Pride of Chanur (29 page)

"My ship," Hilfy said. "My ship, father."

It cost him, as much as the other yielding. He nodded. Hilfy took his massive hand, turned and took the hands of Huran Faha, who nodded likewise.

"Come on," Pyanfar said. "Come on, all of you. Move. -I'll get her back, Kohan."

"All of you," he said. The others gathered themselves and headed for the door in haste, some delaying to go back after weapons. Pyanfar stayed an instant, looked at Kohan, his :eyes, his golden, shadowed eyes; his ears were pricked up, he managed that. "That matter," she said, "this Outsider of mine-I'll be back down to explain it. Don't worry. Get Chanur back in order. We've got an edge we haven't had before, hear me?"

"Go," he said softly. "I'll get it settled here. Get to it, Pyanfar."

She came back and touched his hand, turned for the door, crossing the room in a dozen wide strides and headed off the porch, where no sign remained of the attack but the trampled garden and a passing of vehicles headed down the road beyond the wall, clearing out in haste.

And Khym. Khym was there, by the gate, crouched there with his head on his folded arms. Fresh wounds glistened on his red-brown shoulders. He survived. He went on surviving, out of his time and his reason for living.

"Khym," she said. He looked up. She motioned toward the side of the house, that pathway which the others had taken to the back, where they could find transport. He stood up and came, limping in the first steps and then not limping at all. "I'm filthy," he said. "No polite company."

She wiped her beard and smelled her hand, sneezed. "Gods, I reek for both of us."

"What is he?"

"Our Outsider? Human. Something like."

"Huh," Khym said. He was panting, out of breath, and the limp was back. They came along the side of the house, down the path by the trees at the back, and latecomers from the house reached them and fell in at their pace, carrying rifles. Khym looked back nervously. "It's all right," Pyanfar said. "You want to go, Khym? Want to have a look at station?"

"Yes," he said.

They reached the bottom of the hill, where Haral and Chur had started up two of the trucks, where a great number from Chanur were boarding, a good thirty, forty of them, besides those ten or so behind. Tully was by the side of one, with Hilfy. Pyanfar reached and cuffed Tully's arm. "Good," she said. "Up, Tully."

He scrambled up into the bed, surprisingly agile for clawless fingers. Hilfy came up after him, and Khym vaulted up with a weight that made the truck rock. Others followed.

Pyanfar went around to the cab, climbed in. "Go," she said to Haral, and the truck lurched into motion, around the curve and onto the road, toward the outer gates, flinging up a cloud of dust as they careened between the hedges, jolting into near-collision with the far post of the outer gate before they headed off across the field on the direct course toward the waiting ship.

Gods help us, Pyanfar thought, looking back at the assortment which filled the bed of the truck, young and old Chanur, armed with rifles; and a one-time lord; and Tully; and the Llun, who had decided to come back with them after all.

The ships had gotten off station to keep the kif there, and the kif were still there, indeed they were; were running the halls of station-kif loose with revenge in mind, a hakkikt who might see his own survival doubtful and revenge very much worth having.

She faced about again, feet braced against the jolts as the truck lurched over uneven ground. Haral fought the wheel with desperate turns and reverses, following the track they had walked now, the beaten line of their own prints in the tall grass, where there would be fewer hidden pits and hummocks.

"Hope Aja Jin's still in place," Haral muttered.

"Hope Hinukku and the rest are," Pyanfar said, bracing her hand against the dash. "If we've got more kif than we had-if they've gotten a call out for reinforcements. ..."

"Lagtime's on our side."

"Something had better be," Pyanfar said. "Gods, for a com."

Haral shook her head and gave all her strength to the wheel, slowed as they jolted toward the slope of the stream. The truck lumbered its way over the grassy bank, clawed its way over muddy bottom and rocks, slewed about and found purchase on the other bank, headed up again, with the ungainly wedge that was Rau's Luck growing closer and closer.

A light was flashing, sun-bright against the ship. Pyanfar pointed to it, and Haral nodded. The Rau saw them coming. Running lights began to flash, red and white, blink code.

It was the message they already had. Haral flashed the headlights, a desperate snatch back at the wheel.

