Read Chanur's Venture for Free Online

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
    Kohan Chanur ruled at home. On the last edge of adolescence. Fearfully proud.
    Once and silently she wished Hilfy safe at home, but she did not say that. Home
    was a long, long way away and Chanur interests were at stake.
    "I want a watch on com," she said. "I want scan set to alarm if something comes
    in, if something budges from this station. I don't care what it is. I want to
    know."
    "Aye," said Haral.
    "Tally's back."
    Ears went up. Eyes went wide. Hilfy sat down.
    "Good gods," Chur said.
    "Mahijiru's here. Was here. Goldtooth's cut loose and run." There were other
    things to break to them, like being backed into agreements, like a fool of an
    aging captain who had believed for one moment in a way out of what she had
    gotten Chanur into, a way into human trade and all it meant. "He was going to
    slip us a canister with a special cargo. Don't blame me--" She waved a hand.
    "Goldtooth's originality, gods help us. But the stsho are playing power games.
    That can's tied up in red tape in customs. I think I've got it fixed."
    Chur and Tirun sank into seats where they were, ears back.
    "Sorry," Pyanfar said tautly. "Sorry, cousins."
    "Got a chance?" Haral asked. Meaning lost trade. Lost chances. A whole variety
    of things, in loyalty too old to be completely blind. "The mahendo'sat've come
    through?"
    "Don't know. They just headed out and left us the package. There's worse news.
    The kif are onto it."
    "Gods." Geran leaned onto the back of Chur's couch. "And the bar fight--"
    "Set up. Absolutely it was a set-up." She recalled with chagrin the kif watcher
    while she