Chanur's Venture

by C. J. Cherryh

  "How much did you put in?"

  "One."

  He added more, going quietly about his business. So he had created a place for himself, and truth, if he freed up crew on this one, he was useful.

  Whatever they were doing to the tail rose to a distant shriek.

  "Py." He offered the cup and she took it. He poured the rest, capped them, to deliver where Haral and Tirun were.

  But Haral showed up, bathed and with her blue coarse breeches still showing wet spots, her mane and beard hanging in ringlets. She had a 194

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  paper in her hand. "That mine?" she asked of the gfi, and laid down the paper in front of Pyanfar. "That came in."

  Pyanfar looked at it. Sipped thoughtfully at the gfi.

  Ehrran's Vigilance, Rhif Ehrran captain, deputy of the han, Immune, to The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur captain, chief vessel Chanur company:

  This will serve as legal notice a complaint will be filed regarding breach of Charter, section 5: willful disregard of lawful order; section 12: hire of vessel; section 22: illegal cargo; section 23: illegal arms; section 24: discharge of arms; section 25: actions in breach of treaty law; section 30....

  She looked up as Khym left on his errand. "They missed the illegal system entry."

  Haral gave a short, dry laugh and sat down. The Pride shuddered to operations aft, and the humor died a rapid death.

  "We answer that?"

  "Fills the time." She drew a deep breath. "Sleep, rest, plot course. We take for granted they'll get us out of here."

  Haral's eyes drifted to the clock. Hers too, irresistibly.

  * * *

  "Tully," Hilfy murmured. The g force kept on. Her nose bubbled with every breath; some blood vessel had popped inside, adding misery upon misery. Her hurts throbbed, and might be pouring blood, but she could not tell and the cocooning blanket would soak it up. Tully was still out. She talked to him periodically, in the chance he should have waked, to let him know one friend was with him. But he did not respond. Possibly they had taped a drug patch to him to keep him under.

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  Perhaps he had just failed to come to. Instincts wanted to call for help and other instincts remembered what would come and told her to keep her mouth shut and let him go if he could.

  They were headed for jump. And if he were awake he would be terrified.

  So was she, when she let her attention wander to herself. When she did that she hoped there was a ship or two chasing them that would let off an unexpected shot before they got to jump, and solve their problems at one stroke.

  Think of anything but the place where they were going.

  Think of Pyanfar, who was likely taking the station authorities apart and telling them what to do about it, which thought gave her a surge of hope; and Haral— she pictured Haral sitting in that chair whose upholstery she had worn out and turning round just so, with that unflappable calm that never broke, not even when in her first tour she had made a dangerous mistake.

  Want to fix that? Haral would say.

  O gods, she wished she could.

  The thrust died of a sudden, just died, in one stomach-lurching shift to inertial.

  Prep for jump.

  * * *

  " Harukk's left," Tirun said, when the word came in. "That's forty-three minutes light, station-center. Pursuit ship relayed image. Jumped... about an hour and fifteen ago." Timelag, Tirun meant: reporting time was in that, what ship scan could pick up and relay, beating the beacon report by a few minutes.

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  Pyanfar nodded, kept working on the course plottings, a great deal of it futile until they had the readout on the new rig. When it got finished.

  When.

  "That's affirmative on Mkks vector."

  "Huh." Her hands shook. She flexed her claws out and in and powered the chair about, taking a look at the work aft, which their dome camera was fixed on. She flinched inwardly at the sight, The Pride stripped of her familiar outlines. There was a new unit moving in. They had the transmissions from the pusher. And getting ship and tail unit joined was only the roughest beginning of the matter, a matter of preparing disconnect-ravaged surfaces for new welds. Hard-suited workers showed like sparks in the working floods, like a swarm of insects where they had backed off for that unit's arrival. Service-com frequency was never silent, crackling with chiso, the mahen patois that bridged their scores of languages, easier than trade-tongue for mahendo'sat.

  "I'm going to get some rest," she said, for the smothering weight of all of it came down at once, and getting herself out of the chair and down the corridor loomed as a major undertaking.

  "Call Haral up when you have to."

  "Aye," Tirun said. Not an expression, not a question what they were going to do or how.

  She appreciated that.

  Time did twists now. In one fashion she could relax, because for the next stationside several weeks Harukk and its company were in the between, in the compression of hyper-light, where everything was in suspension and nothing would start again until the Mkks gravity well took hold. Two weeks at least, in which everything was stopped. No pain. No fear.

  Nothing, till they came out again.

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  But Tully needed drugs for that gravity-drop, needed them like stsho needed them. Perhaps kif knew this. Perhaps they cared to keep him sane.

  Better, perhaps, if he was not.

  * * *

  She waked, suddenly, caught at the edge of the sleeping-bowl and realized she was not falling, despite the thumping of her heart. She rolled and looked at the clock and punched the lights on and the com connection. The hammering was silent. That had waked her. "Bridge, gods rot it, it's 0400!"

  "Aye, captain." Haral's voice. "Nothing's going on. Thought we'd let you sleep."

  "Uhhhnn." She leaned her elbow on the bed-edge. "That tail set?"

