The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  “The hakkikt Sikkukkut has secured the dock around his ship,” the kif said from his seat across the bridge. “His force is on its way to take station central; central indicates no resistance. Hani, I am suffering. Kkkt. I am—”

  “So are all of us. Shut up.”

  “Beware traps. Beware—Sikkukkut knows them. Beware hidden resistance. There will be—kkkt. Hidden resistance.”

  “Where?”

  “Hidden. Hidden.”

  “Lot of help, kif.”

  “Kkkt. Ktkot kifik kifai. . . .”

  “Well, we’re not kif. Thank gods.”

  “Fool. Kkkt. Fool.”

  “Shut him up!” (From Hilfy, harsh and desperate.)

  “Quiet. Kif, shut it down.”

  “Kkkkt.” (Subdued.) “Kkk—kt.”

  “Shut it down.” (Tirun.) “Or I’ll break your gods-be arm.”

  Quiet then, excepting a few clicks. Profound silence, around Hilfy’s station. You lost it, kid, everyone knows it, the kif knows it. Pick it up again, huh, niece? Let’s pick it up, mind on business, you’re doing all right, kid.

  And a little later: “Aunt,” Hilfy said; and from com: “—This is Kefk traffic control, compliments of the hakkikt resuming transmission. Ikkiktk, continue as instructed. Pride of Chanur, compliments of the hakkikt, continue as instructed. This is Tikkukka, skku to Sikkukkut an’Nikktukktin akki-hakkikt pakkuk Kefktoki. Compliments of the hakkikt your docking will be berth 12 as assigned.—Ikkiktk, honor to the hakkikt, you will occupy berth 14; Makkurik, honor to the hakkikt, you will occupy berth 25—”

  “Politeness,” Chur muttered. “Politeness. Listen to ’em.”

  “Skkukuk?” Pyanfar asked. “You hear that?”

  “It seems straightforward,” Skkukuk said from his post at the rear of the bridge. “The hakkikt has secured station central control. Hani, I am weary of this chair; the wire cuts my wrists. I need food—kkkt. Kkkt. I warn you my services will be wasted—”

  “Just shut up about it, kif. Answer me straight. What’s likely up there?”

  “What will the mahendo’sat do? Kkkt. Kkkt. What does your incoming ally intend? Kkkt. If the mahendo’sat try treachery against the hakkikt we will not be wise to dock.”

  Goldtooth’s Mahijiru was still coming, inertial now. Not hurrying as much as he might. But decidedly on his way.

  “Aunt,” Hilfy said, “Aja Jin advises we dock and take no connections but shielded line and personnel access.”

  “Affirm and acknowledge.”

  “Kkkt. Most of all beware your allies. Beware—”

  “Shut it down, kif.”

  “Fools. I have been given to fools.”

  * * *

  They kept coming. Ahead of them their lone tc’a escort underwent its lunatic evolutions on its way to docking on Kefk’s methane side. Kefk’s methane-side control sent out data matrices in tc’a communication. And camera image came up now on monitor 4, Haral’s sending. Kefk station shone in its own floods like a baleful star, lit in orange and red.

  “Gods-be mahen hell,” Chur said.

  “Kif have a hell?” Tirun wondered. “How about it, Skkukuk?”

  No answer.

  “They don’t swear, either,” Hilfy said. “Kif don’t swear, do they, kif?”

  “Mind on your business,” Pyanfar said shortly.

  “Kefk,” Haral said, and switched a call through—likeliest from Khym’s board. Kefk stats started up, and Tirun sorted them on comp, searching for anomalies and trouble. “All clear, all clear,” Tirun said, “we got a normal approach at this v, all standard for Kefk’s size.”

  More numbers started rolling in. “Auto this?” Haral wondered. “Affirm,” Pyanfar said. There was no reason not to. The Pride took the numbers in as Haral punched into the auto-approach: tired, gods, they were all tired. A red light blinked urgently, comp’s advisement that armament was live and it was being asked to violate the law. Pyanfar overrode with a triple keypunch and logged that decision with another press of a key.

  “Approach under hostile conditions,” she muttered into the recorder. “Armaments will stay live until dock.” The vid screen caught her eye. There was a tone-difference in the slowly rotating station, a few ships not taking the floods in the same way as others docked at Kefk, three, not two bright spots in Kefk’s asyet indistinguishable row of oxygen-breather ships, beside the methane-sector rim. She keyed in a tighter shot. Tighter still.

