Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 12

"Arly, I'll need the names of those on duty, the likeliest to have access." She had already keyed in Adis and Veron, and their personnel records were up on her left-hand screen. Nothing obvious - but she'd already been over all the records looking for something obvious. "And, when you've time, a complete report on alternate access methods: if an exterior device was used, what would it look like, and so on." Sa.s.sinak turned to Major Currald. "I know you consider that cargo lift your fault, but in ordinary circ.u.mstances, who would have locked it off?"

"Oh . . . Sergeant Pardy, most likely. He had troop deck watch, and when the galley's secured, he usually does it. But I'd snagged him to supervise the mounting of those barrage mirrors, because Carston was already working on the artillery. That would have left . . . let's see . . . Corporal Turner, but she went with the boarding party, because we needed to send two people with extra medical training. I really think, captain, that it was a simple accident, and my responsibility. I didn't stop to realize that Pardy's usual team had been split, when the boarding party left, and that left no one particular a.s.signed to it."

Sa.s.sinak nodded. From what he said, she thought herself that it was most likely an accident - almost a fatal one, but not intentional. And even if it had been - even if one of the marines now dead had told another to do it, in all that confusion she would find no proof.

"What I'm planning to do now," she told them all, "is sit here quietly until the fuss clears, then do our repairs as best we can, and then continue our quiet surveillance until something else happens. If the slavers decide to evacuate that base, I'd like to know where they go. Even if they don't leave, we can log traffic in and out of the system. Huron's taking that transport to the nearest station - a minimum of several weeks. If something happens to him, our beacon is ... mmm . . . telling the world just where the Zaid-Dayan Zaid-Dayan was. It'll be years before anyone picks it up, probably, but they will. If we see something interesting enough to tail, we will; otherwise, we'll wait to see if Huron brings a flotilla in after us." was. It'll be years before anyone picks it up, probably, but they will. If we see something interesting enough to tail, we will; otherwise, we'll wait to see if Huron brings a flotilla in after us."

"Won't he think we're destroyed?" asked Arly.

"He might. Then again, he might think of the trick we used - we both read about a similar trick used in water-world navies, long ago. Either way, though, he knows the base is here, and I'm sure he'll report it." Sa.s.sinak paused, her throat dry. "Anyone for coffee? Food?" Several of them nodded. Nav and Helm rose to serve it. Sa.s.sinak took two of her favorite pastries, and sipped from her full mug. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. Coffee wasn't her favorite drink, but this had a strange undertaste. Major Currald, who'd taken a big gulp of his, grimaced.

"Somebody didn't scrub the pot," he said. He took another swallow, frowning. The others sniffed theirs, and put them down. Nav sipped, and shook his head. Helm shrugged, and went to fill the water pitcher at the corner sink.

Sa.s.sinak had taken a bite of pastry to cover the unpleasant taste when Currald gagged, and turned an unlovely shade of bluish gray. His eyes rolled up under slack lids. Hollister, beside him, quickly rolled him out of the seat onto the floor, where the commander sprawled heavily, his breathing harsh and uneven. "Heart attack," he said. "Probably the stress today - " But as he reached for the emergency kit stowed along the wall, Sa.s.sinak felt an odd numbness spread across her own tongue, and saw the frightened expression of those who had taken a sip of coffee.

"Poison," she managed to say. Her tongue felt huge in her mouth, clumsy. "Don't drink - " Her vision blurred, and her stomach roiled. Suddenly she doubled up, helplessly spewing out the little she'd had. So was Bures, and now Currald, apparently unconscious, vomited copiously, gagging on it. Someone was up, calling for Med on the intercom. Someone's arm reached into her line of sight, wiping up the mess, and then her face. She nodded, acknowledging the help but still not able to speak.

