The main character is Hilfy Chanur, Pyanfar's niece. In the book, Hilfy gets caught up in interstellar politics and law when she agrees to transport a religious object and it's keeper for what seemed to be a bit too much money. Uplifting tone, occasional sad parts. The people living on the moons of the outer planets are running out of resources. They need some from Earth.
Earth is controlled by some bad government that lives on space stations orbitting Earth.
The guys living on the outer moons send people down to Earth to cause a stir so all the people will come down from the space stations to straighten things up, whereupon they'll get smacked from behind as the outer-mooners attack the empty space stations. But it's not really about war. It's about people. Confused, frightened people. VERY good book, very good author.