Chanur's Legacy (46 page)

“Query, aux one?”

“I’ve got something. I recorded it—I think I did ...’‘

Frightened neo. He didn’t know how to give a report or switch images. Tiar had her hands full.

“Fala,” she said, “advise station we’re inbound for dock and take the feed from Hallan.”

It popped over from Fala’s number one: matrix-com, raw transcript.

Chanur advise Paehisna-ma-to mistake No ‘shto-shti-stlen

Hilfy you kill violent right all wrong not-low bring choice stations death ambassador now change listen kif stsho on Meetpoint kif now is all governor tc’a know guilty party. . .

Chanur advises Paehisna-ma-to ((she is) mistaken (about?)) (of the error of?) No’shto-shti-stlen. Hilfy, kitting a violent (person) will be right. All unlawful wrong (deeds) bring choice/change. Stations (because of) death of the ambassador now are changing. Listen, Idf, to the stsho on Meetpoint. Kif, now the governor is falling. The tc’a know the guilty party (incomplete statement.)

Killing a violent person will be right? Aunt Pyanfar?

“What is it?” Tiar asked. “What’s she talkingabout?”

“Gods-be thing’s in kifish records too. They sleepwalk, most of them. —Give me the
hakkikt!”

“Aye,” Fala said, and the click and hiss of kifish communications came through strongly in her earpiece.

“Nakgoth na sti!” she said. “Hilfy Chanur nak, nakgoth na sti, hakkikt-tak skkhta.”

‘ ‘The ic ‘a are most difficult to persuade to lie,” thevoice came back, cultured and fluent. “In fact, they can’t.”

“Hakkikt,
with profoundest regard to your wisdom, this isn’t Pyanfar. This isn’t right!”

“ Right?” Vikktakkht asked. “What is ‘right?’ Tell us ‘right,’ Chanur captain. We are Pyanfar’s allies. Has there been cause for her to change sides in this ?”

Kif would. On a puff of contrary wind. Intellectually Vikktakkht knew that hani were otherwise. In his gut, in a chancy situation, he might not. “Give me a moment,” she said, looked desperately at the screen, and made a reach and unbelted, dizzy as she was. She snagged the nutrient pack beside her chair, bit a hole in it and got a swallow down as she was getting up.

“Captain?” Fala said. “We’ve got a station message. “

“You can’t have a station message. We’re time-lagged.” Another swallow.

“It says—“

“It’s a gods-be lie-in-wait. Transmitted to our call number from the buoy. They know who we are.

They’ve prepped the buoy with a false system schema. What do they say?”

“It’s—“ Fala half turned, as she hand-over-handed her way to Fala’s station, where the translator main keys were. “They’re saying ... in the name of the stsho government ...”

... and the han and the hani you are required to dock immediately and open to inspection. You are in violation of Compact Treaty and will be subject to severe criminal penalties if you do not obey instructions. We will accept a single ship in approach with weapons deactivated.

The ship is cleared for lane 1280. Acknowledge.

“We’re getting the system detail,” Tiar said. “What now, captain?”

“We’re getting their word what’s in this system, that’s what we’re getting. Chihin, look alive, Hallan, we’re on live-scan only, don’t believe a thing station images tell you. Fala, give me the raw data on the tc’a.”

“It matches—“

“I don’t care what it matches, I want to see it, now!”

The kid was rattled. She shouldn’t have yelled. Fala made a false start on the order and a second one and got it.

Chanur 998 Paehisna-ma-to 86- 786 No ‘shto-shti-stlen

586 8 798-897-22 46 567

6 57 868-897-22 1872 98

9-9 786 7 6-75 299-786t

96 76 10-69 7657 40y8

786 8=999 8/659 6-976 6-7/0

5/8 98 768-./768/86S 6868/5 .

“It’s not tc’a.”

“How isn’t it tc’a?” Fala protested, and Hilfy reached past her, punched up the rough again.

“It’s not tc’a, I’ve just seen too many of them. You don’t get that many unknowns in the transcript. It’s driving the translator crazy. —Tiar, course change to that lane and transmit compliance.”

“Captain,” Tarras said, and Chihin nearly on top of that.

“I know. Did I say we were going? —Where did this gods-be thing come from?
Na
Hallan? Did you capture this transmission?”

“I—heard them. I think it’s what I heard. They were with us ... I could hear them. But I couldn’t see them, captain.”

