Chanur’s Legacy by C.J. Cherryh

“Absolutely you do, Ehrran.”

“Captain,” Hallan said distressedly.

“You’re married. Shut up.”

“I’m—“—married, the jaw said.

“As of about half an hour ago. Signed by a stsho official, a stsho holiness, an impartial witness and me as captain of this ship. Congratulations and don’t disgrace us.”

“Who—?” Hallan shut up again. The Eyes of the Ban was reading more charges on com.

“Better be me,” Chihin said darkly.

“First listed,” Hilfy said. “Excuse us we didn’t ask preferences. You were calculating approach and I thought they’d pull this.”

“But,” Hallan said. Before Chihin shut him up. Ehrran was repeating some question. She just transmitted the document in facsimile. And the one charging Sahern with desertion, abandonment, public insult, public indecency, malicious suit, and nine infractions of the common law of Compact space.

“And I’m adding conspiracy and defamation under the law of the Amphictiony; and conspiracy to commit breach of the Peace under Treaty law, Ehrran, against the captain and crew of Sahern’s Star Ascendant. If she wants to go to court, by the gods, I have names and dates logged.”

Strange the silence that followed that. The contact broke off. Somebody was consulting somebody.

She punched in on the conversation on the other channel. Indicators were still hitting high levels.

Let it run, she thought, and shoved back to give her legs a stretch. “I think we’ll stand down a while. Put us on alarm, Chihin. Put the recording on. Go clean up … do whatever takes your fancy. Good luck, na Hallan, congratulations, welcome to the clan, we’ll give you the formal party when we get out of this.”

There was a general clearing out. She didn’t ask to where. She sat down again, and started reviewing the messages that they weren’t admitting receiving.

Not everyone had left. She saw the shadow in a dead monitor, looked back at Tiar over her shoulder.

“Need any help?”

“Might.”

“The han’s not through yet.”

“The han’s not through yet and Paehisna-ma-to hasn’t even started.”

“The bribes have to be flying. Paehisna-ma-to to the stsho, to the kif off-station, the kif on-station…”

“The hakkikt has been loyal to aunt Py for a long time.”

“Some of them could be getting restive. Including the hakkikt.”

“I have thought of that.”

“They say you can buy anything at Meetpoint.”

“Except certain things. I’d say maybe the Precious-ness isn’t on the open market. Maybe a holiness isn’t. The stsho are fragile people. They’d never take a chance that wasn’t forced on them. They’re hanging back now, I’m betting on it, trying to see where advantage lies.”

“Politicians.”

“Not all bad, politicians. The stsho are good at it. They’d have been a mouthful for somebody long since if they weren’t. And if they weren’t a prime source of goods; and if they hadn’t ties with the methane folk.”

“The tc’a business? That was extremely odd.”

“It was very extremely odd. Py sent that in symbol-set. The tc’a that received it didn’t read it in the ordinary way. It thought the sentences were separate-brain paths. It interpreted them that way and just nearly got us all in trouble.”

“You think she’s near here?”

She considered that answer a long moment. Then: “No. I don’t. I think she knows what’s going on but she can’t get here in time.”

“You can’t transmit in hyperspace!”

“You can’t change vector and you can’t transmit. Correction. We can’t.”

Tiar made a rumbling in her throat and shook her head. “If you could do that—“

“—to blazes with the futures market, the whole way we trade? Yes to that, too. Aunt took a big chance getting that message here. Possibly Vikktakkht knows. Possibly it surprised him. Possibly he won’t rush to the nearest gathering of kif and tell what he just heard. I have the feeling it scared hell out of him.”

“Keep the fear in him?”

“Certainly it shook him. Certainly it made him think. Certainly we’ve got one ally out there that’s got something new to think about. That’s why I’m inclined to make a bet that we’ve got a little leeway with Vikktakkht. And I may do something I wouldn’t dare, if gtst excellency can’t find gtst excellency very soon now.”

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