Chanur's Homecoming

That left her and Tully; and Tirun coming to meet them, welcome sight. “You all right, captain?”

“We got Tauran coming in, we got nowhere to put them, we got data up to our ears to process into nav, but things could be worse-” Another figure turned the corner, tall and wide-shouldered and hani: her husband was coming her way in a hurry, and she flinched to the very bones. “Haral, you listening up there?”

“Aye, captain.”

“Lay us course for Urtur on our old capacity: we got some slower ships to take with us. Have Hilfy line up our direct transmission with Aja Jin, we got specifics to get. Then relay the result to Tahar. Have Aja Jin run our backup check.”

“Won’t take long; I got us course plot already on our present cap. I got their caps. We got this fancy mahen

computer and I figured we were going somewhere. We doing the sequencing for the whole convoy?”

“You got it.” Miracles from the harried bridge. She did not even question them. “Do it, cousin. And get kif stats out of Harukk, we got an escort.”

Khym intercepted them and fell in to walk with her and Tirun and Tully. “You all right?” he asked. That was all.

“I’m a whole lot better.” She discovered she could breathe again. The tightness in her chest let up a bit, and a sneeze startled her. “Gods-be kif.” Her eyes watered. She wiped her nose. “Khym, you and Tully want to go up there and get us some sandwiches and get us rigged for a run? We’re getting out of here.”

“They’re letting us go?” Khym asked, ears half-back. Worried-looking.

“You’re right, .we got troubles. Even the kif are worried. We got to get through Urtur, remember? We got to get past Akkhtimakt to get home. Got to clear out the opposition all the way to Anuurn, that’s what we’ve got. Go do the galley. And give Tully a chance to get off his feet, he’s exhausted.”

Me, I got to take this ship through jump. We got to move, I got no time to be resting—

“Tully,” Khym said. “Galley.”

“Aye,” Tully said, and quickened his pace and got through to join him; the two of them went off up ahead at a fair walk, Tully staggering a little as he went, muscles undone by fatigue and exertion and cold. Her own felt like rubber.

“Tirun, we got seven of Tauran clan coming in. We got to bed ’em somewhere. Run protocols for me. My brain’s mush. Got to figure out where to put Tully and their captain. No, b’gods, put Sirany Tauran in Jik’s cabin. Tully-”

“He’s with us.”

“They’re not going to like sharing sheets with ’im on offshift. Gods-be. Our attitudes. We got the world going down and we got to worry about sheets and our godscursed prejudices.”

“Let ’em gripe. He’s crew, captain.”

She gnawed her mustaches and heaved a breath. “Let ’em howl, then. We’re going to split-shift with a couple of them if I can get it out of Sirany. Do the best we can and hang

their sensibilities. If Khym doesn’t send them into frothing fits-”

“Aye,” Tirun said.

“Let’s get at it, then.” She waved Tirun into faster motion as they came to the turn for the lift. “We don’t know what’s going to break loose here. I want us out of here. Fast. We could have a hundred ships all around us.”

Three hundred-thousand stsho, Pyanfar. Vulnerable and helpless, whatever breaks around them.

Ask the kif to let them go?

What reason? What reason can I think of?

“Better restock that downside freezer, huh? How close are we to full tanks?”

“Three quarters, last I looked. Haral’s running checks on systems. She had to cancel that linguistics run in favor of the course plot, cap’n; sorry about that.”

“Sorry. My gods. Get. Go. Out of here is all we got time for; tell her I want that course sequence as tight as she can shave it down, no waste time, everything up to cap. Time’s what we can’t buy.”

“Here, here, here,” Jik said, using a light-pen to mark the moves on the computer monitor, and the 3-d rotating model obligingly paced itself through its level-changes: he had brought both fiche and software key aboard when he came, and the mahen-installed comp suddenly displayed unguessed virtuosities. “Same come in maybe Tt’a’va’o, maybe V’n’n’u.”

Geran made a sound deep in her throat, slow and full of omen. “We got the whole mess shoved off into hani space is what we got.”

Jik said nothing at all to that. He had a mouthful of sandwich. He had not stopped for food on Aja Jin and arrived opportunely for a handout from The Pride’s galley. Pyanfar gulped a mouthful of gfi and blinked with the heat of it while she watched the display run its paces.

Tauran clan was on their way down the docks, with everything they could carry. Tirun was down there in the airlock with Skkukuk on guard at the foot of the ramp, preparing to receive them with their baggage. An eerie quiet hung all about them, Harukk and its chosen few bound out from dock in whatever business it chose, the station itself subject to kifish piracies she had no wish to think of; and saw every time she shut her eyes-the wretches on Harukk, pale and fragile and physiologically incapable of violence, not even to save their minds or their lives.