Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “If they don’t blow us away,” said Lunzie. “That’s not Sassinak up there.”

  “She’d have left the ship to her most competent

  275

  combat officer. The best we can do now is make sure whatever was planned down here doesn’t work.”

  Lunzie was unconvinced. “But what can one cruiser do against a whole fleet?”

  “Buy us time, if nothing else. Don’t worry about what you can’t change. What we’ll have to do is make sure Insystem has the alarm, and believes it, and get Sassinak out of whatever trap she’s in.”

  The tiny clinic attached to Fleet Central Systems Command had but one corridor that opened directly into the back offices of the Command building. Lunzie followed Coromell, noticing that the enlisted personnel looked as stunned to see him as he had looked when he heard about the Seti fleet.

  “Sir? When did the Admiral arrive?” asked one, almost but not quite barring the way to the lift marked “Admiral’s use only.”

  “About thirty hours ago. Apparently our security confused at least a few people.” He punched the controls and the lift door sighed open.

  “But, sir, that commander . . . the murder ...”

  “Put a lock on it, Algin. Who’s been speaking for us?”

  “Lt. Commander Danish, sir. He’s up . . .”

  But Coromell had closed the lift door, and now gave Lunzie a rueful smile.

  “I knew that. But he doesn’t know that Dallish is the one officer here I really trust. His father and I were close friends, years ago. Dallish has been covering for me.”

  “Shouldn’t you have stayed under cover longer?”

  “With Sassinak still accused of murdering me? No. Showing up alive should shake them up just as much as you shook the conspirators by waking up in the midst of their plot. Whoever thought he killed me will wonder who the victim was. And whoever sent the victim to take my place will wonder if we’re onto him. We soon will be.”

  Lunzie found Coromell’s office a relief after the pastel-walled, determinedly soothing atmosphere of the clinic suite. A great arc of desk took the place of the command module onboard a ship. He grinned when he saw her expression.

  “Yes, it’s an indulgence. But one which keeps me

  276

  277

  thinking like a deepspace admiral, and not a planet-dweller.”

  A younger man, whom Lunzie assumed was “Dallish,” stood aside as they entered, then handed Coromell a sheaf of thin plastic strips. One wall had a window looking out across the city—Lunzie’s first live view of the hub of interplanetary government. It looked, to her, like any other large city. Below, a broad street had both slideways and vehicular traffic: bright blue and green monorail trains. She glanced around Coromell’s office again. The dark-blue flat-piled carpet that seemed to be favored by Fleet officers, a bank of viewscreens on the opposite wall, racks of datacubes, fichefiles, even a row of books bound in plain blue. “Lunzie!”

  She looked away from a row of exquisitely detailed model ships, displayed against a painted starscape. Coromell and Dallish had tuned in one of the civilian news programs, now showing a view that Lunzie realized was the docking tube of a ship at Station. At first she did not hear whatever the news commentator was saying. Over the tube, the electronic display had gone from green to orange; the ship’s name Zaid-Dayan and status “Un-dock: Warning” blinked on and off

  A commentator stepped in front of the vicam, and Lunzie made herself listen to the sleek-haired woman with the professional frown.

  “Most unusual behavior has prompted some to suggest that the missing captain of this dangerous ship may have been contaminated with a psychoactive agent, even a disease which has spread to crewmembers. We have just been informed that the Insystem Federation Security teams whose duty it is to ensure that these warships cannot fire their weapons at innocent civilians, these teams are being evicted from this ship. Even now,” and the commentator’s head turned slightly so that Lunzie could see out-of-focus movement behind her, up the tube toward the ship. “I believe, yes, here they are, quite against their will ...”

  Hands on heads, the men and women clumping down the length of the tube looked unhappy enough. Behind

  them were figures in ominous gray and green armor, helmets locked down, and very impressive-looking weapons in hand.

  “Security team weapons,” Coromell commented to Dallish. “Notice that? Their own are probably still locked up. They disarmed the warden teams.” He sounded almost gleeful. “Probably Wefts, shifting on ‘em.”

