Kif Strike Back (26 page)

"Tirun, you got a knife?"

"I got it." Tirun drew her folding-knife from her pocket, turned Tahar's face to the wall and sawed through the binding cords that held her hands, turned her about again and cut the one that circled her throat-stuffed the cut cord into her pocket, spacer's neatness, while Dur Tahar leaned against the wall, rubbing the blood back into her hands, her eyes glassy with shock.

"I sure didn't fancy to meet you under these circumstances," Pyanfar said.

"We were off our ship when you came in. They held us in the offices-Gods, I don't care what you do to me, just get them away from the kif."

"I'm going to try. I sent Sikkukkut a message out there in the accessway. I'm not sure I've got enough credit the hakkikt's going to listen, but I think I've got enough it'll get to him."

Dur Tahar pushed away from the wall. "You can do better than that, Chanur!"

"Listen, you make me trouble, Tahar, you'll die earless. Hear me?"

"I hear. Just get on it. Talk to them. You know what they'll do-"

"I know. But that message has to get there before I can do anything. You should know that well as any. I'm going to call Harukk on com. Suppose you tell me what you're doing in port; where Akkhtimakt is. Maybe you can give me some coin to bargain with, huh?"

Tahar's mouth tightened. She gestured vaguely outward, elsewhere, anywhere, with a lifting of her eyes. "There. Out there. Kshshti, likeliest." It was the ghost of a voice. "You want our word, you have it from me. Anything. Just for the Gods' sakes don't let them die like that."

Pyanfar stood staring at her. Old-fashioned words meant something on Anuurn; like our word, like clan and law and other things alien to the far dark place they had gotten to, in the modern age of Vigilance and stsho connivance. "It's a long way from home. A long way, Tahar."

Dur Tahar leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. "They'll turn on you. Mahendo'sat same as kif. They will. Take my example-get out of here. Shed all of them and run, Chanur."

"You know a place to run to?"

Dur Tahar opened her eyes and looked at her, such a look as ached with exhaustion and terror and months and years of running. "No. Not ultimately. Not if you're like me. And you're getting there real fast, aren't you, Chanur?"

It was not a sight any of them would ever have looked for- Moon Rising's captain sitting at The Pride's galley table up by the bridge, taking a cup of gfi Geran pressed on her. Dur Tahar drank, and Pyanfar sat across the table with a cup in her own hands and more of the crew lounging against the cabinets with whatever bits of food Tully had scrounged: two males in the galley-so beaten Dur Tahar was that she hardly spared more than a misgiving glance at Tully and less than that at Khym.

She knew Tully was with us, Pyanfar noted. Or at least knew he might be. So the rumor's got to Akkhtimakt. Tirun was back on duty, trying to query Vigilance on the medical assistance and get Jik's attention to the Tahar matter-("Let me take this round," Tirun had offered, while Geran was back seeing to Chur. "Do it," Pyanfar said. And between the two of them: "Put the fire under Vigilance, huh? Discreetly. Gods rot them. Get some hurry out of them.") Khym and Haral and Hilfy and Tully-they lounged about the walls, guns on hips, all of them armed but Tully; and Tahar drank her gfi in silence, eyes at infinity. "I want it straight," Pyanfar said to her. "I want the whole story, ker Dur. And fast. Tell it to me."

Focus came back. "My crew-"

"Mahijiru's in dock; Goldtooth's hooking up the com lines right now. We'll begin to get some movement out of the kif soon now. Ships are on short crew, same as us. Even the kif. Your cousins'll be safe enough for the time being-the kif'll hold off till they've got some direct order from Sikkukkut, or until Sikkukkut's free to see to them; and Sikkukkut's real occupied just now. Depend on it. Drink that down. My watch officer's sending to Aja Jin. We're doing more than it looks like we are. But you play me for a fool, Dur, and I'll-"

"No." Tahar took a swallow. The cup trembled in her hands. "You run in rough company. This hakkikt of yours-"

"Not mine."

"-he's winning, do you understand that? The kif think Akkhtimakt's already lost. The word's spreading-How we!! do you know the kif?"

"About as well as serves, and better than I want to."

