Off the open docks, out of the way of snipers. She had gotten wary in her new profession. Learned the hard way, like any fool. “Khym stays aboard. So does Chur. You can tell them that in the appropriate quarters, too. Tell ’em it’s an order. Skkukuk’s calling a kifish ship in. We don’t want any more hani ships sitting at dock than we can help.”
“Relay that,” Sirany said to her First. And glanced back again. “Take care, for godssakes.”
“Huh.” She leaned over the com console, punched in on station. “Llun. Want to talk to you.”
“Chanur. Pyanfar.” The station-Immune’s voice was calm and quiet. “It’s a trap, Pyanfar, it’s a-“.
Something hit the mike at the other end. And silence, then.
Sirany rose from her seat. The First turned in hers.
She stood there paralyzed a moment, then turned and started punching codes. “Rhean! Fortune, are you hearing me?”
“Com’s dead,” the First said; she could see that, the telltale not lit: the dockside com relay was cut off. Pyanfar half-knelt in the seat, reached and put in the ship-to-ship as her incoming com board lit and the First started taking calls. Other ships had gotten that sudden cutoff. “Pride of Chanur to Chanur’s Fortune, Chanur’s Light, Harun’s Industry-all ships relay: trouble in central com, we’ve got troubles-”
“Pyanfar!” A familiar voice, her own sister’s, out of two years’ absence. “This is Rhean, they got somebody into central, that’s what they’ve done, they’ve cut Llun off-”
“I know that! Bail out of there! Get ’em out!”
And in the same heartbeat: Gods, the kif. Pull off, Pyanfar, let the station stew in its own troubles, deal with it later, we got kif incoming.
No, gods, no, if there’s no control here, Sikkukkut will take it himself, he’ll come in shooting. We’ve got to get Gaohn in hand, get our ships repositioned if we can.
“Pyanfar.” It was another voice, coming from the speakers, deep enough to shake the speakers. A male voice. Off Chanur’s Fortune.
“Kohan? My gods! Is that Kohan?”
“Pyruun sent me. Llun just called Immune Sanction, did she not? I distinctly heard it.”
Hani answers. Hani matters. From a voice she had never looked to hear again.
“My gods.”
“Pyanfar?”
“Immune Sanction. Yes. By gods, yes. Tell Rhean I’ll see her out there.”
“Ehrran,” said Tauran’s First, impeccably and crisis-wise serene at her post, “has just called Sanction from her side against Chanur and taken possession of the station in the name of the han. She says we are all under arrest. They have taken Llun clan under Ehrran protection.”
“In a mahen hell they have! Message: transmit: Spacer-clans! Get to the docks and get to central! Arm and out!”
Acknowledgments came back, some mere static sputter. Gods knew how many were following. Or who would.
“Pyanfar,” came another voice, clear and familiar and cold. “Anfy, on the Light: we’re positioning ourselves over station zenith: any ship fires, we’ll blow it to blazes. Go for “em!”
“We’re going!” she said back, and grabbed Tauran’s First by the shoulder, cast a desperate look at Sirany Tauran’s dazed face. “Take care of my ship, hear me!” And dazed and aching as she was, she ran for it.
Chapter Twelve
She was wobbling when she reached belowdecks, staggering with the weight of the gun; she ran face-on into the others as she came off the lift and into the corridor-regular crew, with Tully and Khym. “I sent orders,” she said to them both. “No. Stay here.”
“It’s changed out there,” Khym said. “Py, for godssakes-”
Panic set in, facing that obdurate desperation, that look in his eyes, which met hers and asked, O gods, with a desperate pleading for his own place. If she never got him back alive . . . if she lost him out here; if, if, and if. She saw all the crew in the same mind, all thin-furred and haunted-looking, ghosts of themselves, but with weapons in hand and ears pricked up and eyes alive though flesh was fading.
“We’ve got to hit fast,” she said, and saw Chur come round the corner from crew quarters, leaning against the wall for support, Chur with a rifle slung at her side. “You-” she said, meaning Chur. “And you,” meaning Tully, who was provocation to any hani xenophobe and a class one target. “You-“