“We drop our people at station,” Haral said from the fourth cushion, “and pull a tight turn, maybe; go sort that crowd out.”

“Got to do something, that’s sure. — Tirun: to you.” She shunted back what activity her board had received. “Take us in. I’m going to talk to the others. — Going to need all the rest of you up here. Stay put, Haral.”

“Right,” Haral muttered.

Pyanfar turned the cushion, slid out of it, headed out of the bridge at a dead run into the direction of thrust, digging in for traction. She skidded to a collision with the wall at the lift, hit the call button and caught her breath while it came.

It arrived; she stepped in and waited while it sped her to the lowerdeck, tremors in her muscles, a tendency to shiver in what ought not to be a chill.

Lowerdeck main corridor. She found the Chanur gathered there, braced sitting in the passage, rifles in laps, the best security they could find near their exit. They scrambled up as she came… and there was Chur among them, and Khym; and Tully, with Hilfy; and the Llun and the Chanur captains and their crews. She went among them, caught Chur’s arm and looked at the others. “You’ve understood?”

“Understood,” Rhean Chanur said. “We try to get the stationers rounded up and if we have to ride through another strike — we get to core and try to wait your pickup after it’s past. Gods help us.”

“The Pride will be back, Rhean; that’s your ship that forced the breach: your crew, gods look on them. I don’t know what damage she may have taken: you’d better plan for any pickup that comes for you. — Anfy: same goes; any ship. Got in-systemers filling jumpship posts, anything we can get. Gods know who’s where. — The rest of you: if you use those guns, you pair up with the crews and give backup fire. Hit the wrong target and you’ll kill your own allies, hear? Or blow a seal; keep your wits straight and know what’s behind what you’re shooting at. You go shooting on a station, hear me, you put your shots on the decking and work up their legs.”

Young ears lowered in distress; eyes stared, black-centered. Hilfy’s look was something else again, ears pricked, sober. Pyanfar stared at her, at once pleased and heartsick. No way to pull her out of it. No need. Those who went onto station and those who stayed with The Pride were in equal danger. Maybe more, for them on the ship. Akukkakk would see to it, given the chance.

“Approaching dock.” com said. “Stand by for braking.”

“We’ll not waste time,” Pyanfar said quietly, to those about her. “Chur; Hilfy; you’re all The Pride can send: do it right and get back; all of you — Khym… go with my crew, hear?”

He nodded. There was a pricklishness in the air. No one else would have been glad to take him. In Chur’s and Hilfy’s eyes there was no flinching. He glanced toward them and the remnant of his ears lifted in the look they gave him.

For her sake, she thought. Gods help them — if he got one of them killed, rushing into something blind-crazy.

Braking started. They braced against the corridor wall — hard thrust, and miserable for the approach. Pyanfar shut her eyes a moment, slid down to a crouch with the rest of them, content for the moment to be where she was and wishing to all the gods she could go with them.

Tully — squatted down close to Hilfy; Pyanfar turned her head, tightened her mouth in consideration. That was the one who might bolt. That was the one, deaf to instructions, crazy with anger. Khym crouched farther down, shamed, she knew, by his condition; by the distrust about him, the expectation that he would be more danger than help to his own side, prone to take his own way, prone to male temper and instability — Khym, who had saved all their necks and given them the chance to get aloft in time. Like Kohan, fretting in agony downworld, because he was trapped in Chanur Holding; and gods, he had won.

They lost g, made the shifts, such that bodies leaned against one another in the nudgings of the docking jets, and those who had a hold braced those who did not.

Contact. The last direction of g confirmed itself and the grapples clanged home, the access thumped into position. “Got contact with a hani force out there,” Geran said. “You’ve got a clear exit. — Luck to you.”

“Have some yourself,” Chur called up at the com. “Hai, up there,” Hilfy shouted, and the lot of them scrambled up in readiness to rush to the lock.

Pyanfar rose with the rest of them. “Tully,” she said, and beckoned him. His face which had been eager took on an apprehension of what she wanted; she beckoned a second time, with the Chanur forces beginning to head down the corridor toward the lock, and when he did not come she went after him and took him by the arm, while Chur and Hilfy delayed.

“Go,” Pyanfar said to the two. “Take care.”

They went, in orderly haste, with the others, down the corridor toward the lock. Pyanfar laid her ears back, felt Tully pull at her hand.

“Ask,” he said. “Fight them, Pyanfar.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t hear orders out there, understand? Come with me. Come up to the bridge.”

If his pathetic small ears could have moved they would have lain down, she thought; it was that kind of look. “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “Understand.”

The lock opened and shut again shortly after. “Coming up,” she called to the open com. “Easy on the undocking.”

Tully came with her, running beside her. She got him into the lift and he leaned against the wall with his eyes on hers, with pain in those eyes, like Kohan’s pain — shadowed eyes, his bright mane tangled, his whole body shrunken with exhaustion and unhappiness.

“We go,” she said as the lift opened onto the bridgeward corridor. “We get the kif, friend, find Akukkakk and settle a score, ship and ship.”

“There?” He made a wide gesture, infinity.

“This system. All too close.” She strode through the archway onto the bridge, grabbed Tully’s arm and thrust him for the auxiliary seat next Haral’s post, none so safe there, but nothing was. She slid into her own well-worn cushion and fastened the restraints while Tirun ungrappled; took the controls as The Pride acquired her own g, sent them out narrower than she would have cut it with station authorities in a position to protest.

“Situation as-was?” she asked Tirun.

“Figure we’ve got a little under a half hour on that strike,” Tirun said.

“Haral: to all ships; got kif among us; broadcast ID’s, now — house and origin — and get our own signal going.”

“Right.” She put them over station. Vid showed the two mahe ships clear enough, a scattering of ships which had never made it away from dock, some wrecked, some trailing debris that streamed in the station’s rotation.

Kif ships, three of them, still at dock, with their tails singed: Mahijiru had done that much.

From the mahe… nothing, neither signal nor output. But they started to move, one after the other.

“We’ve stirred something,” she said. “Our friends have some notion they’re not talking about.”

“Getting ID input,” Geran said. «

Scan started acquiring data, positive ID’s on hani ships. The knnn zigged and darted at some velocity, throwing off small ghosts that indicated boosts. Pyanfar ran her tongue over her teeth, refusing that distraction, watching the pattern of those ships as yet unidentified, as more and more identifications came in and The Pride increased her own speed. Another ship was moving in on dock, and another one behind, insystem haulers, at a standstill compared to their own building velocity. Ships were moving in random directions, not to be caught when the strike came in — at least that was their hope.

“Rot them!” Haral exclaimed. “Crippled even — look at that speed.”

Jik, Haral meant. Aja Jin trailed debris; but the two mahe kept accelerating with no apparent impairment… straight into the thickest concentration of ships.