“Couldn’t see them. ‘Couldn’t
see
them’ doesn’t explain this output. Something odd’s going on with it. You can’t get a capture this clear out of hyperspace.”

“Mechanical?” Fala asked. “Could it be a patch-together? Something the buoy’s sending us?”

The kid was using her head again. Somebody using some complicated equipment might have assembled it out of other tc’a transmissions, and rigged the buoy to send it to their specific ship ID when they dropped in. But she wasn’t that sure it was an answer. The
Legacy
made a gentle burn and she caught at the chair back and the hand-line. “Look sharp, all stations. Don’t gawk. They’ve given us a lane down which they’ll be lying in wait, friends, let’s not get caught by it. Tarras, missile up.”

“Aye,” came the flat acknowledgment.

“Fala, vertical sort. Read it down.”

Chanur Hilfy Advise you Paehisna- kill ma-to

Chanur to all stations; listen to the kif and the tc’a. (I?) advise you of the wrongful death (because) kif now know Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of murder of the stsho ambassador. Mistake now will bring violence on all parties. No’shto-shti-stlen makes the right choice to change the governor (on) Meetpoint...

“Third sort. Diagonal on the left.” Gods-rotted matrix brains. “Aye, captain.”

No’shto-shti-stlen: mistake right. Paehisna-ma-to violent choice. Advise killing brings change. Chanur you not-low now Meetpoint. All death ambassador on governor. Stations kif stsho all ? listen now is party...

“Garbage. It’s not tc’a.
Hani
translator, idiomatic, vertical pass.”

“Captain.” That from Hallan, quietly.

“Chain of command. Chain of command, Meras.”

Chanur to all stations: listen to the kif and the tc’a. They will advise you the death was murder. The kif now have proof that Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of the murder of the stsho ambassadorial personnel. A false move now will loose violent behaviors on all fronts. No’shto-shti-stlen made the right choice when he decided to bring in a new governor.

“It
is
aunt Py. Gods rot her, why in a mahen hell did she set up a hash like that? Broadcast
that
translation to the kif. Broadcast it system-wide. And watch it! That’s not going to make certain individuals happy—“ Meanwhile they were inbound on 1280 with an ambush of some kind set for them, no question. And
na
Hallan was sitting there with something bursting to say, for which she had no present time. “Fala, get me the
hakkikt
again. And find out if our passengers are in one piece.”

She oozed back to her chair, fell into it as the earpiece sputtered kifish.

“Nak.”

“Chanur nak. Pakkaktu hastakkht. 1280 lakau.”

A soft kifish laughter. “Tc’a? Mau Ikkto mekt-hakkikta.”

Put nothing past her.

She broke off transmission for a second. “Fala, are the stsho alive down there?”

“Not happy,” Fala said. “Alive. Scared. The two in cabin 2. I’m trying to raise the holiness. I’m getting sounds, I can’t swear to else.”

She switched
Tiraskhti-com
in. “We’re going in there,” she said in the Trade. “I’m calling station, advising them we’re going in alone. They don’t frighten us.” They did, but you didn’t explain that to a kifish ally. You didn’t stand back here and trade ultimatums with hair-triggered kif and mahendo’sat and hope to avoid escalations.

Though wherever the trap was, their scan hadn’t bounced off anything out there. And the kif hadn’t seen anything they were telling about.

“Captain,” Chihin said,
“na
Hallan thinks there’re more ships out there.”

“Where? Vector, Hallan.”

“Up,” came the faint answer. “They were
there,
captain.”

“Tc’a?”

“I heard them. I could hear them over the com. I heard
something.”

Gods-be spookiness. Chur was spook enough. When you had a neo wandering around in jump, the gods knew what you got. More ships? Messages at the buoy?

The buoy was the intersection, the place where ships dropped toward the local sun. The buoy recorded presences, and hadn’t recorded anything but them and the kif.

Nothing, at least, that that buoy was programmed to confess to the
Legacy
and its kifish companions.

But would aunt Py set up a message that ambiguous?

“More of her gods-be mail,” she muttered. “Filtered through a tc’a brain. They’ve dived down like a fish breaching. They’re
up
there.”

“
Hovering
in hyperspace?” Tiar said.

“You can’t do that,” Hilfy said. “You can’t change vector in hyperspace, either.”

But knnn did it.

“I’d hate to pay their fuel load,” Tarras said.