When she looked again, Hollister was trying to keep the commander's airway open, and Bures was still hunched over, wild-eyed and miserable. She expected she herself didn't look much better. A last violent cramp seized her and bent her around clenched arms. Then it eased. Her vision was clearer: she could see that Arly was trying to open the door for Med, and realized that it was still on voice-only lock. She cleared her throat, and managed an audible command. The door slid aside. While the med team went to work, she put the room ventilation on high to get rid of the terrible stench, and rinsed her mouth with water from the little sink. This was not what she'd had in mind when she'd insisted on running a water line into this office, but it was certainly handy. The med team had Currald tubed and on oxygen before they spoke to her, and then they wanted her to come straight back to sickbay.

"Not now." She was able to speak clearly now, though she suspected the poison was still affecting her. "I'm fine now - "

"Captain, with all due respect, if it's a multiple poison there may be delayed effects."

"I know that. But later. You can take Bures, keep an eye on him. Now listen: we think it's the coffee, in here - " She pointed to the pot. "I don't want panic, and I don't want the whole ship knowing that someone tried to poison the officers: clear?"

"Clear, captain, but - "

"But you have to find out. I know that. If we're the only victims, that's one thing, but you'll want to protect the others - I recommend the sudden discovery that those invaders may have put something in the galley up here, and you need to see if they contaminated the galley on Troop Deck."

"Right away, captain."

"Lieutenant Gelory will help you." Gelory, a Weft, smiled quietly; she was the a.s.sistant quartermaster, so this was a logical choice.

The movement of a litter with an unconscious Major Currald aboard couldn't be concealed. Sa.s.sinak quickly elaborated her cover story about the invaders having somehow contaminated the galley for the officers' mess. The bridge crew were angry and worried - so was she - but she had to leave them briefly to get out of her stinking uniform. Her face in the mirror seemed almost ten years older, but after another shower her color had come back, and she felt almost normal - just hungry.

Bures and the others who had sipped the coffee were also better, and had taken the opportunity to get into clean uniforms. That was good: if they cared about appearance, they were going to be fine. She settled into her seat and thought about it. Poisoning, an open cargo lift through the cordons, and a missile launch . . . ? Three times enemy action: that was the old rule, and a lot better than most old rules. But it didn't feel right. It didn't feel like the same kind of enemy. If someone wanted the ship to reveal itself to the slavers - and that was the only reason for a missile launch - what was the poison supposed to do? If they all died of it, retching their guts out on the decks, the whole crew together wouldn't make enough noise to be noticed. So the subversive could take over the ship? No one person could: a cruiser was too complicated for any one individual to launch. Was it pique because the earlier sabotage hadn't done its work? Then why not put poison in something where it couldn't be tasted? The poison was, in fact, a stupid person's plot - she leaned forward to put Medical on a private line and picked up her headset.

"Yes?"

"Yes, poison in the coffee: a very dangerous alkaloid. Yes, more cases, although so far only one is dead." Dr. Mayerd's usually business-like tone had an extra bite in it.

Dead. Tears stung her eyes. Bad enough to lose them in combat, bad enough to have her ship blown open . . . but for someone in the crew to poison fellow crew! "Go on," she said.

"Major Currald's alive, and we think he'll make it, though he's pretty bad. He'll be out for at least three days. Two more have had their stomachs pumped; those who just sipped it heaved it all up again, as you did. So far everyone's buying the idea of the invaders having dumped poison in the nearest canister in the galleys - that would almost fit, because the coffee tins were sitting out, ready to brew. Apparently it wasn't in all the coffee - or didn't you drink that first batch sent to the bridge?"

"I didn't, but some others did, with no effect. What else?"

"The concentration was wildly different in the different containers we found - as if someone had just scooped a measure or so, carelessly, into the big kettles, and not all of those. Altogether we've had eleven report in here, and reports of another nine or ten who didn't feel bad enough to come in once they quit vomiting - I'm tracking those. More important: captain, if you experience any color change in your vision - if things start looking strange - report here at once. Some people have a late reaction to this; it has to do with the way some people's livers break down the original poison. Some of the metabolites undergo secondary degradation and lose the hydroxy - "

Sa.s.sinak interrupted what was about to be an enthusiastic description of the biochemistry of the poison, with, "Right - if things change color, I'll come down. Talk to you later." She found herself smiling at the slightly miffed snort that came down the line before she clicked it off. Mayerd would get over it; she should have known the captain wouldn't want a lecture on biochemical pathways.

