Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “No. There’d have been no reason for them to do so: they thought they were taking the ship. They’d have used our supplies. And remember, we have that other sabotage to consider, the missile.”

  “Have you figured it out, captain?”

  “No. Frankly, Major, I wanted you well before we went further. I do have a list of suspects . . . and one of them is a young woman from an ambiguous background.” She paused; no one said anything, and Sassinak went on. “She was a medical evacuee from Diplo - an unadapted infant who did not respond to treatment. Reared on Palun - “

  “That’s an intermediate world,” said Currald slowly. Sassinak nodded. “Right. She lived there until she was thirteen, with a heavyworlder family related to her birth family. Applied for light-G transfer on her own, as soon as she could, and joined Fleet as a recruit after finishing school.”

  “But you’re not sure - “

  “No, if I were sure she’d be in the brig. She had access, but so did at least four other stewards and the cooks. Thing is, she’s the only one with a close link to Diplo - not just any heavyworld planet, but Diplo. She’s actually visited twice, as an adult, in protective gear. We don’t know anything about it, of course. And anyone who wanted to incriminate a heavyworlder could hardly have found a better way than to use a Diplo poison.”

  “Could she have popped the missile?” Currald glanced at Arly, who quickly shook her head.

  “No - we checked that, of course, right away. Particularly when both my techs in that quadrant came up sick. But they were well when the missile went off, and unless they’re in it together they clear each other. I think myself it was a handheld pulse shot, probably from a service hatch down the corridor, that triggered the missile.”

  “You remember that Fleet Intelligence warned each captain to expect at least one agent . . . they didn’t say only one,” said Sass. “I think the character of the missile launch and the poisoning are so different as to point to two different individuals with two different goals. But what I can’t figure out for sure is what someone hoped to gain by random poisoning. Unless the poisoner had a group of supporters to take over the ship ...”

  Currald sighed, and laced his fingers together. Even gaunt from his illness, he outweighed everyone else at the table, and his somber face looked dangerous. “Captain, you have the reputation of being fair ...” He stopped, clearly unhappy with that beginning and started over. “Look: I’m just the marine commander; I don’t mingle with your ship’s crew that much. But I know you all believe heavyworlders clump together, and to some extent that’s true. I think I’d know if you had any sort of conspiracy among them on your side of the ship, and I hope you’ll believe that I’d have told you.”

  Sassinak smiled at his attempt to avoid the usual heavyworlder paranoia, but gave him a serious response. “I told you before. Major, that I trust you completely. I don’t think there was a conspiracy, because nothing happened while the poisonings were being discovered. But I am concerned that if this steward is the source, and if I arrest her, you and other heavyworlders will see that as a hasty and unthinking response to the Diplo poison. And I’d be very interested in what you thought such a person could hope to gain by it. What I know of heavyworlder politics and religion doesn’t suggest that poisoning would be the usual approach.”

  “No, it’s not.” Currald sighed again. “Though if I had to guess, I’d bet her birth family - and her relations on Palun - were strict Separationists”. She couldn’t be, because she couldn’t handle the physical strain. Some of those Separationists are pretty harsh on throwback babies. A few even kill them outright - unfit, they say.” He ignored the sharp intakes of breath, the sidelong glances, and went on. “If she’s been unable to adjust to being a lightweight, or if she thinks she has to make up for being unadapted, she might do something rash just to make the point.” He glanced around, then looked back at Sass. “You don’t have any heavyworlder officers, then?”

  “I did, but I sent them with Huron on the prize ship.” At his sharp look, Sassinak shrugged. “It just worked out that way: they had the right skills, and the seniority.”

  Something in that had pleased him, for he had relaxed a little. “So you might like a heavyworlder officer to have a few words with this young woman?”

  “If you think you might find out whether she did it, and why.”

  “And you do trust me for that.” It was not a question, but a statement tinged with surprise. “All right, captain; I’ll see what I can do.”

