Chanur's Legacy

Chapter Fifteen

It was one way to get out of station — station traffic control couldn't rightly refuse an emergency undock, a fire squad had their last two lines shut down, and they were on their way.

With empty holds and running light; with Ha'domaren and the kif still at dock and trying to get clearance, Hilfy was sure: one could imagine the messages flying back and forth. If they hadn't a stsho aboard, if they weren't for other reasons reluctant to demonstrate to the universe at large what the Legacy could do unladed, they could kite out of here.

As it was they put as much push on it as they dared use and listened to Kshshti try to solve its problem.

With nervous ships trying to bolt, the doors of that section of dock shut, and the whole population of Kshshti under seal-failure warning… station police were looking for the driver, who had disappeared, the truck was registered to a warehouse two sections away, no one they'd dealt with, it was stolen, so far as the manager claimed, and the can, which could match almost any ship's ink-written sequence-number for the manifest, didn't match anyone's serial numbers in the embedded ID, that a laser reader would pick up: the manufacturer was Ma'naoshi on Ijir. Mahendo'sat. But cans scattered from their point of manufacture, by the very nature of carrying freight. It could be anybody's; and being a cold-can, and being handled only by robot and by gloved personnel, any exterior biological contact could go all the way back to the day of manufacture, or to some truck driver on Gaohn station three years ago.

"Probably some load of frozen vegetables," Tarras said.

"Funny thing they haven't cleared anybody to leave the station," Tiar said. "I'm surprised they cleared us."

Station hadn't been at all happy when they declared themselves outbound. Station had threatened them with legal action. But station was silent on that point now that they'd entered the all but vacant traffic pattern and declared course for Kefk.

"We're getting the traffic advisories," Tiar said.

"Guess they've decided not to sue," Chihin said.

There was a markedly subdued atmosphere on the bridge — no Hallan hadn't said a thing, Chihin had been remarkably quiet, and Fala maintained a business-only report on the comflow.

One could say one had foreseen this situation, one could toss na Hallan off the bridge and lock him in the laundry, except if anyone deserved to be locked in the laundry the senior scantech ought to be first for that accommodation.

"They're saying," Fala said with a sudden edge of alarm in her voice, "they're saying there's something electronic in the can. They're taking it real seriously. Wondering if they should jettison it out the nearest lock."

"Could be a pressure trigger," Tarras said. "That's a cold-hold can. Could be vacuum sets it off, could be thermal…"

"Thermal's the better bet," Tiar said, "rig it through the environmental sensors. Think they want advice?''

"They've probably thought of it," Hilfy muttered, "but gods know… relay that, Fala. If they're going to kick it out, better they maneuver it out sun-side…"

"Thing could be thermonuclear for all we know," Chihin said. "Somebody's out of their godloving mind.

They didn't think we were going to let that thing aboard."

"Enough if it's sitting on our dock when it…"

"… goes off. Plain gods-be timer fuse. They should quit messing around and kick it out of there."

Fala was relaying that, too, she could hear the gist of it. It was useless. Kshshti had to know its possibilities, a few more, maybe, than they could think of.

But the perpetrators had to be on the station or on one of those ships still at dock.

"Methane ship's hit system."

"Gods, that's the brick too many on this load."

Add the confusion of an inbound methane-breather to a stationside catastrophe and there was no telling what could happen.

"They are going to jettison the can," Fala reported. Station wasn't answering its traffic inquiries, wasn't acknowledging calls, evidently… station's internal calls were probably reaching crisis proportions. What was coming back to them was the ops channel station made available to nervous ships at dock.

"Tiraskhtiis breaking dock. The kif have given station five minutes to shut down their lines. Station isn't happy.''

"One gets you ten Ha'domaren is next."

"Won't take that bet," Tarras said.

"Oh, good… gods…"

Number two screen. A white light flashed on Kshshti's side, flashed and died.

Like a lot of innocent station workers.

There was quiet on the bridge. Station ops com was dead. Then some other channel came through, reporting a major explosion, the decompression of sector 8, ordering Kshshti citizens to remain calm and stay put, ordering ships not to complicate matters by launching.

