papers and the moving stylus. “Got this one more idea.”
She subsided onto the counter edge, steadied herself through another of The
Pride’s attitude corrections. She gnawed at her mustaches and waited, wiped her
eyes. The stylus scratched away on the paper.
“There’s the YR89,” Haral said, putting out a hand to point. “If it went–”
“Huuuh.” The snarl was hoarse and vexed and Haral got the hand out of Tirun’s
way. Fast. Scratch-scratch went the stylus.
More silence. The dustscream on the hull grew louder. The Pride corrected. There
was a resounding impact.
“Gods rot!” (Hilfy.) Ears went down in embarrassment. She ducked her chin back
to her arm on the counter-edge and tried to pretend former silence.
Tirun shoved a strip under the autoreader. The slot took it. Lights rippled as
if nothing at all were wrong. Tirun’s shoulders slumped.
“Anything left untried?” Pyanfar asked.
“Nothing,” Haral said quietly.
“It’s a ghosty thing,” Tirun said. Her voice cracked. Her ears flagged. “I can’t
turn it up.”
“Stress-produced?”
“Think so. Always possible the unit was rotten. Remember that fade at Kirdu.”
Pyanfar heaved a breath and stared at Tirun, reading that grudging mistrust of
an unclean system. “We’ve still got one backup,” she said.
“We’ll be down to none at Kshshti. Enough for braking. If we’re lucky.”
Pyanfar thought about it. Thought through the whole vane system. “Back to the
regulator,” she said.
“You want to replace that Y unit?”
A long, long worming up the vane column, with The Pride yawing and pitching
under power. A long, dark solo job fishing a breaker out of the linkages, where
the system was already in failure. From inside-because the particles would strip
a suit.
“No. I want all of us to see Kshshti, thanks.” She drew a deep breath. “We put
in for repair when we get there, that’s all.”
Noses drew down. Ears sank.
“Well, what else can we do?”
“I’d try the column,” Hilfy said.
“Hero’s a short-term job, kid.” And to Haral: “We go on schedule.”
“If it would get us–” Hilfry said.
“I’d gods-rotted put Chur up that thing if it’d work: at Jeast she’d know the
system.”
Ears sank; shoulders slumped.
“If someone gets killed up there,” Tirun muttered, “gods-rotted lot of trouble
getting you out of the works. Might fry the system along with you. Captain’s
right the first time.”
“Sure takes out the Kura option,” Haral said.
“Huh,” Pyanfar said. “Isn’t an option.”
“There’s Urtur.”
“There’s Urtur.” She let go a long, long breath and thought about it as she had
thought about it the last ten hours. Spend days on Urtur. With five kif, two
mahendo’sat freighters and six tc’a who were apt to do anything. Or nothing,
while the kif blew them apart or boarded.
“The mahendo’sat,” she said, “want us at Kshshti. Goldtooth does. You looked at
that scan image? You want to bet Sikkukkut’s not passed the word along?”
“Kif got the dice,” Haral said. “No bets. You get anything out of Tully to tell
us what this is?”
Pyanfar slumped against the cabinet back and stared at Haral. “Big. Real big.
You want to hear it? Mahendo’sat tried to get humankind in the back door. Humans
lost some ships. I think this Ijir’s a hunter-ship. It went in and got Tully —
typical mahen stunt. They wanted to figure out what was going on and they wanted
Tully in their hands. He’d talk. He’d trust them. He’d tell them anything they
asked.”
“O good gods,” Hilfy murmured.
“That’s not the end of it, niece. Humanity wanted to send their real authorities
to the mahendo’sat, I’m guessing, because they had trouble. Mahendo’sat wanted
Tully, because they have trouble. Here it gets complicated. I think this whole
thing’s touched off the knnn.” No one moved. Eyes dilated to thinnest amber
rings. “I think,” Pyanfar said, patiently, quietly, “humans failed a promised
trade, mahendo’sat investigated, sent a ship — humans from their side blame the
kif, and Tully’s not high up enough that humanity would’ve told him much beyond
that. He couldn’t know the knnn angle. So the mahendo’sat got Tully and
rendezvous’d with Goldtooth at some point beyond Tvk, I’m guessing. For