Caroline Cherryh: The Pride of Chanur

“Move,” Pyanfar said. Haral took Tirun up in her arms and outright carried her, no small load. They withdrew up the rampway curve into their own lock, sealed that door and felt somewhat safer.

“Captain,” Chur said, businesslike. “All lines are loose and cargo ramp is disengaged. In case.”

“Well done,” Pyanfar said, vastly relieved to hear it. They walked through the airlock and round the bend into the main lower corridor. “Secure the Outsider; sedate it all the way. You—” she looked aside at Tirun, who was trying to walk again with an arm across her sister’s shoulders. “Get a wrap on that leg fast. No time for anything more. We’re getting loose. I don’t imagine Hinukku will stand still for this and I don’t want kif passing my tail while we’re nose-to-station. Everyone rig for maneuvers.”

“I can wrap my own leg,” Tirun said. “Just drop me in sickbay.”

“Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, collected her niece as she headed for the lift. “Disobedient,” Pyanfar muttered when they were close.

“Forgive,” said Hilfy. They entered the lift together; the door shut. Pyanfar fetched the youngster a cuff which rocked her against the lift wall, and pushed the mainlevel button. Hilfy righted herself and disdained even to clap a hand to her ear, but her eyes were watering, her ears flattened and nostrils wide as if she were facing into some powerful wind. “Forgiven,” said Pyanfar. The lift let them out, and Hilfy started to run up the corridor toward the bridge, but Pyanfar stalked along at a more deliberate pace and Hilfy paused and matched her stride, walked with her through the archway into the curved-deck main operations center.

Pyanfar sat down in her cushion in the center of a bank of vid screens and started turning on systems. Station was squalling stsho language protests, objections, outrage. “Get on that,” Pyanfar said to her niece without missing a beat in switch-flicking. “Tell station we’re cutting loose and they’ll have to cope with it.”

A delay. Hilfy relayed the message in limping stsho, ignoring the mechanical translator in her haste. “They complain you killed someone.”

“Good.” The grapples clanged loose and a telltale said they had retracted all the way. “Tell them we rejoice to have eliminated a kif who started firing without provocation, endangering bystanders and property on the dock.” She fired the undocking repulse and they were loose, sudden loss of g and reacquisition in another direction… fired the secondaries which sent The Pride out of plane with station, a redirection of up and down. Ship’s g started up, a slow tug against the thrust aft.

“Station is mightily upset,” Hilfy reported. “They demand to talk to you, aunt; they threaten not to let us dock at stsho—”

“Never mind the stsho.” Pyanfar flicked from image to image on scan. She spotted another ship loose, in about the right location for Hinukku. Abruptly the scan acquired all kinds of flitter on it, chaff more than likely, as Hinukku screened itself to do something. “Gods rot them.” She reached madly for controls and got The Pride reoriented gently enough to save the bones of those aboard who might not yet be secured for maneuvers… warning enough for those below to dive for security. “If they fire on us they’ll take out half the station. Gods!” She hit general com. “Brace; we’re backing hard.”

This time things came loose. A notebook sailed across the section and landed somewhere forward, missing controls. Hilfy spat and curses came back from com. The Pride was not made for such moves. Nor for the next, which hammered against that backward momentum and, nose dipped, shot them nadir of station (the notebook flew back to its origins) and braked, another career of fluttering pages.

“Motherless bastards,” Pyanfar said. She punched controls, linked turret to scan. It would swivel to any sighting, anything massive. “ Now let them put their nose down here.” Her joints were sore. Alarms were ringing and lights were flashing on the maintenance board, cargo having broken loose. She ran her tongue over the points of her teeth and wrinkled her nose for breath, worrying what quadrant of the scan to watch. She put The Pride into a slow axis rotation, gambling that the kif would not come underside of station in so obvious a place as the one in line with last-known-position. “Watch scan,” she warned Hilfy, diverting herself to monitor the op board half a heartbeat, to see all the telltales what they ought to be. “ Haral, get up here.”

“Aunt!” Hilfy said. Pyanfar swung her head about again. A little dust had appeared on the screen, some of the chaff spinning their way from above. She had the scanlinked fire control set looser than that and the armament did not react. The lift back down the corridor crashed and hummed in operation. Haral had not acknowledged, but she was coming. “We fire on anything that shows solid,” Pyanfar said. “Keep watching that chaff cloud, niece. And mind, it could be outright diversion. I don’t trust anything.”

“Yes,” Hilfy said calmly enough. And then: “ Look out!”

“Chaff,” Pyanfar identified the flutter, her heart frozen by the yell. “Be specific to quadrant: number’s enough.”

Running feet in the corridor. Haral was with them. Hilfy started to yield her place at scan; Haral slid into the third seat, adjusted the restraints.

“Didn’t plan to do so much moving,” Pyanfar said, never taking the focus of her eyes from scan. “Anyone hurt?”

“No,” said Haral. “Everything’s secure.”

“They’re thinking it over up there,” Pyanfar said.

“Aunt! 4/2!”

Turret was swiveling. Eye tracked to the number four screen. Energy washed over station’s rim: more chaff followed, larger debris.

“Captain, they hit station.” Haral’s voice was incredulous. “ They fired.”

“Handur’s Voyager.” Pyanfar had the origin mapped on the station torus and made the connection. “O gods.” She hit repulse and sent them hurtling to station core shadow, tilted their nose with a second burst and cut in main thrust, shooting them nadir of station, nose for infinity. Pyanfar reached and uncapped a red switch, hit it, and The Pride rocked with explosion.

“What was that?” Hilfy’s voice. “Are we hit?”

“I just dumped our holds.” Pyanfar sucked air, an expansion of her nostrils. Her claws flexed out and in on the togglegrip. G was hauling at them badly. The Pride of Chanur was in full rout, having just altered their mass/drive ratio, stripped for running. “Haral, get us a course.”

“Working,” Haral said. Numbers started coming up on the comp screen at Pyanfar’s left.

“Going to have to find us a quiet spot.”

“Urtur’s just within singlejump range,” Haral said, “stripped as we are. Maybe.”

“Has to be.” Beyond Meetpoint in the other direction was stsho space, with a great scarcity of jump points to help them along, those masses by which The Pride or any other jumpship steered; and on other sides were kif regions; and knnn; and unexplored regions, uncharted, without jump coordinates. Jump blind into those and they would never come back again… anywhere known.

She livened another board, bringing up jump-graphs. Urtur. That was the way they had come in, two jumps and loaded — a very large system where mahendo’sat did a little mining, a little manufacture, and licensed others. They might make that distance in one jump now; kif were not following… yet. Did not have to follow. They could figure possible destinations by dumped mass and the logic of the situation. O my brother, she thought, wondering how she would face Kohan. He would be affected by this disgrace, this outrage of lost cargo, of flight while a hani ship perished stationbound and helpless. Kohan Chanur might be broken by it; it might tempt young males to challenge him. And if there were enough challenges, and often enough…