The Pride of Chanur

“We’ll accept,” Hilan Faha said, to Pyanfar’s consternation.

“Cousin,” Hilfy said in a voice carefully modulated. “Cousin, The Pride will put out quickly enough; and we need the help. We need you, cousins. You might find common cause in the company.”

“Tamun’s had all she can stand,” Hilan Faha said, with a protective move of her hand on her injured comrade’s shoulder. She looked toward the Tahar. “We’ll board, by your leave.”

“Come,” Dur Tahar said, and the Tahar fell about the four and escorted them across to their own access. Hilfy took a couple of steps forward, ears flat, stood there, hands fallen to her sides, and took a good long moment before she turned about again, with her kinswomen disappearing upward into the rampway of Moon Rising. Mortification was in every line of her stance, a youngster’s humiliation, that set her down as well as set her aside, and Pyanfar thrust hands into her waistband to keep them from awkwardness — no reaching out to the imp as if she were a child, no comfort to be offered. It was Hilfy’s affair, to take it how she would. “They’ve had a shock,” Hilfy said after a moment. “I’m sorry, aunt.”

“Come on,” Pyanfar said, nodding toward their rampway. There was a red wash about her own vision, a slow seething. She was bound to take the matter as it fell for Hilfy’s sake, but it rankled, all the same. She walked up first and Haral last, leaving Hilfy her silence and her dignity.

Cowards, Pyanfar thought, and swallowed that thought too for Hilfy’s sake. They desperately needed the added hands: that thought also gnawed at her, less worthy. They needed the Faha. But the Faha had had enough of kif.

And there were kif ships out there, waiting. She was increasingly certain of it — if not actually on the fringes of Kirdu System, which they might be, at least scattered all about, waiting the moment. More and more kif ships, a gathering swarm of them, unprecedented in their cooperation with each other.

She passed the airlock into the corridor, and Chur and Tirun who had turned out with the evident intention of welcoming their Faha guests — stopped in their exit from the op room,

simply stopped.

“Our friends changed their minds,” Pyanfar said curtly. “They decided to take passage with Tahar. Something about an injury a one of them suffered, and the Tahar promised them a more direct route home.”

That put at least an acceptable face on matters for Hilfy’s sake. They retreated as Pyanfar walked into the op room, looked at Geran and Tully who sat there, Geran having well understood and Tully looking disturbed, catching the temper in the air, no doubt, but not understanding it. “Nothing to do with you.” Pyanfar said absently, settling into a chair at the far counter, looking at the system-image which Geran had been monitoring. Hilfy and Haral came in together, and there was a strained silence in the op room, all of them gathered there and Hilfy trying to keep a good face on.

“Well, good luck to them,” Tirun muttered. “Gods know they’ve seen enough.”

“There are kif out there on the dock,” Pyanfar said, “who know too much. Getting cheeky about it. They’ve come in from Kita ahead of us, part of the bunch from Meetpoint or Urtur — Urtur, I’ll reckon, since I checked names and they weren’t the same as there. Just passing the message from one kif to the next. It’s getting tight here.”

“There’ll be more soon,” Haral said. “I’ll bet there’s some outsystem. Captain, think we can talk the mahe to run us escort to our jumppoint? Surely we’ve got leverage enough for that.”

“That story will go from station to station,” Pyanfar said bitterly. “Gods, but I don’t think we’ve got much choice. Get them to shepherd us out of here.”

“When we can get our tail put together again,” Tirun said glumly.

There was a noise from down the hall, a footstep in the airlock. Every head turned for the doorway and Pyanfar reached for the gun in her pocket and thrust her way past Tirun getting to the op room door and the corridor, clicking the safety off the gun.

It was hani — Hilan Faha, who flung up a startled hand and stopped at the sight of her. Pyanfar punched the safety back on with a clawtip and thrust the weapon back into her pocket, aware of others of her crew now behind her.

“Changed your mind of a sudden?” she asked the Faha.

“Need to talk to you. To my young cousin.”

“To your cousin, rot you; and to me. Come on inside. Neither she nor I’ll talk out here like dockside peddlers.”

“Ker Pyanfar,” the Faha murmured, ma

And Hilan Faha stopped in the doorway at the sight of Tully, this naked-ski

“His name is Tully.”

Hilan’s mouth tightened, am ominous furrowing of the nose. “A live item. By the greater gods, where have you been, Chanur, and what’s going on with this business?”

“If you were traveling on this ship you might ask and I might answer. As things are, you can learn when the Tahar do.”

“Rot you, Starchaser died in your cause, for this—” She spat, swallowed down a surplus of words when Pyanfar stared at her sullenly. “It was the captain’s decision; we off-loaded everything at Urtur and tried to run to give you a break for it. But where were you then? Where was our help?”

“Blind, Hilan Faha — off in the dust and stark blind. We tried, believe that; but at the last we had to jump for it or risk collision; we hoped you could get off in what confusion we created.”

Hilan drew a quieter breath. “The captain’s decision, not mine. I’d not have budged out of dock: know that. I’d have sat there and let you sort it out with the kif, this so-named theft of yours…”

“You take kif word above mine?”

“If you have an explanation I’ll be glad to hear it. My cousins are dead. We’re broken. We’ll not get another ship, not so likely. Great Chanur makes plans, but the likes of us — we’ll go on other Faha ships, wherever we can get a berth. I’ll reckon you know where the profit’s to be found, and, gods rot your co

“Kif threats. I’d thought you had more nerve.”

“No empty threats,” Hilan said, eyes dilated, her nostrils flared and sweat-glistening. “Tell all hani, this Akukkakk says — desert this Pyanfar Chanur or see desolation… even to Anuurn space.”

“And where did you hear all this? From a scattering of ships and a kif who never caught us — who failed to catch you. Hilan Faha; and if we’d gotten together at Urtur—”

“No. — No. You don’t understand. They did catch us, Chanur. Did overhaul us. Killed two of my cousins doing it. At Kita. And they let us go… but we broke down in the jump. They let us go to deliver that message.”

The Faha’s shame was intense. There was a silence in the room, no one seeming to breathe.