Sassinak

by Anne McCaffrey

  "So you're going to mingle with the crew, and check that sort of thing, stuff that doesn't come up in the records at all?"

  "Right. And of course, I'll fill you in on whatever I find."

  Dupaynil was the last incoming crewman—when Sassinak thought about it, the perfect arrangement, since anyone transferring out so late would be noticed. The orders came through for them to leave, and soon they were on their way to their assigned position. Sassinak wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry that she had no chance to attend Huron's funeral. Soon she was far too busy to brood about it.

  For one thing, she had to supervise the continuing education of five newly "hatched" ensigns, fresh from the Academy, and eager to prove themselves capable young officers. Fordeliton handled their assignment slots, but she had an interview with each one, and chaired the regular evaluation sessions. It was a very mixed group. Claas, one of the largest heavyworlder women Sassinak had ever seen, came with a special recommendation from Sass's old friend Seglawin at the Academy. ("I can trust you," she'd written, "to perceive the sensitivity and generosity of this ensign—she's bright, of course, and reasonably aggressive, but still too easily hurt. Toughen her, if you can, without sending her straight into the Separationists.") Sassinak looked up—and up—at the broad face with its heavy brow and cheekbones, and mentally shook her head. If this girl was still oversensitive, after four years in the Academy, she had small chance of curing it.

  Timran, stocky and just above the minimum height, had a low rank in the graduating class, and an air of suppressed glee. Clearly he was thrilled (surprised, even?) to have made it through commissioning, and equally delighted to have such a good assignment—and such a commanding officer. Sassinak was used to male appreciation, but his wide-eyed admiration almost embarrassed her. She wondered if she'd really been that callow herself. His only redeeming characteristic, according to the file, was "luck." As his pilot instructor said, "Under normal circumstances, this cadet is adequate at best, and too often careless or rash. But in emergencies, everything seems to come together, and he will do five wrong things that add up to the best combination. If he continues to show this flair in active duty, he may be worth training as a scoutship pilot, or a junior gunnery officer."

  Gori, on the other hand, was a quiet, studious, almost prim young man who had ranked high in academics and sports, but only average in initiative. "The born supply officer," his report said. "Meticulous, precise, will do exactly what he is told, but does not react well in chaotic situations. He should do well in a large crew, and ultimately onstation in a noncombat capacity. Note that this is not lack of courage; he does not panic in danger—but he does not exceed his orders even when this is desirable."

  Kayli and Perran were more "average," in that their abilities seemed to be all on one level. Physically they were something else. Kayli was a stunning diminutive brunette, who could have had a new partner every night if she'd wanted it. What she wanted, apparently, was Gori. Sassinak was not surprised to find that they were already engaged, and planned to marry at the end of their first cruise. What did surprise her was Kayli's continuing disinterest in the other men—very few people were exclusive in their relationships. But despite all suggestions, Kayli spent her off-duty time with Gori, much of it in the junior officer's mess with books spread all over the table. Perran, not at all as overtly attractive as Kayli, turned out to be the vamp of the group. She had an insatiable interest in electronics . . . and men. Ford's description of her stalk of the senior communications tech gave Sassinak her first relaxed laugh in weeks.

  As the trip progressed, Claas seemed content enough, if quiet, and Sassinak noted that she seemed to spend some free time with Perran. It seemed like an odd combination, but Sassinak knew better than to interfere with what worked. Timran got into one scrape after another, always apologetic but undaunted as he discovered the inexorable laws of nature all over again. Sassinak wondered if he'd ever grow up—it didn't seem likely at this point. Only her experience with other such youngsters, who surprisingly grew into competent adults if given the chance and a few years, reassured her. Gori and Kayli occupied each other, and Perran, having caught her first man, soon started looking for another. Sassinak felt a twinge of sympathy for the unlucky quarry; Perran was none too gentle in her disposal of the former lover.

  Dupaynil turned up evidence of several anomalies in the crew. He said quite frankly that most of them were probably innocent errors—data entered wrong in the computer, or misunderstandings of one sort or another. But sorting them out meant hours of painstaking work, correlating all the data and holding more interviews to recheck vital facts.

  "I had no idea that the personnel files were this sloppy," grumbled Sass. "Surely most of these must mean something." They were back to Prosser, and Sassinak was careful to say nothing about her earlier reaction to his holo in the files. His eyes weren't quite as close together as she'd thought earlier. Dupaynil passed over the file with a shrug—nothing wrong with it at all.

  "Have you ever really looked at your own file?" asked Dupaynil with a sly smile.

  "Well, no—not carefully." She had never wanted to brood over the truncated past it would have revealed.

  "Look." He called up her file onscreen, and ran it through his expanded database backups. "According to this, you had two different grades in advanced analytic geometry in prep school . . . and you never turned in your final project in social history . . . and you were involved in a subversive organization back on Myriad—"

  "What!" Sassinak peered at it. "I wasn't in anything—"

  "A club called Ironmaids?" Dupaynil grinned.

