/ can think the way home. Bring us all home.
“Chur?”
“I’ll be with you,” she said. “No worry. Wish they could move this godsrotted rig onto the bridge.” She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. “When?”
“Bring him, captain?” It was not Tirun Araun’s way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun’s ears and put a little stammer in Tirun’s mouth. “That is to say-”
“Skkukuk’s not the one I’m worried about,” Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, auto-rigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader’s honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great
deal; and Tirun’s worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. “How many rings you got, cousin?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. ” ‘Bout many as proves I’ve got good sense, captain.”
“We get out of this one, cousin, I’ll buy you a dozen more.”
“Huh.” Tirun said. “Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I’ll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most.”
“All of our allies will,” Pyanfar said. “Skkukuk’s safe. He’s on this ship, isn’t he? Kif don’t understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we’d really blow the ship? Couldn’t figure why you’d do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He’ll think it’s a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk’s no different, I think. Tell the son I’m going to give him a job to do: he’ll handle kif-com. I’m putting him under Hilfy’s orders.”
“My gods, cap’n.”
“Tully’s sitting com too, this jump. No choice, is there? You’ve got to handle armaments-this time for real, I’m very much afraid; and back up Haral, and keep an eye on scan: I’m putting Jik in Chur’s seat, but his board stays locked, whatever condition his hands are in; and sure as rain falls down I’m not giving him com. While we’re at Kefk we’ve got one excuse; at Meetpoint we may have to contrive another. But I don’t want to put him between his ethics and our survival. Gods know, maybe it’ll take something off his shoulders, in some bizarre turn of the mahen mind. He wants to help us; he wants to carry out his own orders; he probably wants to save Goldtooth’s neck in spite of what the bastard did to him, he wants a whole lot of things that are mutually exclusive. Or that may turn that way in a hurry. And gods know I don’t want him in reach of your board and the guns.”
“He won’t like Skkukuk there.”
“He’ll know why, though. I figure he’ll know inside and out why that is.”
“Him knowing the kif and all, yes.”
“Him knowing the kif and knowing what his own side wants from him, gods save him-gods save us from mahendo’sat and all their connivances. And watch Goldtooth, cousin, for the gods’ own sakes, if we do spot him, keep us a line of fire there. I don’t like the rules in this game either, but we didn’t make them up. They’re his, they’re that bastard Sikkukkut’s, and gods know who else has a finger in it. Watch them all.”
“Aye,” Tirun said in a hoarse, faint voice. “Them and Ehrran.”