by neetha Napew
He could almost believe that. It made sense, criminal sense. But if it were true, Ollery or the mate who he suspected of being the senior within the criminal organization, should have known from the beginning about him, should not have needed to discover his taps to suspect him. Of course, there were always glitches in the transfer of data within an organization. Perhaps the message explaining him to Ollery was even now back at the supply station.
Panis had let him do a bit of first aid, a sign of trust that Dupaynil valued. The jig’s bruised face wasn’t all the damage. He had a massive bruise along his ribs on one side.
“Ollery,” he said when Dupaynil raised his eyebrows at it. “That’s when I realized, or at least, I didn’t know what was going on. Siris had me down, and then I saw die captain with the needier. He yelled for Siris to roll aside, and kicked me, and then you ...”
“Yes,” said Dupaynil, interrupting that. “And it’s going to hurt you to breathe for awhile. Well have to keep an eye on your color, make sure you don’t start collecting fluid in that lung. Why don’t you start teaching me what I need to know to do the heavy work while we’re going wherever we’re going? You don’t need to be hauling up and down ladders.”
He had had Panis fetch a clean uniform from his quarters, and now helped him into it. Ice for the bruises. At least they had plenty of that. He mentioned the bay fiill of water ice and suggested thawing some for showers.
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“III tell you another thing that bothers me,” Dupaynil said with disarming frankness when they were back on the bridge. “I’m no longer sure that my orders to leave the Zaid-Dayan and board this ship were genuine.”
“What? You think someone sent false orders?” Dupaynil nodded. “My orders carried an initiation code that really upset Commander Sassinak. She claimed she’d seen it before, years ago, right before someone tried to kill her, on her first cruise. I always thought that initiation code simply meant the Inspector General’s office. One particular comp station, say, or a particular officer. But even she thought it was strange that she had to put in at a supply station. That I was being yanked off her ship when she had previous orders that all of us were to appear as witnesses in the Ireta trial.” He had explained the bare outline of that toPanis. “I could hardly believe it, but they’d come by IFTL link. No chance of interference. But you heard what they said on tape and what Sins said. If there are high-placed traitors in Fleet, especially in Personnel Assignment, and there’d almost have to be for this crew to have stayed together so long, it would be no trick at all to have me transferred.”
“Hard to prove,” Panis said, sipping a mug of hot soup.
“Worse than that.” Dupaynil spread his hands. “Say that’s what happened and they expected me to be killed, with a good excuse, like that malfunctioning escape pod. They still might take the precaution of wiping all records of those orders out of the computers. Suppose they try to claim Commander Sassinak or 1 faked those orders. Then, if I turn up alive, they can get me on that. If I don’t, they can go after her. She’s caused them a lot of trouble over the years, and I’d bet Randy Paraden still holds a big, prickly grudge where she’s concerned. Faking orders or interfering with an IFTL link is big enough to get even a well-known cruiser captain in serious trouble.”
“I see. It does make sense they’d want you away from her, with the evidence you’d gathered. And if they could discredit her later ...”
“I wonder how many other people they’ve managed
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to finagle away from her crew,” Dupaynil went on, embroidering for the mere fun of it. “If we find out that one officer’s been called away for a family crisis, and another’s been given an urgent assignment? Well, I think that would prove it.”
Panis, he was glad to see, accepted all this without difficulty. It did, after all, make sense. Whereas what Sassinak had done, and Dupaynil was still convinced she had done it, made sense only in personal terms: he had trespassed on her hospitality. At least his new explanation might clear her and laid guilt only on those already coated with it.
“So what do you think we should do, aside from avoiding all the unknown friends of the late Major Ollery?”
Dupaynil smiled at him. He liked the way the young man referred to Ollery, and he liked the dry humor.
“I think we should find out who they are, preferably by raiding Ollery’s files. And then it would be most helpful if we’d turn up at the Ireta trial. Tanegli’s trial, I should say. Then we ought to do something about your prisoners before their pod air supplies run out.”
“I forgot about that.” Panis’s eyes flicked to the computer. “Oh, they’re still on ship’s air. Unless you did something to that, too.”
“Didn’t have time. But they don’t have recycling capacity for more than a hundred hours or so, do they? I don’t think either of us wants to let them out, even one by one.”
“No. But I can’t...”
“You can offer them coldsleep, you know. The drugs are there, and the cabinets. They’d be perfectly safe for as long as it takes us to get them to a Fleet facility.”
Panis nodded slowly. “That’s a better alternative than what I thought of. But what if they won’t do it?”
“Warn them. Wait twelve hours. Warn them again and cut them off ship’s air. That’ll give them hours to decide and prepare themselves. Are these the standard pods, with just over 100 hours of air?”
“Yes. But what if they still refuse?”
Dupaynil shrugged. “If they want to die of suffoca-
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tion rather than fece a court martial, that’s their choice. We can’t stop it without opening the pods and I can’t advise that. Only Siris has any injuries, and his aren’t bad enough to prevent his taking the induction medications.”
