“Do it,” Cecelia said. Red patches marred her cheeks again. Heris thought to herself that one of the advantages of darker skin was that blushes didn’t show. Much. “Do you have sensors in there?”
“Oh, yes.” Heris called up the compartment specs. “You have a pretty fair internal security system, probably to let your staff monitor offship loading . . . see?” There were Ronnie and George, looking stubborn, hunched over a hard copy of something. She did not wait to hear what they were saying, but her fingers flicked over the screen controls. The young men suddenly stopped talking, and stared at each other.
“She wouldn’t!” George said in a tinny voice.
“Why’s he sound like that?”
“Air pressure,” Heris said. “Their ears just popped, I’ll bet.” Her fingers moved again, and both of them looked pale and ill at ease. “You’d better go,” Heris said to Cecelia. “You want to be properly angry and upset, and you don’t want to know what happened to them . . . not until they tell you. I won’t hurt them.”
“I know that,” Cecelia said, but she left reluctantly.
* * *
“If you get into the computer, then you can pull drills on her,” George said. “She won’t know—” He lounged against a burlap sack marked “Fertile seeds: contains mercury: do not use for food.”
“Neither will we,” Ronnie said. “I don’t want to be up all night every night.”
“You don’t have to be. That’s the beauty of it. You just set them up, but cut our bells out of it.”
“She’ll know who did it,” Ronnie said. “I still think I should start with the internal monitors. She’s spending a lot of time with Aunt Cecelia now; she’s bound to say something I can use.” They had a hard copy of the communications board specs, left in an unsecured file from one of Cecelia’s training sessions. Getting into the secured files would be harder. Ronnie had the feeling that Captain damn-her-backbone Serrano would not leave her files unsecured.
“Yes, but what can she do? You’re the owner’s nephew—she can hardly throw you out in the void.”
“Maybe.” Ronnie stared at the specs, trying to remember all that stuff he had had in class. This little squiggle was supposed to mean something about the way that channel and this other channel interacted . . . wasn’t it? He put his thumb firmly on the line that came from Cecelia’s sitting room, and a finger on the one that came from the gym. He really needed a tap in both. If only Skunkcat had been along. . . . Scatty was the best for this sort of thing.
“Here’s the captain’s direct line to the bridge,” George said, trying to be helpful. George had good ideas, but always managed to get the wrong slant on them. Ronnie did not want to interfere with the captain’s communication to the bridge; he wanted them to know how ineffectual she was going to be once he figured out how to sabotage her.
Suddenly his ears popped, then popped again. He saw from George’s face that the same unsettling shudder was going through his stomach, too. George said something; he paid no attention. Lower air pressure . . . shifts in the artificial gravity . . . could it have been a real emergency? He was suddenly sweaty, and as suddenly cold, the sweat drying on him. No. It had taken too long. That bitch of a captain was doing something to him, doing it on purpose.
“Out!” he said, across the middle of something George was trying to say. “Before the pressure locks engage.”
But they had. He could not wrestle the hatch open against the safety locks; he would not call for help. His stomach protested, as another shift of AG squashed him, then released . . . and the air pressure dropped again, to another painful pop of his ears.
George looked green. “I . . . I’m going to—”
“Not in variable G—hold it, George.” There was nothing to use for a spew-bag. Every storage container in there—bags, boxes, tubes—had a lock-down seal on it. A surge of AG crushed him to the deck, then let up slowly. Air pressure returned; his ears popped just as many times on the way back to ship normal. His stomach tried to crawl out his mouth; George looked as bad as he felt, but had managed not to spew. He swallowed the vile taste in his mouth and rolled over onto his back. He had a sudden pounding headache.
Something banged on the closed hatch. “Anyone inside?”
