Chanur's Homecoming

“Movement on Nekkekt,” Geran said monotone, deliberate monotone. As Haral prioritied scan up. No emergency. That was where it had to be.

“Transmission,” Hilfy said. “Skkukuk’s passing your orders to the kif. Ordering the clans and the mahendo’sat to clear out of their way.”

“Confirm that to our allies.”

A pause. A longer-than-one-breath pause. Then: “Aye.” And compliance, rapid pushing of buttons.

“Captain.” Chur’s voice, quiet, very quiet. Strain was in it. “I got this idea-”

“Spill it.”

“The kif. They know their enemy. They turned round here. Akkhtimakt’s ships-” The voice faded out, restored itself. “They knew it was sprung, the trap- They’ve been here-how long? Jik went on-but there’s others-”

“Timetables. Gods. The mahendo’sat know there’s a second wave, they knew it. Hilfy. Transmit: Hasano-ma. My gods, we’ve been sitting on that code program-Jik’s letter. Run the coded parts through. Spit it on at them. Send it out on the Ajir vector. Put our wrap on it and get the mahendo’sat—

gods, gods, gods, the man gives us a key and a coder and we sit on it.”

“That’ll worry the kif some.”

“Good! They love it. Jik. Jik, gods rot it-no, he hasn’t gone on. He doesn’t have to jump all the way to Ajir, b’gods, he can stop out there, stop, turn, and get back here, and the kif know it, they know it, that’s why they’re stalled. Akkhtimakt’s run into a trap, and his ships saw it coming, by gods, he was already pinned here thanks to Ayhar-We came in and his ships panicked; and defected; and now they don’t know what to do.”

“Kill their captains,” Haral said grimly. “That’s what they’re doing, you want to lay odds to it? One place they’re not going is back to Akkhtimakt. That bastard’s gone. Run to the deep for sure, and his crew will kill him and turn that ship around if they can stop fighting mahendo’sat long enough: they’ll be out of there and back through here like a shot if they get half a chance.”

“Tirun. What’s the mahen AOS?”

“Good eight minutes.”

She gnawed at her mustaches. A good hour Light to the nadir range. Maybe two out, if there was a mahen force out there lurking.

Gods blast you, Jik-throw the hani at it again, do you? Use us for a decoy. Set us up. Unless you’re already on your way. And you won’t be, will you? It’s a trap the kif understand. The lurking kind. That’s why the kif flinched, why I’ve got me a dozen kif out there trying to figure out whether to listen to me now and turn on me later—

They don’t know what might come through out there first. Anything could. If it’s Goldtooth they better have joined me. If it’s Sikkukkut they better not have. Poor bastards. What’s a kif to do but stall?

And Skkukuk, that gods-be conniving son is out there risking his neck because it’s logical. He’s mine. He senses I’m against the hakkikt and Sikkukkut’s going to kill him right along with the rest of us, that’s what’s going on in that earless head of his-he’s taking all he’s got and charging the bastards headon with the widest bluff he can run—

Gods, can you call a kif brave?

“We got a-”

Priority!” Geran cried. “Blip’s in, bearing zenith ten, twenty two, ten. ...”

The scan image flashed red-rimmed, flashed red on the newly arrived blip—

“Knnn!” Hilfy said. “That’s knnn output-”

“Vector, vector-”

A line popped onto the course diagrams, the whole perspective shifted, rotated, showed it passing through system on a trajectory right past them, while the dopplered image flashed to yellow: “Going right through system fringes,” Geran said, “passing within-Tyri orbit to nadir range.”

“Gods, I don’t like this.” That was Sirany. Quietly.

“All sorts of strange fish,” Pyanfar muttered. “Goldtooth. They ran right before Goldtooth at-”

“Priority, priority, we got another one-”

“It’s here,” Haral said. As the scan image acquired another blip that blinked and came ahead. The knnn kept dopplering, the image rotating to show relative position: comp had the hazard warning blinking all round the edges. “Same course.”

“Not knnn,” Pyanfar said. “That thing’s might not be knnn, I go this terrible feeling-”

“Fake a knnn ID?”

“Who’d dare fire on it? Put the armaments on track. Warning to all ships: Hilfy.”

“Aye.”

“Armaments locked,” Tirun said. “And tracking.”

“It’s just gone kifish; it’s Harukk”

“Gods rot-To all ships. Inertial!”

“Slow him down?” Haral was mind-reading again. The Pride’s mains cut out abruptly, an abrupt feeling that down was no longer aft, bodies were suddenly not lying flat on backs but attracted weakly seatward under the slight rotation-the whole board went blurred a moment in her eyes and a feeling of vertigo and panic came over her—

“We’ve got-got to play it step by step. Hope to gods Sikkukkut’s being smart again, smart’ll hang him-nobody understands the han.” A screen flashed change. More kif

were dropping into system. IDs multiplied. Harukk. Ikkhoitr. Others of the old association.

It was very quiet for a moment. Just ship after ship dropping out of hyperspace.