Chanur's Homecoming

“Gods curse that bastard,” Pyanfar muttered, and something hurt deep in her gut, diminishing that pain about her heart. “Gods curse him. Haral. To my boards. Hilfy: tell our partners stand by. Haral: course to Urtur.”

“Aye,” Hilfy said.

“Do it,” Pyanfar said, “Haral.”

A code flashed to her screen. Priority four. Personnel emergency. From Tirun’s hand.

“Pyanfar!” Jik’s voice. She spun the chair, saw Jik unbuckled and rising to his feet as Khym scrambled for his and Skkukuk moved faster still.

But Jik stopped. Stopped still. So did everything else when she held up a hand. “Pyanfar, you got give me com-”

“Aja Jin’s outputting code,” Hilfy said. “Inputting to code faculty, Haral.”

“Jik,” Pyanfar said, “I don’t want my crew hurt. Don’t want you hurt. You’re about to give me no choice. You hear me?”

“Damn fool hani, that be Mahijiru, Ana be wait signal-he get your message, he go from here. He got go from here. I give you message. You send: say Sheni. He understand, give you same co-operation. I tell truth, Pyanfar.”

“Directive to that ship can’t go out from here,” she said, ears flat. All but deaf. Her heart was pounding. “You trying to fry us good, Jik? Mahen ships are dead-stopped out there. They’re caught, same as hani are. We haven’t got a choice here and Sikkukkut isn’t just real pleased with us to start with. Khym. Skkukuk. I think you better get Jik off the bridge.”

“No! Pyanfar! Damn fool, you need me. Need me here. You send message!”

“I can’t trust you. I’m going to ask you to leave. Quietly. Right now. Or you sit in that chair.”

Jik’s hand tightened on the chair back. Not going to move, she thought; it seemed forever. Khym would never delay so long. Time spooled itself out the way it did in jump. She had to think of her own ship; and of the gun in her pocket. I’ll use it, Jik; I’d use it if you made me, for godssakes, don’t, don’t make me, I’ve got my ship to protect—

He moved to put himself in the chair. And she let go the breath she had forgotten, and spun her chair back again.

The translations were multiplying on the screen. Aja Jin was spilling out everything, a flood of com-sent explanations, coded and headed out toward the mahen ships. Tully was still sending on their com, never having stopped. It was a guess what he was sending. Saying everything they could not, dared not, in a code no one could crack.

Treason against the hakkikt. Perhaps against them.

Or against humankind itself.

But what did the hakkikt expect, sending them in first, to paralyze the system-when his own arrival hard upon their own would send ships running like leaves in the wind?

She switched that to Jik’s monitor. Silent comment.

It’s getting done, Jik. And it may kill all of us.

Tully’s output made no sense at all, misapplications or coded applications of vocabulary driving the translator to lunacy. What came out of Aja Jin achieved syntax. It made no sense in some of its parts. But did in others. They were onto those codewords. If Kesurinan over there had truly suspected something she might have used some alternate; it was a guess that the mahendo’sat had alternates. But Kesurinan did not suspect. That was the best guess: Kesurinan did not suspect that they had those words at least; or that Jik would have given them out against his will, to a ship that had a mahen-given translation program.

While the ship hurtled on at its reduced V and duty stations talked back and forth to each other in muted voices and the blip and click of instruments and boards.

For Jik it was already past. And there was the kif in front of him, and hani who had kept him from his ship at a moment that might prove decisive in all history.

She found not a thing to say either.

Sikkukkut’s kif hurtled on toward attack on Akkhtimakt and on Goldtooth and the humans, if that was what that mass was out there. While the stsho and any other non-combatants on that station abided the outcome in helpless terror.

“Priority,” Geran said. Scan went red-bordered, a group of outlier ships went from stationary blue to blinking blue of low-V ship from which passive-recept had picked up some activity. Like engine-firing.

Akkhtimakt.

Her claws dug into the upholstery. “What AOS are they on?”

“That’s our message,” Tirun said. “They don’t know Sikkukkut’s here yet. That AOS is coming up minus three. I’ve got ID on some of those hani ships at station. Negative on Ehrran. That’s Harun’s Industry and The Star of Tauran, stsho ship Meotnis; hani vessel Vrossaru’s Outbounder; Pauraun’s Lightweaver; Shaurnurn’s Hope-”

Old names. Spacer names. The clans of Araun. Pyanfar heard them and clenched her hands on the arms of the chair.

As the color-shift on Akkhtimakt’s kif went over from blue to blinking green. To purple, like the image on Sikkukkut’s ships. But a double hand of Sikkukkut’s ships were shifting down, going brighter bluegreen, and two brighter still. Different assignments. Stopping in midsystem. Where they could shift vector and strike at Meetpoint Station. Or at the mahendo’sat.

“Priority,” Geran said.