Chanur's Venture (23 page)

fine. Captain."

Pyanfar stood back, met Geran's eye.

"See you at the ship," Geran said.

Pyanfar laid her ears back. "Listen." She set a hand on Geran's shoulder and

drew her aside.

253

C. /. Cherryh

"We can handle it, much as we can do. Gods-rotted place to be left. Stay with

her, huh ?"

"Then what?"

Shipless. Two hani, stranded. She had no answer for that.

"See you," Geran said.

One hani left behind. No better. Chur without Geran. They had never been apart,

never looked to be. It was a final shock, in what sense remained unnumbed.

"See you." She dropped the hand and turned to gather up Tirun and Haral. Khym

stood by the door. No rifles. They had left those outside with a nervous stsho

medic and scrubbed up in a washroom. But the stench of smoke still hung about

their clothes. Strong soap and smoke. The smell turned her stomach. "Come on.

Better let her rest. --Chur. You take it easy, hear? We'll fix it. Trust us for

it."

Asleep, she reckoned.

"Captain." Geran bent beside the bed and picked up a white plastic sack. Washed,

since Chur had had it beneath her head. "It's in there. Packet's intact."

"Huh." She took the white bundle and tucked it within her arm. Kif would have

killed for it, would have wiped the station to get it -- if they knew. The

stationmasters themselves had not known. Knew comparatively little, all things

considered. "Thank her, huh?"

She laid the sack on the bridge counter, lacking the heart to delve into the

personal things. She drew the packet from it and checked inside.

Intact. Rumpled papers. Recordings protected in their cases. She put the lot

into security storage, closed the coded latch.

Sounds reverberated through the hull, horrendous sounds from aft as skimmers

performed their work and cut away the stern assemblies. The shocks went through

the very frame as a third of The Pride's length was sheared away. "Py. Captain."

She looked up and back. Khym was standing there.

"You didn't mention me -- when you talked about crew going to Mkks."

"Khym--"

"I can fetch and carry. I can scrub galley. Lets skilled crew free. Doesn't it?"

Protective instincts rose up. Another image did. Khym's arm between her and the

Ehrran; Khym, whose mind had gone on working when hers quit.

"Good job," she said, "that business on the docks." She walked past him, patted

him gently on the arm.

"Captain."

Not Py. . . . She looked back, saw rage, and hurt.

"For godssakes don't dismiss me with that.'"

She stood there, trying to recall what she had said or done. "I'm tired," she

said. "I'm sorry."

He managed nothing, no answer.

"You want to go," she said, "gods rot it, you're in. Get killed with the rest of

us. Happy?"

"Thanks," he said flatly. In a hostile tone.

She turned and walked off. It was the best way, when his tempers got obscure.

Gods defend him. Fool.

He was fond of Hilfy, that was what. Age got on him and he doted on

daughter-images, remembering his own. Theirs. Tahy. Who had been no defense to

him against her brother. Hilfy respected him. Called him na Khym. Fixed special

things for him and pampered him the way he was accustomed.

Gods rot.

She reached the galley, delved into cabinets and threw gfi into the brewer,

feeling the wobble in her knees. She had not cleaned up, except the scrub at the

hospital. She did not care to now, wanting only something on her stomach.

"Fix that for you?" Khym offered, having followed her. "Sit down, Py."

Her arm tautened to slam the unit lid down. She lowered it carefully and looked

around, bland as he was. "Galley's all yours."

"How much did you put in?"

"One."

He added more, going quietly about his business, So he had created a place for

himself, and truth, if he freed up crew on this one, he was useful.

Whatever they were doing to the tail rose to a distant shriek.

"Py." He offered the cup and she took it. He poured the rest, capped them, to

deliver where Haral and Tirun were.

But Haral showed up, bathed and with her blue coarse breeches still showing wet

spots, her mane and beard hanging in ringlets. She had a paper in her hand.

"That mine?" she asked of the gfi, and laid down the paper in front of Pyanfar.

"That came in."

Pyanfar looked at it. Sipped thoughtfully at the gfi.

Ehrran's Vigilance, Rhif Ehrran captain, deputy of the han, Immune, to The Pride

of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur captain, chief vessel Chanur company:

This will serve as legal notice a complaint will be filed regarding breach of

Charter, section 5: willful disregard of lawful order; section 12: hire of

vessel; section 22: illegal cargo; section 23: illegal arms; section 24:

discharge of arms; section 25: actions in breach of treaty law; section 30. . .

.

She looked up as Khym left on his errand. "They missed the illegal system

entry."

Haral gave a short, dry laugh and sat down. The Pride shuddered to operations

aft, and the humor died a rapid death.

"We answer that?"

"Fills the time." She drew a deep breath. "Sleep, rest, plot course. We take for

granted they'll get us out of here."

Haral's eyes drifted to the clock. Hers too, irresistibly.

"Tully," Hilfy murmured. The Gforce kept on. Her nose bubbled with every breath;

some blood vessel had popped inside, adding misery upon misery. Her hurts

throbbed, and might be pouring blood, but she could not tell and the cocooning

blanket would soak it up.

Tully was still out. She talked to him periodically, in the chance he should

have waked, to let him know one friend was with him. But he did not respond.

Possibly they had taped a drug patch to him to keep him under. Perhaps he had

just failed to come to. Instincts wanted to call for help and other instincts

remembered what would come and told her to keep her mouth shut and let him go if

he could.

They were headed for jump. And if he were awake he would be terrified.

So was she, when she let her attention wander to herself. When she did that she

hoped there was a ship or two chasing them that would let off an unexpected shot

before they got to jump, and solve their problems at one stroke.

Think of anything but the place where they were going.

