and things felt — marginally in control. Not just the unit back there on the
tail. The bill. The finance.
Nine tenths of The Pride’s physical value, excluding her licenses and rights —
and mahendo’sat picked up the tab.
Foreign hire. Vigilance had made that charge already. They were down there
logging everything. There would be inquiry.
The han would have questions.A lot of questions. If they lived through Mkks.
She turned from the screens, walked past a cluster of chiso-babbling mahendo’sat
who had their own instruments linked into auxiliary sockets on the ops board,
headed out in the hall for fresh air. They had the place chilled down for the
mahendo’sat. The hall was frigid. A cold draft wafted in from the lower lock,
with the flavor of Kshshti docks, oil and old beer and mahendo’sat as she passed
that corridor. Workmen in their orange coveralls came in, some went out. She
pursued her way to the lift.
Hilfy. The thought came nudging in whenever she let it, and she pushed it away.
“Captain,” mane said. “Come.”
She stopped, blinked at the workman who beckoned her to the lock, opened her
mouth to refuse that imprudence, but the mane had flitted around the turn again,
hasty as every mahe was hereabouts.
Some gods-rotted supervisor with questions. Her ship. Her access. She refused
the jangling of her nerves and went after the workman. But her hand was in her
pocket as she walked into the lock.
No one. She spun a look over her shoulder, looked back again as something dark
came into her way, mahe-tall and spacer-ringed with gold.
Her finger tautened, hand cocked to aim through cloth and all. “Pyanfar!” the
mahe cried, flinging up both hands; and the finger stopped.
“Jik!” she gasped, and her heart started up again. The mahe still held his hands
up till she had gotten hand from pocket. “Where’d you come from?” And then she
knew. “That’s Aia Jin in 29, isn’t it?”
“Same.” Jik still looked nervous. “Make quick come here. Got trouble, huh?”
She looked him up and down., this lank solitary mahe with enough gaud in his
dress to turn a hani envious. “Jik.” It seemed half the troubles in the universe
fell off her shoulders. “O gods. About time. About gods-rotted time, hear me?”
He flung up his hands again, pleading for quiet. She grabbed him by the arm and
pulled him back toward the lift. “Come in here like this,” she muttered, fishing
up the key. She stuck it in. “Dressed like that.” The lift doors hissed wide.
“Get in.” She snatched him inside, this mahe a third again her size. He leaned
against the lift wall as it shot them up topside and the door shot open.
Khym was in the hall. His mouth fell open at the sight.
“Jik,” Pyanfar identified him. “My husband, Khym. Old friend. Goldtooth’s
partner. Come on, Jik.”
Chapter 1O
Nomesteturjai was his name: captain Keia Nomesteturjai. Jik to tongue-bound
hani, this thin, anxious-looking mahe. “Sit,” Pyanfar said and, spinning the
com-post chair about, backed Jik into it. She leaned on the counter and one
chair arm with not an arm’s length between their noses. “Where’s Goldtooth?”
“Not know sure.”
“What, not know?”
Jik’s dark eyes shifted uncomfortably at that range. “Think near Kefk.”
“Kefk!”
“Not know sure.” The eyes shifted back and forth, bloodshot-rimmed. “Not good
make guess.”
“Gods and thunders, what are we in?”
“You go Mkks?”
She stood back. “Khym. Get him a hot drink, huh?” Gods. Him. A weary twitch went
through her nerves, a panic rage at biology.
But: “Aye,” Khym said and went. Pyanfar sat down on the counter edge. Haral
settled one hip on the console near her station, to keep an eye to things, Tirun
slouched onto the padded arm of observer two.
“We talk,” Pyanfar said. “Real slow. You understand me.”
“Not sleep,” Jik said, wiping a lank, blunt-clawed hand over his face. His
shoulders slumped. “God, lousy course change Urtur system.”
“It took us out,” Pyanfar said. “Come on, Jik. What’s going on out there? Hilfy
and Tully are headed for Mkks, Chur’s in hospital, they’re dicing up my ship,
the Personage says he’s sorry and don’t discuss the knnn I’ve had on my tail.”