“You understand it real well,” Hilfy said. “Come on. Let’s go topside and discuss it with the crew.”
“Not my doing,” Skkukuk said, “hani, it was not my—”
“Out!” she said.
Skkukuk came out toward them. Khym grabbed himself a handful of kifish robe at Skkukuk’s nape, and Skkukuk twisted and rolled his eyes in alarm. The jaws clicked alarmingly. “I offer no resistence, I want to go to your bridge, there is no need—”
“I’ll bet you do,” Hilfy muttered, and grabbed his arm while Khym took the other side, hauling the kif along clicking and protesting. Something black and small fled down the hall and scuttled around the corner into a lesser-used corridor.
“I have given you my weapons,” Skkukuk hissed, struggling to free his arms. “Let me go! Let me go, hani fools! I am yours, I am loyal to the captain—”
“In a mahen hell,” Hilfy muttered.
* * *
They reached the bottom of the ramp, down by the gory row of heads, and Pyanfar looked back yet again with her hand laid on the AP gun she wore. The Tahar crewwomen did the best they could, keeping Haury Savuun on her feet and keeping moving; and Haral brought up the rear—clear enough that Haral would gladly have gone faster on this stretch, but there was a limit to what the Tahar kin could do; and there were several watching clutches of kif, down by the dockside and up above them on the ramp. “Kkkkt,” the sound came to them from above and below. “Kkkkt.”
Well, look at those fools, Pyanfar translated it to herself, and her hair bristled. She glanced a second time at the Tahar, at Moon Rising’s first officer in particular, the moment that they passed out of earshot from either end of the ramp. “Ker Dur’s safe,” she said quickly. “That’s the truth. And I got your ship back. You’re free. How are you doing?”
Gilan’s eyes seemed to pass in and out of focus, a widening and narrowing of the dark-in-amber as what she had said got through. “Captain’s with you—And Moon Rising?”
“Both in my keeping. You’re safe. We’re getting you back into safe territory fast as we can, going to turn you loose—Don’t you wilt on me, gods rot you, look alive!—We’ve got a long way to walk, Gilan Tahar. No transport on this dock I want to use.”
“Aye, captain.” Gilan’s voice was hoarse and earnest. “We’re with you.”
Kif were to either side of them. Kif clicked and muttered, in mirth at the sight they saw—
Sfik, Pyanfar thought with a sinking heart. This ragged crew of hani demonstrated—gods help them all—hani vulnerability. Not enemies, the kif don’t see Tahar as enemies to us. We’re treating them wrong. It’s a trap, by the gods, Sikkukkut’s own sense of humor, not to send them with a kifish escort. To make us take them ourselves. Hoping one of them will faint on the way and make a scene.
“Captain—” Haral said from a few paces behind.
Kif were taking up a stance along the dockside ahead, across their path. It was walk through or detour round.
“We don’t bluff,” Pyanfar said, and put an exaggerated swagger in her step, her hand on the gunbutt. On a second thought she took the AP from the holster and flicked the safety off, carrying it barrel-down and swinging as she walked. “Out!” she yelled down the way, and gestured at the kif with a wave of the gunbarrel. “Praise to the hakkikt, you scum, we’re on his business with these prisoners and you’ll keep your noses out of it!”
There was slow movement, timed, she reckoned, just to brush against them in retreat—pushing it. But they were going to move. She kept the gun free and her finger on the trigger, reckoning Haral behind her was taking a similar attitude and backing her up.
“Hani!”
A kifish shout behind them. She stopped at once and braced wide-legged with the gun aimed two-handed at the crowd in front; and knowing Haral was turning similarly braced toward trouble behind them.
“Three of ’em,” Haral’s voice reached her backturned ears; back brushing against her back. “Migods! A kif’s been hit! Someone shot a—”
Pyanfar let off a warning shot over the leading kif’s heads as she spun to Haral’s side and saw one kif on the dockside deck and a second and a third in the act of falling. Sniper-fire. Her other foot hit the deck and she shouldered Gilan Tahar in a move toward the tangle of gantries and lines along the shipberths. “Cover,” she yelled. “Rot it, out of the open, move it!”
The Tahar crew ran. She stopped and spun again to see Haral covering their retreat, with fire coming from somewhere, with kif falling and kif firing back and a chittering of kifish voices in tumult.
