Pride of Chanur (13 page)

A kif voice came in over com. "Identify: urgent." Someone was waiting in this place, stationed to guard, another of Akukkakk's long arms.

"Aunt," Hilfy's voice came weakly, bubbling liquid. "Kif. . ."

"Got it." Pyanfar sniffed blood or sweat, licked salt from her mouth, staring at the screens which showed the dark mass hoving up at them . . . tight skim, incredibly tight. Their own output was still knnn-song, wailing up and down the scale, tickings and whines . . . that had to put the kif off. Haral and Tirun talked frantically to each other, searching with the sensors for their way out.

"Got it!" Haral exclaimed suddenly; a star showed up in the bracket.

"Can't do it," Pyanfar said: the mass was too close. They had no choice now but to skim past and hope.

"Identify," the kif voice insisted.

Instruments flared of a sudden, screens going static. "That was fire," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, "onto our former vector, thank the gods."

A second flaring: The Pride had returned a shot, automatic response. Of a sudden the alarms went again, crescendo of mechanical panic.

"Mass proximity," Pyanfar said into allship, for those riding it out below. "We're going to miss it."

The solidity was there, a sudden jump in every mass/drive instrument on the bridge, lights flaring red, a static washout on the number four screen: Kita Point mass, a chunk of rock, a cinder radiating only the dimmest warmth into the dark, light-less, lonely, and far, far too big for The Pride to drag with her into jump. . . .

Vid picked up flares of light, massive spots like the glow of a sun in that dark, illumining the surface of Kita mass. Rock boosted in their field out of Urtur had not changed vector. It hit the dark mass at near c, pyrotechnics which flowered the dark.

They passed in that flare of impact, slingshotted with a wrench which brought a new flood of blood to Pyanfar's throat . . . grayout . . .

. . . back again. "Haral!"

A frantic moment. "There!" Then- referent was back in bracket. A kif voice clicked and chattered out of phase with what they should be getting: that was then a second ship, lying off Kita zenith.

Fire hit them.

Pyanfar slammed the drive back in, with the howl of the kif in her ears, the static spit of instruments trained on the chaos in their wake. She tried with all her wits to keep oriented, a .slow reach of a sore arm while matter came undone about them, while they were naked to the between and time played games with the senses. No way that the kif could have followed. They had run the gauntlet. They were through the worst. After Kita it was one of three destinations and after the next, one of two more; and the choices multiplied, and the kif had harder and harder shift to bring numbers to bear against them. . . .

"We're fading," Haral said, words which stretched through infinity, emotion-dulled, nowhere: this was the way it went when ships lost themselves, when they jumped and failed to come out again . . . perhaps some mathematical limbo ... or straight into mahendo'sat hell, where four-armed demons invented horrors . . . Pyanfar dragged her wits together, watched for another such wobble. Damage they had taken under fire could have done something to the vanes, robbed them of capacity, might lose them permanently. . . .

. . . second arrival, a blurring downdrop of the senses into here and when again. Pyanfar reached for the panel and ordered scan search. Differential com was already getting signal: it was the marker of Kirdu System, wondrous, beautiful mahendo'sat voice, the buoy of the jump range.

"We're in!" Hilfy cried. "We're in."

"Clear and in the range," Pyanfar said, smug. She hit the jump pulse to throw off velocity and the smugness evaporated somewhat: the pulse was queasy, less powerful than it ought to be.

"Captain?" Haral's voice.

"I feel it."

"Maintain knnn output?" Hilfy asked.

"Yes." Pyanfar kept her eyes on the readout, hit the pulse again. "Plot entry vector," she ordered Tirun. "We might have trailed some debris with us."

"Reckon we dumped most of the rocks on Kita," Tirun muttered. She started sending the schematic over, fired off a comp-signal warning for what good it would do a slow ship in the path of their debris-attended entry. The dump went on, sickly pulses which finally began to count.

"That's better," Pyanfar said, swallowing against the stress. "Hilfy, got a lag estimate?"

"Approximate," Hilfy said in a thin voice. "Thirty-minute roundtrip to station, estimate."

