Kif Strike Back (27 page)

"What are they doing?" Tahar asked in a hollow voice. "Chanur, what's going on?"

"The law. The law that wants you is telling me they'll by the gods let Chur Anify die if we don't hand you over on the spot. That's what's happened on Anuurn since Gaohn. That's what the han's come to nowadays, spies and note-takers out to prove their case at any cost. Law by innuendo, by threat, by payoff and profit and political gain. That's what we've got. Deals with the stsho. Buy-outs and sell-outs. Hani so gods-be anxious to get the advantage of their rivals they don't see anything else-like you and me, Tahar. Like both us gods-be fools. I watched you and you watched me and we fought each other, and our menfolk did, and all the while the old women in Naur and Schunan licked their whiskers and planned how to skin us both. They sent Ehrran out. The stsho found a chink and they're using it-stsho money; and hani gods-be stupidity. Incarnate in Ehrran.. By the gods, Tahar, I'll help your crew, I swear to you. But they're demanding I turn you and them over to Ehrran. And I don't see a way out of it. I've got a sick woman aboard with another jump to go, gods know when. They've got the medic that can help her; and they're going to play dirty."

"My sister," Geran said quietly. Her voice achieved a pitch of deep hoarseness it had never reached. And stopped though it was clear Geran had more to say than that. Shame, shame to have a transaction like that to Chanur's account and Anify's, and there was nothing else to do.

"Chanur," Tahar said, hands clenched on the co-pilot's cushion till the claws gouged. "Chanur, I'm a gift. A kifish gift, hear? You want the hakkikt to think Chanur can't hold what they give you?"

"Gods, you argue like a kif."

"You're dealing with kif, Chanur. You're in their station. This is their game. Not the han's. Not yours. You give me to the han you lose sfik. And you can lose your life for it. You can lose all you've got."

"Shut it down, Tahar!"

"Don't send me yet! Gods, Chanur, if you're going to throw it all away, at least get my crew out first, while you still have the sfik to bargain with!"

"I've got a woman sick, I've got gods-be little time to bargain in."

"They'll kill you. The kif will kill you if you slip. You hear me? Where's Chur Anify or any of you then, huh? You think Tahar's the only lives at stake at this gods-forsaken station?"

More silence, profound and dreadful. The crew listened; Tully's face was set and pale, for what small amount he followed.

"Maybe-" Geran's voice came softly, hoarse and hollow. "Maybe a mahen doctor-Captain, maybe Chur'd be better off with someone not Rhif Ehrran's pick in the first place. I trust her that little. And I know how Chur feels about it."

What for godssakes has gotten into us? A darkness closed about Pyanfar's vision, a narrowing tunnel in which one course leapt out with white-edged clarity. "By the gods, no! We're not taking this from that blackbreeched foot-licker. Tirun! Get me Jik." Pyanfar spun her chair about to the board and hit the recorder and the com. "Priority-" The com came live. "The Pride of Chanur to Aja Jin, priority, priority; this is Pyanfar Chanur. Get the captain on-" And as a mahen voice droned back: "Move it, crewman--Tirun, gods rot it, give me those med stats." She punched buttons, hunting in two banks. "Where in a mahen hell'd you put that gods-be file?"

"Four, captain, it's your comp four, I'm getting it-"

"Stand by comp transmission, Aja Jin, priority-Where's Jik, gods blast your eyes!"

"I got," a deeper voice came back.

"Jik, get our comp-send and get a med over here, priority, priority one! Mahen, hani, I don't care what, just hurry, code one, hear? Hurry it, Jik!"

"You got. Ready you send."

She sent, two keystrokes.

"Got. We go, go."

"Go!" She broke the contact and spun the chair about. "Tirun. Log a medical emergency. Log the call." She leaned buck in the cushions and stared at her crew and at Tahar, darkly smug. "There's more than one way to get something done around here. Now let Ehrran play politics with an emergency call."

It was not safe. Sudden moves in a stationful of nervous kif might open something else up.

No move at all was unthinkable. She looked at Geran, whose ears were canted back, whose eyes were white-edged about the amber and black.

"So we get Jik in on it," Pyanfar said. "And by the gods
 
he can get Blackbreeches to Kefk he can gods-be sure get
 
a hani medic over here whether Rhif Ehrran likes it or not, and by the gods she'll do her job."