  “I’m not picking up any heat,” Haral said, “except on the ships I think are ours.”

  Meaning no hostile ship’s engines were hot and no one unanticipated was lately come or about to bolt dock. Yet.

  “We got more than kif at this station,” Pyanfar said. “Haral, have a look at vid one. We’ve got more bright spots on that rim than we ought to have.”

  “I see it. Maybe the spare’s our fugitive stsho. Maybe it docked here. Maybe it had to.”

  “Might be.”

  “Or more of Jik’s gods-be conniving?”

  “Or Goldtooth’s.”

  The Pride trimmed up and lines trued on: Kefk station kept talking, realtime now for all practical consideration. The system schematic indicated a scatter of miner craft, all insystem and hardly more maneuverable than the asteroids themselves. There were the guardships, which had shed their v and began a sedate return to their base. And Mahijiru advancing with the only speed in the system besides their own that still warranted a flashing red line on the course-plot.

  “Aja Jin says they’ve got the dock secure,” Hilfy said. “Mahijiru’s requesting docking instructions.”

  “Huh,” Haral said, and: “thank the gods,” from Geran.

  Not going to attack then. Once the braking started in earnest—Goldtooth meant to come in.

  Why? for the gods’ sakes, when he was safe and secret out where he was?

  Why leave cover, Goldtooth? What are you up to—friend of mine? Another doublecross?

  Or did Jik always know you were here?

  “Captain,” Haral said, and gave her station-image. “Vid one. That anomaly looks mahen-type.”

  Pyanfar looked. The brightness among the dull grim shapes of kifish vessels resolved itself. It was indeed another ship of mahendo’sat design.

  That meant an unanticipated mahen ship at Kefk dock—or a hani.

  Closer and closer. Pyanfar wiped her eyes. Fool, stay awake, stay alert, or you won’t have to worry. Kif-taint had permeated the bridge. Her nose twitched in the promise of a sneeze. She restrained it, and it crept up again and erupted. She wiped her nose. Another revolution.

  Aja Jin and Vigilance and one bright-shining ship too many. “That’s about berth 18 or 20,” Haral said. “I’d sure like to know what it is.”

  “So would I,” said Pyanfar. Ask Jik, Haral meant. But Jik was not saying anything about the discrepancy. No one was talking. Neither Jik nor Vigilance. “Put in a call to Vigilance. Ask them to confirm status dockside.”

  “Aye,” Hilfy said, and it went. Pyanfar bit at a hangnail and watched Kefk station in its slow turning at the highest magnification The Pride could use. Definitely mahen-type craft. Definitely. Not their stsho. That stsho had to have gotten through unscathed: it would take phenomenal luck for even hair-triggered kif guardstations to stop a through-bound starship that meant to jump out again without pausing. There was small chance a sedentary force could fire anything that could intercept a high-v transit—unless they were virtually in its path. That was the nature of stations. That was their vulnerability. And the vulnerability of ships that shed v and went to dock.

  “Message from Vigilance,” Hilfy said. “They confirm. Central’s secured. They indicate we’re to come ahead with caution.”

  “Thank them,” Pyanfar muttered absently. They haven’t noticed? Ehrran came into a kif station denied a shiplist and never tried the vid? Jik didn’t? In a mahen hell. Jik knows there’s a ship here that doesn’t belong. And Rhif Ehrran can’t be that much of a fool. What are they toget
her on? Do they know that ship?

  She fired retros. Hard.

  “Huhhh!” Haral said. Hearts must have leapt all across the bridge.

  “We’re off-pattern,” Tirun said calmly then; and Hilfy: “Message from Kefk, from our escort, they query—”

  “We just missed a rock,” Pyanfar said. “Tell them sweep their lousy lanes, huh?”

  “We going to take a look at that ship?” Haral asked, having figured it out for herself.

  “Gods-be right we are.” She had just thrown The Pride off the auto-approach timing with the station’s revolutions. Now they had to revise their figures and fuss about with revised lane-assignment and approach. A few judicious pulses might put them closer to station on a timing that would swing that surplus ship under the camera’s scrutiny.

  “Gods,” Haral said, “priority, priority—we show that knnn’s engines live on the rim.”