Close, by the gods, too close. Pyanfar kept the dump pulses going at the closest possible intervals, kept her eyes nowhere but the center screen now, the relayed scan from the station buoy which plotted the location of ships and planets and large objects in the system. Automation had added in the warning The Pride had sent out, a hazard zone in a cone headed transzenith of system.

"Getting refinement on course," Haral said as a schematic came up on number two screen. It took only a little bending: check velocity, the warning kept flashing. Pyanfar coaxed another dump out of The Pride and made the slight correction, her senses swimming now with the prolonged strain of high-velocity reckonings, with stringing her mind along those distances and speeds which the ship's own comp handled in special conflict-dumping mode.

"Down the slot!" Tirun cried as the lines matched.

They were dead on at last, free and safe and headed down the approach path station had preassigned the next incomer in that area of the range. Pyanfar afforded herself a lighter breath, still with her eyes fixed on the scan, trying to figure how much more they could dump and how fast. Let one miner be where he ought not to be, let one skimmer have gone off for some private reason without advising station in advance, some idiot crossing the entry lanes, some mad knnn or chi, with whom there was never any reasoning, navigation hazards wherever they operated. . . .

Sweat ran, or blood. She sniffed and wiped at her nose, eyes still fixed and hand on the button. They rode the odds; they came in like a shot, counting on statistics and blind luck and traffic being exactly where it ought: one could do that a few times in a lifetime and not run out of luck.

"Acquiring station signal," Hilfy said. "That's tc'a talking now, I think. It's this knnn signal of ours. . . ."

"Cut the signal. Give station our proper ID. Relay pirate attack; damage and emergency, and probable accompanying debris."

"Got it," Hilfy said.

Pyanfar hit the dump again, forced them a little more toward a sane speed, and a board redlighted. She cycled in a backup.

Haral unbelted and leaned into the pit beside her console, frantic readjustments.

There might be kif in dock at Kirdu . . . gods, would be kif here, by all the odds, and just possibly one of them had come through from Urtur. But this was Kirdu: mahendo'sat here, in their own territory, had teeth, and took no arguments from visitors. They would demand explanations for such an entry. Gods grant whatever remaining debris they had boosted through with them from Urtur found no mahendo'sat targets, or there would be more than an explanation due.

"Something's left station," Tirun said. The image showed up on the number two screen. Ships were outbound, four of them, one after the other, moving on intercept, dopplering into their path. "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "signal general alert, all hani ships insystem."

"Done," Hilfy said, moving to do it. Haral slid back into place, set to work in haste at the comp. The number one screen started acquiring estimates, locational shifts on the oncomers and everything else in the system. That was station guard which had just put out, more than likely: The Pride had broken regulations from entry to this moment, heaps and piles of regulations. Some mangy mahe station official was likely elbow deep in the rule books this moment hunting penalties, Pyanfar's nose wrinkled at the thought of the fines, the levies, the arguments.

"Getting signal on the ships outcoming," Hilfy said. "They're mahendo'sat, all right."

"Huh." Pyanfar blew a sigh of relief. Worse had been possible, worse indeed. "Geran," she said over allship. "Chur. Are you getting this down there? We're all right; station's ending us an escort."

"Coming in clear, captain."

"Is everything secure down there? How's Tully? Have you got a monitor on him?"

"He's here in op with us," Geran said. "Drugs are wearing off. He's muzzy but following what's going on."

"No more risks, rot you; who cleared that?-Take scan on number four for approach; give us some relief up here; and get him secure."

"I friend." Tully's voice came back to her, hani words. And others, his own tongue, a flood of words. "Shut him down," Pyanfar hissed; and there was silence. "Working," Chur's voice reported, and Tirun paused in her frantic pace, dropped her head into hands and wiped them back over her mane. She took the chance for a drink, from a plastic bottle from under-counter, passed it to Hilfy and then to Tirun and then to Haral and Haral to Pyanfar. The remnant went down, a welcome cooling draught. Pyanfar took the chance to call up comp to locate the damage, gnawed her upper lip as the information came through incomplete. She looked right, at the others, at Hilfy, who was listening to something, with a bruised, exhausted look on her face. "Shunt that below when they get the Outsider settled," Pyanfar said to her, and looked at Haral, who was still doing updates. "Damage indeterminate," she said to Haral privately. "I don't feel any lag in the insystem responses, at least. It should be a normal dock, but we're going to have to get a hurryup on that repair and I don't know how to the gods we're going to finance the bribe."