  The rest of the meeting involved the results of their surveillance. For the first few days after the landing, they’d recorded no traffic in the system except for a shuttle from the planet to the occupied moon. But only a few hours before, a fast ship had lifted, headed outsystem by its trajectory.

  “Going to tell the boss what happened,” said Bures.

  “So why’d they wait this long?” asked Sass. She could think of several reasons, none of them pleasant. No one answered her; she hadn’t expected them to. She wondered how long it would be before the big transports came, to dismantle the base and move it. The enemy would know the specs on the ship Huron had taken; they’d know how long they had before Fleet could return. A more dangerous possibility involved the enemy attempting to defend the base, trapping a skimpy Fleet expedition with more overweaponed ships like the little escort she had fought.

  “So what we can do,” she summed up for them at the end of the meeting, “is trail one of the ships that leaves, and hope we’re following one that goes somewhere informative, or sit where we are and monitor everything that goes on, to report it to Fleet later, or try to disrupt the evacuation once it starts. I wish we knew where that scumbucket was headed.”

  Two hours later, Currald called and asked for a conference. Sassinak agreed, and although he’d said nothing over the intercom, she was not surprised to see the steward under suspicion precede him into her office.

  The story was much as Currald had suggested. Seles, born without the heavyworlder’s adaptations to high-G, had nearly died in the first month of life. Her grandfather, she said, had told her mother to kill her, but her mother had lost two children in a habitat accident, and wanted to give her a chance. The medical postbirth treatments hadn’t worked, and she’d been evacuated as a two-month-old infant, sent to her mother’s younger sister on Palun. Even there, she had been the weakling, teased by her cousins when she broke an ankle falling from a tree, when she couldn’t climb and run as well as they could. At ten, on her only childhood visit to Diplo, she had needed the adaptive suits that lightweights wore . . . and she had had to listen to her grandfather’s ranting. She had ruined them, he said: not only the cost of her treatment, and her travel to Palun, but the simple fact that a throwback had been born in their family. They had lost honor; it would have been better if she had died at birth. Her father had glanced past her and refused to speak; her mother now had two “normal” children, husky boys who knocked her down and sat on the chest of her pressure suit until her mother called them away - clearly annoyed that Seles was such a problem.

  In school on Palun, she had been taught by several active Separationists, who used her weakness as an example of why the heavyworlders should avoid contact with lightweights and the FSP. One of them, though, had told her of the only way in which throwbacks could justify their existence ... by proving themselves true to heavyworlder interests, and serving as a spy within the dominant lightweight culture.

  In that hope she had requested medical evacuation to a normal-G world, a request quickly granted. She’d been declared a ward of the state, and put into boarding school on Casey’s World.

  Sassinak realized that Seles must have gone to that strange boarding school at about the same age she herself had come to the Fleet prep school - within a year or so anyway. But Seles had had no Abe, no mentor to guide her. Bigger than average, stronger than usual (though weak to heavyworlders), she already believed she was an outcast. Had anyone tried to befriend her? Sassinak couldn
’t tell; certainly Seles would not have noticed. Even now her slightly heavy-featured face was not ugly - it was her expression, the fixed, stolid, slightly sullen expression, that made her look more the heavyworlder, and more stupid, than she was. She had been in trouble once or twice for fighting, she admitted, but it wasn’t her fault. People picked on her; they hated heavyworlders and they hadn’t trusted her. Sassinak heard the self-pitying whine in her voice and mentally shook her head, though she made no answer. No one likes the whiner, no one trusts the sullen.

  So Seles had come from school still convinced that the world was unfair, and still burning to justify herself to her heavyworld relatives. In that mood, she had joined Fleet - and in her first leave after basic training, had gone back to Diplo. Her family had been contemptuous, refused to believe that she really meant to be an agent for the heavyworlders. If she’d had any ability, they told her, she’d have been recruited by one of the regular intelligence services. What could she do alone? Useless weakling, her grandfather stormed, and this time even her mother nodded, as her younger brothers smirked. Prove yourself first, he said, and then come asking favors.

