“Aye.” Haral started making the links, shunting over some of com function, an operation which Hilfy should have done. Her broad, scarred face was without disturbance at this insanity. Haral knew the game; they had done it a time or two, this prolonged dark silence, waiting out a kif or an unknown — but not in Urtur’s debris-cluttered field, not where other ships were likely and collision was possible. Haral knew. It was Hilfy for whom she offered instructions.
Pyanfar took her own pager from the wall by the exit and went back to give one to Hilfy, who was leaning against the counter, nostrils slitted and ears laid back. Pyanfar clapped her on the shoulder and thrust the pager into her hand. “Out. Go. Everything’s about to go under automatic here, and there’s nothing you can do.” She passed by Hilfy and headed out her own way down the corridor outside, with a foul headache, a worry in her gut, and an obsessive desire for a bath.
Her quarters, left unsecured, were not as bad as they might have been. The spring covers had held on the round bed, and the only casualty was a pile of charts now randomized. She gritted her teeth against the throbbing in her skull and picked them up, straightened the edges and slapped the unsorted pile back onto the desk, then stripped off her bloody clothes, brushed dried blood from her fur and a cloud of shed fur, too. She always shed in jump… sheer fright. Her muscles were tight. She flexed her cramped shoulders and an arm strained from fighting g, a stitch all the way into her rib muscles; and she picked up the pager again and took it with her into the bath, listening to it, which had nothing but static — set it on the bathroom counter before getting into the shower cabinet.
The shower was pure delight, warm and soothing. She lifted her face to it, lowered ears, shut nostrils and squinched her eyes shut, letting the stream from the jet comb her mane and beard into order, stepped back and wiped her eyes clear, turned her back and let the spray massage the pain out of her tired shoulders.
The pager went off, emergency beep. She spat a curse and flung the shower door open, skidded on the floor and ran out of the bath and out of her quarters naked and dripping as she was. She met Haral and Hilfy on their separate ways back and beat them to the central console.
A ship was out there all right, some ways distant, where no ship had been previously — an arrival out of jump. Pyanfar leaned over the board, wiped a bit of water off the screen and wiped it down her chest, holding her beard and trying to avoid dripping. The newcomer was closer to Urtur than they, a good distance inward and zenith — had actually arrived a while ago: passive recept picked it up from its inherent noise.
“Better part of an hour backtime,” Haral calculated. “I can fine it down.”
’Do that.”
They watched it a while, while Pyanfar dripped a cold puddle on the decking and the counter. “Going inward,” she pronounced finally on the figures Hilfy passed her, checked against current reception. “If that’s the kif, they overjumped us and now they’ve got a bit of hunting to do. We have a wave just getting to them, but it’s got nothing for them, nothing they’re going to know from all the rest of the junk out here. Good.” She recalled her condition and straightened from bending over the board. “Mop that,” she said to Hilfy, who was juniormost. She strode off, pricklish in her dignity.
“Captain,” Haral’s voice came over the pager, and Pyanfar crossed the cabin in two strides to reach the com by her bedside… punched it with a forefinger, comb clenched in the same hand. “Receiving you.”
“Got some chatter that doesn’t sound good,” Haral said. “I think there are kif here, all right. What came into the system a while ago isn’t certain, but it could be mahendo’sat; and I’m getting kif voices and kif signal out of system center.
“Doesn’t surprise me. Pity the mahe who dropped into this pond, if that’s what’s happened. But it might cover any noise we made in entry, if that’s what it is.”
“Might do,” Haral said. “Gods, captain, no telling how many kif there may have been at Urtur to start with. They’re going to swarm all over the mahendo’sat.”
“Gods know how much kif trouble they’ve already had here. That bunch from Meetpoint could have gotten as much as five, six days’ jump on us. Forget it. Let it rest. Our business is our own business.”
“Aye,” Haral said reluctantly.
“Shut it down, Haral. Until they come after us, we’re snug.”
“Aye, captain.”
The contact broke off. Pyanfar drew a long breath and let it go, stood in front of the unit and after a moment punched in the image they could get, from the telescope in the observation dome. Urtur was a glorious sight… at a distance, a saucer of milky light. A shadow passed the image, a bit of rock, doubtless, part of the swarm with which they traveled. She shut it down again. They rolled along blind, getting a tap on the hull now and again from debris, muted this far into The Pride’s core, as they played their part as a mote in Urtur’s vast lens. This silence was an old trick. It worked… sometimes.
She continued her combing, and finally, pelt dried, mane and beard combed and silky again in their ringlets, changed to her third-best trousers, of black silk, with green and gold cuffing and belt, a round-the-hips dangle of real gold chains. She changed her pearl earring for an emerald, inspected her claws and trimmed a roughness. A tip had broken. Hard-skinned, the kif. But she had got him, that bastard on the dock. That was at least some consolation for the lost cargo and Tirun’s misery. For hani lives — that was yet to collect.
She strolled out again, into controls, where Hilfy was standing lone watch. They had far more room when they were under rotation, with the ship’s g making the crew’s private quarters and a great deal of storage accessible, as well as that large forward ell of the control area itself which was out of reach during dock. Some of the crew ought to be offshift now, eating, sleeping: they arranged such details among themselves when things were tight, knowing best when they needed rest and balancing the ship’s needs against their own. Hilfy had a bruised look when she turned to face Pyanfar as she came up behind her in the semishadow of the bridge, amid dead screens and virtually lightless panels. She stood there as if there was something she could hope to do, ears pricked up and eyes wide-irised with her general distress.
“Haral left you on watch, imp?”
“Haral said she was going below.”
“I thought I dismissed you.”
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt to be here. I can’t rest.”
“Can’t rest is a cheat on the ship. Can’t rest is something you learn to remedy, imp. It’s going to be too long a wait to wear ourselves to rags up here. Nothing we can do.”
“Com keeps coming in. It’s them — it’s the same kif. They’re asking the mahendo’sat ships where we are and they’re making threats. They call us thieves.”
Pyanfar spat dryly and chuckled. “What tender honor. What are the mahendo’sat doing about it?”
“Nothing. It is a mahendo’sat station, after all; there are other ships… all over the place — there’s help for them, isn’t there? I’d think they’d do something, not just let the kif do what they please.”