Hilfy’s brown study evaporated into disquiet. “He’s junior-most?”
“A willing worker,” Pyanfar said, with a wrinking of her nose. “Your responsibility in part, now.”
“Aunt, I—”
“I told you how it was, niece. Hear? You know what we’re dealing with, and what stakes are involved?”
“I hear,” Hilfy said in a faint voice. “No, I don’t know. But I’m figuring it out.”
“Kif,” Geran spat. “They’re different, when the odds go against them.”
“Once—” Haral said, and winced. The knnn song was back again, shriller. “Rot that.”
“Close,” Pyanfar judged. It was exceedingly clear reception. She met Haral’s eyes facing her down the length of the table, more and more uneasy. The song continued for a moment, too loud to talk above it, then wailed away, gibbering to itself into lower tones.
“Too rotted close,” Haral said. “Captain—”
Pyanfar started to push herself back from table, surrendering to anxiety.
“Chanur Captain,” com said far more faintly, a clicking voice speaking the hani tongue. “Chanur Captain—don’t trouble to acknowledge. Only listen. . . .”
Pyanfar stiffened, looked toward com with a bristling at her nape and a lowering of her ears. Everyone was frozen in place.
“The bargain you refused at Meetpoint. . . is no longer available. Now I offer other terms, equal to the situation. A new bargain. A safe departure from this system, for yourself and for the Faha ship now at dock. I guarantee things which properly interest you, in return for one which doesn’t. Jettison the remnant of your cargo, hani thief. You know our ways. If you do the wise thing, we will not pursue you further. You know that we are the rightful owners of that merchandise. You know that we know your name and the names of your allies. We remember wrongs against us. All kif. . . remember crimes committed against us. But purge your name, Pyanfar Chanur. More, save lives which were not originally involved in your act of piracy. Give us only our property, Pyanfar Chanur, and we will take no further action against the Faha and yourself. That is my best offer. And you know now by experience that I make no empty threat. Is this matter worth your sure destruction and that of the Faha? Or if you think to run away again, deserting your ally, will you hope to run forever? That will not improve your trade, or make you welcome at stations who will learn the hazard of your company. Give it up, thief. It’s small gain against your loss, this thing you’ve stolen.”
“Akukkakk,” Pyanfar said in a low voice when it had done. “So.”
“Aunt,” Hilfy said, carefully restrained. “They’re going to go after Starchaser. First.”
“Undoubtedly they are.” The message began to repeat. Pyanfar thrust herself to her feet. “Gods rot that thing. Down it.”
Chur was nearest. She sprang from her seat and turned down the volume of the wall unit. Others had started working themselves out of their places, Tully among them. Sweat had broken out on his skin, a fine, visible dew.
“Seal the galley,” Pyanfar said. “Secure for jump. We’re moving.”
Hilfy turned a last, pleading look on her. Pyanfar glowered back. And with Geran urging him to move on, Tully delayed, putting out a hand to touch Pyanfar’s shoulder. “Sleep,” Tully pleaded, reminding her, panic large in his eyes.
“For the gods’ sake put him out,” Pyanfar snarled, turned and thrust her own plate and some of the nearer dishes into the disposal, shoved others into the hands of Haral and Tirun and Chur, who were throwing things in as fast as they could snatch them. Hilfy started to help. “Out,” Pyanfar said to Chur. “That business in the airlock. . . get its lifesupport going. Move it!”
Chur scrambled over the top of the table and ran for the doorway in a scrabbling of claws. Pyanfer turned with fine economy and stalked out in her wake, toward controls. Tirun limped after her, but Pyanfar had no disposition to wait. Anxiety prickled up and down her gut, disturbing the meal she had just eaten, sudden distrust of all the choices she had made up till now, including the one that had a slightly crazed Outsider loose on the ship in a crisis; and knnn near them; and their eyes blinded and their ears deaf to the outside. . . .
She walked into the darkened bridge, slid into the well worn cushion which knew her body’s dimensions, settled in and belted in, heard the stir of others about her, Tirun, Hilfy, Haral. The kif voice continued over com. Elsewhere she heard Tully pleading with Geran over something, trying to get something through the translator which he could only half say. She started running perfunctory clear checks, all internal, threw a look toward her companions. Haral and Tirun were settled and running personal checks on their posts, rough and solid and intent on business. Hilfy had her ears back, her hands visibly shaking in getting her boards ready. So. It was one thing, to ride through kif fire at Meetpoint. . . quite another to face it after thinking about it.
