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

her breath, wiped her nose, seeing a red smear across her thumb. No wonder she was snuffling. And how had that happened?

Down the corridor, past one and another of the shattered doorways, over debris of broken plastics, the stench of explosion and burned plastics still hanging in the air, cleaned somewhat by the fans: things were still working.

And Pyanfar was in a sudden fever, now she had begun, to get back to The Pride and get out to space again, to deal with the kif she had in hand before she suddenly had more kif than she could deal with.

They reached the corridor end, where the last shattered pressure door let out on the open dock. She stepped over the frame, swung the AP in a perfunctory and automatic sweep about the visible dock, right along with the glance of her eye, which had gotten to be habit.

An AP thumped: her brain identified it as one of that category of dreadful sounds it knew; knew it intimately, right down to the precise sound an AP made when it was aimed dead on: and the twitch went right on to the muscles, which asked no questions. She sprawled and rolled as the world blew up around her; rolled all the way over and let off a shot with both her hands on the AP, in the maelstrom of her crew shouting and shots going off.

My gods, into the doorway, thing hit us dead center—O my gods!

Second shot, off into the cover of the girders.

"You all right?" she yelled back at her crew, at her husband. "You all right back there?"

"Get back here!" Khym's voice, deep and angry.

Third shot. "Are you all right, gods rot it?"

A shot came back, hit the wall. She made herself a part of the deck.

"Py!"

"Get out of the gods-be door!"

"Chanur!" a voice came over a loudhailer. "Leave the weapons and come clear of there. You want your crew alive, we have you pinned! We have women coming down that corridor at your backs—"

"Ehrran?" she yelled out, still belly-down. "Is that Ehrran?"

"This is Rhif Ehrran, Chanur. We have crew behind you. Give up!"

"She's the same gods-be fool she ever was." Haral's voice, somewhere behind her, something in the way of it. Door rim, Pyanfar earnestly hoped.

"You got to match her, Hal? F'godssakes, get out of that door!"

"Hey, she just told us we got company to the rear. You want us to go handle 'em, or you want help out there to fore, cap n? She's a godsawful lousy shot."

"Chanur!"

"I'm thinking!" she shouted back. And to Haral: "Is everyone all right back there?"

"Na Khym caught a bit in the leg, not too bad. You want to back up, or you want us to come out there?"

She looked out toward that line-of-sight where structural supports gave cover. And up. Where a gantry joined that area, with its couplings and its huge hoses and cables. A grin rumpled her nose and bared her teeth. "It'll be for'ard." As Ehrran yelled again over the loud- hailer. "Chanurrr!"

"You gods-be fool." She slipped up the sights, aimed, and sent the shell right into the center of the skein. That blew some of the huge hoses in two and blew the ligatures and dropped the whole ungainly snaking mass down behind Ehrran's position, hose thick as a hani's leg and long as a ship ramp dropping in from the exploded gantry skein, hitting, bouncing and snaking this way and that with perverse life of its own. Pumps screamed, air howled and safeties boomed; and blackbreeched figures scattered for very life, in every direction the bouncing hoses left open.

She scrambled up. "Come on," she yelled to her own crew, to get them clear in the confusion, out of that exposed position; and: "Captain!" Tirun yelled.

She whirled toward the targets, got off one shot toward the one figure who had stopped in the clear and lifted a gun. It was not the only shot. APs and rifles went off in a volley from the door behind her, and there was just not a hani at all where that figure had stood. The shock of it numbed her to the heart.

"Still a fool," Geran said, without a qualm in her voice. And Haral: "Couldn't rightly say who hit her, cap'n, all this shooting going on."

"Move it!" she snarled then, and shoved the nearest shoulder, Geran's. The rest of them moved, covering as they went, Khym limping along and losing blood, but not overmuch of it. The Pride was a short run away, Ehrran's Vigilance out of sight around the station rim; it was Harun's Industry that might well have taken damage in that hit on the gantry lines, if its pumps had been on the draw. Still spaceworthy, gods knew, the pumps were a long way from a starship's heart. They ran across the edge of a spreading puddle of water and mixed volatiles: the toxics, thank gods, ran their skein separately, in the docking probe in space: those were not loose, or they would have been dead.

They could all still be dead if Vigilance's second-in-command decided to rip her ship loose and start shooting. That little stretch of dock loomed like intergalactic distance, passed in a dizzy, nightmare effort, feet splashing across the deck in liquid that burned in cuts and stung the eyes to tears, that got into the lungs and set them all to coughing. Pumps had cut off. On both sides of the station wall. Gods hope no one set off a spark.

"Chur!" That was Geran's strangled voice, yelling at a pocketcom. "Chur, we're coming in, get that gods-be hatch open!"

They reached the ramp. She grabbed Khym's arm as he faltered, blood soaking his leg. She hauled at him and he at her as he struggled up the climb, into the safety of the gateway.

Then they could slow to a struggling upward jog, where at least no shot could reach them, and the hatch was in reach. She trusted Chur's experience, The Pride's own