  “Excuse me,” the commentator was saying, thrusting her microphone into the faces of the first to exit, while the camera zoomed at them. “Could you comment on the mental stability of the crew of this ship? Is there any danger that they might turn ...”

  “Bunch of flippin’ maniacs!” snarled one of the men. He had a ripening bruise over one eye, and a split lip. “Gone totally bonkers, they have, hallucinatin’ about invaders from the deep I”

  “Krimsl” Dallish glanced at Lunzie and back to the screen. “If they take that line ...”

  Coromell was already punching commands on his desk. Lunzie’s gaze flicked back and forth between him and the newscast. She found it hard to concentrate on either. Those exiting the ship had clumped around the newscaster and her crew; behind them, the camera barely showed something moving again in the tube.

  Suddenly a loud squeal made everyone on the screen

  jump and they moved back. The camera focussed on a

  | large red hatch sliding across the tube opening, as the

  status board changed to “Undock: ACCESS CLOSED.”

  The news program shifted to someone in a studio.

  “Thank you, Cerise,” said a male ‘caster who then turned to the front. “As you can see, something ominous is going on with the Fleet heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan, whose former captain, a Fleet officer named Sassinak, is sought in connection with a murder investigation on the surface of this planet. We have no explanation for the expulsion of the security teams or for the cruiser’s apparent intention to undock from the Station. ;.We have learned from sources close to the Federation Justice Department Prosecutor’s office that valuable evidence and a witness in the upcoming trail of the ^jheavyworlder conspirator Tanegli are also missing. Al-

  278

  though we cannot speculate at this time on any connection between the two, our correspondent Li Tsan is standing by at the office of the Justice Department Chief Prosecutor, Ser Branik. Li, what can you tell us about the Justice Department’s reaction to this latest Fleet outrage?”

  “Well, the Prosecutor isn’t saying anything. This situation is still too new. But we have heard suggestions that the Zaid-Dagan became contaminated with some kind of spore or viral particle, on die proscribed planet Ireta, which is affecting the mental processes of anyone exposed.”

  “And would that apply as well to the witnesses expected to arrive in the next day or so from the EEC vessel . . . the ... uh ... former co-governors, Kai and Varian?”

  “It certainly could. We expect to hear that they may be quarantined and their transmitted testimony might well be scrutinized more closely. If such a disease did cause mental instability, that might even be a defense for the original alleged conspirators. Certainly Tanegli hasn’t appeared normally healthy in any of die interviews we’ve seen.”

  “NOI” Lunzie startled herself as well as Coromell and Dallish with that explosion. They stared at her. She got her voice back under control, choked down the less acceptable phrases she wanted to useT and said, “It’s ridiculous nonsense, and any doctor would know that at once. There’s no disease that could make Sassinak and Arly crazy after a brief exposure, that wouldn’t have affected the rest of us all those years. To the point where we couldn’t have survived, Tanegli is not some innocent overcome by alien spores. He’s as guilty as anyone could be, and I’ll see him convicted.”

  “Not if this goes on,” Dallish said, pointing to the scre
en. He had turned the sound down, but Lunzie could see that the mouths were still moving.

  “He’s right,” Coromell said, putting down the comunit he’d been holding. “I can’t convince anyone to listen to me. Even those who believe I’m who I say I am. Someone’s put a lock on this thing, hard and fast. That,” and he nodded at the unit, “was the Assistant

  279

  Longscan Supervisor, and as far as he’s concerned there’s not a ship within a couple of light-years that he didn’t have logged for scheduled arrival months ago. That’s one I trust, normally as suspicious as I am, but he’s believing his machines and his outstation crews. And someone had already reached him, insisting that it was his duty to squelch any panic in the week before the ; Grand Council and Winter Assizes open.”

  “Who?” asked Dallish. “I’ve never seen anything Mocked that fast. It was as if they had everything in place.”

  “Of course they would have,” Coromell said. “Once

  · they knew about their time bomb, about Ireta, they’d Start setting up ways to counter anything we could do. I’m suddenly becoming very suspicious about that hunting trip.”

