She walked past nine, eight, seven. She saw no activity outside The Pride. No
sign of any loaders, the cargo ramp withdrawn, the canisters missing. The cans
were inside, she hoped. She kept alert for any sight of kif on the docks and
found none. The few passersby with business on the dock were mostly stsho, a few
mahendo’sat, no hani. If they noticed the rare spectacle of a hani captain being
trailed by two hulking mahendo’sat station guards, they gave no sign of it. This
was Meetpoint, after all, where folk minded their business, knowing well how
trouble tended to travel down line of sight. At the upward-curved limit of the
horizon, only its bottom third visible, the great seal of the market zone was
still shut, on gods knew what kind of damage. Money was being lost while that
market was out of action. Hourly the tab went up.
The Pride’s ramp access gaped ahead, berth six. She ignored her escort, not even
looking back at them as she took out the pocket com. “Haral. I’m coming in.”
No answer.
“Haral.” She walked up the rampway into the chill, yellow-lighted access,
hearing no footsteps behind — walked warily, thinking of kif ambush even here.
Ambush and stsho treacheries.
She met a shut hatch beyond the bend of the tube. She had expected that, and hit
the bar of the com unit in the accessway. “Haral. Haral, gods rot it, it’s
Pyanfar. Open up.”
The hatch shot open at once, with a waft of warmer, familiar air. Tirun was
there; and Chur, appearing armed from the lower-deck ops room down the corridor.
Both showed the plasmed seams of recent wounds on their red-brown hides, Chur
with a stripe of plasm visible across the leather of her nose, a painful kind of
cut.
“Huh.” She walked in past the lock. “Close that. Everyone aboard?”
“All accounted for, nothing serious.”
She came to a stop and gave Tirun one long stare. “Nothing serious. Gods and
thunders, cousin!”
Tirun’s ears fell. “On our side,” Tirun said.
“Huh.” She turned and stalked for the lift, with their company as the inner lock
hissed shut at her back. “Where’s Khym?”
“Na Khym’s up in his quarters.”
“Good.” She shoved that distress to the hindmost, swung about in the lift as
they got in with her. Chur anticipated her reach for the button, tucked her arm
behind her again in haste when she had pushed it. Pyanfar glared at her. “What
else is wrong? What’s Haral doing up there?”
“Got a lot of messages in,” said Tirun. “Still coming. Board’s jammed.”
“Huh.” The lift slammed upward. Pyanfar studied the door in front of her till it
opened and spat them out on main, then strode for the bridge with a cousin on
either side. “Who’s called in?”
“Stsho, mostly,” Chur said. “One message from Ayhar’s Prosperity. Banny Ayhar
requests conference at soonest.”
“And some mahen nonsense,” said Tirun. “No ship code.”
She gave Tirun a second hard look, caught the lowered ears, the tension round
the nose. She snorted, walked on into the bridge where Haral stood to meet her,
where Hilfy got up from com– o gods, Hilfy –with her side patched in bandages.
Geran with her right ear plasmed along a rip.
“You all right?” Haral asked. “We got a message from stsho central . . . said
you were coming.”
“How courteous of them. They give you any trouble?”
“Kept us locked up filling out forms,” said Geran. “Sent us out about an hour
ago.”
“Huh.” She sat down in her own place, at The Pride’s controls, swung the chair
about in its pit to look at the solemn row of faces. Hilfy, her niece, young and
white about the eyes just now. Haral and Tirun, tall, wide shouldered, daughters
of an elder Chanur cousin; Geran and Chur, wiry and deft, daughters to Jofan
Chanur, her third cousins. A row of earnest, sober stares. She gazed last and
steadily at her brother Kohan’s favorite daughter, at Hilfy Chanur par Faha with
a scratch down her comely nose and her ears, gods forfend — plasm on a nick in
the left one. Heir to Chanur’s mercantile operations, while-and-likely-after