Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “But she shouldn’t be wasting her time,” fumed Bias. Tailler’s arm grew visibly heavier and the smaller biologist quieted.

  “I’m not asking her to do it,” said Tailler, giving Lunzie a friendly but commanding grin. “I’m asking her to see that it’s done. Lunzie’s good at administrative work. She’ll do it. Come on. Let’s leave her with it; you don’t want to be late.”

  And he steered Bias away even as the biologist said, “But she’s a doctor . . .” one last time. Tailler winked over his shoulder at Lunzie, who grinned back.

  It was easy enough to find a clerk willing to enter the data. Lunzie stayed to watch long enough to be sure tile clerk really understood his task, then went on to her first appointment. She waited until well after the local noon to break for her lunch, hoping to miss Bias. Sure enough, he’d already left the dining hall when she arrived, but Conigan and Jarl were eating together. Lunzie joined them.

  “Did you get the data re-entered?” asked Jarl, grinning.

  Lunzie rolled her eyes. “I did not, I swear, enter it

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  myself. Thanks to Tailler, and a clerk out of the university secretarial pool, it was no problem. Just checked, and found that it’s complete, properly labelled, and on file.”

  Jarl chuckled. “Tailler told us when we came in for lunch about Bias’s little fit. He says Bias is like this by the second week of any expedition, to Diplo or anywhere else. He’s worked with him six or seven times.”

  “I’m glad to know it’s not just my aura,” said Lunzie.

  “No, and Tailler says he’s going to talk to you about last night. Seems there’s some reason Bias is upset by women associates having anything to do with local males.”

  “Alpha male herd instinct,” muttered Conigan.

  Jarl shook his head. “Tailler says not. Something happened on one of his expeditions, and he was blamed for it. Tailler wouldn’t tell us, but he said he’d tell you, so you’d understand.”

  Lunzie did not look forward to that explanation. If Bias had peculiar notions, she could deal with them; she didn’t have to be coaxed into sympathy. But she suspected that avoiding Tailler would prove difficult. Still, she could try.

  “I’m having dinner with Zebara tonight,” she said. “Bias will just have to live with it.”

  Jarl gave her a long look. “Not that I agree with Bias, but is that wise? You know?”

  “I know what you told me, but I also know what Zebara did for me over forty years ago. It’s worth embarrassing Bias, and worth risking whatever you fear.”

  “I don’t like anyone’s Security, external, internal, or military. Never been one yet that didn’t turn into someone’s private enforcement agency. You’ve had a nega-‘tive contact with heavyworlders before. You have a near relative in Fleet: reason enough to detain and question you if they’re so minded.”

  “Not Zebara!” Lunzie hoped her voice carried conviction. Far below the surface, she feared precisely this.

  “Just be careful,” Jarl said. “I don’t want to have to risk my neck on your behalf. Nor do I want to answer a lot of questions back home if you disappear.”

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  Lunzie almost laughed, then realized he was being perfectly honest. He had accorded her the moderate respect due a fellow professional, but he felt no particular friendship for her (for anyone?) and would not stir himself to help if she got into trouble. She could change quickly from “fellow professional” to “major annoyance” which in his value system would remove her from his list of acquaintances.

  To add to her uneasiness, Tailler did indeed manage to catch her before she left the center and insisted on explaining at length the incident which had made Bias so sensitive to “relationships” between research staff and locals. A sordid little tale, Lunzie thought: nothing spectacular, nothing to really justify Bias’s continuing reaction. He must have had a streak of prudery before that happened to give him the excuse to indulge it.