So someone had tried to poison not only the more senior officers, but also the crew - or some of the crew. She wondered just how random the poisoning had been . . . had the kettles which hadn't been poisoned been chosen to save friends? Poisoning still made little sense in terms of helping the slavers. Unless this person planned to kill everyone, and somehow rig a message to them . . . but only one of the Communications specialists would be likely to have the skills for that. Sa.s.sinak was careful not to turn and look suspiciously at the Comm cubicle. Morale was going to be bad enough.

Her intercom beeped, and she put the headset back on. "Sa.s.sinak here."

It was the Med officer again. "Captain, it's not only an alkaloid, it's an alkaloid from a plant native to Diplo."

She opened her mouth to say "So?" and then realized what that meant. "Diplo. Oh ... dear." A heavyworld system. As far as some were concerned, the most troublesome heavyworld political unit, outspoken to the point of rudeness about the duties of the lightweights to their stronger cousins. "Are you sure?"

"Very." Mayerd sounded almost smug, and deserved to be. "Captain, this is one of the reference poisons in our databank - because it's rare, and its structure can be used to deduce others, when we run them through the machines. It is precisely that one - and I know you don't want to hear the name, because you didn't even want to hear about the hydroxy-group cleavage - " Sa.s.sinak winced at her sarcasm, but let it pa.s.s. " - And I can confirm that it did not come from medical stores: someone brought it aboard as private duffel." A longish pause, and then, "Someone from Diplo, I would think. Or with friends there."

"Currald nearly died," said Sa.s.s, remembering that the Med officer had had more than one sharp thing to say about heavyworlders and their medical demands on her resources.

"And might still. I'm not accusing Currald; I know that not every heavyworlder is a boneheaded fanatic. But it is a poison from a plant native to an aggressively heavyworlder planet, and that's a fact you can't ignore. Excuse me, they're calling me." And with the age-old arrogance of the surgeon, she clicked off her intercom and left Sa.s.sinak sitting there.

A heavyworlder poison. To the Med officer, that clearly meant a heavyworlder poisoner. But was that too easy? Sa.s.sinak thought of Currald's hard, almost sullen face, the resigned tone in which he claimed responsibility for the open cargo lift. He'd expected to be blamed; he'd been ready for trouble. She knew her att.i.tude had surprised him - and his congratulations on her own success in the battle had also been a bit surprised. A lightweight, a woman, and the captain - had put on armor, dived across a corridor, exchanged fire with the enemy? She wished he were conscious, able to talk ... for of all the heavyworlders now on the ship, she trusted him most.

If not a heavyworlder, her thoughts ran on, then who? Who wanted to foment strife between the types of humans? Who would gain by it? A medical reference poison, she reminded herself. . . and the medical staff had their own unique opportunities for access to food supplies.

"Captain?" That was her new Exec, to her eye far too young and timid to be what she needed. She certainly couldn't get any comfort from him. She nodded coolly, and he went on. "That other escort's coming across."

Sa.s.sinak looked at the main screen, now giving a computer enhanced version of the pa.s.sive scans. This vessel's motion was relatively slower; its course would take it through the thickest part of the expanding debris cloud.

"Its specs are pretty close to the other one," he offered, eyeing her with a nervous expression that made her irritable. She did not, after all, have horns and a spiked tail.

"Any communications we can pick up?"

"No, captain. Not so far. It's probably beaming them to that relay satellite - " He paused as the Communications Watch Officer raised a hand and waved it. Sa.s.sinak nodded to her.

"Speaks atrocious Neo-Gaesh," the Com officer said. "I can barely follow it."

"Put it on my set," said Sa.s.s. "It's my native tongue - or was." She had kept up practice in Neo-Gaesh, over the years, just in case. If they had even the simplest code, though, she'd be unlikely to follow it.