"Those sons are going anyway," Chihin said. "Gods rot it, there's—"

"Methane-breathers are going out," Fala said.

"They're talking to the one inbound, I'm not getting any sense on the translator — all that comes clear is destruction and hani and stsho, kif and mahendo'sat."

Chilling message. You could read a methane-breather's many-brained matrix output in any direction at all. And it all said the same thing.

Chihin said, "Got more than you bargained for, na Hallan. Nice quiet trading voyage…"

"Let him alone," Fala snapped.

"Touchy. Touchy."

"Cut it out," Hilfy said. "You want to end up as a dust cloud, let's just have an argument in ops."

"She—" Fala began.

"I don't care!" Hilfy said. "I don't care who did what. Shut it down! People are dead back there. Let's have attention to what's important, shall we? The ones that did that don't by the gods care who else they kill. Does that fact reach you?"

"Tiraskhti'saway," Chihin reported. "Going slow. No real hurry. Tc'a are away. Two of them. I'm looking for ID on our station chart. Station's not giving good output, I think they're confused. Hallan, double me, I've got my hands fall."

"I want those gods-be ID's," Hilfy said. "Hallan! Acknowledge, rot you!"

"I'm watching, captain."

" Ha'domaren's delivered an ultimatum to station. They get the lines shut down or they let them fall…"

Fala was back on the job. With her whole brain, hope to the gods.

Vectors were shaping up. Tiraskhti for Kefk, no question. Ha'domaren., Ha'domaren was going askew from that.

Meetpoint, Hilfy thought, about the time Tiar said it and Tarras swore.

"What's he up to?"

"I don't know." They could do it, unladed as they were. They could burn off v and go the other direction, as Ha'domaren was headed. They could arrive at Meetpoint with their contract unfilled, in debt for money part of which they'd spent, and have No’shto-shti-stlen suing them, along with Kshshti and Urtur. Or they could go to Kefk, alone with the kif.

"Fala. I want to talk to that son Haisi."

"Aye," Fala said. And made the try. It took a while. They were not cooperative.

Then Fala said, "They say he's not available. He's asleep."

"And I'm the Personage of Iji. Tell his crew I had a message for him, but it's not available either."

Fala did that. Of course they offered to take it.

"They—" Fala said.

"No. I'll talk to him."

There was a delay. And they were still headed for Kefk.

Then Haisi came through, loud and clear. "You damn fool, hani. What message?"

"What's the matter? Tired of our company?"

"You not learn lesson? Go kif? Good luck. Have nice funeral. What message?''

"What message? Regards from gtst excellency. What was it you wanted to know?"

"You chief number one bastard, youknow!"

"By the gods right I know, mahe! I know you didn't level with me. So I know and you don't. Good luck yourself.''

What followed was mahen dialect, and the gist of it was not polite. It was Haisi who broke off the contact, with: "/ don't tell you go hell, Chanur. You already got course set.''

"Not happy," Tiar said.

Out of Vikktakkht's ship, Tiraskhti, not a word.

"Tc'a!" Fala said, and matrix-corn shaped up on the number 4 screen.

Tc'a tc'a tc'a chi hani hani

birth chi rescue birth go go

danger danger danger danger danger danger

see join make divide danger danger

"What's this 'birth' business?" Tarras muttered. "I don't like that."

Neither did she, all considered. "Urtur," she said, of the inbound tc'a. "That son's from Urtur."

"Mama," Tiar said. "Not son. That's mama. "

The hours ran on, and the tc'a sent the same message, over and over, an accusing presence on the number four screen persistent as the presence on the scan display. No one said any more about it, but they didn't have to. It was in the tail of Hallan's vision, and the scan display showed the tc'a moving on their heading, not accelerating, but definitely tending toward a meeting of the incomer and the two local ships, and all three tc'a vessels transmitting that same message again and again.

It's my fault, he thought. They blame us.