When push came to shove, though most of them blustered, only three waited until the ship ventilators cut out. The senior mate, Dupaynil noticed, was one of diem. All the crew put themselves into coldsleep well before the pod air was gone. When the last one’s bioscans went down, Dupaynil and Panis celebrated with the best the galley offered.
Dupaynil had found that the crew kept special treats in their quarters. Nothing as good as fresh food, but a tin of sticky fruitcake and a squat jar of expensive liquor made a party.
“I suppose I should have insisted on sealing the crew quarters,” Panis said around a chunk of cake.
“But you needed to search them for evidence.”
“Which I’m finding.” Dupaynil poured for both of them with a flourish. “The mate kept a little book. Genuine pulp paper, if you can believe that. I’m not sure what all the entries mean . . . yet. . . but I doubt very much they’re innocent. Ollery’s personal kit had items far out of line for his Fleet salary, not to mention that nonissue set of duelling pistols. We’re lucky he didn’t blow a hole in you with one of those.”
“You sound like a mosquito in a bloodbank,” Panis grumbled. “Fairly gloating over all the data you might Sid.”
“I am,” Dupaynil agreed. “You’re quite right; even without this,” and he raised his glass, “I’d be drunk with delight at the possibilities. Do you have any idea how hard we normally work for each little smidgen of information? How many times we have to check and recheck it? The hours we burn out our eyes trying to find correlations even computers can’t see?”
“My heart bleeds,” said Panis, his mouth twitching.
“And you’re only a Jig. Mulvaney’s Ghost, but you’re going to make one formidable commodore.”
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“If I survive. I suppose you’ll want to tap into the computer tomorrow?”
“With your permission.” Dupaynil sketched a bow from his seat. “We have to hope they were complacent enough to have only simple safeguards on the ticklish files. If Ollery thought to have them self-destruct if a new officer took command ...”
Panis paled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“1 had. But then I thought of Ollery. That kind
of smugness never anticipates its own fall. Besides, you had to log a command change. It was regulation.”
“Which you always follow.” Panis let that lie, a challenge of sorts.
Dupaynil wondered what he was driving at, precisely. They’d worked well together so for. The younger man had seemed to enjoy his banter. But he reminded himself that he did not really know Panis. He let his fece show the fatigue he felt, and sag into its age and his usually-hidden cynicism.
“If you mean Security doesn’t always follow the letter of regulations, then you’re right. I freely admit that planting taps on this ship was both against regulations and discourteous. Under the circumstances . . .” Dupaynil spread his hands in resignation to the inevitable.
Panis flushed but pursued the issue. “Not that so much. You had reasons for suspicion that I didn’t know. Anyway it saved our lives. But I’d heard about Commander Sassinak, that she didn’t follow regulations as often as not. If this is some ploy of hers?”
Blast. The boy was too smart. He’d seen through the screen. Dupaynil let the worry he felt edge his voice.
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Admiral Spirak. He captained the battle platform I v .”
“Spirak!” Relief and contempt mixed gave that more force than he’d intended. Dupaynil lowered his voice and kept it even. “Panis, your admiral is the last person who should complain of someone else’s lack of respect for regulations. I won’t tell you why he’s still spouting venom about Sassinak, even though she saved his ca-
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reer once. Gossip was Ollery’s specialty. But if you ever wondered why he’s got only two stars at his age and why he’s commanding Fleet’s only nonoperational battle platform, there’s a damn good reason. I’ve seen Commander Sassinak’s files, and it’s true she doesn’t always fight an engagement by the book. But she’s come out clean from encounters that cost other commanders ships. The only regulations she bends are those that interfere with accomplishing the mission. She’s fer more a stickler for ship discipline than anyone on this ship was.”
Now Panis looked as if he’d been dipped in boiling water.
“Sorry, sir. But he’d said if I ever did end up serving with one of her officers, look out. That she had a following, but more loyal to her than to Fleet.”
“I don’t suppose he told you about the promotion party he gave himself? And nobody came? It’s useless to tell you, Panis. Youll have to decide for yourself. She’s popular, but she’s also smart and a good commander. As for regulations, I felt that my duties entitled me to bend a few on her ship and she straightened me out in short order.”
“What’d you do? Put a tap on her?*
Dupaynil gave that a hard look, and Panis suddenly realized what that could mean and turned even redder than before.
“I didn’t mean . . . That’s not what ...”
“Good.” Dupaynil gave no ground with that tone. “I did attempt to monitor some communications traffic without giving her proper notice. We were looking for a saboteur, as I told you. I thought a little snooping along the corridors, in the crew’s gym, and so on, wouldn’t hurt. She felt differently.” That this was only distantly related to what had really happened bothered him not at all. She had been angry. He had put in surveillance devices without her permission. That much was true. “I don’t consider myself one of Commander Sassinak’s officers,” Dupaynil went on. “My assignment to her ship was temporary duty only, a special mission to unearth this saboteur.”
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He could not tell if this satisfied Panis, and he didn’t really care. He had liked the younger officer but suggestive questions about Sassinak rubbed him the wrong way. Why? He wasn’t sure. He had not been tempted to involve himself with her. Her relationship with Ford was clear enough. So why did he feel such rage when someone criticized? It was worth thinking over later, when they’d found or not found the evidence he needed, and decided what to do with it.
