“Thank you, hakkikt.”
The schematic flashed up, glowing lines channeling their approach and their mandated velocity.
Scary enough on a small station. But the numbers, the indicators, were kifish characters, base 8.
“They’re offering automated approach,” Fala said, in a voice a little higher than her wont. “They say they have translation programs.”
“So do we and No. No input from them to our computers. Absolutely not. Just calc it.”
“ ‘Just calc it,’ “ Chihin muttered in a tone of desperation. ‘Calc it’ was herself and Tiar and their computers, in rapid cross-check calculation. While they were aimed at Kefk Station like a missile.
But numbers started popping into the display of their own instrumentation, distance to dock, rate of spin, moment of contact.
“Fine it down,” Hilfy said. “That’s a stand-down on the weapons board, Tarras.”
“Confirm, captain. Standing down and locked.”
The kifish station was protesting their irregular approach. The Kefk control center wanted, they demanded computer to computer contact. They ordered them to brake and abort. The emergency flasher was on the station output. And if there was a time Tiraskhti could be absolutely certain weapons were at stand-down, it was now, preparing for dock. If there was a time Tiraskhti could get a shot that might miss their own station, it was in the next few minutes.
“By the book,” Hilfy said calmly, and kept her claws out of the upholstery of her seat. “.Extra decimals. Let’s not have a repair bill at this place.”
Station was still objecting. From Tiraskhti, moving in just behind them, there was silence that meant, one hoped, observant respect, waiting to see whether they could justify the defiance of station control, respect that grew or died a dangerous death on the skill with which they touched that docking cone.
And bet that the station wouldn’t be quick to warn them of an impending mismatch.
“Rotation shutdown,” Tiar announced, and the next queasy part started, as the Legacy gave up its own internal g and the ring coasted into null. They were coming very slowly, at a tangent to the station’s scarify rapid spin. This was the point where panic could set in, and a point where, as an insystemer, you were either licensed to do this or you linked to tenders who were, and got cabled in.
Or you docked, like the ore carriers, in null at the mast.
A long hauler didn’t have either option. Just the mobile cone that gave you a little guide and a tangential approach, and took you up at a distance that wouldn’t let you crack the bulkheads, before the grapple snagged you and the docking assembly took you into sudden 1.2 g sync with the station’s rotation.
Tiar made a lightning reach: the Legacy’s portside thrusters shoved her one way and then braked that motion null. A quick flurry of small adjustments truing up with the calculated appearance of the cone. You didn’t track the cone until the last moment, didn’t see it until it was too late to brake: and station computers weren’t talking to theirs: theirs was just talking to their engines, now that it had the intercept plotted.
There was the cone. The last correction to put the probe right down its throat and a brisk shove from the mains that put the Legacy into the guide zone at intercept with the station’s rate. The jolt of capture rang through the bow; the contact moved the whole passenger ring for a stomach-wrenching second and pressed them down in their seats. Grapples banged, the braces touched and boomed against the hull …
“And we are in,” Tarras declared.
In. At a kifish station. Solo. Wonderful. “Good job,” Hilfy said in the collective breath that followed.
“Good job. The crew earns one for that.”
By the Book, Fala was already sending her fueling request, arguing in the Trade with the Kefk dock authority.
And by the Book, by aunt Py’s lately sacred and mandated Book, there would be no bending on that point: fueling and offloading of wastes before the Legacy ever opened an airlock, aunt Py’s procedures, in places Pyanfar didn’t trust; and a very good idea, in Hilfy’s present estimation—but meanwhile a kifish hakkikt would, publicly, be compelled to wait on his hearing until that fuel was in, and that was a dangerous slight, in a game of volatile egos: sfik, kifish elegance, was life: offend it, and expect attack, as they expected a move of you under like circumstances. Kif were much on etiquette … their own etiquette, to be sure, a pricklish protocol of arms.