It did not encourage breathing either. Her nose ran. She wiped her eyes with a gritty hand and checked the AP’s cartridges. Down to six. No reloads. “We don’t waste any fire,” she said to Vihan, at her back. “Anything compatible on that kif?”
“Got two rounds,” Vihan said, pressing them into her hand. “His gun’s in pieces.”
“Get over there and see if Haral needs them worse; I got-”
Fire came back; Pyanfar took a chance shot the moment she saw the brighter flare of a rifle aimed their way, and dived aside, shouldering Vihan to the ground.
Thunder broke and particles showered. Pyanfar bobbed up again and restrained herself from spending another round. “May have got the son-I can’t tell-”
Kif moved, a number of black distant figures cavorting in rolling smoke, about a lake of golden fire. Sikkukkut’s? Akkhtimakt’s?
BOOM! from the other side. She spun about and plastered herself flat against the console with Vihan and Naur crouching tightly by her; and rolled a glance at Haral, who had pressed herself mirror-image to the far corner of the console. “Get him?”
“Dunno,” Haral said, and wiped watering eyes with a bloody fist. “Gods-be smoke-”
Pyanfar looked up, where the smoke got lower and lower, obscuring most of the gantry now, lowering a black, asphyxiating ceiling over their heads. “They by the gods got to get those fans going soon.” A cough threatened. Her own eyes were pouring water and her throat was raw.
“We got four berths to go to next dock,” Haral said.
“We got a gods-be blockade up there,” Gilan said. “We got kif between us and any way out of here. Snipers got your own people pinned for sure. Sikkukkut’s losing this one-”
“Console-” Pyanfar said suddenly; and twisted onto her knee, found the storage panel at her back with the kifish lettering that said EMERGENCY.
She ripped it open and hauled out the first aid kit. Plasm foam. A few plastic bandages. She shoved the contents in Gilan Tahar’s direction. No injectables. No class two supplies. No oxygen.
A second glance up. There was a console call-post up over their heads, if anyone wanted to stand tall enough to try for it. And tell the kif in central their precise position when it got to that. But the sirens warned of more imminent disasters. The smoke worsened.
She thrust herself onto her knees and risked her head standing up, a quick snatch at the mike and jab at the recessed channel buttons. The connection failed. “Captain,” Haral cried in anguish as she tried the input again.
“Gods-be short gods-be cord-Pride, hello, Pride, do you receive?”
“Try Mahijiru!” Haral shouted from a crouch a little below her shoulder. “And get your head down!”
“Captain,” a hani voice came back, hoarse and weak and static-riddled. “What’s going on?”
“Chur? Chur? Where’s Tirun? We need help-”
Something whistled past her head and blew at her back; and something seized her about the legs and got her down, hard, Haral wrapped about her as a second burst blew the corner off the control console and roiled up a stinging smoke. Somewhere in the murk overhead, bending metal shrieked and groaned in protest, something huge giving way-
“Gantry’s going!” Nif Angfylas cried. “Migods, the gantry’s going down-”
Pyanfar rolled, as the metal-sound rose to a shrill grinding. She was not the only one to grab for Haury; Tav Savuun had her sister’s other arm-there was general collision of well-meaning help; and in the smoke above, the gantry’s dissolution progressed one shrieking degree at a time, impelled by inexorable station-spin and its own steel mass. Cables dropped down and writhed like snakes.
“Run!” Pyanfar yelled, struggling to stand and pull Haury with her. Her knees wobbled as she drove against the weight. “Run!”
“Where’s my aunt?” Hilfy Chanur yelled at the Ehrran over the noise of fire, of a horrendous crash from somewhere down docks. “What’s their position? Have you seen them?”
“Out there!” the seniormost Ehrran crew woman yelled back with a wave at the stinging smoke. “How should I know?” The Ehrran’s mouth fell open as Tully came panting up with Tirun. “My gods-you fools!”
Hilfy shot out an arm: Tully evaded the Ehrran’s grasp with a suck of gut and a spin onto the off foot-and Hilfy flung herself with a hard body-check into the path of the Ehrran officer.