He had heard how the methane-breathers would attach themselves to a ship, and how they could change vector in jump, which physicists couldn't explain, but tc'a and knnn could do; and chi, who always traveled with the tc'a, aboard their ships, but no one knew whether they were allies or pets…

The captain had warned him. The captain had said he was a fool and the ship could be in danger. Now it was in danger, from the methane-breathers, in addition to everything else, and the tc'a might follow them into hyperspace, where the gods only knew what might happen — if they could change directions, they could do things in hyperspace, and having them attack the ship there, he didn't want to think about…

Besides which there was the station back there with a hole in it; and Fala was upset with him, he could see it in every move she made… not that he'd done anything or promised anything. But she thought he'd insulted her — which he hadn't meant to do. And the crew was feuding with each other, just the way they said would happen with men on ships.

Besides which — gods, he only had to think about Chihin to think how he'd felt down in the airlock, and that was just stupid, he didn't want to do what he'd done, he didn't want to feel what he felt, he wanted to use his common sense and straighten things out… probably nothing was even wrong in Chihin's eyes, except for Fala: Chihin probably didn't think it meant anything more than the crewwomen on the Sun had thought it did. But Chihin was like them and unlike, so unlike and so diiferent in the way she dealt with things that he knew the spacerfarers he'd thought existed, both tough and kind, did exist…

And she might not care. That wasn't as important as her existing.

"Stand by for jump," ker Tiar said.

They were going. This part always scared him. And the tc'a were still there. The kifish ship Tiraskhti was pacing them. People were still dead back there.

"… here we go."

Fala said, "Why was I so unimportant? Is there something wrong with me?"

He didn't know how to answer that. But Chihin did.

"Nothing but youth," Chihin said, "and time cures that, if you don't make fetal mistakes."

"Let me alone!" Fala said.

He was dreaming. He knew he was, and he could make it stop. He wanted Chihin and Fala not to quarrel. He looked away.

But he could see the ship around him as if it were made of glass. And a shadow of a ship rode close beyond the hull.

Serpent bodies moved and twined within that ship, transparent as their own. He heard sound too low for sound. It quivered through deckplates and through bone, and shrieked until it passed above hearing.

Another ship came dangerously near them, within the proscribed limit, wailing. He leaped up, passed behind Chihin's frozen shape and reached past her shoulder. There was a warning button on that console and he pushed it.

Lights flared red. A siren wailed.

"Go away!" he shouted in this dream, as the shadow loomed larger. It was coming at them.

Foolishly he waved his arms to warn it off.

But it swept right through them, with a dimming of the lights, a rumbling of sound, a feeling unlike any heat or cold he remembered.

Then all the ships were beyond them and retreating, the rumbling gone fainter as they became a triple shadow against the stars, smaller and smaller and fainter.

He dropped into his cushion, breathless and numb-raked his fingers through his mane and caught a frantic breath.

People had dreams in jump. That was surely all it was.

"… Welcome to sunny Kefk," Chihin was saying. "A friendly sodium burner, no planet, but then, we can't have every convenience…"

"Look alive," the captain snapped. "Where's the tc'a?"

"There's Tiraskhti," Chihin said, and Hallan saw that, and murmured so, but, searching the scan for the tc'a ships… nothing showed. An alarm had gone off in hyperspace. One of those anomalies, Chihin called it. Sometimes things happened.

There were things she'd rather lose track of than a clutch of methane-breathers bearing on their tail at three quarters light. "Gods-be snakes could drop out right on top of us," Hilfy muttered, when scan persistently showed nothing but their kif escort.

"With real luck," Tarras said, "they'll drop on Tiraskhti. ''

"Don't count on it," Tiar said, and toggled a screen change, view of the mass itself: Kefk, sullen apricot orange.

Then it was real to her. The wan sun evoked that reflection on steel bars, that spectrum cast triple shadows on the decking of a kifish prison, lit distant objects in a deathly imitation of sunlight, recalled the clangs and clash of doors and the working of machinery. And over all the smell of it…

Sunny Kefk, Chihin said — leading edge of kifish territory, first of a nest of same-generation suns they favored. Pirate territory, before the treaty, space no other species ever wanted to see.

Well, so, this is an experience, Hilfy thought to herself. The young kid that had come to space with Pyanfar had longed after the strange and the dangerous. And found it once. And now again.

You fool, she said to herself — you utter fool, Hilfy Chanur.

