Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 51

see. You'd think they could realize the last thing you need is worry about money, but the Feds have acute formitis."

"A bad case," Lunzie agreed.

With the others, she craned her head to see the last responder, a dark man whose specialty was heavyworlder genetics. From the heft of his shoulders, he might have heavyworlder genes of his own, she thought.

So it proved when the whole team met for briefing. Jar! was the smaller (and nonadapted) of twins born to a heavyworlder couple; he was fascinated by the unusual inheritance patterns of adaptation, and by the equally unusual inheritance patterns of tolerance or intolerance to coldsleep. Aside from his heavyworlder genes, he seemed quite normal, and Lunzie felt no uneasiness around him.

Bias, the volatile molecular biologist, was for more upsetting; he seemed ready to fly into pieces at any moment. Lunzie wondered how he would take the heavy gravity; he didn't look particularly athletic. Tailler, die cardiac physiologist, impressed Lunzie as a good team leader: stable, steady, but energetic, he would be easy to work with. She already knew, from a short bio at die foot of one of his papers, that he climbed mountains for recreation: the physical effort should be within his ability. Conigan, the rehab specialist, was a slender redheaded woman who reminded Lunzie of an older (but no less enthusiastic) Varian.

She was aware that she herself was the subject of just such curiosity and scrutiny. They would know little about her besides her file info: she had no friends or past a.s.sociates they could question covertly. She wondered what they saw in her face, what they expected or worried about or hoped for. At least she had pa.s.sed her Boards, and by a respectable margin, so Jerik had told her. She wondered, but did not ask, how he had gotten the actual raw scores, which supposedly no one ever saw.

And all the while, Bias outlined the project in excited phrases, pausing with his pointer aloft to see if they'd understood the last point. Lunzie made herself pay

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attention. Whatever information she could get for Sa.s.sinak and the trial aside, her team members deserved her best work.

By the time their s.h.i.+p came to the orbital station serving Diplo, they were all working easily together. Lunzie thought past the next few months, and Tanegli's trial, to hope that she would find such professional comraderie again. There were things you could not say to a cruiser captain, however dear to your heart she was, jokes she would never get, ideas be-yond her scope. And here Lunzie had that kind of ease.

Chapter Three.

"I did not need this." Sa.s.sinak waved the hardcopy of the Security-striped message at Dupaynil and Ford. "I've got things to do. We att have. And the last thing we need to do is waste time playing nursemaid to a senile conspirator." Things had gone too smoothly, she thought, when she'd sent Lunzie off. She should have expected some hitch to her plans.

Dupaynil had the suave expression she most disliked. "I beg your pardon, Commander?"

He could not be that suave unless he knew what was in the message: Ford, who clearly did not, looked worried.

"Orders," Sa.s.sinak said crisply. "New orders, sent with all applicable coding on the IFTL link. We are to transport die accused conspirator Tanegli and the alleged native-born I re tan Aygar to ..." She paused, and watched them, Dupaynil merely waited, lips pursed; Ford spoke up.

"Sector HQ? Fleet HQ on Regg?"

"No. Federation Headquarters. For a full trial before and in the presence of the Federation High Council. We are responsible," and she glanced down at the message to check the precise wording, "responsible for

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die transportation and safe arrival of said prisoner, who shall be released to the custody of Council security forces only. The trial date has already been set, for a local date that translates to about eight standard months from now. Winter a.s.sizes, as we were told before. Prisoner's counsel is given as Klepsin, Vigal, and Tollwin. And you know what that means."

"Pinky Vigal, Defender of the Innocent," said Dupaynil, almost chuckling. "That ought to make an exciting trial. You know, Commander, he can probably make you look like a planet pirate yourself, a villainous sort masquerading as a Fleet officer. Hmmm . . . you stole the uniform from Tanegli, bribed everyone else to testily against him."

"It's not funny," said Sa.s.sinak, glowering. She had never been one to follow the escapades of fas.h.i.+onable lawyers, but anyone in human s.p.a.ce had heard of Pinky Vigal. It was another of the failings of civilian law, Sa.s.sinak thought, that someone everyone knew had done something could not be punished if a honeytongued defense counsel could convince even one member of a trial jury that some minute error had been made in procedure. Fleet had better methods.

