Gods. Sikkukkut. Where? When?
A weight depressed the end of her bed. A hand touched her leg. “Cap’n.” Haral’s voice, ragged with fatigue. “We got a little rest now. Ker Sirany’s arguing with Gaohn, telling ’em we got right of way and they can by the gods quit quibbling. She’s all right, captain. Swear she is. Never shot at anything in her life, her and her crew, I think they’re a little shook. Us-we’re falling-down and gone away. Whole crew. Thank gods for the Tauran, thank gods, I say.”
“I say too,” she murmured. Felt a touch across her brow, her ears. Khym’s hand. She opened her eyes and stared at the uninformative ceiling. “Was that Chur in here?”
“Not walking too good, but she’s put on weight. Turned a corner somewhen and started storing it up instead of burning it. Skkukuk’s having lunch-”
“O gods.” Her stomach heaved.
“We got to get those things cleared out somehow. Skkukuk says Chur got to the bridge in jump, went into some kind of hyperdrive, started telling the Tauran what to do when they came out, got us all waked up- Cap’n, somebody threw a bunch of relays on manual, got us over on backup systems, or we wouldn’t have made it: those gods-be black devils had got into the works, chewed stuff up good. And somebody aimed the guns. Chur doesn’t remember, but I got my guess who did it. Or we’d be on the long trip for sure.”
She blinked and absorbed that. Remembered bailing out of bed and running the corridor. Was not too clear on how she had gotten into her own seat. Or how anything had happened. The mind did not function well on the trailing edge of jump.
Did not function well after too many jumps, either.
“Call to home,” she remembered. “We on response-time yet?”
“Gaohn refuses to relay.”
“Gods and thunders, politics, politics and we got a system full of kif-”
“They’ve got Ayhar under arrest, cap’n. We’re still on course. We got Vigilance in our way and we got three other big freighters just hanging off and not doing anything. They’ll have fire position on us if we keep coming. They warned us. Have to ask you what you want to do.”
She lay there and breathed quietly a moment, ran that situation through her aching skull once and twice and a third time.
Vigilance positioning itself where it could go head on with them or strike at their tail if they docked.
You gods-be fool, / got thirty, forty kif out there!
Bring kif against the han? O my gods, my gods. That fool’s going to call bets and I can’t bluff, those kif back there don’t know where to stop and I can’t hold them else. I can’t bluff, Ehrran! Don’t try to call it.
“Mahendo’sat. Where are they?”
“They’re braking. Holding steady relative to the kif. Keeping an eye on ’em.”
“And no sign of Jik.” That pain was back again. It hurt to blinding. “Gods rot the luck.” He’s got to be alive. Out there somewhere. Preserving his options. Saving his own people. He has no choice. And I did it, I, I gave it to him. “Ayhar arrested.”
“Aye, cap’n. We inquired. We got a communication from Llun, onstation. They’re real sorry, they got no choice.”
Old friends, the keepers of Gaohn station. Old allies. Under a lot of pressure. “That all they said?”
“Says plenty, doesn’t it, cap’n?”
There was a time they were Py and Hal and Tirun. Across every accessible dock in the Compact. Here they were, gray nosed and at wits’ end and Haral was sticking by formalities. Haral had held that line ever since the day she got set upstairs, command post, being heir to Chanur; and Haral, equally qualified, being sub-sept, got the second seat. It was the System.
“Captain?”
“Yeah. It says plenty. It says every godsrotted thing wrong with us.” She shoved herself up on her hand and an elbow, flung her feet for the side of the bed. Blood was moving in her veins again. Her vision cleared. “I’ll have Ehrran’s ears, b’gods if I don’t. My own hands. In the condition I’m in, I could take that blackbreeched prig! I’ll kill her!”