It must be all right, Hallan decided. Everything was normal on the boards. He felt after the nutrients pack. His hands were shaking. He'd never come out of jump so dehydrated or so wobbly. He could scarcely handle the pack without sticking holes in it, he couldn't make his fingers work.

Truth was, he was scared — because there was nothing he could do for himself, because there was, beneath the ordinary and necessary chatter the crew made, a grimness that hadn't been there on the jump before this. And it might very reasonably be because it was a kifish port and their lives were in imminent danger, and they'd lost track of the tc'a ships, all of which was very good reason to be upset.

But there was just this subtle turning of the shoulder Fala did toward him, and somehow she avoided looking at him or at Chihin at all. Everybody was upset with Chihin, the captain had been angry on the starting side of jump, and tempers might be a little cooler on this side — time passed, in hyperspace, a lot of time; and you didn't come out of it as intense about most things as you'd gone in, even if it felt like only an hour later. It was a lot more than that, the body had had a chance to cool down, and the angers and the fears had a chance to settle and evaporate if they had no reason to start up again on this side of jump.

But he'd made a public scene; and as soon as people weren't busy they were going to remember it, the same as Fala already did, as his fault.

He wanted to say something to Fala, he wanted to do something to set it right, but Chihin was sitting between them out there, and his brain was still caught in that sugar-short haze that deprivation created in jump. He was doing well to get himself to his feet when the captain told him: Go fix breakfast, be useful; and his trousers started a slide he only just stopped with a grab at his waistband.

Thank the gods Fala was busy on the bridge and the captain didn't send her too. He couldn't deal with it now. He could scarcely walk. He felt his way into the galley, which was next to the bridge for very good reasons, and giddily, wobbily, started locating the frozen dinners, keeping a hand sort of near safety holds, because a ship coming in from above a sun could find some other ship dropping in too close to them, even yet, and the ship could have to maneuver without warning.

But you didn't plan for it. And probably you couldn't really hold on if it did. Most times the off-duty crew began to stir about just now, only the Legacy didn't have that many hands, and they took their breaks close to the bridge, where they could answer a sudden recall. People took breaks as they could, did necessary maintenance on the bridge and thereabouts…

And snacked, if they could keep it down. He popped another nutrient pack and shed fur over everything. He wanted a bath, but that wasn't possible till they'd reached the inner system boundary: he'd asked for duty and he had it.

Crew was up and moving. Chihin went through, and gave him some kind of a look he didn't dare meet; and came back through again, with her face wet and her mustaches dripping.

He was scared to death she was going to speak. But she didn't. He had some chips, galley's privilege, to keep his stomach from heaving, and it didn't help much. He followed it with cold tea, from the fridge.

And he thought he was going to be sick right there, he was cold from the drink and shaking and his stomach was trying to turn itself inside out. He leaned on the counter trying just to breathe, wondering if he should go for the facilities, or if jostling wasn't the right thing to do just now…

A hand landed on his shoulder. "You need some help?" Tarras asked, and when he stood against the counter: "You all right?"

"Fine," he managed to say. And prayed to keep his stomach still, while Tarras wandered around and looked in the oven and put a pot of gfi on to brew… the smell was almost more than he could take.

"Looks like you've about got it," Tarras said, and came and leaned against the counter beside him.

"Hits you hard sometimes."

"Yes," he said.

"You want to go back to the bridge and sit down?"

"No," he said, monosyllabic, desperate. No, he did not.

Silence for a moment. Then: "Prickly situation," Tarras said, and he felt his stomach knot a little tighter, hoping she was going to talk about the kif and the ship out there or anything else but—

"You and Fala have something going?"

"No!" He kept his voice low, hoping to the gods they didn't carry over the noise of the fans. "She's just nice, is all."

"She's a good kid," Tarras said. "You're the most attractive thing she's seen in a year. The only. But that's beside the point."

"I didn't—" He didn't want to talk about this. But he was cornered. And Tarras might be on Fala's side, but Tarras was easier to talk to than Fala. "I didn't want to upset her."

"Chihin's a full-time pain. It's her aim in life. You're not obligated to put up with—"

He didn't like Tarras saying that. He didn't want to hear it. He shoved off on his way to the crew lounge, as the only refuge he could think of, and Tarras caught his arm, caught it with a claw, and it hurt, but he kept going.

