The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Translate this.”

  “—He’s crazy as all kif.”

  The thin body shook and hissed atop its insect-perch. “Bigot. I shall make my own translations. Kkkt!”

  * * *

  “Fool!” mahen authority screamed into com; and other, less complimentary things.

  “Stand by third dump,” Pyanfar said.

  “You fool, daughter ten thousand fools, what do? what do? You get report sent han this outrage; we report you endanger—”

  The Pride dumped speed, a breakup of telemetry—

  —phased in again, into a new flood of station chatter.

  “Khym. List.” Tirun’s voice, prompting him in his muzziness. “Shift it. Move.”

  The incoming shiplist turned up on number two screen, Haral’s transfer of data smooth and routine while station’s voice suddenly grew quieter. . .

  “That’s two minutes light,” Geran said. They were virtually realtime with Mkks station, moving at a crawl now, within the capacity of their realspace braking thrust.

  Harukk, the shiplist said. There were other kifish names. A lot of them. A few mahendo’sat. A stsho. (A stsho, at Mkks!) A flock of tc’a and chi in Mkks’ small methane-sector.

  “Thank the gods,” Pyanfar muttered, and began to take the telemetry again, shifting her mind back to business. “Approach,” she said; and when Geran delayed: “Course clearance, gods rot it, look to it!” She began The Pride’s high-v braking roll. “Hang on. We’re going with it. Now.”

  * * *

  “What business?” Sikkukkut asked; and Hilfy pressed close to Tully’s side, hearing the shifting of bodies about them beyond the smoke and the lights. “What did it arrange with the mahe? Kkkt. Ask it. Get an answer, young Chanur.”

  “—He’s asking about deals,” Hilfy said, and shifted again, for a kif moved up on that side of Tully. She looked at Sikkukkut. “He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand, gods rot it. He uses a translator on our ship. He can’t speak, he can’t shape our words even if he knew what I was saying to him.”

  Sikkukkut gathered up a silver cup from the table, a ball-like thing studded with thumbsized, flat-ended projections. He extended a dark tongue, dipped his snout into it and drank—gods knew what. He lifted his face. A thin tongue flicked about his muzzle. He still held the cup, his fingers caressing the flat-studded surface. “Choose better words. They will harm him, young Chanur, my skkukun; they will. Persuade him. Break this silence of his. If there are mechanical translators needed, we will supply them. Only make him speak.”

  “I’m trying.” She shifted again, bringing herself between Tully and the circling kif. “Back off! Tully, Tully, tell him something. Anything. I think you’d better.”

  —lie, she wished him; play the game, I’ll help you—she felt the chill of his body against her side. She tried to look up at him, but he looked only to the kif, perhaps without the wit left to lie at all.

  “Perhaps,” said Sikkukkut. A door opened, admitting sullen light: another kif came in, silhouette like all the rest. “We should consider another private interview with him. Kkkk-t?”

  The kif hastened past the others. Sikkukkut turned his head.

  “Ksstit,” it hissed. “Kkotkot ktun.”

  Message. Hilfy drew a breath and felt Tully shiver against her. The interloper bent its hooded head near its captain’s and whispered shortly. Sikkukkut rested with his hands upon his knees. His shoulders moved with a long, long breath and his jaw lifted.

  “Kkkt! Kktkhi ukkik skutti fikkti knkkuri. Ktikkikt!”

  All about them the room rustled with kif. Take them from here. Hilfy knew that much kifish. But not the inflections. Not why, or what had happened, or what happened next.

  Kif closed about them: Tully let out an unaccustomed sound as they tore him from her side.

  “Claws in,” she yelled at the kif, “you stupid clot!” She raked a kifish shin with a bare-clawed foot. A returned blow jolted her teeth and claws bit into her shoulders. There was nothing, with her hands tied, that she could do. They were enough to carry her. They seized her about both knees and did that at the end, despite her twisting and turning.

  “Bastard!” she yelled past kifish bodies. She saw Sikkukkut still sitting there like some graven image in the dark, flanked by other kif.

  “They are here,” Sikkukkut said.

  The door came between and closed.

  * * *

  Mkks station was a wall in front of them as The Pride homed in: the berth Mkks had assigned her glowed with the comeaheads on the number two screen while the closing numbers ticked off.

  “—Please you wait,” mahen authority had protested via com during the last part of their approach, a much, much more conciliatory tone. “Got already advise Harukk, same want conference, repeat, want conference. Request reply—”

  And closer still, in their silence: “We make request you delay dock, Pride of Chanur, you got problem, please, we negotiate—”

  Because there was no way a station like Mkks had to stop any ship from coming in. And worse, there were fifteen vulnerable kifish ships dead-vee at dock, attached to Mkks’ very vulnerable side. Mkks would have sounded alarms by now and thrown the section-seals on its docks, fearing projectiles launched, fearing kif; and riot.

  “—Please,” the protest went on from Mkks authority: “you stop this make negotiate the kif: We forbid you carry quarrel here.”

