Chanur's Homecoming

On the bridge even Haral had taken one quick look around.

“Invitation from the kif,” Pyanfar said. “Ranking personnel of allied ships. On his deck. Fast.”

“My gods,” Khym exclaimed.

“Unfortunately,” Pyanfar said, and thought of Hilfy down there in the corridor with two kif alone. “Unfortunately we haven’t got a real choice. Get Tahar and get Kesurinan. I’m not taking any of you—”

Mouths opened.

“It’s a trap,” Khym said, his deep voice quivering with outrage. “Py, Tirun’s right, listen to her.”

“Not taking any of you,” she said carefully, “except our friend the kif. Get to it, Geran, get our friends out there.”

“That dock,” Geran said.

“We got worse risks than a leaky dock, cousin; one of ’em’s being late and one of them’s missing a signal with that kif. I’m going down there, I want Tahar and Kesurinan just the way the kif asked, and about the time I clear the lock down there I want The Pride powered up and held that way till I get back again. Make the point with ’em we still got teeth, hear? And that my crew’s on full alert.”

“Aye,” Haral muttered, far from happy.

Neither was Pyanfar happy. She went and pulled one of their APs out of the locker by the bridge exit and headed back down the corridor, with the heavy sidearm and its belt in hand.

Not to the lowerdeck straightway.

First came a stop in her own quarters, for a fast exchange: for a bit of glitter, because appearances counted, a psychological weapon as essential as the gun at her side.

Sikkukkut meant to move now. In some regard.

She clenched her jaw and started cataloging things, fast, things that wanted doing. In case she had just said goodbye to her crew and her husband.

Gods, Khym had just stood there and took an answer for an answer. Her heart did a little painful thump of pride when she realized belatedly what that had cost him: he was not the gentle ignorant she had married, not the feckless man who had walked out on the docks at Meetpoint and run straight into a kifish trap. If she died today at kifish hands he would not act the male; would not rush out there like a lunatic to take the kif on hand to hand—he had grown a lot on this voyage, had Khym, when he was no longer a boy and no longer young at all. He had finally found out what lay outside his limits and what the universe was like—had found friends, b’gods, female friends and one who was even male, friends which she suddenly realized in grief that Khym had never had in all his adult life, excepting her and his other wives, and I them but scarcely: clan-lord, shielded from all contact with the world by his wives and his sisters and his daughters, he had finally come out into the real world to find out what it was, and he was not just her Khym anymore; or even Khym lord Mahn; he was something more than that, suddenly, long after he should have gone to die in Hermitage, outworn and useless—he grew up and became what he always could have been; discovered the universe full of honest folk and scoundrels of all genders, and learned how to win respect, how to ignore the barbs and become ship-youngest and work his way out of a second youth, with utterly different rules. That was more change than most women had the fortitude to take in their lives; but by the gods he had made it complete back there; he would do his fighting from that bridge and that board, under Haral’s command if something went wrong, part of the crew that drove a ship of mass enough and internal power enough to turn Kefk and Sikkukkut and all his ambitions into one briefly incandescent star.

The docks were the shambles she had expected, gray metal still supercooled under her bare feet, with a good many of the lights out-blown when the pressure went and when this dock had opened to space. Gantries loomed up down the righthand side of the docks, subtly tilting in the positive curvature of