The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  * * *

  It was not a sight any of them would ever have looked for—Moon Rising’s captain sitting at The Pride’s galley table up by the bridge, taking a cup of gfi Geran pressed on her. Dur Tahar drank, and Pyanfar sat across the table with a cup in her own hands and more of the crew lounging against the cabinets with whatever bits of food Tully had scrounged: two males in the galley—so beaten Dur Tahar was that she hardly spared more than a misgiving glance at Tully and less than that at Khym.

  She knew Tully was with us, Pyanfar noted. Or at least knew he might be. So the rumor’s got to Akkhtimakt. Tirun was back on duty, trying to query Vigilance on the medical assistance and get Jik’s attention to the Tahar matter—(“Let me take this round,” Tirun had offered, while Geran was back seeing to Chur. “Do it,” Pyanfar said. And between the two of them: “Put the fire under Vigilance, huh? Discreetly. Gods rot them. Get some hurry out of them.”) Khym and Haral and Hilfy and Tully—they lounged about the walls, guns on hips, all of them armed but Tully; and Tahar drank her gfi in silence, eyes at infinity. “I want it straight,” Pyanfar said to her. “I want the whole story, ker Dur. And fast. Tell it to me.”

  Focus came back. “My crew—”

  “Mahijiru’s in dock; Goldtooth’s hooking up the com lines right now. We’ll begin to get some movement out of the kif soon now. Ships are on short crew, same as us. Even the kif. Your cousins’ll be safe enough for the time being—the kif’ll hold off till they’ve got some direct order from Sikkukkut, or until Sikkukkut’s free to see to them; and Sikkukkut’s real occupied just now. Depend on it. Drink that down. My watch officer’s sending to Aja Jin. We’re doing more than it looks like we are. But you play me for a fool, Dur, and I’ll—”

  “No.” Tahar took a swallow. The cup trembled in her hands. “You run in rough company. This hakkikt of yours—”

  “Not mine.”

  “—he’s winning, do you understand that? The kif think Akkhtimakt’s already lost. The word’s spreading—how well do you know the kif?”

  “About as well as serves, and better than I want to.”

  “I know them, gods, believe me that I do. Sfik. Gods-forsaken kif change sides quick as stsho in a situation like this, two kif at the top of the heap and both of them near-matched: Sikkukkut and Akkhtimakt—they both served Akkukkak in different capacities till he went, and now the two of them have all kif space in chaos. Every wind, every whisper that comes along, ordinary kif sniff it and change their politics. And all of a sudden Akkhtimakt’s small stuff. His move against Kita was a big threat; gods, he’s from Akkht, he’s big stuff there—got powerful skkukun hunting down all his rivals on homeworld, while Sikkukkut’s just a jumped-up provincial boss from Mirkti, for the gods’ sake. But the mahendo’sat know him. Sikkukkut’s a longtime neighbor of theirs, someone they’re used to dealing with; and they’re dealing with him. Do you see? All of a sudden Akkhtimakt looks like a kif a long way from his power base and losing it. Sikkukkut’s operating in his own home territory, using old connections, and Sikkukkut’s cut Akkhtimakt bad—thanks to you and the mahendo’sat. Real bad.”

  Pyanfar leaned her elbows on the table. “Where’s humanity fit into this, huh?”

  The whites showed around Tahar’s eyes, a slight tic in Tully’s direction, but Tahar did not turn her head, not even when Geran drifted quietly into the room and stood there with arms folded and her face like boding storm. “Humans,” Tahar said, “are coming in. They’re moving slowly—but your ally ought to be able to tell you that.”

  “Sikkukkut, you mean?”

  “This human. Or the mahendo’sat. Akkhtimakt’s program was to stop the human ships; keep them out of Compact space. Or prey on them one by one on the fringes. Humans are mahen allies, the way the kif read it. But Sikkukkut’s got the mahendo’sat working with him. He’s got you, got himself the Eyes of the han, for the gods’ sweet sake. Got a pet human of his own. How do you fight a combination like that? Kefk took one look at that situation and all of Akkhtimakt’s partisans here started looking at their neighbors and refiguring every tie they had—I’ve been through it before. A kif looks at a situation, adds up his own sfik and whether he’s got any advantage to the other side, and if he doesn’t, he’ll know his neighbors are adding it up too, and one of them may try to get more sfik by killing him. If he kills his attacker he’s got more sfik for the moment, but if he suddenly gets too much, he may look like a threat and lose all the benefit of it. It’s a bloody game, Chanur. I’ve played it for two years.”

