Tirun's ears were back. Tirun had the clear ruthless sense to throw the emergency seal, backup to Geran; Hilfy was there because Hilfy happened to be belowdecks, and sending her topside would say something Pyanfar had no wish to say.
"Huh," Tirun said, commentary on it all.
They rounded the corner toward the lock. "Geran. Inner hatch only, Geran."
Ssssnnk. The big inner hatch went back on the instant, and the lock glared white with lights. Tirun took up position where the hatch rim gave some cover from fire and a split-second longer survival in an explosive decompression, her left hand set on the emergency switch. Hilfy stood armed on the opposite side of the hatchway.
"Easy," Pyanfar said; and walked into the airlock with Haral behind her. "Geran, open her up."
The outer hatch whisked back. A single kif who stood there a distance down the orange-lighted access, its hands in plain sight. It looked not at all startled at the pair of guns it faced; and it wisely refrained from all sudden movement.
Sikkukkut himself? Pyanfar wondered. But it was not so tall as Sikkukkut. It smelled different. She caught the different smell of Kefk station, musty and ammoniac, that came wafting in with it, fit to raise the hairs on a hani's back. Her nose twitched. Gods, I'm allergic to the bastards—
"The hakkikt sends," it said. "Will you accept the gift?"
“What gift?"
The kif made a slow turn. "—Kktanankki!" he called out. Bring it—a word that implied other things beyond bring, like a present that was able to walk under its own power.
A faint sound came from further down, around the corner of the accessway. More kif arrived, a massed drift of shadow with the red-gold of a hani in their midst, a hani in torn blue silk breeches.
Pyanfar's heart lurched, first in statement and then in recognition of that face, the tangled mane with the bronze tone of Anuurn's southlands; left ear ripped, a black scar that raked mouth and chin.
"Dur Tahar," Pyanfar said.
The captain of Moon Rising raised her eyes as the kif brought her to the threshold of the lock. She blinked and the ears came up and flattened as the first kif and two more took her inside, under the white light. Her eyes were the same bronze as her mane, wild and hard and crazed-looking. "Pyanfar Chanur," Tahar said, in a distant, hoarse voice.
"The hakkikt gives you your enemy," the foremost kif said. "His compliments, Chanur."
"Mine to him," Pyanfar muttered.
"Kkt," the kif said, and turned with a sweep of its robes and left, taking its dark companions with it, in kifish economy of courtesy.
"My crew," Dur Tahar said. Her voice struggled for composure and failed. "For the gods' own sake, Chanur—go after them! Ask for them; get them out of there!"
Pyanfar expelled one breath, sucked in a new one and strode out into the accessway in pursuit of the departing kif. "Captain!" Haral called after her; but Pyanfar went only as far as the bend, where she had view of the down-bound knot of kif on the ramp. "Skku-hakkiktu!" she yelled after the collective shadow. "I want the rest of the hani! Hear?"
The kif came to a leisurely halt, and gazed up at her as his band halted around him.
"Tell the hakkikt," Pyanfar called down the icy chute til the ramp, "I appreciate his gift. Tell the hakkikt I want the rest of the hani. I set importance on that. Tell him so!"
"Kkt. Chanur-hakto. Akktut okkukkun nakth hakti-hak-kikta."
Something about passing the message on. Modes eluded her, the subtleties of when or how fast, woven into the words kif used with each other like fine-edged knives.
"See to it!" she yelled back.
The kif bowed like a slide of oil, turned and walked on down the ramp with his companions around him. Pyanfar scowled, snicked the safety onto the pistol, then turned and hastened back into the airlock.
"Shut it, Geran!" Pyanfar yelled up at com. "And lock her up good!"
The door hissed behind her, and the electronic seals clashed and thumped.
"Where are your crew?" Pyanfar asked Tahar.
"Station Central. Last I knew." Tahar staggered as Haral took her by one bound arm and pulled her through into the warm corridor outside. As she passed, Tahar looked from Hilfy at her left to Tirun at her right; and with Hilfy whose mother was Faha-clan there was a feud as grievous as Chanur's own. But Dur Tahar showed not a spark of defiance, only weary acquiescence as Pyanfar pushed her over to stand against the corridor wall.
"Get them out!" Tahar said hoarsely. "Chanur, anything you want, just get them out. Fast."
"Tirun, you got a knife?"
"I got it." Tirun drew her folding-knife from her pocket, turned Tahar's face to the wall and sawed through the binding cords that held her hands, turned her about again and cut the one that circled her throat—stuffed the cut cord into her pocket, spacer's neatness, while Dur Tahar leaned against the wall, rubbing the blood back into her hands, her eyes glassy with shock.
"I sure didn't fancy to meet you under these circumstances," Pyanfar said.
"We were off our ship when you came in. They held us in the offices—Gods, I don't care what you do to me, just get them away from the kif."
"I'm going to try. I sent Sikkukkut a message out there in the accessway. I'm not sure I've got enough credit the hakkikt's going to listen, but I think I've got enough it'll get to him."
Dur Tahar pushed away from the wall. "You can do better than that, Chanur!"
"Listen, you make me trouble, Tahar, you'll die earless. Hear me?"
"I hear. Just get on it. Talk to them. You know what they'll do—"
"I know. But that message has to get there before I can do anything. You should know that well as any. I'm going to call Harukk on com. Suppose you tell me what you're doing in port; where Akkhtimakt is. Maybe you can give me some coin to bargain with, huh?"
Tahar's mouth tightened. She gestured vaguely outward, elsewhere, anywhere, with a lifting of her eyes. "There. Out there. Kshshti, likeliest." It was the ghost of a voice. "You want our word, you have it from me. Anything. Just for the Gods' sakes don't let them die like that."
Pyanfar stood staring at her. Old-fashioned words meant something on Anuurn; like our word, like clan and law and other things alien to the far dark place they had gotten to, in the modern age of Vigilance and stsho connivance. "It's a long way from home. A long way, Tahar."
Dur Tahar leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. "They'll turn on you. Mahendo'sat same as kif. They will. Take my example—get out of here. Shed all of them and run, Chanur."
"You know a place to run to?"
Dur Tahar opened her eyes and looked at her, such a look as ached with exhaustion and terror and months and years of running. "No. Not ultimately. Not if you're like me. And you're getting there real fast, aren't you, Chanur?"
It was not a sight any of them would ever have looked for- Moon Rising's captain sitting at The Pride's galley table up by the bridge, taking a cup of gfi Geran pressed on her. Dur Tahar drank, and Pyanfar sat across the table with a cup in her own hands and more of the crew lounging against the cabinets with whatever bits of food Tully had scrounged: two
males in the galley—so beaten Dur Tahar was that she hardly spared more than a misgiving glance at Tully and less than that at Khym.
She knew Tully was with us, Pyanfar noted. Or at least knew he might be. So the rumor's got to Akkhtimakt. Tirun was back on duty, trying to query Vigilance on the medical assistance and get Jik's attention to the Tahar matter—("Let me take this round," Tirun had offered, while Geran was back seeing to Chur. "Do it," Pyanfar said. And between the two of them: "Put the fire under Vigilance, huh? Discreetly. Gods rot them. Get some hurry out of them.") Khym and Haral and Hilfy and Tully—they lounged about the walls, guns on hips, all of them armed but Tully; and Tahar drank her gfi in silence, eyes at infinity. "I want it straight," Pyanfar said to her. "I want the whole story, ker Dur. And fast. Tell it to me."