Dupaynil’s excursions into the ship’s computers yielded all he could have wished for. He knew his satisfaction showed. He insisted on sharing his findings with Panis so the younger officer would know why.
“Besides,” he said, “if someone scrags me successfully, you’ll still have a chance to break up the conspiracy. “
“How?” Panis looked up from the hardcopy of one of the more startling files, and tapped it with his finger. “If all these people are really part of it, then Fleet itself is hopeless.”
“Not at all.” Dupaynil put his fingertips together. “Do you know how many officers Fleet has? This is less than five percent. Your reaction is as dangerous as they are. If you assume that five percent rotten means the whole thing’s rotten, then you’ve done their work for them.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“No. Most people don’t. But let’s be very glad we have to evade only five percent. And let’s figure out how to get this information back to some of the 95% who aren’t involved in it.”
Panis had an odd expression on his face. “I’m not really ... 1 mean, my skills in navigation are only average. And the computer in this ship holds only a limited number of plots.”
“Plots?”
“Pre-programmed courses between charted points. I’m not sure I could drop us out of FTL, and then get us somewhere else that’s not in the computer.”
Dupaynil had assumed that all ship’s officers were
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competent in navigation. He opened his mouth to ask what was Panis’s problem, and shut it again. He wasn’t able to pilot the ship, or even maintain the environmental system without Panis’s instructions, so why should he expect everything of a young Jig?
“Does this mean we’re stuck with the course and destination Ollery put in?” A worse thought erupted into his mind with the force of an explosion. “Do we even know where we’re going?”
“Yes, we do. The computer’s perfectly willing to tell me that. We’re headed for Seti space, just as your orders specified.” Panis frowned. “Where did you think we might be going?”
“It suddenly occurred to me that Ollery might never have entered that course, or might have changed it, since he was planning to kill me. Seti space! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Dupaynil said. “Assuming my orders were faked, was that chosen as a random destination, or for some reason?”
Panis fiddled with his seat controls and glanced at something on the command screen next to him.
“Well . . . from where we were, that gives the longest stretch in FTL. Time enough for Ollery to figure out what to do with you and how. Perhaps it was that. Or maybe they had a chore for him in Seti space, in addition to scragging you.”
“So, you’re saying that we have to go where we’re going before we can go anywhere else?”
“If you want to be sure of getting anywhere anytime soon,” Panis said. “We’ve been in undefined space— FTL mode—for a long time, and if we drop out before the node, I have no idea where we might end up. We do have the extra supplies that the crew would have needed, but...”
“All right. On to Seti space. I suppose I could find something to do there, in the way of digging up dirt, although what we have already is more than enough.” Dupaynil stretched. “But you do realize that while the personnel listed as on duty with the embassy to the Sek are no* on Ollery’s list of helpers, this means nothing.
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They could be part of the same conspiracy without Ollery having any knowledge of it.”
The outer beacon to the Seti systems had all the courteous tact of a boot in the face.
“Intruders be warned!” it bleated in a cycle of all the languages known in FSP. “Intruders not tolerated. Intruders will be destroyed, if not properly naming selves immediately.”
Panis set Claw’s transmitter to the correct setting and initiated the standard Fleet recognition sequence. He was recovering nicely, Dupaynil thought, from the shock of his original captain’s treachery and the necessity of hel
ping in a mutiny. He did not blurt out everything to the Fleet officer who was military attache at the embassy nor did he request an immediate conference with die Ambassador. Instead, he simply reported that he had an officer with urgent orders insystem and let Dupaynil handle it from there.
“I’m not sure I understand, Commander Dupaynil, just what your purpose here is.”
That diplomatic smoothness had once seemed innocuous. Now, he could not be sure if it was habit or conspiracy.
“My orders,” Dupaynil said, keeping his own tone as light and unconcerned as the other’s, “are to check the shipping records of the main Seti commercial firms involved in trade with Sector Eighteen human worlds. You know how this works. I haven’t the foggiest notion what someone is looking at, or for, or why they couldn’t do this long distance.”
“It has nothing to do with that Iretan mess?”
Again, it might be only ordinary curiosity. Or something much more dangerous. Dupaynil shrugged, ran his finger along the bridge of his nose and hoped he passed for a dandified Bretagnan.
“It might, I suppose. Or it might not. How would I know? There I was happily ensconced on one of the better-run cruisers in Fleet, with a woman commander of considerable personal ah ... charm . . .”He made it
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definitely singular, but with a tonal implication that the plural would have been more natural, and decided that a knowing wink would overdo his act. “I would have been quite satisfied to finish the cruise with her . . . her ship.” He shrugged again, and gave a deep sigh. “And then I find myself shipped out here, just because I have had contact with the Seti before, without arousing an incident, I suppose, to spend days making carefully polite inquiries to which they will make carefully impolite replies. That is all I know, except that if I had an enemy at headquarters, he could hardly have changed my plans in a way I would like less.”