“We’re going out, are we?”
Chur’s ears went down.
“Aren’t we?”
“Got some little deal going,” Chur said.
“Who? deal?”
“Jik. We got this-well, we got this pay-off we got to make. Jik’s asked us to go to Kefk. He’s talked Ehrran into it.”
“Gods-be.” Hilfy’s claws dug into the upholstery and she retracted them. Fear. Stark fear. She knew it in herself, that flinchings had been set into her, bone and nerve, forever. “What’s at Kefk but kif? We still following this willy-wisp of human trade?”
“Some other kind of deal,” Chur said. Her ears stayed at halfmast. The white showed at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know clearly what. Captain’s back and forth with Jik.”
“Go Kefk?” Tully asked. He wobbled over against the wall and stood there holding himself on his feet. “Kif? Go kif?”
“What deal?”
“Jik’s deal,” Chur said. “Hilfy-we bribed you out. don’t know what’s up, but it’s certain we’ve got trouble on our tail and we’re clearing out of here to lead Akkhtimakt off Mkks in the likely case he comes this way. We got two kif headed for a showdown at Kefk and Jik’s taking sides. Mahen politics. And we’re in it.”
“Gods, no!” The room went black-tunneled. She thrust the chair skidding on its track and headed doorward, dodged Chur’s hand.
“Hilfy-” Chur’s voice pursued her. “Hilfy!”-Tully’s, that cracked and broke.
“In a mahen hell,” Hilfy said to everything in reach, and headed for the lift.
V
“We got Ehrran agree,” Jik’s terse message had said, scantly after Jik could have gotten back to his ship and put the call through. (“Good gods,” Haral muttered then. “What kind of blackmail’s he using?”) (“Must be good-“-from Tirun.) And straightway from Jik: ” We got hakkikt send comp feed, lot interesting stuff. We run through library. You take, we make check.”
And arriving with that feed from Sikkukkut’s Harukk: “I Sikkukkut send a gift. Kefk is not Mkks. You will discover this. We leave port in twelve hours or less.”
“Aja Jin,” Pyanfar protested at once, “that’s a short turnaround. I know we’re pushing, but gods rot it, we haven’t got relief.”
“Sorry,” Jik said. “Got do. Try, friend. We got problem.”
“What problem?”
“Like vector on that stsho.”
“Went to Kefk, huh?”
“Damn right.”
Gods be.” She raked a hand through her mane, leaned both elbows on the console, feeling the tension behind her eyes. –
The com kept up a steady crackle of kifish chatter and mahendo’sat, the station central offices still in kifish control, but with a few mahendo’sat speaking now from dock offices. The boards rippled systems-lights with the feed from Jik’s Aja Jin, which was filtering Harukk data through its own computer and checking it against records before sending it on.
“I’d like to have a look at that comp system over there,” Tirun said. “One gods-rotted complicated son, I’m betting, the way it put us in here.”
“Better do it twice,” Haral said, “that’s all I say. Khym- get that thing, will you? Help him, Geran. He’s got it fouled somehow.”
“It’s gone. I’m sorry. I lost it out of records.”
“What’s one more bill?” Geran said.
Two crew down. Chur was not up to more work and Hilfy was R&R with Tully belowdecks, while the accessible universe wanted through the com system with individual complaints.
“We sue,” was a frequent note.
“You gods-rotted optimist,” Pyanfar yelled at one mahe more persistent than the rest. “Send your lawsuit to Maing Tol and I by the gods hope it gets through!”
Then she wished she had held her peace. Her hands shook and there was a hollow feeling at her gut that going hyper-ac after jump was guaranteed to do to a body. She ate concentrates, drank, and it did no good.
They had to sleep, no matter what; they all had to go off-shift and get some rest, and Jik’s communications streamed in without letup.
“Gods-rotted mahe’s got no nerves,” she muttered. “He had a relief crew while he was inbound. Probably had a five-course dinner. What’s he think we are?”
No one answered that.
And: “Gods,” Geran muttered when the course plan and the Kefk information began to take shape. “That son’s mean.”