They didn't. In plain, if accented, Neo-Gaesh, the individual on the escort vessel was reporting their observation of the debris. " - And a steel waste disposal unit, definitely not ours. A ... a cube reader, I think, and a cube file. Stenciled with Fleet insignia and some numbers." Sa.s.sinak could not hear whatever reply had come, but in a few seconds the first speaker said, "Take too long. We've already picked up Fleet items you can check. I'll tag it, though." Another long pause, and then, "Couldn't have been too big - one of their heavily armed scouts, the new ones. They're supposed to be d.a.m.ned near invisible to everything, until they attack, and almost as heavily armed as a cruiser." Another pause, then, "Yes: verified Fleet casualties, some in evac pods, and some in ship clothes, uniforms." That had been hardest, convincing herself to sacrifice their dead with scant honor, their bodies as well as their lives given to the enemy, to make a convincing display of destruction.

When the escort pa.s.sed from detection range, Sa.s.sinak relaxed. They'd done it, so far. The slavers didn't know they were there, alive. Huron and his pitiful cargo were safely away. One lot of slavers were dead - and she didn't regret the death of any of them.

But in the long night watch that followed, when she thought of the Fleet dead snagged by an enemy's robot arm to be "verified" as a casualty, she regretted very much that Huron had gone with the trader, and she had no one to comfort her.

Chapter Twelve.

Repairs, as always, ran overtime. Sa.s.sinak didn't mind that much: they had time, right then, more than enough of it. Engineers, in her experience, were never satisfied to replace a malfunctioning part: they always wanted to redesign it. So mounting replacement pods involved rebuilding the pod mounts, and changing the conformation of them, all to reconcile the portside pod cl.u.s.ter with the other portside repairs. Hollister quoted centers of ma.s.s and acceleration, filling her screen with math that she normally found interesting . . . but at the moment it was a tangle of symbols that would not make sense. Neither did the greater problem of ship sabotage. If someone hadn't blown their cover, they might have gotten away without that great gaping hole in the side of her ship, or the fouled pods. Or the deaths. This was not, by any means, the first time she'd been in combat, or seen death . . . but Abe had been right, all those years ago: it was different when it was her command that sent them, not a command transmitted from above.

Finally they were done, the engineers and their working parties, and as the pressure came up in the damaged sector, and the little leaks whistled until they were patched, Sa.s.sinak could see that the ship itself was sound. It needed time in the refitting yards, but it was sound. Marine troops moved back into their quarters when the pressure stabilized, to the great relief of the Fleet crew who'd been double-bunking, and not liking it. Seven days, not three or four or five, but it was done, and they were back to normal.

Currald was out of sick bay, just barely in time to move his troops back into their own territory. Sa.s.sinak had visited him daily once he regained consciousness, but he'd been too sick for much talk. He'd lost nearly ten kilos, and looked haggard.

She was in the gym, working out with Gelory in unarmed combat, when Currald came in for the first time. His eyes widened when he saw the shiny pink streak across her shoulder.

"When did that - ?"

"One of the pirates nearly got me - the five that got up to Main." She answered without pausing, dodging one of Gelory's standing kicks, and throwing a punch she blocked easily.

"I didn't know you'd been hurt." His expression flickered through surprise, concern, and settled into his normal impa.s.sivity. Sa.s.sinak hand-signed Gelory to break for a moment.

"It wasn't bad," she said. "Are you supposed to be working out yet?"

He reddened. "I'm supposed to be taking it easy, but you know the problem - "

"Yeah, your calcium shifts too readily in low-grav. I could have Engineering rig your quarters for high-grav . . ."

His brows raised; Sa.s.sinak gave herself a point for having gotten through his mask again. "You'd do that? It takes power, and we're on stealth - "

"I'd do that rather than have you blow an artery working out here before you're ready. I know you're tough. Major, but poisoning doesn't favor your kind of strength."

"They said I could use the treadmill, but not the weight harness yet." That was an admission; the tread-mill wasn't even in the gym proper. Currald gave her the most human look she'd had yet, and finally grinned. "I guess you aren't going to think I'm a weakling even when I look like one ..."

