She retrieved her hand. “You better get back. While you can. Before I change my mind.”
“You got good nerve,” he said. “Mahendo’sat got no better.”
“Same you, gods rot you.” Mawkish sentiment overcame her. She laid her ears down. They burned. Crew was witness. But it occurred to her she might never have the chance. “That was quick thinking in there, on Harukk.”
“A.” He tapped his head. “Number one stuff.” He levered himself wearily to his feet and caught himself on the cabinet. “See you otherside, a?”
“Get. Geran, walk him down.”
She watched him go, tall black mahe and smallish red-maned hani, off the bridge and down the corridor. A shiver came over her. She drank the last of the gfi and got up to toss the cup. Haral got it from her. They treated her as if she were glass.
“Captain,” Haral said, “you want to go lie down, catch a nap, I’ll get Tauran settled. I’ve had my off-shift, you’re-”
“I’ll take you up on that,” she murmured, and wandered off, toward the corridor. There was a thump from below. That was the airlock cycling, too soon to be Jik. Tauran was arriving. They were about to take boarders. They had about time to get them settled in and then they started their outsystem run. It was discourtesy to Tauran, not to be there to meet them.
But to dump her ship into system at Urtur, into kifish fire and Urtur’s dust, herself helplessly groggy, she could not do that either.
Neither could she trust a strange pilot at Urtur. It had to be her or Haral. Tirun at a pinch. No one else. Not with The Pride’s new rig, either. O gods. I’ve got to brief Tauran on systems, she’s not used to that much power. Haral’s got course auto’ed in, gods know all we have to do is persuade Tauran’s pilots to keep hands off the autos and ride with it, o gods, I hope they take orders.
She turned and trekked the weary, staggering way back tothe bridge, over to com, leaned there, over Hilfy’s shoulder. “Give me lowerdecks main.” And when the light lit: “Tauran. Ker Sirany?”
“I’m here,” the answer came back.
“Pyanfar Chanur here. Welcome aboard. I’m about to go off shift awhile. I’d do briefing myself but I’ll be taking us through jump. I want you to sit topside during undocks; Meetpoint system is the best chance we have for you to check out our boards, on the run out. Appreciate it if you’d make a quick settle-in and come up to bridge, let my onshift crew show you the rig.”
“Understood.”
“We’re running wobbly, ker Sirany. Out on my feet. Profoundest apologies.”
“We’ll be up there directly, ker Pyanfar.”
“Thanks.” She clicked them out. Shoved back from the board and wandered off with the sour, distressed feeling of proprieties slighted and gods know what she had just said or how it sounded or whether it did any good or not. And no one had explained to Tauran clan about Khym’s crew status.
No. They would have heard. Everyone at Meetpoint would have heard plenty about Khym and the riot and the kif. The Pride and Chanur had become notorious. They would have heard about Khym, about Tully, even before they saw him. Only Skkukuk had startled them.
They were spacers, not groundlings. Not Immunes, black-breeched and arrogant with power like Ehrran and her ilk.
She stopped by Chur’s cabin, shot the door open a moment. Chur was awake, there in her bed with the silver machinery there by the wall and all the tubes going into her arm and out. “You doing all right?” she asked as Chur lifted her head. “We’re going home, you hear that? Got crew from The Star of Tauran coming on board. You’re going to hear strange voices on the bridge. Didn’t want you to worry.”
“Aye,” Chur said. “Been keeping up with things, captain.” A difficult wrinkling of her nose. “You look like you could ’bout as well trade places with me.”
“Hey, we’re all right, we got Jik out. Got his charts and some cooperation for a change. He’s back on his ship. We got the whole lot of kif backing us. We’re going back home, to make sure nothing of Akkhtimakt’s gets that far. Minor matter to the kif, but it may be just our size, huh? We got this one turn at Urtur. Then easier. How are you doing?”