Rhif Ehrran made an abrupt gesture upward. Rifles clattered out of the way. Her eyes were amber rings around black. Her rumpled mane stood out in curling wisps as if charged with static. "We'll settle it later, Chanur."
"Fine." Pyanfar led her own crew through, lingered at the rail of the upward ramp and turned her head to see nothing happened behind her. The Ehrran crewwomen stood stock still. Ker Rhif herself stared with ears flat, promise in that look. Geran came last, not without a backward glance on her own. "Get in," Pyanfar said in Geran's slight hesitation: Need help? that delay implied. Geran went; she followed, and as they came into the accessway she remembered the Ehrran guards in lowerdeck. "Gods," she muttered, and started running, sweeping the crew with her.
Khym had gotten to the airlock with Tully in his arms. The hatch stood open; and two Ehrran guards stood there with rifles uncertainly in their hands and panic in their eyes.
"That's all right," Pyanfar said equably, taking her breath. She pursed her mouth into a cheerful smile for the guards, all
innocent of the fracas outside. "Hold your post. Come on, Khym. Need help with him?"
"He doesn't weigh much." Khym shifted his arm to roll Tully's head up against his chest as they went on through the lock and into the inner corridor. Tully moved, a limp wave of his hand. "Py-an-far."
"We've got you," Haral said, gently disengaging Khym's rifle from his arm, taking the weapon to herself before it blew a hole in the overhead. "No more worry, Tully, we got you."
The lift worked as they walked on into main corridor. Hilfy came out and headed for them at a run
" He' s all right," Geran said.
Hilfy slid to a worried halt in the face of Khym and an evident Situation; but Tully reached out his hand and she took his arm, Khym or no. "Hil-fy—" Tully tried to grasp her arm, awkwardly, with Khym's holding him and walking again. "Hilfy—" —over and over again.
"Huh," Pyanfar said. It was good to see Hilfy's ears up, her eyes bright like that. As if something was repaired. "Gods, get him to bed. We got other problems."
She leaned back against the corridor wall when Khym had taken the whole Tully-business away. Across from her Tirun sagged, standing on one foot. The wound Tirun had gotten at Meetpoint two years ago, the wound they had never had time on that voyage properly to treat—gods, they ran scared again. She thought of Chur, patched together at Kshshti. Like The Pride itself.
"Kefk," Haral said, going to lean against the wall beside her sister. "That's going to be one bitch, captain."
She listened. Geran overtook them and joined the lineup, the several of them. She felt numb. Her gut hurt from long walking, and from the earnest desire to break Rhif Ehrran's neck. "Gods rotted right one bitch." She shoved off from the wall and walked along the corridor toward the lift, alone.
Gods, the worry and the trust in Haral's eyes. Oldest of her friends and truest, Tirun next by a year; Geran and Chur after that by two. Five hani, with a few gray hairs round the nose mid aches when they ran; a young fool kid. A stray human and a hani male past his prime— There had been a time, when she had gotten into this, that she had had ambitions—trading deals with mahendo'sat and humans, to repair Chanur's financial damages; get the ship up to standard—well, that much she had done. And The Pride had altered outlines, wider vanes, alien systems that would put a kink in Chanur's enemies for sure—if it came to a conflict in space.
But there were other kinds of enemies—like on the debating floor of the han, when the Rhif Ehrran stood up to declare charges and bring Chanur down.
Khym, gods, Khym—she hugged the moment to herself, his defiance of Rhif Ehrran on the docks. But it cost. It would cost plenty when Ehrran and Vigilance got home. Chanur had staked much on this dealing with outsiders; risked too much. Chanur had become like The Pride itself, half-hani, with alien outlines. Foreign wealth bought those changes.
—but go home again? See her clan-home again? Deal again as hani and not some mahen agent bought and paid for?
She pushed the lift button. Turned. The crew had stayed where they were down the corridor, not following. Maybe they sensed her mood. She beckoned and Haral saw and brought the others.
Another hani ship had gotten cut off from hani kind two years ago: Tahar's Moon Rising. Moon Rising served the kif nowadays; and time was when she would have gone for Tahar on dock or in open space and known that she was right.
The lift arrived; her crew did. Another thought occurred to her and sent the wind up her back. "We've still got that kif aboard," she said.
"We can throw it out," Tirun said. "We've got what we want."
Pyanfar thought about it, her claw hooked into the lift-switch. But small alarms went off in everything she knew about the kif. "Sfik," she said. She let them into the lift and got in after. "If we turn it out, we lose a sfik-item, don't we, whatever by the gods that means. Status. Face."
"What's that kif want we do with it?" Geran asked in disgust.
"What he did with Tully," Haral surmised in the general silence as the lift went up. "Maybe worse. What's a kif care? It's to salve our pride, that's what."
A chill spread through Pyanfar. "Gods."
"Captain?"
"He talked about a kifish ship not his," The lift stopped and the door opened. "Rearranging its loyalties. He said."
"That kif's one of Akkhtimakt's?" Haral guessed, right down her own track.
"Bet you."
"Good gods, what do we do with the son?"
Pyanfar walked out and threw a glance over her shoulder on the way to the bridge, to Chur. "If you figure out what a kif's mind's like, let me know. It says it belongs to Chanur. If we let it go we lose sfik. And we got a stationful of kif at our throats if we do"
"We could space it," Tirun muttered longingly.
"We could give it to Ehrran," Geran said.
Pyanfar looked back, short of the bridge door. "That's the best idea I've heard yet."
"We do it?"
She bit at her mustaches, gnawed and gnawed. "Huh," she said, storing that thought up. "Huh." And walked into the bridge.
"Kefk?" Chur asked, turning her chair about.
"I got him for you," Khym said, huge, disheveled, hands hooked into the waistband of a tatty and snagged pair of brown breeches. His much scarred ears were slanted halfback, his scarred nose ducked in embarrassment. Hilfy came and fussed his mane into order, and the ears came up, there, in that room with another male, with Tully lying still on the bed and witnessing all of this.
"You were marvelous," Hilfy said.
"Huh," Khym muttered. "Huh. He smells awful. So do I." And with one shrug of his great shoulders he meandered out into the corridor.
Hilfy shivered then. And she thought of killing kif, which had become a constant, burning thought with her.
"Hilfy." Tully made an attempt to get up from where Khym had disposed him, on his own bed in his own quarters, on a coverlet soiled with blood from his poor back. She looked his way and he made a face and tried to stand. He sat down again, hard, and caught himself on one elbow.
"Gods." She snatched at the pocket com she had and punched the translator channel through. "Tully. Lie still." She came and put the com into his hands, so that he could speak and understand, with that unit to relay to the computer on the bridge.
But he let it fall and grabbed her about the shoulders and held on, just held, the way he had done when he had been hurt; or she had; or the kif threatened to separate them. "It's all right," Hilfy said. She held to him, which she had done in their dark cell when he could understand little more than that. "It's all right. We got you. No more kif."