"Weaklings don't survive that kind of poisoning, and weaklings aren't majors in the marines." She delivered that crisply, almost barked it, and was glad to see the respectful glint in his eye. "Now - if you and Med think that a high-grav environment would help you get back to normal, tell me. We can't take the power to do more than your quarters, without risking exposure, but we can do that much. I have no idea if that's enough to do any good. In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you'd follow Med's advice - you don't want them telling you how to handle troops, and they know a bit more about poisoning than either of us."

"Yes, captain," he said. This time with neither resentment, defensiveness, nor guilt.

"I'll expect you for the staff conference at 1500," Sa.s.sinak went on. "Now, I've got another fifteen minutes of Gelory's expertise to absorb."

"May I watch?"

"If you want to see your captain dumped on the gym floor a dozen times, certainly." She nodded to Gelory, who instantly attacked, a move so fast she was sure it must have been half shapechange. Something that felt almost boneless at first stiffened into a leg over which she was flipped - but she coiled in midair, managed to hang onto a wrist, and flipped Gelory in her turn. But this was the only change that Gelory pulled on her for the rest of the session. Instead they sparred as near-equals, and she hit the floor only once. She could not ask, in front of Currald, but suspected the Weft of making her look good in front of the heavyworlder.

Staff meeting that day found almost the same group in her office as on the day of the poisoning. Sa.s.sinak noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that suddenly no one went near the coffee service - although until Currald's return, the coffee fiends had been drinking at their normal rate.

"I'm fairly sure this coffee is safe," she said, and watched their faces as they realized their unconscious behaviors. When everyone was settled, and had taken the first cautious sips, she brought Currald up to date, outlining the repairs, the few changes necessary for the marines on Troop Deck, and the discreet hunt for the poisoner. The chief medical officer had already told him the poison was from Diplo, she knew, and she outlined what they had discovered since.

"It's obvious that any saboteur, as we discussed before, would want to foment trouble between factions. My first thought was that having a heavyworld poison pointed to someone who wanted to put heavyworlders in a bind, and knew that I had a reputation for trusting them. But we had to take a look at the possibility that a heavyworlder had, in fact, done the poisoning. It had to be someone with access to the galleys - preferably both, although it's just barely possible that some of the coffee from Main made it down to Troop Deck. Since we were serving all over the ship, it's hard to trace the source of everyone's drink . . . particularly if one or more of the stewards was involved."

"You no longer believe that the intruders poisoned open canisters?"

"No. There'd have been no reason for them to do so: they thought they were taking the ship. They'd have used our supplies. And remember, we have that other sabotage to consider, the missile."

"Have you figured it out, captain?"

"No. Frankly, Major, I wanted you well before we went further. I do have a list of suspects . . . and one of them is a young woman from an ambiguous background." She paused; no one said anything, and Sa.s.sinak went on. "She was a medical evacuee from Diplo - an unadapted infant who did not respond to treatment. Reared on Palun - "

"That's an intermediate world," said Currald slowly. Sa.s.sinak nodded. "Right. She lived there until she was thirteen, with a heavyworlder family related to her birth family. Applied for light-G transfer on her own, as soon as she could, and joined Fleet as a recruit after finishing school."

"But you're not sure - "

"No, if I were sure she'd be in the brig. She had access, but so did at least four other stewards and the cooks. Thing is, she's the only one with a close link to Diplo - not just any heavyworld planet, but Diplo. She's actually visited twice, as an adult, in protective gear. We don't know anything about it, of course. And anyone who wanted to incriminate a heavyworlder could hardly have found a better way than to use a Diplo poison."

"Could she have popped the missile?" Currald glanced at Arly, who quickly shook her head.

"No - we checked that, of course, right away. Particularly when both my techs in that quadrant came up sick. But they were well when the missile went off, and unless they're in it together they clear each other. I think myself it was a handheld pulse shot, probably from a service hatch down the corridor, that triggered the missile."

"You remember that Fleet Intelligence warned each captain to expect at least one agent . . . they didn't say only one," said Sa.s.s. "I think the character of the missile launch and the poisoning are so different as to point to two different individuals with two different goals. But what I can't figure out for sure is what someone hoped to gain by random poisoning. Unless the poisoner had a group of supporters to take over the ship ..."