  Chapter Six

  Dupaynil, hustled through the scarred and echoing corridors of the transfer station to the control center where the Claw’s captain met him with the suggestion that he “put a leg in it” and get himself out to the escort’s docking bay, had no chance to think things over until he was strapped safely into the escort’s tiny reserve cabin. He had not been passenger on anything smaller than a light cruiser for years; he had never been aboard an escort-class vessel. It seemed impossibly tiny after the Zaid-Dayan. His quarters for however long the journey might be was this single tiny space, a minute slice of a meager pief hardly big enough to lie down in. He heard a loud clang, felt something rattle the hull outside, and then the escort’s insystem drive nudged him against one side of his safety restraints. The little ship had artificial gravity, of a sort, but nothing like the overriding power that made Main Deck on the Zaid-Dayan feel as solid as a planet.

  The glowing numbers on the readout overhead told him two standard hours had passed when he felt a curious twinge and realized they’d shifted into FTL drive. Although he’d had basic training in astrogation, he’d never used it, and had only the vaguest idea what

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  FTL travel really meant. Or where, in real terms, they might be. Somewhere behind (as he thought of it) was the cruiser he had left, with its now-familiar crew and its most attractive captain. Its very angry and most attractive captain. He wished she had not been so transparently suspicious of his motives. She was no planet pirate nor agent of slavers. She had nothing to fear from him. And he would gladly have spent more time with her. He let himself imagine the nights they could have shared. __

  “Sir, we’re safely in FTL, if you want to come up to Main.”

  Dupaynil sighed as the voice over the com broke into that fantasy and thumbed the control. “I’ll be there.”

  He had messages to send, messages he had had no time to send from the transfer station. And with the angry Commander Sassinak sitting on the other end of the block, so to speak, he would not have sent diem from the station anyway. He re-discovered what he had once been taught about escort-class vessels in a few miserable minutes. They were small, overpowered for their mass, and understaffed. No one bunked on Main but the captain who was the pilot. Crew consisted of a round dozen: one other officer, the Jig Executive, eleven enlisted, from Weapons to Environmental. No cook: all the food was either loaded prepackaged, to be reconstituted and heated in automatic units, or synthesized from the Environmental excess.

  ; Dupaynil shuddered; one of the best things about the Zaid-Dayan had been the cooking. With fall crew and ,,jme supercargo, the escort had to ration water: limited :j bathing. The head was cramped: the slots designed to ;K.discourage meditation. There was no gym but the un-^ even artificial gravity and shiplong access tubing offered ;; -Opportunity for’ informal exercise. For those who liked r ^climbing very long ladders against variable G. Worst of J: all, the ship had no 1FTL link.

  “ ‘Course we don’t have IFTL,” said the captain, a Major Ollery whose face seemed to brighten every time

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  Dupaynil found something else to dislike. “We don’t have a Ssli interface, do we?”

  “But I thought . . .” He stopped himsetf in mid-argument. He had seen a briefing item, mention of the ship classes that had IFTL, mention of those which would not get it because of “inherent design constraints.” And escorts were too small to carry a Ssli habitat. “That . . . that stinkerl” he said, as he realized suddenly what Sassinak had done.

  “What?” asked Ollery.

  “Nothing.” Dupaynil hoped his face didn’t show how he felt, torn between anger and admiration. That incredible woman had fooled him. Had fooled an experienced Security officer whose entire life had been spent fooling others. He had had a tap on her communications lines, a tap he was sure she’d never find, and somehow she’d found out. Decided to get rid of him. And how in Mulvaney’s Ghost had she managed to fake an incoming IFTL message? With that originating code?

 
; He sank down on the one vacant seat in the escort’s bridge, and thought about it. Of course she could fake the code, if she could fake the message. That much was easy, if the other was possible. But nothing he’d been taught, in a long and devious life full of such instruction, suggested that an IFTL message could be faked. It would take ... he frowned, trying to think it through. It would take the cooperation of a Ssli: of two Ssli, at least. How would the captain of one ship enlist the aid of the Ssli on another? What land of hold did Sassinak have on her resident Ssli? It had never occurred to him that the Ssli were capable of anything like friendship with humans. Once installed, the sessile Ssli never experienced another environment, never “met” anyone except through a computer interface. Or so he’d thought.

