-Hilfy-
In this place. Here. No sane hani ever built a place like this, this cage for thinking creatures, this place of horrors and torment.
She was supposed to be daunted by this place. Sikkukkut arranged it. No word of explanation-just guides who came to take them down to see what happened to hani here.
“-orders of the hakkikt,” the guides had said in the corridor outside the hakkikt’s hall, and showed them into a lift and down and further astern in Harukk’s huge ring. To recover the prisoners, they promised. And the message was clear: dare my hospitality to the depth, hani; or tell me you’re afraid. Tell me that in front of my captains and my sycophants, and we’ll know where hani fit in our ranks and in our future plans. We’ll know how we have to deal with you-how much you can take and how much you can hold onto. Are you like Ehrran, hunter Pyanfar? Where is yow flinching -point?”
Useful to know that-when we meet in space, when your nerve and mine guide ships and time their reflexes-
Where are your reactions, hunter Pyanfar-so that I can predict them?
She walked halfway to the bars and stood there. There was a small movement from the knot of hani in the corner of their cell. A tension and then a furtive fix of slitted eyes: if they had been resting at all, the opening of the outer door had gotten their attention. And now her presence did.
Chanur, their enemy, resplendent with silk and gold and weapons, standing beside their kifish guard in the heart of this prison.
“Stand behind me,” Hilfy said when she and Khym got to the lock-she turned and looked up at him, great towering hulk that he was. “Cover me. Don’t shoot toward the access; you can blow us all to vacuum. You hearing me, na Khym?”
“Yes,” he said, and the ears flicked, so she knew he heard. But the eyes were dark. And that was trouble. So was his silence on the way down the corridor.
“You make a mistake you can kill her-hear? This is probably a little thing, the stuff we were supposed to get for that gods-be kif-”
“I’m not crazy,” Khym said, and bristled about the shoulders. “But they’re from Sikkukkut. He’s trying something.”
He was thinking. “I’m sure of it,” Hilfy said, and hit the com button by the lock. “Open her up, Geran.”
“I’m on monitor,” Tirun’s voice came back. “Careful, cousin. And don’t take any stuff either.”
The Tahar gathered themselves up. Blood had caked on their fur, in their manes. The senior–Gilan, her name was- had taken a kifish bite on the left shoulder and the awful wound glistened under plasm that had kept her from bleeding to death. It was not the only such wound. Canfy Maurn had a hand wrapped up in a rag and by the blood on it, it was a bad one.
“Get them out,” Pyanfar said to the kif, with no doubt the kif was going to do that, and fast. “You’ve got your orders.”
“Kkkt.” The kif lifted his long jawed face, contemplating mayhem. “I take no orders from you, hani.”
“Captain, you earless bastard, and I’m sure the hakkikt won’t miss you much.”
“Ssss. My orders are only the hakkikt’s. Don’t push, hani.”
The airlock opened. A group of kif stood there, black knot against the orange-lit accessway, the foremost two holding a large metal cage in which dark things darted and squealed. Hilfy sucked a deep breath of the cold air that wafted in. It tasted of something obnoxious, beyond the expected ammonia-taint.
“You can set it down right there,” Hilfy said, with the pistol in her fist aimed at the kif in general. “We’ll take it aboard.”
“But we are ordered to observe courtesy,” said the leftmost kif, stepping over the threshold with his end of the cage.
“Hold it!” Hilfy brought the gun to both hands and remembered the danger of firing. Angle them against the wall. Make the shots true. Panic wobbled her hands.
A living red-brown wall shifted into Hilfy’s way, brushing the gun aside. “She said stop,” Khym rumbled, and faster than seemed likely made a grab for the kif.