{"id":2209,"date":"2026-01-03T22:16:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/chanur-03-the-kif-strike-back-txt-cherryh-c-j\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:16:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:16:48","slug":"chanur-03-the-kif-strike-back-txt-cherryh-c-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/chanur-03-the-kif-strike-back-txt-cherryh-c-j\/","title":{"rendered":"Chanur 03 – The Kif Strike Back.txt – Cherryh, C. J."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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The Kif Strike Back<\/p>\n

by CJ Cherryh<\/p>\n

(Chanur series book #3)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Our Last Episode. . . . (As told in: The Pride of Chanur and Chanur’s Venture.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A kifish prince named Akkukkak acquired a prize and an unprecedented opportunity: an alien ship and crew fell into his hands-promising him new hunting-grounds for the kif and a new species to prey on. All he had to do was to find out where the ship came from and how powerful the aliens might be.<\/p>\n

But the last surviving alien escaped him onto the docks at Meetpoint, and ran onto the hani ship The Pride of Chanur.<\/p>\n

That was how Pyanfar Chanur met Tully the human; and how the ancient Chanur clan ended up in a fight hani would ordinarily have avoided.<\/p>\n

It ended in a full-scale shootout at Gaohn Station in the hani home system, when Akkukkak occupied Gaohn. Chanur clan and a couple of mahendo’sat hunter-captains named Goldtooth and Jik joined forces to defeat the kif.<\/p>\n

Akkukkak perished in that battle-or at least made an unwilling exit in the company of a species called the knnn, methane-breathers of bizarre mentality.<\/p>\n

Tully went back to human space. Pyanfar Chanur hoped then that there would be trade forthcoming. She anticipated a whole new era of hani prosperity with Chanur clan getting rich.<\/p>\n

But she was quickly betrayed, first by the stsho who owned Meetpoint and who barred her from that critical trading, station- and thereby from access to humanity; then by her mahendo’sat partners, who went off and dealt with the humans on their own; and finally by her own kind, because a good many hani clans saw Chanur clan as a threat to their own power and were all too glad to see it impoverished.<\/p>\n

In hani eyes, Pyanfar Chanur had done a heinous thing in bringing aliens to Gaohn: hani had been brought into space by the mahendo’sat and always resented the debt. Mahendo’sat had taken their direct influence off the hani home world of Anuurn, but hani never quite trusted them; they liked kif far less, distrusted the stsho, and wished not even to contemplate the knnn-let alone the prospect of non-Compact aliens like humans, all of which Pyanfar Chanur had brought into the very heart of hani civilization.<\/p>\n

More, she had grown foreign. When a hani lord is defeated in challenge, he dies; but Pyanfar intervened when her son supplanted her husband: she took her husband offworld where no hani male had ever been permitted, and declared him part of The Pride’s crew. Moreover, Kohan, lord of Chanur, acquiesced in her action, a circumstance which occasioned ribald jokes at Chanur’s expense and further damaged Chanur’s credit among hani.<\/p>\n

So for two years The Pride of Chanur and other Chanur ships made small runs and barely kept operating, sinking deeper and deeper into financial ruin.<\/p>\n

Constantly Pyanfar renewed her applications for Meetpoint access; but she lacked money for the bribes necessary to deal with the stsho, she had no help from the mahendo’sat, not a whiff of human trade, and there seemed no hope for Chanur’s fortunes.<\/p>\n

But unexpectedly and for no reason she could fathom, the stsho sent word her application was approved: The Pride turned toward Meetpoint with the last large cargo Chanur could scrape together.<\/p>\n

Once docked, Pyanfar headed immediately for the offices Stle stles stlen, stationmaster of Meetpoint, to sign the necessary documents and reinstate her trading license. She was accosted on dockside by Goldtooth, who dragged her aboard his ship, Mahijiru, and brought her face to face with Tully–back in Compact space and at a station which would erupt in xenophobic riot if it knew a human was present<\/p>\n

Now Pyanfar Chanur was a hani of considerable nerve, but this was more than she could bear-until Goldtooth began naming advantages to the deal, like human trade, and money, and alliance-and until a small quiet alarm started going off In her skull telling her just who had gotten those papers cleared, and how fast it all might collapse if she refused Goldtooth’s deal.<\/p>\n

She took it; and Tully; and a packet of papers; and went buck to break the news to her crew.<\/p>\n

Hut kif on the station arranged a riot to cover their attempt to snatch Tully from her custody. Goldtooth fled the docks; she and her crew ended up billed for damages-which she charged to the mahendo’sat government, using the papers Goldtooth had left her. Stle stles stlen was mollified-for the moment, so well-disposed, in fact, that this avowed friend of the mahendo’sat gave her one direct warning: don’t trust Goldtooth.<\/p>\n

The kif also approached Pyanfar with two direct offers: one, to buy Tully from her and, two, to ally themselves with her against a certain kif who had a bounty on her head.<\/p>\n

It was certainly tempting. Money enough to solve their problems. A way out of their dilemma. A possible peace with the kif.<\/p>\n

But she turned it down, dumped her precious cargo, and pulled out of Meetpoint as rapidly as she could with Tully aboard-because her credit with Stle stles stlen hung upon a credit authorization from the mahendo’sat-and that was only valid if she played her role as Goldtooth’s courier. Kif offers<\/p>\n

or not, she had never dealt with kif and never wished to; Goldtooth, moreover, had her trapped-and Goldtooth had run, heading deep into stsho space with kifish hunters on his tail, some of whom were interested in her.<\/p>\n

Then she learned that getting Tully and his message to the mahen regional capital was only part of it-<\/p>\n

A knnn tracked them out of Meetpoint. That was no good news. Rumors of what she was carrying had evidently spread to methane-side. Knnn, so alien no one could talk to them, so technologically advanced no one could fight them-existed inside the Compact and outside the law. They might take exception to any move at any moment and kill a ship; and no one would do a thing about it-because no one could talk to them. It was a monumental achievement that the serpentine tc’a had once upon a time gotten the knnn to understand the concept of trade: so nowadays knnn simply contacted a station, rushed onto its methane-dock and deposited whatever they liked, grabbed whatever they wanted and left. This was an improvement over their former behavior, in which they simply looted and left. Or took a ship apart.<\/p>\n

And Tully, when questioned, avowed that humans were late getting back to Compact space because their ships had been stopped. Someone was conducting piracy against human ships in human space, and kif was the automatic assumption. The message and the mission seemed to have to do with a mahen determination to push through a regular, patrollable route that would bring humans to Compact space-and incidentally right past their old enemies the kif. All this made sense, and Pyanfar was averse to nothing that bothered the kif.<\/p>\n

But Tully handed her his own suspicions-that it was not kif which had raided them: it was knnn, and humans had fired on knnn ships.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar was horrified.<\/p>\n

If Tully was right, they had a potential knnn target aboard their ship. They were carrying a message which involved knnn affairs, either one of which was about as welcome as a ticking bomb. If the knnn moved on them they were flatly done for. Moreover, the kif who was hunting them had seized the route that led most directly to the mahen capital and they had to reroute to the border station of Kshshti-far from a safe place to have a prize like Tully, a place close to kif territory and frequented by the methane breathers.<\/p>\n

As if they needed more trouble, they had picked up another pursuer. A hani government ship captained by one Rhif Ehrran was out hunting a hani renegade named Tahar. This Tahar had sided with the kif at the battle of Gaohn, and was a well-known outlaw, said to be operating as a pirate in the vicinity of Kefk and Meetpoint. But The Pride of Chanur turned up under Rhif Ehrran’s nose, trafficking with mahendo’sat and kif-and this policewoman of the han diverted herself from one quarry to another potential traitor. Rhif Ehrran’s political patrons would be far happier to see the demise of Chanur than that of a mere pirate already powerless in hani affairs. So priorities were revised. Rhif Ehrran learned, probably from Stle stles stlen, that Chanur had Tully aboard- and that Chanur was in the employ of a foreign government; and Rhif Ehrran saw a chance to ruin Chanur once for all.<\/p>\n

Ehrran commandeered assistance: Banny Ayhar of Ayhar’s Prosperity was compelled to dump her cargo and come along as Ehrran’s ally-as they headed off in the only direction now open to travel.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar barely reached Kshshti alive: The Pride, long running without needed repairs, broke down under the stress of the jump and limped into Kshshti to discover a welcoming committee in port: Rhif Ehrran, Banny Ayhar-and the same kif who had tried to buy Tully back at Meetpoint.<\/p>\n

Now, this kif’s name was Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin, once a vassal of Pyanfar’s old enemy Akkukkak. Akkukkak in fact had had two lieutenants: Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut; and the two of them were currently contending for primacy among kif Akkhtimakt was the one they had evaded on their way to Kshshti; Akkhtimakt had imposed the blockade not only to slop traffic, but to forestall his rival Sikkukkut-and lo! into Sikkukkut’s reach came the whole mahendo’sat plan to out-maneuver the kif … in the person of Pyanfar Chanur and Tully.<\/p>\n

The mahendo’sat authorities at Kshshti knew what Sikkukkut was up to, and they were anxious to get The Pride out of there at any cost. They broke The Pride’s old engine pack off the rear and began to install a new one, effectively rebuilding the ship, but as The Pride sat immobile in the last stages of repairs, kifish raiders kidnapped Tully and, by accident, Pyanfar’s young niece Hilfy Chanur, gravely wounding Pyanfar’s cousin Chur Anify.<\/p>\n

Whoever began the fracas, Akkhtimakt’s agents or Sikkukkut’s, it was undisputably Sikkukkut’s ship Harukk which sped out of Kshshti with Tully and Hilfy aboard, with The Pride dockbound and helpless.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the methane-breathing tc’a delivered Pyanfar an ambiguous warning of multiple factions and connivance among kif; of danger to themselves, and of knnn involvement in the whole question.<\/p>\n

At this depth of despair another ship pulled into Kshshti: the mahen hunter ship Aja Jin, commanded by none other than Keia Nomesteturjai-Jik, to his friends; partner to Goldtooth; agent of the mahen government and armed with enough authorizations to coerce even Rhif Ehrran.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar still had the message packet destined for Maing Tol-but Sikkukkut’s parting message indicated if she wanted to see Hilfy and Tully alive she must come instead to Mkks- even deeper into the border zone, where kif were predominant.<\/p>\n

Jik called a conference of captains and handed the packet to Banny Ayhar with orders to get it to Maing Tol; and thrust upon Rhif Ehrran a set of authorizations that won her cooperation as well.<\/p>\n

So one message has sped toward Maing Tol; Hilfy and Tully are held hostage on the kifish border; Goldtooth is among the missing and one more dockside has been wrecked.<\/p>\n

They move each as they must. And The Pride leaves Kshshti, headed deliberately into a kifish trap.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

The Pride came in, dropping suddenly into here and now; and Pyanfar Chanur reached for controls, half-dazed yet.<\/p>\n

Where? she thought, with one wild panicked notion that the drive could have betrayed them and they might be nowhere at all. There were new routines to remember. There were new parameters, new systems-<\/p>\n

No. Go on comp, fool, let the autos take her-<\/p>\n

“Location,” she said past jaws gone dry as dust.<\/p>\n

“We’re in the range,” Tirun said.<\/p>\n

The first dump came, phasing them into the interface and out again; and The Pride of Chanur hauled herself back to realspace with authority.<\/p>\n

“We’re alive,” Khym said.<\/p>\n

And that surprised them all.<\/p>\n

“Chur?” Geran asked.<\/p>\n

“Here,” a voice said from in-ship com, faint and slurred. ”I’m here, all right. We made it, huh?”<\/p>\n

Second dump: The Pride shed more of the speed the gravity drop had lent her. And kept going, while the red numbers reeled on the board, a passage-speed that flicked astronomical measures past like local trivialities.<\/p>\n

“Just passed third mark,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

“Huh,” said Pyanfar.<\/p>\n

“Beacon alarm.”<\/p>\n

“No response.” Pyanfar’s eye was on the scan image Mkks’ robot beacon sent them, positions of everything in Mkks system. Beacon protested their velocity. “Get me that line, gods rot it, can we do it?-where’s that line? Wake up!”<\/p>\n

The line flashed onto the monitor, red and dangerous, showing them a course that broke every navigation code in the Compact.<\/p>\n

Alarms flashed: the siren howled. Pyanfar laid back her ears and reached frantically to controls as Haral synched moves with her to get the numbers ripped loose from scan-comp and embedded in nav. She keyed a confirmation, one press of a button. Alarms died, and The Pride kept going, hellbent on the line–<\/p>\n

(“We’re on, we’re on, we’re on!” Tirun breathed-)<\/p>\n

-sending a C-charged jumpship on a course straight to Mkks station, a maneuver two stars wide, betting everything they had that Mkks beacon would be accurate. They were racing the lightspeed wavefront of their own arrival, the message which that jumprange beacon back there sent to Mkks-chased that moment down the timeline as fast as any ship could dare, with enough energy bound up in their mass to make one great flare if anything Mkks beacon had not reported should turn up in their path-a nova in miniature, a briefly flaring sun.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar let the controls go, flexed aching hands and reached in null G drift for the foil packet she had clamped to the chair arm. It escaped her claws and she snagged it back, bit a hole in it and drank the contents down in several convulsive gulps, shuddering at the taste and the impact on her stomach. It was necessary: the body shed hair, shed skin, depleted its minerals and moisture. Shortly blood sugar would surge and plummet, and she had to be past that point when The Pride’s course reached critical again.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Mkks nine minutes Light,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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-<\/p>\n

“Send again: Message to Harukk, Sikkukkut commanding. We have an appointment. We’ve come to keep it. We’ll see you on the docks.”<\/p>\n

(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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Another half minute down.<\/p>\n

At this dizzying rate, inside this time-packet, there was a curious sense of slow-motion, of insulation from kif and threats.<\/p>\n

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-<\/p>\n

The dizziness hit; the concentrate had reached her bloodstream.<\/p>\n

“You sick, Khym?”<\/p>\n

“No.” A small and strangled voice. It was not the first time.<\/p>\n

“Chur?”<\/p>\n

“Still with you, captain.”<\/p>\n

“Tirun: got a realtime check?”<\/p>\n

“483 hours in transit, by the beacon.”<\/p>\n

“That’s 20 minutes to final dump,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar said nothing. She uncapped the safety switch on what few armaments The Pride had, and broke another law.<\/p>\n

“Eighteen to final dump,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Mahen voice. “Confirm dump, confirm dump-“<\/p>\n

“Repeat previous message. Tell them we want that shiplist. Fast.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

By now their own message would be flashing to the kif, who would not be so naive.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Not with prisoners in his hands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Where did you hope to go?” Sikkukkut asked. “To do what?”<\/p>\n

“I hoped,” Hilfy Chanur said, because it never paid to back up with a kif, “to fracture a skull or two.”<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“This speaks hani,” Sikkukkut said. “It tries to pretend not-”<\/p>\n

Hilfy stepped into his path.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“Soft,” Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. “Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own.”<\/p>\n

Closer still.<\/p>\n

“Let him go!”<\/p>\n

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-<\/p>\n

“Stop it! Gods rot it-stop!”<\/p>\n

“But it will have to stop struggling,” Sikkukkut said, “I can’t release my claws.-Tell him so. …”<\/p>\n

Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, slopped-all at once, betraying himself.<\/p>\n

“Ah. It does understand.”<\/p>\n

“Let him go.”<\/p>\n

The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p>\n

“Try kind words.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

She weighed it for what seemed forever. She wondered that the kif s patience could last so long.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Tully said nothing.<\/p>\n

“Guess he doesn’t understand,” she said. “He gets words muddled up-“<\/p>\n

“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?”<\/p>\n

“–Friend of Akkukkak’s,” Hilfy said. Distract him; gods, distract him, get him off the hunt. “-If kif had friends.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

“-He’s still asking questions,” she said to Tully.<\/p>\n

“I shall be asking them,” Sikkukkut said. “I do ask them.” The silence lingered. Light kifish fingers touched her shoulder, stroked the fur-<\/p>\n

-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.<\/p>\n

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-<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

“Gibberish.”<\/p>\n

“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,”<\/p>\n

“Sure.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

It still spoke hani. The words meant other, kifish things. Her nape bristled. She wanted out, out of here.<\/p>\n

“Translate this.”<\/p>\n

“-He’s crazy as all kif.”<\/p>\n

The thin body shook and hissed atop its insect-perch. “Bigot. I shall make my own translations. Kkkt!”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Fool!” mahen authority screamed into com; and other, less complimentary things.<\/p>\n