She caught him again. Most wouldn't. Nobody ever had, on this ship. But he'd learned on the Sun, that defying orders meant getting dumped. So he did stop. He didn't have to look at her.

"Oh,gods," Tarras muttered. "Chihin?"

So Chihin joked. He knew that. It didn't change the fact he felt it in the gut when she walked past him. It didn't change the fact he liked her, and it didn't change the way he'd felt, and the way he still felt.

Tarras let out a breath and leaned against the wall. "Kid, Chihin isn't the most serious-minded soul in the crew."

"That's all right," he said without looking at her.

"Ow," Tarras said, and after a moment of silence. "Look, na Hallan. She's not a bad sort. — Gods, I've landed in it, haven't I?"

He didn't know what to say. He wasn't mad at Tarras. He wasn't mad at anybody. Mostly his stomach was upset and he wished Fala wasn't mad. The oven timer went off, to his vast relief, and he said, "It's ready."

"I'll call them," she said, and ducked out while he took the dinners out.

And burned his fingers.

Something about na Hallan and Chihin… Tiar didn't wholly pick it up on the first hearing, with Tarras leaning and whispering into her ear.

And then she didn't believe it. But Tarras said, "It's serious."

Sheunbelted and got up; and went over to the captain and whispered, "The kid and Chihin? We got a problem."

Hilfy turned her head, looked at her nose to nose and said, ominously: "Problem?"

Tiar made a glance back toward the galley, another to Chihin and Fala, working side by side. An unnaturally quiet Chihin.

"She hasn't said a word."

The captain evidently added the same chain of figures. Chihin was deathly quiet. Not a joke. Not an ill-timed jibe about the situation. A lot of efficiency out of her, this last hour, but seldom a word, since the first.

And Fala — Fala was talking to the kif, but not to Chihin.

"I want this straightened out," Hilfy said under her breath. "Good gods, we aren't in a place we can afford this! Grow by the gods up, can't we?"

"I don't think it's Fala," Tiar said as faintly as she could, and got a second furious look from Hilfy.

"I don't care what's going on," Hilfy hissed. "This is deadly serious, cousin. The kif aren't playing lovers'

games out there. Breakfast at stations, nobody's getting a break."

Good idea, Tiar thought to herself, and went and relayed the order out loud: "Stay at vrr'*- nnsts. We've got a situation shaping up. We're" n~r"£n "ongoing caution, here, we can get the food out, but we're not taking any breaks, got it?"

Let them think she and the captain had been consulting on the kif. Give them something outside the ship to worry about. She went back to the galley. "General alert. Get the trays out here, keep them clipped down, no open hot liquids. Tarras, arms board shakedown."

Tarras' ears went back, and sobriety happened fast, in a hesitation between the oven and getting back to her post.

"Get the trays out," Tiar repeated, to the young gentleman at the center of the storm, and he wiped the scowl off his face and started snatching, ignoring singed fingers.

"That's the way," she said. "Let's move! Get in those seats and get belted. This isn't Anuurn system."

She took her own tray back, grabbed a drink and settled in while Tarras and Hallan were passing out trays off the stack and drinks out of a box.

The captain started giving system check orders. The captain ordered a condition three on the armament.

And that was the first time the Legacy had ever brought the weapons board up full. There was a different kind of quiet on the bridge when that order came down, and various stations had to crosscheck with targeting.

Hope to the gods it was a test. The fact of the weapons got to her nerves too, even knowing it was a calculated distraction. The war memories came up along with that long-silent board. Her reflexes wound themselves tight as a spring, and her heart beat a little faster.

Because now that she thought of it, kif being kif, the arms computer on Tiraskhti was probably completely live. And probably had been, from the moment the kif went for jump toward his own border, There w^.t.,ng craft. There were construction pushers. They looked, except the major kifish ships at dock, like ordinary miners and pushers in any system in hani or mahen space.

Well they might, Hilfy thought. They were probably stolen.

