Scritch-scratch. Another note went down on the well-worn starchart. She studied it and restudied it, gnawed her mustaches and refigured, though all but the finest decimal exactitudes of current star-distances were in her memory. There were surely answers in that map; and she racked her wits to find them, to discover what the opposition planned and what her allies (treacherous though they be) might be figuring to do, and to juggle all the variables at once. The answer was there, patently there, in the possibilities of that starmap and in the self-interests of eight separate and polylogical species.
Knowing all the options, all those self-interests, and all the capabilities of the ships involved, a hani merchant might conceivably manage to think of something clever. She needed something clever. Desperately.
She sat at Kefk, inside kifish space where no hani of right mind would ever consent to be, allied to kif no hani in her right mind would ever trust; she sat in the same space station with nervous methane-breathers (tc'a and chi) who had lately been raided (reprimanded? attacked? congratulated?) by an intruding knnn ship, which had carried off a tc'a vessel. Gods knew what was in the tc'a's multipartite minds; the chi had no minds that any oxy breather had ever proved; and as for the knnn, no one had any least idea what they were up to. Wherever those black hair-snarls on thin black legs intruded their influence (and the power of their strange ships), things bent. Fast. But the knnn had withdrawn and Kefk occupied itself with its own affairs, like repair of its fire-ravaged docks and placating its new master, the hakkikt Sikkukkut, whose ships now numbered thirty-two (the count was rising). It occupied itself with the hani pirate Dur Tahar, lately at liberty by the hakkikt's grace; with the mahen hunter-ship Aja Jin, lately outside the hakkikt's good graces, and still at dock, sitting beside The Pride and not daring send a compromising query across the dockside communication lines. Kefk had a great deal to worry about, not least of which was the missing hunter-ship Mahijiru and its captain, one Ana Ismehanan-min, aka Goldtooth, and the hani ship that had run with him.
Along with major structural damage, a breached sector, fire, disruption of the lifesupport systems, the remnants of a revolution and other nagging difficulties.
Another flurry of figures and pen-corrections. There was, number one, the mahendo'sat territory to reckon with: a wide sprawl of stars into which at least one message had gone and might have gotten through, knnn and the gods willing. Banny Ayhar would have done her best to get it through, as much as any merchant captain could do: she might have lived to get it to Maing Tol, if the knnn had not stopped her or if the kif had not been laying for her. The mahendo'sat, tall black-furred primates with enough double-turning motives involved to baffle a tc'a's multipartite brain (but antagonism toward their neighbors the kif was always high among them), might have made a move if that message had gotten through. Down the line via Kshshti and out to Mkks might be a good course of action for the mahendo'sat to take, if they hoped to forestall any kifish breakout along that border; but Meetpoint station or Kita Point, critical to all trade routes, was most likely the object of any major push from the mahendo'sat. That effort would have to come via Kshshti if Kita was still blocked; while Kefk, in kifish territory, was not a likely route for them. Not impossible, given the current state of borders in the Compact, just less than likely.
Also reckoning mahendo'sat moves, it was very likely there were one or more mahen hunter-ships escorting the human ships; and they were coming in toward Meetpoint from Tt'a'va'o and tc'a/chi space.
With human ships and human captains; still another set of motives and self-interests, on gods-knew-what orders from their own authorities. (Or lack of them-who knew what human minds were like?)
Further complication: kifish forces under the rival hakkikt Akkhtimakt had likely moved in to take the mahen/tc'a station at Kshshti. That might stand off any mahen flanking move to Meetpoint, if Akkhtimakt's forces still controlled Kita as well. Akkhtimakt might have Kita, Urtur, Kshshti, or all three, and advance from any or all of those points against Meetpoint and/or Kefk itself, if the report Goldtooth had brought was true and the stsho had been fools enough to invite Akkhtimakt in as hired help.
There was, lure to Akkhtimakt, his greatest enemy Sikkukkut, sitting here at Kefk gathering to his control every ship that came into port. And revenge was always high on any list of kifish motives. Pukkukkta, they called it. Advance retaliation was better than revenge after the fact. Having an enemy know his calamity before he died was best of all.
Yet another move of the pen, another arrow, lurid green: one could not exclude interference from the methane-breathers, whose motives no oxy breather could guess.
And, certainly not to be forgotten, there were the stsho who owned Meetpoint, congenitally noncombatant, but hiring alien, aggressive help right and left and forming reckless associations.
While the han-gods, the hani senate was up to its nose in politics as usual, and Rhif Ehrran was on her way to Meetpoint with evidence enough to outlaw Chanur once and for all.
The Pride of Chanur sat at a kifish dock six to seven jumps from homestar, no matter which way she figured it. Six or seven jumps was a long way, a very long way, measured in stress on ship and on body; and gods knew what would follow on her heels, if she did what she would gladly do now and broke dock at Kefk and ran for their lives, withdrawing herself like a good law-abiding hani from all the affairs of kif and mahendo'sat and multifarious aliens.
But the trouble would surely follow her home; she knew beyond a doubt that it would. She had involved herself in the affairs of kifish hakkikktun and she had acquired their notice. She had made herself a name in kifish eyes. She had gotten sfik, face. And that meant that kif would never let her alone so long as she lived.
Her uneasy partner Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin would never forget her; certainly (gods forbid he should replace Sikkukkut in power) her personal enemy Akkhtimakt would not.
Pyanfar scribbled, flicked her ears, and the rings of forty years of voyages chimed in her hearing. A pearl swung from her right ear, a Llyene pearl from the oceans of the stsho homeworld; she still wore that gift, regardless of the perfidy of the giver, who was Goldtooth, friend, traitor, flatterer and tenfold liar.
Curse him to his own deepest hell.
Goldtooth was bound for Meetpoint with Rhif Ehrran, beyond a doubt he was, the conniving bastard. He was dealing with the stsho and anyone else who offered his species an advantage, and he was betting opposite to the alliance his own partner Jik had made-to which maneuver Sikkukkut took strongest and understandable exception.
Another scribble.
A quick movement caught her eye, a black blot speeding across the floor, sinuous, small, fast.
She leapt to her feet. "Haral!" she yelled, while paper cascaded off the table and the black thing paused for one beady-eyed stare before it skittered on, faster than her limping dive to stop it.
Haral appeared, hobbling in by the short bridge-galley corridor, and did a fast skip and wince as it dived between her feet and vanished.
Pyanfar snatched up a handful of jumbled papers. "Fry that thing!"
"Sorry, captain. We're setting traps-"
"Traps be bothered, they're breeding, I swear they are! Get Skkukuk on it, they're his by-the-gods dinner. Let him find 'em. Gods-be mess. Vermin!" The hair stood up on her shoulders and she stared at her first officer in bleakest despair. No one in the crew was up to more orders, more duty, or more trouble.