  "They're welding now."

  "They're not going to make that deadline."

  "They've got techs working on the boards already. They're pushing it."

  "Gods." She let her head down on her arm, feeling as if a wall had come down on her yesterday and some of the bricks still lay there. Lifted it again. "How's Chur?"

  "Geran called, says she's doing all right. They both got a little sleep."

  "Huh. Good."

  "Got a call from Vigilance. They got our paper. Ehrran's chewing sticks."

  "Good."

  "Got a pot of something fixed in galley."

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  Her stomach rebelled. "Fine." She passed a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes. "I'm coming." She punched the com off, rolled out and sat on the bed edge trying to convince her legs to work.

  Gods, Hilfy. Tully. That settled back on her shoulders. There was the packet in the security bin. There was Tt'om'm'mu's writhing shape in its violet glow and the mahendo'sat, together against the glass (don't ask about the knnn) and mahendo'sat making vital connections on her ship, when mahendo'sat incompetency had let kif do as they pleased.

  Incompetent? Kshshti stationmaster, and no better than that?

  Suspicions had tramped her subconscious half the night, rose up in memories of dreams of a kif in the shadows of that room. Of delicate connections in the column links, some mahen technician carefully making a sequence of mistakes that would send false readout to the boards. Gods, what if—

  A body could go crazy on what-ifs. Like treachery from Goldtooth from the start. Like Vigilance being in the right— for hani interests. Like Chanur on the wrong side of matters and about to become expendable in some mahen intrigue.

  Or traitorous.

  She got up, showered, dressed in a subdued way, a pair of old breeches she saved for rough work. No earrings but the plain ones, such as any spacer wore.

  Khym had done much the same, in a pair of silk breeches that had seen the Meetpoint riot
and would never be the same. He met her in the galley with gfi and a dish of something overspiced— not good at cookery either. But the job got done and the stuff was far from fatal.

  "Good," she said, to please him, and coupled with that was the ugly thought that nothing mattered much, beyond Mkks. Tomorrow. Their tomorrow, and their next tomorrow, when they would come out the other side of jump.

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  How much time-gain for a hunter-ship like Harukk and its ilk? Days faster than The Pride at absolute best. Harukk would be in port at Mkks as much as a week by the time their day-after-tomorrow came, and they spent time working up to dock at Mkks, and all the attendant nonsense. If they got that far.

  She shivered, swallowed an overspiced last mouthful and washed it down with gfi. Her ears kept going down despite herself. She pricked them up.

  Looked Khym's way. "There's a procedures list in comp," she said to him.

  "Checklist."

  "Got it," he said, displaying a paper on the countertop. Gods, efficiency.

  She poured the whole matter out of her mind and got up and walked off.

  Maybe— maybe the kif would hold off in Hilfy's case, until they had used the bait for everything they could get. Not Tully. No. Not with a chance to pull information about all humankind from him, and a week to do it in.

  The first time kif had had their hands on him he had had a word or two he could speak, and a handful more he could understand, and never admitted either to the kif.

  Now he could get a hani sentence out. And Sikkukkut had fluency.

  "Captain," Haral said when she walked out on the bridge. "Got a request from the repair chief. They want to get column access from inside. I told them go ahead. I'm opening lower deck for that."

  "Get their security down there." The thought of outsiders straying at random through The Pride's interior workings set her nerves on edge. But they were out of personnel. Out. Totally.

  "Second item," Haral said. "A freighter turned up about 0300 last watch in approach to 29. Our scan's been down. It just turned up, blink, on station output, at the one-zone. I didn't think it was worth waking you, but I queried station. They identified it as Eishait, said it came in during the Harukk business and security had it scan-blocked. I queried Prosperity.

  They had their scan shut down. They're too far round the curve for the cameras to help. I put in a call to Vigilance, begging your pardon—"

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  "They get it?"

  Haral dipped her ears. "They said, quote, they had no authority to release information. I suggested they wake their captain. They suggested I wake you."

  She drew a tight slow breath and leaned against the counteredge nearest the doorway.

  "At that point," Haral said, "it was committed to dock and I figured there wasn't all that much to do about it that fast. Stationmaster's office stuck by the Eishait story. I called Prosperity back and suggested one of them take a walk down that way."

  "Should have waked me, gods rot it."

  " Prosperity agreed. They say it's all security down there. Can't get past.

  Our work crew never stopped back there, no sign of any concern while that ship was inbound. Meanwhile there's nothing kifish on com. I think it's a mahen hunter."

  "Not friendly of station not to say. Wouldn't you think?"

  "Worries me," Haral said. "Whole gods-forsaken place worries me." Her eyes shifted minutely aft, by implication including the repair work. Back again. "You still want that mahen security on our access?"

  The breakfast lay uneasy at her stomach. "Put them on it. They're all we've got. And log those exchanges."

  "They're logged." Haral powered her chair about and punched into the station comlink. "Kshshti central, this is the watch officer, from the bridge, The Pride of Chanur.... Get me dock security."

  Pyanfar stood away from the counter and looked left as Tirun came shambling in half asleep and nodded a courtesy.

