"Secure that!" Pyanfar snapped. He jerked to a stop and looked about, looking for what he had done. But Tirun took the gun along with Chur's.
"Got it, captain. He gave it to me."
Pyanfar nodded and collapsed onto her rump on the console edge as Khym headed off. She gave him no mercy. None. Crew covered for him; and they did it not because he was male, or hers, but because he had just earned it out there if he had the sense to know it. That warmed some of the cold at her gut. Some. That beaten weariness in the slump of Hilfy's shoulders, that bleak, all-business stare—that was out of reach.
"How close are our friends to final dump?" she asked Chur, and handed her rifle on to Haral. "We got anything trustable out of Central?"
"I marked the first alarm," Chur said, gestured loosely toward comp, a ticking chronometer on the number two monitor. "Figure—figure our ships'll be dumping down about now, but Jik may freehand it. Don't trust the kif to tell us huh?"
Understatement. Complicated comp operations from a crewwoman doing well to be sitting upright. "You're going off-duty. Shift's Haral and Tirun. Rest of us clean up, then turn about. Move it. We've got company coming."
There were minute delays, a quick dart of Haral's eyes.
Questioning. What do we do? Sit here?—because sitting here at dock was not altogether sane. Think there's a chance of pulling the rest of this off?
"Send," Pyanfar said. "Us to both those ships. Tell them we're back aboard. Tell them we've talked to the kif and we've got half the job done. Kif wants to go on talking."
"Tully's left there," Hilfy said, of a sudden turning about and leaning toward her on the counter edge. Hilfy's voice cracked and spat. "Four days, aunt—four days they worked on him. ..."
"Then we made good time," Pyanfar said, cold, very cold, because Hilfy wanted heat. "I'd have figured five. We'll get him out."
"They're taking him apart." Hilfy stood up and back. "That bastard kif has got time to do it in."
"We got what we could."
Hilfy drew one long breath. "Yes," she said, and was ail quiet, all the way through.
"Send that message," Pyanfar said to Tirun, and unbuckled her AP and passed it to Haral to put in the locker with the rest. She turned back to Hilfy. "Go wash up. We're not through yet, niece."
"Aye," Hilfy said, and turned and walked off.
"You too," she said to Chur. "Geran, get her out of here."
"Want the gfi," Chur protested.
"Fine. It'll come back there where you are, just fine." She stood there while Geran helped her sister up from Haral's chair and supported her toward the door. "Stay to Khym's cabin, huh? I want to keep you near controls. Might need you to sit watch."
"Aye," Geran said on Chur's behalf, a departing glance.
The situation was not what they had feared, in alclass="underline" hostages murdered, Mkks with major damage—That was what could have happened even before they made dock. It was little short of a miracle they had worked, getting in and getting Hilfy free.
But it was not good enough.
Haral slid into the chair that Chur had left, powered it about again and got to work in Haral's own unflappable fashion, mind going instantly from dockside to those boards with no glitch-ups likely. Pyanfar tested the weapons-locker door and heard the electric tick of the resisting latch. "That access camera and the motion-sensor better stay on. We don't control those gates down there."
"Right," Haral said, and reached and keyed mode and number without a beat missed, while the numbers ticked by on comp's other sections.
"Got a confirmation on that final dump," Tirun said, holding the complug to her ear. "Captain, just got the confirm from Aja Jin. Captain's compliments and he'll see you here soon as he gets in."
Pyanfar looked at the chronometer. They were down to two minutes Light on response-time between themselves and the incoming ships. "Understood," she said.. Two minutes as light moved. A good deal longer for a ship that had blown off its C- fractional energy to move into station's slow-going frame of reference, and longer still to dock. "I'm going for that bath."
Mayhem and chaos might erupt. There might be attack. There were wobbles in her knees, deprivations coming due. There was still time for a bath, a cup to drink; in the meanwhile it was The Pride's seniormost crew at controls. No flap, no emotional decisions, no foulups. Thank the gods.
She dumped it all into their laps and headed down the corridor untying belt-cords as she went.
Hilfy had gone below, to the empty crewquarters. Alone. She would not have had that. But there was nothing else to do, nothing else to offer.
So we throw the party later, kid. When it's due.
Gods help us all.
She thumbed the door open and headed straight for the bath, shed trousers into the bin, hung the com on the bathroom wall within reach of the shower cabinet and turned on the warm mist with a melting sigh.
Fur by the fistful swirled into the drain at her feet—gods, only half of it was left from jump: the kif business had scared the rest off. And the while she lathered and rinsed under the warm flood she tried to collect her jump-scattered wits, plotting and replotting how to bet the next dice-throw. The kif would have a trick or two. She knew.
And the com beeper went off as she reached to cut in the drying-cycle.
"Gods, what?" she asked, snatching the com, shedding water on the floor. Her heart thudded. Showers—any offduty indulgence—had begun to make her paranoid. They knew; somehow the whole universe knew the moment her guard went down.
"Got a kif outside in the access way," Haral's voice came back. "Captain, it swears it's yours."
III
"You. Kif." Pyanfar leaned above the com console, and saw the intruder on the camera they had rigged back at Kefk, a huddled black-robed silhouette in the yellow glare of their access tube. It was cold out there, no place for standing. The kif’s breath frosted against its own darkness. "Kif, this is Pyanfar Chanur. You can talk back from there. You got some news for me?"
"Skkukuk is my name. Let me in, Chanur. The hakkikt an'nikktukktin has sent me."
"In a mahen hell."
"I must freeze then."
"Get your freezing carcass out of my accessway!"
The kif stood still. Lifted its arms. The sleeves of the black robes fell back, disclosing black, hairless arms and long, retractable-clawed hands. "Chanur's safety is mine. I offer it my weapons."
"Library," she muttered to Haral; and Haral dived for the comp, looking to see what Linguistics made of that as a formula. Meanwhile she stalled; and the hair on her backbone stood up. "Kif. Skkukuk. What do you expect from me?''
"I wait to discover."
—"Captain," Haral muttered, "library's blank on that idiom."
—"Fine. Gods rot.—Kif you take my orders, do you?"
"I am Chanur's."
She killed the sound. Straightened. "Gods know what that means either. We've got a Situation," she said; and as the number four screen carrying the routine output from station central and traffic control suddenly went all to kifish letters, her jaw dropped. "Gods fry them—"
Tirun snatched at controls. Nothing better happened. "That's the station nav output," Tirun said, hitting keys as fast as her fingers could move. Translation came up: Transmission difficulty. Lights started flashing elsewhere on the com board, urgent communication arriving from incoming Vigilance and Aja Jin, which had just seen their navigation monitors go totally kif.