“Got him,” Hilfy’s young voice shouted up ahead. “Got them both.”
A door opened onto the lift. Someone had gotten to it. A distant rectangle opened, blinding white, with a score of dark bodies hurtling and struggling along the blue dotted course toward it, large and small with distance, some like swimmers in the air, some using the rope and propelling the swimmers along. Bodies collided and caught each other and kept going, one after the other, into that lift chamber, where they took on color and identity. Pyanfar found herself slung along the final distance, hauled into the lift; and among the last came the Rau, into that blinding glare.
“We’re in,” Chur was shouting into com. Haral shouted a warning and closed the lift door, and suddenly all the floating bodies tended floorward as the car moved. “Brace!” Pyanfar snapped at the novices, but experienced spacers grabbed them, and of a sudden the car thundered and slammed into synch with the rotating inner cylinder. There was full g, and the lift slammed upward again, with a queasy rear-of-the-car acceleration stress as The Pride put on a gingerly movement. Something banged in the distance. — “Grapple’s clear,” Haral said. The lift went on rising, past lowerdeck, to main. Feet found the floor; bedraggled groundlings hugged those who had a hold on them, ears flat and eyes wild.
The car stopped and opened on main. Pyanfar thrust herself through and out, raced down the main corridor for the archway of the bridge, claws scrabbling on the decking against the gentle thrust. Haral was hard on her heels. “Lowerdeck,” Chur shouted behind them. “Ride it back down where there’s secure space.” The door closed; the lift hummed into function again. Pyanfar did not look back. She hurled herself the last difficult distance, past Geran and Tirun at the number three and two posts as Haral found her place and slid into it. Pyanfar reached her own vacant cushion and flung herself into it without a word. Scan images were coming up on her screens, their position relative to the world and the station — a dot that was knnn-symboled, hovering off apart from the chaos of other dots, two marked mahe, and the horrid hazard near the station, a horde of unidentifieds, debris sweeps that marked the death of ships and the course of their remains.
“Aja Jin took damage,” Tirun said steadily. “Kif invaded traffic control on the station and knocked the scan out. Llun had their hands full; everyone was boarding any ship at all. We broke out of dock and ran with the rest… figured they were screening incoming ships. Strike came in three quarters of an hour ago. Outbound now. We’re headed back in to station, present course: Fortune got a landing party in. Several others got in after them. Proceed?”
“Keep talking. Go as we bear.” She reached and hit the motion warning. “We’re moving,” she said over allship. “Brace; I’m going to keep the com open from our end. We’ve got troubles and I don’t want any stirring about down there. — Tirun, what’s the comp on that kif movement? Got a course plotting?”
The data flashed to the screen. “All stations have killed scan output. Some of the kif are out of dock but we don’t know which. Only good thing in it, with station’s scan stopped a good bit before the strike, they had only our last-known position to go on and the attack missed most of us. Aja Jin got it, being posted stationary; at least one freighter was hit and we think some of the kif, but we don’t know who got hit, because no one’s outputting much chatter and a lot of the freighters are scan-blanked and hiding. I figure they’ll go for the fixed targets on the next pass — the station, Aja Jin’s last position …”
“Anuurn, maybe.”
Tirun threw her an ears-flat look.
“You’ve got it going,” Pyanfar said. “I’ll go with it. Give me the rest of your reckoning. Where do you reckon Akukkakk is?”
“I think he was one that got off station; and he can’t have boosted fast enough to have run with the strikers. I figure he’s one of those ships out there, quiet like all the rest of them. And we find out just which one he is when that strike force comes sweeping back in.”
Pyanfar nodded. To take the maneuver they had handed him — the undocking of the freighters — and to turn it to his own advantage… that was very probable. That was Akukkakk’s style, for which she had begun to acquire a sense: a pattern of movements, a tendency to up the stakes when challenged.
“He’s going to go on sending them in against the station,” she judged, “hammer it into junk. That, for a lesson for us. But he knows rotted well which one we are, cousins: we’re all too conspicuous, and I’ve a notion which way he’ll go when he can — even odds between us and Mahijiru. And since Mahijiru’s got Jik by him …” She cast a glance at scan, where the mahe rode as a double blip hard by the kif position at station. “They’ll be overriding their own scan, that strike force, but Akukkakk’s going to have a good identified image for them. Gods rot him.”
“We drop our people at station,” Haral said from the fourth cushion, “and pull a tight turn, maybe; go sort that crowd out.”
“Got to do something, that’s sure. — Tirun: to you.” She shunted back what activity her board had received. “Take us in. I’m going to talk to the others. — Going to need all the rest of you up here. Stay put, Haral.”
“Right,” Haral muttered.
Pyanfar turned the cushion, slid out of it, headed out of the bridge at a dead run into the direction of thrust, digging in for traction. She skidded to a collision with the wall at the lift, hit the call button and caught her breath while it came.
It arrived; she stepped in and waited while it sped her to the lowerdeck, tremors in her muscles, a tendency to shiver in what ought not to be a chill.
Lowerdeck main corridor. She found the Chanur gathered there, braced sitting in the passage, rifles in laps, the best security they could find near their exit. They scrambled up as she came… and there was Chur among them, and Khym; and Tully, with Hilfy; and the Llun and the Chanur captains and their crews. She went among them, caught Chur’s arm and looked at the others. “You’ve understood?”
“Understood,” Rhean Chanur said. “We try to get the stationers rounded up and if we have to ride through another strike — we get to core and try to wait your pickup after it’s past. Gods help us.”
“The Pride will be back, Rhean; that’s your ship that forced the breach: your crew, gods look on them. I don’t know what damage she may have taken: you’d better plan for any pickup that comes for you. — Anfy: same goes; any ship. Got in-systemers filling jumpship posts, anything we can get. Gods know who’s where. — The rest of you: if you use those guns, you pair up with the crews and give backup fire. Hit the wrong target and you’ll kill your own allies, hear? Or blow a seal; keep your wits straight and know what’s behind what you’re shooting at. You go shooting on a station, hear me, you put your shots on the decking and work up their legs.”
Young ears lowered in distress; eyes stared, black-centered. Hilfy’s look was something else again, ears pricked, sober. Pyanfar stared at her, at once pleased and heartsick. No way to pull her out of it. No need. Those who went onto station and those who stayed with The Pride were in equal danger. Maybe more, for them on the ship. Akukkakk would see to it, given the chance.
“Approaching dock.” com said. “Stand by for braking.”
“We’ll not waste time,” Pyanfar said quietly, to those about her. “Chur; Hilfy; you’re all The Pride can send: do it right and get back; all of you — Khym… go with my crew, hear?”