Chanur's Homecoming

The lift door had closed back there. The shadows in the reflective glass had come closer. Pyanfar slowly rotated her chair to face the last-comers. Courtesy. Tirun walked beside Jik, Jik beside Skkukuk’s dark-robed shape. They had washed Jik’s clothes for him, had not even dared have clean ones couriered over from Aja Jin, for fear of rousing kifish suspicions. And someone of the crew must have lent him the bracelet on his arm. The kif had robbed him of the gaudy lot of chain he usually wore.

“This person,” Skkukuk said the moment he got through the door, “this person refuses your order, hakt’.”

“He means the gun,” Tirun said.

“We don’t carry firearms up here,” Pyanfar said patiently. With spectacular patience, she thought. “Nor do we change captains under fire.” With an internal shudder and a thought toward Jik: / hope. “Tirun will give you instructions. If you’re that good, prove it.”

So much for kifish psych.

But the son moved. Jik was still looking at her.

“How my ship?” he asked, very quiet, very civilized. She would not have been that restrained, under similar circumstances.

“Hilfy, give his station that comflow on receiving only."

“Aye,” Hilfy said. “It’s in.”

“That’s scan two,” Pyanfar said, meaning seat assignment; and he gave a short, more than decent nod of his dark head and went to belt in, wincing a bit as he sat down. He spoke quietly to Geran; and Pyanfar found her claws clenched in the upholstery: she released her grip, carefully; and turned her seat around again.

2313.

“We’re on count,” Haral said. “Aja Jin reports ready. We’re on.”

“Stand by.”

“We going to show the hakkikt punctuality?”

She considered the potential for provocation. Considered the kif. And considered another possibility as she put their engines live. There was another set of switches by her hand, safety-locked by a whole string of precautions which they had a program now to bypass. Input three little codes and that set of key-slots would light. And The Pride would have a last chance to take out a space station full of kif, a handful of innocent methane-breathers; a doublecrossing allied ship that held one of two plans for a mahen hegemony over the Compact; a kif who was very close to having a kifish hegemony, and who with cold intent, threatened the whole hani species. Half the whole problem in the Compact was sitting right here at this station, with the solution within reach of her hand; and for one ship to take out half the problems in the immediate universe was not a bad trade, as trades went.

It also assured by default the immediate success of their rivals, whose intentions were also mahen and kifish hegemonies, maybe a human one, a methane-breather action, and the immediate collapse of the stsho and then the han into the control of one or the other hegemonies. Which meant years of bloody fighting. Not taking into account humanity, which was already at odds within its own compact, and whose ships they knew were armed.

Take out one set of contenders here or make Jik’s throw for him and play power against power.

She was not even panicked in contemplating that sequence of bypasses. She felt only a numb detachment: she could give it, and only Haral would know; Haral would look her way with a slight flattening of the ears and never pass the warning to the crew. Just a look that said: / know. Here we go.

Perhaps Haral was thinking the same thing about now, that it was one last chance, while their nose was still into the station’s gut and they were an indisputable part of station mass. Haral went on flicking switches, the shut-down of certain systems no longer necessary, along with the check of systems-synchronization and docking jets.

2314.

“We break on the mark,” Pyanfar said in the same tone in which they threw those checkout sequences back and forth. “Advise them down the line. Advise station.”

“Aye,” Haral said. “Hilfy.”

“I got it,” Hilfy said.

The minute ticked down.

2314.46.

“On mark,” Pyanfar said. “Grapple.”

Clang. The station withdrew its grip.

Thump. They withdrew their own as the chrono hit 2315; and Pyanfar hit the docking jets. Precisely. And hard. G shifted, momentum carrying them in a skew the jets corrected, and more so, as The Pride left the boom and the hazard of collision with the kifish ship down-wheel from them.

Another G shift, no provision for groundling stomachs, as she sent The Pride axis-rolling on a continual shove of the docking jets.

“Show those bastards,” Haral muttered beside her. As The Pride finished her roll with never a wasted motion, precisely angled the jets and underwent outbound impulse.

“Aja Jin’s cleared on mark,” Geran said. “Precisely.” Pyanfar flicked her ears, rings jingling, and her heart picked up.