Chanur's Legacy by C. J. Cherryh

let’s not take any additional chances, shall we?”
    “Trouble?” Fala asked from the doorway to the little galley.
    “No trouble. I trust you locked that door.”
    “I locked it. I don’t see, begging the captain’s pardon, why he’s—“
    Hilfy leaned her forehead on her hand.
    “Tell you later,” Tarras said.
    “We’re in count,” Hilfy said, leaning back and looking at the clock. “Load’s got to be finished by 2300. Gods, I want out of this port.”
    “Have we got a problem?” Fala asked.
    Something ticked over, like a piece in a game falling. A roll of the dice. “I want an instrument scan.”
    “What?” Tiar asked.
    “I want a thorough read-out, I want a camera scan on the hull, I want to know if any skimmers have approached us during our stay here.”
    A solemn stare from several pairs of eyes.
    “Is something going on?” Fala asked.
    The camera scan turned up negative. Nothing had approached their hull. Station skimmers always came and went, on such business as external inspections, catching the occasional chunk of something that escaped a ship’s maintenance systems, things nobody wanted slamming into their hull or catching on some projection, to be accelerated with the ship and boosted to lethal v. Trouble was, such skimmers had legitimate business back by one’s vanes and engines and up near one’s hatches; and if a ship with legitimate reason to worry didn’t have cameras to prove where such little tenders had access, that ship had far more reason to worry.
    But being the Personage’s niece had convinced her before the Legacy was outfitted that the camera-mounts were a good idea and that motion-sensors and tamper-alerts were mandatory. So they didn’t have that to worry about—at least so far as they opted prudently to use them.
    There wasn’t, of course, a way to monitor everything. But they were sure it was water that had gone into their water-lines and that that water was Meet-point ice-melt, the sensors above the valve had proved it or that valve would have shut. Being Pyanfar’s niece and having shipped aboard The Pride, she had been in ports where one had good reason to wonder about the lines; absolutely right, being sure was worth the cost. Unfortunately having solved all the high-tech means of sabotage, one still had to worry about the low-tech means at an enemy’s disposal. Certain things one could solve by carrying all supplies aboard, and by not refueling and not taking on water at certain ports: but carrying extra mass cost a ship, if one wasn’t paying somebody else’s freight plus station-cost getting it to the station. If it was local, you were financially ahead to buy it. If it wasn’t, and it massed much, you were ahead to freight it, and that was the sum-up and payout of it: if you operated otherwise you weren’t competitive, in a tightly competitive market.
    But even if you did all of that, and even if you absorbed the cost of being as self-contained as possible, you were still vulnerable to your own cargo and to the legal claim of your ship to use a port and the station’s legal right to charge you for being there, and, after that was said, to a bank’s obligation to honor the claim of other banks on the funds you had in that all-important record you carried that the bank alone allegedly could access.
    But banks themselves were not without their compromised accesses, where stsho were concerned, since stsho had set up the banking system, all through Compact space: stsho technology, stsho procedures, stsho rules of accounting and the stsho system of transfers and debits.
    Hilfy Chanur preferred an old hani tradition: cash... and cargo; and as little as possible of the former, since it was not going to be drawing interest for the month you were in transit, but your goods were acquiring value during that transit, simply by moving closer to where they were in shortest supply.
    Which left you vulnerable to piracy, but you always were; and at least that answer