George croaked, and the hatch opened. A crewman, someone Ronnie did not recognize, in full emergency gear. “My—you weren’t in here for the drill, were you?” Without awaiting the obvious answer, the man went on, “It’s not anyone’s assigned station—you’re lucky I found you. We’re doing a pressure check on all compartments—”
“Just get us out of here,” Ronnie said, staggering to his feet. “That miserable captain—”
“Wasn’t her fault,” the crewman said, as if surprised at his words. “It’s a computer-generated emergency; they all are, you know. Didn’t you get your handouts?”
“Yes,” George said. “We got our handouts. Thank you. Just let me pass, please.” He shoved past and shambled down the passage to the nearest toilet, where Ronnie could hear him being very thoroughly sick.
Ronnie himself hoped to sneak back to his own stateroom, but in the lounge he found a very angry Aunt Cecelia. She said all the things he expected, and didn’t want to hear, and he managed not to listen. She had said them all before, and so had others, and it was not really his fault anyway. It was that captain. That arrogant, stiff-necked, conniving bitch of a captain, and he was going to get even with her. If Aunt Cecelia didn’t want to see his face for two days, that was fine. He could eat in his room; he would be glad to eat in his room. All the more time to figure out how to do what he was going to do. Still, an attempt at patching things up never hurt. He did his best at a contrite apology, but she turned away, ignoring him. Ignoring him. No one ignored him.
* * *
By the time he reappeared in the dining room, several days later, to all appearances chastened and determined to be a good boy, Ronnie had figured it out. At least the beginning of it. It had been easy, using the specs he had, to get a tap into his aunt’s sitting room. And into the gym. He hadn’t yet dared try the captain’s cabin, but he was hearing a lot as it was. That fool captain actually liked his ridiculous aunt, he’d discovered. Enjoyed the riding lessons, enjoyed explaining to Cecelia how her ship worked, enjoyed the relaxed conversations in the evenings, when they explored each others’ backgrounds.
A lot of it bored him silly: talk about books he’d never read, and art he’d never seen, and music he avoided. (Opera! He had liked the opera singer’s body, and the competition with the prince, but not the music she sang onstage. It was hard to believe even someone like his aunt actually liked all that screeching.) No juicy gossip, no political arguments—it was almost like hearing an educational tape, the way they discussed the topics and deferred courteously to each other.
Other bits, though, fascinated him. His aunt’s analysis of the workings of the family businesses. . . . His own father hadn’t made it that clear. Captain Serrano’s version of her resignation from the Fleet, which his aunt teased out of her with surprising delicacy. . . . He had never imagined that someone in the Regular Space Services would dare to disobey an order; they were all such stiff-necked prigs. It didn’t make sense; she should have known she would lose her ship, one way or the other. He could almost feel guilty listening—he would not have expected to hear that woman so upset, or for that reason—but he loved the sense of power it gave him. She could be shaken from her calm, controlled persona; she was not invincible. He would start with something simple, he decided. Something that might be an accident, that would be hard to trace back to him.
* * *
Heris used the reins when she rode now, and the soft tones in her earphones let her know how she managed the tension, even before the simulator responded by swinging one way or the other. If the tones matched, the rein tension was equal; a higher tone meant more tension. She had discovered, as Cecelia gradually enabled the simulator’s sensors, just how sluggish that first “mount” had been. C
ecelia had shown her a cube of herself at that first lesson, and she was ready to laugh at the novice who couldn’t even keep her position for a single circuit. On this program, that novice would have been bucked off already. Heris listened to Cecelia’s voice, coaching her in the next maneuver, and tried to respond. The brown neck and ears in front of her changed position; she felt the movement in her seat and the lessening tension of the reins in her hand. The simulator lunged; this time Heris was ready, and controlled that with a leg and hand . . . and . . . they were cantering. She liked cantering. Circling. Straight. Circling again. Today she would “jump” for the first time; she was eager, sure she was ready.
A small white fence appeared ahead of her. “Keep your leg on him,” Cecelia’s voice reminded her. She squeezed, and the fence moved toward her faster. Then the horse’s back rose beneath her, and fell again, and she grabbed—and got a handful of metal tubing. The illusion went blank; the simulator beneath her was once more an inert hunk of metal and plastic.
