Chanur’s Legacy by C.J. Cherryh

She drew a breath and strode down into the mess, answered the inevitable, “You captain this ship?” with the lamentable truth, and fixed Hallan with a flat-eared look. His ears twitched downward, and he winced, but he did not look down.

“Is the methane truck leaking?” she asked. If the tc’a vehicle was leaking its atmosphere into flammable oxygen, this was a bad place to be standing. Procedure was to evacuate the passenger into a rescue pod, pump the methane atmosphere into a sound container, and get the victim methane-side for medical treatment, rather than to pry the wreckage apart—but nobody had told the docker who was bouncing on the oxy-vehicle bumper trying to disengage it. “Stop that!” she shouted. “Fool!”

The police and the rescue workers started yelling, and maybe the tc’a in the cab was distraught too: it started writhing about, its serpentine body bashing the windows of the cab with powerful blows, and wailing—wailing in a tc’a’s multipartite voice its distress. Its companion chi was racing about—a wonder that the convulsions didn’t smash the sticklike creature to paste, and the whole cab was rocking, rescue workers were shouting at the tow-truck, something about come on, hurry up.

Then the thrashing grew quiet. The rescue workers climbed up on the cab and peered inside, and Hilfy held her breath. There was a lot of dialectic chatter, a lot of muttering and one of the workers got down off the cab and began motioning the tow-track to move in.

The police yelled at the rescue workers, the rescue workers yelled at the police, Hallan said, “I’m sorry, captain.”

“What,” she said in a low voice, “happened?”

“The loader jammed. I backed the truck. It just-turned up in back of me.”

Tc’a didn’t exactly drive a straight line. It was the nature of their nervous systems. “Do you have a license to drive on dockside?”

“No, captain.”

“Do you suppose there’s a reason why you don’t have a license to drive on dockside?”

“I think so, captain.”

The police were coming back. They had the tow truck hitched. “Watch your mouth,” she said. “Let me do the talking.” Out of the tail of her eye she saw Tiar and Tarras on the ramp, and Fala behind them.

And the police were on their way back to them, with their slates and their recorders. Lawyers would be next—if it was an oxy-sider Meras had backed into. One could only wish it was lawyers.

“It reproduce,” their chief said, with an expansive gesture involving his slate. “You responsible. Urtur station not.”

She drew a long careful breath. “You write your report. I write mine.”

“We got take him.”

Tempting thought. “No.”

“He not list with you crew.”

“He’s on loan. He’s a licensed spacer. I put him on the dockside. I take responsibility for accidents.”

“Captain,” Hallan objected, brim full of noble and foolish objections—her claws twitched out and her vision shadowed around the edges.

“Shut up, Meras. —I’ll need a copy of your report, officer, and I’ll pay charges on the alarm.”

Don’t even ask if anybody was injured when the section doors moved shut. Disruption of business, inconvenience to traffic, time and services of rescue workers and police…

Say about 200,000 in damages … give or take.

She signed the report as Reserving the right to amend or correct, and so on, due to language barrier and lack of legal counsel, etc., and so on. She thanked the officers, thanked the rescue workers, gave the eye to her crew lurking up in the ramp access, and smiled sweetly at Meras.

“He try fix loader,” the docker chief said.

Grant the fellow a fair mind and an inclination to speak out. She delayed for a look up at the mahe, and gave a bow of the head, and put the name in memory, Nandi, in the not unlikely event they needed a witness. “He thanks you for your support,” she said, in her best mahendi, and gave a second bow, before she took Meras by the arm and headed him up the ramp.

“I feel awful it was pregnant,” he said on the way up, and she threw him a disbelieving glance.

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