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."No response.""Log that.Call the station office and file a protest.""Hazard to our personnel?""That'll do." She drew a quieter breath, hands on hips.Looked at Khym and saw a gleam in his eye she had not seen since Mahn.She stood a breath taller, walked over to lean over Haral's shoulder."Next thing's that repair crew.Any sign yet?"* * *170Chanur's VentureKshshti docks passed in a blur of gray and brown, of dingy fronts obscured by the shielding of the car windows as the vehicle hummed along, buzz-thump-thump as the soft tires hit the joints of unshielded deck plating with manic speed in time to Hilfy Chanur's heart.She leaned to look back again as far as the shield-dimmed car window afforded: the Ehrran vehicle had fallen in behind them, no longer attempting to pass, but staying close on their tail.Tully's leg pressed hers on the left, the three of them occupying the back seat with Chur on the far side.Two of the mahen guards sat in front with the driver.The escort car filled much of the forward view, they ran so close to its tail: the strobe atop that lead car limned objects and the three mahendo'sat in front in unreality and blocked out the outside so that it had no color.Beside them office fronts and gantry machinery passed in a blur."Easy." She felt a shiver from Tully and patted his leg as she straightened around to look his way."Safe, Tully.It's all right." The translator had stopped working as they passed out of range.But some words he understood on his own."Safe, hear?"He nodded, glancing distractedly her way.He had his plastic bundle clutched firmly in his arms and they sat close to him to keep him warm.The white flash from the front of the car glanced off his pale skin and pale hair and turned his nervous movements into something surreal."I—" he began, and the car lurched, swerved, threw them all forward and left with a suddenness that brought the rear of the escort car up in Hilfy's view as she turned her head, the car, the mahendo'sat driver fighting to turn, the guards flinging up arms to protect themselves as the car slewed into angled impact, glanced, hooked itself perversely into the escort car's torn body and kept slewing round, grating metal as a tire stripped off the rim and jolted over deckplates.Things blurred, snapped clear in a howl from the mahendo'sat, and a fist slammed them; the back of the seat flew up in Hilfy's face and she grabbed for Tully as her head hit the padding with the shock of explosion whumping through the air and the whole car tilting and slamming down again."They're firing!" Chur yelled and that reality got through to Hilfy's brain, sent her hand clawing for the gun in her pocket, numb-fingered from a shock to her elbow somewhere in the spin.The car had stopped.The 171Chanur's Ventureforward window was cracked.The driver was slumped; both guards were alive."Stay inside," Chur was yelling from the other side as one guard worked at the door on that side.A shock hit the car and blossomed in a fireball beyond the cracked front window and Hilfy got the gun out as the stench of ozone roiled through the door in silver smoke.The door opened on manual, slammed down as the smoke poured in and the mahe sprawled as he went out in a pop of weaponsfire through the smoke: his comrade fired from inside and another shock hit the car, fire bloomed, deafening."Hilfy!" Tully dragged at her as cold air hit from the other direction, as Chur got the door open on the sheltered side and bailed out of the car.Hilfy flung a look in the other direction, pasted shot after shot at the flutter of black kif robes amid the smoke, intending to go when she had stopped that.But alien hands seized the waist of her trousers and skidded her sharply backward across the slick seat even as she fired.An arm whipped round her waist and jerked her from the door backwards as she got off a last few shots.Tully tried to carry her, but she twisted free, got her feet on the ground and ran for herself, Tully beside her, Chur—Another shock blossomed by her, and she was flying through the air, the deck coming up under her hands and under her face as something heavy came down on her and sprawled.She was running then after a blank space, her legs working, not knowing how she had gotten there or where she was going until the gray of a girder came up and hit her shoulder and she spun, flailed for balance and caromed into Tully, arms about him as she decided on cover and kept falling, crawling then, along the base of the gantry over deckbolts.She gripped the hard edge of the base rim, hitched herself along, lay still then.Smoke roiled along the overhead where red alarm strobes flashed, staining girders and smoke alike.Sounds were distant, through the ringing in her ears.She felt small distant pains, saw Tully's face twisted with exertion and with pain."Chur?" he said, twisting on his elbow to look back.In panic: "Chur?" And Hilfy rolled over to look through the obscuring smoke, wiping her eyes and trying to see and hear."Chur?" she cried.172Chanur's VentureThe red-gray smoke gave up a momentary view of tangled vehicles and other wreckage, of running figures, of fire from various quarters.She heard the dim chitter of kif commands, flinched as a shot came their way and reached to her pocket for the gun, but it was gone."Hilfy—" Tully cried, and pulled her further back as kif poured past them to take up position."O gods," she breathed."We're behind the wrong gods-rotted line!"Shots popped off the wall behind them and ricocheted wildly.She ducked down and in the first pause in fire she grabbed Tully by the shirt, scrambled up and ran with him while the smoke held— but that smoke was not dissipating as it should, the fans were not working, and it dawned on her battered skull that they were cut off, shut down: section doors had sealed.* * *" Where? " Pyanfar shouted into the com as if volume could help, aware of Tirun and Khym and Geran at her back and a great silence elsewhere on the bridge." What 'stay still'? You gods-rotted incompetent— where around the rim?" — Babble poured into her ear.She whirled round as her eye caught movement, saw Haral's running arrival on the bridge and waved a furious hand at her crew." Arm! Move it!" "Got section seal go," the mahen official was saying into her ear."Got no chance kif get away, you wait report—""You authorize us past that seal.Hear?""Office got no authority—""Get it!" She cut the official off in midword and shoved her way past Khym.Geran had the sidearms out of the locker."Get the rifles," she said.They had them.It was illegal, a defense they never admitted to port authorities they had.173Chanur's Venture"Aye," Haral said, and ran."Pyanfar—" Khym said.She put the lock on controls, spun about and ran.Khym was with them and she had no desire to stop him.Not in this.* * *The huge section doors were shut, red and amber strobes on their surface spearing through the wafts of smoke that reached even here.Sirens wailed and echoed in the vastness of the docks."They're shut, they're sealed," Hilfy gasped, blinking smoke-tears and half-carrying the human who half-carried her, the two of them weaving past the clutter of dockside bins and chutes as they tried to get the break they needed to get past the line of fire."We can't get out— Tully, stop!"Shots broke out from a new direction.She dragged him off his balance [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]