“Please,” a mahendo’sat voice came through, relayed suddenly from Hilfy’s board to hers. “Stand off from station. We appeal to all sides for calm. We suggest arbitration. . . .”
They had thrown that out on longrange, plea to all the system, to all their unruly guests, this station full of innocents, where all who could in the system had taken refuge.
And among them, Starchaser.
“That had to antedate the other message,” Pyanfar said morosely. “It’s all old history at station.” That for Hilfy, to get her mind straight. Tully was still talking: she took the translator plug from her ear, shutting down all communication from that quarter, trusting Geran’s not inconsiderable right arm if all else failed.
“Captain.” That was Chur on allship. “Lifesupport’s on and the lock’s sealed again.”
“Understood, Chur,” she muttered, plying the keyboard snd calling up her course plottings. “Take station in lower-deck op.” She would rather Chur on the bridge; but there was Tully loose; there was a kif loose, and time running on them—it was getting late to risk someone moving about in the corridors. She spun half about, indecisive. Hilfy, the weak link, sat at com, scan backup. “What’s the kif doing? Any pickup?”
“Negative,” Hilfy said calmly enough. “Repeat of message. I’m getting a garble out of ships insystem, no sign yet of any disruption. The knnn. . . .”
That sound moaned through main com again, a transmission increasingly clear and distinct. Closer to them in this maelstrom of dust and debris. Pyanfar sucked in a breath. “Stand by to transmit, full sensors, all systems; I want a look out there, cousins.” She started throwing switches. The Pride’s nervous system came alive again in flares of color and light, busy ripplings across the boards as systems recalibrated themselves. She hit propulsion and reoriented, reached for the main comp.
“Gods,” Tirun muttered, throwing to her number-one screen the scan image which was coming in, a dusty soup pocked with rocks. “Ship,” Haral said suddenly, number-one scan, and overrode with that sectorized image. Panic hit Pyanfar’s gut. That was close to them, and moving.
“Resolution,” she demanded. The Pride was accelerating, without her shields as yet. The whisper of dust over the hull became a shriek, a scream: they hit a rock and it shrilled along the hull; hit another and a screen erupted with static. “Gods, this muck!”
“Shields,” Haral said.
“Not yet.”
“No resolution,” Tirun said. “Too much debris out there. We’re still blind.”
“Gods rot it.” She hit the airlock control, blew it. “We lost something,” Tirun said; “Beeper output,” Hilfy said at once. “Loud and clear. Aunt, is that our decoy?”
Pyanfar ignored the questions, harried. “Longrange com to my board. Now.”
It came through unquestioned, a light on her panel. She put the mike in. “This is Pyanfar Chanur, Hinukku. We’ve just put a pod out the lock. Call it enough, hakkikt. Leave off.”
And breaking that contact, to Hilfy: “Get that on repeat, imp, twice over; and then cut all signal output and ID transmission and output
the signal on translator channel five.”
Half a second of paralysis: Hilfy reached for the board, froze and then punched something else over, static-ridden snarl, a hani voice. “Chanur! Go! We’re moving!” It repeated, a rising shriek of urgency like that of the debris against the hull.
“It’s not our timeline,” Pyanfar snapped at Hilfy, but Hilfy was already moving again, outputting one transmission, then clearing, reaching with ears back and a panicked look after what recording she had been ordered, however insane.
“Prime course laid,” Haral pronounced imperturbably. “Referent bracketed.”
“Stand by.” Their acceleration continued: the dust screamed over the hull. Another screen broke up and recovered.
“Aunt,” Hilfy exclaimed, “we’re outputting knnn signal.”
“Right we are,” Pyanfar said through her teeth. She angled The Pride for system zenith, where no outgoing ship belonged. A prickle of sweat chilled her nose, sickly cold, and the wail over the hull continued. “Readout behind us,” Geran said, “confirmed knnn, that ship back there,” Gods rot it, nothing was ever easy. Differential com was suddenly getting another signal in the sputter of dust. “Chanur! Go. . . .”
