Kif Strike Back Read Online Free PDF

Personage. Hear?"
     
    The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face.
     
    "You've got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast."
     
    "Captain!" Haral hissed. "Your left."
     
    A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery-kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. "You stop! Stop! You break law!"-as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards.
     
    The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians.
     
    Law. The Voice's protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo'sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port.
     
    Not in this hour, that was sure.
     
    Pyanfar's ears flattened. She let them stay that way. "Well?" she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. "We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?"
     
    The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym's; hers. Haral's and Geran's were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun-Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that was sure.
     
    The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. "I have message, hani."
     
    It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.
     
    Tully's. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.
     
    "Is the human alive?"
     
    "At present."
     
    Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. "Tell Sikkukkut I'll talk about it."
     
    There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. "You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours."
     
    It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. "We can deal here," she said. "Now."
     
    "This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?"
     
    She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. "All right," she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif's neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. "All right. We'll add it up later, kif."
     
    It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks.
     
    Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings.
     
    "Captain." A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. "No go-"
     
    "Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?"
     
    The Voice fell behind. "You crazy," the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. "You crazy go that place!"
     
     
     
     
     
    II
     
    Kif fell in and walked as an escort about them, their black robes like a moving wall in the dockside twilight. A dry paper and ammonia smell rose about them, mingled with the; scent of pungent incense and oil. Weapons rattled as they went,   rifles and sidearms as illegal as their own.
     
    They had docked in the same section as Harukk, without a section door to pass. The twilit deck stretched out in the! upward-tending horizon of all station docks, up to a towering section seal that