“Not bad,” Cecelia said. “You grabbed for the right thing, at least. I had one student who reached for the helmet. And you didn’t fall all the way off.”
Heris blinked and took a deep breath. “Umm. A real horse wouldn’t stop and let me get my breath, would it?”
“No. You can grab for mane like that and stay on, usually, but you were pretty high out of the saddle. I think you need more time in the two-point. Let’s go.”
The rest of that session, and the next, Heris spent practicing the position she should have taken over the jump. Then she put on the helmet to find the ring full of jumps. “Nothing big,” Cecelia said cheerfully. “But if you see more than one, you can’t get fixated on it. Now—pick up a trot.”
She came out of that lesson a convert to riding. “It’s like a boat,” she tried to tell Cecelia. “Bouncing over the waves, only in a boat you’re in it, and this way you’re surrounding it. Not really like sailing, more like white-water kayaking.” Cecelia looked blank. “You never did any?”
“No, just the little bit of sailing I told you about.”
“But it’s the same thing.” Heris ran her hands through her hair, not caring if it stood up in peaks. “You’re swooping along between obstacles, only they’re rocks making standing waves, not fences.”
“If you say so. I always thought of it as music, myself. A choral or orchestral work, where if everything goes well it sounds lovely, and if you get out of time you crash.”
“Anyway,” Heris said, “I like it. I don’t want to quit when my ten hours are up—that is, if you’ll let me—”
Cecelia chuckled wickedly. “Your ten hours were up last session. Do you think I’d let a potential convert quit before she got hooked? I thought you’d come around. Just wait until you can jump a real course—small, but a real one.”
“And you—don’t tell me you don’t like knowing more about your ship,” Heris said.
“That’s true.” Cecelia rubbed her nose. “I know you think I’m crazy to liken it to stable management, but that’s how it makes sense to me.”
“Whatever works,” Heris said. She would have said more, but Ronnie and the other young people came into the gym.
“Is the pool available, Aunt Cecelia?” He asked politely enough, but his expression showed what he thought of two older women exercising. He did not look at Heris at all.
“Yes—for about an hour,” Cecelia said. “But you ought to get in some riding time, Ronnie.”
“I’ll get enough riding at Bunny’s,” Ronnie said. It was not quite sulky. “We’ll leave you the practice time. . . . Are you enjoying yourself, Captain?”
It was the first time he’d actually spoken to her since the incident on the bridge. His expression was so carefully neutral it could have been either courtesy or insult. “Yes, I am,” she said, pleasantly. “Lady Cecelia is an excellent teacher.”
“I’m sure.” He would have been very handsome, Heris thought, if he’d learned to limit that curl of lip to moments of passion. His voice sharpened. “It’s too bad you’ll have to let your newfound expertise wither in Hospitality Bay . . . although I understand they have donkey rides along the beach.”
Heris would not have answered so childish an insult, but Cecelia did. “On the contrary, Ronnie, I’m taking Captain Serrano with me; she’s going to be quite adequate by the time we arrive.” Her cheeks flamed, her hair seemed to stand on end. Heris blinked; that was the first she’d heard of this plan.
“You’re taking—her—but she—she’s just a—” Ronnie looked from one to the other, then to his friends.
“If you’ll excuse me, Lady Cecelia,” said Heris, giving her employer a covert twinkle, “I have urgent business on the bridge—remember?”
“Oh. Yes, of course,” Cecelia dismissed her with a wave, and turned back to her nephew; Heris used the gym’s other entrance. It was not all a fake, though she had no desire to watch aunt and nephew sparring—she had in fact scheduled another emergency drill for the crew only, and needed to change. She and the crew would all be wearing full sensor attachments, so that she could analyze the drill in detail later on. She had allowed herself fifteen minutes, originally, but Ronnie’s interruption had cost her a couple.
