The Pride of Chanur

“Whose business?”

“Maybe same you business.”

She swelled up with a breath and looked up at him, hands in the back of her waistband. “Maybe you talk straight, captain. Once.”

“Where you go?”

“Maybe I should broadcast it on the dock. For the kif.”

“Home, maybe? Ajir route?”

“Guess as you like.”

“Got Mahijiru weapons first rate; friend mine make port today, also got number-one rig. Wait over, Chanur.”

“Bastard!”

He stepped back, held a hand up, blunt-nailed; hers, lifted, was not. He gri

“You egg-sucking liars. Where I’m going has nothing to do with you; hani business, you hear that? Private business. You want a quarrel with the kif you go find your own.”

“Go home, do you?”

“Private business, I’m telling you.”

“Warn you,” Goldtooth said. “Once. Maybe now go make deal hani port; lots trade. You talk for your good friend there, yes?”

“Goldtooth, what game are you playing?”

He gri

“Goldtooth!”

He paused to wave. “Mahijiru you escort, captain. You got number one best.”

“Rot your hide, I’m not playing decoy in some mahen game with the kif!”

He was gone while the echoes were still ringing. Haral, lacking orders, looked back at her, and Pyanfar slung her arms to her sides, not reckoning on giving any. It was the mahe’s terms and there was nothing they could do to stop him from following. “Seal that lock,” she said. “Gods know what else might get in.” Haral went on the run. Pyanfar looked about at the others, at Tully, and Chur and Hilfy and Tirun; and Geran, who had stepped out of op.

“Mahijiru’s on,” Geran said. “Someone’s just hooked up a shielded line and we’re getting transmission. They claim they’ve got orders and they’re asking data.”

“We’re going home,” Pyanfar said shortly. “Home, by the gods. They’ve cost us time. If Stasteburana’s got notions of using us, rot him, two can play that game. I’ll give them our course; I’ll give them a leadin inside the Anuurn perimeter.”

“Chanur—” Tirun objected quietly.

“More than Chanur’s got a stake in this. Maybe Anuurn needs to see that. We’ve got ourselves trouble. Widespread trouble. We don’t know how far it stretches. There ought to be hani here, do you mark that? Lots of hani ships coming and going here, not just Tahar. Here we are at one of the prime stops on our rivals’ route… and no hani ships but that one. Homebound. I’ll lay you odds, cousins, they’ve been staying home when they’ve come to port. That’s what’s vacated the track we’ve been on. Starchaser knew; word’s been passing, at every port, every contact.”

“Aye,” Chur murmured. “Aye. Gods. Six months they could have had at this—”

“I’m going to the bridge. Bridge crew this passage — Haral; Geran; Chur. The rest of you take op station; and get Tully his sedative, now, before someone forgets.”

“Aunt!” Hilfy called after her. Pyanfar stopped and turned. “Captain,” Hilfy said in a quieter voice.

“Question?” Pyanfar asked, scowling. Hilfy’s chin went up. “No, captain, ” Hilfy said quite steadily. Pyanfar nodded, with a small tightening of the mouth, looked satisfaction into Hilfy’s clear eyes, then turned again and strode off to the lift.

Down the corridor, the lock boomed shut. The Pride had begun her separation.

X

“Getting pickup on the companion,” Chur said, snugged in com station. “They swear it’s a secure line.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar finished up the checks and reached for the contact flashing on her com module. “Chanur here.”

“Introduce you,” Goldtooth’s voice came back to her. “Captain Pyanfar Chanur, got link to Aja Jin. Captain Nomesteturjai.”

“Chanur,” a voice rumbled back. “Name Jik, here.”

“Number one fellow, Jik,” Goldtooth said. “Honest same you, Pyanfar Chanur.”

“Honest like stall me off; like delay me. Chanur’s fighting for its life, you rag-eared bastard, does that get through your head? Challenge; and I’m not there. In your spying about, do you know what that means?”

“Ah,” Goldtooth said. “Know this trouble. Yes.”

Pyanfar said nothing, forced the claws back in.

“Know where this Akukkakk too,” Goldtooth said. “Interested, hani captain?”

“After I’ve settled my own business.”

“Same place.”

“Anuurn?”

“Keep you alive, hani. We make slow maybe, but you make deal we want. More big than pearls and welders, a, hani?”

“You follow, rot you.” She keyed through the course and the graph on comp. “There’s the way.”

A mahen hiss came back, throaty and rueful. “You steer by luck, hani? You crazy mad, that course?”

“Do it all the time, mahe. Scare you?”

“Hani joke, a?”

“Got two kif docked down there. We go, they’ll go. You got that patrol alerted?”

“Got,” came that second voice.

“Ha,” Pyanfar muttered. “You got your data; got all you want. Enough. We’re getting out of here.”

“A.”

Assent. Pyanfar flung a glance toward Haral, across the separating console, and the contact went out. Chur flicked signals to the dock crew. “Got us prioritied out,” Chur reported. “No problem.” The lines were coming loose. Telltales began to flash, wanting ports sealed. Haral put the seals in function, straight down the sequence. Screens in front of number one post livened, Geran routing through the station scan image. The airlock grapple clanged into unlock, and the last of the seal-ports was firm. “Moving out,” Pyanfar warned over allship, and cleared The Pride’s own grapples, her grip on station independent of the station’s grip on her: those boomed into the housing, and undocking jets eased them clear.

It was a smooth parting, an easy push clear and a nosing toward an untrafficked nadir as g started up, a whine of the rotational engines. Comp flashed them their lane, and scan showed Mahijiru and Aja Jin moving down below the station rim off portside. The Pride gathered momentum, a solid g and a half now, outbound.

“Kif are breaking free,” Chur said, com monitor. “Station advises.”

“No scan confirmation,” Geran said.

Pyanfar was already reaching for the shielded weapons switch, uncapped it and flicked it on: a ripple of lights advised the gunports were clearing. “Stay on that,” she told Haral without taking her eyes off her own business. “No comp synch, not with the mahe in the way. Can’t be taking one of them by mistake.”

“Hope they’re as considerate,” Haral muttered.

“Huh.”

“Kif are moving out,” Geran said. “Number two screen.”

“Where’s our escort?” Pyanfar wondered glumly. ” — Op deck, stay braced. Listen in and take your cues.”

“Escort moving,” Chur said. “They’re on intercept; station’s got them scan-blanked.”

“Understood.” She darted a look at station-sent scan, on which they themselves showed as an oversized wedge, massed blip of ships in synch. Geran sent another image. G continued, dragging at the gut, straining her arm back against the elbow brace. The kif were not gaining, were maintaining a sedate acceleration in their wake.

Goldtooth and this stranger Jik: escort. She did not, she admitted to herself, understand the mahen order of things, no more than outsiders understood the stsho. Trading with them was one thing. Figuring out the limits of a mahe like Stasteburana was another. Goldtooth and this mahe friend of his, this ship which had come kiting into system in the hour of Tahar’s exit — merchanters, maybe; but what she saw of Mahijiru and Aja Jin on vid was ominously lean, ominously trim with their cargo holds stripped off; a lot of space given to the power assembly on those two, a profligate lot of jump capacity masked by those missing holds, odd-shaped cores swelling in such fashion that they would cut into any reasonable geometry of tanks which had been strapped on. Vanes with strange dark interstices, like folding joints, vanes larger than ships of their mass ought to carry. It was a curious thing, that ships never saw «ach other; that they nosed up to station and stayed invisible behind station walls; that they existed as blips and dots and figures in comp, moving too fast for vid to pick up. Only now that they were in synch, a package moving at the same velocity and in sight of each other—