That would confuse them: a ship behaving like vane malfunction and talking like cargo emergency. Eight point nine minutes to get that message to station. Fifteen point something by the time station could so much as reply if they were instantaneous. Someone had to turn a chair, ask a supervisor, report the message. She heard Khym send it out—gods, a male voice from a hani ship: that alone would confound station central. They would not have heard its like before—would be checking their doppler-receivers for potential malfunction, doubting the truth while it hurtled down on them, even techs accustomed to C- fractional thinking—
"Send again: Message to Harukk, Sikkukkut commanding. We have an appointment. We've come to keep it. We'll see you on the docks."
(Someone deciding to relay that to the kif; kifish feet racing to locate the commander: another moment to decide to undock or sit tight—An instant's consideration and a planetary diameter flicked by.)
Ten minutes to launch a ship like Harukk if they ripped her loose from dock without preamble: forty more to get her sufficient range from mass to pulse the fields up. Harukk had a star to fight for its velocity, and that star was helping them come in.
Another half minute down.
At this dizzying rate, inside this time-packet, there was a curious sense of slow-motion, of insulation from kif and threats.
And a sense of helplessness. There were things the kif could do. And there was time for those things—like pressing a trigger, or cutting a defenseless throat—
The dizziness hit; the concentrate had reached her bloodstream.
"You sick, Khym?"
"No." A small and strangled voice. It was not the first time.
"Chur?"
"Still with you, captain."
"Tirun: got a realtime check?"
"483 hours in transit, by the beacon."
"That's 20 minutes to final dump," Haral said.
On schedule, on mark. They had worked it all out at Kshshti, before they undertook this lunacy; worked it out the hard way, in the hours before undock, and in the long hard push that sent The Pride out to a jump by-the-gods deep in the gravity ,well and brought her in gods-rotted deep in this one, in a maneuver a hunter-crew would stick at and no merchanter ever ought to try.
They were hani, alclass="underline" red-gold maned and bearded, red-gold hides. All of them but one had gold rings aplenty up the sweep of their tuft-tipped ears, gold that meant experience, voyages and ventures from home at Anuurn to Idunspol, Meetpoint, Maing Tol and Kura; Jininsai and Urtur; strange ports, foreign trade, dice-throws and wide bets. But no voyage like this one. Mkks was no hani port. Not a place where any honest freighter would care to go. And no honest merchanter had that outsized engine pack they carried; or that ratio of vane to mass.
Pyanfar said nothing. She uncapped the safety switch on what few armaments The Pride had, and broke another law.
"Eighteen to final dump," Haral said.
"Call coming—Tirun—Tirun—which one?" Khym's voice betrayed strain and panic, inexperienced as he was at that board. Disoriented as well as jump-sick, it was well possible. But the switch got made and the station's voice came through, dopplered out into sanity.
Mahen voice. "Confirm dump, confirm dump—"
"Repeat previous message. Tell them we want that shiplist. Fast."
There were codes they might have used to get cooperation from the mahendo'sat. There was no way to use them. The kif had ears too.
So they went at it the hard way, and Mkks station began to panic, dopplered message overlaying message, continuing a few seconds yet in the initial assumption: that they had a ship incoming dead at them in helpless malfunction.
By now their own message would be flashing to the kif, who would not be so naive.
The kif might—might—at this stage get a ship out to run; but she had not read Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin as that breed of kif.
Not with prisoners in his hands.
It was a hall somewhere within the upper reaches of the ship docked gods-knew where. Hilfy Chanur knew the ship-name now. It was Harukk.
And she knew the kif seated before her, among other kif. His name was Sikkukkut. He sat as a dark-robed lump on an insect-chair, among its black, bent legs. Sodium-glow relieved the murk close in, casting harsh shadow and orange-pink light. Incense curled from black globes set about the room and mingled with ammonia-stench. She could not so much as rub her offended nose. Her hands were linked with cords behind her back, Tully's likewise, for all the good that he could have done if his hands were free. Tully's face was pale, his golden mane and beard all tangled and sweat-matted, his fragile human skin claw-streaked and bleeding in the lurid glow. He had done his best. She had. Neither was good enough.
"Where did you hope to go?" Sikkukkut asked. "To do what?"
"I hoped," Hilfy Chanur said, because it never paid to back up with a kif, "to fracture a skull or two."
"No fracture," Sikkukkut said. "Concussed."—whether that this was a kif s humor or a kifish total lack of it. Harukk's captain unfolded himself from his insect-chair in a rustling of black robes. There was no color save the sodium-light, none, throughout all the ship. Objects, walls, clothes were all grays and blacks—They're color blind, Hilfy thought, really, totally blind to it. She thought of blue Anuurn skies and green fields and hani themselves a riot of golds and reds and every color they decked themselves in, and held that recollection like a talisman against the dark and the hellish glare.
Sikkukkut moved closer. There was a sound like the wind in old leaves as other kif moved beyond the lights and the curling wisps of smoke. She braced herself; but it was Tully the kif aimed at.
"This speaks hani," Sikkukkut said. "It tries to pretend not—''
Hilfy stepped into his path.
"And where our understanding fails," the kif said in flawless hani accents, "I know you have expertise with the human. We can secure that. Can't we?" He brushed past her and jerked Tully suddenly toward him by one arm and the other. The kif s claws made small indentations in his flesh and Tully stood there, face to face with those jaws a hand's breadth from his eyes. Hilfy could smell the sweat and fear.
"Soft," Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. "Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own."
Closer still.
"Let him go!"
The dark snout wrinkled and the tip twitched. Kif sustenance was mostly fluid, so outsiders said: they were total carnivores, and disdained not at all to use those razored outer jaws. Two rows of teeth, two sets of jaws. One to bite and one fast-moving set far up inside that long snout to reduce the outer-jaw bites to paste and fluids the tiny throat could handle. The tongue darted in the v-form gap of the teeth. Tully jerked and winced in silence. The long face lifted, to use its eyes at level, its jaws—
"Stop it! Gods rot it—stop!"
"But it will have to stop struggling," Sikkukkut said, "I can't release my claws.—Tell him so. ..."
Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, slopped—all at once, betraying himself.
"Ah. It does understand."
"Let him go."
The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions.
Tully stumbled back. Hilfy thrust her shoulder between him and Sikkukkut's step forward and stood her ground with her knees wobbling under her from stark fear. Her ears were back; her nose rumpled into a grin that was not at all the grin of Tully's helpless primate kind.