Chanur’s Homecoming by CJ Cherryh

“They threw me back in here. I was up walking, captain.”

Her ears pricked up. “Want you to think about that one double-jump, about getting to the other side of it. It’s all easy after that. Home. You hear me?”

“Promised my sister,” Chur said. The voice grew strained with the effort of lifting her head. “Gods-be machine trying to put me out again. No sense of proportion. No sense.”

“Cousin.” She shut the door and went on, next door to her own cabin, leaned on it and pushed the open button. It let her in. She left it on autoclose, crossed the floor to her bed and flung herself onto it facedown and fully clothed. She reached blind and fumbled after the safety net. It hummed across.

Chur.

Jik could still be setting us up.

Tauran-got to make them understand.

We got Skkukuk down there lunching on little animals, we got Tully stark scared and sitting next Armaments, if he could read the keys; we got Urtur-

-o gods, Urtur.

“Py. Py.” A gentle shake at her shoulder. She gasped air and blanket fluff and came out of it with a swimming-motion, a wild flailing of her arm for the bed-edge. It would be an emergency. Everything was an emergency.

She clawed her way to the edge and a hand helped her upright, two hands held her there by the shoulders. She flicked her ears with a chiming of rings she had not taken off; and blinked into her husband’s face.

“They need you,” he said. “It’s all done, we’re inertial. I’m one of the ones going offshift. Haral said they need every experienced hand they have up front for this one. They got two Tauran-clan at the boards. I’m just going to have a nap myself. All right?”

He was so calm. She stared at him stupidly. She had slept through undock? Slept through all the clank and thump and I he shift of gravity? Haral had handled the ship gentle as eggshells.

Then Haral had evidently told her husband to give up his post and get off the bridge: more, to shut himself up alone in here and wait out the worst jump they had ever made; so her Khym just came back and explained it all calmly? He was terrified. He had to be. She was.

Of a sudden she felt a great tenderness toward him; she reached up and touched his face, nosed him in the ear. “Huh. Good job. Real good job.” Nothing more than that, no compliment for following orders; he deserved having that part taken for granted.

Going home. If they lived to get there it was no good place for him. If they lived past Urtur.

“Don’t do that,” he said in his lowest voice. “You don’t want to be late.”

“Uhhn.” She scrambled past him.

She came onto the bridge still raking her mane into order, still with sleep fogging her brain.

Everything done, the man said. Haral had let her sleep, that was what; Haral had gone and run everything her own way, the competency of which she trusted with her life, high and wide and inside out. But there was more than a handful of lives riding on it this time. And she had wanted her hand on it.

There was Tauran crew in Chur’s seat. Skkukuk was in place. Another young Tauran sat at the com, in Tully’s place. Haral and Tirun, Geran and Hilfy; and strangers. Sirany Tauran rose from her seat, forward. Her gut knotted in spite of everything.

“Tauran,” she murmured, offering a dip of the ears by courtesy to the tawny-hided westerner. “Sorry, dreadfully sorry. I meant to be up here long before this.”

“Your First told me you’d run without sleep.” Tauran lowered her own ears; they stayed half-down, an attitude of reservation, jaw jutting. She swept an arm about. “My cousin Fiar Aurhen at com. Sifeny Tauran at scan: call her Sif. I’ll be heading down.”

“Haral explained-”

“As well as she could.” Tauran gave a hitch at her breeches. “I took you on credit, ker Pyanfar. I’m still doing that. I’d better get moving. We’re coming up on our jump.”

“Right,” she murmured. “Ker Sirany.” At Sirany Tauran’s departing back. The Tauran went off in some haste. The whole bridge crackled with necessity.

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