"Gods," Pyanfar said with feeling. "Geran. Stay with her. You hang onto that. They'll get an ambulance in here real soon."
"Not Kshshti," Chur said. "Pride."
For a moment Pyanfar failed to understand her, then gripped her arm. "No way we leave you here. Got that?"
"Got," Chur said, and let her eyes close.
"Stay with her," Pyanfar said to Geran. "We'll find them." She stood up, keeping low, for there were still shots flying, drew Tirun and Khym and Haral off to the mahen position. She seized one by the arm and pulled him about. "Hani. Seen hani?"
"No got," he said.
"Alien?"
"No got."
She edged back again, cast about amid the confusion of arriving emergency vehicles, the thunder of PA above sirens, each confounding the other. Evacuate, she made out. Evacuate, evacuate — unsafe — getting the non-involved clear. She hoped. Possibly the whole sector of the station had gone unstable in the explosions. In the mahen-language shouting and the noise of the sirens there was no knowing. She put her head up, for firing had stopped, ducked down again as her own crew pulled her down, but there were still no shots.
"Think they're through out there," she said, and seized Haral by the arm. "Get Chur into an ambulance. Geran's not to leave her. Whatever."
"Right," Haral said; he turned to leave and froze, so that Pyanfar turned to look too, where hani had appeared among the emergency vehicles, some black-trousered, several blue, the first sight of which lifted her hope and the second dashed it.
"Ayhar," she spat, and hurled herself to her feet. "Ehrran!" — for Rhif Ehrran was in that group, and she headed for them in mingled wrath and hope, dodged round a stretcher crew and a fire-control team headed into the wreckage. Hani faces turned her way, Banny Ayhar and Rhif Ehrran chiefest of them.
"Chanur!" Ehrran shouted, headed her way, "By the gods, Chanur, you've really fouled it up, haven't you?"
She slowed to a walk, with long, long strides. A hand caught her arm and she jerked free.
"Captain," Tirun begged her. "Don't.
She stopped. Stood there. And Ehrran had the sense to stop out of her reach. Tirun was on one side of her, Khym on the other.
"Where are they?" she asked Ehrran.
"Gods if I know," Ehrran said, hand on that pistol at her side. The whites showed at the edges of her eyes. "Gods rot it, Chanur-"
"Be some use. We need searchers. They may have taken cover somewhere, anywhere along the docks."
Ehrran flicked her ears nervously, turned and lifted a hand in signal to her own. "Fan out.
Watch yourselves."
"Move," Pyanfar said to her own, and they did.
Hilfy moved a finger, a hand, discovered consciousness and remembered kif, with the kif-stink all about her. She tried the whole arm, both arms, a deep panicked breath, and opened her eyes on a gray ceiling and bare steel and lights, with the memory of a jolt she had not fully heard, with her arms tangled in something, her legs pinned — the wreck — o gods —
She turned her head, a dizzy haze of lights, a bright spot of light with kif clustered round something pale on a table, something pale and human-sized.
She heaved, met restraints that held her to a surface. Blankets wrapped her arms about, and they had her fastened about that. She heard another clank of machinery, shieldings in retraction, all the familiar sounds, watched the kit cast an anxious look up and go back to their work — Clank! Thump!
Ship sounds. It was the grapple-disengage. The kif stayed at work, clinging to the table on which Tully lay when the G stress shifted. There were hisses, the click of kifish speech. She shut her eyes and opened them again and the nightmare remained true.
Pyanfar stopped and looked about her, swung the rifle about as she heard someone coming in this zone of wreckage and shot-out lights. Hani silhouette against the lighted zone.
"Captain," Haral cried, and the echoes went up. "Captain-" Her first officer gasped for breath and stopped, leaning on a gantry leg. "Harukk just left dock. Mahendo'sat just sent word. . "
She said nothing. Nothing seemed adequate. She only slung the rifle to her shoulder and started running for the center of the search, for what help there was to find.
They had left. "Tully," Hilfy said. The G stress was considerable, and it was hard to breathe; the kif had beat that out the door, gone somewhere for protection, but they had left Tully lying there on the table, no blanket, nothing against the cold. "Tully-"
But he did not move. She gave over trying to rouse him. They had patched the worst, she reckoned. They were headed for long acceleration, for jump, and they wanted their prisoner to stay alive that long.
She, she reckoned, was quite another matter. Against Chanur, quite a number of kif had a score to settle.
"Going where? She built the map in her head. Kefk, likeliest. Kefk, inside kif territory. They could do that in one jump.
The whole ship jolted. Hit, she thought with one wild hope that someone, somehow, had moved to stop it; but the G grew worse then, incredibly worse. The ship had dumped cargo, no, not even cargo: she remembered Harukk, the sleek wicked lines of her docked at Meet-point. It was the false pods that had just blown, and stripped Harukk down to the hunter-ship she was.
Nothing could catch her now.
"How long ago?" Pyanfar shouted at the messenger, and the tall mahe backed up a step.
"Soon ago, soon." The mahe laid hands on his chest. "I messenger, hani captain, got com shot up, come office Personage give me same, say bring you."
Pyanfar took a swing at nothing in particular, turned away and found Rhif Ehrran in her path.
"Well, Chanur? Got any brilliant plan?"
"If you weren't down here on the dock, if you hadn't left the only ship fit to chase them sitting crewless, you gods-rotted fool-!"
"To do what? Chase a hunter-ship to Kefk? You're the fool, Chanur. There'll be a full report.
Believe me that there will."
"Py, don't!" It was Khym who got her arm in time and dragged her back, so it was too late to do it at white heat. She straightened herself, stared at the Ehrran whose crew had moved in to back their captain.
"Captain," a mahe said, moving in. "Captain, Personage want see, quick, please quick. Got car."
She shoved the rifle at Khym, turned and followed the mahe across the littered deck. She was aware of Haral with her, Tirun, Khym hastening to catch up.
"Chanur." A hani voice, a portly hani moving up from the side. "Chanur-" Banny Ayhar caught her arm and tried to stop her.
She flung the hand off. "Get out of my way, Ayhar. Go lick Ehrran's feet."
"Listen, Chanur." Ayhar caught her arm with force this time and thrust her bulk in the way. "I'm sorry! You want passage?"
She stopped dead and stared at Banny Ayhar's broad face.
"She hire you?"
"No."
"Who did?"
"See here, Chanur-"
Pyanfar walked off.
Chapter Nine
The lift let them out where Tully and Hilfy should have gotten to, in the upper security levels, where guards looked nervous at the appearance of a clutch of blood-stained hani armed with rifles, and one of them a male.
But doors opened for them unquestioned, doors upon doors of Kshshti's utilitarian architecture, gray steel, heavy security, armed guards at intervals.
Stars and dark: Pyanfar lost the sight in front of her for that, remembrance of the kif hunter-ship in dock at Meetpoint, sleek, deadly, fast; of a ship outbound to Kshshti nadir and the jump range at a greater and greater fraction of C. She went there the guard motioned, went where doors parted.