Kif Strike Back (36 page)

Tirun spun her chair about, still listening to something, the complug pressed hard in one ear. Her eyes flicked. "Ehrran's just engaged the kif-Gods rot it, they're shooting up the docks out there-"

"I'm going out there," Khym said flatly.

"You go with the rest of us," Tirun said, and hurled herself to her feet. "Gods be, the captain's going to skin us, but when we get 'em back she can skin me first. We seal The Pride up tight and we get ourselves out there. Move it! Geran-shut her down.
 
Put the lock on autoseal." Tirun crossed the deck at speed and opened up the weapons locker, handed a pistol toward Dur Tahar.

"I," Tully said, on his feet, holding out his hand. "I" Tirun slapped her pocket gun into his hand. "Use it." "Come on," Hilfy said to Skkukuk, and grabbed him ungently by the arm, claws out. "We put you back below."

"Leave him one of two on this ship?" Tirun said. "No thanks. This son goes. First. First out. You lead the way, kif." Skkukuk's wiry body straightened. His head lifted to his full, gangling height. "Give me my gun back, hani."

"Suppose you take one," Tirun said, nose rumpling. "From the other side."

"Captain-" Haral leaned over her in the shelter they had reached along a towering gantry, in the red tracery of fire that speared the smoke and popped off the wall and the gantry structure. Haral had a piece of cloth from somewhere and was daubing away at her face with a rough earnestness while her ears rang and the fire went back and forth. It was all far away; and then it came clear, Haral's anguished face and the pain in the back of her head. "Gods be," Pyanfar muttered, struck the ministering hand away and tried to move. Her skin hurt. She put a hand to her middle and wiped away a dew of blood.

Metal fragments. Splinters. She was peppered with them. She felt their prickling. Felt the slickness on her fur. She blinked at the Tahar crew's frightened faces-saw Haral looking white around the nose, and panic in Haral Araun was so out of character it shook the world.

A second shaking: this time an AP blast against the station wall over their heads, and another spatter of particles. A five-hundred-weight of severed hose plummeted to the deck close enough to kick up the wind. "Gods!" Pyanfar cried, and got over onto her knees, searching after her gun in an empty holster.

"Here." Gilan Tahar slapped the heavy butt into her hand, and she looked from the Tahar first officer to her own, saw Haral take a careful look out from their cover, and turn a dour face back toward her.

"Pretty thick out there," Haral said.

"A weather report, for godssakes- we got any cover further on?"

"We got ourselves pretty well set here-"

BANG! Another thunderclap, another shower of metal from overhead.

"They're hitting the gods-be wall!" Pyanfar yelled. "The gods-be fools are going to take this whole gods-be dock for a spacewalk-"

"That's volatiles down the dock," Haral yelled back over the sudden thunder of fire, pointing at the cans down the way, cans with the deadly yellow combustibles sticker. "If we run that way we can draw fire on that and get fried real good, captain!"

"We sit here we got our choices too! How long's that sister of yours going to wait, huh?"

"I'm expecting Jik," Haral yelled.

"Well, he's late! And we got a fool lot of crew's going to be out here on this dock after us if they don't get assurance out of Sikkukkut, and I don't think he's in any position to give them any! We got to move, cousin, cans or no cans." She turned a look on Gilan Tahar, on a woman undone with blood loss. Gilan had gotten a bandage tied on the wound in her shoulder, but it was soaked. Haury Savuun was still conscious, by what force of will the gods only knew. "Gilan-we got a long sprint ahead. We don't want to do any shooting- don't want to attract any attention near those cans." She fished in her pocket and drew out the light pistol, handed it to Gilan. "In case. But you by the gods stay with us."

"We're with you," Gilan said, and the overhead erupted and another length of hose and a length of pipe hit the deck and bounced erratically the other way-as easily into the midst of them.

"Come on!" Pyanfar yelled, and headed for the next berth in a roiling of laser-riddled smoke so thick it obscured the next support girders. She sprinted for the cans with the yellow circles, remembering then that kif were at least partially color-blind.