  But they had the berth they demanded, a clear spot with nothing directly next them on either side. There were kif at hand. Harukk was in the sixth berth down, within the section. Two mahen traders were docked far over on the other side of Mkks’ torus. Kif ships lined the adjacent section’s docks. There were more mahen ships beyond. The solitary stsho. And tc’a and chi on methane-side.

  “—We meet you at dockside. We bring security. Make negotiate this matter. We appeal—”

  Clank-thump. The grapples took, from their side and from station’s; the hookup routines started. They had a docking crew waiting. And security. So Mkks Central said.

  “They’ve stopped talking,” Khym said anxiously, meaning he had done nothing to cut them off by accident, in his inexperience. “They just went quiet.”

  But half a heartbeat later, another call came through.

  “This is kif port authority,” said a clicking voice. “You are clear. Welcome to Mkks, Pride of Chanur. You may even bring your arms. The hakkikt extends safeconduct. You will have guides. Welcome, again, to Mkks.”

  “Gods rot those bastards!” Geran cried.

  “They’ve got their own personnel inside Central for sure,” Tirun said. “That was a valid code.”

  “Move. We’ve got no choice.” Pyanfar powered her chair about and hurled herself out of it, slapped the back of Haral’s seat. “Get that linkup made.”

  “Rifles or APs?” Tirun was already on her feet; Haral’s sister, tall, full-maned and bearded, with gold rings winking from her ear. There was Geran, slight and fairer: slight indeed against the size of Khym nef Mahn who climbed out of his seat and towered there, wider and taller and dead grim.

  “APs,” Pyanfar said with a tautness about the mouth, a drawing-down of her mustaches. “But I’ll take a rifle; want you with one, too. Might want a distance weapon on those docks—might want a lot of distance, huh? And I don’t think we have to worry about the law here.”

  There were quiet laughs, a soft explosion of ugly humor. Tirun opened the locker and passed out sidearms to her and Geran, mahen weapons that fired an explosive shell, not the motley patchup of pocket guns they had had back at Kshshti: APs with the necessary extra cartridge-case on the holster belt. And the two rifles, hers and Tirun’s, longer-range and capable of a precise target, unlike the APs.

  Pyanfar took the rifle and checked the safety and cycled the power-test while com crackled with further instructions. “We will meet you outside,” the kifish voice said. Thumps and clanks went on, the securing of lines and hoses.

  The kif inten
ded ambush. They took that for granted. Ambush might come later, after they had gotten far from the ship, or it might be a kifish rush the moment the airlock opened, and gods help any mahen dock-worker caught between.

  “They’re moving the access link in.” Haral spun her chair about. “We’re in.” She rose and belted on the AP Tirun handed her.

  “One of us,” a voice said from the door, “has got to stay here and hold the farm.”

  “Gods rot—” Pyanfar did not need to turn. She saw Chur clearly from where she stood. Geran’s sister leaned in the doorway of the bridge, blue breeches drawstringed perilously low, beneath the bandages swathing her midsection. “Chur—”

  * * *

  “Doing fine, thanks.” The tightness about Chur’s nose and mouth denied it. “Na Khym’s worth more outside, isn’t he? And I can bust her loose from dock if need be.” Chur limped across the bridge into her sister’s reach and waved off Geran’s help. She reached for her own accustomed seat at scan and leaned on the back of it, kept going as far as Haral’s copilot’s post and sat down. “You tell me when you want her opened, captain. I’ll figure shut for myself. No mahe’s getting in, huh? Gods rotted sure no kif either.”

  Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and threw one look at Geran, whose head lifted in terminal stubbornness. No reasoning with either sister. It ran in the blood. No reasoning with that sudden fire in Khym’s eyes, when he saw a chance more to his liking than sitting guard up here. “Fine,” she said. “Get Chur a rifle. In case. And get him one. Move it. Khym, you keep your wits about you out there. You don’t breathe without my order. Hear? We’ve got one problem on those docks. One. Hear me?”

  “Aye.”

  They were husband and wife at other times. Not here. Not out there. As males went, he was a rock of stability and self-control.

  And Chur was right: he was helpless with the boards.

  Clank-thump-clang. The accessway was firm. They had connection to Mkks station.

  Geran laid a rifle into Chur’s grasp. Chur lifted it deliberately, though she had done well to lift a hand the other side of jump’s time-stretch. Click-click. Safety off and on again. She looked up, ears pricked, mouth pursed in a wry smile that showed hollowness below her cheekbones, substance wasted in jumpspace healing. Her gold-red fur was lusterless and dulled. Light showed through her ear-edge where rings belonged. Chur had not dressed for amenities, not even important ones like that. “Get them out, huh?” Chur said, meaning Hilfy, meaning Tully, and gave a look at Geran before all of them. “Want you all back, too.” she said.

  “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; or 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 sequential.”

  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 twilight, 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. Gods 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 and 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, now, get 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 wheeled 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.