Planetary speeds. In the time it had taken them to get this far from the house, a jumpship could cross an interworld distance. And perhaps some were doing that. The han was intact, the structure of Holdings which could decide policies; but the loss of Gaohn Station-

She cursed herself, to have assumed any revenge would be too great for Akukkakk's pride; to strike at stations-he had done that; no one struck at worlds, not in the whole history of the civilized powers.

Except the kif... it was rumored that they had done so, in their own rise off their native world, in the contests for power. They had once struck at their own.

XIII

The engines put on thrust, a hollow roar of the downworld jets, and the Luck lifted. Pyanfar dropped into the rear of the dark control pit as the deck came up, hit heavily and crouching and tucked down, straightening the blanket and pillow she had gotten to pad her back in that nook, on the pit floor behind the Rau's three cushions. The captain lifted her hand, signal that her presence was noted, and reached at once back to the board in front of her. The Luck went on rising; the gear thumped up into the housings and the pressure mounted. Pyanfar discovered a pain in her shoulder and struggled a little against the blanket to relieve it.

Not so steep a lift compared to the angle at which they had landed: the lander flew, of sorts, vertical lift at first, and then an angled flight which still had aft for downside, g-wise. The primaries cut in with a thrust which settled all her gut differentially toward her spine.

Some of their company were well off, aft, in the padded passenger shell: Tully and Khym and Ginas Llun were settled there, in thick cushions; and Haral, to keep them company and settle problems. The unlucky rest rode the boards, tilting cushioned partitions expanded from the next bulkhead-blind, dark misery, packed in like fish, four across, the back of the next cushion tilting back and forth almost in one's face . . . gods, gods, to ride like that with the ship going into trouble aloft-she felt guilt for being where she was, in what relative comfort she had.

The copilot let an object fall to her. She reached with difficulty and gathered the plastic-wrapped article from the angle of the pit where it stayed fast, unwrapped the earplug and thrust it in. No information was coming in during their ascent, only static, but having the contact helped.

Station had gotten that one message off, had still been sending it out when ascent began, which meant that the station central command had been in hani control and that stationers had their hands full, sparing no one to answer questions. It kept going, meaning that the kif had not gotten to it to silence it-or that they had had no critical interest in doing so.

But the docks-She pictured the workers fled in panic, disorganized, having no preparation against such an action as the kif had taken. Attacking stations was not a thing hani would do; therefore it was not reasonable; therefore there was no contingency.

Gods blast such thinking, and the complacency which fed it. Gods blast her own; and hani nature, that they ran each for their own fragmented concerns, because all the world was set up that way. She had had no choice in going home to Chanur, because a hani would go on with challenge while the house caught fire, until the fire singed his own hide. Hani always went their own way, disdaining Outside concerns, pricklish about admitting they would not be in space at all but for the mahendo'sat explorers who had found them-but that was so. And hani went on doing things the old way, the way that had worked when there were no colonies and no outside trade; when hani were the unchallenged owners of the world and hani instincts were suited to the world they owned.

But, gods, there were other ecosystems. They had another one going, in the Compact itself; and they dealt with distances wider than the grassy expanses of Anuurn's plains; and with creatures of instincts which had proven equally capable of being right in other ways.

In one unimagined hell, the kif way had worked best; and gods, even the chi way had worked somewhere, lunatic as they seemed, incomprehensible to Outsiders. And Tully-who sometimes made half sense, and at other times made none at all.

Had Goldtooth despised her for her desertion, because being hani she had had no choice but to go, in the face of every reason to the contrary? Shame pricked at her, the suspicion that all hani-kind had failed a mahen hope, that hope which had lent those two ships; and that somewhere up above might be the wreckage of her mahen allies and The Pride itself, with a kif waiting to blow this shell of a lander to vapor and junk, along with the hani brain who had just figured out something critical to the species, far too late.

Madness. The angle had her brain short of oxygen. There was a grayness about her vision. She felt nothing any longer in her backside and her arms and her legs, and the pressure kept j on building.

Engine sound changed. They were leaving the-envelope of I air, still accelerating. She blinked and struggled to move her neck, saw through a blur telltales winking in the darkness, saw j a flare of light as the scan screen cleared. She blinked again, trying to see past the silhouetted arm of the copilot, making out something large and close to their position.