“Stand by third dump,” Pyanfar said.<\/p>\n

“You fool, daughter ten thousand fools, what do? what do? You get report sent han this outrage; we report you endanger-”<\/p>\n

The Pride dumped speed, a breakup of telemetry-<\/p>\n

-phased in again, into a new flood of station chatter.<\/p>\n

“Khym. List.” Tirun’s voice, prompting him in his muzziness. “Shift it. Move.”<\/p>\n

The incoming shiplist turned up on number two screen, Haral’s transfer of data smooth and routine while station’s voice suddenly grew quieter …<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Harukk, the shiplist said. There were other kifish names. A lot of them. A few mahendo’sat. A stsho. (A stsho, at Mkks!) A flock of tc’a and chi in Mkks’ small methane-sector.<\/p>\n

“Thank the gods,” Pyanfar muttered, and began to take he telemetry again, shifting her mind back to business. “Approach,” she said; and when Geran delayed: “Course clearance, gods rot it, look to it!” She began The Pride’s high-V braking roll. “Hang on. We’re going with it. Now.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What business?” Sikkukkut asked; and Hilfy pressed close to Tully’s side, hearing the shifting of bodies about them beyond the smoke and the lights. “What did it arrange with the mahe? Kkkt. Ask it. Get an answer, young Chanur.”<\/p>\n

“-He’s asking about deals,” Hilfy said, and shifted again, for a kif moved up on that side of Tully. She looked at Sikkukkut. “He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand, gods rot it. He uses a translator on our ship. He can’t speak, he can’t shape our words even if he knew what I was saying to him.”<\/p>\n

Sikkukkut gathered up a silver cup from the table, a ball-like thing studded with thumbsized, flat-ended projections. He extended a dark tongue, dipped his snout into it and drank-gods knew what. He lifted his face. A thin tongue flicked about his muzzle. He still held the cup, his fingers caressing the flat-studded surface. “Choose better words: They will harm him, young Chanur, my skkukun; they will. Persuade him. Break this silence of his. If there are mechanical translators needed, we will supply them. Only make him speak.”<\/p>\n

“I’m trying.” She shifted again, bringing herself between Tully and the circling kif. “Back off!-Tully, Tully, tell him something. Anything. I think you’d better.”<\/p>\n

-Lie, she wished him; play the game, I’ll help you-She felt the chill of his body against her side. She tried to look up at him, but he looked only to the kif, perhaps without the wit left to lie at all.<\/p>\n

“Perhaps,” said Sikkukkut-A door opened, admitting sullen light: another kif came in, silhouette like all the rest.-“We should consider another private interview with him. Kkkk-t?”<\/p>\n

The kif hastened past the others. Sikkukkut turned his head.<\/p>\n

“Ksstit,” it hissed. “Kkotkot ktun.”<\/p>\n

Message. Hilfy drew a breath and felt Tully shiver against her. The interloper bent its hooded head near its captain’s and whispered shortly. Sikkukkut rested with his hands upon his knees. His shoulders moved with a long, long breath and his jaw lifted.<\/p>\n

“Kkkt! Kktkhi ukkik skutti fikkti knkkuri. Ktikkikt!”<\/p>\n

All about them the room rustled with kif. Take them from here. Hilfy knew that much kifish. But not the inflections. Not why, or what had happened, or what happened next.<\/p>\n

Kif closed about them: Tully let out an unaccustomed sound as they tore him from her side.<\/p>\n

“Claws in,” she yelled at the kif, “you stupid clot!”-She raked a kifish shin with a bare-clawed foot. A returned blow jolted her teeth and claws bit into her shoulders. There was nothing, with her hands tied, that she could do. They were enough to carry her. They seized her about both knees and did that at the end, despite her twisting and turning.<\/p>\n

“Bastard!” she yelled past kifish bodies. She saw Sikkukkut still sitting there like some graven image in the dark, flanked by other kif.<\/p>\n

“They are here,” Sikkukkut said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The door came between and closed.<\/p>\n

Mkks station was a wall in front of them as The Pride homed in: the berth Mkks had assigned her glowed with the comeaheads on the number two screen while the closing numbers ticked off.<\/p>\n

-“Please you wait,” mahen authority had protested via com during the last part of their approach, a much, much more conciliatory tone. “Got already advise Harukk, same want conference, repeat, want conference. Request reply^-“<\/p>\n

And closer still, in their silence: “We make request you delay dock, Pride of Chanur, you got problem, please, we negotiate-“<\/p>\n

Because there was no way a station like Mkks had to stop any ship from coming in. And worse, there were fifteen vulnerable kifish ships dead-vee at dock, attached to Mkks’ very vulnerable side. Mkks would have sounded alarms by now and thrown the section-seals on its docks, fearing projectiles launched, fearing kif; and riot.<\/p>\n

-“Please,” the protest went on from Mkks authority: ”You stop this make negotiate the kif: We forbid you carry quarrel here.”<\/p>\n

But they had the berth they demanded, a clear spot with<\/p>\n

nothing directly next them on either side. There were kif at hand. Harukk was in the sixth berth down, within the section. Two mahen traders were docked far over on the other side of Mkks’ torus. Kif ships lined the adjacent section’s docks. There were more mahen ships beyond. The solitary stsho. And tc’a and chi on methane-side.<\/p>\n

-“We meet you at dockside. We bring security. Make negotiate this matter. We appeal-“<\/p>\n

Clank-thump. The grapples took, from their side and from station’s; the hookup routines started. They had a docking crew waiting. And security. So Mkks Central said.<\/p>\n

“They’ve stopped talking,” Khym said anxiously, meaning he had done nothing to cut them off by accident, in his inexperience. “They just went quiet.”<\/p>\n

But half a heartbeat later, another call came through.<\/p>\n

“This is kif port authority,” said a clicking voice.” You are clear. Welcome to Mkks, Pride of Chanur. You may even bring your arms. The hakkikt extends safeconduct. You will have guides. Welcome, again, to Mkks.”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot those bastards!” Geran cried.<\/p>\n

“They’ve got their own personnel inside Central for sure,” Tirun said. “That was a valid code.”<\/p>\n

“Move. We’ve got no choice.” Pyanfar powered her chair about and hurled herself out of it, slapped the back of Haral’s seat. “Get that linkup made.”<\/p>\n

“Rifles or APs?” Tirun was already on her feet; Haral’s sister, tall, full-maned and bearded, with gold rings winking from her ear. There was Geran, slight and fairer: slight indeed against the size of Khym nef Mahn who climbed out of his seat and towered there, wider and taller and dead grim.<\/p>\n

“APs,” Pyanfar said with a tautness about the mouth, a drawing-down of her mustaches. “But I’ll take a rifle; want you with one, too. Might want a distance weapon on those docks-might-want a lot of distance, huh? And I don’t think we have to worry about the law here.”<\/p>\n

There were quiet laughs, a soft explosion of ugly humor. Tirun opened the locker and passed out side-arms to her and Geran, mahen weapons that fired an explosive shell, not the motley patchup of pocket guns they had had back at Kshshti: APs with the necessary extra cartridge-case on the holster belt. And the two rifles, hers and Tirun’s, longer-range and capable of a precise target, unlike the APs.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar took the rifle and checked the safety and cycled the power-test while com crackled with further instructions. “We will meet you outside,” the kifish voice said. Thumps and clanks went on, the securing of lines and hoses.<\/p>\n

The kif intended ambush. They took that for granted. Ambush might come later, after they had gotten far from the ship, or it might be a kifish rush the moment the airlock opened, and gods help any mahen dock-worker caught between.<\/p>\n

“They’re moving the access link in.” Haral spun her chair about. “We’re in.” She rose and belted on the AP Tirun handed her.<\/p>\n

“One of us,” a voice said from the door, “has got to stay here and hold the farm.”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot-” Pyanfar did not need to turn. She saw Chur clearly from where she stood. Geran’s sister leaned in the doorway of the bridge, blue breeches drawstringed perilously low, beneath the bandages swathing her midsection. “Chur-“<\/p>\n

“Doing fine, thanks.” The tightness about Chur’s nose and mouth denied it. “Na Khym’s worth more outside, isn’t he? And \/ can bust her loose from dock if need be.” Chur limped across the bridge into her sister’s reach and waved off Geran’s help. She reached for her own accustomed seat at scan and leaned on the back of it, kept going as far as Haral’s co-pilot’s post and sat down. “You tell me when you want her opened, captain. I’ll figure shut for myself. No mahe’s getting in, huh? Gods rotted sure no kif either.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and threw one look at Geran, whose head lifted in terminal stubbornness. No reasoning with either sister. It ran in the blood. No reasoning with that sudden fire in Khym’s eyes, when he saw a chance more to his liking than sitting guard up here. “Fine,” she said. “Get Chur a rifle. In case. And get him one. Move Khym, you keep your wits about you out there. You don’t breathe without my order. Hear? We’ve got one problem on those docks. One. Hear me?”<\/p>\n

“Aye.”<\/p>\n

They were husband and wife at other times. Not here. Not out there. As males went, he was a rock of stability and self-control.<\/p>\n

And Chur was right: he was helpless with the boards.<\/p>\n

Clank-thump-clang. The access way was firm. They had connection to Mkks station.<\/p>\n

Geran laid a rifle into Chur’s grasp. Chur lifted it deliberately, though she had done well to lift a hand the other side of jump’s time-stretch. Click-click. Safety off and on again. looked up, ears pricked, mouth pursed in a wry smile that showed hollowness below her cheekbones, substance waste in jumpspace healing. Her gold-red fur was lusterless and dulled. Light showed through her ear-edge where rings belonged. Chur had not dressed for amenities, not even important ones like that. “Get them out, huh?” Chur said, meaning Hilfy, meaning Tully, and gave a look at Geran before all of them. “Want you all back, too.” she said.<\/p>\n

“Come on,” said Pyanfar. She turned on the pocket com she had hooked to her belt and gestured at the door. She wore no finery this trip, none of the bright color she favored, just blue spacer breeches, same as the rest, excepting Khym, who wore plain brown.<\/p>\n

She headed out the door without a backward look, with Khym thumping along beside her and Haral and Tirun and. Geran at her back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Com’s live,” Chur’s voice pursued them down the corridor toward the lift, all-ship address that echoed everywhere. Behind them the bridge door hissed shut, sealing Chur in.<\/p>\n

“Hurry it.” Pyanfar hit the lift button and held the door open, diving inside last as the door shut and the lift whisked downward with a G drop of its own. They were rank at close quarters, unwashed since jump. Wisps of shed fur clung to bodies and clothes; copper taste filled her mouth. None of the crew was better off, none of them fit for diplomacy dockside. The gun dragged at her hip. The heavy rifle in the crook of her arm offered no comfort at all. Gods, gods, kif outside; mahendo’sat- honest mahen station guards trying to prevent trouble and protect their own folk. The last thing any of then<\/p>\n

wanted was to shoot their way past allies who were duty-bound to stop them.<\/p>\n

The lift braked and let them out again on lowerdecks. They sorted themselves out into an order of instinctive precedence as they headed down the hall: herself and Haral; Khym with partnerless Geran; Tirun at the rear, Haral’s sister-shadow, a little lame in a long run, but veteran of too many ports to let anything reach their backs.<\/p>\n

And Khym – calamity waiting a chance, she thought; lousy shot, male-like; male-like, a worry in a crisis; and twice as strong as any of them if it came to a set-to hand to hand.<\/p>\n

“Got a call from a mahen officer named Jiniri,” Chur’s disembodied voice boomed out from com. ‘”We got ourselves some mahen station guards out there and a lot of citizens. I told them keep clear; they’re not – not listening – “<\/p>\n

“You all right up there?”<\/p>\n

“Fine, captain.” The voice was hoarse and thin. “Fine.” Stronger that time. “Watch yourselves, huh?”<\/p>\n

They reached the bend toward the airlock. “We’re there,” Pyanfar said to the pickups in the corridor. “Where’s the kif? See any?”<\/p>\n

“Can’t tell for sure. Haven’t heard a sound in the access and I’ve got the gain up full. The com – they say they’re out there. Mahe – mahendo’sat – out there – Me, I’d just as soon they were.”<\/p>\n

“Gods-rotted trouble. Tell them get out of it. Fast.”<\/p>\n

“Won’t listen – They invoke the Compact. Say – say – Gods rot. you can guess.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar snicked the safety off her rifle; there were two echoes and a couple of different sounds as Haral and Geran took the APs from their clip-holsters, took the safeties off and sent cartridges to the chambers. “We’re set. Open us up.”<\/p>\n

The hatch hissed open. They herded in and stopped, facing the outer door. “Seal us out and let’s go,” Pyanfar said.<\/p>\n

The way behind them closed; the facing hatch shot open on an empty accessway, a yellow-lighted passage, icy cold.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar dashed to the last point of cover where the accessway bent; Tirun took the other side with her rifle and the two of them came round the bend together, with three more guns aimed past their backs.<\/p>\n

No kif. Empty passage. Pyanfar jogged soft-footed as far as the debouchment, where the yellow access tube gave over to descending rampway, a slope of interlocked gratings leading down to the pressure gates, and down again, a long exposed walk to the dock. People down there. Crowd-noise. A knot of about forty civilian mahendo’sat waited at the bottom of that long ramp, with a handful of mahen guards, dark, tall, primate: black-furred and one conspicuous tasunno, brown. And, gods, an anomaly in the midst of the crowd, a white-skinned stsho in drifting rainbow gossamer. The crowd surged forward with a gibbering outcry at the sight of them.<\/p>\n

“Smell it?” Haral muttered, at her side.<\/p>\n

Ammonia: kif scent. The dilapidated dockside was in twirl light, and a hundred doorways showed on the anti-dockward side, any one of which might hold a sniper; if the wind had! not been up her back before, that smell would have sent it.<\/p>\n

She headed down in haste, a quick thunder of steps on the; old-fashioned steel rampway, Haral at her side. The mahendo’sat below shouted and pushed and shoved among themselves, attempting the ramp while the guards struggled to-hold the line.<\/p>\n

One passed, came striding forward right onto the foot of the ramp as they came down to it. “You crazy, crazy!” The official-looking mahe waved her hands as they came face to face; her howl rose louder than the rest, even the stsho’s agitated warble. “You go back ‘board, we negotiate this trouble, not bring guns this dock! You keep back our line, let our guard do, hani captain! Hear? Go back you ship! We arrange talk; come, go between talk, you, kif hakkikt! No go down, hear! We got accommodations-we fix-“<\/p>\n

They had it down smooth, she and Haral: she could deal with the mahe knowing her second in command was watching the crowd; and Geran and Tirun would be watching left and right, with the known space of the ramp at their backs. God knew where Khym’s attention was. She ignored the waving hands, the attempt to catch her arm, and brushed the officer aside. “Come on,” she said to her crew, and left the ramp, parallel to the line of guards who had their hands full with agitated dignitaries.<\/p>\n

“You no go!” the mahe cried, trying to get in front of her again. The black face contorted in anguish. “No go!”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar shoved with the rifle, sideways-held, which drew a collective gasp from the crowd. “Private business,” she said. “Get your people out of the way, I’m telling you-Go! Get! Get cover!”<\/p>\n

“Not bring guns! Go, go you ship, not do, not do!”<\/p>\n

And from the stsho, who eluded the guards to rush, up and wave white arms in her face: “You break Compact law. Complaint, we make complaint this barbarous behavior-We witness-“<\/p>\n

“Move it!”<\/p>\n

A second shove. The stsho recoiled in a wild motion of gtst spindly limbs, retreating in a flood of gtst gossamer robes and a warble of stsho language, headed full-tilt away from the scene. “Ni shoss, ni shoss, knthi mnosith hos!-“<\/p>\n

“Maheinsi tosha nai mas!” the mahe cried; and mahendo’sat guards turned from crowd-control to facing hani rifles with their riot-sticks, as the mob discovered they were not at all interested in getting closer. There was a low sound of dismay und the docks grew astoundingly quiet.<\/p>\n

“Move them,” Pyanfar said, gesturing with rifle barrel still averted from the mahen official. “Hasano-ma. Authorization from your Personage. Hear?”<\/p>\n

The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast.”<\/p>\n

“Captain!” Haral hissed. “Your left.”<\/p>\n

A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery-kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. “You stop! Stop! You break law!”-as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards.<\/p>\n

