Kif Strike Back (2 page)

There was no hope now of steering. They were going too fast to skew off to any influence but the star's, and that pull was plotted into their course. She wiped her mane back and rubbed an itch on her nose that had been there since Kshshti.

"Mkks nine minutes Light," Haral said.

Nine minutes til Mkks station got the news of their arrival; mahendo'sat authority would take a few minutes more realizing they had not made that critical third velocity dump. In the meanwhile The Pride was shortening the nine minute reply interval. In much less than eighteen minutes, they would run into the outgoing communications wavefront of a frantic station.

That was time as starships saw it: but someone had to call the kif on com; someone had physically to push buttons and get to kif authority, while in each running stride of kifish feet down a corridor an inbound jumpship traveled a planetary diameter.

"Send," she said to Khym. "The Pride of Chanur inbound to Mkks: requesting shiplist and dock assignment. We want berths clear on either side of us. We have cargo hazard. Send."

That would confuse them: a ship behaving like vane malfunction and talking like cargo emergency. Eight point nine minutes to get that message to station. Fifteen point something by the time station could so much as reply if they were instantaneous. Someone had to turn a chair, ask a supervisor, report the message. She heard Khym send it out-gods, a male voice from a hani ship: that alone would confound station central. They would not have heard its like before-would be checking their doppler-receivers for potential malfunction, doubting the truth while it hurtled down on them, even techs accustomed to C- fractional thinking-

"Send again: Message to Harukk, Sikkukkut commanding. We have an appointment. We've come to keep it. We'll see you on the docks."

(Someone deciding to relay that to the kif; kifish feet racing to locate the commander: another moment to decide to undock or sit tight-An instant's consideration and a planetary diameter flicked by.)

Ten minutes to launch a ship like Harukk if they ripped her loose from dock without preamble: forty more to get her sufficient range from mass to pulse the fields up. Harukk had a star to fight for its velocity, and that star was helping them come in.

Another half minute down.

At this dizzying rate, inside this time-packet, there was a curious sense of slow-motion, of insulation from kif and threats.

And a sense of helplessness. There were things the kif could do. And there was time for those things-like pressing a trigger, or cutting a defenseless throat-

The dizziness hit; the concentrate had reached her bloodstream.

"You sick, Khym?"

"No." A small and strangled voice. It was not the first time.

"Chur?"

"Still with you, captain."

"Tirun: got a realtime check?"

"483 hours in transit, by the beacon."

"That's 20 minutes to final dump," Haral said.

On schedule, on mark. They had worked it all out at Kshshti, before they undertook this lunacy; worked it out the hard way, in the hours before undock, and in the long hard push that sent The Pride out to a jump by-the-gods deep in the gravity ,well and brought her in gods-rotted deep in this one, in a maneuver a hunter-crew would stick at and no merchanter ever ought to try.

They were hani, all: red-gold maned and bearded, red-gold hides. All of them but one had gold rings aplenty up the sweep of their tuft-tipped ears, gold that meant experience, voyages and ventures from home at Anuurn to Idunspol, Meetpoint, Maing Tol and Kura; Jininsai and Urtur; strange ports, foreign trade, dice-throws and wide bets. But no voyage like this one. Mkks was no hani port. Not a place where any honest freighter would care to go. And no honest merchanter had that outsized engine pack they carried; or that ratio of vane to mass.

Pyanfar said nothing. She uncapped the safety switch on what few armaments The Pride had, and broke another law.

"Eighteen to final dump," Haral said.

"Call coming-Tirun-Tirun-which one?" Khym's voice betrayed strain and panic, inexperienced as he was at that board. Disoriented as well as jump-sick, it was well possible. But the switch got made and the station's voice came through, dopplered out into sanity.

Mahen voice. "Confirm dump, confirm dump-"

"Repeat previous message. Tell them we want that shiplist. Fast."

There were codes they might have used to get cooperation from the mahendo'sat. There was no way to use them. The kif had ears too.

So they went at it the hard way, and Mkks station began to panic, dopplered message overlaying message, continuing a few seconds yet in the initial assumption: that they had a ship incoming dead at them in helpless malfunction.

By now their own message would be flashing to the kif, who would not be so naive.

The kif might-might-at this stage get a ship out to run; but she had not read Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin as that breed of kif.

Not with prisoners in his hands.

It was a hall somewhere within the upper reaches of the ship docked gods-knew where. Hilfy Chanur knew the ship-name now. It was Harukk.

And she knew the kif seated before her, among other kif. His name was Sikkukkut. He sat as a dark-robed lump on an insect-chair, among its black, bent legs. Sodium-glow relieved the murk close in, casting harsh shadow and orange-pink light. Incense curled from black globes set about the room and mingled with ammonia-stench. She could not so much as rub her offended nose. Her hands were linked with cords behind her back, Tully's likewise, for all the good that he could have done if his hands were free. Tully's face was pale, his golden mane and beard all tangled and sweat-matted, his fragile human skin claw-streaked and bleeding in the lurid glow. He had done his best. She had. Neither was good enough.

"Where did you hope to go?" Sikkukkut asked. "To do what?"

"I hoped," Hilfy Chanur said, because it never paid to back up with a kif, "to fracture a skull or two."

"No fracture," Sikkukkut said. "Concussed."-whether that this was a kif s humor or a kifish total lack of it. Harukk's captain unfolded himself from his insect-chair in a rustling of black robes. There was no color save the sodium-light, none, throughout all the ship. Objects, walls, clothes were all grays and blacks-They're color blind, Hilfy thought, really, totally blind to it. She thought of blue Anuurn skies and green fields and hani themselves a riot of golds and reds and every color they decked themselves in, and held that recollection like a talisman against the dark and the hellish glare.

