“They’ve got techs working on the boards already. They’re pushing it.”
“Gods.” She let her head down on her arm, feeling as if a wall had come down on
her yesterday and some of the bricks still lay there. Lifted it again. “How’s
Chur?”
“Geran called, says she’s doing all right. They both got a little sleep.”
“Huh. Good.”
“Got a call from Vigilance. They got our paper. Ehrran’s chewing sticks.”
“Good.”
“Got a pot of something fixed in galley.”
Her stomach rebelled. “Fine.” She passed a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m coming.” She punched the com off, rolled out and sat on the bed edge trying
to convince her legs to work.
Gods, Hilfy. Tully. That settled back on her shoulders. There was the packet in
the security bin. There was Tt’om’m’mu’s writhing shape in its violet glow and
the mahendo’sat, together against the glass (don’t ask about the knnn) and
mahendo’sat making vital connections on her ship, when mahendo’sat incompetency
had let kif do as they pleased.
Incompetent? Kshshti stationmaster, and no better than that?
Suspicions had tramped her subconscious half the night, rose up in memories of
dreams of a kif in the shadows of that room. Of delicate connections in the
column links, some mahen technician carefully making a sequence of mistakes that
would send false readout to the boards. Gods, what if–
A body could go crazy on what-ifs. Like treachery from Goldtooth from the start.
Like Vigilance being in the right — for hani interests. Like Chanur on the
wrong side of matters and about to become expendable in some mahen intrigue.
Or traitorous.
She got up, showered, dressed in a subdued way, a pair of old breeches she saved
for rough work. No earrings but the plain ones, such as any spacer wore.
Khym had done much the same, in a pair of silk breeches that had seen the
Meetpoint riot and would never be the same. He met her in the galley with gfi
and a dish of something overspiced-not good at cookery either. But the job got
done and the stuff was far from fatal.
“Good,” she said, to please him, and coupled with that was the ugly thought that
nothing mattered much, beyond Mkks. Tomorrow. Their tomorrow, and their next
tomorrow, when they would come out the other side of jump.
How much time-gain for a hunter-ship like Harukk and its ilk? Days faster than
The Pride at absolute best. HaruJdc would be in port at Mkks as much as a week
by the time their day-after-tomorrow came, and they spent time working up to
dock at Mkks, and all the attendant nonsense. If they got that far.
She shivered, swallowed an overspiced last mouthful and washed it down with gfi.
Her ears kept going down despite herself. She pricked them up. Looked Khym’s
way. “There’s a procedures list in comp,” she said to him. “Checklist.”
“Got it,” he said, displaying a paper on the countertop. Gods, efficiency. She
poured the whole matter out of her mind and got up and walked off.
Maybe — maybe the kif would hold off in Hilfy’s case, until they had used the
bait for everything they could get. Not Tully. No. Not with a chance to pull
information about all humankind from him, and a week to do it in. The first time
kif had had their hands on him he had had a word or two he could speak, and a
handful more he could understand, and never admitted either to the kif.
Now he could get a hani sentence out. And Sikkukkut had fluency.
“Captain,” Haral said when she walked out on the bridge. “Got a request from the
repair chief. They want to get column access from inside. I told them go ahead.
I’m opening lower deck for that.”
“Get their security down there.” The thought of outsiders straying at random
through The Pride’s interior workings set her nerves on edge. But they were out
of personnel. Out. Totally.
“Second item,” Haral said. “A freighter turned up about 0300 last watch in
approach to 29.
Our scan’s been down. It just turned up, blink, on station output, at the