"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.
(Continued in THE KIF STRIKE BACK)
APPENDIX: Species of the Compact
The Compact is a loose affiliation of all trading species of a small region of stars who have agreed by treaty to observe certain borders, trade restrictions, tariffs, and navigational procedures. It is an association, not a government, has no officials and maintains no offices, except insofar as all officials of the various governments are de facto officers of the Compact.
Native to Anuurn, hani may be among the smaller species of the Compact, but the size range, particularly among males, is so extreme that individual hani may overreach and outbulk the average of other, taller species. Their fur is short over most of their bodies except for manes and beards. It ranges in color from red gold to dull red brown with blackish edges, and in texture from crimped waves to curls to coarse straightness.
Hani were a feudal culture divided into provinces and districts a few centuries previous to the events of The Pride of Chanur. They had well-developed trade and commerce when they were contacted by the spacefaring mahendo'sat (qv) and flung from their middle ages, with its flat-earth concept and territoriality, into interstellar trade.
The way of life previous to that age had been this: that individual males carved out a territory by challenge and maintained it with the aid of their sisters, currently resident wives, and female relatives of all sorts, so long as the male in question remained strong enough to fend off other challengers. Actual running of the territory rested with a lord's sisters and other female relatives, at least a few of whom, if he was fortunate, would prove skillful traders, and whose marriages with outclan males would form profitable links with the females of other clans. Such males as lived to become clan lords were sheltered and pampered, kept in fighting trim at the urging of their female relatives, and generally took no part whatsoever in interclan dealings or in mercantile decisions, which were considered too exacting and stressful for males to cope with. The male image in most households was that of a cheerful, unworldly fellow mostly involved in games and hunts, and existing primarily for the siring of children and, in time of challenge, idolized for those natural gifts of irrational temper and berserker rage which would greet the sight of another male. The females stood between him and all other vicissitudes of life. Much of hani legendry and literature, of which they are fond, involves the tragic brevity of males; or the cleverness of females; or the treks and voyages of ambitious females out to carve out territory for some unlanded brother to defend.