She didn’t. That rarely stopped Pyanfar Chanur. But her aunt tilted her chin up in that lock-jawed way she had when she knew she’d won a point, and changed subjects.
“That’s a hunter ship out there. And it wants what you’ve got. It could blame things on the kif. It could be rid of you, get hold of your passengers and the oji, pin the raid on kif pirates, and still show up in civilized ports smelling like a spring morning. Think about that. They could be lying silent when you show up at Kshshti. They could clip a vane and strand you, for a least thing they could do. Kshshti’s not going to investigate. You know what Kshshti is…”
She was on Kshshti docks—red lights flashing, black-robed shadows closing in on them in some trading company’s dingy freight access, fighting for their lives, and Tully going down-She didn’t want the rest of that memory. She tried to come out of it. She hadn’t flinched at going to Kshshti when she’d known she had to, she hadn’t let what had been affect what would be … she wasn’t a coward, she hadn’t been and wouldn’t run scared. She’d go there, she hadn’t given herself time to think and none to recall the jump out of there, the absolute black despair of a kifish hold…
Kshshti was where it had started. That was where she had made the worst mistake of her life, when the kif had been waiting for nothing so much as a chance at any of them. Leave it to the kid.
She’d been younger then. Hormones in full spate. A fool.
A kif leaned close to the cage, and talked to her, its speech full of clicks from inner and outer rows of teeth. A kif reached into a cage and devoured small live creatures that squealed and squeaked pathetically. Kif were delicate eaters. Their appetites failed, with other than living food. And nothing went down their gullets but liquids—of whatever viscosity. She wanted out of this dream… But it was forever before she heard the beep of the alarm, telling her they were making the drop ….. here and now.
* * *
“That’s first dump,” she said. And remembered the hunter-ship. “Where’s Ha’domaren? Look alive! Can you spot him?’’
“Got the buoy,” Fala murmured.
And from Chihin and a deeper voice almost simultaneously, a set of coordinates, as Tiar’s switching sent the buoy system-image to her number one screen.
She was relieved to know where that son was, damned sure.
Meanwhile Fala was talking to gtst excellency, who seemed to be alive, and Tiar was handling a message to station.
“Rocks didn’t blow,” Tarras said.
“That’s nice. Advise gtst excellency we’re going down again.”
Pulling the dumps close together. But they’d come in close. Showy precision. She pulled a nutrient pack from the clip and downed it in three gulps.
“Kshshti Station,” Tiar was saying, talking to a station central that wasn’t going to hear them for another hour. “This is ,inbound.”
Not The Pride. Now wasn’t then. Maybe on Kshshti docks a stsho was running for cover. Maybe they’d caught Atli-lyen-tlas this time, maybe gtst hadn’t had time to get out of port. A stsho didn’t have the constitution for consecutive spaceflights. Gtst had to be feeling the strain of the chase by now. Gtst had to be saying to gtstself that maybe running wasn’t worth it.
Gods-for-sure certain no kifish captain had provided gtst the comforts they’d given Tlisi-tlas-tin. That kifish ship held the dark kifish eyes preferred, the sullen glow of sodium lights, the perpetual stink of ammonia …
… on anyone who dealt with them…
A stsho couldn’t flourish in the dark. Gtst sanity would go.
On the other hand … considering Kita Point … maybe it already had. Maybe there wasn’t an Atli-lyen-tlas by now, just a body, and compliance to kifish orders, and no knowledge who gtst had been.
Disquieting thought.
One she refused to deal with until she had found their recipient.
They traveled at insystem v now, good, peaceful citizens of the Compact. They had the output of the buoy computer that, constantly updated by real events in its vicinity and events transmitted from Kshshti Station, maintained a time-warped reality of its own, shading from the truly real and contemporaneous, or at least minutes-ago truth to the many-minutes-ago truth of Kshshti station.