  “Gods be.” Pyanfar scanned a ripple of new information across her screens, heard Khym talking urgently on one channel while Hilfy queried the other—“We’ve got that information,” Khym said. “—Py, Jik says—”

  —a new image came up. Scan.

  “—it’s moving out from dock, gods, gods, look at that thing travel.”

  “Get it, get it—Chur, help, I’ve fouled it!”

  “Kkkt. Kkkkt.”

  “Priority, priority—it’s transmitting—Tc’a’s answering.”

  Knnn-song wailed over com. Tc’a-matrix flashed up, totally numerical.

  “What’s that?” From Khym.

  “I’ve got translator on it,” Hilfy said. “Our tc’a escort’s talking to the knnn.”

  “Kefk transmission,” Tirun said. “Methane-side’s talking on several wavelengths.”

  “Keep going,” Pyanfar said and gnawed her mustaches. “We keep on approach until they try to stop us.”

  “—Priority: Translation: query, query, query, from the knnn. Tc’a response: indeterminate. Translator can’t get it. Shall we query?”

  “Negative, negative on the query. Steady as we go.”

  More matrix came up.

  “Sounds like it’s just talking to the knnn,” Haral muttered.

  “Tc’a’s holding course, on the average. Gods—knnn’s shifting to match—o good gods—”

  “—Priority,” Hilfy said. “Kefk’s giving us a new lane assignment. They’re scheduling us on in.”

  “Knnn?” Tully asked. “What do, what do?”

  “Hush,” said Chur. “Quiet. It’s not. . . not. . . doing anything, it’s just out there.”

  “We’re just going on in, Tully. Quiet.”

  “Kkkkt. Kkkkkt. Kkkkkt.”

  “Shut up.” From Tirun. “Or we give you to it.”

  “Easy, easy,” Pyanfar muttered. “Chur—you all right?”

  “Priority—Jik’s advising us come on.”

  “Knnn’s close—close to our line; intercept with the tc’a, looks like—”

  “There—it’s not on our numbers—” Geran said.

  “That’s match with the—Tc’a’s moving. There’s the knnn—”

  “Track it. Get vid.”

  “Trying,” Haral said. “Gods-be—”

  Image came up, magnified in a series of jolts, the tc’a’s jumbled planes in its running lights and floods: the flare of fire where the knnn was—no running lights, no numbers, no names: the knnn took no care in navigation at all and obeyed no lanes. It was out there, that was all—it showed on scan. Fire showed. Braking.

  “That’s intercept with the tc’a,” Geran reported. “Minus 23, 22, 21—”

  Goldtooth was back there—minutes outside the timeline and taking cues from what old information got to him. He might have spotted the knnn by now. Might be doing anything. Or he might be waiting on cues from them. Slowing down—continuing at v—anything was potential provocation with a knnn. Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and spat them out again, her heart pounding against her ribs.

  “. . . . 3, 2—Priority.”

  Scan image came up. The knnn was moving into pattern with the tc’a. Was matching v with it—that quickly, that easily. Dead stop to course-reverse: metal could never stand it. Bodies would flatten.

  Tully muttered to himself. It sounded like oaths, a steady drone of them. The tc’a and knnn began to accelerate together, the joint blip moving faster and faster away from the station vicinity.

  “Gods,” Geran muttered, “they’re going, they’re going. Plus 10, 25—look at that!”

  The other way. The knnn was heading outsystem, nadir with the tc’a either grappled or close in pattern. Colors shifted on the scope, incredible acceleration.

  “Ah!” Tully said.

  “It’s jumped!”

  “Kkkt. Kkkkt.”

  “Minds on business!” Pyanfar snapped. Nothing had stopped, least of all The Pride hurtling inbound to station and the chrono flicking numbers down. It was over. The tc’a was gone. Lost. And Nav-comp was flashing red lines on second monitor. “Off the mark, off the mark, gods rot it, Haral—I want that flyby. Get that equipment up, get it, hear?”

  “Aye, aye, up and coming.”

  “We are observed,” Skkukuk said faintly. “Kkkkt. The methane folk, I warned you. Pull us out of here. Kkkt. Fools.”

  “Shut up,” Tirun said.

  “There is no profit to this!”

  “Skkukuk,” Pyanfar snarled, “shut it up.”

  Silence then. The beep and click from instruments went on. Kif ships talked to each other. “—Honor to the hakkikt,” the station took up the refrain again, “there is no damage. We are secure. Continue in pattern. Please acknowledge.”

