She was already mentally sorting through possible arguments with the Tahar, a loan, anything to get The Pride’s repairs made and paid, to get out of this place: they needed no more damages than they had, and most of all they did not need prolonged residence here.

If they were very, very fortunate, the kif were sorting matters out with a certain knnn who had picked up a bit of salvage at Urtur; and that knnn might not be amused by a hani joke. The great hakkikt Akukkakk would be even less amused… but he would have a hard time negotiating with the knnn for a look at its prize; and a harder time with his fellow kif… indeed he would. She felt, in all, satisfied.

But a knnn had happened through jump with them; had happened to crowd them. Gods… did they have apparatus which made tracking possible?

Its voice was back, distant and eerie, like that which she had duplicated at Urtur, to use a knnn voice as shield and disguise.

Gods knew what message they had been transmitting to knnn hearing: follow me? Help me? Something far less friendly?

Tc’a might know; but there was no querying that side of Kirdu Station.

They came up on dock, moving in next the Tahar ship: Kirdu wanted its hani problems collected, apparently, giving them berths next each other. In some part that was good, because it gave them private access to talk without witnesses; and in another part it was not, because it made them one single target.

“Where are the kif?” she asked station bluntly, stalling on the approach. “I’m not putting my nose into station until I know what berths they have.”

“Number twenty and twenty-one,” station informed her. “Mahe and stsho in the between numbers, no trouble, no trouble, hani captain. You make easy dock, please.”

She wrinkled her nose and committed them, not without contrary thoughts.

The Pride’s nose went gently into dock, the grapples clanged to and accesses thumped open, and Pyanfar thrust back from the panel with a sudden watery feeling about the joints. Station chattered at them, requests for routine cooperations. “Shut down,” she said curtly, waved a weary signal at Haral and pushed the cushion round the slight bit it could go. “Hilfy: tell station offices. Tell them we’ve got some shakeup. I’ll talk with them when we get internal business settled.”

“Aye,” Hilfy murmured, and relayed the message, with much flicking of the ears in talking with the official and a final flattening of them. Pyanfar shortened her focus, on Tirun, who was running her last few checks. Her hands made small uncertain movements; her ears were drooping. “Tirun,” Pyanfar said, and Tirun’s face when she looked around showed the strain. “Out,” Pyanfar said. “Now.”

Tirun stared at her half a moment, and ordinarily Tirun would have mustered argument. She looked only numb, and pushed back from her place and tried, a faltering effort which got her to her feet, and a reach which got her to the next console. They all scrambled for her, but Hilfy was quickest, flung an arm about her. “She goes to quarters,” Pyanfar said. “Aye,” Haral said, and took charge from Hilfy, replacing Tirun’s support on that side.

Hilfy stood a moment. Pyanfar looked on her back, on the backs of Tirun and Haral as Tirun limped away trying not to limp; and Hilfy straightened her shoulders and looked back.

“I’ll stay on the com,” Hilfy offered.

“Leave it. Let station wonder. Clean up.”

Hilfy nodded stiffly, turned and walked out, quite, quite without swagger, with a hand to steady her against the curvature-feeling of the deck when they were docked. It occurred to Pyanfar then that Hilfy had not been sick, not this time. Pyanfar drew a deep breath, let it go, turned and leaned over the com. “Lowerdeck, who’s at station?”

“Geran,” the voice came back. “All stable below.”

“Clean up. Above all get Tully straightened up and presentable.”

“Understood.”

Pyanfar broke the connection. There was another call coming over com.

“Chanur, this is Tahar’s Moon Rising. Private conference.”

“Tahar, this is Pyanfar Chanur: we have a medical situation in progress. Stand by that conference.”

“Do you require assistance, Pride of Chanur?”

There was, infinitesimal in the tone,, satisfaction in that possibility. Pyanfar sweetened her voice with prodigious effort. “Hardly, Moon Rising. I’ll return the call at the earliest possible. Chanur’s respects, Tahar. Out.”

She broke off with abruptness, pushed back and strode off, without swagger in her stride either. All her joints seemed rearranged, her head sitting precariously throbbing on a body which complained of abuses. Her nape bristled, not at kif presence, but at an enemy who sat much closer to home.

Gods. Beg of the Tahar?

Of a house which had presented formidable threat to Chanur during Kohan’s holding? The satisfaction in the Tahar whelp’s voice hardly surprised her. It was a spectacle, The Pride with her gut missing and her tail singed. There would be hissing laughter in Tahar, the vid image carried home for the edification of Kahi Tahar and his mates and daughters.

And from Tahar it would go out over Anuurn, so that it would be sure to come to Kohan. There would be challenges over this, beyond doubt there would be challenges. Some Tahar whelp would get his neck broken before the dust settled, indeed he would: young males were always optimists, always ready to set off at the smell of advantage, the least edge it might afford them.

They would try. So. They had done that before.

That was what Dur Tahar had wind of.

“She’s well enough,” Haral reported at the door of the crew’s quarters on the lower deck. Pyanfar looked beyond and saw Tirun snugged down in bed and oblivious to it all. “Leg swelled a bit under the stress, but no worry.”

Pyanfar frowned. “Good medical facilities here onstation. But it might be we’d have to pull out abruptly; I don’t want to risk leaving any of us behind for a layover, not… under the circumstances.”

“No,” Haral agreed. “No need for that. But we’re wearing thin, captain.”

“I know,” she said.

“You too, begging your leave.”

“Huh.” She laid her hand on Haral’s shoulders. Walked away to the lift, paused there and listened in the direction of Chur and Geran’s post. She walked back that way and leaned in at the door of op, where Geran sat watch, washed and in clean blue trousers, but looking on the world with the dull look someone ought to have who had gone from one on-shift to the next without sleep. “Right,” Pyanfar said simply, recalling that she had given them orders they were following, and leaned an arm against the doorframe. “Tully made it all right down here, did he?”

“No trouble from him.”

“I’m going to have to take him up on that work offer. You and Chur trade off with him, one on and one off. Tirun’s ailing.”

“Bad?”

“G stress didn’t favor that leg. We’ll rest here as much as we can. I’m going to see what charity I can get out of Tahar. Need to find out what damage we’ve got, first off.”

“Got a remote on it,” Geran said, turned about and called it up on the nearest screen. Pyanfar came into the room, looked at the exterior camera image, which was from the observation blister, and suffered a physical pang at the sight. Number one vane had a mooring line snaking loose, drifting about under station’s rotation, and there were panels missing, dark spots on the long silver bar. “That was our fade,” Pyanfar said with a belated chill. “Gods. Could have lost it all coming in with that loose. Going to take a skimmer crew to get that linked back up, no way the six of us can do it.”

“Money,” Geran said dismally. “Might have to sell one of us to the kif after all.”