  He felt as if he’d sat down on an anthill. He fairly itched with new knowledge and had no way to convey it to anyone. Ssli could have relationships with humans beyond mere duty. Could they with other races? With Wefts? Were Ssli perhaps telepathic? No one had suspected that. Dupaynil glanced around the escort bridge and saw only human faces, now bent over their own

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  work. He cleared his throat, and the captain looked

  “P;

  “Do you . . . mmm . . . have any Wefts aboard?”

  An odd expression in reply. “Wefts? No, why?” Then before he could answer, OHery’s face cleared. “Oh! You’ve been with Sassinak, I know. She’s got a thing about Wefts, doesn’t she? They say it started back in the Academy. She had a Weft lover or something. That true?” Ollery’s voice had the incipient snigger of those who hope the worst about their seniors.

  Dupaynil suppressed a surge of rage. As a Security officer, he listened to gossip professionally; idle gossip, malicious gossip, juicy gossip, boring gossip. He found it generally dull, and sometimes disgusting: a necessary but unpleasant part of his career. But here, applied to Sassinak, it was infuriating.

  “So far as I know,” he said as smoothly as he could, “that story was started by a cadet expelled for stealing and harrassing women cadets.” He knew the truth of that; he’d seen the files. “Commander Sassinak, and”—he emphasized the rank a little, intentionally, and enjoyed seeing Ollery’s face pale—“keeps her sex life in her own cabin, where it belongs, and where I intend to leave it.”

  A muffled snort behind him meant that either someone else thought the captain had been out of line, or that Dupaynil’s defense implied personal knowledge. He left that alone, too, and hoped no one would ask.

  Silence settled over the bridge; he went on with his thoughts. Telepathic Wefts, and a ship’s captain who could sometimes talk that way with them. He’d seen Ae reports on Sassinak’s first tour of duty. A Ssli who—he suddenly remembered something from the tour before he joined the Zaid-Dayan. Sassinak had reported it as part of her testimony before the Board of Inquiry. Her Ssli, this same Ssli, had taken control of the ship momentarily and flipped it in and out of FTL space. A move which she had described as “unprecedented, but Undoubtedly the reason I am here today.”

  He was beginning to think that Fleet knew far too little about the capabilities of Ssli. But he had no way to out more at the moment so he moved his concen-

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  McCaffreg and Moon

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  tration to Sassinak herself. When he thought of it, her actions were entirely probable. He could have kicked himself for not realizing that she would react quickly and strongly to any perceived threat. She had never liked having him aboard; she had never really trusted him. So his interception of her classified messages, once she found out, would naturally result in some action. Her history suggested a genius for quick response, for instantly recognizing danger and reacting effectively in novel ways.

  And so he was here, out of communication until the escort reached its destination. No way to check the validity of his orders (though he was quite sure now where they had come from) and no way to tell anyone what he’d found out. It occurred to him then, and only then, that Sassinak might have planned even more than getting him off her ship before he could “do something.” Perhaps she had other plans. Perhaps she was not going to take the Zaid-Dayan tamely into Federation Central space, with all its weaponry disabled and all its shuttles locked down.

  For a long moment he fought off panic. She might do ant/thing. Then he settled again. The woman was brilliant, not crazy: aggressive in defending her own, responsive to danger, but not disloyal to Fleet or Federation, not likely to do anything stupid, like bombing FedCentral. He hoped.

  “Panis, take the helm.” Ollery pushed himself back, gave Dupaynil a challenging glance, and stretched.

  “Sir.” Panis, the Executive Officer, had slid forward to the main control panel. He, too, glanced at Dupaynil before looking back at the screen.

  “I’m going on a round,” Ollery said. “Want to come along, Major?” A round of inspection, through all those long access tubes.

  Dupaynil shook his head. “Not this time, thanks. Ill just...” What? he wondered. There was nothing to do on the tiny bridge but stare at the back of Panis’s head or the side of the Weapons Control master mate’s thick neck. A swingaway facescreen hid his face as he tinkered delicately with something in the weapons sys-

  tems. At least, that’s what Dupaynil assumed he was doing with a tiny joystick and something that looked like a silver toothpick. Maybe he was playing a game.

