gut a brusque presence swept into the center, graynosed and haggard and accompanied by a band of hani in hardly better shape-the look, Hilfy had gotten to know it, of spacers off a brutally hard run. Dulled fur, thinned patches. She knew them, had seen this lot last on a Meetpoint dockside with police closing in on all of them.
Banny Ayhar and her crew filled the doorway, blinked, and stared at her closer than a chance encounter warranted. “Is that young Chanur?” Banny asked. “Is that Hilfy Chanur?”
Hilfy’s jaw refused to work. The wits that had done quite well up to that point, turned to butter.
“Chanur for sure!” Banny drew a deep breath, and her ears slanted back and up again. “They told me what you did.” Down again. “Got us free, b’gods! Gods-be fools! But what’s this with you and the kif?”
There was profound silence at her back, and profoundest attention to the question.
“Chanur,” another voice said at her back. “Ker Hilfy.”
She started out, past Banny. But that obstacle was not moving.
“Kif,” Banny Ayhar said. “That’s what I want to know. What’s going on?”
It was stop or fight. A fight now could do Chanur no particular good. She glared at Banny Ayhar with flattened ears and the power of the AP in her fist which was right now worth nothing at all.
My gods, I can lose it all. Everything. If they get wind of what we’re doing, they’ll throw it wide and high and we’ll all die, the whole world will die for it. O Banny Ayhar, you godscursed fool, you’re about to throw away everything you won.
“You got the message here,” she said to Banny, quiet and urgent, ears up now. “You want to lose it all? Or you want to stand with me here?”
She was talking to a captain; and a hardnosed one; and flatly forgot the ker and the respects: she threw her whole life and self into it.
Banny’s ears twitched this way and that in the deep hush. Everyone in the whole center must have heard that appeal, as if Ayhar and Prosperity were part of all that tainted Chanur. There was Harun back there. And Munur Faha. She was not alone. Even in the matter with the kif. There were senior captains to rely on. There stood Fiar and Sif, co-conspirators off the same bridge.
She saw a sudden guardedness in Banny Ayhar’s eyes, the look of an old trader and an old hand in rough places. The old woman knew when she had gotten a high sign, by the gods she caught it up; and it was suddenly spacers and stationers in the control center, spacers and Them, which was only slightly less foreign than the kif.
“Chanur,” that Llun voice behind her said, a woman’s voice of some age and authority.
But before she turned, Ayhar lifted her chin in that way that from Anuurn docks to Meetpoint, said Ally, till I find out different.
“Cap’n, they got into Central, they got it.”
Pyanfar crossed the bridge in the wake of a cheer from both crews, to lean on Chur’s seatback. “Clear?”
“Not officially confirmed yet.” Chur did not look around. Her ears backslanted as she flicked switches and punched buttons. “Gaohn station, this is The Pride of Chanur, we got an incoming lighter, we’ll handle that. Appreciate word on casualties at your earliest.” Pause. Flick of the ears. “Captain, we got a general announcement: Remain calm. Llun has retaken Central.”
“They’ll have every clan in reach of there asking casualties. We’ve got to sit and wait, I’m guessing.”
“I’d like it better if they got some operators on output. We just got that same message cycling over and over. Nobody’s handling anything. We got what we got from a ship-to-ship off a Maura freighter. Somebody’s got com in there.”
Pyanfar gnawed at her mustaches, spat and gnawed again. “We got no favors coming. Those with bad news get it first, that’s the way of it. They’re all right. Just keep after ’em.”
While Tauran crew methodically handled the approach of the kifish lighter, which was coming in toward the docking boom aft. And a certain kif was standing there with bags and Dinner packed. One hoped.