Han lot crazy. They don't like the stsho make sudden clear paper, bring you to Meetpoint. Got lot suspicion, the han. I tell you, Pyanfar, you got go home talk sense these hani."
"Who cleared those papers up?"
Jik pushed her doorward. She braced her feet.
"Who, gods rot it?"
"Goldtooth talk good stsho, got same treaty, a?"
"Stle stles stlen."
Jik rubbed the bridge of his nose, where an old scar showed gray. "Same got Ayhar."
"What 'same got Ayhar'?"
"Stle stles stlen. Got somehow station damage charge, a? Got big bill, Ayhar. Stsho seize Ayhar cargo."
"O gods."
"Lot scared, Banny Ayhar. Stsho send here, direct route, run courier old bastard Stle sties stlen. Same come Vigilance. Same Stle stles stlen got long talk Rhif Ehrran after you leave Meetpoint, a?"
"That eggsucker!"
"One scared hani, Ayhar."
"Gods rot. What's gtst after?" But ideas occurred to her. A certain bill. A detailed report to the han sent by way of Vigilance.
And another thought muddled past, about timing, information and mahen interests. "You came from Kura, huh? Sure, you did." Jik held up both hands. "Maybe come Meetpoint. Forget these detail."
"Gods rot it, can't somebody tell the truth?"
"Lot truth."
"Sure." She jerked her arm as he laid a hand on it to move her on, and he gave her all her reach for distance between them. "Sure," she said. "Maybe fifty-fifty, huh? What happens now when I get outbound? Maybe have an accident? — Sorry, old friend? Repair crew made a mistake? Hope you enjoy the trip? Gods rot-"
"No. Swear to you." Jik held up his hands again and dropped them. "Say message come to Kshshti. I get same here."
"Who sent you here?"
"Mahen agent, a? Got here, there agent, same hani, same kif. I not say more, Pyanfar. See? I one time try tell truth, got big trouble."
Ayhar? she wondered. Gods, no. Not Banny, not that lot. They loved their liberties too well.
Methane-breather? T'T'Tmmmi had come in from Meetpoint. She had seen it on the list. It was still in port.
Tt'om'm'mu's spy, reporting to methane-side of Kshshti? Circles upon circles. It sent a cold, cold feeling to the stomach.
Knnn. But no one talked to knnn. No one could — excepting tc'a.
"You come," Jik said, mistaking overload for acquiescence, taking her by the unresisting arm, flinging his over her shoulders. "Get you safe back ship, Pyanfar. Got time maybe catch sleep. Tell you truth. . I come Kura way, lousy long run. Sleep make you better, a?" He squeezed hard, dropped the arm again as they came out into the general offices and walked through. Mahen crew hastened to open the outside door. Station guards stood with rifles beside the waiting car.
Kura. Kura was in hani territory. And Ehrran had folded fast when she had a look at the authority in that small wallet Jik had at his belt. Ayhar-Ayhar had been folded before she got there, ears down.
Scared. Plenty scared.
She got into the car at Jik's side in back, surrounded by mahe whose musky flavor got past the perfumes. A guard caught her eye, one curly-furred and smallish, and alarms rang.
"That one," she said to Jik, digging claws into his knee, "outside-"
"Name her Tginiso," Jik said, ducking his head to look past her out that window. "Eseteno aide."
"She was with the car when Hilfy went. Her fur's not singed." For a moment the air seemed very close, the scent of mahendo'sat all-enveloping, and she knew who she was talking to, hunter-captain, mahe with mahen interests very much at stake. She felt Jik's arm shift across the seatback.
"Move," he said to the driver in the mahen tongue. The car leapt forward with a burr of the motor, wheels bumping on the plates like a panicked heartbeat.
Not a word from Jik, only a shifting of his eyes from one side to the other, watching everything along the sides.
Pyanfar watched him, among the rest. Friend. Companion. Along with Rhif Ehrran.
The car thumped along, dodged pedestrians.
Jik took out his pistol and thoughtfully took the safety off in his lap, no small piece like her pocket gun, no, nearly as long as his forearm, with a black, wicked sheen. The mahe on the other side drew hers and kept scanning the surrounds, the whisk of gantries past, of lines, machinery, canisters, all places for ambushes.
Berth five passed. Jik spoke to the driver in something mahen and obscure. "We go close," Jik said. "Want you go fast up ramp."
"Gods rot it, my whole lower deck's occupied."
He pressed her knee. "Same good get you safe in ship." The car veered: a ship access and guards loomed into the way and the car veered again, bringing the door even with the access. The door flew up and Pyanfar scrambled out with Jik and the crewwoman close behind.
Up the ramp then, a slower pace, the long, chill walk through that yellow gullet with the L bend to the lock. Pyanfar looked back, looked round again as they reached the lock and Jik laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Safe. Safe here."
"Sure. The stationmaster's handpicked aides-"
"Listen. I know you safe."
"You know. What's in that ID, Jik? Who are you? Who are you working for?"
Both hands settled on her shoulders. There was nowhere to look but dark mahen eyes, a plain mahen face. "You got watch on you deck, understand, got number one good watch."
"Who? What are you talking about?"
Jik's lips went tight. "Mahe take orders somewhere else. Same good tech, a? Not make mistake."
"Like that aide? Safe like that?"
"I fix."
That left cold after it. Jik lifted his hands from her shoulders, held one finger up.
"Then," Jik said, "get good sleep."
"Ayhar's jumped," Khym said, who sat monitor on com, and the board checks paused for the moment. He scribbled furiously on the lightpad and his florid scrawl came up on screen three as Haral punched it through, a string of numbers meaningless to him, but he got them down with speed.
