open-mouthed.
“Nothing else to do,” Pyanfar said to her. “Nothing else. He’s worth too much to
take chances with. That message is. Understand? We’ve had it. That vane’s got
us.”
“We go in like this we could be down a week!”
“So we take our damage. We can cover the bill. We’ve got that. We’re done, imp.
Finished.”
“I could make it,” Hilfy said, “up that column and we’d have that unit
replaced.”
“Wrong. Chur would have to do it. She’s smallest. And she’s not fool enough.”
There was silence but for that. That and the dust.
She got up and walked away, staggered a little as she reached the corridor and
The Pride corrected course again.
She had another, chilling thought and turned, pointed at Haral. “No way this kid
tries it. You sit on her. Someone goes up that column I’ll space her. Hear?”
“Aye,” Haral said.
No one followed her. Presumably they were clearing up the paper. Closing down.
Her eyes blurred with exhaustion and she refrained from rubbing at them as she
passed Khym’s cabin.
She thought of going to him. She had not — not since Hoas. It was not her time;
had not been, then. Such niceties went by the board with them as they had in her
world-visits. But sleep would not come easy with the dust, the small shifts of G
that went on constantly: and he might be asleep; and there would be questions if
she waked him.
Did you fix it, Py?
She opened her own door and walked in, sat down at the desk and methodically
cleared the clutter of her own work away.
Course-plottings. Calculations every way she could make them in hopes of getting
another dump-and-turn that would turn them off toward Kura and hani space,
without breaking them down at Urtur and stranding themselves here with the kif.
None were feasible. And if they were — if they were, knnn notice fell on hani
thereafter.
Goldtooth, you mahen bastard. Seeing to the safety of his own, that was sure.
So she handed the package back again: Here, fool mahe, you take it. Good luck.
Run fast.
And Tully–
She rested her head against her hands. Gods, gods, gods.
Knnn.
And the failsafe that was Ijir, whatever else it had been, with its humanity
aboard, and just gone backup.
Kif had it, gods help them. Kif would take them apart, mahe, humans, everyone.
Tully knew, who had spent time in kifish hands, who had gone to hani for help
because he heard them laugh once, across Meetpoint docks.
Gods rot Sikkukkut and all kifish gifts.
They were out of it, that was all. Whatever gain or loss there was yet to be
made, The Pride had gone her limit. So they should be glad to be out of it. A
vane down. They could not jump The Pride again. They rolled the dice for
Kshshti. That was gambling all their lives. At Maing Tol the odds went up, that
it would not hold for braking.
Hero’s a short-term job, kid.
So what was stung, that they had to give up and lay back and let others do what
hani failed at?
And hand Tully on alone to mahendo’sat?
“All secure,” Haral said, beside her, at her post. “I take her, captain?”
“I’ll take this one,” Pyanfar said, and reached and settled her arm into the
brace. She glanced up at the reflection of the rest of the bridge, crew in
place, Khym in his observer’s post.
Fixed, they had told him. And his face had lightened, trusting them.
Fixed, they had told Tully, who was harder to lie to, being spacer himself. And
he had drugged himself into a haze by now, as his kind had to do.
“Starfix positive, Maing Tol,” Haral said.
The dust whined over the hull, constant but thinner now. “Going to dust up
Kshshti a bit,” she said. “Can’t be helped.”
Haral rolled a glance in her direction, a stark, stark stare. “Can’t be helped,”
she said.
Sudden silence then, as the jump field began to build and the shields came up.
They rode their luck this time.
Chapter Seven
There were hazard lights blinking urgent alarm, and Harals voice protesting–