“Mekt-hakkikt!” Into the right ear. “We are tracking this advance. Give us the order! We are your allies! This mahendo’sat is a devious and a ruthless liar! Take him!”
“Goldtooth, I got a real anxious kif here. Now it’s seven-odd minutes ago, and if I don’t see those ships of yours start braking in thirty seconds from the time you get this, I’m going to take some serious measures. I’ll clip you good, friend. Your ship. Now you stop, and you get ready to talk this out, you don’t push your way here. You want an incident, you want trouble that’s going to echo all the way to Iji, I got to serve you notice these hani ships aren’t moving. I’m timing this real close. I know you, old friend. If I call your bluff like this, you’ll shoot if I don’t. So you better be doing what I say by now, because if you aren’t, you got a fight coming. Endit. No repeat. Time that bastard. Skkukuk! You keep those ships of yours in line.”
“Yes.”
“Jik!” Hilfy’s voice, between two beats of a panicked heart. “Jik’s transmitting, incoming-”
“Negative scan,” Geran said.
Lightspeed wavefront, inbound, the buoys not reporting and no one in position to pick him up.
“Pyanfar-” the thin voice reached her. “We follow you fast we can, damn, you not engage, not engage-”
He was talking about the kif. She realized that finally. He was that far away. Hours out.
Hours ago, when he had fired off that message, he had known Sikkukkut incoming and that a few fool hani were in a lot of trouble.
About his own partner, he could not know.
Nor could Goldtooth know that he was there. For seven more minutes.
“Goldtooth. I’m in contact with your partner now. Ismehanan-min. My friend. There’s a lot of data you don’t have. Critical information. It’s Iji at stake. It’s your border. We’ve got a kifish hakkikt here willing to talk borders. What we’ve got left at Meetpoint you know and I don’t. But I’ve got a passenger, an old mutual acquaintance, who has some real important information. And I’m not talking to a fool, Goldtooth. I want a face to face meeting. You, me, a few old friends.”
“One minute,” Tirun said, timekeeping.
“At Gaohn. Dockside.”
Chapter Fifteen
The docks at Gaohn were deserted, with the profound chill that came of seals cutting off the air circulation, the deckplates so cold they burned the feet; and Pyanfar limped a bit-had been limping since she rolled out of bed stiff and sore and knowing what there was yet to face.
There had been a little leisure, on the way back to Gaohn, a little time for The Pride to run at a decent, safe rate; for aching crew to tend their own needs and the ship’s, and to catch a nap and a hot meal.
She went in spacer’s blues. It was all she had left, and that was borrowed. She went with her own crew about her, and left The Pride in Sirany’s capable hands.
Another lostling had turned up. Dur Tahar had quietly showed up on-scope, blinking in with an ID signal and turning out not to be a piece of hurtling wreckage. “Friggin’ hell,” Tahar had said when they got her on com: “you don’t think I’m going to run my ID, us, while we got you standing off half the Compact and most every hani ship out here ready to blow us to dust and gone. I’m not coming in yet, Chanur. I’ll meet with you or one of your ships, I’ll let Vrossaru and her crew off, but I’m not going to go in to dock … not this old hunter. I’ll just watch awhile.”
“You running with Goldtooth? Or Sikkukkut?”
“Me? Gods upside down, Chanur, you got an exaggerated idea how fast we are. I got out on your tail, been following your emissions trail like a highway clear from Meetpoint, firing like hell to catch you up, but I blew two more systems making that gods-be Urtur shift: sorry if you had any fondness for that kif. Me, I owed him. Plenty.” 5 “You godsforsaken lunatic! You could have blown us all.”