Free Kif Strike Back by C. J. Cherryh Page A

ominous and more, a solitary, AP-wearing mahendo'sat slouched her way up to her captain in specific. Sleekly black, gold glittering as Jik himself, she had half an ear missing and a bald streak on a burn scar down her jaw.
     
    Jik spoke to his crewwoman rapidly in some language they both shared, of Iji's great multitude. "A," the woman said, and with her hand on the AP gun's butt, moved off again into shadows near the gantry.
     
    "Khury," Rhif Ehrran muttered to her aide, "get back to the ship; take charge. And if we don't get back, get home directly and make a thorough report to the han."
     
    It was Enaury hani the Ehrran spoke; Pyanfar caught it: so would Geran, but not likely anyone else. And Pyanfar ducked her head and rubbed her nose-better say less than one knew than more, she reckoned. With the han deputy it was certainly the case. There were already mounds and mountains of reports aboard that ship, to the delight of Chanur's enemies when Ehrran got back to Anuurn and that collection of complaints got to the han debating floor-
     
    And a certain stsho check was on its way to a mahen bank at Maing Tol, if it had not gotten there already. When that hit the desk of a certain Personage-
     
    The han's deputy had not discovered that small matter yet.
     
    Nor had Jik.
     
    Pyanfar lifted her head and the oncoming kif welcoming committee looked almost friendly in that light.
     
    They did not turn in at the same corridor as before. The half-dozen kifish guides brought them further and further down the open dock, and the paper and ammonia smell even surmounted the cold in this sector. The light was dim and murkish orange-gold, the only visual warmth in the gray and black of their surroundings. The signs were kifish, in crawling, dotted script.
     
    Kifish ships were docked along the row at their left; kifish dens lined the right hand, deserted and quiet, which lent no reassurance at all. The hair prickled down Pyanfar's back as more and more of the horizon unfurled; it went all bristled as all the missing kif suddenly showed up past the curtaining overhead girders of the station's curve-a dark mass ahead, a gathering of thousands on the docks.
     
    O gods, she thought. Her legs wanted to stop right there; but Jik had not even hesitated, nor had Ehrran-perhaps they waited on her, on Chanur, who they thought had been this route before.
     
    "More of them than last time," Pyanfar said, breaking the spell of caution. "Gods-rotted lot more of them."
     
    Jik made some sound in his throat. A noise grew ahead, like nothing she had ever heard-clicking and talking all at once, the roar of kifish speech from thousands of kifish mouths together. And they were obliged to walk through this congregation. She was conscious of Khym at her back, hair-triggered; of Haral and Tirun and Geran, steady as they came, And Rhif Ehrran and her handful; Jik striding along with legs that could match a kifish stride and instead kept pace with theirs, holding their guides to a hani pace.
     
    She slipped the safety off her rifle as the scene came down off the upcurved floor and straightened itself out in the crazy tilting of things on station docks. It became flat, became distinct as hooded, robed kif standing about, became kif on all sides of them, close at hand, turning to stare at them as they passed with their escort. A clicking rose-"Kk-kk-kk. Kk-kk-kk."   Everywhere, that soft, mocking sound.
     
    Kif territory for sure. Outnumbered, out-gunned a thousand times and three. If it got to shooting here-gods help them. Nothing else would.
     
    And if they had to enter one of the ships at dock to do their bargaining- they were in no position to protest the matter.
     
    The kif guiding them brushed other black-robed, hooded kif from their path like parting a field of nightbound grass; and indicated a double-doored passage into a dark like that other dark hole, into a place thicker with kif stench and the reek of drink.
     
    Kokitikk, the flowing sign