Chanur's Homecoming

“They’ve got Ayhar under arrest, cap’n. We’re still on course. We got Vigilance in our way and we got three other big freighters just hanging off and not doing anything. They’ll have fire position on us if we keep coming. They warned us. Have to ask you what you want to do.”

She lay there and breathed quietly a moment, ran that situation through her aching skull once and twice and a third time.

Vigilance positioning itself where it could go head on with them or strike at their tail if they docked.

You gods-be fool, / got thirty, forty kif out there!

Bring kif against the han? O my gods, my gods. That fool’s going to call bets and I can’t bluff, those kif back there don’t know where to stop and I can’t hold them else. I can’t bluff, Ehrran! Don’t try to call it.

“Mahendo’sat. Where are they?”

“They’re braking. Holding steady relative to the kif. Keeping an eye on ’em.”

“And no sign of Jik.” That pain was back again. It hurt to blinding. “Gods rot the luck.” He’s got to be alive. Out there somewhere. Preserving his options. Saving his own people. He has no choice. And I did it, I, I gave it to him. “Ayhar arrested.”

“Aye, cap’n. We inquired. We got a communication from Llun, onstation. They’re real sorry, they got no choice.”

Old friends, the keepers of Gaohn station. Old allies. Under a lot of pressure. “That all they said?”

“Says plenty, doesn’t it, cap’n?”

There was a time they were Py and Hal and Tirun. Across every accessible dock in the Compact. Here they were, gray nosed and at wits’ end and Haral was sticking by formalities. Haral had held that line ever since the day she got set upstairs, command post, being heir to Chanur; and Haral, equally qualified, being sub-sept, got the second seat. It was the System.

“Captain?”

“Yeah. It says plenty. It says every godsrotted thing wrong with us.” She shoved herself up on her hand and an elbow, flung her feet for the side of the bed. Blood was moving in her veins again. Her vision cleared. “I’ll have Ehrran’s ears, b’gods if I don’t. My own hands. In the condition I’m in, I could take that blackbreeched prig! I’ll kill her!”

“We got other word,” Haral said, and braced her back, setting her down with both hands. Held onto her. “Rhean sent on com-says Chanur’s fallen. Kohan’s exiled. Mahn’s got the estate. Rhean’s broken with the blockade out there. She and Anfy- coming in hard behind us with Fortune and Light. Pyruun-Pyrunn got Kohan to safety somewhere. They swear that. So it’s not all lost onworld, and we got help on the way if we just hold and wait. Sirany’s up there trying to keep the thing from blowing to a-”

“Mahn.” She shook her head, blinked. Tried to focus on it. “My godsrotted conniving son?”

“Our godsrotted conniving son,” Khym said at her back, his voice a low rumble. “And our twice conniving daughter."

“With Ehrran!”

“With their own interests, Py, when were they ever anything wider?”

“Gods. Gods!” She flung off Haral’s hands and slapped Khym’s interference aside. Hit the floor with both feet wide and swayed there till she had shaken the fog out of her eyes. Then she headed for the door.

The corridor.

The bridge, where Tauran crew filled the seats.

“Give me com,” she snarled, coming up over Sif Tauran’s shoulder. Sif hesitated, throwing a startled glance her way.

“Captain-”

“Give it to her,” Sirany said. “Ker Pyanfar, I’ll give you your chair.”

“Keep it. We got troubles.” She slipped into the vacant post between Sif and Fiar. “Get me Gaohn station. Are armaments still live?”

“We’re shut down, captain.” Nasany Tauran, down at Tirun’s post. “Reactivate?”

“Do it.” The com light signaled available and she punched in on the frequency.

“Pride of Chanur hailing the station,” Sif was saying. Trying to raise a response. Another light was blinking, another channel active. Sif punched it in, on a momentary pause. “That’s a call from Vigilance, captain. They advise us we’re under arrest.”

“Tell Ehrran there’s a threat to Gaohn and we’re not it. Standby. That’s all.”

The message went.

“Gaohn station,” she said on her own. “This is Pyanfar Chanur, The Pride of Chanur. Stand by to record and relay.” Gaohn was hearing: that was beyond doubt: every official on that vulnerable and threatened station would be prioritied onto their transmissions. “Llun, you’ve just seen the first and smallest wave of our assault on Akkhtimakt’s ships. The next one is incoming. Naur, there’s no time for your politics. Your treaty with the stsho may have destroyed the whole species, hear me? Your relations with the mahendo’sat are tottering. Attack on our own world is possible and imminent. It is possible that no life will survive on Anuurn surface. I appeal

to you, I beg you, anyone who can get their menfolk offworld right now, do it, get us a chance, for the gods’ own sake, get to shuttles and get to shelters. There are still three large groups of ships unaccounted for and one of them has threatened attack on Anuurn itself.”

Static. Sputter. “Pyanfar Chanur, retreat from this course.”