"So," Ford broke in, clearly intending a distraction. "We're responsible for Tanegli until we get to Federation Central . . . and for Aygar as well? Why Aygar?"

"Witness for both sides, I suppose," Dupaynil said with a flourish of his hand. "Friendly to one, hostile to the other, but indispensable to both."

"And registered copies of all the testimony we took, and depositions from all bridge officers, and any other crew members having contact with the said Tanegli and Aygar," Sa.s.sinak continued to read. "Kipling's bunions! By now that's half the crew, the way Aygar's been roaming around. If I'd known ..."

She knew from Ford's expression that she must look almost as angry as she felt. They would spend weeks getting in and out of the required transfer points for Federation Central, and then weeks being interviewed- deposed, she reminded hersetf-and no doubt Fleet ; Security would have its own band of interrogators there.

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In the meantime, the Zaid-Dayan would be sitting idle while the enemy continued its work. She would no doubt have umpteen thousand forms to fill out and sign: in multiple copies which had to be processed individually, rather than on computer, for security reasons.

She noticed that Dupaynil was watching her with alert interest. So he had read the message even before she'd seen it-which meant he had a tap on the IFTL link, or had somehow coerced one of her communications officers into peeling a copy to his quarters. What else did he know, or had he been told? She decided not to ask; he wouldn't tell her, and she'd just be angry when he refused.

"Dupaynil." The change in her tone surprised him; his smugness disappeared. "I want you to start finding out which crew Aygar has been in contact with. Marines, Wefts, officers, enlisted, everyone. You can have a clerk if you need one-"

"No ... I can manage ..." His voice was bemused; she felt a surge of glee that she was making him think.

"I suspect it's too late to restrict his contacts. And after all, we want him friendly to FSP policies. But if the crew know that they'll have to go through paperwork and interviews because they talk to him, some may pull back."

"Good idea . . . and I'd best get started." Dupaynil sketched a salute-to more than her rank, she was sure-and left.

Sa.s.sinak said nothing for a moment, engaging her own (surely still undiscovered?) privacy systems. Then she grinned at Ford.

"That sneak: he knew already."

"I thought so, too. But how?"

"He's Naval Intelligence-but I'm never sure with those types if he's Intelligence for someone else, or someones else, as well. The fact that he's planted his own devices-and too cleverly to rea.s.sure me of his ultimate aims- is distinctly unsettling because there's no telling why he's doing it. I'm-" and Sa.s.sinak pushed her thumb into her chest, grinning-"allowed to be that clever, but not my subordinates.

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"At the moment, that's not the issue. Getting you away to find your dear great-aunt or whatever is the issue, because I don't want you tied up for the time this is going to take. We need information before that trial date." Sa.s.sinak pushed the orders over to Ford who noted the date and its conversion to Fleet standard notation on his personal handcomp. "If you can't find anything by then, be sure you're back to say so."

"But how can I leave when all-"

Sa.s.sinak hushed him with a gesture. "There are more tricks in that com shack than Dupaynil knows about. So for, he's the only one who knows that you were present when these orders arrived. And he's got priority orders he doesn't know about yet. But he soon will. Just follow my lead."

The bridge crew came to attention when Sa.s.sinak arrived, but she gave the helm to Ford and entered the communications alcove.

"Captain's orders," she said crisply to the officer on watch, "You received an IFTL a short time ago?"

"Yes, ma'am, to the captain's address with encryption."

Sa.s.sinak could not tell if the com officer's tension was normal or not. "The contents of that message require me to sit com watch myself for two hours." This was unusual, but not unheard of: sometimes extremely sensitive information was sent this way. "I expect incoming IFTL signals, encrypted, and by these orders," and she waved the paper, "only the s.h.i.+p's captain can receive them."

"Yes, ma'am. Will the captain need any a.s.sistance?"

