Let them take it." She stood up again. "Get some rest. All of you this time."
"Aye," Tirun murmured in what of a voice she had left. Hilfy stared at her open-mouthed.
"Nothing else to do," Pyanfar said to her. "Nothing else. He's worth too much to take chances with. That message is. Understand? We've had it. That vane's got us."
"We go in like this we could be down a week!"
"So we take our damage. We can cover the bill. We've got that. We're done, imp. Finished."
"I could make it," Hilfy said, "up that column and we'd have that unit replaced."
"Wrong. Chur would have to do it. She's smallest. And she's not fool enough."
There was silence but for that. That and the dust.
She got up and walked away, staggered a little as she reached the corridor and The Pride corrected course again.
She had another, chilling thought and turned, pointed at Haral. "No way this kid tries it. You sit on her. Someone goes up that column I'll space her. Hear?"
"Aye," Haral said.
No one followed her. Presumably they were clearing up the paper. Closing down. Her eyes blurred with exhaustion and she refrained from rubbing at them as she passed Khym's cabin.
She thought of going to him. She had not — not since Hoas. It was not her time; had not been, then. Such niceties went by the board with them as they had in her world-visits. But sleep would not come easy with the dust, the small shifts of G that went on constantly: and he might be asleep; and there would be questions if she waked him.
Did you fix it, Py?
She opened her own door and walked in, sat down at the desk and methodically cleared the clutter of her own work away.
Course-plottings. Calculations every way she could make them in hopes of getting another dump-and-turn that would turn them off toward Kura and hani space, without breaking them down at Urtur and stranding themselves here with the kif.
None were feasible. And if they were — if they were, knnn notice fell on hani thereafter.
Goldtooth, you mahen bastard. Seeing to the safety of his own, that was sure.
So she handed the package back again: Here, fool mahe, you take it. Good luck. Run fast.
And Tully-
She rested her head against her hands. Gods, gods, gods.
Knnn.
And the failsafe that was Ijir, whatever else it had been, with its humanity aboard, and just gone backup.
Kif had it, gods help them. Kif would take them apart, mahe, humans, everyone. Tully knew, who had spent time in kifish hands, who had gone to hani for help because he heard them laugh once, across Meetpoint docks.
Gods rot Sikkukkut and all kifish gifts.
They were out of it, that was all. Whatever gain or loss there was yet to be made, The Pride had gone her limit. So they should be glad to be out of it. A vane down. They could not jump The Pride again. They rolled the dice for Kshshti. That was gambling all their lives. At Maing Tol the odds went up, that it would not hold for braking.
Hero's a short-term job, kid.
So what was stung, that they had to give up and lay back and let others do what hani failed at?
And hand Tully on alone to mahendo'sat?
"All secure," Haral said, beside her, at her post. "I take her, captain?"
"I'll take this one," Pyanfar said, and reached and settled her arm into the brace. She glanced up at the reflection of the rest of the bridge, crew in place, Khym in his observer's post.
Fixed, they had told him. And his face had lightened, trusting them.
Fixed, they had told Tully, who was harder to lie to, being spacer himself. And he had drugged himself into a haze by now, as his kind had to do.
"Starfix positive, Maing Tol," Haral said.
The dust whined over the hull, constant but thinner now. "Going to dust up Kshshti a bit," she said. "Can't be helped."
Haral rolled a glance in her direction, a stark, stark stare. "Can't be helped," she said.
Sudden silence then, as the jump field began to build and the shields came up.
They rode their luck this time.
Color-shifts multiplied on the scan.
"Gods," Pyanfar muttered, and put in the general take-hold. Alarm rang up and down the corridors. In case. "Message to our partners: hold steady, keep course; Khym, advisement to Chur: Take precautions, we got kif moving gods know where. Tirun, feed scan down to Jik's monitor; tell him we're all right, we're still on course, we just got something going here."
Acknowledgments came back.
"Captain," Haral said, "Hilfy's got this idea-"
"Tahar acknowledges," Hilfy said. "They're on our lead. Aye-we got that, Aja Jin. Thanks-"
"— Akkhtimakt's got bad troubles," Haral said. "I think we got 'em too."
She waited. Waited till she heard Tirun report all personnel accounted for; Tirun had made it onto the bridge. A last safety snicked into place.
They were secure for running. If they had to.
On the screens the flares continued as the doppler recept sorted it out and got information trued again.
And one and another of Sikkukkut's ships flaring green and going into maneuvers.
Not all on the same vector. They were headed out like thistledown scattering from a pod. Everywhere.
In every direction open to them, mahen space and hani and stsho and tc'a.
"They go," Jik exclaimed over the open com. And something else profane in mahensi. He was monitoring the situation, down there in his sealed cabin. "Damn, they go, they go-"
To every star within reach. To strafe every station and every system where there might be a hostile presence.
"Priority, priority," Hilfy said, overriding something Geran was saying: ''Harukk-com says: Pride of Chanur, proceed on course."
"They go hit ever' damn target in Compact," Jik cried. There was the sound of explosion. Or of a mahen fist hitting something. "Damn! Let me out!"
"She was right," Haral muttered. "Gods-be right. They're going to do it anyhow and we got kif every which way. Captain, they're going to push Akkhtimakt right down that open corridor, to Anuurn, captain, by the gods they are."
"We got problems," Pyanfar muttered.
While a stream of mahen profanity warred with Chur's insistent question on the com.
"Kkkkt." From a forgotten source behind them.
And station was ahead. Meetpoint, with three hundred thousand stsho and a handful of hani citizens.
With kif closing in on them with declared intent to dock.
"Transmit: " Pyanfar said. "The Pride of Chanur to all hani on station: prepare to assist in docking for incoming ships. Join us. This is your greatest hope of immediate safety."
Offer a hani an overlord, a master, a foreign hegemony-
They would spit in Sikkukkut's face. And die for it. That, beyond doubt.
But if they heard the reservation in that message, if they keyed on the nuances of safe-shelter-in-storm and all the baggage that went with it-even if the kif did, it was no more than kif expected, even if it was something no kif dared say: until we find a better.
"Repeat?" Hilfy queried.
"Repeat."
"Still braking," Geran said.
And the brightness on the amber lines that was their own position crept closer and closer to their own brake-point for station approach.
"Harun's Industry; responds," Hilfy said, "quote: We take your offer enthusiastically."
It took awhile, for ships to reduce V.
It took awhile for outbound kifish ships to go their way, leaping out into the dark, toward Hoas Point and Urtur System, toward Kshshti and Kefk and Tt'a'va'o and V'n'n'u and Nsthen. Seven ships, to follow right down Akkhtimakt's tail in a second strike after the first one; and right down the throats of Goldtooth and humans and mahendo'sat and whoever else might be coming in if they could find them.