Chanur's Homecoming

“I’ll take you up on that,” she murmured, and wandered off, toward the corridor. There was a thump from below. That was the airlock cycling, too soon to be Jik. Tauran was arriving. They were about to take boarders. They had about time to get them settled in and then they started their outsystem run. It was discourtesy to Tauran, not to be there to meet them.

But to dump her ship into system at Urtur, into kifish fire and Urtur’s dust, herself helplessly groggy, she could not do that either.

Neither could she trust a strange pilot at Urtur. It had to be her or Haral. Tirun at a pinch. No one else. Not with The Pride’s new rig, either. O gods. I’ve got to brief Tauran on systems, she’s not used to that much power. Haral’s got course auto’ed in, gods know all we have to do is persuade Tauran’s pilots to keep hands off the autos and ride with it, o gods, I hope they take orders.

She turned and trekked the weary, staggering way back to the bridge, over to com, leaned there, over Hilfy’s shoulder. “Give me lowerdecks main.” And when the light lit: “Tauran. Ker Sirany?”

“I’m here,” the answer came back.

“Pyanfar Chanur here. Welcome aboard. I’m about to go off shift awhile. I’d do briefing myself but I’ll be taking us through jump. I want you to sit topside during undocks; Meetpoint system is the best chance we have for you to check out our boards, on the run out. Appreciate it if you’d make a quick settle-in and come up to bridge, let my onshift crew show you the rig.”

“Understood.”

“We’re running wobbly, ker Sirany. Out on my feet. Profoundest apologies.”

“We’ll be up there directly, ker Pyanfar.”

“Thanks.” She clicked them out. Shoved back from the board and wandered off with the sour, distressed feeling of proprieties slighted and gods know what she had just said or how it sounded or whether it did any good or not. And no one had explained to Tauran clan about Khym’s crew status.

No. They would have heard. Everyone at Meetpoint would have heard plenty about Khym and the riot and the kif. The Pride and Chanur had become notorious. They would have heard about Khym, about Tully, even before they saw him. Only Skkukuk had startled them.

They were spacers, not groundlings. Not Immunes, black-breeched and arrogant with power like Ehrran and her ilk.

She stopped by Chur’s cabin, shot the door open a moment. Chur was awake, there in her bed with the silver machinery there by the wall and all the tubes going into her arm and out. “You doing all right?” she asked as Chur lifted her head. “We’re going home, you hear that? Got crew from The Star of Tauran coming on board. You’re going to hear strange voices on the bridge. Didn’t want you to worry.”

“Aye,” Chur said. “Been keeping up with things, captain.” A difficult wrinkling of her nose. “You look like you could ’bout as well trade places with me.”

“Hey, we’re all right, we got Jik out. Got his charts and some cooperation for a change. He’s back on his ship. We got the whole lot of kif backing us. We’re going back home, to make sure nothing of Akkhtimakt’s gets that far. Minor matter to the kif, but it may be just our size, huh? We got this one turn at Urtur. Then easier. How are you doing?”

“They threw me back in here. I was up walking, captain.”

Her ears pricked up. “Want you to think about that one double-jump, about getting to the other side of it. It’s all easy after that. Home. You hear me?”

“Promised my sister,” Chur said. The voice grew strained with the effort of lifting her head. “Gods-be machine trying to put me out again. No sense of proportion. No sense.”

“Cousin.” She shut the door and went on, next door to her own cabin, leaned on it and pushed the open button. It let her in. She left it on autoclose, crossed the floor to her bed and flung herself onto it facedown and fully clothed. She reached blind and fumbled after the safety net. It hummed across.

Chur.

Jik could still be setting us up.

Tauran-got to make them understand.

We got Skkukuk down there lunching on little animals, we got Tully stark scared and sitting next Armaments, if he could read the keys; we got Urtur—

—o gods, Urtur.

“Py. Py.” A gentle shake at her shoulder. She gasped air and blanket fluff and came out of it with a swimming-motion, a wild flailing of her arm for the bed-edge. It would be an emergency. Everything was an emergency.

She clawed her way to the edge and a hand helped her upright, two hands held her there by the shoulders. She flicked her ears with a chiming of rings she had not taken off; and blinked into her husband’s face.

“They need you,” he said. “It’s all done, we’re inertial. I’m one of the ones going offshift. Haral said they need every experienced hand they have up front for this one. They got two Tauran-clan at the boards. I’m just going to have a nap myself. All right?”

He was so calm. She stared at him stupidly. She had slept through undock? Slept through all the clank and thump and I he shift of gravity? Haral had handled the ship gentle as eggshells.