Generation Warriors

by Anne McCaffrey

  "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!"

  "Krims!" 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 focused 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 heavyworlder conspirator Tanegli are also missing. Although 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-Dayan became contaminated with some kind of spore or viral particle, on the 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 the interviews we've seen."

  "NO!" 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 use, 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 screen. He had turned the sound down, but Lunzie could see that the mouths were still moving.

  "He's right," Coromell said, putting down the comm. unit 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 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 blocked 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 embarrassed 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 onplanet."

  "And we have to assume a leak in that office. Yes, sir."

  "Mmm. We'll just have to make sure we have none here." His comm unit buzzed and Coromell picked it up. "Ah . . . Mr. Justice Vrix. Yes, as a matter of fact, but you have her taped deposition on file. No. No, that's impossible. Because . . . yes. Precisely. And until that time, I'm not risking the government's remaining witness." He flipped a toggle and smiled at Lunzie. "You 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 the 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 shuttleport, 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 himself. 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.

&nb
sp; "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 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 had 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? We don't know. We don't talk with her in human shape. We're not made for it. It's direction sense only. When we are nearer, I can shift, and then perhaps 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 protruberances, 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 the 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 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.

  The first "uptowners" they saw hardly glanced at them. The upsloping tunnel, linking one subway level with another, had streams of pedestrians scurrying in both directions. Most wore one-piece worksuits in grays, browns, and blues; the others were dressed as flamboyantly as Aygar. Homebound workers, Fleur had said, mingling with the pleasure-hunters who also tended to "change shifts" at rush hours. Sassinak trailed him, trying to look as if she merely happened to be going in the same direction. In that brief time below, she'd forgotten how noisy large groups could be. Announcements no one could have understood boomed from the levels below and above; the scurrying feet were overlaid by a constant roar of conversation. A flare of Ryxi screeched, threatening, and the humans parted around them. A gray uniform approached at a jog.

  At the next level, the upbound stream bifurcated, a third veering left and two-thirds right. Even more noise broke over them. The synthesized voice of the transportation computers announcing train arrivals and departures, warning passengers away from the rails, repeating the same list of safety rules over and over. Friends met on the platforms with squeals of delight as if they had not seen each other at rush hour the day before. Less demonstrative workers glared at them or muttered brief curses. Aygar and Sassinak both turned right. Here, service booths backed the subway platforms: fountains, restrooms, public callbooths, even a few food booths. As he'd been directed, Aygar turned into the third of these. Sassinak paused as if to look over the menu displayed, then ducked in after him.

  He was already shaking the hand of a much smaller young man with a milder version of the same outfit; small-flowered purple print shirt, and looser green shorts but higher-heeled boots. Backing him were two other young men, similarly dressed, and a girl who seemed to have stepped out of a Carin Coldae rerun. Her silvery snugsuit clung to the right curves, all the way down to sleek black boots, and her emerald green scarf was knotted casually on the left shoulder. Across the back of the bodysuit ran a stenciled black chain design and short lengths of minute black chain hung from her earlobes.

  Sassinak managed not to snicker. Innocent bravado deserved a passing nod of respect, although she could have told the young woman that carrying a real weapon where she'd stashed her emerald-green plastic imitation needler would make it hard to draw in time for practical use. Her own hand checked the weapon Aygar had taken from the dead man behind the bar. She moved past them, up to the counter, and ordered a bowl of fried twists that were supposed to be real vegetables, not processor output. Whatever it was, it would taste better than her last meal. She paid for it from the money Fleur had given her and sat down at a largish table near the clump of young people. They were talking busily
, waving their arms and looking like any other group of young people in a public place. Now they were moving up, ordering their own food, and then Aygar led them to the table she'd chosen.

  "Can we sit here?" asked the darkest of the young men. He was sitting already. "We need a big table."

  Sassinak nodded, hoping she looked like a slightly intimidated middle-aged office worker. She ate a couple of fries and decided that it didn't matter if they were real veggies or processed: they were delicious.

  "I'm Jonlik," he said, smiling brightly at her. "This is Gerstan, and this is Bilis, and our Coldae clone is Erdra." The girl gave Sassinak a long stare intended to impress.

  "I thought you were supposed to be a cruiser captain."

  "I am," Sassinak said very quietly. "Did you never hear of disguises?"

  They all looked unimpressed and she sighed inwardly. Had she ever been this young?

  "I wore this for you," the girl said. "I thought . . ."

  Sassinak laid a hand over the girl's wrist with strength enough to get a startled look. "I had a Coldae poster, in silver, when I was a girl. But that was a picture. Reality's different."

  "Well, of course, but . . ."

  Sassinak released the girl's wrist and leaned back, giving her stare for stare. The girl reddened suddenly.

  "Erdra, you wouldn't have lasted a week in the slave pens. Most of my friends didn't."

  Now their stares had a different expression. Jonlik's bottle of drelz sauce was dripping on his lap.

  "Best wipe that up," she said, in the tone she used aboard ship.

  He gaped, looked down, and mopped at his shorts with one flowing sleeve.

  "I told you," Aygar growled. She wondered what else he'd told them. At least he was keeping his voice low.

  Sassinak turned to Gerstan. "Is it true, what Aygar said, that you can patch into the secure links without being caught?"