  "Oh." She had forgotten completely about Ironmaids, the local Carin Coldae fan club that she and Caris had founded in their last year of elementary school. She and Caris and—who was that other girl? Glya?—had chosen the name, and written to the address on the bottom of the Carin Coldae posters. And almost a year later a packet had come for them: a club charter, replica Carin Coldae pocket lasers, and eight copies of the newest poster. Her parents wouldn't let her put it up where anyone could see it, so she'd had it on the inside of her closet door. "But it wasn't subversive," she said to Dupaynil. "It was just a kid's club, a fan club."

  "Affiliated with the Carin Coldae cult, right?"

  "Cult? We weren't a cult." Even her parents, conservative as they were, had not objected to the club . . . although they'd insisted that a life-size poster of Carin Coldae, in snug silver bodysuit with a blazing laser in each hand, was not the perfect living room decoration.

  Dupaynil laughed aloud. "You see, captain, how easy it is for someone to be caught up in something without realizing it? I suppose you didn't know that Carin Coldae's vast earnings went into the foundation and maintenance of a terrorist organization?"

  "They did?"

  "Oh yes. All you little girls—and boys, too, I must admit—who sent in your bits of change and proofs of purchase were actually funding the Sector XI resurgents, as nasty a bunch of racist bullies as you could hope to find. The Iron Chain, they called themselves. Carin herself, I understand, found them romantic—or one of them, anyway. She was convinced they were misunderstood freedom fighters, and of course they encouraged that view. So your little Ironmaids club, in which I presume you all felt brave and grownup, was a front for terrorists . . . and you had your brush with subversive activity."

  Sassinak thought back to their six months of meetings, before they got tired of the routine. The little charter and handbook, which had them elect officers and discuss "old business" and "new business" according to strict rules. The cookies they'd made and served from a Carin Coldae plate, and the fruit juice they'd drunk from special glasses. If that was subversive activity, how did anyone keep doing it without suffering terminal boredom? She remembered the day they'd disbanded—not to quit watching Carin Coldae films, of course, but because the club itself bored them stiff. They'd gone back to climbing in the nearby hills, where they could pretend that villains were hiding behind th
e rocks.

  "I think the most subversive thing we did," she said finally, "was decide that our school principal looked exactly like the villain in White Rims. I still have trouble believing—"

  Dupaynil shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. Security knows that nearly all the kids in those clubs were innocent. But some of them went on to another level of membership, and a few of those ended up joining the Iron Chain . . . and those have been a continuing problem."

  "I remember . . . maybe a year after we quit holding meetings, we got another mailout, suggesting that we form a senior club. But we'd lost interest, and anyway that was just before the colony was taken."

  "Right. Now—can you explain the two grades in analytic geometry? Or the uncompleted social history project?"

  Sassinak frowned, trying to remember. "As far as I know, I always got top grades in math . . . what are those? Oh . . . sure . . . they were trying a pass/fail system, and gave all of us dual grades in math that semester. It's not two grades, really; it's the same grade expressed two ways. As for social history—I can't remember anything."

  "You see? Three little things, and you can't clear up all of them. And yet it's not important. If we had a pattern—if you seemed to have incompletes in all your social science classes—it might matter. But this is nothing, and most of the odd things in your crew's records are nothing. Still, we must look into all of it, even so silly a thing as a child's fan club."

  Among the odd bits Dupaynil turned up in the next week were a young man who'd chosen to use his matrilineal name rather than his far more prominent patrilineal title, and yet another person of heavyworlder genetic background posing as a normal human. Sassinak came in on the interviews of both these, but neither had the unstable personality of the poisoner. The young man insisted that he'd joined Fleet to get away from his father's influence—he'd been pushed to enter the diplomatic service, but preferred to work with his hands. The heavyworlder said frankly that heavyworlders looked down on him, but that he had found acceptance and even friendships among the lightweights. "If they know I'm from a heavyworld family, they're afraid of my strength—I can tell by the way they hold back. But I can pass as a strong normal, and that suits me just fine. No, I wouldn't help heavyworlders expand their influence—why should I? They're snobs—they teased me and threw me out for being a weakling, as if they really were superior. They're not. Let 'em stay on their worlds, and let me go where I fit in."

  Dupaynil, Sassinak noticed, seemed far more sympathetic to the young man escaping a pushy father than to the heavyworlder. She herself found both convincing.

  They had been on-station a month when their detectors picked up a ship off the normal FTL paths. Its IFF and passive beam gave its ownership as General Freight (again! thought Sass), but from the passive beam they could strip its origin code . . . and that was a heavyworld system.

  Once more the Zaid-Dayan took up the chase, guided by its Ssli perception of the quarry's disturbance of space. And once more it soon became clear that the quarry was headed for someplace unusual.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "And just what is this?" No one answered the navigation officer's murmur; Sassinak leaned over to see what identification data were coming up on the screen. Nav went on. "Mapped . . . hmm . . . on the EEC survey, Ryxi on the fifth planet, which is on this side of the system, and a human team dropped to do some exploration on the fourth, called Ireta. Wonder why it's got a name, if it doesn't have a colony and this was the first exploration team. Something about mesozoic fauna, whatever that means."

