“Captain,” Skkukuk said as cheerfully as she had ever heard a kif speak, about the time her crew poured about her and made a defensive wall.
She struggled for her feet, almost sprawled again, but Tully, closest to her, caught her arm and saved her balance.
“I feared treachery,” said Skkukuk with a wave of his hand at the rest of the crew. “And so I followed you my own way, captain, to be of service.”
“Gods save us,” Tirun muttered.
“I would advise,” Skkukuk said, “going back to the ship. The hakkikt Sikkukkut will reward you for that prudence.”
“You’re a gods-be agent of-his!” Pyanfar cried.
A flourish of dark sleeves and weapon-hand toward the smoking pile of kifish corpses. “Did I not offer you my weapons? I am skku to Chanur, no other, and I have given you your enemies.” Skkukuk turned and pointed down the docks toward their own berth. “The mahendo’sat have secured the docks a little further on. Come and I will show you a safe route.”
“Then move,” Pyanfar said numbly. “Get!”
“Keep this one from my back!” Skkukuk pointed a claw in Hilfy’s direction. “This one-”
“You gods-be filth!” Hilfy cried, and headed for him, but Pyanfar caught her ann. “Move it!” Pyanfar yelled at the kif.
The kif turned and started off in a dash for other cover. “Go,” Pyanfar said, still holding Hilfy’s arm, and hurled her into free, passing her in the tracks of the kif who sped as a darting wisp of black in the smoke.
Whump! Overhead, power went up full: lights glared; the distant burr of fans reasserted itself. Kefk station was trying to live. The loudspeaker blared, inaudible in the other din.
There was a sudden fading-out of fire; as if entropy had set in-decreasing organization and increasing desire on the part of kif still involved to exit the affair with whatever gains they had: alive. Defense only, at this point.
Follow the kif. Trust the kif who had saved her skin. They were within com range of The Pride. Pyanfar reached for the pocket com in her limping jog, coughing as she went, blinking smoke-stung tears and hoping to the gods all the rest were still behind her as she tracked the light-footed kif from cover to cover. “Chur,” she gasped into the com. “Chur, it’s Pyanfar-do you hear me?”
No answer.
A dozen strides more. “Chur!”
Silence from the com. It could have gotten broken in a fall. It could have.
Skkukuk came to a sudden halt in the shelter of a set of girders just ahead, and plastered himself against it. Strobe-light flashes lit the smoke ahead, a ceiling-towering series of upward cycling lights that sent ice to a spacer’s heart.
Of a sudden the whole station shuddered. Pyanfar flailed wildly for balance and found it next Skkukuk in a thunder of rollers and hydraulics and an airshock that made the ears ache.
“0 gods,” she said, braced against the column and staring into that rolling cloud as the rest of the company reached them. The great doors of the section seal had shut. The Pride’s dock, Mahijiru’s, Vigilance-Aja Jin-They were cut off.
“What-!’ Khym’s voice came in gasps, subdued and frightened. He leaned there gasping, his back to the girder crossbrace, Haury limp in his arms. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Pyanfar said. The whole station seemed suddenly quiet. The sirens were silenced. “Could’ve been holed-” The Pride. O gods. “We’re cut off.” She tried the pocket com again. “Chur. Chur, you receiving?”
She expected no answer. She got none. She flicked it to standby again and met Geran’s eyes by accident. “Probably can’t get through,” Pyanfar said on a gasp. “Range is marginal through that seal.”
“Ktiot ktkijik!” the PA thundered- EMERGENCY. And went on and on-Skkukuk lifted his dark, long face the better to hear, but the kifish words garbled in the echoes.
Another burst of loudspeaker sound, from another direction, likewise kifish, groundlevel.
“Captain!” Haral caught her arm and pointed, where four brightly-garbed mahendo’sat had broken from cover and begun to run their way, close at hand.
Desperately.
“Gods be,” Pyanfar said, “Jik-Jik, you gods-be earless- What’s going on over there?”