The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians.<\/p>\n

Law. The Voice’s protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo’sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port.<\/p>\n

Not in this hour, that was sure.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar’s ears flattened. She let them stay that way. “Well?” she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. “We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?”<\/p>\n

The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym’s; hers. Haral’s and Geran’s were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun-Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that was sure.<\/p>\n

The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. “I have message, hani.”<\/p>\n

It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.<\/p>\n

Tully’s. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.<\/p>\n

“Is the human alive?”<\/p>\n

“At present.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. “Tell Sikkukkut I’ll talk about it.”<\/p>\n

There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. “You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours.”<\/p>\n

It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. “We can deal here,” she said. “Now.”<\/p>\n

“This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?”<\/p>\n

She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. “All right,” she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif’s neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. “All right. We’ll add it up later, kif.”<\/p>\n

It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings.<\/p>\n

“Captain.” A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. “No go-“<\/p>\n

“Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?”<\/p>\n

The Voice fell behind. “You crazy,” the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. “You crazy go that place!”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

Kif fell in and walked as an escort about them, their black robes like a moving wall in the dockside twilight. A dry paper and ammonia smell rose about them, mingled with the; scent of pungent incense and oil. Weapons rattled as they went, rifles and sidearms as illegal as their own.<\/p>\n

They had docked in the same section as Harukk, without a section door to pass. The twilit deck stretched out in the! upward-tending horizon of all station docks, up to a towering section seal that blinked red lights: hazard, hazard, hazard-precaution against riot and catastrophe. Mkks braced itself.<\/p>\n

On the rows opposite the docks, in that space usual for services and bars such as spacers used, doorways filled with kif who lounged there with hateful eyes and whispers. Windows glowered with neon, with sodium- and argon-light; the girders overhead were palled with smoke no ventilation coped with, a haze about the glaring suns of the dock’s floodlamps.<\/p>\n

“Gods-rotted mahen hell,” Haral muttered, striding along at Pyanfar’s side. “The place is all kif.”<\/p>\n

The kif cluttered and clicked among themselves in some obscure accent. Not main-kifish. Pyanfar knew words enough of that, and lost this entire.<\/p>\n

They passed other doors from which came different, grass-eater smells; and strange moans and wailings: animals, kept and pent here. Hunter-kind that hani were, it turned Pyanfar’s stomach. Kif fed on live food. While it lived.<\/p>\n

Even on their own kind, in defeat. So rumor had it.<\/p>\n

The kif in the lead tended toward the inner wall and a side corridor; they followed into that narrower passage, among armed kif who loitered in small clusters along the wall and stood away from it as they passed.<\/p>\n

“Kk-kk-kk,” one said, insulting them. Khym broke step: “No,” Pyanfar hissed; and Geran grabbed his arm. They went further, with kif closing in at their backs and in front of them. The safeties were already off the guns and had been off, since the airlock. But there was nothing to win here. Not even for the kif.<\/p>\n

Doors opened for them, on a room sodium-lit and reeking of kif-stink. The distinctive chatter and. clicking of kif came out to them; and a high wail that was not kif died in a sudden squeak.<\/p>\n

“Here,” their hooded guide said, beside that open door, extending a wide-sleeved arm. “The hakkikt will welcome you.”<\/p>\n

“Huh,” Pyanfar said, and stepped inside, into the murk, slid sideways of the door and sideways still as Haral and the rest followed, in amongst a crowd of kif, in amongst deeper shadows and that old-paper scent and scent of ammonia and incense so strong they blinded the nose to other cues.<\/p>\n

There were chairs, tables: seated kif, standing kif.<\/p>\n

And standing at the far end of the long room, amid the hellish glare and drift of incense, two paler figures, one pale-skinned, one red-brown.<\/p>\n

Abruptly Pyanfar’s rifle tumbled from carry to her hands and rifles and guns moved with one rattle that sounded round the room in rapid sequence, a hundred-fold. Five of them were hers. The ready-lights on rifle stocks glowed like a scatter of bloody stars.<\/p>\n

Nothing moved after that. Their backs were at the wall; and Hilfy and Tully were thrust back amid a ring of kif with rifles all about them.<\/p>\n

“Sikkukkut!” Pyanfar yelled. “You here, hakkikt?”<\/p>\n

One kif had remained seated in a many-legged chair. That one unfolded upward and stepped from among its legs, one hand lifted. “You amaze me, Chanur. Now what will you do? Ask me to let them go?”<\/p>\n

“Oh, no. I’m going to stand here. We’re all going to stand here like this, and no one moves, until my friends get here.”<\/p>\n

“Your friends.”<\/p>\n

“Couple of hunter-ships. Just to keep the odds even while we trade.”<\/p>\n

The kif lowered his hand very slowly. He was utter shadow as he moved before the orange glaring lamp. The hands spread themselves, light streaming past the sleeves. A dry sniffing reached her ears. Kifish laughter. “So that was your request for an open berth. Good, hani. Very good.” He gestured toward his prisoners. “Do you want to take them now?<\/p>\n

Pyanfar did not look, refusing the distraction. She kept the gun aimed at the hakkikt’s chest. “We can have a real good bloodbath, hakkikt. Let me put it in kifish terms: we’ve got a sfik item here. It’s my ego in question. So we’ll just stand here. Hours maybe. We’re patient. You want to send a message? Head my friends off from docks? Fine. Or come at us. It’s all over in here, then.”<\/p>\n

The kif gave a flourish of his hands and sat down in his insect-legged chair, a black lump amid the black pillars of his folk, beside the solitary wisp of white and color that was the prize. In the tail of her eye she saw a shifting there among the prisoners, and heard a sharp, hurt gasp.<\/p>\n

“I’d stop that back there,” Pyanfar said, “hakkikt. One my people over there yells, might distract me, huh?”<\/p>\n

Sikkukkut lifted a hand. “Hunter Pyanfar, you should have been a kif. I tell you, I will deal with you.”<\/p>\n

They could die, they could all die, of this kif s embarrassment. Of failing him. Or of trusting him. But it was an offer. She drew a long, even breath.<\/p>\n

“Fine. Let’s wait on my friends.”<\/p>\n

“There truly are such?”<\/p>\n

“Truly, there are.”<\/p>\n

“You have a fast ship, hunter Pyanfar.”<\/p>\n

A kif-gave points away and halfway admitted to surprise. It was, gods help them, conciliatory. Or mockery. Or some obscurely kifish thing.<\/p>\n

“What do you want?” she asked. It had to be the right question. Or there might none of them leave the room alive. “You wanted me here. Why? What trade?”<\/p>\n

There was long silence. “Skokitk,” the kif said. Cease. “Skokitk!”<\/p>\n

The pale figure hit the floor, a thudding tumble to its knees. The red-brown moved and crouched low beside it. Pyanfar never turned her head.<\/p>\n

“Hilfy,” Haral said. “Very carefully. Get up and get him over here.” –<\/p>\n

“No,” said Sikkukkut. “This would not be wise.”<\/p>\n

“Then we’ll wait,” said Pyanfar. “He all right, Hilfy?”<\/p>\n

“So far,” Hilfy said, a hard, thin voice. She heard the spasms of breathing, saw the paler figure rise again, assisted to his feet. “So far.”<\/p>\n

“Let us,” said Sikkukkut, leaning an elbow on the high arch of a chair leg, and resting his long jaw on his hand, “-let us settle this matter. Let us dismiss this inconsequence and talk like allies.”<\/p>\n

“Allies in a mahen hell.”<\/p>\n

“Mkks is neutral ground. Let us welcome your friends when they come.”<\/p>\n

“We’ll wait.”<\/p>\n

“They really are coming.”<\/p>\n

“Absolutely. And your ships still have their noses set to station. Still sitting targets.”<\/p>\n

“If you had meant to die you would have killed your kin first.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe.”<\/p>\n

“So these allies will not fire on our ships, no more than you did. You intend to get out of here. So do I. Therefore your prizes are intact. And mine is.”<\/p>\n

Kit-thought. It made mazes. “What prize, kif?”<\/p>\n

“You,” said Sikkukkut. He leaned toward the upright and rose from his chair ever so slowly, a smoky drift against the glaring lights. “You are here. And your allies are. I am no merchant. Trade-does not interest me. I make other transactions. Young Chanur-you may cross the room. Do so slowly.”<\/p>\n

“Tully-” Pyanfar heard Hilfy say. “Come on.”<\/p>\n

“No,” said Sikkukkut. “He is ours. You may go, young Chanur.”<\/p>\n

Silence then.<\/p>\n

“Hilfy,” said Pyanfar. Her eyes never strayed from Sikkukkut; the gun barrel never moved. “Get over here. Now.”<\/p>\n

“He-“<\/p>\n

“Now.”<\/p>\n

There was slow and careful movement. The kif stirred and eclipsed Tully’s white shape. Pyanfar never let her eyes stray, trusting Haral and the others to watch the other kif. She had her own target all picked out. She heard the quiet movement reach her side, heard Hilfy’s harsh breathing.<\/p>\n

“Give me a gun.” Hilfy’s voice, hoarse and strained, with mayhem in it.<\/p>\n

“Stand fast,” Pyanfar muttered. “Just stand still, imp- Don’t get in front of anyone.”<\/p>\n

“Get Tully out of here.”<\/p>\n

“In time,” said Sikkukkut. “Perhaps.”<\/p>\n

“What perhaps?” asked Pyanfar.<\/p>\n

“How soon,” asked Sikkukkut, “these friends of yours?”<\/p>\n

“Inbound now,” Pyanfar said. Sikkukkut made a flourish of his sleeve, a sweep of his robe, an acceleration of small moves. ” Stand still, hakkikt.”<\/p>\n

“Ah.”<\/p>\n

“I advise you. Stay put.” The shot she fired would take out Sikkukkut. The<\/p>\n

returning barrage would do for her, her crew, and the wall behind them. “Not a convenient time leave dock, even if you could get to your ships. Hilfy, get. Get out.”<\/p>\n

“With your allies,” Sikkukkut said, “I will also deal. There is no need for haste.” He paced aside, the only moving figure in the room. “After all.” He moved again. Close<\/p>\n

Spread his arms in a dark flourish. “Fire, hunter Pyanfar. Or admit I have judged what you will do.”<\/p>\n

“Don’t push me, kif.”<\/p>\n

”Civilization. Is that not your word for it? Friendship? The mahendo’sat who will die of your rashness are your allies. Your own life is still more precious. \/ shall be your ally, hunter Pyanfar, as I was at Kshshti. Is it not true? Others aimed at this young hani and this human. \/ took them. Therefore they were safe. Is this not a friendly act?”<\/p>\n

“You want us out of here before the rest of us reach station. Is that it?”<\/p>\n

“I will deal with you, hunter Pyanfar. Nankhit! Skki sukkutkut shik’hani skkunnokkt. Hsshtk!”<\/p>\n

Rifles lowered, one by reluctant one, among the kif. A tremor came to her muscles, a long, long shiver; her heart thudded against her ribs. But the rifle stayed steady.<\/p>\n

“You may go,” said Sikkukkut.<\/p>\n

“Haral. Get them out. Get everybody out.”<\/p>\n

“Captain-“<\/p>\n

“Move it!” She heard a low rumbling. “Khym. Out.”<\/p>\n

“Come on,” she heard from Haral. She drew in her breath, heard the sibilance of cloth and quiet hani feet, the slight rattle of arms.<\/p>\n

She was alone then. Herself. A roomful of kif. Tully and Sikkukkut.<\/p>\n

“You plan to die like this?” the hakkikt asked.<\/p>\n

Her nose rumpled into a hani grin. “Scare you, kif?”<\/p>\n

Sikkukkut walked again, laid a hand on Tully’s shoulder, where he stood in the others’ grip. Gently. “One last prize. I shall keep this one for a while, and give you another, perhaps, for your sfik.-Your crew is still outside. Do they pick and choose your orders?”<\/p>\n

“They understand me.”<\/p>\n

The kif stared at her within the shadow of the hood, faceless against the glare.<\/p>\n

And laughed his dry laughter then. The hand fell from Tully’s shoulder. “Hunter-ships.”<\/p>\n

“They’ll come.”<\/p>\n

“Skhi nokkthi.” Sikkukkut retreated again to his chair, the while a rustling of cloth told her of movement at her side. The kif reached to the table beside the many-legged chair, where a meshwork bowl stood. Something in it raced and scrabbled madly; squealed as the hakkikt’s hand closed. The squeal ceased abruptly. He popped it in his mouth, the jaws worked rapidly a moment. Then he took an ornate cup and spat into it.<\/p>\n

She laid her ears back.<\/p>\n

“Would you join me at table?” asked Sikkukkut. “No, I thought not.” A bony-knuckled hand gestured Tully’s way. “You know he has not spoken since the day we took him. Not a word. He utters sounds, sometimes. I cherish such sfik. His words are precious. Perhaps he will give them up.”<\/p>\n

Take him from me, the kif meant, do something about it, if you can. .<\/p>\n

“The mahe gave you this passenger at Meetpoint,” Sikkukkut went on. “Was that all? Was that all Mahijiru brought you? Goldtooth. Is that not what you call that mahe? Ismehanan-min is his name. We are old acquaintances. I spoke to him about alliance. He was doubtful.” Again Sikkukkut raised the cup and thrust his snout inside. He lifted his face after. ” think this bigotry.”<\/p>\n

“Think what you like. Let’s talk about Tully, shall we?”<\/p>\n

“I was skku to Akkukkak. Vassal, you would say. And potential heir-to use hani terms, which mislead. You did me a service.”<\/p>\n

“Killing Akkukkak, you mean.”<\/p>\n

“Even so. Often our interests have been mutual. This human, for one. And have you noticed the stsho here? Uncommon. Stsho send emissaries about. Even here to Mkks. When the grass-eaters raise such dust, expect fire. And there is fire, hani. From Llyene to Akkt to Mkks. Even Anuurn. A fool would reject my offer. You are not a fool.”<\/p>\n

“No. I’m not.”<\/p>\n

He set the cup aside. “Is Mahijiru one of these ships?”<\/p>\n

“No. Lost, I thought you told me.”<\/p>\n

“Perhaps. Ismehanan-min is full of surprises.”<\/p>\n

“And Tully’s folk? What happened to them?”<\/p>\n

A kifish shrug.<\/p>\n

“You had a ring, gods rot it. It came from Ijir. What’s your part in that?”<\/p>\n

“I have my agents. Even among Akkhtimakt’s spawn. That ring has traveled, hasn’t it? Like Tully himself. you’ll give it back to him.”<\/p>\n

“Did you take that ship?”<\/p>\n

“I? No. That was Akkhtimakt. He has that prize. I have mine. Go back to your ship. I’d hate to have a misunderstanding with your allies coming in. If my ships should be damaged at dock-you understand. It would be a great mistake.”<\/p>\n

“So would harming him. You want talk. All right. Return him now. You’ll get talk. You’ll get something more. I’ll tell you we won’t fire.”<\/p>\n

There was long, long silence. “Ah. Promises. Another hani term. Some hani put sfik-value on a promise. Mahendo’sat are another matter. I will keep this human. To assure good behavior. But for your promise I will give you one of mine-<\/p>\n

“I get him back. Alive. And well.”<\/p>\n

“There’s no kif word for promise. When -your allies are here. I promise.” Wrinkles chained up and down the kif’s dark snout, limned in light. “I do tell you truth. You should thank me, hani. Someone else might have gathered up your people, there on Kshshti dock. I found them in an alleyway But it was not I who aimed at them.”<\/p>\n

“Akkhtimakt.”<\/p>\n

“His agents. If he had taken them, there would be no hope for them. I’ve protected them. Comparatively.”<\/p>\n

“Tully.” Still she did not look at him. She did not want to see that look, that blue-eyed trusting look that confounded and knotted up her gut. “Tully. They want me to go. hours more. I get you back, Tully.”<\/p>\n

“Fine,” he said, a faint, slurred voice. “Py-anfar. Go.’<\/p>\n

“Kkkt. It does talk.”<\/p>\n

She stood very still. Points, gods: Tully scored on the hakkikt and maybe did not know it. She held the gun constantly toward Sikkukkut, not daring look Tully’s way.<\/p>\n

“Promises,” she said. “Your ships are safe. Safe as is.”<\/p>\n

The silence hung there. “We will talk,” Sikkukkut said then. “He and I. While we wait on your agreement. Go back to your ship. You have no choice, hani. See that nothing happens.”<\/p>\n

