“Mechanical?” Fala asked. “Could it be a patch-together? Something the buoy’s sending us?”
The kid was using her head again. Somebody using some complicated equipment might have assembled it out of other tc’a transmissions, and rigged the buoy to send it to their specific ship ID when they dropped in. But she wasn’t that sure it was an answer. The Legacy made a gentle burn and she caught at the chair back and the hand-line. “Look sharp, all stations. Don’t gawk. They’ve given us a lane down which they’ll be lying in wait, friends, let’s not get caught by it. Tarras, missile up.”
“Aye,” came the flat acknowledgment.
“Fala, vertical sort. Read it down.”
Chanur Hilfy Advise you Paehisna- kill ma-to
Chanur to all stations; listen to the kif and the tc’a. (I?) advise you of the wrongful death (because) kif now know Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of murder of the stsho ambassador. Mistake now will bring violence on all parties. No’shto-shti-stlen makes the right choice to change the governor (on) Meetpoint…
“Third sort. Diagonal on the left.” Gods-rotted matrix brains. “Aye, captain.”
No’shto-shti-stlen: mistake right. Paehisna-ma-to violent choice. Advise killing brings change. Chanur you not-low now Meetpoint. All death ambassador on governor. Stations kif stsho all ? listen now is party…
“Garbage. It’s not tc’a. Hani translator, idiomatic, vertical pass.”
“Captain.” That from Hallan, quietly.
“Chain of command. Chain of command, Meras.”
Chanur to all stations: listen to the kif and the tc’a. They will advise you the death was murder. The kif now have proof that Paehisna-ma-to is guilty of the murder of the stsho ambassadorial personnel. A false move now will loose violent behaviors on all fronts. No’shto-shti-stlen made the right choice when he decided to bring in a new governor.
“It is aunt Py. Gods rot her, why in a mahen hell did she set up a hash like that? Broadcast that translation to the kif. Broadcast it system-wide. And watch it! That’s not going to make certain individuals happy—“ Meanwhile they were inbound on 1280 with an ambush of some kind set for them, no question. And na Hallan was sitting there with something bursting to say, for which she had no present time. “Fala, get me the hakkikt again. And find out if our passengers are in one piece.”
She oozed back to her chair, fell into it as the earpiece sputtered kifish.
“Nak.”
“Chanur nak. Pakkaktu hastakkht. 1280 lakau.”
A soft kifish laughter. “Tc’a? Mau Ikkto mekt-hakkikta.”
Put nothing past her.
She broke off transmission for a second. “Fala, are the stsho alive down there?”
“Not happy,” Fala said. “Alive. Scared. The two in cabin 2. I’m trying to raise the holiness. I’m getting sounds, I can’t swear to else.”
She switched Tiraskhti-com in. “We’re going in there,” she said in the Trade. “I’m calling station, advising them we’re going in alone. They don’t frighten us.” They did, but you didn’t explain that to a kifish ally. You didn’t stand back here and trade ultimatums with hair-triggered kif and mahendo’sat and hope to avoid escalations.
Though wherever the trap was, their scan hadn’t bounced off anything out there. And the kif hadn’t seen anything they were telling about.
“Captain,” Chihin said, “na Hallan thinks there’re more ships out there.”
“Where? Vector, Hallan.”
“Up,” came the faint answer. “They were there, captain.”
“Tc’a?”
“I heard them. I could hear them over the com. I heard something.”
Gods-be spookiness. Chur was spook enough. When you had a neo wandering around in jump, the gods knew what you got. More ships? Messages at the buoy?
The buoy was the intersection, the place where ships dropped toward the local sun. The buoy recorded presences, and hadn’t recorded anything but them and the kif.
Nothing, at least, that that buoy was programmed to confess to the Legacy and its kifish companions.
But would aunt Py set up a message that ambiguous?
“More of her gods-be mail,” she muttered. “Filtered through a tc’a brain. They’ve dived down like a fish breaching. They’re up there.”
“ Hoveringin hyperspace?” Tiar said.
“You can’t do that,” Hilfy said. “You can’t change vector in hyperspace, either.”
But knnn did it.
“I’d hate to pay their fuel load,” Tarras said.