  On her way back to the spaceport, she had bought a kilo of poison - since its use on Diplo was unregulated, she had assumed that the heavyworlders were immune to it. She was going to kill all the lightweight crew of whatever ship she was on, turn the whole thing over to heavyworlders, and that would prove -

  “Exactly nothing!” snapped Major Currald, who had held his tongue with difficulty through this emotional recitation. “Did you want the lightweights to think we’re all stupid or crazy? Didn’t it occur to you that some of us know our best hope is inside FSP, alongside the lightweights?”

  The girl’s face was red, and her hands shook as she laid a rumpled, much - folded piece of paper on Sass’s desk. “I - I know how it is. I know you’re going to kill me. But - but I want to be buried on Diplo - or at least my ashes - and it says in regulations you have to do that - and send this message.” It was as pitiful and incoherent as the rest of her story. “In the Name of Justice and Our Righteous Cause - “ it began, and wandered around through bits of bad history (the Gelway Riots had not been caused by prejudice against heavyworlders - the heavyworlders hadn’t been involved at all, except for one squad of riot police) and dubious theology (at least Sassinak had never heard of Darwin’s God before) to justify the poisoning of the innocent, including other heavyworlders as “an Act of Pure Defiance that shall light a Beacon across the Galaxy.” It ended with a plea that her family permit the burial of her remains on their land, that “even this Weak and Hopeless Relic of a Great Race can give something back to the Land which nurtured her.”

  Sassinak looked at Currald, who at the moment looked the very personification of heavyworlder brutality. She had the distinct feeling that he’d like to pound Seles into mush. She herself had the same desires toward Seles’ family. Perhaps the girl wasn’t too bright, but she could have done well if they hadn’t convinced her that she was a hopeless blot on the family name. She picked up the paper, refolded it, and laid it in the folder that held the notes of the investigation. Then she looked back at Seles. Could anything good come out of this? Well, she could try.

  Briskly, holding Seles’ gaze with hers, she said, “You’re quite right, that a captain operating in a state of emergency has the right to execute any person on board who is deemed to represent a threat to the security of the vessel. Yes, I could kill you, here and now, with no farther discussion. But I’m not going to.” Seles’ mouth fell open, and her hands shook even more. Currald’s face had hardened into disgust. “You don’t deserve a quick death and this - “ she slapped the folder, “sort of thing, these spurious heroics. The Fleet’s spent a lot of money training you - considerably more than your family did treating you and shipping you around and yelling at you. You owe us that, and you owe your shipmates an apology for damn near killing them. Including Major Currald.”

  “I - I didn’t know it would hurt heavyworlders - “ pleaded Seles.

  “Be quiet.” Currald’s tone shut her mouth with a snap; Sassinak hoped he’d never speak to her like that, although she was sure she could survive it. “You didn’t think to try it on yourself, did you?”

  “But I’m not pure - “

  “Nor holy,” said Sass, breaking into that before Currald went too far. “That’s the point, Seles. You had a bad childhood: so did lots of us. People were mean to you: same with lots of us. That’s no reason to go around poisoning people who haven’t done you any harm. If you really want to poison someone, why not your family? They’re the ones who hurt you.”

  “But I’m - but they’re - “

  “Your birth family, yes. And Fleet has tried to be - and could have been - your life family. Now you’ve done something we can’t ignore; you’ve killed someone, Seles, and not bravely, in a fight, but sneakily. Court martial, when we get back, maybe psychiatric evaluation - “

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “No? You try to please those who hurt you, and poison those who befriend you; that sounds crazy to me. And you are guilty, but if I punish you then other heavyworlders may think I did so because of your genes, not your deeds.”

  “Heavyworlders should get out of FSP, and take care of themselves,” muttered Seles stubbornly. “It never helped us.”

