Gods. Her nape prickled.
“Breakfast and relief is coming,” she told Tirun as she arrived.
“No change,” Tirun said. “Same courses, all involved. Not a move from the kif, not a word.”
“Huh.” Pyanfar sat down sideways on the counter. “Confused likewise. I hope.”
“They couldn’t be in communication with them.” Tirun turned a disquieted stare toward her.
“I’m out of the assumption market.”
The rout progressed, Moon Rising proceeding outsystem with ii mahe escort at great distance and a manic flood of knnn behind.
“They’re mad,” Tirun said.
Pyanfar sat and watched, glaring at the screen.
Haral arrived, with Hilfy and breakfast; the others showed up hard on their heels, a procession, Geran and Chur and Tully carrying their own trays. “What’s going on out there?” Haral asked.
“Tahar,” Tirun said, “leading every scatterwitted knnn at the station—”
The screen had changed, the dots parting on the scan, that which was Tahar going on, the knnn…
“They’re stopping,” Hilfy said.
“Wonderful,” Pyanfar muttered, took up her cup of gfi and sipped it, watching as the gap widened. Turnover eventually, she reckoned; the knnn developed other plans. Tully spoke, a flood of alien babble, but she had left the pager in her cabin. Chur turned hers to broadcast. “Enemy ship,” it rendered.
“Knnn,” Haral said. “Not an enemy. Neutral. But trouble. That’s Moon Rising. The knnn followed them; now they’ve quit.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know, Tully.”
Moon Rising made jump, a sudden wink off station scan — knnnless. “Gods,” Hilfy exclaimed, as the knnn bent a turn.
“Knnn maneuver,” Tirun said. “The bastards are showing out. They can jump boost and turn like that. It’d kill a hani. Any oxygen breather. Can’t outmaneuver them. Gods forbid, if we should have to shoot at one — comp plotting can’t hit one: not programmed for their moves.”
“They don’t shoot at us. They aren’t armed.”
“In the old days,” Haral said, “they never caught the knnn shooting either. But ships turned up gutted. Before my time. But I heard they’d swarm a ship, jump it elsewhere — haul its mass off where they’d open it at their leisure—”
“Haul it between them?” Hilfy’s face mirrored disbelief.
“Among them. A dozen. All synched. So I heard. Hani ships’d tear each other to junk; but knnn can synch like that.”
“Huh,” Pyanfar said. It was an old bunk yarn, like ghost ships. Like aliens outside the Compact. She stared at Tully and thought about that. Ate her dried chips and washed it down with gfi. On com, station sent instructions to its patrol to stay out of the way of the knnn. A tc’a went on, presumably talking to the knnn.
And a message light blinked on their own board, something directed at them.
Revise estimate, the letters crept across the screen when Tirun keyed it. 75 hours repair additional. Regret. Mahe more worker this job. Two team. Repeat …
“Gods help us.” Pyanfar snatched the mike and punched in station op. “What kind of trouble this? What fifteen hours? Fifteen more hours?”
Station routed the complaint, one to the next, to the almost incomprehensible mahe skimmer supervisor. “All skimmer station work,” was the answer, three times repeated, in rising volume, as if loudness improved communication. “Thanks,” Pyanfar muttered. “Out.” She ran a hand through her mane, put the mike down, looked around at staring eyes and managed a better face.
“Well,” Haral said in a quiet voice, “at least they found it before they sent us out with it.”
“I’ll go out the aft lock,” Geran said, “and check them out on it.”
“No,” Pyanfar said. “I don’t doubt you’ll find damage. Longshot it from the observation dome. And by the gods, if there’s something new I want to know about it.” She composed herself a moment. “No, gods rot them, the mahe’d gouge us on fines and charges, but if I’ve got the measure of that foreman she’s not the type. Still… Do the check anyhow.”
“Right.” Geran snatched up the tray and headed out, down the corridor for the bubble access, a cold trip to the frame. Pyanfar thought of going herself, delayed to finish her breakfast and watched the knnn, who had stopped again, hovering off in utter violation of lanes and regulations. Station operations reported a ship coming in, a mahendo’sat freighter arriving in the zenith range: they had their own problems. So did the mahen freighter, coming in to what should be a safe haven and finding traffic snugged down and knnn gone berserk.
“I’m going to main,” she said finally. “Go off down here. Rest. Haral, I’ll take it, up there. I’ll key you.”
“Captain—” Haral started to object, swallowed it, having a sense about such things. “Right.”
Pyanfar walked out, hitched up the trousers which had gotten too loose in recent days, headed for the lift. Go in person to station offices and take the place apart? It tempted. At the moment she wanted something breakable within reach. But it would hardly mend matters. Fifteen hours. It was hardly surprising; repairs for all of time and to all ends of the Compact ran behind schedule and over estimate. And then it was sixteen and seventeen and another twenty—
She took the lift up, ensconced herself in her cushion on the bridge and sent rapid inquiry through all appropriate channels. Defect vane yoke, the answer came back from the station office, and hard upon that, from Geran: “Got closeup; they’ve swarmed in on the vane collar, but I can’t tell much.” The image came through, two skimmers and three workers in eva-I pods grappled onto the afflicted vane where it attached to the strut, cables and vane and strut strung with red hazard lights to prevent accidents in shadow. It was a plausible repair, gods — nothing cheap; the damage that had blown the panels loose could have stressed it… one of those systems for which there was no bypass, through which a third of the power of the jump drive passed. “Yoke,” Pyanfar sent to Geran, who was likely shivering her teeth loose in the bubble. “Come on inship; there’s no more we can do.”
It was a fifteen hour job. A gnawing suspicion worked at her gut. The defect should have shown up on the board: there were reasons why it might not — that it had blown as they camel in… something had redlighted, so many things had redlighted at one instant and gone back to normal status. possibly, possibly it was real. Possibly too it was one of those demon touches, the mahendo’sat called them, that lost ships, something loose that contacted in stresses and killed. It was five to five they owed the mahendo’sat crew profound thanks; or they were being stalled, conned, set up. Check it now and ill was bound to redlight: the casing was off. She sat staring at the vid screen with her blood pressure up and a smoldering] rage with nowhere to send it.
“Haral,” she said into com.
“Captain?”
“That problem you fixed as we were coming in. Was the number one yoke involved? Could you tell?”
A long moment of silence. “Captain, we were losing the input; I put in a new board and we got it cleared. But that fade had stressed everything; the whole board was fouled. I couldn’t say beyond doubt. It was everywhere. I thought it was the panels. I’m sorry, captain.”
There was misery in Haral’s voice. Haral was not accustomed to be wrong. Ever. “It’s one of those things,” Pyanfar said, “that would redlight if the panels were overloaded; I’m not so sure you were wrong, Haral. I’m not at all sure you were wrong.”