Closer and closer.
“Your excellency?” she asked. “No’shto-shti-stlen?”
There were bows, a deep one from the one stsho, nervous ones from the others.
“Wai, most gracious hani,” said the one, in stshoshi, which the others might not know she understood. It was the only proof she could look to have … gtst looked right. Gtst sounded right.
“Please accompany me with all tasteful speed,” she said, and added, for the others, “Please abandon this exposed place. There is danger.”
No’shto-shti-stlen was willing. She struck out for the Legacy’s dock at a fair pace, the others were dithering, and of a sudden alt the stsho were bolting with her.
Herd-mind, Vikktakkht had said, My gods! She didn’t know what to do but run, all the stsho were running, and Fala sprinted for the ramp, but no shots came. Hilfy stopped there, a momentary pause, in the middle of a lot of stsho who were probably wishing they had bolted the completely opposite direction.
“Get gtst into the ship!” she ordered Fala. “Your excellency, go with her!”
As she saw Haisi with the box on the decking, yonder, saw the stsho with her begin to go uncertainly in that direction. But Haisi was bound to check out the goods—to be sure of them.
Haisi opened the box. A silver spheroid rolled out— a small one. And if their wiring worked right—
Haisi dived for the cover of a station girder, right behind his men. The stsho shrieked with one voice and retreated the only direction they could, toward the Legacy. A moment later the silver ball exploded with a fearsome shock, a ball of upward-wafting fire, and a huge cloud of smoke.
Stsho yelped into silence, Haisi was sprawled flat not quite into cover, and just then apparently realizing the explosion behind him had not done major damage. Thank the gods of space.
Haisi was getting up, beginning to figure it, and glared at her. She laughed and laughed harder, in spite of the fact snipers were possible. The smoke was beginning to clear and a shape to appear out of it, a pale, twisted structure tall as he was, twice as wide, lacy, white, with subtle ochers.
“Exploding rocks,” she said, and shouted it, she couldn’t resist it. “Exploding rocks, Haisi, you son of an earless mother!”
She herded the stsho for the Legacy’s rampway, just a little out of the way of snipers, or a direct shot from Haisi, who was just standing there, probably with his brain rattled from the shockwave, and maybe adding up the fact that that hadn’t been the oji, which was still on the Legacy, and that she had, presumably, No’shto-shti-stlen, and that, thanks to stsho instincts, she had the Llyene officials uncertainly sheltering in the shadow of the Legacy’s access. And she had a lot of kif allies out there. “Pray go inside,” she said to the stsho, “where your excellencies will find more safety. This mahe is of uncertain mood and possibly tastelessly violent behavior.”
“What is this object?” a stsho asked. She hadn’t exactly decided what to call it. But she threw it another look, standing there wreathed in the smoke of its birth, and said, considerately, “An … artwork, actually, most excellent, and never of any hazard to the station.”
“An artwork,” one said, and something she couldn’t catch. “An artwork,” another said, or a variant on that. There was a sound among them she’d never heard the species make, with waving of hands and bobbing of heads, and a general milling about.
Then a mass “liiii,” of uncertainty, but not a thing more, as she and Fala together urged them into the rampway chill, away from snipers, please the gods, away from imminent attack.
“Advance to the airlock,” she advised them above their murmuring and hesitations. “All will be well.” She certainly hoped so.
Tarras had the gun discreetly out of view behind the gate: “Tiar,” she said to the pocket com, once they were through, with Tarras still keeping a careful eye on the docks, “Tiar, shut that gate and open the airlock, we’re in, we’re all in, we’re clear.”
She was breathlessly glad when that gate slid shut: no way to lock it against somebody stationside with a key or a master control, but she heard the lock open, out of sight around the curve of the tube—safety and their own deck was that close, and if nobody started an interstellar war while they were traversing this very fragile tube she vowed she would turn religious.