Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “I ... might be able to help with the Diplo bit.”

  “You? How?”

  Sassinak had been thinking of her own heavyworlder friends, but she hated to use any of them that way. It would be too risky for them if some agent within Fleet caught on.

  “They don’t let many lightweights visit Diplo, but because of their continuing medical problems, genetic and adaptive, medical researchers and advisors are welcome. As welcome as lightweights ever are. I’d need a refresher course with a Master Adept ...”

  Sassinak pursed her lips. “Hmmm. That’s reasonable, the refresher part. If anyone were watching you, they’d expect you to. You’ve gone a stage or so beyond your rating, haven’t you? And you people go back fairly regularly, once you’re in the Adept rating, so I’ve heard. ...”

  She let that trail away, in case Lunzie wanted to ofier more information, but wasn’t surprised when Lunzie simply nodded and went on to talk about Diplo.

  “Doctors are expected to ask questions. If I were on a research team, perhaps statistical survey of birth defects, something like that, I’d have a chance to talk to lots of people as part of my job.”

  Sassinak cocked her head to one side; Lunzie barely stopped herself from making the same gesture.

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  “Are you sure you’re not doing this just to exorcise your own heavyworld demons? From what you’ve said ...”

  Lunzie didn’t want to go into that again. “I know. I have reason to hate and fear them. Some of them. But I’ve also known good ones; I told you about Zebara.” Sassinak nodded, but looked unconvinced. Lunzie went on. “Besides, 111 have time to talk to the Master Adept renewing my training. You know enough about Discipline to know that’s as good as any psych software. If a Master says I’m not stable enough to go, 111 let you know.”

  “YouTl discuss it with him?” By Sassinak’s tone, she wasn’t entirely happy with that.

  Lunzie sighed internally. “Not everything, no. But my going to Diplo, certainly. There are certain special skills which can make it easier on a lightweight.”

  “Just be sure a Master passes you. This is too important to risk on an emotional storm, and with the trouble you’ve had ...”

  “I can handle it.” Lunzie let her voice convey the Discipline behind it, and Sassinak subsided. Not really Impressed, Lunzie noticed, as most people would be, but convinced for the time being.

  “That’s Diplo, then,” Sassinak gave a final minute shrug, and went on to the other problems. “You’re going off. And you don’t know how long that will take, either, do you? I thought not. You’re going off for a refresher course and a visit to Diplo, and that leaves us with digging to be done among the suspect commercial combines, the Seti, and the inner workings of EEC, Fleet, and the Council. It would be handy if we had our own private counterintelligence network, but...”

  Lunzie interrupted, feeling smug. “You know Admiral Coromell, don’t know?”

  Sassinak’s jaw did not drop because she would not let it, but Lunzie could tell she was surprised. “Do you know Admiral Coromell?”

  “Quite well, yes.” Lunzie watched Sassinak struggle with the obvious implications, and decide not to ask. Or perhaps the implications weren’t obvious to her. By now Coromell would be as old as his father had been;

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  Sassinak would have known him as an old man. Lunzie fought off yet another pang of sorrow, and concentrated on the present moment. “Coromell actually recruited me, temporarily, back before the Ambrosia thing.”

  “Recruited you!” Was that approval or resentment? Lunzie did not ask, but gave as brief a synopsis as possible of the circumstances of that recruitment, and what followed. Sassinak listened without interrupting, her eyes focussed on some distant vision, and shook her head slightly when Lunzie finished.

  “My dear, I have the feeling we could talk for weeks and you’d still surprise me.” There was nothing in the tone to indicate whether this most recent surprise had been pleasant or not; Lunzie suspected that respect for Coromell’s stars might be part of Sassinak’s reticence. To underscore that reticence, Sassinak pushed away from her desk. “I feel like stretching my legs, and you haven’t really seen the ship yet. Want a tour?”

  “Of course.” Lunzie was as glad to take a break from their intense conversation. She followed Sassinak out into the passage that led nearly the length of Main Deck.

