“Believe us,” she said to that captain. “Believe what we’ve told you.”
Other calculations. The solar system danced in her memory, swung through two years of positional changes. Lanes threaded like moving spirals of color through this maze of rock, converging on Anuurn.
Cover a ship with mass and emissions-noise, a gravity well it could stay in, concealed in dancing fragments, in the thunderous emissions of a gas giant. Akkhtimakt knew there would be attack coming in at him. He had had time to plan and research the moves he hoped to make, and attack could not possibly take him by utter surprise.
She crossed to the com board, reached the slack hand of a Tauran crewwoman, punched in a channel. “Kif. Do you hear me?”
“Kkkt,” the voice came back, slow and slurred. “Who calls? Who is this?”
She reached-it was terrible effort-to the board. Sat down in a vacant chair. Tully’s. Between two Tauran crewwomen. She freed up armaments from that master board and set her hand on that control, preprogramming fire on the Tyar vector from their entry point.
Black things ran and squealed. There were red lights on boards, systems failures. She went to the main board and carefully switched to backups, system after system, where automation had failed.
. . . down again. She staggered, held to the board, blinked with the jolting here of the bridge about her, where she spent her life. The crewwoman beside her was turning her head in confusion, the whole of the bridge was real for the moment before it began to darken.
“My gods,” someone said. As The Pride fired on its own.
The dark folded round again, but it was only a dimming of the light; and there was pain, the bite of the strap against her sagging body. She pushed herself upright again. She reached for the com-switch again, threw it on wide. “Captain. This is Chur. Get up here. Emergency, emergency.”
“How in a mahen hell’d she do it?” a young voice cried; and another: “Captain!”
As space sorted itself into sanity, as alarms wailed, advising of systems gone backup; as they ran into a wavefront of information that said ANUURN, ANUURN, ANUURN-
“My gods!” someone yelled, seeing something.
And their own ship answered, automatic: The Pride of Chanur.
They were well into system. Close to the star. To the sun that had warmed their backs as children and beaconed them home trip after trip.
Anuurn buoy was out. No help for that. “Watch out for Tyar,” she said to the scan operator by her, tried to say. As The Pride’s weapons fired again.
Pyanfar ran. She had never moved so hard, straight out of jump. She hit the door with her whole body, triggered the lock and staggered into the hall and ran it with the thud and thump of Khym running behind her. A blurred figure came out of Chur’s room and collided with her, embraced her, stink of human, half-naked and all but falling. “Chur-” Tully said, but she sorted out from him, already on her way, and left him to obstruct Khym’s path.
Bridge loomed, lit and swimming in and out of focus. She grabbed the doorframe, safetywise hand-over-handed toward the nearest console and lurched for the next, heading for the captain’s seat, grabbed the back of it and hung there. “I’m here,” she gasped, and Sirany twisted in the seat and began to get out of it. “Get to observer one. Too far to go below.”
“We’re still firing,” a youngish voice said. “Do I stop?”
“Priority, we got no buoy here.”
“What are we firing at?” Sirany snapped. “Gods and thunders, what are we doing? My gods, we’re high-V-those guns-”
“Not sure,” that one said; and: “She’s fainted-” Another voice. As Pyanfar grabbed Sirany’s seatback. “Out!” she yelled at the Tauran; and Sirany cleared it as she threw herself into it, a collision of bodies. “Tyar vector,” someone said; and: “Stay your posts,” Pyanfar snapped, blinking at a blur of lights, and felt blind after the general hail: “Chanur, get your backsides up here! Run for it! Tauran, cancel fire, cancel.”
”My door, my door! Fools!”
“Unlock the kif,” she said to the Tauran copilot/switcher. Confusion behind as Tully and Khym tried to ascertain Chur’s state. “Khym! Get her to the galley, emergency secure. Getcliquid down her if you can.” They had run that drill, galley-secure, smallest fore-aft space next the bridge. Close the corridor-access and hit the padded benches, collapse the table to use for auxiliary brace, and belt in and tie down. In the tail of her vision they took Chur out that way. Sirany moved and came on over intercom from the seat Chur had left. “I’ll aux switch, Chanur.”