“Likewise.” She backed for the door, reached the archway where the brighter light of the twilit hall fell on the corners of her eyes. There was light to one side of that vision, hani red and blue and brown. There was kif black to the right. She kept the gun trained on the hakkikt inside the room. “You want a deal, kif,” she said into the murk. “An alliance. I’ll ask my allies. Don’t foul it up, huh?”<\/p>\n

Silence from the room. Perhaps the majority expected her to fire and scour the room. Most kif would, losing points by it, in Tully’s case. Destroying all, both gain and loss.<\/p>\n

A very arrogant kif might not.<\/p>\n

Or a hani with a friend in there. In his own arrogance, Sikkukkut was confident he knew hani. She stared constantly at that single seated shadow beneath the lights. At the hakkikt’s right, among the guards, she saw Tully’s pale face and never focussed on it. About the room the LED ready-lights of a hundred rifles glowed a wicked, unblinking red.<\/p>\n

She dived aside, rolled her shoulders against the wall and bounced off it, headed at a trot for her own crew while they covered the kif down the hall.<\/p>\n

“Tully–” Hilfy said.<\/p>\n

“We can’t get him yet.”<\/p>\n

“Give me a gun.” Hilfy caught at Geran’s wrist. “For the gods’ sakes-“<\/p>\n

“Gods rot it, move.” Pyanfar tore Hilfy away one-handed and dragged her along the hall. Hilfy dug her claws in, roundhoused a swipe at her and Khym caught her by that arm.<\/p>\n

Hilfy fought without a sound. Her feet went from under her in their haste and Khym hugged her against his side and kept her moving, down the hall, round the corner.<\/p>\n

Further still, as they reached the open docks. Hilfy still struggled, but more weakly now, as Khym maintained his grip. Pyanfar never let them slow. There were kif, kif everywhere, in the doorways off the dock, standing about by the gantries of the ships.<\/p>\n

Up ahead-far distant– blue lights blinked on the wall above two shipberths: incoming ships, one on either side of The Pride. . . “<\/p>\n

“We’ll get him,” she premised Hilfy, herself hard-breathing as they strode toward that goal. We’ll get him out.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy’s rage sank away to gasps. She thrust away from Khym’s side as he let her, staggered free, weaving in her steps ahead of them.<\/p>\n

Rage; and grief. It was not the youngster she had lost and found. It was all too profound for lighthearted Hilfy. Pyanfar’s gut hurt, seeing it, seeing the bowed shoulders, the hurt no one could hold and cure.<\/p>\n

She had grown too old for comforting, the niece who used to swing upon her belt-ends and laugh and beg for tales, where the ship went, where she fared, what the stars were like.<\/p>\n

Hilfy strode on ahead of them, staggering now and again. There was bloodstain on her trousers and her fur, across her shoulders: Her mane was tangled and matted with it.<\/p>\n

And the ships were coming in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Chur,” Pyanfar called on pocket com, there at the foot of the ramp. “Chur-We’re coming in.” She cast a glance back; Tirun was still behind them, gun live, covering them against the chance of attack from the shop-lined far side of the docks, over among the shadows and the kif. The mahendo’sat and stsho had gone, hidden, abandoning them.<\/p>\n

“You get ’em?” The voice coming back from the bridge was faint and full of breath-<\/p>\n

“Hilfy’s with us,” said Pyanfar, Hilfy’s ears had come up as they started up the ramp pricked forward with the first liveliness she had shown. Had a little problem getting Tully loose. We’re working on it-“<\/p>\n

The ears went down.<\/p>\n

“Hhhuh,” Chur said, of the com lost something. “Hatch is open. Vigilance and Aja Jin are headed in; they haven’t dumped down yet. They want our instructions.”<\/p>\n

“Huh.” From her side. “Confirm as agreed.” An unshielded pocket-corn was not the way to talk that out. She strode up the chill ramp plates with one glance back to every three steps forward. Tirun had stationed herself in the cover the start of the ramp afforded, there by the gantry control console, rifle slowly sweeping the dock. They entered the covered access way and Pyanfar glanced back yet again, Haral standing by her side with AP in hand. “Tirun!” she called out, and Tirun ducked about and pelted up the echoing metal plates.<\/p>\n

Inside, then, Tirun still out of breath as they hurried through the lock into The Pride’s safe inner corridors. Geran swore in relief. Tirun clicked the safety back on her rifle and used it for a stick as she walked: “Not good for sprints anymore,” Tirun muttered as they bolstered the APs and slung the rifles back to carry-straps. Hilfy went on through the corridors ahead of them, ears down; got into the lift first and held the door for them, tempers past. But no one touched her. Welcome home, kid. Welcome back. Glad you’re all right, at least. No one ventured it.<\/p>\n

Neither back nor right, Pyanfar thought, with profile view of that young face as the lift went up: ears back, mouth tight on silences. Gods rot it, niece, I got everything I could.<\/p>\n

The lift let them out on bridge level. They trudged out in no particular order. Khym stayed with them, past his cabin and baths and all such allurements. They were filthy, cold from the docks, and stank of kif. They brought that smell onto The Pride along with them.<\/p>\n

Chur powered the co-pilot’s chair about when they came in, inexorable move of machinery cradling a bandaged hani who lay shrunken and feeble against the cushions. But her ears came up and she lifted her head.<\/p>\n

“Good to see you, kid.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy crossed the bridge and bent down to clasp Chur’s arm. “Good to see you,” Hilfy said hoarsely. “I thought they’d got you. Gods, I thought you were dead.”<\/p>\n

“Huh. No.” Chur laid her head back as they gathered around her. She shut her eyes and opened them refocused on Pyanfar. “Captain. I sent the confirm-message. Not a rotted<\/p>\n

bit of help from the mahendo’sat on-station. ‘Cept traffic control. Central’s staying real quiet. They’ve<\/p>\n

been real upset ever since our friends dropped into system. Scared. Not saying a thing but necessities.”<\/p>\n

“Huh.” Pyanfar laid her hand on the chairback. “Best you get to bed, right now.”<\/p>\n

“Food,” Chur said. “Lousy c-stuff. Want a cup of gfi.”<\/p>\n

“I’ll get it,” Khym said, and set the rifle down (gods, on the counter, loose) and headed off.<\/p>\n

“Secure that!” Pyanfar snapped. He jerked to a stop and looked about, looking for what he had done. But Tirun took the gun along with Chur’s.<\/p>\n

“Got it, captain. He gave it to me.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar nodded and collapsed onto her rump on the console edge as Khym headed off. She gave him no mercy. None. Crew covered for him; and they did it not because he was male, or hers, but because he had just earned it out there if he had the sense to know it. That warmed some of the cold at her gut. Some. That beaten weariness in the slump of Hilfy’s shoulders, that bleak, all-business stare-that was out of reach.<\/p>\n

“How close are our friends to final dump?” she asked Chur, and handed her rifle on to Haral. “We got anything trustable out of Central?”<\/p>\n

“I marked the first alarm,” Chur said, gestured loosely toward comp, a ticking chronometer on the number two monitor. “Figure-figure our ships’ll be dumping down about now, but Jik may freehand it. Don’t trust the kif to tell us huh?”<\/p>\n

Understatement. Complicated comp operations from a crewwoman doing well to be sitting upright. “You’re going off-duty. Shift’s Haral and Tirun. Rest of us clean up, then turn about. Move it. We’ve got company coming.”<\/p>\n

There were minute delays, a quick dart of Haral’s eyes.<\/p>\n

Questioning. What do we do? Sit here?-because sitting here at dock was not altogether sane. Think there’s a chance of pulling the rest of this off?<\/p>\n

“Send,” Pyanfar said. “Us to both those ships. Tell them we’re back aboard. Tell them we’ve talked to the kif and we’ve got half the job done. Kif wants to go on talking.”<\/p>\n

“Tully’s left there,” Hilfy said, of a sudden turning about and leaning toward her on the counter edge. Hilfy’s voice cracked and spat. “Four days, aunt-four days they worked on him. …”<\/p>\n

“Then we made good time,” Pyanfar said, cold, very cold, because Hilfy wanted heat. “I’d have figured five. We’ll get him out.”<\/p>\n

“They’re taking him apart.” Hilfy stood up and back. “That bastard kif has got time to do it in.”<\/p>\n

“We got what we could.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy drew one long breath. “Yes,” she said, and was ail quiet, all the way through.<\/p>\n

“Send that message,” Pyanfar said to Tirun, and unbuckled her AP and passed it to Haral to put in the locker with the rest. She turned back to Hilfy. “Go wash up. We’re not through yet, niece.”<\/p>\n

“Aye,” Hilfy said, and turned and walked off.<\/p>\n

“You too,” she said to Chur. “Geran, get her out of here.”<\/p>\n

“Want the gfi,” Chur protested.<\/p>\n

“Fine. It’ll come back there where you are, just fine.” She stood there while Geran helped her sister up from Haral’s chair and supported her toward the door. “Stay to Khym’s cabin, huh? I want to keep you near controls. Might need you to sit watch.”<\/p>\n

“Aye,” Geran said on Chur’s behalf, a departing glance.<\/p>\n

The situation was not what they had feared, in all: hostages murdered, Mkks with major damage-That was what could have happened even before they made dock. It was little short of a miracle they had worked, getting in and getting Hilfy free.<\/p>\n

But it was not good enough.<\/p>\n

Haral slid into the chair that Chur had left, powered it about again and got to work in Haral’s own unflappable fashion, mind going instantly from dockside to those boards with no glitch-ups likely. Pyanfar tested the weapons-locker door and heard the electric tick of the resisting latch. “That access camera and the motion-sensor better stay on. We don’t control those gates down there.”<\/p>\n

“Right,” Haral said, and reached and keyed mode and number without a beat missed, while the numbers ticked by on comp’s other sections.<\/p>\n

“Got a confirmation on that final dump,” Tirun said, holding the complug to her ear. “Captain, just got the confirm from Aja Jin. Captain’s compliments and he’ll see you here soon as he gets in.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar looked at the chronometer. They were down to two minutes Light on response-time between themselves and the incoming ships. “Understood,” she said.. Two minutes as light moved. A good deal longer for a ship that had blown off its C- fractional energy to move into station’s slow-going frame of reference, and longer still to dock. “I’m going for that bath.”<\/p>\n

Mayhem and chaos might erupt. There might be attack. There were wobbles in her knees, deprivations coming due. There was still time for a bath, a cup to drink; in the meanwhile it was The Pride’s seniormost crew at controls. No flap, no emotional decisions, no foulups. Thank the gods.<\/p>\n

She dumped it all into their laps and headed down the corridor untying belt-cords as she went.<\/p>\n

Hilfy had gone below, to the empty crewquarters. Alone. She would not have had that. But there was nothing else to do, nothing else to offer.<\/p>\n

So we throw the party later, kid. When it’s due.<\/p>\n

Gods help us all.<\/p>\n

She thumbed the door open and headed straight for the bath, shed trousers into the bin, hung the com on the bathroom wall within reach of the shower cabinet and turned on the warm mist with a melting sigh.<\/p>\n

Fur by the fistful swirled into the drain at her feet-gods, only half of it was left from jump: the kif business had scared the rest off. And the while she lathered and rinsed under the warm flood she tried to collect her jump-scattered wits, plotting and replotting how to bet the next dice-throw. The kif would have a trick or two. She knew.<\/p>\n

And the com beeper went off as she reached to cut in the drying-cycle.<\/p>\n

“Gods, what?” she asked, snatching the com, shedding water on the floor. Her heart thudded. Showers-any offduty indulgence-had begun to make her paranoid. They knew; somehow the whole universe knew the moment her guard went down.<\/p>\n

“Got a kif outside in the access way,” Haral’s voice came back. “Captain, it swears it’s yours.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

“You. Kif.” Pyanfar leaned above the com console, and saw the intruder on the camera they had rigged back at Kefk, a huddled black-robed silhouette in the yellow glare of their access tube. It was cold out there, no place for standing. The kif’s breath frosted against its own darkness. “Kif, this is Pyanfar Chanur. You can talk back from there. You got some news for me?”<\/p>\n

“Skkukuk is my name. Let me in, Chanur. The hakkikt an’nikktukktin has sent me.”<\/p>\n

“In a mahen hell.”<\/p>\n

“I must freeze then.”<\/p>\n

“Get your freezing carcass out of my accessway!”<\/p>\n

The kif stood still. Lifted its arms. The sleeves of the black robes fell back, disclosing black, hairless arms and long, retractable-clawed hands. “Chanur’s safety is mine. I offer it my weapons.”<\/p>\n

“Library,” she muttered to Haral; and Haral dived for the comp, looking to see what Linguistics made of that as a formula. Meanwhile she stalled; and the hair on her backbone stood up. “Kif. Skkukuk. What do you expect from me?”<\/p>\n

“I wait to discover.”<\/p>\n

-“Captain,” Haral muttered, “library’s blank on that idiom.”<\/p>\n

-“Fine. Gods rot.-Kif you take my orders, do you?”<\/p>\n

“I am Chanur’s.”<\/p>\n

She killed the sound. Straightened. “Gods know what that means either. We’ve got a Situation,” she said; and as the number four screen carrying the routine output from station central and traffic control suddenly went all to kifish letters, her jaw dropped. “Gods fry them-“<\/p>\n

Tirun snatched at controls. Nothing better happened. “That’s the station nav output,” Tirun said, hitting keys as fast as her fingers could move. Translation came up: Transmission difficulty. Lights started flashing elsewhere on the com board, urgent communication arriving from incoming Vigilance and Aja Jin, which had just seen their navigation monitors go totally kif.<\/p>\n

Things went chaotic for the moment: Haral swore and started switching systems. Images flickered on the monitors in rapid sequence. “Gods!” Pyanfar hissed, putting kif and airlocks out of her mind in the press of worse disasters. She rang the general alert to bring the crew up. “We got anything to give them?”<\/p>\n

“Station’s not jamming us,” Haral said. “We can output our own scan to our friends out there, but it’s not much, in our position. We can beacon them in to dock right enough.”<\/p>\n

Aft, the lift was working, crew on the way from lowerdecks to the bridge as fast as feet and The Pride’s, lift mechanism could carry them. The alarm bell rang in spurts, drowning other sound at intervals.<\/p>\n

“Message from central,” Tirun said. “Kif say-say: compliments of the hakkikt and they won’t interfere with the docking of our ships. This is relayed . . . We’ve got another call: stsho-that’s a protest. Mahendo’sat-a group is protesting to the kif and wanting rescue. They’re stuck in some shops down the way and they’re afraid to go outside. They want police. Meanwhile the kif are saying mahen crew will handle docking for Aja Jin and Vigilance-The hakkikt’s compliments again.”<\/p>\n

There was a soft noise, a wheeze of leather upholstery: Chur made it back alone and took a post. There were running steps in the corridor behind.<\/p>\n

“What we got?” Chur asked straightway.<\/p>\n

“Got a kifish takeover of the whole gods-forsaken station,” Pyanfar muttered. “Got a gods-be kif in our gods-be access-Get back to bed!”<\/p>\n

“Give me that,” Chur murmured to Tirun, all business; and business went on in mutters and com-chatter.<\/p>\n

A thunder of steps, scrape of claws on decking; more bodies hit the cushions, one, two, three: Haral delivered a terse briefing to late-arriving crew and Pyanfar let it go, finding more and more information popping up on her screens as stations came alive. Vigilance and Aja Jin were still proceeding on their approach toward docking: “Negative. No fire,” she answered the query from the inbound mahendo’sat. “Brief them on it, Tirun.” She spun her chair half about and saw The Pride’s bridge more crowded than it had been since Kshshti: Hilfy and Khym were both at posts.<\/p>\n

“Kif are counting on us to calm it down,” she muttered to the lot of them. “Gods rot it, they’re pushing us hard as they can push. Gods-cursed kif bastard knows we won’t fire cold.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy swiveled her head half-about. “He’s got Tully,” she said, once and tautly. So it was said. The line was drawn.<\/p>\n

And gods be feathered if she wanted to be put under pressure to do what she already told herself she was crazy for doing on her own. Like sitting pat at dock instead of tearing loose and running with what she had.<\/p>\n

“So we’ve got our own detainee,” Pyanfar said, puzzling Hilfy: she saw the ears cant in bewilderment. She opened a channel below to the accessway com. “Skkukuk. What do we do with you?”<\/p>\n