Geran gave a smile far from pleasant, prim pursing of her mouth. No smile at all from the rest of the crew; a wary look from Khym; a warier one yet from Tahar; and from Tully a lost and worried stare. He laid a hand on Haral's arm, questioned her with a look.

"We get help for Chur," Pyanfar said in simplicity, for turn, and got up from her chair. "Tahar, your crew gets my help nonconditional. I'm not Rhif Ehrran. If you doublecross me or get in my way I'll just break your neck right off and send the remains to the kif. And let me make one thing more clear: my crew's not in any state to be patient with your mouth. We're short on sleep and gods-be mad, and I don't know if I'd save you if you cross one of us again. Hear it?"

Tahar's ears went back, a visible flinching. It was the truth, at least the first part. And maybe the second. And Tahar gave no sign of doubting it.

"Better be ready on that access," Pyanfar said, and turned a look toward Haral. "Tirun, stay your post. You know who you've talked to. Hilfy, Khym, put Tahar in Tully's room a while." It was one of the few places on the ship relatively damage-proof, and it at least had a bed. "Move it. Geran- see to Chur, that's all."

Crew scattered, except Tully. He still had that lost look- anxious, frightened. Chur. That was all he could likely make out. Next to Hilfy, the closest friend he had. Pyanfar walked over to him and set a hand on his arm. Claws half out. He had that disconnected look of hysteria, and she gripped his arm to wake him up. "Hey," Pyanfar said, "it's all right, huh?"

"Tahar," he said. "Kif. Kefk. What do, Pyanfar? What do, what do?"

What are you up to? What kind of game are you playing? I trusted you. What's going on, Pyanfar?

"Captain," Tirun said, "Jik's lot're headed up the dock. Estimate three minutes. Mahijiru queries: assistance wanted?"

"Affirmative." She left Tully, walked over to Tirun's side and leaned there.

"Kif query," Tirun said. "It's Harukk."

Then the minuses of the trick came home to nest. "Respond: medical emergency. Injured crew."

Tirun relayed it. "We have a call already in-" Tirun added, reminder to the kif on the other end. And: "We understand that. Will you go on trying?" Another incoming-light lit. Haral snatched the call. ". . . Right. We got you. We'll open for you. Captain, it's the meds."

"Tell Hilfy intercept them as they come in. Tully-go help Geran. Go to Chur. Take Geran's orders."

Tully went without question. It was off the bridge, it kept him from underfoot and he could fetch and carry if someone could get it through to him what was wanted. Loyal, she thought; he was that. Friend.

And alien and dangerous as the mahendo'sat when matters got beneath his skin.

There was a coming and going belowdecks, grim mahen personnel bristling with weapons taking up station in the .accessway, along the lowerdeck main corridor and at the lift.

And on the upperdeck main, where a frowning Ehrran medic worked with a tall black Ksota mahendo'sat, and Chanur's off-duty and motley assortment standing grim and glowering round the walls of Chur's sickroom-two males, either one of whom might have raised the Ehrran's hackles for completely different reasons; Geran Anify and Hilfy Chanur, Hilfy standing there with her hand consciously or unconsciously on the butt of a pistol. They went armed, with the airlock standing open under mahen guard; and it was not only the kif that concerned them.

Pyanfar hovered by the door, with a complug in one ear, listening to operations as Tirun sorted them past.

The medics exchanged surly technicalities. "No gods-rotted good," the hani said; and Geran moved closer, hands in her belt and a frown clenching her jaw. "What isn't good?"

"Captain," the medic protested, not for the first time. "I'd like this room cleared."

"That's all right," Pyanfar said from the doorway. "We're all friends. I'm sure Chur doesn't mind."

"Get them out of here-" With a look at The Pride's two menfolk.

"Why?" Pyanfar said. "You going to object to your professional colleague too?"-who was male, and mahendo'sat.

The hani medic gave a bleak hard stare and turned and laid out supplies. Plainly she did object to males in medicine, whatever the species, and swallowed it.

"Better be good," Geran said.

The medic hesitated with a bottle in her hand.