But the ships at dock at Kefk had no look of honest traders. Huge engine packs. Cold-haulers that could release their cargo or blow off their mass with the flip of a toggle: hunter-ships, clutching cargo cans in their clamps, like many-legged insects; purported tankers, whose tanks probably were false mass.

"Captain," Fala said, "Vikktakkht."

"I'll take it," she said, and a clicking, soft voice said,

“ Chanur captain. You 'II go first and we 'II dock beside you. For convenience' sake. "

"Understood. And do we understand this trip is worth our time?''

"Put Meras on. I find him amusing. "

I won't talk to you, that meant. "Later," she said shortly, and punched out. "-Tiar, I want one course laid out for Meetpoint, and courses for Kshshti, Mkks, Harak, Lukkur, and Tt'a'va'o…"

"Tt'a'va'o!"

“If we go out of here with kif on our tail, better the methane folk than Lukkur. But we take any vector open and deal with it when we get there."

"Aye, captain."

"Their prices aren't bad," Tarras said.

Tiar said: "Gods, load their cans aboard, after Kshshti?"

"I was kidding," Tarras said. "Kidding, cousin."

The Legacy still had the option to run, Hilfy thought. She could do a sudden break and sight on Meetpoint and get the Legacy out of here.

But you didn't run from kif. If you ran, they were wired to chase — sometimes literally; sometimes, more dangerously, they merely wrote you down for weak and apt for more abstract predation.

A Chanur — if she ran — would weaken Chanur clan in the eyes of all kif. It would prompt ambitions. It would encourage seditions. Assassinations, to which aunt Pyanfar was all too vulnerable.

But rational as everything had seemed the other side of jump — they weren't just the only hani ship in system, they were the only foreign ship anywhere: not a mahendo'sat, not a stsho, not a methane-breather showed in the revolutions of the station. Not even a ship that was clearly a merchant ship.

"Those are hunters," Tiar said. "Every one of those are hunters. What's building here?"

"I don't like this," Fala said. "I really don't like this."

"Don't panic," Hilfy said quietly. "Never panic with them. It's a guarantee of problems."

"Chanur,"came the kifish voice over her earpiece, '” you're clear to dock now.' '

"Thank you, hakkikt."

The schematic flashed up, glowing lines channeling their approach and their mandated velocity.

Scary enough on a small station. But the numbers, the indicators, were kifish characters, base 8.

"They're offering automated approach," Fala said, in a voice a little higher than her wont. "They say they have translation programs."

"So do we and No. No input from them to our computers. Absolutely not. Just calc it."

"Just calc it," Chihin muttered in a tone of desperation. 'Calc it' was herself and Tiar and their computers, in rapid cross-check calculation. While they were aimed at Kefk Station like a missile.

But numbers started popping into the display of their own instrumentation, distance to dock, rate of spin, moment of contact.

"Fine it down," Hilfy said. "That's a stand-down on the weapons board, Tarras."

"Confirm, captain. Standing down and locked."

The kifish station was protesting their irregular approach. The Kefk control center wanted, they demanded computer to computer contact. They ordered them to brake and abort. The emergency flasher was on the station output. And if there was a time Tiraskhti could be absolutely certain weapons were at stand-down, it was now, preparing for dock. If there was a time Tiraskhti could get a shot that might miss their own station, it was in the next few minutes.

"By the book," Hilfy said calmly, and kept her claws out of the upholstery of her seat.".Extra decimals.

Let's not have a repair bill at this place."

Station was still objecting. From Tiraskhti, moving in just behind them, there was silence that meant, one hoped, observant respect, waiting to see whether they could justify the defiance of station control, respect that grew or died a dangerous death on the skill with which they touched that docking cone.

And bet that the station wouldn't be quick to warn them of an impending mismatch.

"Rotation shutdown," Tiar announced, and the next queasy part started, as the Legacy gave up its own internal g and the ring coasted into null. They were coming very slowly, at a tangent to the station's scarify rapid spin. This was the point where panic could set in, and a point where, as an insystemer, you were either licensed to do this or you linked to tenders who were, and got cabled in.

Or you docked, like the ore carriers, in null at the mast.