  "Morning," she said to Tirun. "Chur's doing fine. Get some breakfast."

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  "Huh," Tirun said, and went, blindly trustful. Down on lowerdeck they had a lock about to open.

  Pyanfar sat down in Tirun's place at bridge ops, conscious of the pistol she kept in her pocket, its weight swinging against her leg. She started locking doors, putting the lift on key/bridge operation only, sealing every hold access but the necessary one that would get work crews to The Pride's vitals.

  "Security's coming," Haral said.

  * * *

  Mahen workers came and went, an occasional splatter of bare running feet, a rush of black and brown mahen bodies in the lower corridors carrying this and that item the techs wanted— honest mahendo'sat, Pyanfar convinced herself. She came down to see the faces, to judge reactions, and the earnest look of the workers reassured her. Their speed reassured her, and the surprised reflexes of respect. Some recognized her, blue breeches and all as she took the tour through ops, where mahen techs ran checks. Above, aft, the first new vane panel was moving up in the careful grasp of a pusher-ship, and suited mahendo'sat prepared the column to receive it. It was a hundred ten panels wide to the old ninety and looked monstrous large. The old drive could not have pushed it. The old drive, The Pride's old heart, had gone off in the clutches of a mahen pusher and a new, mahen-made unit was coupled to the ship's alloy spine, struts recoupled—as good amputate a part of her, and put back some fancy foreign part. She watched the floods sparkle bright off the panel rim and glisten off the black panel surfaces as the pusher turned. A shiver prickled up her back, worry about telemetry complications, systems that might not mesh and set them further back, despite the Voice's assurances. Topside, Tirun ran calculations and more calculations, had the third, this time sulphurous request in for raw specifications on the individual units.... "Make soon,"

  the reply had come back from the supervisor, "give composite." And when Tirun objected that: "Got get security clear give that information."

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  "Good gods!" Tirun had screamed into com. "It's part of our ship, you gods-rotted lunatic!"

  "I make request," the supervisor said.

  Meanwhile the panel was moving in, and mahendo'sat ran their own checks in ops; and things felt— marginally in control. Not just the unit back there on the tail. The bill. The finance.

  Nine tenths of The Pride's physical value, excluding her licenses and rights— and mahendo'sat picked up the tab.

  Foreign hire. Vigilance had made that charge already. They were down there logging everything. There would be inquiry.

  The han would have questions. A lot of questions. If they lived through Mkks.

  She turned from the screens, walked past a cluster of chiso-babbling mahendo'sat who had their own instruments linked into auxiliary sockets on the ops board, headed out in the hall for fresh air. They had the place chilled down for the mahendo'sat. The hall was frigid. A cold draft wafted in from the lower lock, with the flavor of Kshshti docks, oil and old beer and mahendo'sat as she passed that corridor. Workmen in their orange coveralls came in, some went out. She pursued her way to the lift.

  Hilfy. The thought came nudging in whenever she let it, and she pushed it away. "Captain," mahe said. "Come."

  She stopped, blinked at the workman who beckoned her to the lock, opened her mouth to refuse that imprudence, but the mahe had flitted around the turn again, hasty as every mahe was hereabouts.

  Some gods-rotted supervisor with questions. Her ship. Her access. She refused the jangling of her nerves and went after the workman. But her hand was in her pocket as she walked into the lock.

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  No one. She spun a look over her shoulder, looked back again as something dark came into her way, mahe-tall and spacer-ringed with gold.

  Her finger tautened, hand cocked to aim through cloth and all. "Pyanfar!"

  the m
ahe cried, flinging up both hands; and the finger stopped.

  "Jik!" she gasped, and her heart started up again. The mahe still held his hands up till she had gotten hand from pocket. "Where'd you come from?"

  And then she knew. "That's Aia Jin in 29, isn't it?"

  "Same." Jik still looked nervous. "Make quick come here. Got trouble, huh?"

  She looked him up and down, this lank solitary mahe with enough gaud in his dress to turn a hani envious. "Jik." It seemed half the troubles in the universe fell off her shoulders. "O gods. About time. About gods-rotted time, hear me? "

  He flung up his hands again, pleading for quiet. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back toward the lift. "Come in here like this," she muttered, fishing up the key. She stuck it in. "Dressed like that." The lift doors hissed wide. "Get in." She snatched him inside, this mahe a third again her size. He leaned against the lift wall as it shot them up topside and the door shot open.

  Khym was in the hall. His mouth fell open at the sight.

  "Jik," Pyanfar identified him. "My husband, Khym. Old friend.

  Goldtooth's partner. Come on, Jik."

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  Chapter 10

  Nomesteturjai was his name: captain Keia Nomesteturjai. Jik to tongue-bound hani, this thin, anxious-looking mahe. "Sit," Pyanfar said and, spinning the com-post chair about, backed Jik into it. She leaned on the counter and one chair arm with not an arm's length between their noses.

  "Where's Goldtooth?"

  "Not know sure."

  "What, not know?"

  Jik's dark eyes shifted uncomfortably at that range. "Think near Kefk."

  "Kefk!"

  "Not know sure." The eyes shifted back and forth, bloodshot-rimmed.