Chanur's Homecoming

And spun aside into the room and shut the door between them.

She locked it. And turned and looked at Skkukuk. This man is valuable,” she said. Kifish logic.

“Dangerous,” Skkukuk said.

She walked off and left him there. Took out the pocket-com and used it and not the intercom-stations along the way. “Tirun, we got it all secure down here.”

“Kif are pounding each other hard. We got approach contact from Meetpoint. Stsho are being extra polite, we got no trouble if the poor bastards don’t Phase on us in mid-dock, I got no confidence I’m talking to the same stsho from minute to minute. Scared. Real scared. I got the feeling kif-com isn’t being polite at all. Ships inbound are Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin.”

“Gods. Wonderful. Sikkukkut’s chief axe. You could figure.”

“You going on break?”

“I’m coming up there.” No way to rest. Not till they had an answer. Even if her knees were wobbling under her. She envied Jik the pills. But not the rest of his situation.

Tirun caught her eye as she walked onto the bridge and looked a further worried question at her. Tirun, who looked deathly tired herself. “No change,” Tirun said. “Except bad news. Goldtooth’s bunch had two chasers on his tail when he went out. Akkhtimakt’s got to jump any minute now. Got to. He’s getting his tail shot up. Some of those ships may not make it otherside. They got to clear out of here.” Pyanfar looked. Everyone was still running for jump. The last of Goldtooth’s company was gone. And a flock of stsho, fortunate in being out of range of all disasters and not being tied up dead-V at station. Not a sign of a methane-breather. Anywhere.

No hani was moving. They were caught at dock. And there was not a way in a mahen hell to get out vectored for hani space with the angle and the V Sikkukkut’s two station-aimed ships had on them. Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin were going to make it in before their own three ships. Kif were going to have control of that dock, and gods help the hani who took exception to it.

“We got one more ship ID: a Faha. Starwind.”

“Munur.” That was a youngish captain. A very small ship. And a distant cousin of Hilfy’s on her mother’s side. “Ehrran?”

“Not a sign.”

“With Goldtooth or kited out of here home a long time ago. Want to lay odds which?” Exhaustion and nerves added up on her. She shivered, and a great deal of it was depletion. “Yeah. Stay on it.” She indicated the direction of the galley and marshaled a steady voice. “Jik’s going to rest a bit. He’s plenty mad. And crazy-tired. I hope to the gods he takes those pills and settles down, but I don’t think he’ll do it. Pass out awhile, maybe. Maybe come to with a clearer head. Right now he’s real trouble. He’s not thinking real clear. Me, I’m not, either. We put his quarters on ops-com when he wakes up. Maybe let him up here, I don’t know yet. It’s my judgment I don’t trust. I’m going to clean up, pass out a few minutes. How are you holding?”

“I’m all right,” Tirun said. It was usual sequence: Haral first on the cleanup; Haral first to snatch a little rest, Haral the one whose wits had to be sharpest and reflexes quickest, their switcher; and Haral generally shorted herself on rest-time to pay her sister for it. "’Bout time, though.” And before she could leave the chair she was leaning on: “Captain, Chur’s wanting a bit of something hot. Geran went to the lowerdecks to fix it.”

That was the best news since the drop. “Huh,” she said. “Huh.” With a little relaxation in tensed muscles. She shoved off and walked on down the corridor. She wanted food. Wanted a bath. Wanted, gods knew, to be lightyears away from all of this. But they did not have that choice. They could run for it and get out of Meetpoint system while Sikkukkut was busy. But he would find them; and anyone they were attached to. Their world was held hostage. Not mentioning the immediate threat to three hundred thousand gods-be stsho and a handful of hani ships.

A kif could not forget an insult.

No more than a hani forgot harm to her friends.

It was a quiet gathering down in crew quarters, in the central area where they had a microwave, and a little store of instant food: one of those amenities they had installed along with the high- V braces and the AP weapons they had acquired on the black market. A couple of little couches and a table or two in a lounge, and a common-room for sleeping, in which they could have installed partitions, but they had never gotten around to that- never much wanted it, truth be known. A body learned to sleep with cousins trekking in and out, and there was never any urgent reason to change, even in the days when they had had wealth.

Right now, Hilfy thought, it was the best reason of all; a body wanted company in this crisis. Geran came kiting in and out again with two cups of soup, gods only hope she got one into her own stomach on the way topside; Chur was evidently