Cats in Space and Other Places by Bill Fawcett (the first e reader txt) 📕

limits. Even Hilfy flagged. Her pulse racketed in her ears like the laboring of some failing machine. There was that pain in her chest again, her eyes were blurred.

We may not have even this time. We shouldn't be here. I should turn this back, get back to the ship, prepare to defend us—

—with what, fool? This vast armament you have?

—turn kif on kif? Can you lead such creatures as that, can you even keep a hold on Skkukuk if you can't get control of Gaohn?

Jik, gods rot you, where are you?

Another doorway. An AP shell took it out, just blew the window out, leaving jagged edges of plex. The youngsters and then the rest waded on through the wreckage that loomed in her vision like an insurmountable barrier, the gun weighing heavier and heavier in her hand. Kohan had gone ahead with Rhean. Khym was still with her. So were all her own crew. "Looks like we got rearguard," Haral gasped, a voice hardly recognizable. "Gods-be fools not watching their own backsides. Groundlings and kids."

"Yeah," she murmured, and got herself through the door, walked on and wobbled in her tracks. A big hand steadied her. Khym's.

The PA sputtered. "Cease, go back to your ships immediately. Vigilance has armaments to enforce the decree of the han. It stands ready to use them. Do not endanger this station."

"Ker gods-be Rhif's safe on her ship," Geran said.

"Patience, we got the Light up there over her head, she's not going anywhere."

"We got a kifish ship coming into dock," Haral said. "There's trouble when it comes. Gods know what that fool Ehrran will do."

Another agonizing stretch of hallway. The first of them had gained the stairwell. There was much yelling of encouragement, inexperienced hani screwing up their courage before a long climb that meant head-on confrontation with an armed opposition.

They were out of range of the pocket-coms. Too much of the station's mass was between them and the ships at dock.

"M'gods." Footfalls came up at their backs, a thundering horde of runners. Pyanfar spun, on the same motion as the rest of the crew, on a straggle of hani in merchants' brights, with a crowd behind them all the way down the corridor, a crowd a lot of which was blackbreeches, strung out down the hall as they filtered through the obstacles of the shattered pressure doors. "Over their heads!" She popped off a shot into the overhead, and plastic panels near the shattered door disintegrated into flying bits and smoke and a thundering hail of ceiling panels that fell and bounced and paved the corridor in front of the onrush.

"Stop, stop!" the cry came back, with waving of hands, some of the merchants in full retreat coming up against the press behind, and a dogged few coming through, holding their hands in plain view. "Sfauryn!" one cried, naming her clan, which was a stationer clan: merchants, indeed, and nothing to do with Ehrran.

"We're Chanur!" Tirun yelled back at them, rifle leveled. "Stay put!"

The press had stalled behind, tide meeting tide in the hallway, those trying to advance through the broken doors and those in panic retreat. The few up front hesitated in the last doorway, facing the guns.

"Ehrran has Central!' the Sfauryn cried.

"You want to do something about it?" Pyanfar yelled back.

"We're trying to help! Gods, who're you aiming at? People all over the stations are trying to get in there!"

"Gods-be about time!" Her pulse hammered away, the blood hazed in gray and red through her vision. "If you can get the phones to work, get word to the other levels!"

"Llun's with us—Llun've got portable com, they got some rifles— It's Llun back there behind us, Chanur. They don't want to get shot by mistake!"

"Bring 'em on," she cried. Gods, what days they had come on, when Immune blacks meant target in a fight. She leaned on the wall and lowered the rifle. Blinked against the haze. Rest here awhile. Rest here till they had the reinforcements organized. Llun! Honest as sunrise and, thank the gods, self-starting. They had been doing something all the while, one could have depended on that.

But they could still get shot, coming up behind the spacers up front. Someone in spacer blues had to get up there and warn the others in the stairwell that what was coming on their tail was friendly. "Who of us has a run left in her?" she asked, and scanned a weary cluster of Chanur faces, ears flagged, fur standing in sweaty points and bloodied from the flying splinters.

"Me," Hilfy gasped, "me, I got it."

"Got your chance to be a gods-be fool. Go. Get. Be careful!"

To a departing back, flattened ears, a lithe young woman flying down that corridor while the shouting reinforcements got themselves organized and came on.

The tide oozed its way through the shattered door, over the rattling sheets of cream plastics that had been the ceiling. It swept on, past a bedraggled handful of heavy-armed hani that hugged the wall and waved them past.

"Time was," Pyanfar said, and hunkered down again as the last of them passed, the heavy gun between her knees, Haral and Geran and Khym already down, Tirun leaning heavily against the wall and slowly sliding down to her haunches, "time was, I'd've run that corridor."

"Hey," Khym said, tongue lolling. He licked his mouth and gasped. "With age comes smart, huh?"

"Yeah," Haral said, and cast a worried look down the corridor, the way Hilfy had gone. Hilfy with a ring in her ear and a gods-awful lot of scars, and a good deal more sense than the imp had ever had in her sheltered life. Hilfy the veteran of Kefk docks and Harukk's bowels. Of Meetpoint and all the systems in between and the circle that led home.

"Kid'll handle it," Pyanfar said. "We hold this place awhile. Hold their backsides. Got to think. We got Vigilance out there. We got kif to worry about."

Station poured out a series of conflicting bulletins. Events were too chaotic for