Vermin scampered pell-mell as they charged up to the airlock, as the hatches shot open, inner and outer, as Tirun turned to hit the lock-close in the dim orange passage. Hilfy ran, skipped aside from the collapsed cage and the can-

Explosives-Hilfy surmised in horror, explosives, if the kif were willing to decompress the dock. "Go!" she yelled, bristled all over, and Skkukuk darted past with kifish speed, Khym and Geran gaining. Tirun banged into the collapsed cage and cursed; and Hilfy clutched her gun and pelted after Khym around the bend of the passage with Tully and Dur Tahar hard after her. "Tirun!" she yelled, half-turning there; but: "Go!" Tirun yelled back, running hard enough at the outset of their course-Tirun would do the best she could, lame in any run, and bring up their rear and cover their backs even if she commanded. "Get down there, get clear!"

Hilfy ran, passing Tully and Tahar, coming up behind Khym as they reached the pressure gates at the bottom of the ramp. There was a gentle, distant popping of fire.

A shot went off the inner wall. Skkukuk skipped and dodged, and dived for cover. "You get, get!" a mahe cried, rising from concealment near their ramp, waving a frantic arm. There were mahendo'sat holding positions over near the cargo-console, Jik's people or Goldtooth's. Hilfy sought cover immediately behind the gantry control console and the sheltering metalwork of the gantry itself, leaned there with her heart pounding in terror and glanced back to see Tirun and Tahar and Tully pelting off the hazard of that ramp. O gods, gods, get us through this-I can't, I can't-She flung a look the other way, thinking Khym had gone to cover in a stack of cargo-cannisters ahead.

He had not. "Na Khym!" she yelled in dismay, huddled in the solidity of her shelter, for Skkukuk dashed on, and Khym followed. "Gods be! Khym! Uncle! Stop! Wait!"

Then it all seemed clear, the direction of the kifish enemy and the direction of the fire where Pyanfar and Haral had gone, and she shook fear away to some far cold place and gave up on either survival or mortality.

Go on, Hilfy Chanur, go on, is a man crazy who knows he's overdue to die or a kif on his way to switch sides again-Go, fool, Haral's out there, and Pyanfar-Run till the shots come your way and then you cover and shoot till they stop. It's all real simple, kid.

Haral's voice, instruction-giving again.

And Pyanfar's: Gods-be fool.

Fire hit, tracing smoke puffs on the deck where Khym ran.

Pyanfar darted behind the cans of volatiles and kept running, feeling the ache in bones and head with every jolt of her feet on the deckplates. The air was too thin and burned the lungs, the ammonia-smell cut with acrid smoke and laced with ozone. She sobbed another breath in a glance back and stopped to wave Gilan and Naur on with a pass of her hand, covering them without firing-wanting no notice they could avoid, but keeping her finger hard on the trigger. Vihan had Canfy by the arm, guiding her; Nif and Tav sprinted after, and hindmost, Haral with Haury flung over her shoulder, jogging along at what pace she could make, Haury no small woman and Haral not smallish either. "Go," Pyanfar yelled at Gilan's back, and ran back to intercept Haral as Haral struggled away from the explosive cans, grabbed Haury as Haral ducked out from under her body-no word of debate from Haral. Haral ran; and Pyanfar shouldered Haury to a carry and jogged on, all but blind for want of air. Fire suddenly burst on the far side of the cans-evidently kif saw the hazard marker-not hitting them. They kept going, reached a tentative shelter behind a cargo-loader. But next was an open space, and a run to scant shelter by the stress-supports. After that, another run, and another and another.

And if Jik had not reached them by now, there was something impassable in the way.

"Na Khym!" Hilfy cried, beckoning her uncle to safety, and he heard, by the gods he heard, and spun about and came sliding in by the gantry-side beside her all reeking of sweat while Geran slid in beside.

"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-"