“Out!” Khym yelled, a male hani voice, that shocked echoes off the overhead; he dived amid the mess and snatched Tully to himself. He grinned at Ehrran, ears flat, with Tully crushed against his chest.
It stopped, it all stopped.
“I’m crazy,” Khym said. “Remember?”
And it was in Pyanfar’s own head that he truly might go berserk. She opened her mouth, shut it. Tully was not struggling. He held on, fists clenched in the fur of Khym’s shoulders. And Ehrran waited for the bloody bits and pieces to start flying. Male and male. Tully hanging in Khym’s grip like an unstrung toy.
“He’s Chanur crew, isn’t he?” Khym rumbled. “Like me.” He swung Tully up into both arms, the rifle swinging loose from his elbow-good gods, the safety off on a gun fit to hole armor plate. Tully’s head lolled back, his limbs suddenly gone loose. “We going inside, captain?”
“Move it,” Pyanfar said. Her heart started beating again.
“Hnhunnh. Excuse me.” Khym walked deliberately through Ehrran’s ranks, swinging to clear Tully’s legs.
“Chanur,” Rhif Ehrran said.
“I know. You’ll file a protest. Get your crew out of my crew’s way, or they’ll be picking fur out of the filters all over Mkks.”
“Damn fool,” Jik muttered. He pinched out his stick and dropped it into a pouch. “Move! You think we got no witness?” He jerked a hand toward the watching kif, far off down the dock. “What want? Entertain them?”
Rhif Ehrran made an abrupt gesture upward. Rifles clattered out of the way. Her eyes were amber rings around black. Her rumpled mane stood out in curling wisps as if charged with static. “We’ll settle it later, Chanur.”
“Fine.” Pyanfar led her own crew through, lingered at the rail of the upward ramp and turned her head to see nothing happened behind her. The Ehrran crewwomen stood stock still. Ker Rhif herself stared with ears flat, promise in that look. Geran came last, not without a backward glance on her own. “Get in,” Pyanfar said in Geran’s slight hesitation: Need help? that delay implied. Geran went; she followed, and as they came into the accessway she remembered the Ehrran guards in lowerdeck. “Gods,” she muttered, and started running, sweeping the crew with her.
Khym had gotten to the airlock with Tully in his arms. The hatch stood open; and two Ehrran guards stood there with rifles uncertainly in their hands and panic in their eyes.
“That’s all right,” Pyanfar said equably, taking her breath. She pursed her mouth into a cheerful smile for the guards, all innocent of the fracas outside. “Hold your post. Come on, Khym. Need help with him?”
“He doesn’t weigh much.” Khym shifted his arm to roll Tully’s head up against his chest as they went on through the lock and into the inner corridor. Tully moved, a limp wave of his hand. “Py-an-far.”
“We’ve got you,” Haral said, gently disengaging Khym’s rifle from his arm, taking the weapon to herself before it blew a hole in the overhead. “No more worry, Tully, we got you.”
The lift worked as they walked on into main corridor. Hilfy came out and headed for them at a run
” He’ s all right,” Geran said.
Hilfy slid to a worried halt in the face of Khym and an evident Situation; but Tully reached out his hand and she took his arm, Khym or no. “Hil-fy-” Tully tried to grasp her arm, awkwardly, with Khym’s holding him and walking again. “Hilfy-” -over and over again.
“Huh,” Pyanfar said. It was good to see Hilfy’s ears up, her eyes bright like that. As if something was repaired. “Gods, get him to bed. We got other problems.”
She leaned back against the corridor wall when Khym had taken the whole Tully-business away. Across from her Tirun sagged, standing on one foot. The wound Tirun had gotten at Meetpoint two years ago, the wound they had never had time on that voyage properly to treat-gods, they ran scared again. She thought of Chur, patched together at Kshshti. Like The Pride itself.
“Kefk,” Haral said, going to lean against the wall beside her sister. “That’s going to be one bitch, captain.”