"... Luck," a voice snapped through the plug into her ear, I "this is The Pride of Chanur. We'll match with you and lock on."

Tirun.

If she could have leaped up and shouted for joy she would I have done so. Pinned by the g force, it was all she could do to smile, a strained and difficult smile, with her heart hammering against her ribs and the blood bringing pain to her extremities.

Then the Luck's engines stopped, and she gasped a reflexive breath in the sudden relief. The invisible hand which had pressed her to the deck was gone, and she reached in a practiced hand-over-hand to the com board, drifting feet toward the overhead and tucking down again to reach the mike. "Hurry it, Tirun, for the gods' sake. And to the Rau: "Where are the kif? Can you pick them up?"

"Station's scan's off," the Rau navigator said. "Not just Gaohn's: Harn and Tyo too, completely down. We've got our own, that's all."

"Put on the rescue beeper," Pyanfar said, thrusting that dire news to a far recess of her mind. "The Pride can home on it. Let her automatics take you."

"Advice," the captain said. "Your job now, her Chanur. Gods help us, we're stone blind to any jumpships moving out there."

"Keep her trimmed and constant and watch out for the shock." Pyanfar aimed herself back to the shelter of her padded nest in haste. "Those grapples will do the fine matching, don't try the jets. She's moving under comp."

"Gods, it's on us," the copilot said.

"Closing," Geran's voice sounded through the com plug. "Stand by, Luck."

A proximity alarm started, quickly silenced from the board. Scan broke up.

"O gods," said the navigator.

Pyanfar tucked, clenching the cushion support with all her strength.

Impact. The Luck rang and leapt and her body left the deck, grip scarcely holding; hit it again, shoved back as the grapples grated, shifted.

Held. There was a comforting silence. Weightlessness.

"Got trouble," Tirun's voice said. "Blow that lock out; we've got a tube the other side. For the gods' sake board, abandon ship. We can't defend you."

"Haral!" Pyanfar yelled down the core corridor. "Everyone! get forward!"

"Captain," Nerafy Rau said.

"Come on," Pyanfar said, hauled herself to the captain's cushion and hung there one-handed, staring down at her. "All of you . . . gods, come with us. We'll get you back to your ship if there's a chance of it. If not that, there's kif to settle with, and those people on the stations-will you die here with no shot fired?"

"No," the Rau captain said, and started unbuckling. The others did. Pyanfar completed the somersault and looked aft down the corridor, at a white-shirted human sailing up it narrowly in advance of a flood of armed hani. The Rau captain handed her way up from the pit and headed for the nearby lock and Pyanfar grabbed for the board and the mike as the crew left it. "Tirun! Where are the kif?"

"Gods know. Mahijiru's running far-guard; tell you the rest when you get here."

The bodies of her companions tumbled about her. The lock powered inward and airshock rammed through in a cold gust. "Coming," Pyanfar said, and let the mike go, kicked at the nearest conduit and flung herself into the stream of bodies, into the dark and numbing cold of The Pride's ship-to-ship grapple-tube. Extremities went numb. Breath stung in the lungs and moisture threatened to freeze her eyeballs. It hurt, gods, it hurt. A light glowed green as she arrived in The Pride's null-g outer frame, a safety beacon, a guidance star far across the dark, marking the location of the personnel lift. A blue chain of glowlights dotted across the blackness toward it, the safety line. "Khym!" Pyanfar shouted, thinking of his inexperience, "blue's the guideline, Khym . . . Tully! go to the blue lights!"

"Got him," Hilfy's young voice shouted up ahead. "Got them both."

A door opened onto the lift. Someone had gotten to it. A distant rectangle opened, blinding white, with a score of dark bodies hurtling and struggling along the blue dotted course toward it, large and small with distance, some like swimmers in the air, some using the rope and propelling the swimmers along. Bodies collided and caught each other and kept going, one after the other, into that lift chamber, where they took on color and identity. Pyanfar found herself slung along the final distance, hauled into the lift; and among the last came the Rau, into that blinding glare.