Tc’a did take on fuel, in realspace. Tc’a did pay bills, like the rest of them. There were surely constraints of physics on what they did in hyperspace. But one had to remember that ships didn’t entirely
enter
hyperspace, didn’t leave the interface, please the gods they didn’t ...

“Message to station,” Hilfy said, “we have tc’a ships in the vicinity. A navigational caution is in order.”

Let the mahendo’sat hunter ships lurking out there worry about that one. Tc’a didn’t obey lane restrictions. Not on Kshshti docks. Not hi the regulated space around a station.

And the gods knew, you didn’t shoot at one. Never shoot at anything, aunt Py had used to say, that you can’t talk to.

“Let’s get us a little more v, Tiar, full 1
g
sustained.”

Sustained 1 g push, and one hoped the stsho aboard had taken advice and remained in their beds. Things tended to go rapidly to the aft bulkhead under these circumstances.

“Kkkt,” came over her earpiece. “This amuses. We are going with you, Chanur. “

You didn’t tell a kifish
hakkikt
mind his own business, either. Thank the gods it was only
Tiraskhti
that moved. And she’d never thought she’d live to say it, but that sleek hunter moving with them was a welcome sight.

And all those kif out there ... if anything happened to the
hakkikt,
there would be a twenty-way sort-out after the leadership of that fleet. Station surely knew that. Station surely knew that it would be very dangerous to deprive the kif of a leader, if it didn’t want a firefight in its territory.

But one had to ask oneself why station was staying silent—besides the fact it didn’t yet know, and wouldn’t, for some few minutes, that they had a kif inbound.

She punched the intercom. “How are you both faring, excellency?”

“Wai,” came the breathless answer. “Wai, the dreadfulness of ships! We are most uncomfortable! I fear for the holiness! I fear for the Preciousness! I fear for our lives!”

“We’re going to cease acceleration, your excellency, in just a few moments. —Tiar, establish
Tiraskhti
helm, we don’t want to surprise them, ustj stay in link with their pilot.—Fala, I’ll take your board, get downside, see if
gtsta
needs attention. —Go inertial, Tiar, at your discretion.”

“Standby.”

The weight that had been pushing them slantwise into their cushions became ordinary, regular orientation revised up and down. “I’m going,” Fala said; and Hilfy keyed over to basic com functions on her own board. “Station, this is
,
inbound on your instructions. Inform
gtst
excellency No’shto-shti-stlen that we return delighted with our success in
gtst
instructions.”

That was stshoshi.
That
for the representatives of the
han,
who would not bother to learn the language of their trading partners.

But after the due round-trip time-lapse, mahendi came back: “You stay lane, Chanur ship. Same ask kif ship Tiraskhti. Stay lane. Legal matter here. No gun. “

A crackle of kifish followed, with no time-lag:
Tiraskhti. “In the name of the
mekt-hakkikt,
we wilt follow the treaty and we will enforce the treaty.
Parau’a mekt-hakkikta rassurrn na uunfaura, uunfaura sassurrn ma ...”

Hani, by the gods.

And from below-decks:
“Captain,
gtsta
is saying something about tc’a and the sun and
ker
Pyanfar, Something like the stars speaking with one voice
...” She could hear the babble from elsewhere, something about star-drives and resonances and talking with the fields ...
“Otherwise
gtsta
looks all right. Should I release the netting?”

“No!” She amended that more quietly. “Tell
gtsta
where we are, tell
gtsta
the situation, tell
gtsta
it’s a safety measure, and get your agile young bones up here as fast as you can.”

There still wasn’t a guarantee there wouldn’t be shooting; but the opposition would have to be crazier than the holiness. The opposition had Meetpoint. The opposition had the Treaty and the Compact itself to hold hostage—because if the opposition didn’t start shooting, the opposition held Meetpoint, and Momentum continued on the side of Paehisna-ma-to; while if
they
started shooting, the
mekt-hakkikt’s
own side would have broken the Treaty. And it all came unraveled from there—even if they had the force to take Meetpoint without damage, which, with a mahen fleet hidden out there—they didn’t have.

Not a nice situation, she said to herself. Not at all a nice situation, Hilfy Chanur.
Why
did you take the gods-be contract?

“Berth 22,
Legacy,” station deigned to say.

“Are we going to take their computer input?” Tiar asked.

“No,” Hilfy said. “What’s one more law? You and Chihin, just figure us in. We’ll take their 22. They’ll probably have guards. Lots of guards.”

“Kif?” Tarras wondered.