“Get cover!” Pyanfar yelled at Haral, and Haral fell back in haste. Fire popped across the deck and exploded off something behind them with a deafening shock and a sting of particles.
“Go!” Pyanfar yelled, turning and waving the Tahar vehemently to move—to gain what ground they could; and: “Move!” Gilan Tahar echoed the order, and lent her good arm to drag at Canfy Maurn. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
Kif firing at kif.
Akkhtimakt’s partisans, rising against Sikkukkut.
“We got a revolution on our hands,” Haral gasped, coming up beside her with her arm about Haury Savuun and Tav and Naun panting up behind. “Captain—we got—”
A shot exploded near, and Haral flung up her gunhand to shield her eyes, staggering. Pyanfar spun about and pasted a shot in the general direction of fire.
“By the gods, they fire this way, they get it—”
A volley came back, a clanging thunder, an impact that flung her backward and cracked her head against the deck. She rolled and scrambled for cover, blind.
“Captain!” Haral cried.
* * *
“Hold it, hold it,” Geran said as chaos erupted out of The Pride’s com, “I got it—Tirun, I got Jik on one and a kif on two—”
“Give me the kif,” Tirun said; and listened while Hilfy and Khym held their own kif immobilized and furious between them.
“Shut up!” Hilfy said to Skkukuk; and maybe it was that or maybe it was the news pouring out over the console speaker that hushed him.
“—Honor to the hakkikt Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin,” the voice said. “A suicide attack by rash elements has endangered your captain and her subordinate. We are now moving in reprisal. We advise all ships in this command to exercise extreme watchfulness for external attack during this crisis. Pride of Chanur, refrain from rash action. The hakkikt will deal harshly with these adventurers.”
“Watch him,” Hilfy muttered, and dived for com. “Tully, shift down. Take number one scan—Tahar captain’s got monitor up there—”
Tully bailed out. She hit the seat and snatched up a complug, coming into the tail of Geran’s few seconds delayed retransmission of the kifish message down the mahendo’sat link. “Jik’s got that,” Geran muttered, as the kif finished and Aja Jin acknowledged on that channel.
“This is The Pride of Chanur,” Hilfy sent back on the kifish link, unauthorized and in haste. “Harukk-com—where’s our personnel? What location?”
“I will ask authorization for that information. Chanur-com.”
“They fear,” Skkukuk hissed at her back. “The hakkikt Sikkukkut is in distress—he does not have them prisoner. . . .”
* * *
Hilfy twisted round in her chair and stared full into the kif’s red-rimmed eyes. “Why?”
“Because, young Chanur, he says they are in danger. He admits a weakness. He promises retaliation. This is not control of the situation. It is not his doing. He would not claim weakness even in subterfuge.”
And on the Jik-channel, suddenly over general speaker: “We got personnel out on dock, we got Mahijiru move—Where be Pyanfar, Pride of Chanur? You got contact?”
“Against what?” Hilfy asked Skkukuk. “What’s going on out there?”
“They will be Akkhtimakt’s partisans, young fool. They hope for a coup. There is likely fighting even within Harukk. The hakkikt will be dealing with that personally. He will
be occupied.”
“Likely truth,” Dur Tahar said, swinging her chair around from the monitor.
Hilfy rose to her feet with her pocket pistol in hand and aimed at Tahar. “That’s your recent side, Tahar, isn’t it—Akkhtimakt’s?”
Tahar laid her ears back. Her eyes showed white and she froze in the chair. “Shoot or listen to me, Hilfy Chanur. The kif’s telling the truth. But it’s local stuff—nothing’s coming in coordinated with this. Nothing I know about, leastwise. And I might have. No. It’s a local thing. We got my crew and your captain out there on the docks. The kif’s guessing but he’s guessing straight—they’re not where the hakkikt can lay hands on them right now or he would have. No, this goes right along with that assault on the lock down there. Kefk station is counterattacking—Akkhtimakt’s partisans are making their move and your captain and my crew is caught in the middle, for godssakes—listen to me and put that gods-be gun down—”
Tirun spun her chair about, still listening to something, the complug pressed hard in one ear. Her eyes flicked. “Ehrran’s just engaged the kif—gods rot it, they’re shooting up the docks out there—”
“I’m going out there,” Khym said flatly.