  “Looks like you missed a step, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, I tried. Kif don’t understand hani, that’s all; they don’t know how our minds work, not in crises—but they do know we’re different and the way we choose sides isn’t predictable or sensible by their lights. So that’s what happened to us. We didn’t get a chance to switch sides. We were in an office—the staff just turned without warning and killed one kif who was too high up—too much sfik to trust; and they rounded up others to hand over to Sikkukkut for—o gods.” Tahar shuddered and set the cup down with both hands. “My crew, Chanur, my crew—Sikkukkut handed me on for a gift. I’ve got sfik enough. The situation has. But my cousins—if you don’t get them out of there—Chanur, I’ve seen what happens when a kif wants to throw a celebration. I’ve seen it.”

  “I’m working on it. My word on it, Tahar. Gods know I’d cheerfully break your neck if things were different. But not here and not now and not that way. I’m applying every leverage I’ve got. Want a warm-up on that?”

  “No.”

  “Take it anyway. You can use it.” She retrieved Dur Tahar’s cup, held it for Tirun to fill and set it back in front of Tahar’s hands. “You get news from home?”

  Tahar raised her eyes with apprehension.

  “Short and straight,” Pyanfar said. Gods, it had a bad taste in her mouth when delivering the news once would have been revenge in itself. “Tahar’s in deep trouble—but you’d figure that. I don’t know how bad or how much internally, or what’s going on at Anuurn at the moment, but you could figure it. Tahar was having trouble getting cargoes last year. Victory, Sunfire and Golden Ring are all working over farside, last that I know about it, as far from kif as they can get. If they haul their own cargo, someone raises a question whether it might be pirated goods being dumped; if they haul someone else’s they have to post a bond of guarantee in the case they should decide to pirate it themselves.”

  “Cut it, Chanur!”

  “I’m telling you the truth. What do you expect you’ve done for Tahar’s reputation? Gods rot it, you knew it when you bolted with the rest of the kif at Gaohn! You might as well listen to it.”

  Tahar’s ears were back, she set the cup down hard and looked as if she were coming over the tabletop in the next breath; but then the wind went out of her in a long shuddering sigh, and she bowed her head and flexed her claws out, points on the hard table surface. “You gave me gods-be little choice. Do what? Come home and face my brother? Go on running Tahar cargoes after what the kif did to hani at Gaohn?”

  “You knew they were kif when you bedded down with them.”

  “So do you know it.” Tahar’s head came up, red-bronze eyes dark-centered and burning. “Remember that. Remember that, Pyanfar Chanur. You can’t shed your clan. You never can. What you do comes back on your kin at home. And kif are kif and hani are hani, and one can’t trust the other in the end. Get us out of here. Get my crew out and let’s go home, Chanur, for the gods’ sake, I’m begging you, let’s both of us go home!”

  “Captain.” Tirun’s voice came over the com on the wall. “Vigilance is sending: Quote: ‘You’ve boarded Tahar personnel.’ I’m reading it exact, captain. ‘We require you stand by to transfer this person to Immune custody.’”

  “Gods rot them,” Pyanfar muttered, and slid out of the bench.

  “Ehrran,” Dur Tahar murmured darkly, and started to her feet in a move that brought Chanur out of their leisured poses all about
the galley. Tahar’s ears went flat in alarm and she subsided back into the seat.

  “The law,” Pyanfar said. “They’re here, Tahar. Han law. They’ve been hunting you for two years.”

  “Chanur—take my parole!”

  Take custody, Tahar meant; clan to clan. Take her back to Anuurn justice in Chanur custody. It might even put Chanur one-up on Chanur enemies; and humiliate Rhif Ehrran. That was what Tahar offered, well knowing what she offered.

  It also might backfire.

  Pyanfar stared at Dur Tahar eye to eye within the half-ring of Chanur crew and the hair bristled down her back. Gods, that I have to be afraid. That one hani has to look at another like this, and worry about the han.

  She brushed past and headed for the bridge.

  “Chanur!”

  Pyanfar looked back, at Tahar with Haral’s hand clamped in a firm grip on her arm. Pyanfar jerked her chin up in a gesture that freed the Tahar captain, turned and walked the narrow, curve-floored corridor to the bridge.

