"Gods," Geran said, pointing ahead, and there was Skkukuk still going, face on with a kif who stood frozen in his path as if it were trying to analyze the matter; then it fired, twice, zig and zag, where Skkukuk had been, but not where he was, which was coming down right onto the kif and taking it in a rolling tangle of black robes.
"Uhhn," Khym said.
The uppermost kif's head was bearing down and down at its enemy—gods knew what it was at. Hilfy shuddered and looked back as Tully came sliding in, -and Tahar and Tirun with him, Tully desperately out of breath and white and gasping in the kifish air. "Where's Skkukuk?" Tirun asked. "Gone Over?"
"Gods know which one's alive over there," Hilfy said. "I don't and I don't care." She lifted the gun then, not clear she was going to shoot, but not clear she was not going to either.
Tirun's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "What are you into? What are you into, Hilfy Chanur?"
The fury on Tirun's face bewildered her; and came home slowly. Hani. Home. And civilized behavior.
"It's a gods-be kif!"
"Who's in command out here?"
She let go the tension in her arm and lowered her ears in silent deference. Tirun let go her hand, ears flat.
"Py-anfar," Tully said, and took her by the shoulder, hard. "Hilfy, Py-anfar—"
She threw off his hand.
"Can we for godssakes move it?" Dur Tahar asked.
"Move," Tirun said, and led this time, until others of them outstripped her, Hilfy among the first. Like a shadow in the tail of her eye she saw the kif leap up and run into the shadows on the far dockside, saw him weave out again and into cover, and afterward, vanish.
Pyanfar stumbled, hit the deck on her knees and threw herself to save Haury's skull—but Haral and Tav were quick enough—both of them to save Haury, and Haral to grab
Pyanfar by the belt and haul her into shelter of a metal console.
"O gods," Pyanfar moaned, and
made shift to get her torn knees under her. Her chest and gut ached, her loins were water, the knees long gone. She leaned on Haral's arm and on Haral for a moment. "I'm too old for this—o gods—"
"Aye," Haral panted, the two of them braced against each other, holding to each other.
And the world went to fire and sound.
"Good gods!" Geran cried; and Hilfy: "Something's blown up! My gods—"
Smoke came rolling down the dock like a black wall, obscuring knots of miniaturized kif, throwing laser-fire into visibility before it swallowed everything. And there ahead was a cluster of red-brown amid all the black and gray, figures huddled together on dockside.
"Look!" Khym yelled, and headed that way, strung out as they were; and Hilfy grabbed Tully and ran. Sirens blew, decompression alert, the triple-interrupt pattern screaming alarms transspecies and translogic—the docks had gone unstable. An outer wall was in jeopardy. And gunfire never stopped. AP bursts peppered the inner walls and kif barred their way, backs turned toward their advance, kif pinning down that group of hani ahead.
Geran opened up and Hilfy did—braced for aim, then moved, for Khym risked their line of fire—rushed ahead firing as he went, and no matter his wretched marksmanship, there was no need to pick targets. The kif besiegers scattered, and Hilfy stumbled a step as a splinter hit her calf—recovered herself and kept going, in and out among the girders and cables. Shots still came and she fired back at opportunity, rounded the last comer of their cover and dashed across the open dock and in among the hani at Geran's heels.
And stopped cold.
They were Ehrran crew, blackbreeches, who stood up to face them with guns and rifles leveled.
It was the second impact for a battered skull, and Pyanfar lay there retching after breath tinged with sweat and smoke and volatiles. Sound when it returned was a chilling siren above the thump of fire. She felt something stir against her, got her eyes focussed against a tendency to cross and stared over into Haral's dazed face beside her.
"I think they got those cans," Haral commented from the horizontal. "O gods, my head." And started moving, swearing in soft incoherency. Pyanfar rolled on an elbow and sat up. "Gilan—"
The Tahar were all moving—sluggish, but moving. Haury proved life by turning on her side and trying to get up on her own; and Pyanfar swung round and looked where the sudden wild fix of Haury's eyes went. Reflex pulled the trigger of a gun she had forgotten she was holding. The shell burst on a kif in mid-leap; and the remains thudded off their sheltering can-stack onto the deck hardly a bodylength distant, while three more kif scrambled for other cover.
She sat there and shook like a beardless youngster; and got her breath and shoved her heels and one hand under her. "Keep going," she said in a voice that failed of steadiness, and looked up at the blank, unfriendly pressure-gates of a sealed ship-berth. An empty berth. Or a ship that had gone on protective internal seal. Those gates in that case could open and pour out hostile kif into their refuge at any moment. "We've got to keep going—"
"Haury," Tav objected, wobbling to her knees. "Haury—"
It was so. Haury Savuun had to be carried. None of them had the wind for it. Pyanfar sank down where she was, on her heels, and Haral rested again, holding her hands locked behind a skull that was doubtless doing what hers was, a steady throbbing to the siren that told them the dock might blow to vacuum at any moment.
"They've stopped shooting," Nif Angfylas said, her torn ears lifting despite her exhaustion. "Maybe—"
A shot hit the wall and they ducked and covered.
"Gods-be!" It was a new angle of fire, one forty five degrees oblique to their escape route, and high. "They got us pinned!"
Another shot exploded and Pyanfar tucked her head into her arms, lifted it with a sinking feeling—the opposite quarter, that time. "They got us crossed," she yelled at Haral. "Get that gods-be sniper ahead highline, and watch your head! I think he's on the second level walkway!"
She scrambled for the firepoint at the other corner of their shelter, and felt a presence close behind—Vihan Tahar, looting the dead kif's body for weapon and cartridges. Vihan ducked in close at her shoulder while Haral took the other side of the console that offered their tiny triangle of shelter from incoming fire. Smoke roiled up and drifted in blinding clouds. Whatever had gone up had gone in a hurry—it smelled like fuel; but a lake of it still burned on the dock, sending a hellish glare up to the smoke-palled overhead. No fans working up there. The air ducts had gone sealed, not to encourage the fire.
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—"