Caroline Cherryh: The Pride of Chanur

“Pyanfar!” Goldtooth’s voice came over com. “ You got sense these bastard?”

“Human ship,” Pyanfar said, punching in her still-active link. “The knnn just dropped a live cargo on us. Tully’s kind. — They’re still going, by the gods, the knnn are still going, outbound.”

“Kif ship leave station,” Jik cut in. “ He go.”

A solitary kif, of the crippled three at station… it was so: a lame kif without a tail, headed out on the course of the other lame kif, inching his way into retreat. “Right down the incoming strike track, that’s their course,” Pyanfar said, fairly shaking with excitement. “By the great and lesser gods, they’re pulling out, they’re going to run.”

There was a sudden and major vacancy on scan, the characteristic scatter-ghost of a ship departed into jump — where the mass of knnn had been, enveloping Hinukku. A vast ghost, a ripple in space-time; and hard after it — a smaller ghost, their own knnn. Vanished.

The two remaining kif kept going, realspace and realtime, headed for the far dark and sending out a steady signal, telling of disaster.

Running for their lives.

“We got,” Goldtooth said. “Got, Pyanfar.”

“Got. — Gods know what we’ve got.” She heard Tully still chattering back and forth with the newcomer, heard lilts and tones in his speech she had never heard. She looked back at him, who had all but usurped Haral’s com board. He saw her. His face was wet. “Friend,” he said to her in her own language. “All friend.”

Gods knew what there was to say to the newcomers that the translator could convey without foulup. Gods knew how to cope with a dozen other Tullys equally confused and upset as he had been in his arrival.

“They come,” she said slowly, distinctly. “Tell them they come to station.”

“Come, yes.”

She spun about again, toward the screens, started putting on thrust for a stationward course. Other ships were proceeding on that heading, the hani jumpships who had never slackened speed; hani who had kin on station; hani who had crew from station or who had dropped landing parties on the docks to try to assist the Llun.

Anything might be happening there, even now, with kif elsewhere in rout.

A hundred Outsiders plated in gold could not have interested her at the moment.

“Captain—” Geran said; and of a sudden new data came up on the screens, and a familiar steady signal came over audio. “Station’s broadcasting again, captain.”

She heard the mahe advise them of the obvious, heard the alien chatter from the Outsider, who must have picked it up, and the voices of hani sending anxious queries to station.

“Station is entirely secure,” the answer came back. “This is Kifas Llun speaking; resistance has ended and the station is entirely secure.”

Pyanfar kept up the thrust, reckless of the lights which advised of damage. That rotted number one vane was hit again; gods knew what else was gone, but the fine control was still there; and likewise their ability to brake: no limping in; no lanes established yet: they were all see-and-avoid.

Other signals came in. Harn Station was back on output; and then Tyo, reporting minor damage, minor casualties.

Hilfy, Pyanfar kept thinking; and Chur.

And Khym: at the bottom of her thoughts, Khym, for whom she had no hope.

But that was what he had come looking for, after all.

A sweat prickled on her nose. Breath came hard under the acceleration. The mahe traveled with them, and for its own reasons and in its own purpose, the Outsider ship came, outstripping slower insystem haulers for whom that voyage was the work of hours.

By the time they could get there, Gaohn Station might have some reckoning of the casualties.

The Pride opened accesses while Mahijiru eased into dock beside her, and Jik’s Aja Jin stood watch toward that quarter of the system out of which some stray kif might still come… not expected, but they took precautions.

The Outsider ship came in more slowly still, permitted docking, but having to accomplish it without understanding the language, the procedures, and without compatible equipment: “Beside us,” Pyanfar had told them simply. “You got vid? You see four grapples: airlock placed in center, understand? You go slow, very careful. You have trouble, you stop, wait, back off: small ship can come from station, help you dock. All understood?”

“Understand,” the answer had come back through the translator. And the Outsider arrived, cautiously… wondering, doubtless, at the holed carcasses of kif ships nearby; at the signs of fire which pitted the adjacent section of the station torus.

Someone on the dock got a direct line hooked up. “Captain,” Geran cried, her eyes shining amber. “Captain, it’s Chur and Hilfy. They’re there, both of them!”

“Huh,” Pyanfar said judiciously, because there was a docking Outsider chattering in her other ear at the moment; but relief jellied her gut, so that she heard very little of the Outsider’s babble at all. She looked at her crew, and at Tully, whose eyes had lighted at the news.

“They’re safe,” he asked, “Chur and Hilfy?”

“We’re going out there,” Pyanfar said, thrusting back from the controls. “All of us, by the gods.” She stood up, remembered the tape they had duped on the way in and pocketed it. “Come on.”

They came, off the bridge and long-striding down the corridor, Tully too, rode down the lift and marched out the lock. If there was eve— a time for running for joy, it was that last walk down the rampway; but Pyanfar held herself to a sedate walk down the ramp, into the wide, fire-scarred dock where ha stood with weapons.

Chur and Hilfy and some of the other Chanur — o gods, Hilfy, with a bloodstained bandage round her side and leaning on Chur who had one arm in a sling. They smiled, in shape to do that, at least. Chur hugged Geran one-armed, and Pyanfar took Hilfy by both shoulders to look at her. Hilfy was white about the nose, with pain in the set of her mouth, but her ears were up and her eyes were bright.

“We got them,” Hilfy said hoarsely. “Got behind them at the dockside while others came through the core and pushed them out to us. And then I think they got some kind of order because they went frantic to get to their ships. That was the big trouble. One got away. The rest — we got.”

“Khym.”

Hilfy turned with some evident stiffness, indicated a figure, crouched against the far side of the dock, small with distance “ Na Khym got the one that got me, aunt, thank the gods.”

“Hit them hand to hand, he did,” Chur said. “Said he never could shoot worth anything. He came across that dock and hit that kif, and gods, five of them never more than singed his fur I don’t think they ever saw a hani of his size — gods, it was something. They bailed out of cover and we got the leftovers.”

Pyanfar looked, at once proud and sad, at that quiet, withdrawn figure. Proud of what he had done — Khym, who had never been much for fighting — and sad at his state and his future.

Gods, if they could only have killed him — given him what her son had not had the grace to give…

Or perhaps Kara had sensed he could not kill him; it* Khym Mahn backed to the wall was a different Khym indeed.

“I’ll see him,” she said. “We’re going to get you two to station hospital.” .

“Begging pardon,” Hilfy said, “station hospital’s got its hands full. Rhean’s got someone hit bad; and Ginas Llun-she’s none too good either; and a lot of others.”

“Hilan Faha,” Chur said, “and her crew — they’re dead, captain. All of them. They led the way in for the core break-through. They insisted to. I think it was shame — for the company they’d kept.”