The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  Without the arrogance of captains involved, Geran meant.

  “Do it,” Pyanfar said without rancor. “They’ve got a com-hold on. You’ll have to get past it.”

  “Aye.” Geran took com one post, sat down and went on the com, quietly, urgently.

  It was not a thing Pyanfar cared to listen to—Geran pleading Chur’s case with an Ehrran crewwoman who wanted to argue channels in the matter of a Chanur life.

  I should have done it before now. Begged them. Gods, I don’t care, we’ve got to get a hurry-up on this. But it was more likely Geran could win it. Doubtless it would come to captains and her having to plead with Ehrran personally before all was done; but something still had to be sacred among hani—like kin-right and the bond between sisters. A ship incoming with family crisis on Anuurn outranked all other traffic. A woman homebound in such events could board any plane, commandeer any conveyance without stopping for formalities like fares till later. Kin-right could unsnarl red tape, overcome barriers, silence opposition and objections. There was law higher than han law. There had always been. Vigilance had to respect that.

  “Captain. They want your request on file.”

  Pyanfar turned the chair and met an anguished stare with a quiet one before she took the call. “This is Pyanfar Chanur,” she said to com.

  “Chanur.” It was Rhif Ehrran in person. “You want your crewwoman transferred to our facilities?”

  “Treated here, if you can do it.” Gods, to put Chur in Ehrran hands. “I’ve got a next-of-kin request, ker Rhif.” Humbly. Quietly. With as much of Chanur dignity as she could save. “Geran Anify par Pyruun: she’s got the right to go with her sister if she has to be taken off.” You’ll have an able Chanur loose on your ship if you take them, you egg-sucking Ehrran bastard, no luck getting your hands on one of us helpless and undefended—and we’ll be two crewwomen down, blast your eyes, and you’ll have two hostages and you know it. “I’d take it kindly, captain, if you could get a little speed on this. She’s pretty sick.”

  A long delay. “Dispatch the case records. Such as you have. My medical staff doesn’t work on suppositions.”

  “You know I haven’t got a medical staff, Ehrran.”

  “You expect me to take on the liability without adequate records. I’ll want a release from Geran Anify as next of kin and from you as clan senior here before my staff touches her.”

  “You’ll get it.” Cover your backside, you gods-be parasite. Protect yourself. You give me the chance and it won’t be a lawsuit when I go for you. “With respect, can we get this underway? We don’t know how long we’ve got in this port.”

  “It’s waiting on that release, Chanur. Or if you’d rather have the mahendo’sat or the kif see to your problem—”

  “We’ll get your release. Thank you, ker Rhif. I owe you one.”

  The contact went discourteously dead.

  “Gods fry her,” Geran muttered.

  “By the gods,” Pyanfar said, turning and matching Geran’s look with one of her own, “we owe her one, Chanur owes her one for this.”

  “Aye,” Geran rasped. The breath came from the depths of her gut, as if it strangled on its way. “Hearth and blood, captain. When we get a chance.”

  “When.” Pyanfar flicked her ears. Rings chimed, reminder of voyages and experience. They dealt with an Immune. Unchallengeable, by every principle of civilized law. But Chanur was older than any Immune clan. Older than Ehrran in all senses. “Get that release. Get Khym in here. And get the automed and relay Chur’s vital signs over to Vigilance; let’s give the meds all the help we can and save the Ehrran for our own time, not Chur’s.”

  * * *

  Khym came onto the bridge and got to legal files; Tully strayed through the door: “Here,” Pyanfar said, called Tully over and leaned aside in her chair to fish a size three probe out of the under-console toolkit. She extended one claw in demonstration, punched a harmless button with the probe while Tully watched, and turned and slapped the probe into his palm. His blue eyes lighted with sudden understanding and he clenched his hand on the tool.

  “We get Chur help,” she said. “Meanwhile we need crewman, huh? Understand? Buttons. Controls. Gods, you can’t read. Use your imagination. Go to Khym, tell him you do what he says, can you?”

  “I understand,” he said. “I do. I work, I help.”

  “Good for you.” She patted an available leg and sent him off, the halt to help the inexperienced, and both to do what they could. Gods, gods. She dropped her head against her hands and wiped her mane back. She was shaking with fatigue. She heard someone else come onto the bridge. Geran had come back with stats from the little medical equipment they had, and she flung herself into Haral’s vacant seat to put the data through to Vigilance, no motion wasted.