  “But, sir, you always go rhuch hunting.” ’ ‘True, but you remember I thought of not going, ; with Sassinak coming in and the trial approaching. Then ‘they had that ‘cancellation’ in Bakli Lodge. Well, no matter now. We can dig into that later, assuming we ; ensure a later.”

  “Sir, if I may suggest?” Dallish looked both embar-

  and determined. “Go ahead.”

  “Lunzie’s now the single witness in the Iretan case. She’s an obvious target even if she hadn’t brought back all that from Diplo.”

  “She ought to be safe enough here ...” Coromell ! began, and then he shook his head. “Except that we’ve ; already passed word to the Prosecutor’s office that she’s j;pnplanet”

  “And we have to assume a leak in that office. Yes, ,8far.”

  “Mmm. We’ll just have to make sure we have none are.” His comunit buzzed and Coromell picked it up. “Ah . . . Mr. Justice Vrix. Yes, as a matter of feet, but

  · you have her taped deposition on file. No, No, that’s ipossible. Because . . . yes. Precisely. And until that time, I’m not risking the government’s remaining wit-i.” He flipped a toggle and smiled at Lunzie. “You

  280

  281

  see? We must not let you out of our sight between now and the trial.”

  Fleet shuttle Seeker

  This time, Ensign Timran told himself, he would do everything right the first time. Not by accident, but by the exercise of cool judgment and keen intelligence. He knew that he’d been chosen for this mission because he had a habit of being lucky. But this time he had a team of marines, a pair of Weft officers (that they outranked him hardly mattered: while he piloted the shuttle, he ranked everyone) and authorization to rescue his revered captain. He was going to do everything right. He would make no mistakes.

  Tongue caught between his teeth, he eased the shuttle off its platform, remembered to key in the appropriate signal to the Zaid-Dayan to confirm liftoff, remembered to check the low-link and high-link connections with the cruiser’s com shack. From this vantage, the Station looked as if a mischievous child had taken three or four sets of TekiLink toys and mismatched half the connections. As a habitat for gerbils, it might have a certain charm but it lacked die clean functional lines Timran approved of in Fleet installations. The cruiser had been docked at the outer end of one long arm; he had another such to dodge, with a row of boxy insystem transports.

  Then he was clear, with an easy drop trajectory down to the shuttleport. Except that he was not going to the shuttleport. He hadn’t told Arly: she was busy enough. And his orders said nothing specific about the shutdeport, just that he was to go render assistance to Sassinak. He was sure she wasn’t at the shuttleport. If she had been, she’d have contacted the cruiser before now. So going to the shuttleport would only involve a lot of hashing around with civilians who didn’t want a Fleet shuttle in their airspace anyway.

  Beside him, one of the Wefts had tuned in the civilian newscast. Tim almost glanced at it when he heard the commentator’s question to the evicted Security team

  and the answers, but he remembered what had happened last time he got distracted. More to the point were the angry questions from Airspace Control. They seemed to think he would interfere with scheduled traffic. He smiled to himsetf. Military shuttles would not have survived in service if they’d been blind to other craft. He knew where everything around him was at least as well as Airspace Control. And all of them knew, from hearing the smug Security teams brag about it, that FedCentral had no inner air defenses The Bronthin had refused to allow them. From Tim’s point of view, the only weapons down there were little stuff.

  “We’re not goin’ to the ‘port?” asked the Weft, Kiksi,

  her name was. If she was a she . . . Tim had never

  bothered to find out much about Wefts. He didn’t

  I- dislike them, he just found his own amusements far

  more interesting than theoretical knowledge about aliens.

  “No,” Tim said. “They’ll just try to impound us. And Commander Sassinak can’t be there, or she’d have contacted us.”

  “Good thought,” said the Weft. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Nobody does,” said Tim. He had punched up the mapping function and was now trying to decide just where he did want to land. FedCentral offered little open land close to where he thought Sassinak might be.

  “Not strictly true,” said the other Weft, Tenant Sricka. , “Sassinak is not where the shuttle can reach her.”

