In the same way she turned and wandered through the bridge, where foreign crew sat working, as strange to see there as if they were mahen. Or human. Sirany Tauran acknowledged her presence, and Pyanfar flicked her ears back and nodded in return, before she wandered out and down the corridor.
Nothing else was wrong. If it were, Sirany would have said. Tauran crew was going to do something about intership communications, try to relay a coded do-watch on mahen ships. Or whatever they might manage to get across of their situation. While Aja Jin rode beside them.
She paused at Chur’s open door. Geran was there, at the bedside. ” ‘Lo,” she said, and was not sure if Chur responded; her eyes were blurring out on her. “Hey, we about got the hard part, cousin, just hang on, huh? We’re all right. We’ll make it.”
She got into her own room, made one trip to the head, fell face-down into bed and coordinated herself enough to jab the bedside console and power the safety rig over, never forget that, gods, never forget, an old spacer never lost that reflex,
move down the corridors right smart, stay out of open areas,
get to safe small places in case the ship had to move. Broken bones and smashed skulls else. Spacers died of bad luck like that, a ship moving to save its steel hide and some poor bastard of a spacer smashed to pulp down a corridor become a three-story drop-epitaph on many an acquaintance: the luck ran out. On a ten-ring spacer it could happen-
Luck out on Tahar and Vrossaru. Gods help ’em.
After a dark space the restraint hummed, a large and warm weight settled onto the same mattress and a warmth settled about her. “We’re about to brake,” Khym said; and woke her up just enough to feel a drunken panic.
“Restraint,” she said. “I’ve got it,” he said, and she opened her eyes blearily on dim light and the arch of the safety web going over them, on a familiar face, a large arm going over her like the arch of the safety, a huge body shaping itself to hers, awful and stinking as they both were, straight out of jump and headed in again without respite. She hugged him back, hard.
The vanes cycled again, blowing velocity in a dizzying pulse of neither here nor there, right down to the lowest energy they could reasonably achieve. It was a hunter-ship maneuver. Honest freighter never had the reason to do a thing like that.
Urtur dust screamed over the hull, shields downed during the low-V of their turn and reacquisition, dust abrading the vanes. The whole ship wailed and keened in sound that hurt the ears.
Gods let Tahar make it after all, gods save the rest of us, where’s the kif?
“Unnnh.” Khym clenched his fist in her mane. “Claws, Py, gods-”
Realspace acceleration started up, the unsettling G-shift of rollover.
“We’re going,” she said, “we’re going all right.” Which might or might not be true. There might be enemies after all. Or a big rock the shields would fail on. It was all Tauran’s problem now. Not hers. Not hers.
The dust wailed away, changing pitch.
“Py-”
He burrowed in closer, arm stretched above her. “I’m holding on,” he said; and did: his weight kept her steady and comfortable, so that her groping reach after the handgrip became too much effort. He stayed like that forever, in a position that could not be comfortable for him. She tried again to move and get a foot braced against the safety-rim. “I’ve got it,” he said again, “it’s all right, Py.”
“Sprain your gods-be shoulder,” she muttered.
He breathed into her ear and tongued the inside of it, like in the dark of off-watch, like the two of them twenty and brand new again. “Good gods.” She caught her breath and lost it again. “Not now, Khym.”
“Think of a better time?”
He couldn’t, under the strain they were under. But he amused himself. While they hurtled on toward oblivion and it was clear he was in pain.
“Gods be fool man,” she said. “Love you like my sister.” It sounded stupid. It was the only way she knew to say it to him, in hani, so he would know what she meant. “Always have.”