  And from Mahijiru, incoming, silence, while the knnn business unfolded on Goldtooth’s timeline.

  “Stand by,” Pyanfar said, “Tirun, I want that approach calc. Take stats and set me up again.”

  “Got it, got it, I’m working.”

  And a little later, when station handed revised schedules down the line: “Bastards! I just had that!”

  “They’re not going to bump us down-schedule,” Haral said. “They’re going to revise the whole list of ships behind us. They want us in before the kif just real bad, don’t they?”

  No one answered.

  “Run that schedule,” Pyanfar said. “Can we do it? Are they going to route us blind to that ship again?”

  “We got it, we got it,” Tirun said after a moment, and a course plot came up.

  Closer then and closer. Vid clarified. One full revolution of Kefk station. Two.

  “Come on, Haral, I want that ship,” Pyanfar muttered. “Digital-record. If we miss it on sight we’ll try that.”

  The station revolved slowly past The Pride’s dome cameras. No need of amplification. The serial numbers showed plain on the next station revolution, on a bright vane column.

  Hani ship. 656 YAAV.

  “Moon Rising,” Haral muttered. “That’s Moon Rising. Tahar!” Oaths went through com all over the bridge.

  Pyanfar sat silent. Not surprised, no. It fit. It fit very well. So how large does this party get? How did Goldtooth know to meet us here? Gods, what have I got us into?

  * * *

  It was the red trousers, a dash of perfume enough to mask the sweating she was likely to do in hours ahead—Pyanfar took time for that, with The Pride only tentatively in dock. Shielded com line and personnel accessway connections were still all that any of their ships took from station, and station dockers made weak protest about safety and undue strain on the grapples, but they swallowed it. Sikkukkut’s ships stayed ready to move; and so did they.

  It was not vanity, this scrub-down: one of them ought to look and smell presentable to kifish hosts, and she made feverish haste about it. Three of them were off-shift at the moment. She had gotten Chur to rest, over protests she should go on sitting duty while her captain took showers; “Up,” Pyanfar had said, and Chur disengaged herself and headed down the corridor from the bridge to Khym’s cabin, wobbling as she walke
d. The wrapped bandage about Chur’s side had gone looser, her drawstringed trousers tending perilously low on the hips. “Get her bedded down and fed,” Pyanfar ordered Geran, laying a hand on Geran’s chair-back. “See she’s all right, huh? Khym—” She paused for more assignments, reviewing what useable crew she had: the personnel-combination worked out wrong, but she took what there was. “Khym, you get the galley up, Tully, you help him, hear?”

  And: “Aye,” Tully said with never a flinching on his part and only an unreadable look from Khym as he got out of his chair and headed galleyward.

  Pyanfar came pattering out of her quarters still damp, still putting on her bracelets as she headed down the main corridor bridgeward. Tully was coming out of Chur’s cabin, having brought food in, she supposed. “She all right?” Pyanfar asked.

  Tully laid a hand on his side. “Hurt,” he said in hani, and by his look had more to say he did not trust the translator for. He blocked her path. Gestured at the door. “See. Go see, captain.”

  “Huh.” She lowered her ears. Tully tended to anxieties: deaf to most that went on, he got the wrong of most crises. There was no time at present for them or him. But the worry was quiet this time, anguished; and Chur—“Get,” she said. “Go bathe.” He was the worst of them save the kif. “I’ll see about Chur. Go.”

  “Chur—” He refused to be moved. “Bad hurt.”

  “Get!” She waved a half-hearted blow to be rid of him, turned and punched the door control.

  Geran turned from Chur’s bedside as the door hissed back, quick and quick about getting her ears up and her face composed. Chur lay there with one arm on the covers. Indeed things were not right—not right, Chur’s listlessness. Not right, the tray sitting on the table, untouched by a spacer just out of jump.

  “How’s she doing?” Pyanfar asked and let the door shut.

  “She’s pretty tired,” Geran said.

  “Fine,” Chur said.

  “Sure. Sure, you are. You’re not working next jump.” Pyanfar caught Geran’s eyes with a glance. I’ll talk to you later. And to herself: Gods, gods, gods. “You get food down her. Huh? I don’t care if she doesn’t want it.”

  “Right,” Chur said, and stirred in bed. She propped herself up on her arms. “My side’s doing a lot better. I’m a lot better, swear I am.”