In her cabin, she ripped off her sweaty riding clothes, spent a minute in the ’fresher, and dressed in her uniform with practiced speed. Anyone who couldn’t bathe and dress for inspection in eleven minutes would never have survived Academy training. She picked up the sensor patches and placed them on head, shoulders, hands, chest and back of waist, and feet. The recording command unit slipped into her pocket. Three minutes. She picked up the last of her personal emergency gear with one eye on the chronometer’s readout. Breather-mask, detox, command wand for hatchlocks, command wands for systems controls . . . the little plastic or foil packets that she had learned to use so long ago, that never left her except in the ’fresher, where she kept them stuck to a wall in their waterproof pouch.
Now. She left her quarters and moved without haste toward the bridge, turning on the recording command unit. Sometime in the next two minutes, something would go wrong—without triggering any alarm on the family side, unless the lockout patch failed. Her skin felt tight. Riding an electronic virtual horse was good exercise, but this was the real thrill: waiting for trouble you knew was coming.
Whatever it was, the crew had just noticed something wrong on the displays when she came onto the bridge at precisely the hour she had set.
“Don’t know what that is—” the ranking mole said. “But we’d better find out; cut it off the circulation—”
“Captain on the bridge,” said Holloway, with evident relief. “Captain, there’s something in environmental—”
Inadequate, even so soon; she switched the command screen to environmental and almost grinned. Pure happenstance, but she’d seen something like this before. She didn’t say that; she said, “Isolate that compartment.” The mole’s hands flickered across his console.
“Captain—the fan blower’s stuck on.”
Not quite the same problem. She hoped it was mostly virtual; the actual compound stank abominably, and would penetrate any porous material. The mole had the sense to cut out the electrical line supplying the blower. Heris said, “Good job,” and then the blower cut back in. Something prickled the back of her neck as she watched Gavin override the mole’s commands and cut power to the entire section. Having the fan blower stuck on was within the parameters she’d given the computer. Having it come back on after its normal electrical connection was cut pushed the parameters as she remembered them. Had she been imprecise? Could she have forgotten to close a command line somewhere in the problem set? The fan stopped. She listened to Gavin give reasonable orders for clearing the contaminant, based on its presumed identity. Then—and she was not surprised—the fan came back on. Gavin turned to her with an expression between disgust and worry.
“I’ve got it,” she said. From her console, her command set blocked the computer�
�s own, briefly, as she isolated and locked out all executing logic loaded in the past seventy-two hours. That would undo some things that would have to be redone, but it should safely contain the problem. And that second startup took it well beyond the parameters she’d set; someone had interfered. Interfered with her ship, on her drill. . . . Rage filled her, along with the exultation that conflict always brought. This was an enemy she could fight. She knew exactly whom to blame for this one, and he had been ordered off her bridge only sixty-three hours before.
The fan had stopped for good, this time, and she went on with the drill, noting that the crew had responded well even to this more complicated problem.
The question was whether to tell Cecelia. She liked Cecelia, she’d decided, and it wasn’t her fault that she had a bratty nephew or even that she’d been stuck with him for this trip. If she could contain Ronnie without bothering Cecelia . . . but on the other hand, she was the owner, and the owner had a right to know what was going on. If it had been an admiral’s nephew, she’d have known what to do (not that any admiral’s nephew would have gotten so far with mischief still unchecked).
But the first thing to do was find out how he did it, and when.
“Sirkin, you’re cross-training in computer systems. I want you to crawl through every trickle in the past . . . oh . . . sixty hours or so, and identify every input.” Sirkin blinked, but did not look daunted. The young, Heris thought to herself, believed in miracles.
“Anything in particular, Captain?”
“I entered a problem set for the drill yesterday. What just happened was not within parameters. . . . Someone skunked them. I want to know when, from what terminal, and the details of the hook. Can do?”
“Yes—I think so.” Sirkin scowled, in concentration not anger. “Was it that—that young idiot who got himself caught in the storage compartment?”
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