Chanur's Homecoming

“You’re not working for them.”

“Gods, no,” Pyanfar said. Maybe Tauran clan had believed her assurances from the start but Fiar wanted to be reassured in words she could hear. “Skkukuk was a present. One I didn’t choose. But I get the feeling his alternative was worse. Kif serve the ship they’re on and he’s on this one. Fight for us like a maniac, he would. And has.”

“He any trouble?”

From a young and worried hani who was about to bed down and sleep on lowerdecks, with a kif down the corridor. Humans, Fiar seemed more able to take in stride. Even one handling the food she ate. But her shoulders were bristled.

“He gives you any, tell him I’ll skin him. With a kif that’s literal.” Gods, when had she gotten so callous? Another gulp of sandwich, on a stomach that was taking it better. Little talk. Little problems. What about the kif, captain, he going to go crazy and cut our throats? What about the human, captain?

What kind of thing is it, your husband and this alien rubbing shoulders and making nothing of it, and this human handling the food we got to eat? “We’re going home, Fiar Aurhen. Home and gods know what else waiting for us. Got no passengers here.”

“I heard-” Fiar said, and whatever she had heard waited when Sif Tauran showed up late and edged her way past Khym in the little galley. Not without a look.

“Heard what?” Pyanfar asked.

Fiar swallowed a choking bite. Her ears went back, her eyes blinked, watered, and fixed on hers dead-on and wide. “Word is-what happened at Meetpoint last year, how you came in there and took it apart when they got-particular. Captain. How you set to with the Immune. How you had a run-in with the kif and that mahen hunter. Whole Compact has the rumor the humans are coming in and you’re involved in it.” Her voice went hardly audible. “To get trade, maybe. Maybe something else.”

“Who said?”

“I don’t know who said. It’s all over. And the treaty and the han- What’re we going to do when we get to Anuurn, ker Pyanfar?”

An edge of panic there. Of outright fright.

/ don’t blame you, kid. Not at all.

“Mahendo’sat are moving to cut this off,” Pyanfar muttered. “We got the plot on it. This is one godsforsaken mess. But we got that hope. Fact is the kif that moved on Meetpoint is about as worried as we are-that’s what we were working on. That’s all that got us out of that port.”

“Does our captain know this?” Fiar asked.

“About the mahendo’sat? Dunno.”

“No,” Haral said. “I briefed ker Sirany on ops and course and the fact we and the kif aren’t cozy. Mahen business I didn’t say.”

That was right. It had been in the report. Otherside of jump. She was losing things. She stuffed more sandwich in her mouth. Waved a hand at Haral, who took that signal and started spilling what else she knew; Tauran ears sagged, flagged, flattened. And:

“You talk to your captain,” Pyanfar said, to Fiar, to Sif Tauran, “before you head below. Tell you another thing. You’re on my crew shift. Tully here’s crew. Shares quarters on this shift. My orders.”

“Work,” Tully objected. “I wake, work.”

“Shut up. You’re on my shift and you stay that way. Give me trouble I’ll bed you with Skkukuk.” She swallowed another mouthful of gfi and shuddered. “I got no time, we got no time.” While Geran staggered off with a pair of cups Khym had given her, for herself and Chur. “We got to get there, is what. Our guns may be all Anuurn’s got, you hear me?”

Tauran ears pricked and half-flattened again in dismay. And maybe, maybe an increasing bit of belief.

One of their number was lost already. Moon Rising arriving late or in any condition was a sight she would give a great deal to see. And there was less and less hope of it.

She shoved herself away from the table, shoved sandwich wrapper and empty cup into the disposal. She was working on autopilot, same as The Pride. Programmed stuff. Lower brain functions.

In the same way she turned and wandered through the bridge, where foreign crew sat working, as strange to see there as if they were mahen. Or human. Sirany Tauran acknowledged her presence, and Pyanfar flicked her ears back and nodded in return, before she wandered out and down the corridor.

Nothing else was wrong. If it were, Sirany would have said. Tauran crew was going to do something about intership communications, try to relay a coded do-watch on mahen ships. Or whatever they might manage to get across of their situation. While Aja Jin rode beside them.

She paused at Chur’s open door. Geran was there, at the bedside. “Lo,” she said, and was not sure if Chur responded; her eyes were blurring out on her. “Hey, we about got the hard part, cousin, just hang on, huh? We’re all right. We’ll make it.”

She got into her own room, made one trip to the head, fell face-down into bed and coordinated herself enough to jab the bedside console and power the safety rig over, never forget that, gods, never forget, an old spacer never lost that reflex,

move down the corridors right smart, stay out of open areas,