  “They still on?” she asked Tirun, at com one, as she settled into her own chair.

  “Your two,” Tirun said, and Pyanfar spun her chair about, and punched that channel in on speaker, along with the recorder.

  “Pyanfar Chanur speaking.”

  “Rhif Ehrran,” the answer came back, delivered over speaker from the board, as others gathered on the bridge to hear it. “We understand the kif have turned one of the Tahar over to you.”

  “That’s correct, ker Rhif. Dur Tahar. She’s advised us that her kin are still in the custody of the hakkikt’s forces, and that they’re in imminent danger. We made immediate application through all channels for their release. We’re holding her pending a quieter situation on the docks—”

  “You undertook this without notifying us.”

  “The notification to the hakkikt was a matter of emergency. Hani lives are in danger. Regarding the general situation, Tahar showed up at my lock in kif custody without advance warning. And let me remind the deputy this is not a secure communication.”

  “You’re obstructing a han order, Chanur.”

  “As a matter of record, Tahar has appealed to us to take her parole.”

  Dead silence on the other end for a moment. Then:

  “Cooperation, Chanur. You don’t take that parole. Hear me? Hear me? You want ours, we get yours. You’ll turn her over.”

  Pyanfar’s pulse skipped. She flicked a glance at the recorder light’s green glow. It was being logged on Vigilance and assuredly she wanted it on The Pride’s tapes. “You’re implying, are you, that our request for medical assistance to injured personnel hinges on our rejecting Tahar’s appeal?”

  More silence. The trap was too obvious. Rhif Ehrran was too wary to confirm that with any chance of it being logged verbatim. “Nothing of the kind, Chanur. But I don’t send my crew into a situation I don’t trust. And pending resolution of this matter, I’m putting that request on hold.”

  “Gods rot you, you’re talking about a critically ill woman and a gods-be short schedule! You’re—”

  Click.

  “Gods blast you!”

  Tirun’s voice quietly: “Log it?”

  “Log it. Log that cut-off, to the minute.” Pyanfar cut the recorder off. She was shaking when she spun the chair about, and her heart hurt her when she looked at the faces about her; Geran’s face; and Tahar’s. “Geran,” Pyanfar said quietly, to the killing-rage she saw in Geran’s eyes. And with profoundest shame: “Tahar. I’m still trying.”

  “What are they doing?” Tahar asked in a hollow voice. “Chanur, what’s going on?”

  “The law. The law that wants you is telling me they’ll by the gods let Chur Anify die if we don’t hand you over on the spot. That’s what’s happened on Anuurn since Gaohn. That’s what the han’s come to nowadays, spies and note-takers out to prove their case at any cost. Law by innuendo, by threat, by payoff and profit and political gain. That’s what we’ve got. Deals with the stsho. Buy-outs and sell-outs. Hani so gods-be anxious to get the advantage of their rivals they don’t see anything else—like you and me, Tahar. Like both us gods-be fools. I watched you and you watched me and we fought each other, and our menfolk did, and all the while the old women in Naur and Schunan licked their whiskers and planned how to skin us both. They sent Ehrran out. The stsho found a chink and they’re using it—stsho money; and hani gods-be stupidity. Incarnate in Ehrran. By the gods, Tahar, I’ll help your crew, I swear to you. But they’re demanding I turn you and them over to Ehrran. And I don’t see a way out of it. I’ve got a sick woman aboard with another jump to go, gods know when. They’ve got the medic that can help her; and they’re going to play dirty.”

  “My sister,” Geran said quietly. Her voice achieved a pitch of deep hoarseness it had never reached. And stopped though it was clear Geran had more to say than that. Shame, shame to have a transaction like that to Chanur’s account and Anify’s, and there was nothing else to do.

  “Chanur,” Tahar said, hands clenched on the co-pilot’s cushion till the claws gouged. “Chanur, I’m a gift. A kifish gift, hear? You want the hakkikt to think Chanur can’t hold what they give you?”

  “Gods, you argue like a kif.”

  “You’re dealing with kif, Chanur. You’re in their station. This is their game. Not the han’s. Not yours. You give me to the han you lose sfik. And you can lose your life for it. You can lose all you’ve got.”

  “Shut it down, Tahar!”

  “Don’t send me yet! Gods, Chanur, if you’re going to throw it all away, at least get my crew out first, while you still have the sfik to bargain with!”

