“We got that kif incoming,” Tirun said.
“Gods, yes. Llun’s not going to like that much.” It was about the first thing the Llun partisans were going to learn when they got back into contact with whatever Llun personnel were keeping the station going under Ehrran guns. Crazy Chanur’s bringing kif in. And Llun at that point had to wonder what side Chanur was on. So did the others, up there with Hilfy.
It was a fair question.
She caught her breath, wiped her nose, seeing a red smear across her thumb. No wonder she was snuffling. And how had that happened?
Down the corridor, past one and another of the shattered doorways, over debris of broken plastics, the stench of explosion and burned plastics still hanging in the air, cleaned somewhat by the fans: things were still working.
And Pyanfar was in a sudden fever, now she had begun, to get back to The Pride and get out to space again, to deal with the kif she had in hand before she suddenly had more kif than she could deal with.
They reached the corridor end, where the last shattered pressure door let out on the open dock. She stepped over the frame, swung the AP in a perfunctory and automatic sweep about the visible dock, right along with the glance of her eye, which had gotten to be habit.
An AP thumped: her brain identified it as one of that category of dreadful sounds it knew; knew it intimately, right down to the precise sound an AP made when it was aimed dead on: and the twitch went right on to the muscles, which asked no questions. She sprawled and rolled as the world blew up around her; rolled all the way over and let off a shot with both her hands on the AP, in the maelstrom of her crew shouting and shots going off.
My gods, into the doorway, thing hit us dead center-0 my gods!
Second shot, off into the cover of the girders.
“You all right?” she yelled back at her crew, at her husband. “You all right back there?”
“Get back here!” Khym’s voice, deep and angry.
Third shot. ‘ ‘Are you all right, gods rot it?”
A shot came back, hit the wall. She made herself a part of the deck.
“Py!”
“Get out of the gods-be door!”
“Chanur!” a voice came over a loudhailer. “Leave the weapons and come clear of there. You want your crew alive.
we have you pinned! We have women coming down that corridor at your backs-”
“Ehrran?” she yelled out, still belly-down. “Is that Ehrran?”
“This is Rhif Ehrran, Chanur. We have crew behind you. dive up!”
“She’s the same gods-be fool she ever was.” Haral’s voice, somewhere behind her, something in the way of it. Door rim, Pyanfar earnestly hoped.
“You got to match her, Hal? F’godssakes, get out of that door!”
“Hey, she just told us we got company to the rear. You want us to go handle ’em, or you want help out there to fore, cap’n? She’s a godsawful lousy shot.”
”Chanur!”
“I’m thinking!” she shouted back. And to Haral: “Is everyone all right back there?”
“Na Khym caught a bit in the leg, not too bad. You want to back up, or you want us to come out there?”
She looked out toward that line-of-sight where structural supports gave cover. And up. Where a gantry joined that area, with its couplings and its huge hoses and cables. A grin rumpled her nose and bared her teeth. “It’ll be for’ard.” As Ehrran yelled again over the loudhailer. “Chanurrr!”
“You gods-be fool.” She flipped up the sights, aimed, and sent the shell right into the center of the skein. That blew some of the huge hoses in two and blew the ligatures and dropped the whole ungainly snaking mass down behind Ehrran’s position, hose thick as a hani’s leg and long as a ship ramp dropping in from the exploded gantry skein, hitting, bouncing and snaking this way and that with perverse life of its own. Pumps screamed, air howled and safeties boomed; and blackbreeched figures scattered for very life, in every direction the bouncing hoses left open.