And a kif voice: “Regrettable decision, Faha Captain.”
Pyanfar spat and gulped air against the drag of g, vision tunnelled with the stress and with anger. Hour old signal, that from the Faha; at least an hour old, maybe more than that.
“Second ship,” Tirun said. “34 by 32 our referent.”
“Get me Starchaser’s course,” Pyanfar said.
“Been trying,” Haral said. “Bearing NSR station, best guess uncertain.” Figures leaped to the number two screen, a schematic covering a quarter of Urtur’s dust-barriered system, below them, system referent.
“Knnn ship,” Hilfy said, “moving on the beeper. Aunt, they’re going to intercept it.”
Pyanfar hesitated half a beat in turning, a glance at scan which flashed intercept probable on that ship trailing them. Knnn, by the gods, knnn were moving on the decoy, and they were not known for rescues. Something clenched on her heart, instinctive loathing, and in the next beat she flung her attention back toward the system schematic.
No way to help the Faha. None. Starchaser was on her own. Knnn had the decoy; kif were not going to like that. If there ever had been knnn. More than The Pride could play that dangerous game. The scream on the hull rose in pitch—“Screens,” she snapped at Haral. She reached for drive control, uncapped switches. “Stand by. Going to throw our navigation all to blazes; I’ll keep Alijuun off our nose when we cycle back.” She pulsed the jump drive, once, twice, three times, microsecond flarings of the vanes. Her stomach lurched, pulse quickened until the blood congested in her nose and behind her eyes, narrowing vision to a hazed pinpoint. They were blind a third time, instruments robbed of regained referents, velocity boosted in major increments. Dead, if Haral failed them now. But they were old hands at Urtur, knew the system, had a sense where they were even blinded, from a known start.
Down the throat of the kif’s search pattern, from zenith. . . she pulsed the vanes again, another increment, swallowed hard against the dinner which was trying to come up again. Differential com got them a kif howl, and a mahendo’sat yammering distress.
That, for whatever they had done against Starchaser, skin their backsides for them, a streaking search for a target.
“Ai!” Haral yelped, and instruments flared, near collision. “Chanur!” she heard: the name would be infamy here as at Meetpoint. There were surges and flares all over the board. She pulsed out and in again and the instruments went manic. “Gods,” Haral moaned, “I almost had it.”
“Now, Haral! For the gods’ sake find it!”
Instruments flickered and screens static-mad sorted themselves, manifoldly offended. An alien scream erupted from their own com. Tully, Pyanfar reckoned suddenly: his drugs were not quick enough. They had betrayed him like the kif.
Image appeared on her number one screen: Alijuun. The star was sighted and bracketed and the ID was positive.
“Hai!” she yelled, purest relief, and hit the jump pulse for the long one. Her voice wound in and out in a dozen colors, coiled and recoiled through the lattices which opened for them, and the stomach-wrenching sensation of jump swallowed them down. . . .
Chapter 6
. . .and spat them up again, a dizzying percept of elsewhere. A shimmer before her eyes, that was the screen, and the automated instruments were searching. Keep conscious, don’t go out, not now, keep the hand on controls. . . .
“Working,” Haral’s low voice drifted to her out of infinity.
“O gods.” That was someone else. Hilfy? A star came into brackets on the screen and wobbled out again. “Check referent,” Pyanfar said. Her blurring eyes sought instruments. A red light was on. “Got a problem,” Haral said, sending cold chills along her back. “No positive ID on referent.”
“Brace.” She started aborting the proposed second jump, dumping speed sufficient for the scanning sensors to make their fix. There was a moan near her when the shift slammed in. Her hand shook like palsy over the controls, hovering over the button. “Gods, we’ve missed,” Haral moaned; and then Tirun: “Abort! we’re vectored massward!”
Dark mass was ahead of them, the mass which had pulled them in from jump, coming up in their faces. Sensors realized it: alarms went off, dinning through the ship. Pyanfar dumped again, hard, flinched as screens went static and one went dead. Something had given way.