  Gods know how long we’ll be here. Geran guesses the risk we’re at—if we have to run for it on the sudden. Chur—gods know if she’s thinking straight at all now. Or thinks she’s dying anyway and won’t burden us with helping her. Gods-be stubborn hillwomen. We go to space. We never get home out of the blood. Gods, gods—there had been a look on Geran’s face for a moment in the dealings with Vigilance, a look such as she had seen on Hilfy’s with the kif, and neither expression looked much toward personal survival. Her own heart beat hard when she thought on Ehrran, when she reflected on herself, on a fool who had gotten a little ship and a merchant crew involved in the affairs of Personages and hakkiktun and gods forbid, the knnn.

  There was nowhere left to run but home, nothing but charges and challenge there, and no way with a sick woman aboard to do that running without killing her. They could get back to Mkks from here. Or reach Tt’a’va’o, in space no hani had ever visited and where no hani was welcome; or run for Meetpoint—where The Pride had no welcome either and no few agencies wanted their hides. Chur might not live to get to any of those places and The Pride itself might not last much longer than their arrival.

  She gave her mane a second wipe, flicked the rings on her ears into order and listened to Geran getting the data through and insisting on an acknowledgement from the Ehrran medical staff.

  Haral came back onto the bridge, still wet from her bath, as Khym got up from his board and quietly handed Geran the legal release for fax-transmission to Vigilance.

  “What’s underway?” Haral asked.

  “Getting a Vigilance med over here,” Pyanfar said quietly; and Haral’s damp ears went back in quiet acknowledgement. Haral knew who; why; was relieved, and avowed she had not been worried it would get done, all in that one twitch. It comforted her, such friendly familiarity, close as her own mind. There had been times in their youth when she and Haral had come to blows. Never on The Pride’s deck. Never since they took to sitting side by side at The Pride’s controls. “Chur’s not so good, huh?” Haral asked.

  “Not critical,” Pyanfar said, “but none too good. It’s not now that worries me.”

  Haral added up other unspoken things right too, with a scowl for their luck and Chur’s and for allies they had to rely on.

  “Goldtooth’s on—”—insertion approach, Pyanfar started to say, and com started flashing an attention-light. She reached and leaned over the mike. “Pride of Chanur. You’ve reached the captain.”

  It was neither Ehrran nor Jik. It was the tinny sputter of the shielded dockside line. “—kokkitta ktogotki, Chanur-hakto. Kgoto naktki tkki skthokkikt.”

  “Gods rot it, I’m not opening that hatch.”

  “—kohogot kakkti hakkiktu.”

  “Not even for him.”

  “—Khotakku. Sphitktit ikkti ktoghogot.”

  “Speak pidgin!”

  “—Gift. From the hakkikt.”

  Pyanfar drew in a long breath and looked up at Haral. Haral’s ears were back. Don’t ask me, that look meant. You know what choice we’ve got.

  “I’m coming,” Pyanfar said into the com. “Kgakki tkki, skku-hakkiktu.” Politeness grated. And when the contact was broken: “Gods, what else did we nee
d? Khym. Tully. Haral and I are headed for the lock. Get on the com and tell Tirun and Hilfy meet us down in lowerdecks—armed, and hurry it. Geran: get that camera on.” She flung herself to her feet as Haral headed for the weapons-locker. “And, Khym, when you’ve done that get on shortrange and advise Jik we’ve got kif arriving with presents at our lock. Don’t use the station lines! Hear?”

  “Aye,” Khym said, and shifted himself into Hilfy’s vacant place, already throwing com switches. No argument. Gods, the menfolk had settled in and become useful—somewhere something had happened, and the uphill weight she had been shoving against since Anuurn port began to move on its own impulse. She took the light pistol Haral handed her, checked the safety in haste and headed out of the bridge a step in front of Haral.

  “Gifts,” Pyanfar muttered as Haral overtook her in the main corridor. “Gifts! That’s how we got into this gods-forsaken mess in the first place. Knnn. Chur sick. Vigilance playing games. And a gods-be kif wants to give us presents.”

  With Goldtooth in the last stages of his docking approach, they were losing their free-space shield; and from here on, it was stand prepped for a hasty undock and a mad scramble for defense at any moment.