  Sassinak looked at Currald, whose mask of contempt and disgust had softened a little. She nodded slightly. “I think. Major Currald, that we have a combined medical and legal problem here. Under the circumstances, we don’t have the best situation for psychiatric intervention . . . and I don’t want to convene a court on this young lady until there’s been a full evaluation.”

  “You think it’s enough for - “

  “For mitigation, and perhaps for a full plea of incompetence. But that’s outside my sphere; my concern now is to minimize the damage she’s done, in all areas, and preserve the evidence.”

  Seles looked back and forth between them, clearly puzzled and frightened. “But I - I demand - I”

  Sassinak shook her head. “Seles, if a court martial later calls for your execution, I will see that your statement is returned to your family. But at the moment, I see no alternative to protective confinement.” She opened a channel to Sickbay, and spoke briefly to the Medical Officer. “Major Currald, I can have Security take her down, or - “

  “I’ll do it,” he said. Sassinak could sense that pity had finally replaced disgust.

  “Thank you. I think she’ll be calmer with you.” For several reasons, Sassinak thought to herself. Currald had the size and confident bearing of a full-adapted heavyworlder, trained for battle . . . Seles would not be likely to try escape, and under his gaze would be unwilling to have hysterics.

  Less than an hour later, the Medical Officer called back, to report that she considered Seles at serious risk of suicide or other violent action. “She’s hanging on by a thread,” she said. “That note - that’s the sort of thing the Gelway terrorists used. She could go any minute, and locked in the brig she’d be likely to do it sooner rather than later. I want to put her under, medical necessity.”

  “Fine with me. Send it up for my seal, when you’ve done the paperwork, and let’s be very careful that nothing happens to that coldsleep tank. I don’t want any suspicions whatever about our proceedings.”

  Now that was settled. Sassinak leaned back in her seat, wondering why she felt such sympathy for this girl. She’d never liked whiners herself, the girl had killed one of her crew - but the bewildered pain in those eyes, the shaky alliance of courage and stark fear - that got to her. Currald said much the same thing, when he got back up to Main Deck. “I’m an Inclusionist,” he said, “but I’ve always believed we should test our youngsters on high-g worlds. We’ve got something worth preserving, something extra, not just something missing. I’ve even supported those who want to withhold special treatment from newborn throwbacks. There’s enough lightweights in the universe, I’ve said, breeding fast enoug
h: why spend money and time raising another weakling? At first glance, this kid is just the point of my argument. Her family spent all that money and worry and time, FSP spent all that money on her boarding school, Fleet spent money and time on her in training, and all they got out of it was an incompetent, fairly stupid poisoner. But - I don’t know - I want to stomp her into the ground, and at the same time I’m sorry for her. She’s not good for anything, but she could have been.” He gave Sassinak another, far more human, glance. “I hate to admit it, but the very things I believe in probably turned her into that wet mess.”

  “I hope something can be salvaged.” Sassinak pushed a filled mug across her desk, and he took it. “But what I told her is perfectly true: many of us have had difficult childhoods, many of us have been hurt one way or another. I expect you’ve faced prejudice on account of your background - “ He nodded, and she went on. “ - But you didn’t decide to poison the innocent to get back at those who hurt you.” Sassinak took a long swallow from her own mug - not coffee, but broth. “Thing is, humans of all sorts are under pressure. There’ve been questions asked in Council about the supposed human domination of Fleet.”

  “What!” Clearly he hadn’t heard that before.

  “It’s not general knowledge, but a couple of races are pushing for mandatory quotas at the Academy. Even the Ryxi - “

  ‘Those featherdusters!”

  “I know. But you’re Fleet, Currald: you know humans need to stick together. Heavyworlders have a useful adaptation, but they couldn’t take on the rest of FSP alone.” He nodded, somber again. Sassinak wondered what went on behind those opaque brown eyes. Yet he was trustworthy: had to be, after the past week. Anything less, and they’d not have survived.