  “It’s so different,” Lunzie said, as Sass led her down the aft ladder to Troop Deck. She wondered why the walls—bulkheads, she reminded herself—were green here, and gray above.

  “Different?”

  “I hadn’t had time to mention it, but when we were rescued from Ambrosia that time, the Fleet cruiser that came was this one. The Zaid-Dayan. I never saw the captain, but it was a woman. That’s why I used the name in the cover I gave Varian and the others back on Ireta. It was a deja-vtt situation, you and this ship ...”

  Sassinak grunted. “Couldn’t have been this ship. Wasn’t the Ambrosia rescue before Ireta and your cold-sleep? Forty years or so back? That must have been the ‘43 version . . . that ship was lost in combat the year I graduated from the Academy.” She nodded to the squad of marines that had flattened themselves along the bulkhead to let her by, and waited for Lunzie to catch up.

  Lunzie felt cold all over. Another reminder that she

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  had not grown naturally older, when she would know things, but had simply skipped decades. “Are you sure? When I heard this was the Zaid-Dayan, with a woman captain, I thought maybe ...”

  Sassinak shook her head. “I’m not that much older than you. No—the Ambrosia rescue—we were taught that battle, in TacSim II. That was Graciela Vinish-Martinez, her first command and a new ship. She caught hell from a Board of Inquiry at first, bringing it back needing repairs like that, but someone on Ambrosia, some scout captain or something ...”

  “Zebara,” said Lunzie, hardly breathing.

  “Whoever it was wrote a report that got the Board off her neck. I thought of that when I had to go before a Board. I saw her.” Sassinak’s expression was strange, almost bemused. She punched a button on the bulkhead, and a hatch slid open: a lift. They entered, and Sassinak pushed another button inside before she said more. Lunzie waited. “She gave us—the female cadets—a lecture on command presence for women officers. We all thought that was a stupid topic. We were muttering about it, going in; the room was empty except for this little old lady in the corner, looked like the kind of retirement-age warrant officers that swarmed all around the Academy, doing various jobs no one ever explained. I hardly glanced at her. She had an old-fashioned clipboard and a marker. We sat down, wondering how late Admiral Vinish-Martinez was going to be. We knew better than to chatter, but I have to admit there was a lot of quiet murmuring going on, and some of it was mine.” Sassinak grinned reminiscently. “Then this little old lady gets up. Nobody saw that; we figured she was taking roll. Walks around to the front, and we thought maybe she was going to tell us the Admiral was late or not coming. And then—I swear, Lunzie, not one of us saw her stars until she wanted us to, when she changed right there in front of us without moving a muscle. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. We were out of our seats and saluting before we realized what had happened.”

  “And then?” Lunzie couldn’t help asking; she was fascinated.

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  “And then she gave us a big bright smile, and said That, ladies, was a demonstration of command presence.’ And then she walked out, while we were still breathless.”

  “Mullah!”

  “Right. The whole lecture in one demonstration. We never forgot that one, I can tell you, and we spent hours trying it on each other to see if we’d learned anything yet. She said it all: it’s not your size or your looks or your strength or how loud you can yell—it’s something else, inside, and if you don’t have that, no amount of size, strength, beauty, or bellowing will do instead.” The lift opened onto a tiny space surrounded by differently colored pi
pes that gurgled and hissed. A Sign said “ENVIRONMENTAL LEVEL ONE.”

  “Adept Discipline?” asked Lunzie, curious to know what Sass thought.

  “Maybe. For some. You know we have basic classes in it in Fleet. But there has to be a certain potential or something has to happen later. Certainly the element of focus is the same ...” Sassinak’s voice trailed away; her brow furrowed.

  “You have it,” said Lunzie. She had seen the crew’s response to Sassinak, and felt her own—an almost automatic respect and desire to please her.

  “Oh . . . well, yes. Some, at least; I can put the fear of reality into wild young ensigns. But not like that.” She laughed, putting the memory aside. “For years I wanted to do that ... to be that ...”

