C.J. Cherryh. Chanur’s Venture

pocket for the gun, but it was gone.

“Hilfy–” Tully cried, and pulled her further back as kif poured past them to

take up position.

“O gods,” she breathed. “We’re behind the wrong gods-rotted line!”

Shots popped off the wall behind them and ricocheted wildly. She ducked down and

in the first pause in fire she grabbed Tully by the shirt, scrambled up and ran

with him while the smoke held — but that smoke was not dissipating as it

should, the fans were not working, and it dawned on her battered skull that they

were cut off, shut down: section doors had sealed.

“Where?” Pyanfar shouted into the com as if volume could help, aware of Tirun

and Khym and Geran at her back and a great silence elsewhere on the bridge.

“What ‘stay still’? You gods-rotted incompetent — Where around the rim?”

–Babble poured into her ear. She whirled round as her eye caught movement, saw

Haral’s running arrival on the bridge and waved a furious hand at her crew.

“Arm! Move it!”

“Got section seal go,” the mahen official was saying into her ear. “Got no

chance kif get away, you wait report–”

“You authorize us past that seal. Hear?”

“Office got no authority–”

“Get it!” She cut the official off in midword and shoved her way past Khym.

Geran had the sidearms out of the locker. “Get the rifles,” she said. They had

them. It was illegal, a defense they never admitted to port authorities they

had.

“Aye,” Haral said, and ran.

“Pyanfar–” Khym said.

She put the lock on controls, spun about and ran. Khym was with them and she had

no desire to stop him. Not in this.

* * *

The huge section doors were shut, red and amber strobes on their surface

spearing through the wafts of smoke that reached even here. Sirens wailed and

echoed in the vastness of the docks. “They’re shut, they’re sealed,” Hilfy

gasped, blinking smoke-tears and half-carrying the human who half-carried her,

the two of them weaving past the clutter of dockside bins and chutes as they

tried to get the break they needed to get past the line of fire. “We can’t get

out — Tully, stop!”

Shots broke out from a new direction. She dragged him off his balance. They both

staggered, thumped into the echoing side of a bin and she landed hard on her

rump as Tully collapsed with a gasp. Flesh stank. He rolled over, clutching at

his arm and she kept pulling at him, claws hooked into his shirt as she worked

toward the corner–

O gods, that there be shelter there–

There was an alleyway of a kind, a recess for freight loading, a door with a

white light over its recess. SERVICE ACCESS, said a battered sign, ROHOSU

COMPANY. Beside it, mahen graffiti, obscurely obscene. She tried the door; but

it was locked like every other door along the row once the emergency had

sounded. She rang the bell; battered at the unyielding steel. “Open up, gods rot

you! We’re hani! Let us in!”

No answer. Tully babbled something. Sirens.

She heard them too, far down the dock. She sank down by him, pried his hand from

his arm and grimaced at the wound the dim light showed, black edged and bleeding

hard. She grabbed the tail of his shirt and tore a wide strip of cloth off,

pressed it tight and put his hand on it, ripped another strip off to tie it

with.

“Easy,” she breathed, senseless chatter to keep him from panic. “Easy, you’re

all right, all right, hear?”

He slumped back against the wall, his face gone to waxen color. The hand of the

wounded arm shook and the tremor spread to the rest of him as he began to go

into shock. But he listened, his eyes on her whenever she looked.

“Listen,” she said, “listen, station’s onto it now. And The Pride — they’ll

have heard by now. The captain’s doing something, you can bet she’ll get us help

–Pyanfar, understand?”

“Pyanfar come.”

“Bet on it. All right, huh?” She got the bandage around his arm, put his hand on

it to hold that. She snugged the knot tight and he mumbled something in human,

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