Caroline Cherryh - The Pride of Chanur

A ship was out there all right, some ways distant, where no ship had been previously — an arrival out of jump. Pyanfar leaned over the board, wiped a bit of water off the screen and wiped it down her chest, holding her beard and trying to avoid dripping. The newcomer was closer to Urtur than they, a good distance inward and zenith — had actually arrived a while ago: passive recept picked it up from its inherent noise.

“Better part of an hour backtime,” Haral calculated. “I can fine it down.”

’Do that.”

They watched it a while, while Pyanfar dripped a cold puddle on the decking and the counter. “Going inward,” she pronounced finally on the figures Hilfy passed her, checked against current reception. “If that’s the kif, they overjumped us and now they’ve got a bit of hunting to do. We have a wave just getting to them, but it’s got nothing for them, nothing they’re going to know from all the rest of the junk out here. Good.” She recalled her condition and straightened from bending over the board. “Mop that,” she said to Hilfy, who was juniormost. She strode off, pricklish in her dignity.

“Captain,” Haral’s voice came over the pager, and Pyanfar crossed the cabin in two strides to reach the com by her bedside… punched it with a forefinger, comb clenched in the same hand. “Receiving you.”

“Got some chatter that doesn’t sound good,” Haral said. “I think there are kif here, all right. What came into the system a while ago isn’t certain, but it could be mahendo’sat; and I’m getting kif voices and kif signal out of system center.

“Doesn’t surprise me. Pity the mahe who dropped into this pond, if that’s what’s happened. But it might cover any noise we made in entry, if that’s what it is.”

“Might do,” Haral said. “Gods, captain, no telling how many kif there may have been at Urtur to start with. They’re going to swarm all over the mahendo’sat.”

“Gods know how much kif trouble they’ve already had here. That bunch from Meetpoint could have gotten as much as five, six days’ jump on us. Forget it. Let it rest. Our business is our own business.”

“Aye,” Haral said reluctantly.

“Shut it down, Haral. Until they come after us, we’re snug.”

“Aye, captain.”

The contact broke off. Pyanfar drew a long breath and let it go, stood in front of the unit and after a moment punched in the image they could get, from the telescope in the observation dome. Urtur was a glorious sight… at a distance, a saucer of milky light. A shadow passed the image, a bit of rock, doubtless, part of the swarm with which they traveled. She shut it down again. They rolled along blind, getting a tap on the hull now and again from debris, muted this far into The Pride’s core, as they played their part as a mote in Urtur’s vast lens. This silence was an old trick. It worked… sometimes.

She continued her combing, and finally, pelt dried, mane and beard combed and silky again in their ringlets, changed to her third-best trousers, of black silk, with green and gold cuffing and belt, a round-the-hips dangle of real gold chains. She changed her pearl earring for an emerald, inspected her claws and trimmed a roughness. A tip had broken. Hard-skinned, the kif. But she had got him, that bastard on the dock. That was at least some consolation for the lost cargo and Tirun’s misery. For hani lives — that was yet to collect.

She strolled out again, into controls, where Hilfy was standing lone watch. They had far more room when they were under rotation, with the ship’s g making the crew’s private quarters and a great deal of storage accessible, as well as that large forward ell of the control area itself which was out of reach during dock. Some of the crew ought to be offshift now, eating, sleeping: they arranged such details among themselves when things were tight, knowing best when they needed rest and balancing the ship’s needs against their own. Hilfy had a bruised look when she turned to face Pyanfar as she came up behind her in the semishadow of the bridge, amid dead screens and virtually lightless panels. She stood there as if there was something she could hope to do, ears pricked up and eyes wide-irised with her general distress.

“Haral left you on watch, imp?”

“Haral said she was going below.”

“I thought I dismissed you.”

“I thought it wouldn’t hurt to be here. I can’t rest.”

“Can’t rest is a cheat on the ship. Can’t rest is something you learn to remedy, imp. It’s going to be too long a wait to wear ourselves to rags up here. Nothing we can do.”

“Com keeps coming in. It’s them — it’s the same kif. They’re asking the mahendo’sat ships where we are and they’re making threats. They call us thieves.”

Pyanfar spat dryly and chuckled. “What tender honor. What are the mahendo’sat doing about it?”

“Nothing. It is a mahendo’sat station, after all; there are other ships… all over the place — there’s help for them, isn’t there? I’d think they’d do something, not just let the kif do what they please.”

“There may be a lot of kif, too.” Pyanfar leaned forward and checked the boards herself, the little data the computer got off passive recept. A rock hit them, a slow scream down the metal; a screen flickered to static and corrected itself, an impact on one of the antennae. “I won’t tell you, imp, just how close we came to losing our referents in that jump. If that kif ship did get here ahead of us, it’s considerably more powerful than we are. All power and precious little cargo room. That tell you anything?”

“It’s not a freighter.”

“Kif runner. Got a few false tanks strapped on, all shell and no mass to speak of, masking what she is. You understand? Ships like that do the kill; the carrioneaters come after, real freighters, that suck up the cargoes and do the dockside trading when they do get to some port. That’s what we’re likely up against. A runner. A hunter ship. They overestimated our capacity… overjumped us, more than likely, and incoming traffic may have been good enough to confuse the issue further. If that’s the case we’ve just used up all the luck we’re entitled to.”

“Are we just going to sit here?” Hilfy asked. “Ship after ship is going to come into this system not knowing what they’re running into… all those ships from Meetpoint that don’t go the stsho route—”

“Imp, we’re blind at the moment. We’ve dumped velocity… and maybe some of those hunting us haven’t; and maybe some are yet to come. You know what kind of situation that puts us in. Sitting target.”

“If they all stay to centerward,” Hilfy suggested cautiously, “we could just jump out again… be gone before they could catch us, take the pressure off these mahe before someone else gets hurt. Maybe we could get away with it again at the next jumppoint, get to Kirdu… after Urtur, couldn’t we maybe make Kirdu in two jumps? Get out of here. After this place, there are other choices. Aren’t there?”

Pyanfar stared at her. “Been doing some research, have you?”

“I looked.”

“Huh.” It was a sensible idea, and one she had had even before the jump; but there were loose pieces in this business. Moves not yet calculated. It remained to measure how upset the kif were. And why. “Possible.” She jabbed a finger at Hilfy. “First we take account of ourselves. We go down, shall we, and see what we have left of cargo.”

“I thought we dumped it all.”

“Oh, not what the kif want, not that, niece.” She leaned over the console, checked the pager link. “I think we can leave it a while. Come along. It’s all being recorded, all the com and scan up here. We’ll check it. Can’t live up here.” She set her hand on Hilfy’s shoulder. “We go ask some questions, that’s what.”