"Get!" Sirany yelled at her own crew. "You heard her. Galley!"
Every regulation in the book was fractured. Crew bailed out and fled in mid-ops, a scramble for the galley corridor. Running footsteps hit the bridge deck and seats sighed and hummed and belts clicked, new crew in. New voices reported over com.
"Your sister's all right," Pyanfar said.
As the chrono ticked over and they went down again-
-programmed dump. More red. Red, red, red. O gods, not the main boards- Lifesupport out. Gods fry those slinking things!
Over to backup on three more systems. Final backup on another.
Out again, with telemetry coming in, Chanur voices delivering information.
"Affirmative: Akkhtimakt. Tyar vector, breaking for nadir."
"Fire."
As another disruption streaked past them, disrupting scan. "That was Jik!" Geran said.
"Go for 'em!" Tirun cried, and: "Kkkt! Sgot sotikkut pukkukt'!" from Skkukuk.
More disruptions. A welter of high-V projectiles, passing by them.
They added their own, lower-V, and a burst of beamfire from their small bow projector. Hydraulics whined and thumped, reloading the chambers on the launcher, tracking.
The source of the fire was off-gods, in the ecliptic. A chill went up her back. Chur and premonitions. The first fire they had thrown out was the most damaging kind, high-velocity, aimed blind.
Someone had keyed the guns.
Whump and groan. Another missile round off. More loading.
"Stand by braking." Gods hope the systems hold. As she threw them into rollover, the guns still tracking and firing under auto.
She threw the mains in. Her hand was shaking on the board, even with her arm thrust through the stress brace. Her vision fuzzed under the strain, and something small and black flew past her head and hit the forward bulkhead beyond her panel, squealing and yelping. Three story drop, where it had come from. "Gods!" she yelled in revulsion: it ran right back over the boards and chittered and squealed as it went, tiny claws scrabbling as it climbed against the G-force and ran right over the counter along the bulkhead, the course of least resistance.
Then colors blossomed all across the scan. . "We got company!" Geran yelled, and pounded the board. "Gods, o gods, they're ours, hani IDs-hani ships lying off-system ecliptic, they're coming in!"
Chapter Eleven
"Hani ships!" Hilfy cried. "Waiting-O gods, someone got 'em the word! They're coming in on our escorts' wavefront!"
"Ayhar," Pyanfar said. Her heart again. It was a good hurt. As if the universe itself were not large enough to hold it. "Gods look on her, Banny Ayhar got through!"
While The Pride hammered down its V and Akkhtimakt's kif picked theirs up, faster and faster shifts. Comp subtracted their V-drop out of that relative V increase and still came up with a plus. "The bastards are running!" Haral exclaimed. "They're getting out of here; they got Ajir for an outbound-''
"They got Jik on their tail," Tirun exclaimed. While on com, Sif was trying to explain it all to the crew in the galley. A cheer racketed out of that section, weak and wobbly in the strain of decel, but a cheer all the same.
"They are lost!" Skkukuk cried, and a string of something else in kifish.
His former associates. Akkhtimakt and all his minions, and Skkukuk was not with them in their debacle, but in the lead ship of the winning side. It was surely a sweet moment to a kif, all his maneuvers justified. He chittered and hissed and all but chortled. "Give me a channel," he cried. "Hakt, give me a channel, praise to my captain, mekt-hakt', they will not turn, they dare not turn, give me a channel!"
"Affirm," she said. It seemed little enough to keep a kif content. And having gotten it he sent out a steady burst of clicking main-kifish.
Fools, was the burden of it. Join my captain, join us in success, turn and rend the doomed and hapless fools who lead you!
"Com," Hilfy said. "Harun's Industry says their compliments and they're wanting instructions."
"Come about and stay after them and for the gods' sweet sake let the comp do the shooting, we got too many allies out there that look like the other side."
"Kifish signal," Hilfy snapped. "Skkukuk."
"Notiktkt has begun to fire on its fellows!" Skkukuk cried. "It signals its loyalty, mekt-hakt'!"
O my gods.
She stared, appalled, listened as Skkukuk rattled off more and more names. As kif hindmost in the whole retreating force began to add their fire to the attack on their own forces, and hani ships swept in like a wave, hammering at the ships that were attempting to flee.
Hammer and anvil. More and more kifish defections, and the Ajir vector, the only way out at their velocity and on that heading-barriered suddenly with yet another wave.
"My gods, what's that?"
More breakout of plague on the com, this time nadir, ships lying emissions-silent suddenly having picked up velocity and started to run.
Howling out mahen IDs.
"My gods, we got "em," Haral yelled. And laughed aloud and pounded the console. "You hear that? That's the mahendo'sat! We got the kif between us, Akkhtimakt's forces are defecting right and left, they're chewing each other to bloody rags!"
Pyanfar stared at it with her mouth open. With bits and pieces of things sorting themselves into vague order, as they had been ordered for longer than she had wanted to look at them.
She did not cheer. There was an obscenity in what was happening in front of them. And yet not obscene or unfit. No more than the little vermin that had multiplied and succeeded against all odds.
It was kif out there, surviving again.
Doing the best they knew to do.
Murder is possible here. Ours, committed against kif innocent by their own lights.
In one stroke, I can order it, clear our system of kifish ships till we can get organized in defense. Wipe the aliens out of home system.
It's prudent to do. It's only prudent.
But gods help me, I'm not a butcher.
"Send: The Pride of Chanur to all ships. Cease fire, cease fire on all kifish IDs that signal surrender."
Then com reached her down the other vector, backflung from Jik.
Requesting that same message that she had anticipated and just sent.
Braking continued. Fighting diminished. There were still casualties. Solid mass became drifting clouds. Scan attempted to track misaimed projectile-fire and confused itself with the sheer magnitude of the problem till Geran gave it a Disregard on non-intersect-potentials.
They reached lower and lower V. "Take it," Pyanfar said, and Haral slewed The Pride around to use the mains on acquisition in a new vector.
Headed for Anuurn.
Vid came up. Haral had been too busy for that till now. The homestar, Ahr, shone brilliant yellow. Lifebearer. Hearthfire to the species. And the paler, nearer light that was Anuurn.
Home again.
With a straggle of battered, stress-damaged merchant ships slewing about in disordered break out of the rigid formation they had kept so long and so far, Harun and little Faha, Pauran, and last and limping, Shaurnurn, reporting damages, talking to each other over com.