And from Chur, plaintively over com:
“What in a mahen hell’s going on?”
“Easy,” Geran said. “It’s all all right.”
“Got crew falling on their noses tired,” Pyanfar muttered. “Haral, keep it steady, standard dock. Tirun, get yourself below, take the rest of your break.”
“Aye,” Tirun said. Old spacer. And falling-down tired. A belt snicked. Tirun went away in silence, to food, sleep, anything she could get.
“Jik’s requesting to be out,” Khym said. So that voice had vanished off com. Khym had silenced him. A mahen hunter captain, locked in a lowerdecks cabin and probably trying to think how to shortcircuit the latch or take the door apart.
“Jik,” she said, cutting in on that blinking light on her com section. “We’re all right. F’godssakes, be patient, get some rest, we’ve got our hands full, you got our scan image. We’re moving in on dock and that’s all that’s going on for a while.”
“Pyanfar.” The voice was calm, quiet, reasoning. “/ understand. I make problem, a? You got protect you crew. I make ‘pology. I lot embarrass’, Pyanfar. Long time with kif make me crazy. Now I got time think-I know what you do. We be long time ally. We befriends, Pyanfar. Same interest. You unlock door, a?”
“I tell you there’s nothing you can do up here. You got awhile to rest, Jik. Take it. You may need it.”
“Pyanfar.” Thump. Impact of a hand near the pickup. Hard. So much for patience. “You in damn deep water. Hear? Deep water!”
“We got another expression.” She flattened her ears, lifted them again. “Told you. After we dock. We got enough troubles, friend. I want your advice, but I got enough to deal with right now.”
“It be war,” Jik said, and sent a chill up her back. War was a groundling word. “Fool hani! The ships go, they go ever’ damn place, not got stop, not got stop!”
“F’godssake, this is open space! This is the Compact, we’re not talking about some backwater land-quarrel!”
‘No. No hanis. New kind thing. Not with rule. We talk ’bout make fight all kif, all hani, all mahendo’sat, make ally, make strike here, strike there. This new kind word. Not like clan and clan. Not like go council. Here we got no council. War, Pyanfar, all devils in hell got no word this thing I see.”
Colder and colder.
“I see it too. So what are the mahendo’sat going to do about it? What have they done about it? Play games with the kif til we got ’em all at each others’ throats? Shove Akkhtimakt off toward hani space? My world? How’m I supposed to be worried about you and yours, rot your conniving hide, when you doublecrossed my whole species! You doublecrossed the stsho, f’godssakes, and that takes fast dealing! You double-crossed the tc’a, gods help us, you doublecrossed them and the chi and maybe the knnn!”
“We got humans. We got humans, Pyanfar. Same got hunter-ships, got way shove these bastard back from out hani territory, you got listen, Pyanfar. Pyanfar, I got timetable!”
Her finger was on the cutoff, claw half-extruded. She retracted it.
“Do you? Way I hear, you got something else too. Like a fancy new maneuver your ships do, just like humans.” Silence from belowdecks then. Profound silence. Then: “Open this door, Pyanfar.”
“At dock.”
“Soshethi-sa! Soshethi-ma hase mafeu!”
Thump.
She cut him off. Looked Haral’s way. Haral studiously lowered her ears. “Not too happy,” Haral said. “Timetable. What’s he mean?”
“By the gods I bet there’s one. At our expense. Mahen gifts. ‘Got a present for you.’ Jik, turning up at Kshshti. Us, miraculously getting our papers cleared so we could turn up back here.”
“I’d sure like to know what was in that packet Banny took on, I tell you that.”
“Eggs to pearls that Jik slipped something into it. Goldtooth’s version, I got a copy on. The stuff that didn’t take a translator to dupe, at least. Which won’t be the sensitive stuff. But anything might be helpful. Downgrade the nav functions: we’ll run that packet of his with the decoder.”
“I’ll start it,” Hilfy said. “My four.”
She keyed the access up and sent the packet over, while The Pride started freeing up computer space.
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