C. J. Cherryh by The Pride Of Chanur Chanur 01

Author:The Pride Of Chanur Chanur 01 [Chanur 01, The Pride Of Chanur]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-12T23:16:10+00:00

VI

. . . and spat them up again, a dizzying percept of elsewhere. A shimmer before her eyes, that was the screen, and the automated instruments were searching. Keep conscious, don't go out, not now, keep the hand on controls. . . . "Working," Haral's low voice drifted to her out of infinity. "O gods." That was someone else. Hilfy? A star came into brackets on the screen and wobbled out again. "Check referent," Pyanfar said. Her blurring eyes sought instruments. A red light was on. "Got a problem," Haral said, sending cold chills along her back. "No positive ID on referent."

"Brace." She started aborting the proposed second jump, dumping speed sufficient for the scanning sensors to make their fix. There was a moan near her when the shift slammed in. Her hand shook like palsy over the controls, hovering over the button. "Gods, we've missed," Haral moaned; and then Tirun: "Abort! we're vectored massward!"

Dark mass was ahead of them, the mass which had pulled them in from jump, coming up in their faces. Sensors realized it: alarms went off, dinning through the ship. Pyanfar dumped again, hard, flinched as screens went static and one went dead. Something had given way.

"Turning," she warned the crew. The Pride veered in her next skip, and blood started in Pyanfar's nose, internal organs and joints and flesh hauled in independent motion. She spat and struggled with the muscles of her eyes to keep focused, fought a strained muscle to keep her hand at the controls. Scan showed hairbreadth miss now and she trimmed ship and let it ride, hurtling for a virtual skim of the obstacle.

A kif voice came in over com. "Identify: urgent." Someone was waiting in this place, stationed to guard, another of Akukkakk's long arms.

"Aunt," Hilfy's voice came weakly, bubbling liquid. "Kif. . ."

"Got it." Pyanfar sniffed blood or sweat, licked salt from her mouth, staring at the screens which showed the dark mass hoving up at them . . . tight skim, incredibly tight. Their own output was still knnn-song, wailing up and down the scale, tickings and whines . . . that had to put the kif off. Haral and Tirun talked frantically to each other, searching with the sensors for their way out.

"Got it!" Haral exclaimed suddenly; a star showed up in the bracket.

"Can't do it," Pyanfar said: the mass was too close. They had no choice now but to skim past and hope.

"Identify," the kif voice insisted.

Instruments flared of a sudden, screens going static. "That was fire," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, "onto our former vector, thank the gods."

A second flaring: The Pride had returned a shot, automatic response. Of a sudden the alarms went again, crescendo of mechanical panic.

"Mass proximity," Pyanfar said into allship, for those riding it out below. "We're going to miss it."

The solidity was there, a sudden jump in every mass/drive instrument on the bridge, lights flaring red, a static washout on the number four screen: Kita Point mass, a chunk of rock,

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