Chanur's Venture by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

flanked by two senior crew.
    Pyanfar evaded collision.
    "Gods rot you--" Banny Ayhar yelled, and Chur cursed; there was the thump of
    impact.
    "Gods rot you!" Pyanfar yelled, whirling about, outraged, as Chur recovered from
    her stagger and spun about at her side. "I told you clear my dock!"
    "What's it take to bring Chanur to its senses?" Banny Ayhar yelled. "When's it
    stop, hey? -- You listen to me, ker Pyanfar! I've had enough being put off--"
    "We've got kif after my crew, blast your eyes."
    "Chanur!"
    She spun and gathered Chur and ran, with the thump of running Ayhar at their
    heels at least as far as the passageway's exit onto the downward ramp.
    "Cha-nur!" Banny Ayhar roared at her back, waking echoes off the docks; but
    Pyanfar never stopped, down the rampway and past the frozen cargo ramp and the
    gantry that hel$I The Pride's skein of station-links.
    "Chanur." Far behind them.
    There was a curious absence of traffic on the chill, echoing docks, and that
    silence itself was a warning. Trouble was in sight even from here, around a big
    can-loader grinding its slow way beside the ship accesses four berths distant.
    An odd crowd accompanied it -- a half dozen mahendo'sat in station-guard black
    strode along beside. Two red-pelted hani in faded blue breeches rode the flatbed
    with the tall white cans, while a dozen black-robed kif stalked along in a tight
    knot; and if any stsho customs officer was involved at all gist was either
    barriered inside the cab or fled for safety.
    "Come on," Pyanfar said to Chur -- no encouragement needed there. Chur kept
    beside her as they crossed the space at a deliberate jog, not out to provoke
    trouble, not slow to meet it either. Her hand was in her spacious pocket,
    clenched about the butt of the gun she tried to keep still and out of sight, and
    her eyes were constantly on that knot of kif, alert for anything kif-shaped that
    might show itself from ambushes among the maze of gantries and dock-side clutter
    to the right and the office doors to the left.
    "Hai," she yelled with great joviality, when they were a single berth apart.
    "Hai, you kif bastards, about time you came out to say hello."
    The kif had seen them coming too. Their dozen or so scattered instantly all
    about the moving can-carrier, some of them screened by it. But from the
    carrier's broad bed, from beside the four huge cans, several mahen guards
    dropped down to stand at those kif's backs.
    "Good to see you," Pyanfar gibed, halting at a comfortable distance. Kifish
    faces were fixed on her in starkest unfriendliness. "I was worried. I thought
    you'd forgotten me."
    "Fool," one hissed.
    She grinned, her hand still in her pocket, her ears up, her eyes taking in all
    the kif. Two moved, beyond the moving can-carrier, and she shifted to keep them
    in sight. The smell of them reached her. Their dry-paper scent offended her
    nostrils with old memories. The long-snouted faces peering from within the
    hooded robes, the dark-gray hairless skin with its papery wrinkles, the small,
    red-rimmed eyes -- set the hair bristling on her back. "Do something," she
    wished them. "Foot-lickers. Riffraff. Petty thieves. Did Akkukkakk turn you out?
    Or is he anywhere these days?"
    Kifish faces were hard to read. If that reference to a vanished leader got to
    them, nothing showed. Only one hooded face lifted, black snout atwitch, and
    stared at her with directness quite unlike the usual kifish slink. "He is no
    longer a factor," that one said, while the carrier groaned past under its load
    of canisters and took itself from between them and four more kif.
    More soft impacts hit the deck beside her. From the tail of her eye she saw a
    red-gold blur. Tirun and Geran had dropped off the flatbed rear. They took up a
    position at her left as Chur held the right.
    "Get back," she said without looking around at her two reinforcements. "Go on
    with the carrier. Hilfy's in lower ops. Get that cargo inside." The mahen
    station guards had moved warily