The kif had tucked down in a ball. It stood up and straightened. “I am freezing, hunter Pyanfar.”<\/p>\n

“Good. What if I blow your head off? Would the hakkikt like that? You offend him somehow?”<\/p>\n

“I lack all status with him.”<\/p>\n

“Hope to gain it, do you?”<\/p>\n

“I am hopeless, unless your sfik is greater than it seems.”<\/p>\n

She laid her ears back. “Kif, you want to live?”<\/p>\n

“Naturally.”<\/p>\n

“Strip and get inside that lock. Leave the robes in the lock. Walk into the main corridor. And wait there.”<\/p>\n

It bowed, hands tucked away again.<\/p>\n

She leaned and keyed the outer hatch open, powered the chair around and met Hilfy’s quick, flat-eared stare. “Got ourselves a sfik item down there. Tully it isn’t. We’ll see what we’ve just been handed. Tell Vigilance and Aja Jin we’re playing this business out and staying at dock; they can do what they like about it.”<\/p>\n

“We’ve got scan image going out,” Haral said. “Jik says affirmative, he’s still coming in.”<\/p>\n

“Gods hope he isn’t kidding,” Geran said.<\/p>\n

“Gods hope,” Pyanfar muttered. Visions of attack assailed her. One swift blast at the dock from either of her two incoming allies and it was ail over. But she trusted Jik. She hoped. “Khym. Come on.”<\/p>\n

“You going down there?” Hilfy asked, turning her chair about.<\/p>\n

“Nose to that board, youngster. Stay put. Come on, Khym. This one’s yours.”<\/p>\n

Khym’s ears came up. He had not looked so cheerful since they took him into fire on the docks in the Kshshti mess.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had her pocket gun in one hand, a com unit at her belt with the gain turned up full as the two of them rode the lift down. Khym had his bare hands; and those were not bad odds–unless, she thought, the kif down in their airlock had a knife or worse: gods witness, they were not a warship, to have security precautions and detectors. They went on guess-work, took the gamble-<\/p>\n

-lunatic, a small voice said. For a bedraggled, half-crazed human’s sake, to risk The Pride.<\/p>\n

“Don’t push it,” she said to Khym while the lift was on the way down. She thumbed the safety off the pistol. “Gods forbid it’s called our bluff and brought us a grenade.”<\/p>\n

“What do you do then?” Khym asked.<\/p>\n

“Throw it back, for godssakes! How should I know?” The thought ruffled her nape-hairs. And punching the button on the in-lift com: “Haral-Stand by that inside hatch release!”<\/p>\n

The lift door whisked open. She walked out after Khym with her gun ready in her hand.<\/p>\n

“Now, captain?” Haral asked.<\/p>\n

“Now.” –<\/p>\n

A corridor and a half away the airlock’s inner hatch opened. Pyanfar grabbed Khym by the arm and jerked him over to the side of the corridor where there was vantage.<\/p>\n

Like a black slither of freefall oil, -the kif rounded the corner and stood there a good distance down the longest corridor The Pride had-stood there, all gangling gray-black nakedness, hands out to show that they were empty.<\/p>\n

“All right,” she said, never taking the gun off the kif s middle. “You keep those palms out, kif, and keep them in plain sight.”<\/p>\n

“The air stinks.”<\/p>\n

“It stinks out there too, kif. Just come a bit forward. Stop right there. Khym, go to the lock and get its clothes. Search them for weapons.”<\/p>\n

“There is my knife and my pistol,” the kif said.<\/p>\n

“Fine. Move it, Khym.”<\/p>\n

Khym went-not without queasiness, that passing in the corridor. Khym flattened his ears as he went by the kif. The kif half turned its head, the hunched shoulders, the forward thrust of the long jaw become something strangely serpentine and graceful. The kif continued the motion in reverse, swinging back to her. The hands lifted, showing empty palms.<\/p>\n

“You’re mine, huh?” Pyanfar said sourly. “What’s Sikkukkut got in mind in this exchange? I don’t trade my claim on the human. Hear?”<\/p>\n

It made a slow move of its hands. “I hear.”<\/p>\n

“So answer, you earless bastard. What are you doing here?”<\/p>\n

“Waiting,” it said.<\/p>\n

“For what?”<\/p>\n

It gave a kifish shrug. “I don’t know.”<\/p>\n

“You hand me puzzles, kif, I’ll skin you.”<\/p>\n

Khym reappeared in the corridor behind the kif with his hands full of black cloth and leather. “Knife and gun,” he called out. ” Nothing else.”<\/p>\n

“Bring its robes. Give them to it.”<\/p>\n

He brought them. Dropped them at the kif s side.<\/p>\n

“May I?” the kif asked.<\/p>\n

She motioned with the gun. It bowed its head and moved very slowly, gathered its belongings and held them to its chest with that hunch of shoulders and lowering of head peculiar to kif. It looked sinister in one instant, beaten and pathetic in the next, in each shifting shadow on the gray-black, wrinkled skin.<\/p>\n

The hairs rose on her back. “Khym. Open up that washroom. Skkukuk. Inside with you.”<\/p>\n

The head lifted. “It is a waste,” Skkukuk said. “Give me my weapons and I shall give you your rivals.”<\/p>\n

”Inside.”<\/p>\n

“I serve a fool.”<\/p>\n

“Not a great enough fool to turn my back on you, kif. Either Sikkukkut sent you or Sikkukkut threw you out; and in either case I don’t want you.”<\/p>\n

Skkukut’s head drew down between his shoulders. With that same serpentine grace he turned away and passed the open washroom door. But she thought that she had scored.<\/p>\n

“Tully’s old quarters,” Pyanfar said to Khym, who lingered outside. “Toss it the rest of its garb.”<\/p>\n

“We keeping this thing?”<\/p>\n

“Heave it.”<\/p>\n

Khym tossed boots and belt through the door. The pistol and knife he kept. And shut the door and locked it. “It’ll probably wreck the room,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That’s the least of our troubles.”<\/p>\n

“What’s it want, for the gods’ own sakes?”<\/p>\n

“You guess, you tell me.” She thumbed the safety back on her pistol, discovering her knees had gone to jelly. “Gods rot, I got a kif on my ship, and he wants to know what for. How should I know? I got ships incoming, I got a station in<\/p>\n

kif hands, and the kif are playing tag.” She turned and stalked back toward the lift, turned again. “Stand guard down here. Doublecheck that gods-rotted lock that it’s closed, put that stuff away, and for the gods’ own sake you open that washroom door-I don’t care if the kif blows up, you open that door I’ll space you first, then the kif! Hear me?” His ears went down. His jaw dropped. She walked back into the lift.<\/p>\n

“And next time,” she yelled back down the corridor, “when I say give a thing you don’t drop it, hear?” The door closed. He was still staring. She leaned on the lift wall as the car slammed up. She was shaking, gods, and food occurred to her. Desperately. But there was no time for that. “Haral. What’s going on?” “They’re entering critical approach.” “Both of them?” “Aye, captain. Both incoming.”<\/p>\n

So it was not attack. Vigilance and Aja Jin were both committing themselves to dock and there was nothing left to defend their vulnerable backsides.<\/p>\n

The car stopped; the doors opened. She stalked down the corridor toward the bridge.<\/p>\n

“They’re on our beacon,” Haral’s voice continued from the com, tracking her on speakers down the corridor. “Kif are outputting guidance now. It jibes with ours. So far. Captain, we got another problem. Station-folk. We got our boards jammed with queries. We got panic out there.”<\/p>\n

She muttered oaths and quickened her pace. Station riot. It was enough to coagulate any spacer’s blood. “We’ve got to hold this dock,” she said, arriving through corridor’s end onto the bridge; and not a harried head turned when her voice acquired a body. “Hilfy. Be polite. Tell the station-folk we got a sniper problem on this particular stretch of dock and keep off it.” She flung herself into her own chair and sent it whining about into position. Screens showed her what information The Pride could gather with station output reduced.<\/p>\n

“Kif might agree to damp those station calls down,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

“Better they get through. Less panic that way. Ten thousand citizens pouring down here after news is the last thing we need.”<\/p>\n

“Uhnn.” Haral sent another list her way. “Messages you might want to see.”<\/p>\n

She scanned it.<\/p>\n

-Compliments of the hakkikt: system scan transmission is resumed for incoming ships. It will be accurate.<\/p>\n

-The Personage urgently requests information-<\/p>\n

-We make protests this insane and irresponsible action. Protest will be filed stsho authority-<\/p>\n

-Compliments of the hakkikt, docking crews are ordered into position-<\/p>\n

Thank the gods.<\/p>\n

Jik of Aja Jin entered the bridge, Jik-alone: he wandered in like some bewildered spacer hunting a proper bar, his black face doleful and worried as ever. He wore a gold collar and half a dozen bracelets; a broad gold and bronze belt above a kilt of purple and bronze stripes; carried an AP gun in its black holster over all of this, weapon enough to take out half the bridge; two knives-Jik rarely underequipped himself, and the condition of the docks out there did not encourage optimism. “About time, Jik,” Pyanfar said to him.<\/p>\n

“See? Tell you that new engine hold, a? You number one sharp, Pyanfar, handle this ship good. Ker Hilfy, good see you ‘live.”<\/p>\n

“Na Jik.” Formal and self-contained. “Good to see you.”<\/p>\n

Not when do we go in, how soon? Give me a gun. Hilfy kept to drill, part of crew. But if she had smiled since her rescue, it was perfunctory, tightly measured.<\/p>\n

Through the several waiting hours.<\/p>\n

Everyone waited. They waited still, disposed about the bridge, even Chur, who sat propped up in bandages-“You damn tough,” Jik vouchsafed, nodding Chur’s way. Chur flicked her ears. “I pass na Khym, a, say he got stand guard down in lower corridor. Ehrran clan all same got you airlock secure.” Jik leaned this rattling magnificence against the nearest counter edge, bit at a hangnail of one non-retracting claw. He looked weary as the rest of them. His eyes had wrinkles about their edges. There were deep creases by the corners of his mouth. “Also got hani guard take position on dockside. That Ehrran, she got ‘nough security both us, a? Same got quick trigger. Make me worry.”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot it, Jik-you had a look at this dock?”<\/p>\n

He shrugged. ‘His brow rumpled as he glanced up. “Got trouble, sure. Got lot calls, station folk lot panic. Kif Back down the hall the lift worked. “You do number one fine job get in here, hani. Number one fine job get ker Hilfy out.”<\/p>\n

“We’re not through yet. And we’ve got to get out of here again.” She canted her ears toward the recent noise of the lift, turned a glance in that direction. Khym was striding down the corridor with a dark look on his face. She matched the scowl as he walked onto the bridge: he had left his post unasked. But the lift had gone down again, on call. She heard that too.<\/p>\n

“Begging pardon,” Khym said tautly. “Ehrran’s headed topside. I locked up.”<\/p>\n

She took that in the coded way he meant it: he had left the washroom unremarkable to outsiders. Politics and intrigue: he was no fool in that department. Jik did not ask further, in his own indolently gracious way, and bit another hangnail. The lift worked again. Tirun and Geran got to their feet; Hilfy was already standing. Haral stayed by her board. “She fine captain,” Jik murmured, of their arriving guests. “Come in right on mark; good ship, Vigilance. Also damn fool. I like maybe leave one ship undock, little way out-scare these kif. But this hani scare me, a? Same like have chi for ally: crazy. SO I got make her come in dock too. Keep eye on her. She hate you, Pyanfar. Maybe want you have accident.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar’s ears went down. Ears all round the bridge flattened, excepting the minuscule ears of the gold-glittering mane. “She’s a bastard,” Pyanfar said, “but that far, no-She’d like the kif to settle it.”<\/p>\n

And down the hall the lift let out a red-gold, black-breeched crowd of armed hani.<\/p>\n

“Sure brought crew enough,” Tirun muttered. “How many’s she got on that ship, anyhow?”<\/p>\n

“I checked library back at Kshshti,” Haral muttered, “Vigilance runs a good hundred fifty crew. All those offices, you know.”<\/p>\n

“Funny,” Geran said, “when we were short-handed they never had crew to spare.”<\/p>\n

“Funny,” Pyanfar said. “I’d have enjoyed turning them down.”<\/p>\n

The Eyes of the han walked onto the bridge, immaculate, her silken mane and beard in bronze ringlets; her black silk breeches, Immune clan uniform, were crisp and new; the AP gun hung at her hip in well-polished black leather. Elegance. Wealth-Trying to do what? Pyanfar wondered. Attract bandits and kif? Her ears refused to prick up. Her pulse refused to stay at level. Gods rot the Immune and all her ilk. Government officials. Note-takers.<\/p>\n

“Best if we could have avoided this,” Rhif Ehrran said: You botched it, that meant. “Our transmissions from central are all kif. Do we propose to negotiate under these conditions?”<\/p>\n

And Rhif Ehrran looked at Jik, deliberately and exclusively at Jik, past Pyanfar.<\/p>\n

“We’ll manage,” Pyanfar said in Jik’s silence, and Rhif Ehrran turned her head with just enough slowness.<\/p>\n

“I hope so.”<\/p>\n

There was no profit in argument. The Immune was only collecting complaints on Chanur clan dealings. Even yet. The list was already long.<\/p>\n

“We go,” Jik said. “Maybe time we talk be already long! time the way this human reckon, a? Want him back. Val-u-able, a?”<\/p>\n

“We just walk in there.”<\/p>\n

“Won’t be a problem,” Pyanfar said. Deliberately she settled on the arm of Tirun’s vacant chair, informal as Jik, leaving the Immune and her crew standing. “We just walked in, walked out. Kif s real friendly.”<\/p>\n

The han deputy turned, her be-ringed ears flattening. “You want to walk in and do it again, Chanur? Maybe you can finish the job this time.”<\/p>\n

“Fine. It’ll be just fine. You’re delegating to Chanur, are you?”<\/p>\n

Jik stood up, abruptly, with a rattle of his weaponry. “No joke,” he said, moving into the midst. “Got number one serious problem. Not got time hani quarrel. Got one human got bad trouble. Got damn bad mess, kif got station, got plenty scared people, got long time not hear from mahen authority this station. You got way get in there, a, friend Pyanfar?”<\/p>\n

“Sure. Ask. That kif let us in number one quick. It’s getting out again I can’t vouch for.”<\/p>\n

“How many kif?”<\/p>\n

“Last time, maybe a hundred, maybe more. That I saw in that room. Up and down that dock, you’re talking-oh, maybe four, five thousand. Maybe worse.. You got current stats on Mkks?”<\/p>\n

“It’s crazy to go in there,” Rhif Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

“Got idea?” Jik asked.<\/p>\n

“I had the idea,” Rhif Ehrran said, “that coming into dock with all three ships was crazy in the first place, but you had other opinions.”<\/p>\n

“What you want? Shoot up dock? Got cit-i-zen here.”<\/p>\n

-“Captain.” Haral spun her chair about. “I got a blip.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar’s eye was already moving, already taking in the scanimage that flashed to main-screen above all the seats.<\/p>\n

Every eye was. Crew dived for posts without an order. Pyanfar did, abandoning Jik and Rhif Ehrran and her lot to their own devices.<\/p>\n

“Get ID, gods rot it, what’s the output?” She spun her chair about and felt the press of a large weight on the shoulder of her chair. Jik, getting view of the screens: she made no objection, too busy to take account of distractions.<\/p>\n

“That’s stsho output!” Hilfy exclaimed.<\/p>\n

“We gods-blasted hope it is,” Tirun said. “Kif could’ve-“<\/p>\n

“Send to station,” Pyanfar said. “Query.”<\/p>\n

A light on com-output lit: confirmation of the outgoing message. “This is The Pride of Chanur,” Khym’s deep voice rumbled, while other lights signaled activity from other crew. “What’s that ship doing out there?”<\/p>\n

Not proper com-etiquette, gods knew, but direct.<\/p>\n

“Khym, give me the response,” Pyanfar said, and as Rhif Ehrran moved up close and offered some advice: “Get clear. We’re working, rot it.”<\/p>\n

”-of the hakkikt, Pride of Chanur, this information is private.”<\/p>\n

“Give me output!” Pyanfar said; and it arrived. “Kif compliments of Pyanfar Chanur, you by the gods lay a hand on that stsho we’ll yank loose and take your wall out! What’s.<\/p>\n

going on over there?”<\/p>\n

Prolonged silence.<\/p>\n

“Give me that contact,” Rhif Ehrran said, and leaned on her chair back.<\/p>\n

“Not on my bridge.”<\/p>\n

“Stsho’s pulling out,” Haral said. “That’s outbound, vectored nadir. …”<\/p>\n

Better news.<\/p>\n

-“the hakkikt, Pride of Chanur, the stsho undocked without clearance Or docking assist. This is not an attack. This was not authorized. It was unprovoked.”<\/p>\n