  “Was she your childhood idol, then? Were you dreaming about Fleet even before you were captured?” Was that what had kept her sane?

  “Oh, no. I wanted to be Carin Coldae.” Lunzie must have looked as blank as she felt, for Sassinak said, “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize. Forty-three years—she must not have been a vid star when you were last—I mean ...”

  “Don’t worry.” Another example of what she’d missed. She hadn’t been one to follow the popularity of vid stars at any time, but the way Sassinak had said the name, Coldae must have been a household word.

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  “Just an adventure star,” Sassinak was explaining. “Had fan clubs, posters, all that. My best friend and I dreamed of having adventures all over the galaxy, men at our feet...”

  “Well, you seem to have made it,” said Lunzie dryly. “Or so your crew let me know.”

  Sassinak actually blushed; the effect was startling. “It’s not much like the daydreams, though. Carin never got a scratch on her, only a few artistically placed streaks of soot. Sometimes that soot was all she had on, but mostly it was silver or gold snugsuits, open halfway down her perfect front. She could toss twenty pirates over her head with one hand, gun down another ten villains with the other, and belt out her themesong without missing a beat. When I was a child, it never dawned on me that someone supposedly being starved and beaten in a thorium mine shouldn’t have all those luscious curves. Or that climbing naked up a volcanic cliff does bad things to long scarlet fingernails.”

  “Mmm. Is she still popular?”

  “Not so much. Re-runs will go on forever, at least the classics like Dark of the Moon and The Iron Chain. She’s doing straight dramas now, and politics.” Sassinak grimaced, remembering Dupaynil’s revelations about her former idol. “I’ve been told she’s behind some subversive groups, has been for years.” Then she sighed, and said, “And I dragged you through Troop Deck without showing you much . . . well This is Environmental, that keeps us alive.”

  “I saw the sign,” said Lunzie. She could hear the distant rhythmic throbbing of pumps. Sassinak patted a plump beige pipe with surprising affection.

  “This was my first assignment out of the Academy. Installing a new environmental system on a cruiser.”

  “I thought you’d have specialists—“

  “We do. But officers in the command track have to be generalists. In theory, a captain should know every pipe and wire, every chip in every computer, every bit of equipment and scrap of supplies . , . where it is, how it works, who should be taking care of it. So we all start

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  in one of the main ships’ specialties and rotate through them in our first two tours.”

  “Do you know?” She couldn’t, Lunzie was sure, but did she know she didn’t know, or did she think she did?

  “Not all of them, not quite. But more than I did. This one,” and she patted it again, “this one carries carbon dioxide to the buffer tanks; the oxygen pipes, like all the flammables, are red. And no, you won’t see them in this compartment, because some idiot coming off the lift could have a flame, or the lift could spark. Since you’re a doctor, I thought you’d like to see some of this ...”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Luckily she knew enough not to feel like a complete idiot. Sassinak led her along low-ceilinged tunnels with pipes hissing and gurgling on either hand, pointing out access ports to still other plumbing, the squatty cylindrical scrubbers, the gauges and meters and status lights that indicated exactly what was where, and whether it should be.

  “All new,” Sassinak said, as they headed into the ‘ponies section. “We had major trouble last time out, not just the damage, but apparently some sabotage of Environmental. Ended up with stinking sludge growing all along the pipes where it shouldn’t, and there’s no way to clean that out, once the sulfur bacteria start pitting the pipe linings.”

  Hydroponics on a Fleet cruiser looked much like hydroponics anywhere else to Lunzie, who recognized the basic configuration of tanks and feeder lines and bleedoff valves, but nothing special. Sassinak finally took her back to the lift and they ascended to Main again.

  “How long does it take a newcomer to find everything?”