Currald sighed, and laced his fingers together. Even gaunt from his illness, he outweighed everyone else at the table, and his somber face looked dangerous. "Captain, you have the reputation of being fair ..." He stopped, clearly unhappy with that beginning and started over. "Look: I'm just the marine commander; I don't mingle with your ship's crew that much. But I know you all believe heavyworlders clump together, and to some extent that's true. I think I'd know if you had any sort of conspiracy among them on your side of the ship, and I hope you'll believe that I'd have told you."

Sa.s.sinak smiled at his attempt to avoid the usual heavyworlder paranoia, but gave him a serious response. "I told you before. Major, that I trust you completely. I don't think there was a conspiracy, because nothing happened while the poisonings were being discovered. But I am concerned that if this steward is the source, and if I arrest her, you and other heavyworlders will see that as a hasty and unthinking response to the Diplo poison. And I'd be very interested in what you thought such a person could hope to gain by it. What I know of heavyworlder politics and religion doesn't suggest that poisoning would be the usual approach."

"No, it's not." Currald sighed again. "Though if I had to guess, I'd bet her birth family - and her relations on Palun - were strict Separationists". She couldn't be, because she couldn't handle the physical strain. Some of those Separationists are pretty harsh on throwback babies. A few even kill them outright - unfit, they say." He ignored the sharp intakes of breath, the sidelong glances, and went on. "If she's been unable to adjust to being a lightweight, or if she thinks she has to make up for being unadapted, she might do something rash just to make the point." He glanced around, then looked back at Sa.s.s. "You don't have any heavyworlder officers, then?"

"I did, but I sent them with Huron on the prize ship." At his sharp look, Sa.s.sinak shrugged. "It just worked out that way: they had the right skills, and the seniority."

Something in that had pleased him, for he had relaxed a little. "So you might like a heavyworlder officer to have a few words with this young woman?"

"If you think you might find out whether she did it, and why."

"And you do trust me for that." It was not a question, but a statement tinged with surprise. "All right, captain; I'll see what I can do."

The rest of the meeting involved the results of their surveillance. For the first few days after the landing, they'd recorded no traffic in the system except for a shuttle from the planet to the occupied moon. But only a few hours before, a fast ship had lifted, headed outsystem by its trajectory.

"Going to tell the boss what happened," said Bures.

"So why'd they wait this long?" asked Sa.s.s. She could think of several reasons, none of them pleasant. No one answered her; she hadn't expected them to. She wondered how long it would be before the big transports came, to dismantle the base and move it. The enemy would know the specs on the ship Huron had taken; they'd know how long they had before Fleet could return. A more dangerous possibility involved the enemy attempting to defend the base, trapping a skimpy Fleet expedition with more overweaponed ships like the little escort she had fought.

"So what we can do," she summed up for them at the end of the meeting, "is trail one of the ships that leaves, and hope we're following one that goes somewhere informative, or sit where we are and monitor everything that goes on, to report it to Fleet later, or try to disrupt the evacuation once it starts. I wish we knew where that sc.u.mbucket was headed."

Two hours later, Currald called and asked for a conference. Sa.s.sinak agreed, and although he'd said nothing over the intercom, she was not surprised to see the steward under suspicion precede him into her office.

The story was much as Currald had suggested. Seles, born without the heavyworlder's adaptations to high-G, had nearly died in the first month of life. Her grandfather, she said, had told her mother to kill her, but her mother had lost two children in a habitat accident, and wanted to give her a chance. The medical postbirth treatments hadn't worked, and she'd been evacuated as a two-month-old infant, sent to her mother's younger sister on Palun. Even there, she had been the weakling, teased by her cousins when she broke an ankle falling from a tree, when she couldn't climb and run as well as they could. At ten, on her only childhood visit to Diplo, she had needed the adaptive suits that lightweights wore . . . and she had had to listen to her grandfather's ranting. She had ruined them, he said: not only the cost of her treatment, and her travel to Palun, but the simple fact that a throwback had been born in their family. They had lost honor; it would have been better if she had died at birth. Her father had glanced past her and refused to speak; her mother now had two "normal" children, husky boys who knocked her down and sat on the chest of her pressure suit until her mother called them away - clearly annoyed that Seles was such a problem.

