“Gods, not another methane load.”
“It pays. It pays and they have their own handlers.”
“It’s who else might be interested in it worries me,” Tiar said.
“It’s a straight shot to Urtur. If we just do a fast turnaround here, and get ourselves out of port …”
Tiar made a visible shudder, and waved a hand in surrender. “It pays.”
“So we agree?”
A murmured set of agreements. Hilfy watched the expressions, wondering whether they might be agreeing against better judgment, because of kinships, because of loyalty.
“I want opinions!” she snarled. “I want someone to disagree if they’re going to disagree!”
No one moved. She waited. And no one said anything.
“No opinions to the contrary.”
“No, captain,” Tiar said, with a flat, unmoved stare. And added: “I’ll check methane ship departures. See what their trade’s been. If it looks like there’s a niche for us, aye, we do it. We’ll pay out the ship on this run. That’s worth a chance.”
“Do it tomorrow,” she said, with the weight of the day on her shoulders. “I want that Hoas cargo done, too, who’s going out we can dump it on. Again, quietly.”
“I’ll check on that,” Chihin said. “We’ll just pull a big general dataload from the station … costs, but nosy neighbors can’t tell anything out of one big request. “
“Do that,” Hilfy said. Specific records-searches would tip off the curious. 15,000 credits. Minimum, for that datadump. But they could re-sell it at Urtur, get back five, six thousand, as moderately comprehensive information. Maybe 10,000. They stood to own the highest currency of information coming in. With a full dataload. She found herself thinking, with increasing solidity: at Urtur. Not Hoas, as they had been bound. At Urtur. They had the advantage of having just been through there, they had the uncommon situation of having the funds to buy their own cargo. That meant the profit was theirs, not some shipping company’s.
And Hallan Meras still had a chance to catch his ship. Gods. One more problem than they needed.
“You’re not staying on watch,” Tiar said.
“No.”
“I’d better.”
“Get some sleep, I said. I want a crew with brains tomorrow. Good night.”
“ ‘Night, cap’n.” From Tiar. At the door, hindmost. Still registering objection, in that backward glance.
But Tiar went.
Tiar was right. If they were half practical they would keep one of them on watch from now on until they parted company with Meetpoint. If they had enemies, things would develop in files on their off watch and proliferate through their sleep. Anyone who had prospects had trade rivals here, and they could have plenty, if No’shto-shti-stlen’s shipment was general knowledge … which, of course, they could not ask to find out.
But all that had proliferated into their files thus far was mail, the stack of which, even from ships that had long since left port, equaled the translation. And with the comp set to rouse them for fire, collision, and interstellar war, she reckoned they knew enough. She added one more alarm word from her console: contract, and on a stray thought, added No’shto-shti-stlen.
And headed for her own quarters and for bed, tired, gods, yes.
Until her back met the mattress and her head hit the pillows. Then every detail of the day wanted to come back and replay itself behind her eyelids.
Kifish guards. That brought her eyes open, and she tried to think of something else, anything else, bright tilings, full of color, like the clan estate on Anuurn, with the golden fields and green forest and rolling hills.
But that did no good. She wound up thinking about family politics, remembering her father, wishing that the time-stretches that spun out her star-jumping youth had somehow reached planetside, and extended Kohan Chanur’s life. But the years had caught up with him— not a fight with some upstart, thank the gods. His daughter and his sisters and his nieces had kept the young would-bes away, had given him a peaceful old age. No one but time had defeated him. He had just not waked one morning.
Meanwhile her husband, no, Korin nef Sfaura, thought he was going to move into Chanur. Pick a husband with brains and muscle and you got the hormones that went with it, you got a husband with ideas, and Hilfy Chanur had spent sleepless nights telling herself there were reasons to abide by the old customs, that shooting Korin Sfaura, while a solution on the docks at Kshshti, was not a solution on Chanur’s borders, with a neighboring clan.