Chanur's Homecoming

All round the table backs stiffened. Except Jik’s, to look at him; he sat there concentrating on his smoke, with a cloud of it round his head.

“Sit still,” Pyanfar said in hani; and Haurnar Vrossaru and Vaury Shaurnurn turned their heads to look toward their escorts, the only two who did.

But maybe they knew their crew.

“Is the hakkikt disposed?” Pyanfar repeated.

“The hani captain may push too far,” Ikkhoitr’s captain said out of his silence. “Be careful of it.”

“Makes me nervous,” Pyanfar said. “This place. We’re exposed sitting here at station. If I were Akkhtimakt-” She rested her elbow on her knee, easy pose, though her heart was hammering away fit to take her breath: thank gods for the incense that masked the sweat. Her nose itched and ran. She ignored it. “This place smells of trap, hakkikt.”

“In what way?”

“I’m an old trader, hakkikt. And stsho may cheat you one way and five more, but I never knew them to plot violence.” Phrase it so the bastard has salve for his pride. A trader can know merchant-things. He isn’t expected to understand grasseaters, is he? “But they’ll buy violence, without understanding what they’ve bought. They’ve made mistakes before. This is a big one. They’ve involved the han. Technically, hani are allied with Akkhtimakt, because of the stsho treaty, which gave him what he never would have had. Support on the far side of the Compact. All of a sudden you don’t hold the majority of Akkhtimakt’s territory. He’s just quadrupled his holdings. And he’s on the other side of an uncrossable gulf. No jump points, hakkikt, no bridge between hani space and here. It’s a narrow neck and one where he can interdict you if hani abide by that treaty.”

There was deathly quiet in the room. No kif moved. Then a nervous shift from the Faha. Ears were flat, all in that section of the table.

And Jik shot her a carefully frowning glance. Sucked in a great deal of smoke and let it go. “A.” Drawing Sikkukkut’s attention to himself.

“Is it so.”

“He go Urtur. Damn sure not go Kita.”

“You have ships at Kita.”

Another slow draw at the smoke. “I don’t swear. Good guess. We send message Maing Tol. My Personage make move on Kita. Where he go? Here? Got no cross-jump but Tt’a’va’o, damn bad choice. Methane-breather, human, lot mahendo’sat. Damn bad choice. You no do. He no do.”

“Should I wonder that that is then precisely what I should do?”

Go off toward Tt’a’va’o and possible ambush, and involve himself with everything Jik had listed? Go home to Akkht and consolidate his hold? Or to Llyene and terrorize the stsho in a raid every kifish pirate must have dreamed of?

They were all good choices for the Compact as a whole. If they cast themselves totally on hope of rescue from the mahendo’sat.

Who had their hands full already, saving their own hides.

“Masheo-to,” Jik said. And something more involving Akkhtimakt and ship IDs, rapidly. While Sikkukkut’s black eyes fixed on him.

“Kkkt,” Sikkukkut said. “Interesting thought. Do you follow that? No? Keia proposes that Akkhtimakt may have faked identification in his ship ID. That he may not be among that group we dispersed, but already at Urtur. We will both have taken precautions: my ships will reach all the jump-points that lead out from here in time to prevent escape from insystem or to prevent any ships not already launched from arriving here. But Keia favors us with another interesting proposal. I tell you I value you both.”

Gods, he means it. The absolute, thorough-going bastard. He’s dead inside. He doesn’t know what he’s done. He doesn’t know Jik’s his enemy. Or if he knows it he doesn’t know it, from the gut. He hasn’t got the equipment. He theorizes. You can revise a theory, but never gut-knowledge, never instinct.

He’s naive as Skkukuk in some ways. He mimics our ways. Even friendship. And he can’t feel it. He can’t ever understand us: just logic his way through our motives; and that won’t always work for him.

“Not know where he be,” Jik said. Another puff of smoke. “Maybe even hani space.”

Hani bodies all about the table stiffened.

“Maybe already there, a?”

Gods look on us all. Let it go. Let him think his way into it. Slowly, slowly.

“Kkkkt. Kkkkt.” Sikkukkut’s tongue flicked in the gap of his teeth.

Can we go too far? Make him lose sfik in front of his servants?

And beside the hakkikt the captain of Ikkhoitr leaned over and spoke rapidly and quietly. Sikkukkut answered a word or two back.

Gods rot him. That one’s no good news.

Worse and worse.

Ikkhoitr’s captain got up from table. And left. While Sikkukkut looked their way again. “You will have noticed the dispatch of certain ships. They are not the first. From Meetpoint, from Kshshti, from Mkks and Kefk. Continually my messengers have gone to inform my ships. And ships have moved. You have never seen all I have. Nor is this all of Akkhtimakt’s company. You are quite correct. Kkkkt. From you, Keia, I expect a certain astuteness in such matters. But the hani are also hunters. And you’ve talked to them, have you, Keia?”