“Got station damage, central?”<\/p>\n

Silence a moment. “We are authorized to report so.”<\/p>\n

“Got a problem, don’t you, kif?”<\/p>\n

Silence.<\/p>\n

“Don’t provoke it,” Rhif Ehrran said. “Chanur, give me that.”<\/p>\n

“Hhhhuh.” From Jik. “Let be. Get ship code. No contact.”<\/p>\n

“That’s Nsthenishi,” Hilfy reported. “Comp says Rlen Nle’s its home port.”<\/p>\n

“When rain falls up,” Ehrran said. “Stsho never give ports further in than that. Eggs’ll get you pearls it’s Llyene. That ship is straight from the capital.”<\/p>\n

“Stsho personnel was on the dock,” Pyanfar said, “when we came in. I don’t know where it came from.”<\/p>\n

-“Message from the hakkikt,” the voice from central said. “The situation on this station is already conducive to incidents. Your allies have been permitted contact with you. Are you prepared now to meet and negotiate face to face, or do we expect more delays?”<\/p>\n

“No more delays. We’ll come with our weapons, kif.”<\/p>\n

Silence. “The hakkikt says: All sides will be armed, hunter Pyanfar.”’<\/p>\n

“We’ll be there,” Pyanfar said. “About a quarter hour.” Rhif Ehrran leaned forward. Pyanfar brushed her aside with a forearm and stayed over the directional mike.<\/p>\n

“Rot you-” Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

“This is acceptable.” From the kif.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar cut it off. “That stsho still headed?” she asked rightward.<\/p>\n

“Still,” Haral said.<\/p>\n

“Monitor that output.” She swung the chair about, looked up at Jik. “So we try for Tully this time.. We ready?”<\/p>\n

“You have no authority to negotiate,” Rhif Ehrran said. “Leave this to us from here on. You got as much as you can get easily. You’d serve us better staying here.”<\/p>\n

“Easily, huh?” At the boards the tracking and translating went on. Pyanfar stood up and stared at the backs of her crew. “Shut down to Hilfy and Chur’s posts. Shunt command to Chur, Haral. We’re going on a walk down the docks, we are.” And when Hilfy turned her chair about, mouth open. “Hilfy, niece-you’re a provocation to them, and I think .you know it. You’re staying here.”<\/p>\n

“Aunt-” Hilfy got to her feet.<\/p>\n

“Sfik, niece. You’re a prize in this, like it or not, and bringing you back into the hakkikt’s reach is asking for more kifish tricks. Sit tight. And let Chur do the talking to central. Let’s try to get Tully out of there, huh? Efficiently and quietly. For his sake.”<\/p>\n

Hilfy’s jaw clamped. Her ears were back, her claws dug into the seatback. But: “Aye,” she said. Everyone but Chur was getting to her feet. Khym too. And the Ehrran crowd stood there aftward on the bridge, blackbreeches among whom her Rhif took her stance, still scowling, while Jik leaned his rump against a cabinet and rubbed behind one ear.<\/p>\n

“Is she running this?” Rhif Ehrran asked indignantly. “Captain Nomesteturjai, I undertook this business on your government’s request, understanding you personally requested-“<\/p>\n

“My government same request you go with,” Jik said. “Same request you got patience, honorable. Chanur got thing organized, a?”<\/p>\n

“Come on,” Pyanfar said. “Guns, Tirun. Let’s get this moving.”<\/p>\n

“Aye,” Tirun said, and brushed Ehrran crewwomen out of the way of the locker door.<\/p>\n

“Got positive ID on that stsho freighter,” Chur said. “And they’re not stopping for anything.”<\/p>\n

“It go home,” Jik said, “got plenty disturb.”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot,” Ehrran said, “what more did it need? We’ve got a stsho in the middle of this incident, tc’a and chi-.”<\/p>\n

“Got also mahendo’sat cit-i-zen on this station,” Jik said pointedly. His smallish ears were flat. “Maybe same got mahen agent, a?”<\/p>\n

“Yours?”<\/p>\n

Jik shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I got check files. But I got other bet: when Sikkukkut come in here, some damn kif escape tell kif authority at Harak system. Four, five day ago. Maybe ‘nother go Kshshti. We got move, get thing fix right, a, Pyanfar? Soon maybe got whole damn lot kif here.”<\/p>\n

“Let’s go,” she said. She took the rifle Geran passed to her, while Haral buckled on an AP. Khym took his rifle from Geran’s hand and checked the safety in rapid order.<\/p>\n

“Wait a minute,” Rhif Ehrran said. “Chanur. You’re not taking him out there, are you?”<\/p>\n

“I’m not taking him anywhere. He goes on his own.”<\/p>\n

“Chanur, that’s the limit. I’ve got a file on you that goes-”<\/p>\n

“I’m sure you do.”<\/p>\n

“Look here, Chanur.” Ehrran’s ears were back and pricked up with a twitching effort. She lifted a hand, one carefully controlled foreclaw crooked. “Practice your cockeyed social theories on your own ship; that’s your business. But when you plan to bring him into a sensitive negotiation and hand him a rifle into the bargain-“<\/p>\n

Rot it, speak up, she wished Khym. But he would not. His ears were down in outrage. It was all dammed up in him: and the temper it deserved if it came from him-would only confirm all the old prejudices Rhif Ehrran served. Unstable males. Hysteria. Berserker rages. He just kept his head down and threw the safety on again. And looked her way.<\/p>\n

He was a lousy shot. But kif were afraid of anything his size. Justifiably, if he got into it hand to hand.<\/p>\n

“I’d rather have him at my back,” Pyanfar said studiedly, “than some.” She slung the rifle into carry, deliberately looking elsewhere, finding it convenient to throw a glance in Hilfy’s direction. “Stay topside, will you?”<\/p>\n

Because, o gods, they had a kifish guest below; and the last thing she wanted on her mind was worry over Hilfy and Chur with a kif loose on the ship.<\/p>\n

“Get him out,” Hilfy said.<\/p>\n

“I’ll do that.”<\/p>\n

“Chanur,” Rhif Ehrran said, “for the record, his presence and your insistence is going in the report.”<\/p>\n

“Fine. Maybe you’ll be able to deliver it to the han in person. Or maybe none of us will ever have to worry about it, huh?” She waved her left hand. “Out!”<\/p>\n

“You don’t give the orders on this.”<\/p>\n

“We go,” Jik said, bestirring himself from his cabinet-edge.<\/p>\n

“That quarter-hour’s getting short,” Pyanfar said- She lagged behind, seeing Ehrran’s blackbreeched lot out the door, and Jik, and her own crew. She paused for a backward look, then strode through the others to overtake Jik halfway down the hall.<\/p>\n

“Got few my crew wait outside,” Jik said as she came even with him. “They watch the ship.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe,” Pyanfar said reluctantly, “Chanur and Ehrran ought to go in there solo and let you and yours hold the dockside. Kif know you, Jik. Know you real well. You stay here, back me and Ehrran up; that’s all we need.”<\/p>\n

Jik rubbed his nose. “Long time I hunt kif. Sure thing they want me. Same want you, Pyanfar. Want bad. Maybe even want han deputy, a? But kif mind, that be crazy thing: we kill kif, no matter: that give us lot sfik with them. We not got sfik, they eat our heart number one sure. We got sfik, they want eat our heart-but same time think maybe they get sfik off us ‘nother way. Like deal with us. Like they hope maybe we make more trouble on their rivals, a, than we make on them? We all go talk to Sikkukkut. We lose sfik else.”<\/p>\n

“You know what you’re doing,” Pyanfar said.<\/p>\n

“Sure,” Jik said cheerfully. “Number one sure.”<\/p>\n

It gave her no reassurance. Neither that nor that washroom door they passed in the lower corridor on their way to the lock: she glanced that direction, and the hair bristled on her nape.<\/p>\n

Kill it, instinct said. Kill the kif hostage outright, let it vanish without a trace. Keep Sikkukkut guessing.<\/p>\n

But where was the sfik in that, and what was she supposed to do with such a gift?<\/p>\n

Be a fool and let it loose?<\/p>\n

One stsho merchant was already loose and running, bolting dock. If one shot went off on that dock and panicked the traders, more ships might break loose from Mkks dock. ships lacking the stsho’s obsessively pacifist tendencies. There were the methane-breathers, for one large instance.<\/p>\n

It was a trap, of course. They had suddenly lost the rhythm of things and kept the kif’s schedule, for a prize the kif still held.<\/p>\n

No kif ever yielded anything without gain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

An eerie quiet persisted on the docks. A few blackbreeched Ehrran clan personnel were visible in vantage points, armed with rifles; .doubtless a few such were not visible at all; and there were two more Ehrran crewwomen stationed up inside the ramp, guarding The Pride’s airlock and accessway. Less ominous and more, a solitary, AP-wearing mahendo’sat slouched her way up to her captain in specific. Sleekly black, gold glittering as Jik himself, she had half an ear missing and a bald streak on a burn scar down her jaw.<\/p>\n

Jik spoke to his crewwoman rapidly in some language they both shared, of Iji’s great multitude. “A,” the woman said, and with her hand on the AP gun’s butt, moved off again into shadows near the gantry.<\/p>\n

“Khury,” Rhif Ehrran muttered to her aide, “get back to the ship; take charge. And if we don’t get back, get home directly and make a thorough report to the han.”<\/p>\n

It was Enaury hani the Ehrran spoke; Pyanfar caught it: so would Geran, but not likely anyone else. And Pyanfar ducked her head and rubbed her nose-better say less than one knew than more, she reckoned. With the han deputy it was certainly the case. There were already mounds and mountains of reports aboard that ship, to the delight of Chanur’s enemies when Ehrran got back to Anuurn and that collection of complaints got to the han debating floor-<\/p>\n

And a certain stsho check was on its way to a mahen bank at Maing Tol, if it had not gotten there already. When that hit the desk of a certain Personage-<\/p>\n

The han’s deputy had not discovered that small matter yet.<\/p>\n

Nor had Jik.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar lifted her head and the oncoming kif welcoming committee looked almost friendly in that light.<\/p>\n

They did not turn in at the same corridor as before. The half-dozen kifish guides brought them further and further down the open dock, and the paper and ammonia smell even surmounted the cold in this sector. The light was dim and murkish orange-gold, the only visual warmth in the gray and black of their surroundings. The signs were kifish, in crawling, dotted script.<\/p>\n

Kifish ships were docked along the row at their left; kifish dens lined the right hand, deserted and quiet, which lent no reassurance at all. The hair prickled down Pyanfar’s back as more and more of the horizon unfurled; it went all bristled as all the missing kif suddenly showed up past the curtaining overhead girders of the station’s curve-a dark mass ahead, a gathering of thousands on the docks.<\/p>\n

O gods, she thought. Her legs wanted to stop right there; but Jik had not even hesitated, nor had Ehrran-perhaps they waited on her, on Chanur, who they thought had been this route before.<\/p>\n

“More of them than last time,” Pyanfar said, breaking the spell of caution. “Gods-rotted lot more of them.”<\/p>\n

Jik made some sound in his throat. A noise grew ahead, like nothing she had ever heard-clicking and talking all at once, the roar of kifish speech from thousands of kifish mouths together. And they were obliged to walk through this congregation. She was conscious of Khym at her back, hair-triggered; of Haral and Tirun and Geran, steady as they came, And Rhif Ehrran and her handful; Jik striding along with legs that could match a kifish stride and instead kept pace with theirs, holding their guides to a hani pace.<\/p>\n

She slipped the safety off her rifle as the scene came down off the upcurved floor and straightened itself out in the crazy tilting of things on station docks. It became flat, became distinct as hooded, robed kif standing about, became kif on all sides of them, close at hand, turning to stare at them as they passed with their escort. A clicking rose-“Kk-kk-kk. Kk-kk-kk.” Everywhere, that soft, mocking sound.<\/p>\n

Kif territory for sure. Outnumbered, out-gunned a thousand times and three. If it got to shooting here-gods help them. Nothing else would.<\/p>\n

And if they had to enter one of the ships at dock to do their bargaining- they were in no position to protest the matter.<\/p>\n

The kif guiding them brushed other black-robed, hooded kif from their path like parting a field of nightbound grass; and indicated a double-doored passage into a dark like that other dark hole, into a place thicker with kif stench and the reek of drink.<\/p>\n

Kokitikk, the flowing sign above the door proclaimed-at least the symbols looked like that. Entry prohibited, mahen letters said. Kifish service only.<\/p>\n

Gods, that would keep the tourists out.<\/p>\n

“Meeting-hall,” Jik said.<\/p>\n

Kifish noise rose about them as they entered, noise from tables at either hand. There was a clatter of glasses-the smell of alcohol. And of blood.<\/p>\n

“Gods save us,” Geran muttered. “Drunk kif. That’s the last.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar walked ahead, rifle at carry, keeping close by Jik’s side. Rhif Ehrran caught up with a lengthening of her stride. There were chairs all about of the sort Sikkukkut had used; there were lamps and smoking bowls of incense that offended the nose and sent smoke curling up against the orange, dirty light. Kif shadows, kif shapes-kkkt, they whispered. In mockery. Kkkt.<\/p>\n

And their half-dozen kifish guides drifted ahead like black specters, clearing them a way. The muttering grew raucous. Jaws clicked. Glasses rattled with ice. There were red LED gleams about the fringes of the hall, rifle ready-lights.<\/p>\n

“It’s a gods-cursed bar,” Rhif Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

The crowd opened out, creating a little open space. In the midst were kifish chairs, a floor-hugging table.<\/p>\n

A kif sat alone at that table, beneath a hanging light.<\/p>\n

Its robed arm lifted and beckoned.<\/p>\n

There was a stirring all about the room as kif rose from chairs for vantage.<\/p>\n

“Sit down,” the kif at the table said. “Keia.” It was Jik’s first name, his true one. “Pyanfar. My friends-“<\/p>\n

“Where’s Tully?” Pyanfar asked.<\/p>\n

“Tully. Yes.” Sikkukkut moved his hand, and kif about him stirred. There was-a mahen shout, unmistakable; a yelp of something in pain. “But the human is no longer the only matter in contention.”<\/p>\n

The dark crowd parted near doors to the rear; and those doors opened. Dark shapes not kif were thrust forward and held fast-mahendo’sat prisoners, some in kilts, several the robes of station officials. One had badges of religious; importance. And a solitary stsho, pale, its gossamer robe smudged, its pearly skin stained with kifish light and smeared with dark patches. Its state was dreadful; it swayed and kif held it on its feet.<\/p>\n

“A,” Jik said. “So the stsho leave Mkks got reason.”<\/p>\n

“Mkks station,” Sikkukkut said, “is mine. Its officials have formally ceded it to me in all its operations. Sit and talk, my friends.”<\/p>\n

It was Jik who moved first, walking forward to settle himself on one of the several black, insect-legged chairs that ringed that table. Pyanfar went to Sikkukkut’s other side, and set a foot on the chair seat, crouched down seated with the rifle over her raised knee and canted easily at Sikkukkut. There was one seat left. Rhif Ehrran filled it. Haral and Tirun moved up at Pyanfar’s back; Khym and Geran and the rest of the Ehrran hani close about the table, with a wall of kif behind.<\/p>\n

“You let folk go,” Jik said. He opened a pouch one-handed, took out a smoke and fished up a small lighter. It flared briefly. Jik drew on the stick and let out a gray breath of smoke. “Old friend.”<\/p>\n

“Do you propose a trade?” Sikkukkut said.<\/p>\n

“I not merchant.”<\/p>\n

“No,” the kif said. “Neither am I.” He made a negligent move of his hand, and Pyanfar caught a whiff of something else, something strange and hers and scared, half a breath before another white thing was shoved into view through the wall of kif. Tully crashed down with arms on the table-edge between her and Sikkukkut. “There. Take him as a gift.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar did not stir. Hunter-vision was centered only on the kif, the trigger under her finger, with the rifle against her knee. If Tully raised up too far, Tully would be in the line of fire. It was intended. She knew it was. She adjusted the knee and the rifle into a higher line. Sikkukkut’s face, this time. “You want your hostage back?”<\/p>\n