Sa.s.sinak let herself glare, and the com officer vanished onto the bridge. What she was going to do was both illegal and dangerous . . . but so was what Dupaynil had done, and what the enemy had done. She logged onto the board and engaged her private comlink to the Ssli interface.

So far, normal procedure. But now . . . her fingers danced on the board, calling up the file of the original encrypted message. And there it was, the quadruple header code she had never forgotten, not in all the years. Idiots, she thought; they should have changed 40.

that long since, as she had changed from a naive ensign standing communications watch to an experienced and powerful s.h.i.+p captain.

With the right header code, it was easy to prepare an incoming message Dupaynil would have to believe was genuine. The other "incoming" message would be in regular Fleet fas.h.i.+on, Ford's detachment on "family compa.s.sionate leave" . . . but it would not arrive until Dupaynil was gone.

Where to send Dupaynil? Where would he be safely out of her way, and also, in his own mind, doing something reasonable? She wished she could send him to a Thek, preferably a large, old, very slow one ... but that wouldn't work. Fleet Security had nothing to do with the pacifist Bronthins, or the Mrouxt.

Suddenly it came to her, and she fought back a broad grin which anyone glancing into the alcove might notice (why would die captain be grinning to herself in the com shack?): Ford would dig up dirt on the Paraden family's dealings, and Lunzie would find what she could on Diplo . . . and that, according to what they'd found on Ireta, left the alien Setis without an investigator. That would be Dupaynil's ch.o.r.e.

He had done a lot of diplomatic work, he'd said. He had bragged after dinner, once, about his ability to get along with any of the alien members of the Federation, and even said the Seti weren't as bad as everyone thought.

So, quickly, carefully, Sa.s.sinak wrote the orders. The Ssli had always shown her special considerations, above and beyond their usual s.h.i.+pboard duties. She owed her life to the sessile Ssli communications officer on her first tour of duty when Hssrho had located her in deep s.p.a.ce after she'd had a "misadventure" in an evac pod. In grat.i.tude she had always taken care to cultivate the Ssli communications officers on every other posting. Now she consulted the resident Ssli. She could not simply pretend that an IFTL had come in; the computer records would show it had not and Dupaynil probably had subverted computer security to some degree. But Dupaynil's actual s.h.i.+pboard experience was

GENERATION WABRIORS.

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limited and Sa.s.sinak knew that he had never bothered to introduce himself to Dhrossh. Her favorite Wefts, such as Gelory, had mentioned in pa.s.sing that Dupaynil's mind was not the right sort for direct contact. Whatever they meant by that.

The Ssli thought her scheme was delightful ... an odd choice of adjective, Sa.s.sinak thought, and wondered if the speech synthesizer software was working correctly. She had never suspected the Ssli of any remotely human emotions. Ssli syntax tended toward the mathematical. But she entered her encrypted message, and the Ssli initiated IFTL communication with another Ssli on another Fleet vessel. Which one she would never know.

The Ssli, her own had informed her, felt no compunction about concealing such communications from human crew. Her own message bounced back, and appeared as a true incoming message on the computer and the board. Sa.s.sinak routed it to the decryption computer, peeled a copy for Dupaynil's file, and leaned out to call to the com watch officer, who had taken a seat on the bridge.

"Get me Dupaynil," she said, letting herself glower a bit.

Ford glanced at her but did not even let his brows rise. Dupaynil arrived in a suspiciously short time; this time Sa.s.sinak's glower was not faked at all.

"You," she said, pointing a finger at him. The rest of the bridge crew became very busy at their own boards. "You have an incoming IFTL, which not only requires decryption and states that I do not have access, but in addition to that, it carries initiation codes I remember all too well!"

He would have to know that, or he could find out- and perhaps her flare of anger would distract him from the unlikeliness of his own orders. At the moment, he f.o.o.ked confused, as well he might.

"This!" Sa.s.sinak pointed to the display she'd frozen onscreen. "The last time I saw that initiation code, that very one, in quad like that, someone smacked me over the head and dumped me in an evac pod. If you think 42.

you're going to do something like that, Major-take me out and take over my s.h.i.+p-you are very much mistaken!" She could hear the anger in her own voice, and die bridge was utterly silent.