  This time he did look away, though he kept his hands steady. “You know where she is? Why didn’t you tell Arly?”

  “She kept moving. She was under surface. We had no return contact.”

  “Under surface . . . like in a submarine?” FedCentral ihad only one ocean and Tim had not suspected it of submarine transport.

  A chuckle from Kiksi, that made his ears burn. “No

  . . under the city. Subways? Maintenance tunnels?

  e don’t know. We don’t talk with her in human Spshape. We’re not made for it. It’s direction sense only. l-When we are nearer, I can shift, and then perhaps

  282

  touch her mind more directly. But you, where are you planning to land the shuttle? And how to prevent detection?” “I’m not sure.”

  He knew his ears were bright red and the back of his neck, under his uniform. It had seemed like a good idea, and even before Arly called on him, he’d daydreamed about rescuing Sassinak, poring over the maps of the vast complex. The shuttle could land on unprepared ground, could even make a direct vertical drop of fifty to a hundred feet, although he’d never done it. But he couldn’t land on the roofs of ordinary buildings or on slideways or monorail tracks.

  Sricka reached over and tapped the map-control console; the area he’d been watching slid aside, and another came up. Open, not too rough, and fairly near the city. He didn’t recognize the code.

  “Land fill,” the Weft said. “That end’s already covered, and the replanting cycle’s only up to grass. And that yellow line there, that’s a subway tunnel for returning workers to their housing. It’s your decision, but if I were flying this thing, that’s where I’d go.”

  He had no better ideas, and he was not about to ask for a vote. He could almost feel the marines’ amusement tickling his backbone.

  “Looks good,” he said, trying to sound casual. “And

  thanks.”

  “Will it alarm you if I shift?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Nonetheless, he had to gulp hard when the ordinary human figure beside him turned into a mass of extra joints, spiky protruberanees, and all too many legs. And a row of bright blue eyes. Instead of staring, he entered his desired destination in the shuttle’s navigational computer and saw to it that the course changes all went as planned. By the time he neared t
he landfill, flying the shuttle as if it were any aircraft, he knew that the Zaid-Dayan was long gone. He had to do it right this time. If he messed up, there would be no rescue.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a moment, following Aygar up into the more public tunnels, Sassinak thought how she could explain all this to a Board of Inquiry, if she survived long enough. There were no Rules of Engagement covering this sort of thing. She remembered something about “accepting civilian volunteers into a military mission” —not recommended, but it did happen—and more than one passage strongly cautioning Fleet officers from involving themselves in local politics. And this was hardly local politics. She had taken on some part of the Federation itself and even though she considered the people involved to be traitors, they could say the same of her.

  She dared not think too far ahead or the weight of it would crush her. A single Fleet captain against the most powerful families in the Federation, against the massed pirates, plus the Seti? And with nothing but a ragged bunch of crazies and losers? How could she even be thinking of this? Yet the thought daunted her for only a moment. She had survived the raid on her home, against odds as high. She had survived battle after battle in space where any mistake could have killed her, and some nearly had. She had survived the

  283

  284

  jealousy of other officers, a hundred mischances, to be where she was now. If not you, who? Abe had said more than once.

  No time for letting her mind drift, not even to the things Fleur had told her. She would have time later for more such talks, for long reminiscences, for shared tears and laughter, or they would both be dead. For now, she had Aygar to get safely to the rendezvous with his student friend, and whatever came after. She patted her midsection where the extra bulk Fleur had insisted she stuff into the pale blue worksuit felt itchy and unfamiliar. Even worse was the slight dowager’s hump that prickled when she twitched her shoulders, trying to remember to slump. Although she’d seen in the mirror that the gray streaks Fleur had added to her hair as well as decidedly wrong makeup made her look years older, she kept thinking a more complete disguise would have been better. Aygar, whose height and shoulders made him unmistakable, had been turned into a male fashion plate. A voluminous magenta shirt unlaced halfway down his chest and tucked into tight gray shorts made him look like anything but fugitive. His mapper button now looked like one of the jewels studding a huge medallion hung on stout chain around his neck.