“Skkukuk? No. That one is for your entertainment. Let’s talk about things of consequence.”<\/p>\n

Rhif Ehrran’s ears had pricked. Jik let out a great cloud of smoke that drifted up and mingled with kifish incense. “We got time.”<\/p>\n

“Excellent. Hokki.” Sikkukkut picked up his cup from the table and filled it with something that reeked like petroleum and looked rotten green. He drank and set the cup down, looking toward Pyanfar. “You?”<\/p>\n

“I’ve got plenty of time.”<\/p>\n

“Even before Kshshti,” Sikkukkut said, “even before that, at Meetpoint, I had converse with Ismehanan-min. Goldtooth, hunter Pyanfar calls him. I advised him to avoid certain points and certain contacts. You’ll have noticed that the stsho vessel has deserted us now.”<\/p>\n

“Same notice,” Jik said dryly.<\/p>\n

“You’ll have noticed a certain distress on the part of this stsho who remains with us-kkkt, perhaps you would care to question this one. A negotiator, gtst claims to be-“<\/p>\n

“You tell,” Jik said, puffing a cloud of smoke. “You got something drink, friend kif?”<\/p>\n

“Indeed. Koskkit. Hikekkti ktotok kkok.-” A wave of his hand. A kif departed. “Were you always at Chanur’s back?”<\/p>\n

“No, not. Crazy accident I come Kshshti. Friend Pyanfar say she got trouble. So I come. Bring this fine hani.” A nod Ehrran’s way. “You remember, a?”<\/p>\n

“Meetpoint,” Sikkukkut said. The long-jawed face lifted. There was no readable expression. “Yes. This hani was dealing with the grass-eaters.”<\/p>\n

Rhif Ehrran coughed. “By treaty, let me remind you-“<\/p>\n

Sikkukkut waved his hand. “I have no desire for treaties. Operations interest me. Chanur interests me.”<\/p>\n

“Hunter Sikkukkut, there’s been a persistent misunderstanding of hani channels of authority.”<\/p>\n

O gods, Pyanfar thought, and felt sick at the stomach. Hunter, indeed. Rhif Ehrran demoted the kif in a word, in front of his subordinates.<\/p>\n

“It seems mutual,” Sikkukkut said, with equanimity and heavy irony, and pointedly turned his attention from Ehrran. “Hunter Pyanfar, I will speak with you. And my old friend Keia. When did we last trade shots? Kita, was it?”<\/p>\n

“You at Mirkti?” Jik asked.<\/p>\n

“Not I.”<\/p>\n

“Kita, then.” Another puff at the stick. Jik flicked ash onto the floor. “We got shoot here?”<\/p>\n

“Mahen bluntness.-That thing is a foul habit, Keia.”<\/p>\n

Jik laughed, replaced the smokestick in his mouth. “True.” He glanced aside as a kif approached him with a glass. He sniffed it and drank. “Mahen. Nice stuff.”<\/p>\n

“Ssskkt. I appreciate it now and again.”<\/p>\n

“What got?”<\/p>\n

“My business? Very serious business. Mahen interference. Stsho connivance with hani. This humanity-” Sikkukkut reached down and lifted Tully’s chin. “How are you faring’.’ Are you well, kkkt? Understanding this?” He let go and Tully kept his head up, white-faced and sweating and incidentally in the line of fire till he slumped and rested his arms on the table. “This humanity is a problem. Not alone has their presence disrupted trade: we do not, ourselves, depend so much on trade. . . . kkkt? But stsho do. Stsho fear any thing that comes near them. So the balance of the Compact is upset. And when that balance tilts, so agreements fall; and when agreements fall, so authorities give way – so there is disarrangement. This is our perspective. And our opportunity. Akkukkak first brought this creature into Compact space. Had it been my doing, of course, I would have fared better, kkkt?”<\/p>\n

“Akkukkak dead. Lot dis-arrangement, a?”<\/p>\n

“We trust that he is dead. The knnn are unpredictable. Perhaps he will turn up in a bazaar in some trade – but let us assume he is out. Presently there is Akkhtimakt. Akkhtimakt styles himself hakkikt, holds Kita, disrupting traffic – “<\/p>\n

” – make lousy big trouble,” Jik said.<\/p>\n

“Have you dislodged him?”<\/p>\n

“I maybe do. Maybe not. Why you raid Kshshti dock?”<\/p>\n

“Ah. Now, there you are mistaken. The Kshshti Personage has a traitor on the staff – “<\/p>\n

“Not got now.”<\/p>\n

“Kkkt. You redeem my opinion of you. But this spy was Akkhtimakt ‘s operative, not mine.”<\/p>\n

“Ummmn. You same got spy at Kshshti?”<\/p>\n

“Not now. But then I did. When the human was crossing the docks – Akkhtimakt’s agents moved to seize him. And I, fortunately, foreknew it. So I was on the hunt as well. Kkkt. Would Kshshti have fared so well in that firefight if kif had not fought kif on that dock? Mahendo’sat have me to thank; I believe thank is the expression – at any rate I stepped in and gathered up the prize before Akkhtimakt’s agents could seize it. There was no negotiating there, at Kshshti, with everything astir, with every probability Akkhtimakt’s agents would presently report all this – I am discreet no longer. By this intervention at Kshshti I have challenged my rival openly. Now I contend with him. And I surmised correctly that you would follow me, hunter Pyanfar, as soon as your ship could move.”<\/p>\n

“What’s the deal?” Pyanfar asked.<\/p>\n

“You might, you know, put the safety on that thing.”<\/p>\n

“Huh. Might. But I’m comfortable, hakkikt.”<\/p>\n

The snout wrinkled in what might be humor. “You don’t trust my word.”<\/p>\n

“The deal, hakkikt.”<\/p>\n

“Ah. Kkkt. Yes. In simplicity: I have chosen Mkks as my temporary base. And my motives and yours coincide.”<\/p>\n

“Do they?”<\/p>\n

“Kkkt. There are fools at large. Many fools. Stsho seek a way to prevent humankind from going through their space. Stsho connive with hani-am I right, deputy?-against mahendo’sat, who would wish to bring humans through at our backs, for reasons not lost to us. How quickly Keia distracted me when I mentioned stsho negotiators! But we know. To gain a foothold at Meetpoint, mahendo’sat route humans through tc’a space. Unwise. Vastly unwise. Stsho will not tolerate this any more than the other-and the very possibility of a human route approaching their territory or even their neighbor and ally tc’a-agitates them beyond rationality. Akkhtimakt operates with the fist. I, with the knife. Akkhtimakt wishes humans barred. But I am, among kif, your friend. Our motives frequently coincide. Is this not a better definition of alliance than friendship?”<\/p>\n

Jik let out a puff of smoke. “You wrong, friend. Human got own idea. Damn stupid. But they want come through.”<\/p>\n

“They have urging. Do they not?”<\/p>\n

“Who know? Tell you got number one serious thing, methane-breather upset. We got trouble. Kif got trouble. Not all profit, either side. A?”<\/p>\n

“You are willing to deal.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe.” Another puff of smoke. “What you got I want?”<\/p>\n

“Mkks.”<\/p>\n

Jik flicked ash. “A. Now we talk kif logic.”<\/p>\n

” You understand.”<\/p>\n

“Sure thing. You no trade. Maybe give gift. You give me Mkks. I then got plenty sfik. make good ally, a? Maybe do something more.”<\/p>\n

“Take Kefk.”<\/p>\n

Jik’s heavy brow shot up. The stick hesitated on its way to his mouth. Arrived. “So. Maybe.”<\/p>\n

Take Kefk. Only take the only kifish gateway to Meetpoint, the one kifish channel to the biggest trading point in the Compact-a major station and probably the most sensitive spot in kifish space outside Akkht itself. Pyanfar kept her ears erect with the greatest of efforts, kept a bland look on her face; and counted the kif and her ally stark mad.<\/p>\n

“You think it possible,” Sikkukkut said.<\/p>\n

“I got allies. You got same. We go take Kefk.” Jik took a final drag on the stick and drowned it in the dregs of the drink. “Personnel this station take back jobs. Then I take Kefk. You want?”<\/p>\n

“Wait a minute,” said Rhif Ehrran. ” Wait a minute.”<\/p>\n

“I talk to her,” Jik said without a look in that direction. “Got same good friend Pyanfar, one tough bastard hani. You want Kefk, fine. You get.”<\/p>\n

“Alliance,” Sikkukkut said. “Myself and your Personage.”<\/p>\n

“You got.”<\/p>\n

“It’s more than talk we’ve got to do,” Rhif Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

“The han deputy wants to know her advantage in this,” Sikkukkut said. “But hani have allied with kif before. The deputy knows whereof I speak. Hani have formed various associations.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar slid a glance Ehrran’s way; the deputy’s ears were down.<\/p>\n

“What,” Ehrran asked, “does the hakkikt know about hani allied with kif?”<\/p>\n

“One word. Tahar. Does that interest you?”<\/p>\n

“Where is Tahar?”<\/p>\n

“In service to Akkhtimakt. Moon Rising is one of his ships and Tahar one of his skkukun. Not high in his estimation- but of some use to him.”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot,” Pyanfar muttered, and looked at Sikkukkut herself.<\/p>\n

“A hani famed for treason-treason, is that not the word?”<\/p>\n

“It’s close enough. Where is she?”<\/p>\n

The kif shrugged, smooth as oiled silk. “Where is Akkhtimakt? Now does confrontation interest you?”<\/p>\n

“She do fine,” Jik said, studying the ice in the glass, in Rhif Ehrran’s silence. “What say, hakkikt?”<\/p>\n

“Ssko kjiokhkt nokthokkti ksho mhankhti akt.” Sikkukkut waved a hand. “The station personnel are free to go.”<\/p>\n

“A.” Jik twisted half about in his chair, leaned back within view of the mahendo’sat and stsho. “Shio! Ta hamhensi nanshe sphisoto shanti-shasti no.”<\/p>\n

There was babble. The stsho shrilled; and the mahendo’sat left the kif s hands and headed for the door, walking at first, then moving with increasing speed. The stsho ran, fell, scrambled up and fled through the chittering crowd even before the mahendo’sat.<\/p>\n

Jik turned around again when the jam in the doorway had cleared. He pulled another stick from his belt and lit it. “How many ship you got?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“Here? All kif here are mine but one. And that one is disabled; its crew-is presently rearranging its loyalties.”<\/p>\n

“Fourteen ship. We got three. No problem. Akkhtimakt maybe come Kshshti; maybe come Mkks. Not good you stay here, all same. Advice come free, a?”<\/p>\n

“So Mkks will fall again-if Akkhtimakt comes here.”<\/p>\n

“He not stay. Got no reason stay.” Another expansive puff of smoke. “He quick learn we go Kefk, a? So he come. He leave Mkks, come Kefk number one quick, pay you visit.”<\/p>\n

Wrinkles chained up Sikkukkut’s snout. “So by aiding me you aid Mkks.”<\/p>\n

“You right, friend.”<\/p>\n

“Hunter Pyanfar, where are your loyalties in this?”<\/p>\n

“Myself. My crew. My friends. Jik wants us there, I don’t doubt we’ll talk about it.”<\/p>\n

“So. And a promise. Will you keep it?”<\/p>\n

“Thought kif didn’t have the word.”<\/p>\n

“You do.”<\/p>\n

She scowled. “I do.”<\/p>\n

“Then take your human as a gift. Join us. I will give the orders in this attack. I will personally provide you information on Kefk defenses.”<\/p>\n

“Jik?”<\/p>\n

“You promise. Got no problem.”<\/p>\n

She shot Jik one long, burning look. But he did not look her way, studying instead the contents of his glass. She looked back over the rifle barrel balanced on her knee.<\/p>\n

“Jik and I will talk about it.”<\/p>\n

“You go,” Jik said.<\/p>\n

“Huh,” she said.<\/p>\n

“She promise.”<\/p>\n

“Excellent.” Sikkukkut unfolded upward from his chair. There was a stir among the kif. “You are all free. Take that as my gift.”<\/p>\n

He drew back. Blackrobed kif surrounded them.<\/p>\n

“Tully.” Pyanfar reached out and nudged Tully with her foot, her rifle in both hands. “Tully. Up. We get you out of here. You walk, Tully.”<\/p>\n

He gathered himself up, holding to Sikkukkut’s vacated chair, and stood wobbling on his feet. No one said anything. Likely Rhif Ehrran was choking on what she wanted to say about the situation, but it was not the time or place for it. Pyanfar stood up and let her rifle hang at carry, laid her hand on Tully’s bare, claw-streaked shoulder. It was icy cold. There was a deep and healing wound on his arm. Come on,” she said. “With us.”<\/p>\n

He walked. Geran took his arm with her left hand, her right on the butt of her pistol. Jik was up-he had the stick still in his mouth, and drew yet another puff on the foul thing. Rhif Ehrran was on her feet and drew her own crew into retreat.<\/p>\n

It was a long walk through the silent kifish crowd to the door, a slow one, at Tully’s pace. But they made it out into the comparatively bright light of the docks, the atmosphere laden with oils and volatiles that hit like a gust of fresh air after the closeness of the meeting hall.<\/p>\n

Khym walked along with them, Haral out in front. Tirun carried her rifle left-handed to keep Tully on his feet, with Jik and Rhif Ehrran bringing up the rear. Pyanfar cast a look back: gods, Jik was puffing on that filthy thing all the way and scattering ashes as he went. But kif kept hands off them. There were stares from the crowd outside, and there was muttering, but nothing worse.<\/p>\n

“You get quick you ship,” Jik said, as Pyanfar fell back to walk beside him. “Got lot work, hani, lot work.”<\/p>\n

“It’s your intention to go through with this,” Rhif Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

“Number one sure. You want wait here, say hello Akkhtimakt? Got also other big trouble. That stsho go out from here. Maybe go Kshshti-maybe instead go Kefk, a, on way to Meetpoint. Maybe talk too much. Stsho lot talk. Not good thing we get compli-cation. Stsho make same, a? Go.”<\/p>\n

“There’s a limit to what treaty makes me liable to. We’ll discuss this, na Jik.”<\/p>\n

“Fine. Same time you lay course. We do same. I tell you, I bet some kif leave here, go Kshshti. They tell Akkhtimakt what happen here at Mkks, we got small time. Akkhtimakt got fast ship. Same got trouble with kif maybe go Harak. Same trouble stsho go Kefk-lot smart, stsho: maybe got rumor already Akkhtimakt come Kshshti, so run damn quick go Kefk, go Meetpoint’-maybe Tt’v’va’o, maybe Llyene- Bet Sikkukkut lot unhappy not stop that ship.”<\/p>\n

“You’ve stopped coinciding with han interests.”<\/p>\n

“A. Then maybe wish you goodbye, lot luck. Akkhtimakt eat you heart.”<\/p>\n

“You foul this up-“<\/p>\n

“-he eat mine. Number one sure, hani. Akkhtimakt want me, long time.” He put his hand amid Rhif Ehrran’s back and hastened them along. “Best we move, a?”<\/p>\n

“Kefk, for the gods’ sake,” Pyanfar muttered.<\/p>\n

“Easy stuff.”<\/p>\n

“Then why for the gods’ sake hasn’t Sikkukkut done It?”<\/p>\n

“Sfik.” Jik took the stick from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke. “Need sfik, make convince other kif, a? Now he got us. We all got lot sfik, le-gi-ti-macy, a?”<\/p>\n

“Lunacy,” she muttered.<\/p>\n

“You run, good friend?”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot it, you’d find some reason why not.”<\/p>\n

Jik grinned and put the stick back in his mouth. “You owe me. When Chanur ever default on debt, a?”<\/p>\n

“Gods rot your hide.”<\/p>\n

She strode along by him, cast occasional looks back, as Ehrran’s crew did. Gods, get us off this dock. More and more kif appeared along the way, all chittering and chattering among themselves. Our allies. Gods!<\/p>\n

And Tully limped along at his own pace, doing the best he could.<\/p>\n

There was the safe area ahead, that portion of the dock under surveillance from their own guns. They reached it, and Pyanfar looked back. The kif had not followed them across that imaginary line . . . thank the gods.<\/p>\n

“We’re safe,” an Ehrran crewwoman said. Ehrran crew stood out from cover on the docks; a few of Jik’s were visible.<\/p>\n

