One other thing you can figure: Ehrran. Ehrran’ll turn on us the moment we hit Meetpoint space. At the least, she’ll run for home-straight for the han to try to get a policy decision. And she’ll take them everything in those records. Everything. Our troubles may come to a head at home before we can possibly get there; if we can get there at all. And there’s no way we can get word to the House and Kohan what’s coming. No way we can warn them-unless we break and run for home ourselves. I’m not about to tell Chur what’s up: she can’t stand this right now. But the rest of you had better know. You’d better think about it real hard. We can tear out of here at first excuse and go home. We can lay course straight from Meetpoint, run for all we’re worth the second we hit that system, while everyone else is busy. And we can face whatever we have to back at Anuurn. We can’t outrun Vigilance. But we might get there in time to meet charges. Tie it up in the han. Organize a fight-when, gods help us-it may have already been lost out here.
“Or we can stay and fight with the mahendo’sat, when it comes, against Akkhtimakt and whatever force the han may have set to assist the stsho at Meetpoint. You can guess what captains they might have talked into it. And where that ends then, I don’t know. But I do know this beyond a doubt: if Akkhtimakt should win-he’ll own Meetpoint, he’ll move in on the stsho with no one to stop him, once he’s past their security systems; and gods know what the knnn and the humans and the han will do in their separate craziness. But I don’t decide this one. On this one you tell me.”
“What do you think we ought to do?” Haral asked.
“I’ve told you.”
“Tell us plain.”
“Aye,” Tirun muttered. “You’ve seen through this much of it-how much else do you see?”
Pyanfar drew a deep breath, pressed her hands against her eyes. Time went in loops. Anuurn sunset. The old vine on the estate wall. Hilfy playing in the dirt.
A ship at Meetpoint, dying because it happened to be hani, and in the wrong place-
Tully, crouching naked on her deck, writing numbers in his own blood-
Chur, handing them a white plastic packet, as she lay bleeding on a Kshshti dock-A kifish den. Jik’s ridiculous smoke-playing sfik-games with the kif.
“I’d go with the mahendo’sat. Maybe I’m a fool. Maybe it’s the worst kind of a fool-but being a fool hasn’t stopped Ehrran from dealing left and right, has it? We can’t do worse. We can’t do worse than the han’s done. Maybe that’s a fool’s arrogance too. Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Maybe it’s Anuurn’s last chance. Last chance for hani to do anything independent in the universe-sounds funny, too gods-rotted high for us; but that’s the plain truth. I’m not sure where we’ll end up, or what we’ll do to Chanur back at home, or how they’ll survive this. Or what we’ll be even if we win-on Sikkukkut’s side. But I don’t want to see what happens when Akkhtimakt laps up the stsho like an appetizer. That’s what I think. If you think the same, we get our minds on short-term business and we ride the waves the best we can. If it’s go home, you tell me and we go that way long and hard as we can, while we can.”
“I’m on your side,” Haral muttered. “The stsho go down-we haven’t seen trouble yet.”
“Same,” Tirun said; and: “Same,” said Geran. “No question.”
“Same with me,” said Hilfy quietly. “No choice, is there?”
Pyanfar found her claws clenched on the upholstery and carefully drew them in. “I owe you an apology for this,” she said. Understatement. But her voice threatened not to work. She bestirred herself to the side and picked up the code-packet from the counter and handed it to Haral. “Mahen codes. We just got made official. As of now, we’re guilty of everything in Vigilance’s files. I just don’t want to spook Vigilance out of our company too fast. So we go on doing what we’ve been doing and we don’t give any hints, if by some wild chance Ehrran hasn’t guessed what Goldtooth’s up to, and what Jik’s done. Gods help us, if we were really lucky, Ehrran would catch some common sense and side with us, and drag the han over to our side, out of the mess it’s in. But that’s about the last hope I entertain.”