  Sassinak pursed her lips. “Well . . . if you mean new crew or ensigns, usually a week or so. We start ‘em off with errands in every direction, let ‘em get good and lost, and they soon figure out how to use a terminal and a shipchip to stay found. You noticed that every deck’s a different color, and the striping width indicates bow and stern; there’s no reason to stay lost once you’ve

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  caught on to that.” She led the way into her office, where a light blinked on her board. “I’ve got to go to the bridge. Would you like to stay here, or go back to your cabin?”

  Lunzie had hoped to be invited onto the bridge, but nothing in Sassinak’s expression made that possible. “Ill stay here, if that’s convenient.”

  “Fine. Let me give you a line out.” Sassinak touched her terminal’s controls. “There! A list of access codes for you. I won’t be long.”

  Lunzie wondered what that actually meant in terms of hours, and settled down with the terminal. She had hardly decided what to access when she heard heavy steps coming down the passage. Aygar appeared in the opening, scowling.

  “Where’s Sassinak?”

  “On the bridge.” Lunzie wondered what had upset him this time. The Weft marine corporal behind him looked more amused than concerned. “Want to wait here for her?”

  “I don’t want to wait.” He came in, nonetheless, and sat down on the white-cushioned chair as if determined to stay forever. “I want to know how much longer it will be.” At Lunzie’s patient look, he went on. “When we will arrive at... at this Sector Headquarters, whatever that is. When Tanegli’s mutiny trial will be. When I can speak for my ... my peers.” He’d hesitated over that; “peer” was a new word to him, and Lunzie wondered where he’d found it.

  “I don^t know,” she said mildly. “She hasn’t told me, either. I’m not sure she knows.” She glanced at the door, where the Weft stood relaxed, projecting no threat but obviously capable. “Does it bother you to be followed?”

  Aygar nodded, and leaned closer to her. “I don’t understand these Wefts. How can they be something else, and then humans? How does anyone know who is human and who isn’t? And they tell me of other aliens, not only Wefts and Thek that I have seen, but Ryri who are like birds, and Bronthin, and ...”

  “You saw plenty of strange animals on Ireta.”

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  “Yes, but. . .” His brow furrowed. “I suppose ... I grew up with them. But that so many are spacefering

  races.

  “ ‘Many are the world’s wonders,’ “ Lunzie found herself quoting, “ ‘But none more wonderful than man . . .’ Or at least, that’s the way we humans think of it.”

  From his expression, he’d never heard the quotation— but she didn’t think the heavyworlder rebels had been students of ancient literature. A Kipling rhyme broke into her mind and she wondered if Aygar’s East would ever meet civilization’s West, or if they were doomed to be enemies. She dragged her wandering mind back to the present (no quotes, she told herself) and found Aygar watching her with a curious expression.
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  “You’re younger than she is,” he said. No doubt at all who “she” was. “But she calls you her great-great-great grandmother . . . why?”

  “Remember we told you about coldsleep? How the lightweight members of the expedition survived? That isn’t the only time I’ve been in coldsleep; my elapsed age is ... older than you’d expect.” She was not sure why she was reluctant to tell him precisely what it was. “Commander Sassinak is my descendant, just as you’re descended from people who were young when I went into coldsleep on Ireta, people who are old now.”

  He looked more interested than horrified. “And you don’t age at all, in coldsleep?”

  “No. That’s the point of it.”

  “Can you learn at the same time? I’ve been reading about the sleep-learning methods . . . would that work in coldsleep as well?”

  “And let us wake up stuffed with knowledge and still young?” Lunzie shook her head. “No, it won’t work, though it’s a nice idea. If there were a way to feed in information that the person’s missing, waking up forty or fifty years later wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Do you feel old?”

  Aygar’s question was lowest on Lunzie’s list of things to think about. She was sure Sassinak had the same back-and-forth tug faced with someone that many gen-

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  erations removed, an uncertainty about what “age” really meant.

  Lunzie put a touch of Discipline in her voice again. “Not old and feeble, if that’s what you mean. Old enough to know my mind, and young enough to ...” Now how was she going to finish that? “To ... to do what I must,” she finished lamely.