More human babble, mingled good and bad news. Urgent, Chur’s message said: Courier Nekekkt is braking. Lighter is enroute to pick up Skkukuk back at E-lock. I have transcript of all his communications to the kif. They seem clean. Communications from station indicate Ehrran holed up in Central, attack ongoing; no mention from Llun regarding kif; Vigilance applying to han for instructions, captain’s whereabouts unknown. . . .
That was a message a few moments old. Long as it took for Tully to run down the topside corridor and down the lift and down another passage to meet them. There was more than that happening. / am transmitting messages to system edge, Tully assisting; Tauran cooperation excellent-
Thank the gods for Chur Anify. And everyone else involved.
“Come on.” She swept Tully up, Tirun having snatched Khym on through; Geran and Haral limped along with her.
Was altruism possible? Had Ehrran come at her in defense of the station itself, tried to arrest Chanur crew in hope of seizing control of the situation, knowing that kifish ship was incoming?
Sorry about it if that’s so. Real sorry. All I got time to be. She hurt everywhere. Her eyes blurred with particulate dust and her nose still bled. She stank of sweat and volatiles.
There was no time to wonder about it. She headed for the lift.
Two of Sifeny’s crew and one of her own were still out there in the shooting. And her husband was down in sickbay to let an exhausted, shaking spacer hunt a piece of shrapnel out of him.
Those were the things she wanted to worry about, the things a hani could somehow manage.
It was not what was waiting for her topside.
There were casualties. One dead. Three likely to be. The dead one was one of the lads from Llun; and Hilfy stood over him and looked down at a boyish, simple face. Nothing much. A boy who had been too brave and a little foolish. Playing at hero.
Gods. Gods. He never knew it was real.
Did he? This boy? Could he imagine Harukk’s black gut? A kifish dockside?
Or did he have to?
A hand touched her shoulder. Her father, sweaty and bloody and breathing hard. And safe. She looked up at Kohan Chanur: he towered, huge and kind and perhaps no longer or ever as innocent as she had always thought him.
She looked at him and saw he was also hunting someone who no longer existed. His daughter. The unscarred one. Perhaps he wanted her to show some emotion. That made her saddest of all, that if she softened it would be a lie. Sadness was all she could muster. She only looked at him.
Her mother was more practical. Huran Faha stood by, with perhaps a little amazement, a hard and reckoning look between them when she turned away, a warning look, because there were Llun taking back this control center as Ehrran clanswomen were rounded up and led away. It had not been that hard at the last. Poor groundling fools who melted away in hand-to-hand so fast it was over in a couple of shots and a tangle of bodies, Ehrran struggling up close and intimate with spacers who learned their infighting in dockside bars. Not a chance in a mahen hell, after that. Easy stuff.
Only the boy, who had never dodged. Who just plunged ahead in his simple bravery because that was what men were supposed to do, wasn’t it?
“Gods blast “em!” Suddenly the anger was too much, and there was nowhere to spend it. She had no wish to stay and answer close questions from the Llun.
She was not known the way her aunt Pyanfar was. She was only another spacer, thin and scarred and unremarkable, except that she had stood for a moment with Chanur clan, except for a moment the lord of Chanur-ex-lord! O gods! had laid his hand on her shoulder. It was time to be gone back to her ship. She gave a look to Fiar and Sif, caught their eye in one sweep and slanted an ear toward the door. Time to be out indeed, before Llun caught on to who she was, and what crew she belonged to.