Kohan’s breath sighed out, a gusty rumble. He reached for Hilfy, laid his arm about her shoulders and ruffled her mane, touched the ring which hung on her left ear — looked at Pyanfar, and at Khym, who had struggled to his knees. Khym flinched from his stare and gathered himself up, retreated head down and slouching, without looking at him.
“Got no time,” Pyanfar said. “Well done. It was well done.”
Kohan blew a sigh, nodded, made a gesture with his free hand toward the rest. Nodded toward the door. “Ker Llun.”
“Na Chanur,” the Llun murmured. “Please. The station—”
“Going to be fighting up there?”
“No small bit,” Pyanfar said.
“You handle it?”
“Might use some of the house.”
“I’ll go,” Kohan said. “/’// go up there.”
“And leave Tahar to move in on the boys? You can’t. Give me Rhean and Anfy and their crews; whoever else can shoot. We’ve got to move.”
Kohan made a sound deep in his throat, nodded. “Rhean; Anfy; Jofan — choose from the house and hurry it.” He patted Hilfy on the shoulder, went and touched Haral and Chur in the same way — lingered staring at Tully, reached and almost touched… but not quite. He turned then and walked back. “Hilfy,” he said.
“My ship,” Hilfy said. “My ship, father.”
It cost him, as much as the other yielding. He nodded. Hilfy took his massive hand, turned and took the hands of Huran Faha, who nodded likewise.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said. “Come on, all of you. Move. — I’ll get her back, Kohan.”
“All of you,” he said. The others gathered themselves and headed for the door in haste, some delaying to go back after weapons. Pyanfar stayed an instant, looked at Kohan, his: eyes, his golden, shadowed eyes; his ears were pricked up, he managed that. “That matter,” she said, “this Outsider of mine — I’ll be back down to explain it. Don’t worry. Get Chanur back in order. We’ve got an edge we haven’t had before, hear me?”
“Go,” he said softly. “I’ll get it settled here. Get to it, Pyanfar.”
She came back and touched his hand, turned for the door, crossing the room in a dozen wide strides and headed off the porch, where no sign remained of the attack but the trampled garden and a passing of vehicles headed down the road beyond the wall, clearing out in haste.
And Khym. Khym was there, by the gate, crouched there with his head on his folded arms. Fresh wounds glistened on his red-brown shoulders. He survived. He went on surviving, out of his time and his reason for living.
“Khym,” she said. He looked up. She motioned toward the side of the house, that pathway which the others had taken to the back, where they could find transport. He stood up and came, limping in the first steps and then not limping at all. “I’m filthy,” he said. “No polite company.”
She wiped her beard and smelled her hand, sneezed. “Gods, I reek for both of us.”
“What is he?”
“Our Outsider? Human. Something like.”
“Huh,” Khym said. He was panting, out of breath, and the limp was back. They came along the side of the house, down the path by the trees at the back, and latecomers from the house reached them and fell in at their pace, carrying rifles. Khym looked back nervously. “It’s all right,” Pyanfar said. “You want to go, Khym? Want to have a look at station?”
“Yes,” he said.
They reached the bottom of the hill, where Haral and Chur had started up two of the trucks, where a great number from Chanur were boarding, a good thirty, forty of them, besides those ten or so behind. Tully was by the side of one, with Hilfy. Pyanfar reached and cuffed Tully’s arm. “Good,” she said. “Up, Tully.”
He scrambled up into the bed, surprisingly agile for clawless fingers. Hilfy came up after him, and Khym vaulted up with a weight that made the truck rock. Others followed.
Pyanfar went around to the cab, climbed in. “Go,” she said to Haral, and the truck lurched into motion, around the curve and onto the road, toward the outer gates, flinging up a cloud of dust as they careened between the hedges, jolting into near-collision with the far post of the outer gate before they headed off across the field on the direct course toward the waiting ship.
Gods help us, Pyanfar thought, looking back at the assortment which filled the bed of the truck, young and old Chanur, armed with rifles; and a one-time lord; and Tully; and the Llun, who had decided to come back with them after all.
The ships had gotten off station to keep the kif there, and the kif were still there, indeed they were; were running the halls of station — kif loose with revenge in mind, a hakkikt who might see his own survival doubtful and revenge very much worth having.
She faced about again, feet braced against the jolts as the truck lurched over uneven ground. Haral fought the wheel with desperate turns and reverses, following the track they had walked now, the beaten line of their own prints in the tall grass, where there would be fewer hidden pits and hummocks.
“Hope Aja Jin’s still in place,” Haral muttered.
“Hope Hinukku and the rest are,” Pyanfar said, bracing her hand against the dash. “If we’ve got more kif than we had — if they’ve gotten a call out for reinforcements…”
“Lagtime’s on our side.”
“Something had better be,” Pyanfar said. “Gods, for a com.”
Haral shook her head and gave all her strength to the wheel, slowed as they jolted toward the slope of the stream. The truck lumbered its way over the grassy bank, clawed its way over muddy bottom and rocks, slewed about and found purchase on the other bank, headed up again, with the ungainly wedge that was Rau’s Luck growing closer and closer.
A light was flashing, sun-bright against the ship. Pyanfar pointed to it, and Haral nodded. The Rau saw them coming. Running lights began to flash, red and white, blink code.
It was the message they already had. Haral flashed the headlights, a desperate snatch back at the wheel.
Planetary speeds. In the time it had taken them to get this far from the house, a jumpship could cross an interworld distance. And perhaps some were doing that. The han was intact, the structure of Holdings which could decide policies; but the loss of Gaohn Station—
She cursed herself, to have assumed any revenge would be too great for Akukkakk’s pride; to strike at stations — he had done that; no one struck at worlds, not in the whole history of the civilized powers.
Except the kif… it was rumored that they had done so, in their own rise off their native world, in the contests for power. They had once struck at their own.
XIII
The engines put on thrust, a hollow roar of the downworld jets, and the Luck lifted. Pyanfar dropped into the rear of the dark control pit as the deck came up, hit heavily and crouching and tucked down, straightening the blanket and pillow she had gotten to pad her back in that nook, on the pit floor behind the Rau’s three cushions. The captain lifted her hand, signal that her presence was noted, and reached at once back to the board in front of her. The Luck went on rising; the gear thumped up into the housings and the pressure mounted. Pyanfar discovered a pain in her shoulder and struggled a little against the blanket to relieve it.
Not so steep a lift compared to the angle at which they had landed: the lander flew, of sorts, vertical lift at first, and then an angled flight which still had aft for downside, g-wise. The primaries cut in with a thrust which settled all her gut differentially toward her spine.
Some of their company were well off, aft, in the padded passenger shelclass="underline" Tully and Khym and Ginas Llun were settled there, in thick cushions; and Haral, to keep them company and settle problems. The unlucky rest rode the boards, tilting cushioned partitions expanded from the next bulkhead — blind, dark misery, packed in like fish, four across, the back of the next cushion tilting back and forth almost in one’s face… gods, gods, to ride like that with the ship going into trouble aloft — she felt guilt for being where she was, in what relative comfort she had.