Chanur's Homecoming

She stood up and looked flat-eared at Skkukuk, with the ammonia-stink in her nostrils and the antiallergents drying her mouth. Something about the asking crawled along her nerves. This alien, this unutterable alien, was feeling out who was to consider among the crew, who he could displace, who he could get around and who not.

That’s one job you can’t work your way into, you slithering earless bastard. You keep your mouth off my husband’s name. You better figure that, fast.

A thousand thousands of years of hani instinct ran up her spine. And Skkukuk read that look and took on one of his own. Caution.

Footsteps in the lowerdecks corridor. Rapid ones, more than one set.

Don’t run, Khym. Dignity, Khym. In front of the kif, gods rot it, Khym.

She was still standing squared off with Skkukuk when Khym showed up in the doorway with Tully close behind.

“You’re all right,” Khym said.

“I’m just fine. Take Jik to sickbay. Get Tirun onto it. Skkukuk-”

The kif was still waiting. Armed. Their ex-prisoner, possessing a gun that could blow a hole in armor plate. And expecting in his aggressive little kifish soul that he had just won his freedom.

“You’re offduty,” she told Skkukuk. “You’ll keep that gun in your quarters. You’ve got a lowerdecks clearance. You understand me.”

“Kkkt. Absolutely.”

“Move.”

Everyone moved. Skkukuk got himself out of her sight, correctly reading her temper. Khym and Tully got to either end of the stretcher, got it lifted with its not inconsiderable dead weight of tall mahendo’sat, and maneuvered it out the hatch.

“Tirun’s on her way to sickbay, captain.” That from her niece. While the powerdown proceeded.

“Understood,” Pyanfar said calmly. And stood there a moment staring at the wall. With a kif’s orders in her pocket. She fished them out and broke open the brittle seal to look at the written portion.

“Departure at 2315,” was the center of that detail. It was, at the moment, all she was interested in. The kif gave them time enough to get organized. Barely. With precise course instructions, aborting one that they had laid in.

“Hilfy.”

“Aye,” the subdued voice reached her.

“Message to Kesurinan and Tahar: stand by departure; they’ll have a bit over six hours. So will we.”

A pause. “Aye.”

Silence after. The Pride was at rest again. The crew on the bridge could see her, where she stood. The camera was live. She looked up at it. “Things could be worse,” she said glumly. “I can think of one way right off. But we got Jik in our custody, we got Tahar and Aja Jin with us, and we’ve got the hakkikt’s orders: it’s Meetpoint. His way.”

A longer pause.

“Aye,” Haral said simply, as if she had given a routine order.

The largest space station in the Compact.

And a forewarned one.

“Clear the boards, stand offduty; I got Jik to see to.”

“Aye, captain.”

She walked out of the airlock. And only then it occurred to her, like the ghost of an old habit that no longer meant anything, that she had just packed her husband and another crewman off to tend another man, knowing beyond the last twitch of instinct, if it was ever instinct, that Jik was safe with them, safe as that kif was safe to send down the corridor in the other direction, because even the kif was a rational mind and sane and sensible, while the universe quaked and tottered on al! sides of them.

She walked down the corridor and into the open door of sickbay, their little closet of a facility. Tirun had beaten her there. Khym and Tully were taking Jif off the stretcher and laying him on the table.

“He’ll have some bruises,” Pyanfar said. “You’d better run a scan on him. He may have more than that.” She went to the med cabinet, keyed the lock with a button-sequence and sorted through a tray of bottles- hani-specific; hani drugs did strange things with some mahendo’sat. No telling what the kif had given him even if she ran a query into Library, and it was better to stick to the simple things. She pulled out an old-fashioned bottle of ammonia salts and brought that over to hold under Jik’s nose.

Not a twitch.

“Gods-be.” She capped the stinking bottle and slapped Jik’s chill face. “Wake up. Hear me?”

“What did they give him?” Tirun asked, lifting Jik’s eyelid, peering close. “He smells like a dopeden.”

“He’s a hunter-captain, gods rot it, his own precious government’s got him mind-blocked, gods know how far down he’s gone.” She turned around, shoved her way past Khym and got to the intercom. “Bridge! Get Harukk on, tell ’em I want to know what they dosed Jik with, fast.”

“Aye,” Haral’s voice came back.

Tirun was counting pulsebeats. And frowning.

“Gods, he doesn’t know where he is.” Pyanfar crossed the deck again, shoving roughly past both the men, to grab at Jik’s shoulders. “Jik, gods fry you, it’s Pyanfar, Pyanfar Chanur, you hear me? Emergency, Jik, wake up?”

Jik’s mouth opened. His chest moved in a larger breath.

“Come on, Jik-for the gods’ sake, wake up!” She yelled it into his ear. She shook at him. “Jik! Help!”