"I know them, gods, believe me that I do. Sfik. Gods-forsaken kif change sides quick as stsho in a situation like this, two kif at the top of the heap and both of them near-matched: Sikkukkut and Akkhtimakt-they both served Akkukkak in different capacities till he went, and now the two of them have all kif space in chaos. Every wind, every whisper that comes along, ordinary kif sniff it and change their politics. And all of a sudden Akkhtimakt's small stuff. His move against Kita was a big threat; gods, he's from Akkht, he's big stuff there-got powerful skkukun hunting down all his rivals on homeworld, while Sikkukkut's just a jumped-up provincial boss from Mirkti, for the gods' sake. But the mahendo'sat know him. Sikkukkut's a longtime neighbor of theirs, someone they're used to dealing with-and they're dealing with him. Do you see? All of a sudden Akkhtimakt looks like a kif a long way from his power base and losing it. Sikkukkut's operating in his own home territory, using old connections, and Sikkukkut's cut Akkhtimakt bad- thanks to you and the mahendo'sat. Real bad."

Pyanfar leaned her elbows on the table. "Where's humanity fit into this, huh?"

The whites showed around Tahar's eyes, a slight tic in Tully's direction, but Tahar did not turn her head, not even when Geran drifted quietly into the room and stood there with arms folded and her face like boding storm. "Humans," Tahar said, "are coming in. They're moving slowly-but your ally ought to be able to tell you that."

"Sikkukkut, you mean?" .

"This human. Or the mahendo'sat. Akkhtimakt's program was to stop the human ships; keep them out of Compact space. Or prey on them one by one on the fringes. Humans are mahen allies, the way the kif read it. But Sikkukkut's got the mahendo'sat working with him. He's got you, got himself the Eyes of the han, for the gods' sweet sake. Got a pet human of his own. How do you fight a combination like that? Kefk took one look at that situation and all of Akkhtimakt's partisans here started looking at their neighbors and refiguring every tie they had-I've been through it before. A kif looks at a situation, adds up his own sfik and whether he's got any advantage to the other side, and if he doesn't, he'll know his neighbors are adding it up too, and one of them may try to get more sfik by killing him. If he kills his attacker he's got more sfik for the moment, but if he suddenly gets too much, he may look like a threat and lose all the benefit of it. It's a bloody game, Chanur. I've played it for two years."

."Looks like you missed a step, doesn't it?"

"Oh, I tried. Kif don't understand hani, that's all; they don't know how our minds work, not in crises-but they do know we're different and the way we choose sides isn't predictable or sensible by their lights. So that's what happened to us. We didn't get a chance to switch sides. We were in an office-the staff just turned without warning and killed one kif who was too high up-too much sfik to trust; and they rounded up others to hand over to Sikkukkut for-o gods." Tahar shuddered and set the cup down with both hands. "My crew, Chanur, my crew-Sikkukkut handed me on for a gift. I've got sfik enough. The situation has. But my cousins-if you don't get them out of there-Chanur, I've seen what happens when a kif wants to throw a celebration. I've seen it."

"I'm working on it. My word on it, Tahar. Gods know I'd cheerfully break your neck if things were different. But not here and not now and not that way. I'm applying every leverage I've got. Want a warm-up on that?"

"No."

"Take it anyway. You can use it." She retrieved Dur Tahar's cup, held it for Tirun to fill and set it back in front of Tahar's hands. "You get news from home?"

Tahar raised her eyes with apprehension.

"Short and straight," Pyanfar said. Gods, it had a bad taste in her mouth when delivering the news once would have been revenge in itself. "Tahar's in deep trouble-but you'd figure that. I don't know how bad or how much internally, or what's going on at Anuurn at the moment, but you could figure it. Tahar was having trouble getting cargoes last year. Victory, Sunfire and Golden Ring are all working over farside, last that I know about it, as far from kif as they can get. If they haul their own cargo, someone raises a question whether it might be pirated goods being dumped; if they haul someone else's they have to post a bond of guarantee in the case they should decide to pirate it themselves."

"Cut it, Chanur!"

"I'm telling you the truth. What do you expect you've done for Tahar's reputation? Gods rot it, you knew it when you bolted with the rest of the kif at Gaohn! You might as well listen to it."