A long hauler didn't have either option. Just the mobile cone that gave you a little guide and a tangential approach, and took you up at a distance that wouldn't let you crack the bulkheads, before the grapple snagged you and the docking assembly took you into sudden 1.2 g sync with the station's rotation.

Tiar made a lightning reach: the Legacy's portside thrusters shoved her one way and then braked that motion null. A quick flurry of small adjustments truing up with the calculated appearance of the cone. You didn't track the cone until the last moment, didn't see it until it was too late to brake: and station computers weren't talking to theirs: theirs was just talking to their engines, now that it had the intercept plotted.

There was the cone. The last correction to put the probe right down its throat and a brisk shove from the mains that put the Legacy into the guide zone at intercept with the station's rate. The jolt of capture rang through the bow; the contact moved the whole passenger ring for a stomach-wrenching second and pressed them down in their seats. Grapples banged, the braces touched and boomed against the hull…

"And we are in," Tarras declared.

In. At a kifish station. Solo. Wonderful. "Good job," Hilfy said in the collective breath that followed.

"Good job. The crew earns one for that."

By the Book, Fala was already sending her fueling request, arguing in the Trade with the Kefk dock authority.

And by the Book, by aunt Py's lately sacred and mandated Book, there would be no bending on that point: fueling and offloading of wastes before the Legacy ever opened an airlock, aunt Py's procedures, in places Pyanfar didn't trust; and a very good idea, in Hilfy's present estimation — but meanwhile a kifish hakkikt would, publicly, be compelled to wait on his hearing until that fuel was in, and that was a dangerous slight, in a game of volatile egos: sfik, kifish elegance, was life: offend it, and expect attack, as they expected a move of you under like circumstances. Kif were much on etiquette… their own etiquette, to be sure, a pricklish protocol of arms.

An air of competency, of hauteur, of willingness to take extreme action… with the firepower to back it up: those were assets; while generosity was the gesture of a superior to a servant; kindness fell in the same category; and loyalty lasted as long as a leader had sfik intact.

Courage? Fierceness in a fight was a plus. But so was deviousness. Self-preservation was the highest virtue, and risking one's neck could be self-preservation — if it demonstrated an arrogant competency to potential rivals.

A whole other universe, Hilfy thought to herself, a very solitary, dark, and aggressive universe. You could do anything you could carry off with style — or at least with sufficient firepower on your side. That counted.

Come to Kefk, Vikktakkht had insisted, certainly aware that she had been a prisoner among his kind, and perhaps, as many kif were surprisingly educated, aware that hani minds, prone to emotional might-have-beens and what-ifs entirely alien to his species, might come adrift from what was, and wander into delusion…

Vikktakkht might hope for that.

But there was a benefit to fluency in other languages. She could think in kifish: see things from kifish perspective — and, so doing, feel the shift in her heartbeat, the change from twice a month hunter to hair-triggered, hard-wired round the clock predator.

If they expected her to have balked at corning here— not likely.

To panic at being here — she had yet to reach that state.

Here I am, na kif. What am I thinking? What will I do? Do you know me that well?

You made me half crazy. If I'm here alone, I must be one tough bastard of a hani.

And you know I don't like you much. So you're taking the chance, na kif. You'd better pay off.

Because by your rules — if you cross me, I can only start a war by not blowing you to hell.

"They're going to fuel us," Fala said. "They say they want payment transferred at the same moment they start pumping."

"That's fine. We'll transfer it bit by bit. They reach an eighth of our load, they get an eighth of the payment. In international trading certificates, and they can run courier and check the authenticity. No computer links to their bank. And we're not talking to Vikktakkht or anybody of his ilk until those tanks are full." Gods, did she know this routine! In her sleep, along with the nightmares. " — Tarras, get a bid on the data dump. We're still traders, that's what we're here for, let's not give them any other ideas. And everything in cash."

Hallan, quietly: "There's some sort of light keeps blinking on com."

"That's the incoming mail," Chihin said. "It's au-toed. Com incoming isn't feeding to any computer that's connected to anything; it's deloused before it's available to read and it won't store. Don't worry."

Hilfy keyed up the file list, wondering what in all reason messages could be waiting for the Legacy at Kefk.

Pyanfar's mail.

Of course it was.