“Absolutely,” said Chur.
“Captain,” Geran said in courtesy, and Pyanfar left them both behind, headed bridgeward in long strides.
Haral was at her post, the only one as yet, but Chur and Geran were trailing in at Pyanfar’s back. The boards were Sit and The Pride’s initial systems were all up, with ready-lights on the rest. Pyanfar threw herself into her own chair and powered it about.
“Captain.” Haral acknowledged the command transfer with a dip of her many-ringed ears, never a turn of her head or a missed beat in the routine switch-flicking of power-up. Pyanfar shoved the com plug into her own left ear and leaned, fished the microfiche packet out of her pocket and shoved it in the security bin.
“That it?” Haral said.
“That’s the latest bit of trouble. Gods, I’m tired of mail-carrying. Gods give that Ehrran-”
Khym showed up, from the galleyward-corridor, his hands full of food-packets, his face all cheerful.
-sons, the ancient curse went. Pyanfar swallowed it and listened to the com. The voice out of central was mahendo’sat, likewise the docking chief talking to them on the outside line. One could believe the universe safe and sane; and then a kif spoke up from down the row, giving them its outbound time.
Khym reached past her to clip the concentrates at her elbow. Three packets, one of water. ‘Thanks,” Pyanfar muttered. And to Haral: “You mark what Jik’s trying?”
“Uhhhn.”
“That’s not on the plan. Something recent. Real recent. Didn’t want to use that system in front of the kif, that’s what, and Sikkukkut wasn’t going to use his-eggs’II get pearls Harukk’s got that equipment too and Sikkukkut won’t use it.”
“That where Jik was, you think? Push-and-shove with the kif? Trying to get them to-”
“Might’ve been. Gods know. Gods know if Ehrran knows what he’s up to.”
“He’s got to fill her in. If she comes in alone with the kif-”
Clang-thunk! The accessway was loose. Crash! The grapples from Mkks station retracted. They had their own grip on Mkks and they were against the docking boom: that was all that held them now.
“He didn’t want to tell us,” Pyanfar said. “He wasn’t going to. You get all that business down there on tape?”
“Hhhuun, yes. Want it logged?”
Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. “It’s enough to give Ehrran our skins. No. But don’t erase it either.” She looked across the dividing console, met Haral’s gold-eyed hani stare. Different than Jik’s. Uncomplex in honor and greatly complex in loyalties. “Stow it in my personal file, huh? You don’t need to be part of it.”
Haral’s ears went back. Offended. “Aye. If you want it that way.”
“I do. Who heard?”
“Me.”
“Huh.” Pyanfar looked to the controls and brought her board up. A seat hissed under weight. She half-turned and saw Tully settle in next to Chur. “Tully r”
“Captain?” Tully turned his head, not using com and the translator.
“You crew, huh?”
“I-” Tully misunderstood the question and fished up a small syringe from the chairside pocket. “I sleep at jump, wake at Kefk. I work.”
It sounded chancy. Gods made humans and stsho that way, that jump made them crazy. So they ran ships in and out of jump unconscious. Lunatics. “No fear, huh?”
A primate grin, quickly compressed to a hani smile. “I scared.”
“Huh. Us too.”
“Hurry it up!” Haral said over shipwide com. The voice echoed through the bridge and corridors. “Tirun, move it.”
“Vigilance lodge a protest?” Pyanfar asked, swinging round.
“Aye,” Haral said, and wrinkled her nose and laid her ears back. “I’d give this voyage’s profits to’ve been in range of one of that pair in that lock.”
“Huh.” Profits. She laughed. But humor died. “It was a stupid thing. Stupid, that’s what it was. Like a gods-rotted-”
Khym was on the bridge and Pyanfar swallowed that ancient comparison down too. Called up the outbound schedule, “Log that Ehrran business. Right down to the exit from the lock.”
A hesitation. A key pushed. “I already had it separated.”
“I’ll lay it out for the rest of us-Put Geran wise to it, huh?”
(Gods, Khym back there, coming and going in all this business between her and Haral, between mahendo’sat in the lower corridor, and not a question out of him, not a What’s going on? or a Why? The world was out of shape. But she and Khym had both said a lot of things in the dark. Last watch.)