Think of Pyanfar, who was likely taking the station authorities apart and

telling them what to do about it, which thought gave her a surge of hope; and

Haral -- she pictured Haral sitting in that chair whose upholstery she had worn

out and turning round just so, with that unflappable calm that never broke, not

even when in her first tour she had made a dangerous mistake.

Want to fix that? Haral would say.

O gods, she wished she could.

The thrust died of a sudden, just died, in one stomach-lurching shift to

inertial.

Prep for jump.

"Harukk's left," Tirun said, when the word came in. "That's 43 minutes light,

station-center. Pursuit ship relayed image. Jumped . . . about an hour and

fifteen ago."

Timelag, Tirun meant: reporting time was in that, what ship scan could pick up

and relay, beating the beacon report by a few minutes.

Pyanfar nodded, kept working on the course plottings, a great deal of it futile

until they had the readout on the new rig. When it got finished.

When.

"That's affirmative on Mkks vector."

"Huh." Her hands shook. She flexed her claws out and in and powered the chair

about, taking a look at the work aft, which their dome camera was fixed on. She

flinched inwardly at the sight, The Pride stripped of her familiar outlines.

There was a new unit moving in. They had the transmissions from the pusher. And

getting ship and tail unit joined was only the roughest beginning of the matter,

a matter of preparing disconnect-ravaged surfaces for new welds. Hard-suited

workers showed like sparks in the working floods, like a swarm of insects where

they had backed off for that unit's arrival. Service-corn frequency was never

silent, crackling with chiso, the mahen patois that bridged their scores of

languages, easier than trade-tongue for mahendo'sat.

"I'm going to get some rest," she said, for the smothering weight of all of it

came down at once, and getting herself out of the chair and down the corridor

loomed as a major undertaking.

"Call Haral up when you have to."

"Aye," Tirun said. Not an expression, not a question what they were going to do

or how.

She appreciated that.

Time did twists now. In one fashion she could relax, because for the next

stationside several weeks Harukk and its company were in the between, in the

compression of hyper-light, where everything was in suspension and nothing would

start again until the Mkks gravity well took hold. Two weeks at least, in which

everything was stopped. No pain. No fear. Nothing, til they came out again.

But Tully needed drugs for that gravity-drop, needed them like stsho needed

them. Perhaps kif knew this. Perhaps they cared to keep him sane.

Better, perhaps, if he was not.

She waked, suddenly, caught at the edge of the sleeping-bowl and realized she

was not falling, despite the thumping of her heart. She rolled and looked at the

clock and punched the lights on and the com connection. The hammering was

silent. That had waked her.

"Bridge, gods rot it, it's 0400!"

"Aye, captain." Haral's voice. "Nothing's going on. Thought we'd let you sleep."

"Uhhhnn." She leaned her elbow on the bed-edge. "That tail set?"

"They're welding now."

"They're not going to make that deadline."

"They've got techs working on the boards already. They're pushing it."

"Gods." She let her head down on her arm, feeling as if a wall had come down on

her yesterday and some of the bricks still lay there. Lifted it again. "How's

Chur?"

"Geran called, says she's doing all right. They both got a little sleep."

"Huh. Good."

"Got a call from Vigilance. They got our paper. Ehrran's chewing sticks."

"Good."

"Got a pot of something fixed in galley."

Her stomach rebelled. "Fine." She passed a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes.

"I'm coming." She punched the com off, rolled out and sat on the bed edge trying

to convince her legs to work.

Gods, Hilfy. Tully. That settled back on her shoulders. There was the packet in

the security bin. There was Tt'om'm'mu's writhing shape in its violet glow and

the mahendo'sat, together against the glass (don't ask about the knnn) and

mahendo'sat making vital connections on her ship, when mahendo'sat incompetency

had let kif do as they pleased.

Incompetent? Kshshti stationmaster, and no better than that?

Suspicions had tramped her subconscious half the night, rose up in memories of

dreams of a kif in the shadows of that room. Of delicate connections in the

column links, some mahen technician carefully making a sequence of mistakes that

would send false readout to the boards. Gods, what if--

A body could go crazy on what-ifs. Like treachery from Goldtooth from the start.

Like Vigilance being in the right -- for hani interests. Like Chanur on the

wrong side of matters and about to become expendable in some mahen intrigue.

Or traitorous.

She got up, showered, dressed in a subdued way, a pair of old breeches she saved

for rough work. No earrings but the plain ones, such as any spacer wore.

Khym had done much the same, in a pair of silk breeches that had seen the

Meetpoint riot and would never be the same. He met her in the galley with gfi

and a dish of something overspiced-not good at cookery either. But the job got

done and the stuff was far from fatal.

"Good," she said, to please him, and coupled with that was the ugly thought that

nothing mattered much, beyond Mkks. Tomorrow. Their tomorrow, and their next

tomorrow, when they would come out the other side of jump.

How much time-gain for a hunter-ship like Harukk and its ilk? Days faster than

The Pride at absolute best. HaruJdc would be in port at Mkks as much as a week

by the time their day-after-tomorrow came, and they spent time working up to

dock at Mkks, and all the attendant nonsense. If they got that far.

She shivered, swallowed an overspiced last mouthful and washed it down with gfi.

Her ears kept going down despite herself. She pricked them up. Looked Khym's

way. "There's a procedures list in comp," she said to him. "Checklist."

"Got it," he said, displaying a paper on the countertop. Gods, efficiency. She

poured the whole matter out of her mind and got up and walked off.

Maybe -- maybe the kif would hold off in Hilfy's case, until they had used the

bait for everything they could get. Not Tully. No. Not with a chance to pull

information about all humankind from him, and a week to do it in. The first time

kif had had their hands on him he had had a word or two he could speak, and a

handful more he could understand, and never admitted either to the kif.