Tahar's ears were back, she set the cup down hard and looked as if she were coming over the tabletop in the next breath; but then the wind went out of her in a long shuddering sigh, and she bowed her head and flexed her claws out, points on the hard table surface. "You gave me gods-be little choice. Do what? Come home and face my brother? Go on running Tahar cargoes after what the kif did to hani at Gaohn?"

"You knew they were kif when you bedded down with them."

"So do you know it." Tahar's head came up, red-bronze eyes dark-centered and burning. "Remember that. Remember that, Pyanfar Chanur. You can't shed your clan. You never can. What you do comes back on your kin at home. And kif are kif and hani are hani, and one can't trust the other in the end. Get us out of here. Get my crew out and let's go home, Chanur, for the gods' sake, I'm begging you, let's both of us go home!"

"Captain." Tirun's voice came over the com on the wall. "Vigilance is' sending: Quote: 'You've boarded Tahar personnel.' I'm reading it exact, captain. 'We require you stand by to transfer this person to Immune custody.' "

"Gods rot them," Pyanfar muttered, and slid out of the bench.

"Ehrran," Dur Tahar murmured darkly, and started to her feet in a move that brought Chanur out of their leisured poses all about the galley. Tahar's ears went flat in alarm and she subsided back into the seat.

"The law," Pyanfar said. "They're here, Tahar. Han law. They've been hunting you for two years."

"Chanur-take my parole!"

Take custody, Tahar meant; clan to clan. Take her back to Anuurn justice in Chanur custody. It might even one-up Chanur enemies; and humiliate Rhif Ehrran. That was what Tahar offered, knowing what she offered.

It also might backfire.

Pyanfar stared at Dur Tahar eye to eye within the half-ring of Chanur crew and the hair bristled down her back. Gods, that I have to be afraid. That one hani has to look at another like this, and worry about the han.

She brushed past and headed for the bridge.

"Chanur!"

Pyanfar looked back, at Tahar with Haral's hand clamped in a firm grip on her arm. Pyanfar jerked her chin up in a gesture that freed the Tahar captain, turned and walked the narrow, curve-floored corridor to the bridge.

"They still on?" she asked Tirun, at com one, as she settled into her own chair.

"Your two," Tirun said, and Pyanfar spun her chair about, and punched that channel in on speaker, along with the recorder.

"Pyanfar Chanur speaking."

"Rhif Ehrran," the answer came back, delivered over speaker from the board, as others gathered on the bridge to hear it. "We understand the kif have turned one of the Tahar over to you."

"That's correct, ker Rhif. Dur Tahar. She's advised us that her kin are still in the custody of the hakkikt's forces, and that they're in imminent danger. We made immediate application through all channels for their release. We're holding her pending a quieter situation on the docks-"

"You undertook this without notifying us."

"The notification to the hakkikt was a matter of emergency. Hani lives are in danger. Regarding the general situation, Tahar showed up at my lock in kif custody without advance warning. And let me remind the deputy this is not a secure communication."

"You're obstructing a han order, Chanur."

"As a matter of record, Tahar has appealed to us to take her parole."

Dead silence on the other end for a moment. Then:

"Cooperation, Chanur. You don't take that parole. Hear me? Hear me? You want ours, we get yours. You'll turn her over.

Pyanfar's pulse skipped. She flicked a glance at the recorder light's green glow. It was being logged on Vigilance

and assuredly she wanted it on The Pride's tapes. "You're implying, are you, that our request for medical assistance to injured personnel hinges on our rejecting Tahar's appeal?"

More silence. The trap was too obvious. Rhif Ehrran was too wary to confirm that with any chance of it being logged verbatim. "Nothing of the kind, Chanur. But I don't send my crew into a situation I don't trust. And pending resolution of this matter, I'm putting that request on hold."

"Gods rot you, you're talking about a critically ill woman and a gods-be short schedule! You're-"

Click.

"Gods blast you!"

Tirun's voice quietly: "Log it?"

"Log it. Log that cut-off, to the minute." Pyanfar cut the recorder off. She was shaking when she spun the chair about, and her heart hurt her when she looked at the faces about her; Geran's face; and Tahar's. "Geran," Pyanfar said quietly, to the killing-rage she saw in Geran's eyes. And with profoundest shame: "Tahar. I'm still trying."