"Aunt," Hilfy said, "station is on, wants to talk to you personally. I told them-"

"Captain." Lowerdeck overrode, sent up an image on scan.

Ship in the jump range, incoming, on their tail.

"Gods," Pyanfar hissed. "Gods rot all kif-Hilfy: ID, fast."

Hilfy hesitated half a breath: Tirun was already overreaching a long arm onto her territory. Wailing came through, and Pyanfar grimaced at the high-pitched squeal.

"Knnn," Tirun said. "Captain, it's that rotted knnn."

"We don't know it's that knnn," Pyanfar spat back, snatching the mike-waved an angry gesture with it at Hilfy. "Station. Station, and get your wits working, niece."

The ready light came on. "Go," Hilfy said, distraught and J wild-eyed, and subdued the knnn pickup.

"This is Kirdu Station," the machine-translated voice came through. "We mahe urgent severe protest this entry. Go slow, hani captain incoming."

"This is The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur speaking. We're incoming with an unidentified on our tail and with damage, but we have maneuverability. The ship behind us may pose a threat to station; I suggest your escort direct its attention to what's following us."

Com stayed dead, longer than lagtime dictated.

"Escort is passing turnover point," Geran's quiet voice came from the other op center. "Captain, they're going to pass us, going to go out and look that bastard over."

Pyanfar looked, saw, returned her attention to comp, where new estimate was coming up on the position of the incoming ship. It was close, moving hard, no dump of speed.

"Got a hani contact," said Hilfy. "Tahar."

"Gods and thunders." This was not a friendly house to Chanur. Pyanfar picked up the contact on her board. "Tahar ship, this is Pyanfar Chanur. Stand ready for trouble. Don't be caught at dock."

"Chanur, this is Dur Tahar. Is this your trouble?"

"It has no patent, Tahar, not so far. Stand out from station, I warn you. In case."

"Chanur," the translated voice of station broke in on them. "Tahar Captain. Against regulation, this. "Use station channel. And this station order stay. No moving out."

"We're coming in, station. We advise you ships are destroyed and lives lost. If that ship back there is knnn, well; but if it isn't, Kirdu has trouble."

Another voice, clicking and harsh. Kif.

"That's from a docked ship," Hilfy said quickly. "Got it on station directional."

"Captain." That from Tirun. "Incomer's just begun dump; they're checking speed."

Pyanfar blinked, the suspicion of good news hitting dully on a dazed brain. She drew a whole breath. "Gods grant it is knnn," she muttered. "Station, you should be getting that now: we'll make a full explanation as soon as we get in and get our mechanical problems in order. We strongly urge you take full precautions and get a positive visual on that so-named knnn arrival. We have serious charges to lodge."

Silence from station. They were not, most likely, overjoyed.

Pyanfar broke the contact. "Bastards." She wiped her mouth, straightened her beard with her fingers. "Cowards." The escort passed and headed out to the incoming ship behind them. She settled back in her cushion and listened to the reports.

"Aunt," Hilfy said finally, "mahendo'sat report visual confirmation: it is a knnn ship."

"Thank the gods," Pyanfar muttered, and threw open the restraint on her cushion, leaned forward more comfortably. Station was coming up. A flurry of docking instructions was arriving on the number three screen.

Not kif behind them, only a vastly confused knnn. She gave a wry pursing of the mouth, imagining the chagrin of the odd creatures, who had arrived to far more commotion than knnn were wont to stir under any circumstances. Coincidence, perhaps; ships came and went from everywhere-gods, rare to have two ships come into a jump range that close, but not that rare. Kirdu had a great deal more traffic than that generated by The Pride. This was civilization, here at Kirdu, civilization, after all.

She drew a series of quieter breaths. Watched the schematic which showed them the way toward docking. Tired. Indeed she was tired. She ached in her bones. It took a moral effort to settle in for docking maneuvers, to do it by manual because she wanted the feel of it, not to be surprised by some further malfunction under automatic.

She was already mentally sorting through possible arguments with the Tahar, a loan, anything to get The Pride's repairs made and paid, to get out of this place: they needed no more damages than they had, and most of all they did not need prolonged residence here.