Sikkukkut moved closer. There was a sound like the wind in old leaves as other kif moved beyond the lights and the curling wisps of smoke. She braced herself; but it was Tully the kif aimed at.

"This speaks hani," Sikkukkut said. "It tries to pretend not-"

Hilfy stepped into his path.

"And where our understanding fails," the kif said in flawless hani accents, "I know you have expertise with the human. We can secure that. Can't we?" He brushed past her and jerked Tully suddenly toward him by one arm and the other. The kif s claws made small indentations in his flesh and Tully stood there, face to face with those jaws a hand's breadth from his eyes. Hilfy could smell the sweat and fear.

"Soft," Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. "Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own."

Closer still.

"Let him go!"

The dark snout wrinkled and the tip twitched. Kif sustenance was mostly fluid, so outsiders said: they were total carnivores, and disdained not at all to use those razored outer jaws. Two rows of teeth, two sets of jaws. One to bite and one fast-moving set far up inside that long snout to reduce the outer-jaw bites to paste and fluids the tiny throat could handle. The tongue darted in the v-form gap of the teeth. Tully jerked and winced in silence. The long face lifted, to use its eyes at level, its jaws-

"Stop it! Gods rot it-stop!"

"But it will have to stop struggling," Sikkukkut said, "I can't release my claws.-Tell him so. ..."

Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, slopped-all at once, betraying himself.

"Ah. It does understand."

"Let him go."

The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions.

Tully stumbled back. Hilfy thrust her shoulder between him and Sikkukkut's step forward and stood her ground with her knees wobbling under her from stark fear. Her ears were back; her nose rumpled into a grin that was not at all the grin of Tully's helpless primate kind.

A dry sniffing.
 
Kifish laughter.
 
Sikkukkut gazed at her from within the hood, the dim light glinting off his eyes. 'Implicit in the hani tongue are concepts like friendship. Fondness. These are different than sfik. But equally useful. Particularly I do not discount them when you have such success talking to this creature. How have you bound him?"

"Try kind words."

"Do you think so? I have been kind. Perhaps then my accent confuses him. Tell him I want to know everything he knows, why he came, to whom he came, what he hopes to do--Tell him this. Tell him that I am anxious and impatient and many other things."

She weighed it for what seemed forever. She wondered that the kif s patience could last so long.

It broke. The kif reached and she blocked that reach a second time with her shoulder. "-He's asking questions, Tully," she said all in one breath. "He wants to talk."

Tully said nothing.

"Guess he doesn't understand," she said. "He gets words muddled up-"

"I was skku to the hakkikt Akkukkak in his day." Sikkukkut's voice was soft, cultured; but in its softness she heard distinctly the clicks within the throat, the clashing of inner jaws as he lifted his chin. "We do know each other, he and I- We have met- before this. At Meetpoint. Does he remember?"

"--Friend of Akkukkak's," Hilfy said. Distract him; gods, distract him, get him off the hunt. "-If kif had friends."

"This human has sfik," Sikkukkut said, unmoving. "Akkukkak failed to know this. How could so soft a creature have so much sfik as this, to elude kif on Meetpoint docks? Had I been there, of course, he would have fared less well. And now I am here, and he is here, and I am asking him these things."

"-He's still asking questions," she said to Tully.

"I shall be asking them,"
 
Sikkukkut said.
 
"I do ask them." The silence lingered. Light kifish fingers touched her shoulder, stroked the fur-

-withdrew. She sucked in a kif-tainted breath, trembling. Her ears were flat. She went deaf, near blind, hunter-vision narrowed to one long black tunnel focused on the kif. But Sikkukkut drew away. He settled down again onto his many-legged chair and tucked his legs up until he indeed resembled some ungainly insect.

Tully's shoulder touched hers and leaned there. She felt his weight, the chill of his flesh: gods, no, stay upright, don't give way, don't faint, they'II go for you-

The kif lifted his hands to the hood he wore and dropped it
 
back to his hunched shoulders, the first sight she had ever had
 
of any kif unhooded, and it was no pleasant thing, the long dark skull, the dull black wisp of mane that lay forward-grained along the centerline: he was virtually earless, stsho-like in that respect. She had seen models. Holos. None were this peculiarly graceful, ugly thing.

The eyes rested on her, apt for such a face, dark and glittering. "You will understand these things: this creature has more than sfik-value; it has sfik itself. Let me speak in hani terms: Akkukkak perished of embarrassment. Therefore I love this creature, because it has killed my superior and now I have no superior."

"Gibberish."

"I think it quite clear. It has value. If it yields me its value and tells me what I ask I shall be further grateful,"

"Sure."

"Perhaps I shall keep it in my affection and let it see the death of my friend Akkhtimakt. Perhaps I shall let it eat of my rivals."

It still spoke hani. The words meant other, kifish things. Her nape bristled. She wanted out, out of here.

"Translate this."

"-He's crazy as all kif."

The thin body shook and hissed atop its insect-perch. "Bigot. I shall make my own translations. Kkkt!"

"Fool!" mahen authority screamed into com; and other, less complimentary things.

"Stand by third dump," Pyanfar said.

"You fool, daughter ten thousand fools, what do? what do?
 
You get report sent han this outrage; we report you endanger-"

The Pride dumped speed, a breakup of telemetry-

-phased in again, into a new flood of station chatter.

"Khym. List." Tirun's voice, prompting him in his muzziness. "Shift it. Move."

The incoming shiplist turned up on number two screen, Haral's transfer of data smooth and routine while station's voice suddenly grew quieter ...

"That's two minutes Light," Geran said. They were virtually realtime with Mkks station, moving at a crawl now,
 
within the capacity of their realspace braking thrust.