  “I’ve got a woman sick, I’ve got gods-be little time to bargain in.”

  “They’ll kill you. The kif will kill you if you slip. You hear me? Where’s Chur Anify or any of you then, huh? You think Tahar’s the only lives at stake at this gods-forsaken station?”

  More silence, profound and dreadful. The crew listened; Tully’s face was set and pale, for what small amount he followed.

  “Maybe—” Geran’s voice came softly, hoarse and hollow. “Maybe a mahen doctor—captain, maybe Chur’d be better off with someone not Rhif Ehrran’s pick in the first place. I trust her that little. And I know how Chur feels about it.”

  What for gods-sakes has gotten into us? A darkness closed about Pyanfar’s vision, a narrowing tunnel in which one course leapt out with white-edged clarity. “By the gods, no! We’re not taking this from that blackbreeched foot-licker. Tirun! Get me Jik.” Pyanfar spun her chair about to the board and hit the recorder and the com. “Priority—” The com came live. “The Pride of Chanur to Aja Jin, priority, priority; this is Pyanfar Chanur. Get the captain on—” And as a mahen voice droned back: “Move it, crewman—Tirun, gods rot it, give me those med stats.” She punched buttons, hunting in two banks. “Where in a mahen hell’d you put that gods-be file?”

  “Four, captain, it’s your comp four, I’m getting it—”

  “Stand by comp transmission, Aja Jin, priority—Where’s Jik, gods blast your eyes!”

  “I got,” a deeper voice came back.

  “Jik, get our comp-send and get a med over here, priority, priority one! Mahen, hani, I don’t care what, just hurry, code one, hear? Hurry it, Jik!”

  “You got. Ready you send.”

  She sent, two keystrokes.

  “Got. We go, go.”

  “Go!” She broke the contact and spun the chair about. “Tirun. Log a medical emergency. Log the call.” She leaned back in the cushions and stared at her crew and at Tahar, darkly smug. “There’s more than one way to get something done around here. Now let Ehrran play politics with an emergency call.”

  It was not safe. Sudden moves in a stationful of nervous kif might open something else up.

  No move at all was unthinkable. She looked at Geran, whose ears were canted back, whose eyes were white-edged about the amber and black.

  “So we get Jik in on it,” Pyanfar said. “And by the gods
if he can get blackbreeches to Kefk he can gods-be sure get that hani medic over here whether Rhif Ehrran likes it or not, and by the gods she’ll do her job.”

  Geran gave a smile far from pleasant, prim pursing of her mouth. No smile at all from the rest of the crew; a wary look from Khym; a warier one yet from Tahar; and from Tully a lost and worried stare. He laid a hand on Haral’s arm, questioned her with a look.

  “We get help for Chur,” Pyanfar said in simplicity, for him, and got up from her chair. “Tahar, your crew gets my help nonconditional. I’m not Rhif Ehrran. If you doublecross me or get in my way I’ll just break your neck right off and send the remains to the kif. And let me make one thing more clear: my crew’s not in any state to be patient with your mouth. We’re short on sleep and gods-be mad, and I don’t know if I’d save you if you cross one of us again. Hear it?”

  Tahar’s ears went back, a visible flinching. It was the truth, at least the first part. And maybe the second. And Tahar gave no sign of doubting it.

  “Better be ready on that access,” Pyanfar said, and turned a look toward Haral. “Tirun, stay your post. You know who you’ve talked to. Hilfy, Khym, put Tahar in Tully’s room a while.” It was one of the few places on the ship relatively damage-proof, and it at least had a bed. “Move it. Geran—see to Chur, that’s all.”

  Crew scattered, except Tully. He still had that lost look—anxious, frightened. Chur. That was all he could likely make out. Next to Hilfy, the closest friend he had. Pyanfar walked over to him and set a hand on his arm. Claws half out. He had that disconnected look of hysteria, and she gripped his arm to wake him up. “Hey,” Pyanfar said. “It’s all right, huh?”

  “Tahar,” he said. “Kif. Kefk. What do, Pyanfar? What do, what do?”

  What are you up to? What kind of game are you playing? I trusted you. What’s going on, Pyanfar?

  “Captain,” Tirun said, “Jik’s lot’re headed up the dock. Estimate three minutes. Mahijiru queries: assistance wanted?”