“You go with the rest of us,” Tirun said, and hurled herself to her feet. “Gods be, the captain’s going to skin us, but when we get ’em back she can skin me first. We seal The Pride up tight and we get ourselves out there. Move it! Geran—shut her down. Put the lock on autoseal.” Tirun crossed the deck at speed and opened up the weapons locker, handed a pistol toward Dur Tahar.
“I,” Tully said, on his feet, holding out his hand. “I!”
Tirun slapped her pocket gun into his hand. “Use it.”
“Come on,” Hilfy said to Skkukuk, and grabbed him ungently by the arm, claws out. “We put you back below.”
“Leave him one of two on this ship?” Tirun said. “No thanks. This son goes. First. First out. You lead the way, kif.”
Skkukuk’s wiry body straightened. His head lifted to his full, gangling height. “Give me my gun back, hani.”
“Suppose you take one,” Tirun said, nose rumpling. “From the other side.”
* * *
“Captain—” Haral leaned over her in the shelter they had reached along a towering gantry, in the red tracery of fire that speared the smoke and popped off the wall and the gantry-structure. Haral had a piece of cloth from somewhere and was daubing away at her face with a rough earnestness while her ears rang and the fire went back and forth. It was all far away; and then it came clear, Haral’s anguished face and the pain in the back of her head. “Gods be,” Pyanfar muttered, struck the ministering hand away and tried to move. Her skin hurt. She put a hand to her middle and wiped away a dew of blood.
Metal fragments. Splinters. She was peppered with them. She felt their prickling. Felt the slickness on her fur. She blinked at the Tahar crew’s frightened faces—saw Haral looking white around the nose, and panic in Haral Araun was so out of character it shook the world.
A second shaking: this time an AP blast against the station wall over their heads, and another spatter of particles. A five-hundred-weight of severed hose plummeted to the deck close enough to kick up the wind. “Gods!” Pyanfar cried, and got over onto her knees, searching for her gun in an empty holster.
“Here.” Gilan Tahar slapped the heavy butt into her hand, and she looked from the Tahar first officer to her own, saw Haral take a careful look out from their cover, and turn a dour face back toward her.
“Pretty thick out there,” Haral said.
“A weather report, for gods-sakes—we got any cover further on?”
“We got ourselves pretty well set here—”
BANG! Another thunderclap, another shower of metal from overhead.
“They’re hitting the gods-be wall!” Pyanfar yelled. “The gods-be fools are going to take this whole gods-be dock for a spacewalk—”
“That’s volatiles down the dock,” Haral yelled back over the sudden thunder of fire, pointing at the cans down the way, cans with the deadly yellow combustibles sticker. “If we run that way we can draw fire on that and get fried real good, captain!”
“We sit here we got our choices too! How long’s that sister of yours going to wait, huh?”
“I’m expecting Jik,” Haral yelled.
“Well, he’s late! And we got a fool lot of crew’s going to be out here on this dock after us if they don’t get assurance out of Sikkukkut, and I don’t think he’s in any position to give them any! We got to move, cousin, cans or no cans.” She turned a look on Gilan Tahar, on a woman undone with bloodloss. Gilan had gotten a bandage tied on the wound in her shoulder, but it was soaked. Haury Savuun was still conscious, by what force of will the gods only knew. “Gilan—we got a long sprint ahead. We don’t want to do any shooting—don’t want to attract any attention near those cans.” She fished in her pocket and drew out the light pistol, handed it to Gilan. “In case. But you by the gods stay with us.”
“We’re with you,” Gilan said, and the overhead erupted and another length of hose and a length of pipe hit the deck and bounced erratically the other way—as easily into the midst of them.
“Come on!” Pyanfar yelled, and headed for the next berth in a roiling of laser-riddled smoke so thick it obscured the next support girders. She sprinted for the cans with the yellow circles, remembering then that kif were at least partially color-blind.