“Turning,” she warned the crew. The Pride veered in her next skip, and blood started in Pyanfar’s nose, internal organs and joints and flesh hauled in independent motion. She spat and struggled with the muscles of her eyes to keep focused, fought a strained muscle to keep her hand at the controls. Scan showed hairbreadth miss now and she trimmed ship and let it ride, hurtling for a virtual skim of the obstacle.
A kif voice came in over com. “Identify: urgent.” Someone was waiting in this place, stationed to guard, another of Akukkakk’s long arms.
“Aunt,” Hilfy’s voice came weakly, bubbling liquid. “Kif. . .”
“Got it.” Pyanfar sniffed blood or sweat, licked salt from her mouth, staring at the screens which showed the dark mass hoving up at them. . . tight skim, incredibly tight. Their own output was still knnn-song, wailing up and down the scale, tickings and whines. . . that had to put the kif off. Haral and Tirun talked frantically to each other, searching with the sensors for their way out.
“Got it!” Haral exclaimed suddenly; a star showed up in the bracket.
“Can’t do it,” Pyanfar said: the mass was too close. They had no choice now but to skim past and hope.
“Identify,” the kif voice insisted.
Instruments flared of a sudden, screens going static. “That was fire,” Pyanfar said to Hilfy, “onto our former vector, thank the gods.”
A second flaring: The Pride had returned a shot, automatic response. Of a sudden the alarms went again, crescendo of mechanical panic.
“Mass proximity,” Pyanfar said into allship, for those riding it out below. “We’re going to miss it.”
The solidity was there, a sudden jump in every mass/drive instrument on the bridge, lights flaring red, a static washout on the number four screen: Kita Point mass, a chunk of rock, a cinder radiating only the dimmest warmth into the dark, lightless, lonely, and far, far too big for The Pride to drag with her into jump. . . .
Vid picked up flares of light, massive spots like the glow of a sun in that dark, illumining the surface of Kita mass. Rock boosted in their field out of Urtur had not changed vector. It hit the dark mass at near c, pyrotechnics which flowered the dark.
They passed in that flare of impact, slingshotted with a wrench which brought a new flood of blood to Pyanfar’s throat. . . grayout. . .
. . .back again. “Haral!”
A frantic moment. “There!” Their referent was back in bracket. A kif voice clicked and chattered out of
phase with what they should be getting: that was then a second ship, lying off Kita zenith.
Fire hit them.
Pyanfar slammed the drive back in, with the howl of the kif in her ears, the static spit of instruments trained on the chaos in their wake. She tried with all her wits to keep oriented, a slow reach of a sore arm while matter came undone about them, while they were naked to the between and time played games with the senses. No way that the kif could have followed. They had run the gauntlet. They were through the worst. After Kita it was one of three destinations and after the next, one of two more; and the choices multiplied, and the kif had harder and harder shift to bring numbers to bear against them. . . .
“We’re fading,” Haral said, words which stretched through infinity, emotion-dulled, nowhere: this was the way it went when ships lost themselves, when they jumped and failed to come out again. . . perhaps some mathematical limbo. . . or straight into mahendo’sat hell, where four-armed demons invented horrors. . . Pyanfar dragged her wits together, watched for another such wobble. Damage they had taken under fire could have done something to the vanes, robbed them of capacity, might lose them permanently. . . .
. . .ssecond arrival, a blurring downdrop of the senses into here and when again. Pyanfar reached for the panel and ordered scan search. Differential com was already getting signal: it was the marker of Kirdu System, wondrous, beautiful mahendo’sat voice, the buoy of the jump range.
“We’re in!” Hilfy cried. “We’re in.”
“Clear and in the range,” Pyanfar said, smug. She hit the jump pulse to throw off velocity and the smugness evaporated somewhat: the pulse was queasy, less powerful than it ought to be.
“Captain?” Haral’s voice.
“I feel it.”
“Maintain knnn output?” Hilfy asked.
“Yes.” Pyanfar kept her eyes on the readout, hit the pulse again. “Plot entry vector,” she ordered Tirun. “We might have trailed some debris with us.”
“Reckon we dumped most of the rocks on Kita,” Tirun muttered. She started sending the schematic over, fired off a comp-signal warning for what good it would do a slow ship in the path of their debris-attended entry. The dump went on, sickly pulses which finally began to count.