  They had caught station with its defenses low. It was an easy trick to take a starstation out—a few c-charged rocks carried through jump and let fly—if an attacker had no scruples.

  And, she kept recalling, Akkhtimakt’s reputation included none, even among kif.

  Chapter 10

  Tirun and Hilfy met them in front of the lift lowerdecks, armed with pistols from the downside locker, ears laid back and both of them wetter than Haral had been. “What have we got?” Tirun asked as they headed down the corridor to the lock.

  “We got a present coming from Sikkukkut,” Pyanfar muttered, and gave a look Hilfy’s direction; Hilfy showed nothing now but a clear-eyed attention to business. “That’s what they say out there, at least; I didn’t like the last present much; and b’gods, if Sikkukkut gives me another earless hanger-on I’ll feed it to Skkukuk and solve two problems.”

  “I don’t like this,” Haral said. “I don’t like it at all. Captain, let Tirun and me sort this out in the lock. We might get more kif than we bargained for and they could sabotage that hatch—”

  “Airlock gives them advantage of position,” Pyanfar said. “Geran, you got image on them?”

  “No, captain—one’s in sight at the bend; there’s more, but they’re staying back and that accessway light’s lousy.”

  “Gods-be mess,” Pyanfar muttered. “Stand by, Geran.”

  A single shot from their airlock toward the accessway might blow them to hard vacuum, even with light pistols; and Kefk was rife with potential suicides willing to bet their lives hani would hesitate one necessary instant to take the opposition with them.

  “We could take it from lowerdeck ops,” Haral said.

  “Sfik,” Pyanfar said, and took her gun from her pocket and threw the safety off. “Besides, sabotage at that hatch we don’t need. Airlock it is. You and I go in, cousin. Hilfy and Tirun hold the rear and keep your hand on that close-switch. And, Geran, you look sharp up there.”

  “I’m on it,” Geran said.

  Tirun’s ears were back. Tirun had the clear ruthless sense to throw the emergency seal, backup to Geran; Hilfy was there because Hilfy happened to be belowdecks, and sending her topside would say something Pyanfar had no wish to say.

  “Huh,” Tirun said, commentary on it all.

  They rounded the corner toward the lock. “Geran. Inner hatch only, Geran.”

  Ssssnnk. The big inner hatch went back on the instant, and the lock glared white with lights. Tirun took up position where the hatch rim gave some cover from fire and a split-second longer survival in an explosive decompression, her left hand set on the emergency switch. Hilfy stood armed on the opposite side of the hatchway.

  “Easy,” Pyanfar said; and walked into the airlock with Haral behind her. “Geran, open her up.”

  The outer hatch whisked back. A single kif who stood there a distance down the orange-lighted access, its hands in plain sight. It looked not at all startled at the pair of guns it faced; and it wisely refrained from all sudden movement.

  Sikkukkut himself? Pyanfar wondered. But it was not so tall as Sikkukkut. It smelled different. She caught the different smell of Kefk station, musty and ammoniac, that came wafting in with it, fit to raise the hairs on a hani’s back. Her nose twitched. Gods, I’m allergic to the bastards—

  “The hakkikt sends,” it said. “Will you accept the gift?”

  “What gift?”

  The kif made a slow turn. “—Kktanankki!” he called out. Bring it—a word that implied other things beyond bring, like a present that was able to walk under its own power.

  A faint sound came from further down, around the corner of the accessway. More kif arrived, a massed drift of shadow with the red-gold of a hani in their midst, a hani in torn blue silk breeches.

  Pyanfar’s heart lurched, first in startlement and then in recognition of that face, the tangled mane with the bronze tone of Anuum’s southlands; left ear ripped, a black scar that raked mouth and chin.

  “Dur Tahar,” Pyanfar said.

  The captain of Moon Rising raised her eyes as the kif brought her to the threshold of the lock. She blinked and the ears came up and flattened as the first kif and two more took her inside, under the white light. Her eyes were the same bronze as her mane, wild and hard and crazed-looking. “Pyanfar Chanur,” Tahar said, in a distant, hoarse voice.

  “The hakkikt gives you your enemy,” the foremost kif said. “His compliments, Chanur.”

  “Mine to him,” Pyanfar muttered.