* * *
Vermin scampered pell-mell as they charged up to the airlock, as the hatches shot open, inner and outer, as Tirun turned to hit the lock-close in the dim orange passage. Hilfy ran, skipped aside from the collapsed cage and the can the kif had left—
Explosives—Hilfy surmised in horror, explosives, if the kif were willing to decompress the dock. “Go!” she yelled, bristled all over, and Skkukuk darted past with kifish speed, Khym and Geran gaining. Tirun banged into the collapsed cage and cursed; and Hilfy clutched her gun and pelted after Khym around the bend of the passage with Tully and Dur Tahar hard after her. “Tirun!” she yelled, half-turning there; but: “Go!” Tirun yelled back, running hard enough at the outset of their course—Tirun would do the best she could, lame in any run, and bring up their rear and cover their backs even if she commanded. “Get down there, get clear!”
Hilfy ran, passing Tully and Tahar, coming up behind Khym as they reached the pressure gates at the bottom of the ramp. There was a gentle, distant popping of fire.
A shot went off the inner wall. Skkukuk skipped and dodged, and dived for cover. “You get, get!” a mahe cried, rising from concealment near their ramp, waving a frantic arm. There were mahendo’sat holding positions over near the cargo-console, Jik’s people or Goldtooth’s. Hilfy sought cover immediately behind the gantry control console and the sheltering metalwork of the gantry itself, leaned there with her heart pounding in terror and glanced back to see Tirun and Tahar and Tully pelting off the hazard of that ramp. O gods, gods, get us through this—I can’t, I can’t—She flung a look the other way, thinking Khym had gone to cover in a stack of cargo-cannisters ahead.
He had not. “Na Khym!” she yelled in dismay, huddled in the solidity of her shelter, for Skkukuk dashed on, and Khym followed. “Gods be! Khym! Uncle! Stop! Wait!”
Then it all seemed clear, the direction of the kifish enemy and the direction of the fire where Pyanfar and Haral had gone, and she shook fear away to some far cold place and gave up on either survival or mortality.
Go on, Hilfy Chanur, go on! Is a man crazy who knows he’s overdue to die? Or a kif on his way to switch sides again?—go, fool, Haral’s out there, and Pyanfar—run till the shots come your way and then you cover and shoot till they stop. It’s all real simple, kid.
Haral’s voice, instruction-giving again.
And Pyanfar’s: Gods-be fool.
Fire hit, tracing smoke puffs on the deck where Khym ran.
* * *
Pyanfar darted behind the cans of volatiles and kept running, feel
ing the ache in bones and head with every jolt of her feet on the deckplates. The air was too thin and burned the lungs, the ammonia-smell cut with acrid smoke and laced with ozone. She sobbed another breath in a glance back and stopped to wave Gilan and Naur on with a pass of her hand, covering them without firing—wanting no notice they could avoid, but keeping her finger hard on the trigger. Vihan had Canfy by the arm, guiding her; Nif and Tav sprinted after, and hindmost, Haral with Haury flung over her shoulder, jogging along at what pace she could make, Haury no small woman and Haral not smallish either. “Go,” Pyanfar yelled at Gilan’s back, and ran back to intercept Haral as Haral struggled away from the explosive cans, grabbed Haury as Haral ducked out from under her body—no word of debate from Haral. Haral ran; and Pyanfar shouldered Haury to a carry and jogged on, all but blind for want of air. Fire suddenly burst on the far side of the cans—evidently kif saw the hazard marker—not hitting them. They kept going, reached a tentative shelter behind a cargo-loader. But next was an open space, and a run to scant shelter by the stress-supports. After that, another run, and another and another.
And if Jik had not reached them by now, there was something impassable in the way.
* * *
“Na Khym!” Hilfy cried, beckoning her uncle to safety, and he heard, by the gods he heard, and spun about and came sliding in by the gantry-side beside her all reeking of sweat while Geran slid in beside.
“Gods,” Geran said, pointing ahead, and there was Skkukuk still going, face on with a kif who stood frozen in his path as if it were trying to analyze the matter; then it fired, twice, zig and zag, where Skkukuk had been, but not where he was, which was coming down right onto the kif and taking it in a rolling tangle of black robes.
“Uhhn,” Khym said.
The uppermost kif’s head was bearing down and down at its enemy—gods knew what it was at. Hilfy shuddered and looked back as Tully came sliding in, and Tahar and Tirun with him, Tully desperately out of breath and white and gasping in the kifish air. “Where’s Skkukuk?” Tirun asked. “Gone over?”