  "New contact: ship on insystem drive boosting out of the fifth planet's system—" That went up on the main screen, where they could all see it. "No leech beacon—d'you want to try its IFF, captain?"

  "No—if they're what I think, another pirate escort, they'll notice that," said Sass. "But . . . Ryxi?"

  "Dropped here some forty years ago—colonial permit—"

  "No one's ever suggested Ryxi were involved in this kind of thing," said Dupaynil, looking as confused as Sassinak felt. "Certainly not in anything with heavyworlders. They hate them worse than they do normal humans."

  The Zaid-Dayan crept cautiously after the other two ships, which now seemed to be making for Ireta, a journey of some days on insystem drive. Sassinak wondered what someone might be planning—another "accidental" missile release? Some other dangerous accident? Dupaynil had come up with nothing definite, and although she had moved both the most likely suspects away from their usual duties, that didn't make her feel any safer. She made sure that none of the same people were assigned duty in the quadrant missile rooms, that the stewards' duties were rotated differently. What else could she do? Nothing, really.

  Day by day the two target ships arced toward the distant fifth planet. Sassinak had time to look it up in the Index for herself, and check out the reference to "mesozoic." One of her new Jigs, a biology enthusiast, rattled on to everyone about the possibilities. Huge reptilian beasts from prehuman history on old Terra, superficially similar to some races of reptiloid aliens, but really quite stupid . . . Sassinak grinned to herself. Had she ever had that kind of enthusiasm, and been so unaware of everyone else's lack of interest? She thought not, but indulged him when he showed her his favorite slides from his files.

  Fordeliton happened into the middle of this, and turned out to be another enthusiast, though more restrained. "Dinosaurs!" he said. "Old Terran, or near enough—"

  "Pirates," said Sassinak firmly. "Dangerous, or near enough."

  * * *

  By the time they were close enough to be sure the quarry was intending to land, Sassinak had to worry what the other ship was doing. This could not be a colony raid, as on Myriad—there was no colony to raid. The ship that had come up from the Ryxi world was not holding a particularly good position for an escort—in fact, it almost seemed to be unaware of the transport. Could it be accidental? A ship on regular movement between planets?

  The transport began to decelerate, dropping toward the planet. Behind, the second vessel seemed to be heading for a stable orbit. So far neither had detected the Zaid-Dayan in its stealth mode. But she could not take the cruiser to the surface leaving a possible enemy up in orbit . . . yet she wanted to be sure just what the transport was up to. She needed two ships . . . and there was a way. . . .

  * * *

  "Take a shuttle down, and see where they're going. This world doesn't have a landing grid, that we know of—hard to believe they're actually going to land, but what else could they be doing? Stay in their dead zone, until they're committed to a site, and then if you can possibly get away unseen, do it. Stay below and behind, until their landing pattern—"

  "What about a landing party?" Timran's dark eyes flashed.

  "Ensign, I just said I wanted you to observe and return without alarming them—you don't need a landing party. Just stay behind 'em, low and fast, and once they're down get back here. If I give you a troop of marines, you'll try to find a use for 'em."

  Ford shook his head as they watched the ensigns clamber into the shuttle hatch. "You know Timran would try to take on that entire transport by himself—"

  "Yes, that's why I wanted Gori with him. Gori's got sense, besides being a good shuttle pilot. I just hope they follow orders."

  "Oh, they will. You've got 'em scared proper." The docking bay alarm hooted, and the load crew scurried for airlocks. The docking hatch opened, flowerlike, and the shuttle elevator lifted it level with the ship's outer hull. Sassinak watched the flight deck officer signal the shuttle to start engines, and then boost away from the Zaid-Dayan.

  The shuttle made an uneventful approach to the transport, and on their screens appeared to be snugged into the transport's blind spot. From high orbit, the Zaid-Dayan's technicians observed the next few descending circuits of the planet. Nothing indicated that the transport had realized it had a tail. Nor did any signal come from the ground. Then Com picked up a landing beacon, and radio signals from below.

  "There's the gri
d . . . weird . . . it's on the edge of that plateau."

  "City? Town?"

  "Nothing. Well . . . some infrared indication of cleared fields, plantings . . . but nothing big enough to put in a grid like that."

  "We can take that out easily enough," said Arly. "One lousy transport and landing grid—"

  "But what are they after? There's no colony to raid for slaves, nothing to raid for minerals or other goods. Why's there a grid here, and what are they doing here?"

  "Wait a minute—that's got to be artificial—" Onto the main screen went a shot of something that looked like a working open-pit mine. "I haven't seen anything like that without someone nearby. A mine? Iron? Copper?"

  Sassinak looked at the puzzled faces around her, and grinned. It had to be important. And this time she had a degree of freedom to act. "A landing grid, a beacon, an open pit mine, and no city—on a world supposedly not open for colonization. I think it's time we stripped our friend's IFF."