on this heading before he came into station—” Remember. Remember it. Mind did strange things when jump shook it and set it down again. There had been such kif. She and Skkukuk had discussed it. There had been methane-breathers. There had been Jik, on their bridge, spilling an incredible sequence of evidence into their computer. She forced a mouthful down. “I got to tell you, ker Fiar, and you can tell your cousins, we got a Situation aboard: we can’t always say what we’d like to say. Skkukuk’s real stable, but we don’t tell him we’re not the hakkikt’s loyal friends. Wouldn’t bother him in some ways. But he’d think we were crazy. Kif thinks you’re crazy, he won’t do what you say. So we just don’t fill him in on everything. You got to understand him—”

  “Aye,” Fiar murmured in a guarded tone, because, perhaps, it seemed incumbent on her to say something to that insanity, surrounded as she was by Chanur and Chanur’s odd crew. Khym attracted as much of her attention as Tully did, little nervous moves of her ears, following sounds. They came desperately forward. “You think one of those lead ships went on to Anuurn, captain?”

  “Could have,” she said, and Haral:

  “Our escort’s in a way to cover anything they choose to cover. Emissions all over the godsforsaken system. No telling what’s here. But they know what they found before they churned it all up. That’s for sure, whatever they’ve cut out of what they send us.”

  “You’re not working for them.”

  “Gods, no,” Pyanfar said. Maybe Tauran clan had believed her assurances from the start but Fiar wanted to be reassured in words she could hear. “Skkukuk was a present. One I didn’t choose. But I get the feeling his alternative was worse. Kif serve the ship they’re on and he’s on this one. Fight for us like a maniac, he would. And has.”

  “He any trouble?”

  From a young and worried hani who was about to bed down and sleep on lowerdecks, with a kif down the corridor. Humans, Fiar seemed more able to take in stride. Even one handling the food she ate. But her shoulders were bristled.

  “He gives you any, tell him I’ll skin him. With a kif that’s literal.” Gods, when had she gotten so callous? Another gulp of sandwich, on a stomach that was taking it better. Little talk. Little problems. What about the kif, captain, he going to go crazy and cut our throats? What about the human, captain? What kind of thing is it, your husband and this alien rubbing shoulders and making nothing of it, and this human handling the food we got to eat? “We’re going home, Fiar Aurhen. Home and gods know what else waiting for us. Got no passengers here.”

  “I heard—” Fiar said, and whatever she had heard waited when Sif Tauran showed up late and edged her way past Khym in the little galley. Not without a look.

  “Heard what?” Pyanfar asked.

  Fiar swallowed a choking bite. Her ears went back, her eyes blinked, watered, and fixed on hers dead-on and wide. “Word is—what happened at Meetpoint last year, how you came in there and took it apart when they got—particular. Captain. How you set to with the Immune. How you had a run-in with the kif and that mahen hunter. Whole Compact has the rumor the humans are coming in and you’re involved in it.” Her voice went hardly audible. “To get trade, maybe. Maybe something else.”

  “Who said?”

  “I don’t know who said. It’s all over. And the treaty and the han— What’re we going to do when we get to Anuurn, ker Pyanfar?”

  An edge of panic there. Of outright fright.

  I don’t blame you, kid. Not at all.

  “Mahendo’sat are moving to cut this off,” Pyanfar muttered. “We got the plot on it. This is one godsforsaken mess. But we got that hope. Fact is the kif that moved on Meetpoint is about as worried as we are—that’s what we were working on. That’s all that got us out of that port.”

  “Does our captain know this?” Fiar asked.

  “About the mahendo’sat? Dunno.”

  “No,” Haral said. “I briefed ker Sirany on ops and course and the fact we and the kif aren’t cozy. Mahen business I didn’t say.”

  That was right. It had been in the report. Otherside of jump. She was losing things. She stuffed more sandwich in her mouth. Waved a hand at Haral, who took that signal and started spilling what else she knew; Tauran ears sagged,
flagged, flattened. And:

  “You talk to your captain,” Pyanfar said, to Fiar, to Sif Tauran, “before you head below. Tell you another thing. You’re on my crew shift. Tully here’s crew. Shares quarters on this shift. My orders.”

  “Work,” Tully objected. “I wake, work.”

  “Shut up. You’re on my shift and you stay that way. Give me trouble I’ll bed you with Skkukuk.” She swallowed another mouthful of gfi and shuddered. “I got no time, we got no time.” While Geran staggered off with a pair of cups Khym had given her, for herself and Chur. “We got to get there, is what. Our guns may be all Anuurn’s got, you hear me?”

  Tauran ears pricked and half-flattened again in dismay. And maybe, maybe an increasing bit of belief.

  One of their number was lost already. Moon Rising arriving late or in any condition was a sight she would give a great deal to see. And there was less and less hope of it.

  She shoved herself away from the table, shoved sandwich wrapper and empty cup into the disposal. She was working on autopilot, same as The Pride. Programmed stuff. Lower brain functions.

  In the same way she turned and wandered through the bridge, where foreign crew sat working, as strange to see there as if they were mahen. Or human. Sirany Tauran acknowledged her presence, and Pyanfar flicked her ears back and nodded in return, before she wandered out and down the corridor.

  Nothing else was wrong. If it were, Sirany would have said. Tauran crew was going to do something about intership communications, try to relay a coded do-watch on mahen ships. Or whatever they might manage to get across of their situation. While Aja Jin rode beside them.

  She paused at Chur’s open door. Geran was there, at the bedside. “’Lo,” she said, and was not sure if Chur responded; her eyes were blurring out on her. “Hey, we about got the hard part, cousin, just hang on, huh? We’re all right. We’ll make it.”

  She got into her own room, made one trip to the head, fell face-down into bed and coordinated herself enough to jab the bedside console and power the safety rig over, never forget that, gods, never forget, an old spacer never lost that reflex, move down the corridors right smart, stay out of open areas, get to safe small places in case the ship had to move. Broken bones and smashed skulls else. Spacers died of bad luck like that, a ship moving to save its steel hide and some poor bastard of a spacer smashed to pulp down a corridor become a three-story drop—epitaph on many an acquaintance: the luck ran out. On a ten-ring spacer it could happen—