  “Kkt,” the kif said, and turned with a sweep of its robes and left, taking its dark companions with it, in kifish economy of courtesy.

  “My crew,” Dur Tahar said. Her voice struggled for composure and failed. “For the gods’ own sake, Chanur—go after them! Ask for them; get them out of there!”

  Pyanfar expelled one breath, sucked in a new one and strode out into the accessway in pursuit of the departing kif. “Captain!” Haral called after her; but Pyanfar went only as far as the bend, where she had view of the down-bound knot of kif on the ramp. “Skku-hakkiktu!” she yelled after the collective shadow. “I want the rest of the hani! Hear?”

  The kif came to a leisurely halt, and gazed up at her as his band halted around him.

  “Tell the hakkikt,” Pyanfar called down the icy chute of the ramp, “I appreciate his gift. Tell the hakkikt I want the rest of the hani. I set importance on that. Tell him so!”

  “Kkt. Chanur-hakto. Akktut okkukkun nakth hakti-hakkikta.”

  Something about passing the message on. Modes eluded her, the subtleties of when or how fast, woven into the words kif used with each other like fine-edged knives.

  “See to it!” she yelled back.

  The kif bowed like a slide of oil, turned and walked on down the ramp with his companions around him. Pyanfar scowled, snicked the safety onto the pistol, then turned and hastened back into the airlock.

  “Shut it, Geran!” Pyanfar yelled up at com. “And lock her up good!”

  The door hissed behind her, and the electronic seals clashed and thumped.

  “Where are your crew?” Pyanfar asked Tahar.

  “Station Central. Last I knew.” Tahar staggered as Haral took her by one bound arm and pulled her through into the warm corridor outside. As she passed, Tahar looked from Hilfy at her left to Tirun at her right; and with Hilfy whose mother was Faha-clan there was a feud as grievous as Chanur’s own. But Dur Tahar showed not a spark of defiance, only weary acquiescence as Pyanfar pushed her over to stand against the corridor wall.

  “Get them out!” Tahar said hoarsely. “Chanur, anything you want, just get them out. Fast.”

  “Tirun, you got a knife?”

  “I got it.” Tirun drew her folding-knife from her pocket, turned Tahar’s face to the wall and sawed through th
e binding cords that held her hands, turned her about again and cut the one that circled her throat—stuffed the cut cord into her pocket, spacer’s neatness, while Dur Tahar leaned against the wall, rubbing the blood back into her hands, her eyes glassy with shock.

  “I sure didn’t fancy to meet you under these circumstances,” Pyanfar said.

  “We were off our ship when you came in. They held us in the offices—gods, I don’t care what you do to me, just get them away from the kif.”

  “I’m going to try. I sent Sikkukkut a message out there in the accessway. I’m not sure I’ve got enough credit the hakkikt’s going to listen, but I think I’ve got enough it’ll get to him.”

  Dur Tahar pushed away from the wall. “You can do better than that, Chanur!”

  “Listen, you make me trouble, Tahar, you’ll die earless. Hear me?”

  “I hear. Just get on it. Talk to them. You know what they’ll do—”

  “I know. But that message has to get there before I can do anything. You should know that well as any. I’m going to call Harukk on com. Suppose you tell me what you’re doing in port; where Akkhtimakt is. Maybe you can give me some coin to bargain with, huh?”

  Tahar’s mouth tightened. She gestured vaguely outward, elsewhere, anywhere, with a lifting of her eyes. “There. Out there. Kshshti, likeliest.” It was the ghost of a voice. “You want our word, you have it from me. Anything. Just for the gods’ sakes don’t let them die like that.”

  Pyanfar stood staring at her. Old-fashioned words meant something on Anuurn; like our word, like clan and law and other things alien to the far dark place they had gotten to, in the modern age of Vigilance and stsho connivance. “It’s a long way from home. A long way, Tahar.”

  Dur Tahar leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. “They’ll turn on you. Mahendo’sat same as kif. They will. Take my example—get out of here. Shed all of them and run, Chanur.”

  “You know a place to run to?”

  Dur Tahar opened her eyes and looked at her, such a look as ached with exhaustion and terror and months and years of running. “No. Not ultimately. Not if you’re like me. And you’re getting there real fast, aren’t you, Chanur?”