"Mistake might damage your career real bad," Hilfy said, hand still on the gunbutt.

"I didn't come here to take abuse and threats from junior crew."

"Better be right," Chur said for herself, rousing herself to tilt her head back on the pillow and look at the drip stand the medic-assistants were setting up by her side. "Mahe, haosti." Check it, will you?

"Shishti," the mahe agreed.

The hani medic glared, and handed the bottles and the bags over to the mahe one by one. "Seals," the hani said, pointing out the tops. "This woman never should have left Kshshti. By the gods she never should have sat a post-"

"You going to quote us another regulation?" Khym asked in his deep rumble. "I'll quote you laws. Like criminal negligence, malpractice, and kin-right."

"Get him out of here."

"Huh," Pyanfar said, and leaned on the doorframe and turned with it at her back until she was in the hall.

"Captain," the voice came from com. "Medic down with Skkukuk says he's fit enough. Says we got a diet problem with him, they want to send some stuff over."

"Live?"

"They say-well, the things are real dumb and they breed fast."

Pyanfar grimaced. The skin between her shoulders drew tight. "Vermin, huh? What's it eat?"

A moment of silence. "I'II ask."

She rolled back around the corner and looked into the room. Looked askance again when the lift door opened down the corridor and let in another band of mahendo'sat. For one moment the grim look of them sent Pyanfar's hand instinctively to the gunbutt.

Then recognition took over, and she flung herself from the doorframe and strode down the dead middle of the corridor.

"Goldtooth!" she spat.

"Ha, Pyanfar-" He was a black mahendo'sat, and he came in the somber black of his companions, not a flash of gold except when he smiled wide and glittery. He towered there in that dark company on whom the only metal was the black sheen of AP guns and belts and buckles. And the grin died a fast death. "Say Chur she all right, huh?"

"No thanks to you, you rag-eared bastard!" She jerked the com-plug from her ear and looked up at his black, worried face. "I got my tail wrecked at Urtur, got my crew shot up at Kshshti-"

"Message go."

"Yes, rot you, your gods-be message went. Banny Ayhar and Prosperity took it on, if she got through alive." She recalled the open door and the Ehrran medic, snagged Goldtooth by a lanky, powerful arm and dragged .him toward her own cabin. "Stay out!" she snapped at his gun-bearing escort as she opened the door and pulled Goldtooth inside.

She closed it in the faces of his guards and turned and glared at him in the privacy and soundproofing of her own quarters. "So no more merchant. No more play-acting. This is your real face, huh, hunter-captain? Leave us a message at Urtur- head us at Jik and never tell us. You play games, you earless bastard, and we do the bleeding, all over Kshshti docks. You good-humor me right now and I'll break your gods-be neck. Where have you been?"

Goldtooth's small ears were back. He had a different look than he was wont, no humor at all. "You want list?" His voice was hoarse and quiet, unlike himself. "Jik number one fool, Pyanfar, he fool listen to this kif."

A cold feeling settled into her, worse than before. "He's your friend, gods rot it! You sent him after me at Kshshti. Didn't you?"

"I send. He friend. He same time number one fool. -Maybe work, this thing. Maybe I fool, same." Goldtooth sought a place to sit down and sank down on her rumpled bed, leaning back on one arm to look at her. "We got trouble, Pyanfar. Fool Jik talk tc'a. Knnn take tc'a. We got lot human ship, come Tt'a'va'o 'bout now. We got human come in, got knnn disturb, got stsho disturb, got kif make fight-Jik know this Sikkukkut. He say-got beat Akkhtimakt. Sikkukkut do. Jik say this kif he be poor pro-vin-cial, going make big lousy mess deal with homeworld, lot longtime trouble. I think Jik wrong. I think he big wrong. This kif not small problem. Got number one hakkikt want be real friendly with mahendo'sat, with you-You watch, you watch, Pyanfar. Sikkukkut be no dumb kif."

"I don't think he is."

"Fool. Big fool, Jik."

"So what are you doing here?"

Goldtooth's ears went up and back again. "Maybe try make kif lot busy. I come, go, hit here, there. I close kif route to Meetpoint. They lot upset." A flash of gilded teeth. "Keep Akkhtimakt lot busy, a? That kif want my heart number one urgent, three time try."