  “You’ll get tired of it,” warned Ollery. Then he was gone, easing through the narrow hatch.

  A lengthy silence, in which Dupaynil noted the scufimarks on the decking by the captain’s seat, the faded blue covers of the Fleet manuals racked for reference below the Exec’s workstation. Finally Jig Panis looked over his shoulder and gave Dupaynil a shy smile. “The Captain’s ticked,” he said softly. “We got into the supply station a day early.”

  “Ollery reporting: Environmental, section 43, number-two scrubber’s up a half-degree.”

  “Logged, sir.” Panis entered the report, thumbed a

  control, and sent “Spec Zigran” off to check on the

  errant scrubber. Then he turned back to Dupaynil.

  “We’d had a long run without liberty,” he said. “The

  ;,. Captain said we’d have a couple of days off-schedule,

  c sort of rest up and then get ready for inspection.”

  Dupaynil nodded. “So . . . my orders upset your !; party-time, eh?”

  · “Yes. Playtak was supposed to be in at the same ; time.”

  ; With a loud click, the Weapons Control mate flicked

  1’ tile facescreen back into place. Dupaynil caught the

  “/• look he gave the young officer; he had seen senior

  noncoms dispense that “You talk too much!” warning

  glance at every rank up to admiral.

  Panis turned red, and fbcussed on his board. Dupaynil ; asked no more; he’d heard enough to know why Ollery : was hostile. Presumably Playtak’s captain was a friend ^; of Ollery’s and they’d agreed to meet at the supply j; station and celebrate. Quite against regulations, because ‘); he had no doubt that they had stretched their orders to VJ make that overlap. It might be innocent, just friendship, ‘.;; or it might have been more. Smuggling, spying, who knows : what? And he had been dumped into the middle of it, . forcing them to leave ahead of schedule. ^ “Too bad,” he said casually. “It certainly wasn’t my %”. idea. But Fleet’s Fleet and orders are orders.”

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  “Right, sir.” Panis did not look up. Dupaynil looked over at the Weapons Control mate whose lowering expression did not ease although it was not overtly hostile.

  “You’re Fleet Security, sir?” asked the mate.

  “That’s right. Major Dupaynil.”

  “And we’re taking you into Seti space?”

  “Right.” He wondered who’d told the man that. Ollery had had to know, but hadn’t he realized those orders were secret? Of course they weren’t really secret, since they were faked orders, but ... He pushed that awa
y. It was too complicated to think about now.

  “Huh. Nasty critters.” The mate put the toothpick-like tool he’d been using into a toolcase, and settled back in his seat. “Always get the feeling they’re hoping for trouble.”

  Dupaynil had the same feeling about the mate. Those scarred knuckles had broken more than a few teeth, he was sure. “I was there with a diplomatic team once,” he said. “I suppose that’s why they’re sending me.”

  “Yeah. Well, don’t let the toads sit on you.” The mate lumbered up, and with a casual wave at the Exec, left the bridge.

  Dupaynil looked after him, a little startled. He had not considered Sassinak strict on etiquette, but no one would have left her bridge without a proper salute to the officer in charge, and permission to withdraw. Of course, this was a smaller ship than he’d ever been on. Was it healthy to have such a casual relationship?

  Then the term “toads” which wasn’t at all an accurate description of the Seti, but conveyed the kind of racial contempt that put Dupaynil on alert. Everyone knew the Federation combined races and cultures that preferred separation, that some hardly-remembered force had compelled the Seti and humans both to sign agreements against aggression. And, for the most part, abide by them. As professional keepers of this fragile peace, Fleet personnel were expected to have a more dispassionate view. Besides, he always thought of the Seti as “lizards.”

  “ ‘Scuse me, sir.” That was another crewman, squeezing past him to get to a control panel on his left.