"This is Sirany Tauran." Sirany had gotten herself an output channel. "Affirmative on the linkup, inquiry affirmative, all ships. They're all right. Chanur's clean and clear. Thank the gods.''
"Gods look on us all. Here and otherwise." Harun was talking, Harun always the leader in that group.
"We've got that," Faha said, and other acknowledgments came in.
While the slaughter went on, while a hard burn shoved at them and made breathing difficult, and a lightspeed message proliferated through ship relays.
"We've got contact with Gaohn," Hilfy said. "They ask for a report."
"They know by now," Pyanfar muttered. "But answer them. Send: The Pride of Chanur to Gaohn. We claim navigational priority. Clan business. End message. Put a call through to Kohan. Ask him how things are down there."
On Anuurn. At home. On that small shining sphere in all the wide dark.
It would take a long time. Question and answer went slow at this range. Conversations were all one-sided.
"Where in a mahen hell is Vigilance! Did we pick up Ehrran's ID anywhere?"
"Affirmative. Affirmative," Geran said, all business. "Five ships are putting out from Gaohn. We got a pickup on Ehrran. They're moving now. Make that six ships. They're not talking.''
"I'll bet she's not. Where's Ayhar? Gods rot it, where's Banny Ayhar and Prosperity!"
The burn stopped. Her vision cleared, her voice no longer had to force its way out of her throat. A wave of giddiness came on her. Depletion. Fight-flight reflexes let go and the body had dues to pay. She clamped her jaws against nausea and fumbled after a packet, dropped one and got another. Bit down on it and swallowed and swallowed, which was the only thing else she could do but retch. Going to faint. O gods. I don't do this. "Haral-Sirany. I'm not-"
"Cap'n? Cap'n?"
She drifted. Lay still under a ceiling which was not the overhead of the bridge. Blinked at it and at Khym's anxious face.
"You fainted," he said.
"Gods rot." She drew her hands up to locate her head, which seemed drifting loose and all fuzzed. "Who's running the ship?"
Ker Sirany. We're inbound for Gaohn. It's all right, Py. We did it."
"Jik. ..."
"The kif jumped, such as could. A lot surrendered. They've attached to the other kif. To Chakkuf. Skkukuk's been talking to them, telling them- Hilfy says-that they'll do well to hold still."
"Where's Jik?" Fear set her heart to hammering. "Did he jump, gods rot it, did he jump out?"
"We aren't tracking him. It got- pretty confused, Py. Not Geran's fault. Sirany says so. We-lost some ships. His ID just cut out."
"He's lying. Gods-be, that bastard's pulling another one." There was an obstruction in her throat. She wanted to break something. Anything. There was dark around her vision, a pain all through her gut. ''We need him.'' All quiet and hard to get past that knot. Oh, Jik, Jik. Another gods-be doublecross.
What do I do now? What am I going to do?
"Cap'n?"
It was not a voice she expected to hear. Not loose and wandering around in places like her cabin. She lifted her spinning head and looked at the worn, wan hani clinging to the doorframe. "Chur? F'godssakes-"
"I'm doing all right," Chur said.
"Huh," she said. "Huh." And fell back into the pillows. It was all she could manage at the moment. The whole cabin was going into slow rotation. It felt like tricks with the G force, a little acceleration this way and that way, but if she asked was that going on she would look the fool. It was her head. Her equilibrium.
Gods. Sikkukkut. Where? When?
A weight depressed the end of her bed. A hand touched her leg. "Cap'n." Haral's voice, ragged with fatigue. "We got a little rest now. Ker Sirany's arguing with Gaohn, telling 'em we got right of way and they can by the gods quit quibbling. She's all right, captain. Swear she is. Never shot at anything in her life, her and her crew, I think they're a little shook. Us-we're falling-down and gone away. Whole crew. Thank gods for the Tauran, thank gods, I say."
"I say too," she murmured. Felt a touch across her brow, her ears. Khym's hand. She opened her eyes and stared at the uninformative ceiling. "Was that Chur in here?"
"Not walking too good, but she's put on weight. Turned a corner somewhen and started storing it up instead of burning it. Skkukuk's having lunch-"
"O gods." Her stomach heaved.
"We got to get those things cleared out somehow. Skkukuk says Chur got to the bridge in jump, went into some kind of hyperdrive, started telling the Tauran what to do when they came out, got us all waked up- Cap'n, somebody threw a bunch of relays on manual, got us over on backup systems, or we wouldn't have made it: those gods-be black devils had got into the works, chewed stuff up good. And somebody aimed the guns. Chur doesn't remember, but I got my guess who did it. Or we'd be on the long trip for sure."
She blinked and absorbed that. Remembered bailing out of bed and running the corridor. Was not too clear on how she had gotten into her own seat. Or how anything had happened. The mind did not function well on the trailing edge of jump.
Did not function well after too many jumps, either.
"Call to home," she remembered. "We on response-time yet?"
"Gaohn refuses to relay."
"Gods and thunders, politics, politics and we got a system full of kif-"
"They've got Ayhar under arrest, cap'n. We're still on course. We got Vigilance in our way and we got three other big freighters just hanging off and not doing anything. They'll have fire position on us if we keep coming. They warned us. Have to ask you what you want to do."
She lay there and breathed quietly a moment, ran that situation through her aching skull once and twice and a third time.
Vigilance positioning itself where it could go head on with them or strike at their tail if they docked.
You gods-be fool, / got thirty, forty kif out there!
Bring kif against the han? O my gods, my gods. That fool's going to call bets and I can't bluff, those kif back there don't know where to stop and I can't hold them else. I can't bluff, Ehrran! Don't try to call it.
"Mahendo'sat. Where are they?"
"They're braking. Holding steady relative to the kif. Keeping an eye on 'em."
"And no sign of Jik." That pain was back again. It hurt to blinding. "Gods rot the luck." He's got to be alive. Out there somewhere. Preserving his options. Saving his own people. He has no choice. And I did it, I, I gave it to him. "Ayhar arrested."
"Aye, cap'n. We inquired. We got a communication from Llun, onstation. They're real sorry, they got no choice."
Old friends, the keepers of Gaohn station. Old allies. Under a lot of pressure. "That all they said?"
"Says plenty, doesn't it, cap'n?"
There was a time they were Py and Hal and Tirun. Across every accessible dock in the Compact. Here they were, gray nosed and at wits' end and Haral was sticking by formalities. Haral had held that line ever since the day she got set upstairs, command post, being heir to Chanur; and Haral, equally qualified, being sub-sept, got the second seat. It was the System.
"Captain?"