“We’re all right,” Haral said by pocket com, now that they came in range of The Pride’s dockside pickup. “Haral speaking. We got him. He’s all right.”<\/p>\n

Some answer came back. Pyanfar did not hear. She saw Rhif Ehrran sweep a signal to her own crew as they passed the dockage of Ehrran’s Vigilance,-not a signal to turn in there, but to come with her. Rhif Ehrran lengthened stride; and stopped Tirun and Tully and Geran at the foot of The Pride’s docking area, with a grip on Tully’s arm. “The human’s safer in our keeping,” Rhif said. “We’ll take him.”<\/p>\n

“No,” Pyanfar said, overtaking. “Gods rot it, Ehrran, we’ll discuss it somewhere else. Get out of the way. We got kif back there-let go of him. He’s had enough! Gods fry you, that’s crew you’ve got your hands on.” She launched a blow of her own and it brought up short on Jik’s out-thrust arm.<\/p>\n

“I take,” Jik said. “\/ take, hear.”<\/p>\n

“By the gods you don’t. No! He’s listed crew of mine. Gods rot you, let him go-“-as Haral decked an Ehrran crewwoman and mayhem broke loose, one brawling knot with Tully in the midst. Pyanfar elbowed Jik and shoved her way in as Khym did.<\/p>\n

“Out!” Khym yelled, a male hani voice, that shocked echoes off the overhead; he dived amid the mess and snatched Tully to himself. He grinned at Ehrran, ears flat, with Tully crushed against his chest.<\/p>\n

It stopped, it all stopped.<\/p>\n

“I’m crazy,” Khym said. “Remember?”<\/p>\n

And it was in Pyanfar’s own head that he truly might go berserk. She opened her mouth, shut it. Tully was not struggling. He held on, fists clenched in the fur of Khym’s shoulders. And Ehrran waited for the bloody bits and pieces to start flying. Male and male. Tully hanging in Khym’s grip like an unstrung toy.<\/p>\n

“He’s Chanur crew, isn’t he?” Khym rumbled. “Like me.” He swung Tully up into both arms, the rifle swinging loose from his elbow-good gods, the safety off on a gun fit to hole armor plate. Tully’s head lolled back, his limbs suddenly gone loose. “We going inside, captain?”<\/p>\n

“Move it,” Pyanfar said. Her heart started beating again.<\/p>\n

“Hnhunnh. Excuse me.” Khym walked deliberately through Ehrran’s ranks, swinging to clear Tully’s legs.<\/p>\n

“Chanur,” Rhif Ehrran said.<\/p>\n

“I know. You’ll file a protest. Get your crew out of my crew’s way, or they’ll be picking fur out of the filters all over Mkks.”<\/p>\n

“Damn fool,” Jik muttered. He pinched out his stick and dropped it into a pouch. “Move! You think we got no witness?” He jerked a hand toward the watching kif, far off down the dock. “What want? Entertain them?”<\/p>\n

Rhif Ehrran made an abrupt gesture upward. Rifles clattered out of the way. Her eyes were amber rings around black. Her rumpled mane stood out in curling wisps as if charged with static. “We’ll settle it later, Chanur.”<\/p>\n

“Fine.” Pyanfar led her own crew through, lingered at the rail of the upward ramp and turned her head to see nothing happened behind her. The Ehrran crewwomen stood stock still. Ker Rhif herself stared with ears flat, promise in that look. Geran came last, not without a backward glance on her own. “Get in,” Pyanfar said in Geran’s slight hesitation: Need help? that delay implied. Geran went; she followed, and as they came into the accessway she remembered the Ehrran guards in lowerdeck. “Gods,” she muttered, and started running, sweeping the crew with her.<\/p>\n

Khym had gotten to the airlock with Tully in his arms. The hatch stood open; and two Ehrran guards stood there with rifles uncertainly in their hands and panic in their eyes.<\/p>\n

“That’s all right,” Pyanfar said equably, taking her breath. She pursed her mouth into a cheerful smile for the guards, all<\/p>\n

innocent of the fracas outside. “Hold your post. Come on, Khym. Need help with him?”<\/p>\n

“He doesn’t weigh much.” Khym shifted his arm to roll Tully’s head up against his chest as they went on through the lock and into the inner corridor. Tully moved, a limp wave of his hand. “Py-an-far.”<\/p>\n

“We’ve got you,” Haral said, gently disengaging Khym’s rifle from his arm, taking the weapon to herself before it blew a hole in the overhead. “No more worry, Tully, we got you.”<\/p>\n

The lift worked as they walked on into main corridor. Hilfy came out and headed for them at a run<\/p>\n

” He’ s all right,” Geran said.<\/p>\n

Hilfy slid to a worried halt in the face of Khym and an evident Situation; but Tully reached out his hand and she took his arm, Khym or no. “Hil-fy-” Tully tried to grasp her arm, awkwardly, with Khym’s holding him and walking again. “Hilfy-” -over and over again.<\/p>\n

“Huh,” Pyanfar said. It was good to see Hilfy’s ears up, her eyes bright like that. As if something was repaired. “Gods, get him to bed. We got other problems.”<\/p>\n

She leaned back against the corridor wall when Khym had taken the whole Tully-business away. Across from her Tirun sagged, standing on one foot. The wound Tirun had gotten at Meetpoint two years ago, the wound they had never had time on that voyage properly to treat-gods, they ran scared again. She thought of Chur, patched together at Kshshti. Like The Pride itself.<\/p>\n

“Kefk,” Haral said, going to lean against the wall beside her sister. “That’s going to be one bitch, captain.”<\/p>\n

She listened. Geran overtook them and joined the lineup, the several of them. She felt numb. Her gut hurt from long walking, and from the earnest desire to break Rhif Ehrran’s neck. “Gods rotted right one bitch.” She shoved off from the wall and walked along the corridor toward the lift, alone.<\/p>\n

Gods, the worry and the trust in Haral’s eyes. Oldest of her friends and truest, Tirun next by a year; Geran and Chur after that by two. Five hani, with a few gray hairs round the nose mid aches when they ran; a young fool kid. A stray human and a hani male past his prime- There had been a time, when she had gotten into this, that she had had ambitions-trading deals with mahendo’sat and humans, to repair Chanur’s financial damages; get the ship up to standard-well, that much she had done. And The Pride had altered outlines, wider vanes, alien systems that would put a kink in Chanur’s enemies for sure-if it came to a conflict in space.<\/p>\n

But there were other kinds of enemies-like on the debating floor of the han, when the Rhif Ehrran stood up to declare charges and bring Chanur down.<\/p>\n

Khym, gods, Khym-she hugged the moment to herself, his defiance of Rhif Ehrran on the docks. But it cost. It would cost plenty when Ehrran and Vigilance got home. Chanur had staked much on this dealing with outsiders; risked too much. Chanur had become like The Pride itself, half-hani, with alien outlines. Foreign wealth bought those changes.<\/p>\n

-but go home again? See her clan-home again? Deal again as hani and not some mahen agent bought and paid for?<\/p>\n

She pushed the lift button. Turned. The crew had stayed where they were down the corridor, not following. Maybe they sensed her mood. She beckoned and Haral saw and brought the others.<\/p>\n

Another hani ship had gotten cut off from hani kind two years ago: Tahar’s Moon Rising. Moon Rising served the kif nowadays; and time was when she would have gone for Tahar on dock or in open space and known that she was right.<\/p>\n

The lift arrived; her crew did. Another thought occurred to her and sent the wind up her back. “We’ve still got that kif aboard,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We can throw it out,” Tirun said. “We’ve got what we want.”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar thought about it, her claw hooked into the lift-switch. But small alarms went off in everything she knew about the kif. “Sfik,” she said. She let them into the lift and got in after. “If we turn it out, we lose a sfik-item, don’t we, whatever by the gods that means. Status. Face.”<\/p>\n

“What’s that kif want we do with it?” Geran asked in disgust.<\/p>\n

“What he did with Tully,” Haral surmised in the general silence as the lift went up. “Maybe worse. What’s a kif care? It’s to salve our pride, that’s what.”<\/p>\n

A chill spread through Pyanfar. “Gods.”<\/p>\n

“Captain?”<\/p>\n

“He talked about a kifish ship not his,” The lift stopped and the door opened. “Rearranging its loyalties. He said.”<\/p>\n

“That kif’s one of Akkhtimakt’s?” Haral guessed, right down her own track.<\/p>\n

“Bet you.”<\/p>\n

“Good gods, what do we do with the son?”<\/p>\n

Pyanfar walked out and threw a glance over her shoulder on the way to the bridge, to Chur. “If you figure out what a kif’s mind’s like, let me know. It says it belongs to Chanur. If we let it go we lose sfik. And we got a stationful of kif at our throats if we do”<\/p>\n

“We could space it,” Tirun muttered longingly.<\/p>\n

“We could give it to Ehrran,” Geran said.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar looked back, short of the bridge door. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.”<\/p>\n

“We do it?”<\/p>\n

She bit at her mustaches, gnawed and gnawed. “Huh,” she said, storing that thought up. “Huh.” And walked into the bridge.<\/p>\n

“Kefk?” Chur asked, turning her chair about.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I got him for you,” Khym said, huge, disheveled, hands hooked into the waistband of a tatty and snagged pair of brown breeches. His much scarred ears were slanted halfback, his scarred nose ducked in embarrassment. Hilfy came and fussed his mane into order, and the ears came up, there, in that room with another male, with Tully lying still on the bed and witnessing all of this.<\/p>\n

“You were marvelous,” Hilfy said.<\/p>\n

“Huh,” Khym muttered. “Huh. He smells awful. So do I.” And with one shrug of his great shoulders he meandered out into the corridor.<\/p>\n

Hilfy shivered then. And she thought of killing kif, which had become a constant, burning thought with her.<\/p>\n

“Hilfy.” Tully made an attempt to get up from where Khym had disposed him, on his own bed in his own quarters, on a coverlet soiled with blood from his poor back. She looked his way and he made a face and tried to stand. He sat down again, hard, and caught himself on one elbow.<\/p>\n

“Gods.” She snatched at the pocket com she had and punched the translator channel through. “Tully. Lie still.” She came and put the com into his hands, so that he could speak and understand, with that unit to relay to the computer on the bridge.<\/p>\n

But he let it fall and grabbed her about the shoulders and held on, just held, the way he had done when he had been hurt; or she had; or the kif threatened to separate them. “It’s all right,” Hilfy said. She held to him, which she had done in their dark cell when he could understand little more than that. “It’s all right. We got you. No more kif.”<\/p>\n

He lifted his face finally and looked at her, alien and awful-smelling and his mane and beard, his handsomest feature–all wispy gold when it was clean; but it was all tangled. His strange eyes were reddened and spilled water down his face-kif-stink hurt her eyes too, and his rags of clothes were full of that and kifish incense. “Pyanfar,” he said, “Pyanfar-friend these kif?”<\/p>\n

“Gods, no.”<\/p>\n

Tully shivered, a shudder apt to tear his joints apart. She held him tight, talisman of her own safety. She was aware of his maleness as she had been aware of it in their prison on Harukk, in a vague, disturbing way; but Anuurn and home and men were very far away-excepting Khym, who was enough to remind her of such things though he was Pyanfar’s, and far too old. As for Tully, whatever humans felt, it was complex and alien and gods knew whether he even thought of her as female.<\/p>\n

But someone should defend him. Hilfy had known all her life that men were precious things; and their sanity precarious; and their tempers vast as their vanity. Na Khym was- well, exceptional; and gray-nosed and sedate in age, whatever Pyanfar believed. Young men were another kind. One made a place for them and kept all unpleasantness away; and they wore silks and hunted and made a woman proud. They fought only when their wives and sisters had failed, when disaster came. And they were brave with the bravery of last resort, no craft-no one expected slyness of males. Not when the madness took them. Not when they were young.<\/p>\n

Her Tully was clever. And brave. There had been a time kif had laid hands on her and Tully had thrown himself at them, clawless as he was. They had batted him aside, but he had tried to defend her till they knocked him senseless.<\/p>\n

And she could not reach him then. That hurt with more than the pain of the bruises it had cost. They had drugged her. And she had been helpless when they took him to question. “Chur’s all right,” she said-remembered to say, for he had not gone up topside yet to learn it. “Tully, she got out.”<\/p>\n

He looked at her and blinked. “Chur safe.”<\/p>\n

“Everyone.”<\/p>\n

He made a sound, wiped his face and ran his blunt fingers through the tangles of his mane. “# # #,” he said, something the translator mangled. He edged one foot and the other over the side. “I # crew. I crew, Hilfy, go work-Want work- understand.”<\/p>\n

He got himself on his feet. He wobbled in the process, caught his balance on her offered hand, then: “Bath,” he said. And headed that direction.<\/p>\n

She understood that.<\/p>\n

“I’ll wait for you,” she said.<\/p>\n

So they were all a little crazed. She felt like collapse herself and felt the dizziness a lump on her skull had left. But The Pride was close to moving. They would be pulling out and getting out of this; and she had undergone one long nightmare of jump in kifish hands-<\/p>\n

shut below, trapped belowdecks, with no sense of where they went or where they were or when they would die.<\/p>\n

They were at Mkks, Chur had told her. And a host of other things-like a deal struck at Kshshti station, that had sent Banny Ayhar hellbent for Maing Tol with messages; and brought Jik and Vigilance with them-improbable alliance, but a useful one.<\/p>\n

Jik’s got some piece of Ehrran’s hide, Chur had said, in the long waiting for results. He flashed some paper at her at Kshshti and she caved right fast. He’s no hunter-captain, that Jik, no way that’s all he is. He’s got connections-got us out of port, used that fancy computer on Aja Jin and laid us a course that put us straight into Mkks, all three, neat as you please. We went out on our mark and by the gods we were on when we came in. Got that new engine pack back there-<\/p>\n

Chur had showed her that, working the cameras aft; and the sight of their tail assembly on the vid had sent a shiver up Hilfy’s back.<\/p>\n

The Pride had changed. Had become something else since they pulled into Kshshti.<\/p>\n

Like her. And she would have wished to see the old outlines back there and to have felt she had come home to something known and never changed.<\/p>\n

Pyanfar friend these kif?<\/p>\n

Hilfy conjured scenes-things Tully had seen and she had not when Pyanfar had stayed alone in that room of kif; and again when Pyanfar had gone in after Tully with Jik and Ehrran and all the crew but herself and Chur. So, gods, why would he even ask?<\/p>\n

True, they had a kif aboard. Tully did not know that. The presence set twitches in Hilfy’s lip, and a shudder in her bones. The thing was down the corridor. Just a few doors down and around the bend.<\/p>\n

She sat on Tully’s bed and hugged her arms about herself, wishing as she had not wished since she begged to go to space and got a doting father’s leave-She wanted her home again, and safety, and not to see what she wanted now to do. Better hunting in the hills, that kind of killing. A clean kind. Find a mate. She was due that in her life. Have the grass under her feet again and the sun on her back where no hani she might meet would understand what kif were or the things that she had seen.<\/p>\n

Tully staggered out again, naked. There were wounds on him that seeped blood; bruises, bruises and burns and every sort of abuse. She carried like scars. He hunted a drawer for another pair of Haral’s cast-off breeches and came up with what must be the last.<\/p>\n

“Need help?” she asked.<\/p>\n

He shook his head, a human no. He sat down and tried with several attempts to get his leg in. He rested a bit, waved her off, hanging on the chair edge; and finally succeeded one leg at least.<\/p>\n

The door opened, unannounced. Chur stood there, all bandaged as she was. Her eyes widened; her voyages-ringed flicked back.<\/p>\n

“Chur,” Tully said, and got the other leg; and contrived to stand up and pull the breeches on and pull the drawstring in with now and then a grasp at the chair back.<\/p>\n

“Gods-rotted little we haven’t seen of each other,” Hilfy muttered with a little shrug at Tully and a heat about her ears “Him or me. It’s all right, Chur.”<\/p>\n

“You all right,” Tully said. He left the chair and reached out both hands for Chur. Chur winced instinctively; but did not grab, only took her hands and clasped them in his own. “Chur, good to see you. Good to see you-”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

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Book Preview The Kif Strike Back by CJ Cherryh (Chanur series book #3) \u00a0 In Our Last Episode. . . . (As told in: The Pride of Chanur and Chanur’s Venture.) \u00a0 A kifish prince named Akkukkak acquired a prize and an unprecedented opportunity: an alien ship and crew fell into his hands-promising him new … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-2209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-j-cherryh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}