Heading, velocity, strength of field.
"It's on its way," Tirun muttered, and Pyanfar felt a twinge of relief as the full scan input went to the number two: no pursuit.
There was a tc'a out. T'T'Tmmmi. Outbound on the same heading, none too quietly.
TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A - transmission said, with ship-function babble in all its harmonics, a tc'a ship fully occupied with tc'a business and the speaker thinking only of its/their jobs. Tc'a did not lie, so the story ran, could not.
Once a tc'a began to output, the underminds had to be there or the harmonics failed and the whole matrix fell into gibberish.
So someone non-tc'a had reckoned, from what gtst thought tc'a had claimed, a hundred years ago.
She went back to work, running checks through the systems, resetting failsafes and running them again and again, putting comp through one and the other simulation as it re-programmed itself.
"Pride." Khym's low voice, answering some call, in the profound silence, the click of keys, the sometime shift of a body in a leather seat. "First is busy. Can you-" The shift of a heavier body.
"Ker Tirun. It's Vigilance. They want a crew member."
Tirun muttered something and took it. "Gods rot," she said. "You don't need to go up the line for that, Ehrran. . That was a crew member."
Pyanfar turned around.
"Fine," Tirun said, and punched the contact out. "That's a confirm on the Ayhar jump."
Pyanfar said nothing. There was nothing to say. Tell Khym to stand his ground and ignore a request for higher authority? But next time it might be something that truly had to get someone more knowledgeable. Log the discourtesy? Who would read it but the han?
Khym was busy already, a look of concentration on his broad, scarred face the while he listened to station chatter that flowed past him like so much babble, sorting for anything of interest, anything of tc'a or knnn, anything of kif or mahendo'sat. Doing the best he could.
In Hilfy's vacant post.
Pyanfar turned back again, twisted in her seat a third time as she heard the lift work down the corridor.
"Captain!" Tirun spun her chair as she did, as she came out of her chair reaching for her pocket and Khym was out of his place.
"Identify." Haral had usurped com function to her panel and keys clicked to freeze locks, but the lift door opened all the same.
Hani. Hani and smallish and one of their own.
"Geran," Pyanfar muttered, and the gun went back. No rejoicing, not from any of them. It was not that kind of time, an hour to go and Geran out of place.
"Something wrong?" Pyanfar asked as Geran walked onto the bridge. "Chur all right, Geran?"
"Left her below, snugged in."
"Gods and thunders!"
Geran shrugged, padded over to main scan, rested a hand on her seatback and looked round again, ears at half, and obduracy in the stare she gave back. "Don't like to cross those docks, captain.
Scary place out there."
It took a good long moment of even breathing to cope with that.
"Geran-" in a tone quiet enough to warn a chi. "We've got one hour, one gods-rotted hour to get things sorted out. You two-"
"Captain, please." Geran's voice sank to the same level, but all wobbly. "Chur'd kill me for saying it, but she's scared. Gut-scared. Being left here — the ship and all — where'd she be? What good's two of us — here? By ourselves? Where's home, but The Pride?"
Something superstitious settled into her own gut, nothing reasonable. "Look. We're not after suicide, hear me? Jik's in port. He's got Vigilance on our side for what she's worth. We're going to Mkks to do some good. Hear me? Now get Chur back where she belongs."
"She is. Same as me." Geran's claws sank into the chairback, tendons stark on the backs of her hands. "What's all this new stuff worth with half a crew, huh? Chur can walk — walked across that dock out there from the lift, she did, just fine."
"Good gods."
"The plasm took; the wound won't tear. Got her packed in real good and the time-stretch' give her a good few days to heal. Might be on her feet by the time we get to Mkks-"
"The gravity-drop'll kill her."
"No. Not Chur."
She folded her ears down and Geran stood her ground, meant to stand it, gods knew. And they needed that pair of hands. Needed hands that could fit hani-specific controls, fit a hani crewwoman's space. "Gods rot,",she muttered and walked off the other way with a wave of her hand. "Bring her topside. Put her in my cabin. Put her close to us. Pack a med kit in there."
"My cabin," Khym said. "She can have mine."
"Do it."
"Thanks," Geran said, all heartfelt. "Thanks, captain."
"And get yourself back here. We've got a tight schedule, huh?"
"Aye!" Geran scrambled and took Khym with her.
Pyanfar looked at Tirun and Haral. Tirun's face carefully showed nothing; Haral's was toward the boards, occupied with business.
"Odds just went up," Tirun said, "captain."
"We need crazy people on our side?" She threw herself into the chair, powered it about again, feeling a shameful comfort to know one more seat was filled. The lift hummed, Khym and Geran going down to see to the transfer.
"Getting a confirmation from Aid /in," Haral said, who still had com. "Getting a readoff on course, They're putting us out gods-rotted deep in the well."
She looked at the figures that flashed onto monitor one. "Huh." She keyed that data set into the simulator and watched the lines tick across the screen, affirmative, affirmative, can-do. It was still The Pride's boards, but something alien answered from aft, up the circuit-synapses through the metal spine. "Huh." It made her nervous, in a way that camera-view did not, that picked up the wider vanes, the rakish lines of the vane-columns. That was plain to inspection. The heart and core of it was not, that added some twenty percent to their unladed mass and threw varied percentages into the figures of moving that mass. Old familiar reckonings went by the board. They had to lean on comp entirely, trust it without the dead-reckoning knowledge what the answers ought to be, when it told them The Pride could make a jump that she could never in a mahen hell have survived half a week before.
"We go with it," she said.