In school on Palun, she had been taught by several active Separationists, who used her weakness as an example of why the heavyworlders should avoid contact with lightweights and the FSP. One of them, though, had told her of the only way in which throwbacks could justify their existence ... by proving themselves true to heavyworlder interests, and serving as a spy within the dominant lightweight culture.

In that hope she had requested medical evacuation to a normal-G world, a request quickly granted. She'd been declared a ward of the state, and put into boarding school on Casey's World.

Sa.s.sinak realized that Seles must have gone to that strange boarding school at about the same age she herself had come to the Fleet prep school - within a year or so anyway. But Seles had had no Abe, no mentor to guide her. Bigger than average, stronger than usual (though weak to heavyworlders), she already believed she was an outcast. Had anyone tried to befriend her? Sa.s.sinak couldn't tell; certainly Seles would not have noticed. Even now her slightly heavy-featured face was not ugly - it was her expression, the fixed, stolid, slightly sullen expression, that made her look more the heavyworlder, and more stupid, than she was. She had been in trouble once or twice for fighting, she admitted, but it wasn't her fault. People picked on her; they hated heavyworlders and they hadn't trusted her. Sa.s.sinak heard the self-pitying whine in her voice and mentally shook her head, though she made no answer. No one likes the whiner, no one trusts the sullen.

So Seles had come from school still convinced that the world was unfair, and still burning to justify herself to her heavyworld relatives. In that mood, she had joined Fleet - and in her first leave after basic training, had gone back to Diplo. Her family had been contemptuous, refused to believe that she really meant to be an agent for the heavyworlders. If she'd had any ability, they told her, she'd have been recruited by one of the regular intelligence services. What could she do alone? Useless weakling, her grandfather stormed, and this time even her mother nodded, as her younger brothers smirked. Prove yourself first, he said, and then come asking favors.

On her way back to the s.p.a.ceport, she had bought a kilo of poison - since its use on Diplo was unregulated, she had a.s.sumed that the heavyworlders were immune to it. She was going to kill all the lightweight crew of whatever ship she was on, turn the whole thing over to heavyworlders, and that would prove - "Exactly nothing!" snapped Major Currald, who had held his tongue with difficulty through this emotional recitation. "Did you want the lightweights to think we're all stupid or crazy? Didn't it occur to you that some of us know our best hope is inside FSP, alongside the lightweights?"

The girl's face was red, and her hands shook as she laid a rumpled, much - folded piece of paper on Sa.s.s's desk. "I - I know how it is. I know you're going to kill me. But - but I want to be buried on Diplo - or at least my ashes - and it says in regulations you have to do that - and send this message." It was as pitiful and incoherent as the rest of her story. "In the Name of Justice and Our Righteous Cause - " it began, and wandered around through bits of bad history (the Gelway Riots had not been caused by prejudice against heavyworlders - the heavyworlders hadn't been involved at all, except for one squad of riot police) and dubious theology (at least Sa.s.sinak had never heard of Darwin's G.o.d before) to justify the poisoning of the innocent, including other heavyworlders as "an Act of Pure Defiance that shall light a Beacon across the Galaxy." It ended with a plea that her family permit the burial of her remains on their land, that "even this Weak and Hopeless Relic of a Great Race can give something back to the Land which nurtured her."

Sa.s.sinak looked at Currald, who at the moment looked the very personification of heavyworlder brutality. She had the distinct feeling that he'd like to pound Seles into mush. She herself had the same desires toward Seles' family. Perhaps the girl wasn't too bright, but she could have done well if they hadn't convinced her that she was a hopeless blot on the family name. She picked up the paper, refolded it, and laid it in the folder that held the notes of the investigation. Then she looked back at Seles. Could anything good come out of this? Well, she could try.