He saluted and was off at a run. She hoped she"d done the right thing. Whatever had happened to Sa.s.sinak, if she was still alive, she would think she had a cruiser waiting for her. And now we"re leaving-I"m leaving, taking her ship, leaving her nothing but a shuttle.
Arly couldn"t believe this was happening, not so fast, but it was. Through her disbelief, she heard her own voice giving orders in the same calm, steady tone she"d cultivated for years. Longscans on, undockmg procedures to begin immediately, two junior Weft officers to report to Flight Two. A loud squawk from the Station Dockmaster, demanding to know why the Zaid-Dayan was beginning undock without permission.
"Orders of Admiral Coromell," said Arly. Should she tell them about the Seti fleet? "We"ll be releasing one planetary shuttle."
"You can"t do that!"
"We"re releasing one planetary shuttle," she went on, as if she had not heard, "and request navigational a.s.sistance to clear your Station without damage." She punched the all-ship intercom and said, "Ensign Gori to the bridge."
"But our scans are showing live weapons..."
That voice abruptly stopped, and an Insystems Security Force uniform appeared on one of the viewscreens.
"You are in violation of regulations. You are requested to cease and desist, or measures will be taken..."
"Ensign Gori reporting, ma"am."
Not as quick as Tim, but eager in his own way.
"Ensign, the cap-Commander Sa.s.sinak said you knew regulations forwards and backwards." He didn"t answer, but he didn"t look worried, either. "You will discuss regulations with Insystems Security. We are withdrawing under threat of enemy attack, at the orders of a higher officer not in our direct chain of command." Gori"s lace brightened and his mouth opened. Arly pushed him toward one of the working boards, and said, "Don"t tell me, tell him."
Yet another screen showed Flight Two, with the hatch closing on one of the shuttles. As the launch hatch opened, the elevator began raising the shuttle. Arly could just see some part of the Station through the open hatch.
"... no authorization for such deliberate violation," the Insystem voice droned on. "Return to inactive status at once or regulations will require that force be used."
Arly"s temper flared. "You have a hostile Seti fleet incoming," she said slowly, biting off" each word. "You have traitors letting them past the defenses. Don"t threaten me. So far I haven"t hurt the Station."
Perhaps not all the Insystem Security were in the plot. This one looked as if he"d just been slugged.
"But... but there"s no evidence. None of the detector nets have gone off..
"Maybe someone"s got his finger on the buzzer."
The shuttle cleared the Zaid-Dayans hull, and disappeared. Arly sent a silent prayer after it.
"If I were you, I"d start looking at the systems with redundancies."
By now, the Zaid-Dayan"s own powerful scans were unlocked. Nothing would show, yet. The enemy was too far out. Arly glanced around and saw that the regular bridge crew was now in place. It felt very strange to be in Sa.s.sinak"s place, while Tenant Yulyin sat at "Tier" board, and stranger to see that board mostly dark, after a"ship"s alert. She pointed to Gori, who transferred the Insystems Security channel to his board.
"Ensign Gori will stay in contact with you."
"Fleet Regulations, Volume 21, article 14, grants authorization to commanding officers of vessels on temporary duty away from normal Sector a.s.signment..." Gori sounded confident, and as smooth as any diplomat.
Arly left him to it. The combination of a surprise Seti fleet and Gori"s zeal for regulations should keep trigger-happy fingers off the b.u.t.tons until they could get away and raise shields.
"Docking bay secure, Captain!"
Arly nodded to Engineering. Critical as the situation was, she could not justify destroying the Station to jump-start the Zaid-Dayan and bringing the insystem drive up was a delicate operation. Centimeter by centimeter they eased away from the Station, adding just enough thrust at first to let rotational inertia begin their outward spiral.
"Weapons still locked down," Yulyin reported, at the two-minute tick.
"Right. Sa.s.sinak and I did some fancy stuff" that should unkink by the time we can use them-" She wondered if this Ssli and that distant one were still in contact. And what was Dupaynil doing there? No time for that, though: her weapons had to come first.
She keyed in the code Sa.s.sinak had left with her, the captain"s access to the command computers, the master controls of all weaponry. Then she explained what they"d done, and as quickly crew and marines began scurrying around the ship to restore it to fall fighting capability. One hundred kilometers from the Station, Arly notched up the insystem drive.
So far, if the invaders were getting scan on her, she would look predictable. A rising spiral, the usual departure of a large ship from anything as ma.s.sive as a planet. Then she engaged the stealth gear, and the Zaid-Dayan pa.s.sed into darkness and silence, an owl hunting across the night.
Fed Central: Fleet Headquarters Coromell swung to face Lunzie.
"I never thought of that! My mind must be slowing!"
"What?" Lunzie hadn"t heard what Arly said, had only seen its effect in the changes on Coromell"s face.
"A Seti fleet, inbound-" He told her the rest, and began linking it to what they"d learned elsewhere. "This Iretan thing... you must have come very close to the bone somehow."
"Unless they had it planned and we just showed up in the middle of it."
"True. I keep forgetting you were sleeping away the past forty-three years. Like a time-bomb for them. Come to dunk of it, without the Iretan"s trial, the Winter a.s.sizes were mostly commercial cases this time. And nothing coming up before Grand Council but a final vote on some financial rules affecting terraforming. Not my field: I don"t know a stock from a bond."
"So if they wanted a quiet session, they could have arranged that... and we really are a time-bomb."
"Which they set for themselves, I remind you. Very fitting, all this is."
"If they don"t blow us away," said Lunzie. "That"s not Sa.s.sinak up there."
"She"d have left the ship to her most competent 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 Sa.s.sinak 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 Sa.s.sinak 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 thinking like a deeps.p.a.ce admiral, and not a planet-dweller."
A younger man, whom Lunzie a.s.sumed 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 Sa.s.sinak, 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. 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-Dagan 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."
"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 Sa.s.sinak 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 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sizes 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 hunting." "True, but you remember I thought of not going, ; with Sa.s.sinak coming in and the trial approaching. Then "they had that "cancellation" in Bakli Lodge. Well, no matter now. We can dig into that later, a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed word to the Prosecutor"s office that she"s j;pnplanet"
"And we have to a.s.sume 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." 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 shutdeport, just that he was to go render a.s.sistance to Sa.s.sinak. 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 airs.p.a.ce 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 Airs.p.a.ce 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 Airs.p.a.ce 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 amus.e.m.e.nts far more interesting than theoretical knowledge about aliens.
"No," Tim said. "They"ll just try to impound us. And Commander Sa.s.sinak can"t be there, or she"d have contacted us."
"Good thought," said the Weft. "Do you know where she is?"
"n.o.body 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 Sa.s.sinak might be.
"Not strictly true," said the other Weft, Tenant Sricka. , "Sa.s.sinak 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 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 Sa.s.sinak, 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 gra.s.s. 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" amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ma.s.s 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 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.