Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 7

"Cavery," Achael broke into their conversation. "I know you liked the girl, and she is attractive. I'd have spent a night or so with her gladly." Cavery reddened at that insinuation. "But the circ.u.mstances are suggestive, even suspicious."

"I suppose you'd suspect any orphan ex-slave?" Cavery meant it to bite, and Achael stiffened.

"I'm not the one who brought up her ancestry," he pointed out.

"No, but you have to admit, if it's a matter of access, you were in the same place at the same time. Maybe someone twisted your mind. Curious you never saw her, hmm?"

Achael glared at him. "You've never been anyone's prisoner, have you? I spent my entire time on that miserable rock locked in a stinking cell with five other members of the Caleb's Caleb's crew. One of them died, of untreated wounds, and my best friend went permanently insane from the interrogation drugs. I hardly had the leisure to go wandering about the slaveholds looking for little girls, as she must have been then." crew. One of them died, of untreated wounds, and my best friend went permanently insane from the interrogation drugs. I hardly had the leisure to go wandering about the slaveholds looking for little girls, as she must have been then."

"I - I'm sorry," said Cavery, embarra.s.sed. "I didn't know."

"I don't talk about it." Achael had turned away, hiding his face. Now he spun about, pinning Cavery suddenly with a stiffened forefinger. "And I don't expect you, Cavery, to tell everyone in the mess about it, either."

"Of course not." Cavery watched the other man stalk away, and wished he'd never opened his mouth.

"You notice he never answered your question," Makin said. At Cavery's blank look, he went on. "You're right, sir, that during that captivity an enemy had a chance to deep-program Lieutenant Achael . . . and nothing he said makes that less likely. A friend who went insane from interrogation drugs . . . perhaps Achael did not."

"I don't - like to accuse anyone who went through - through something like that - "

"Of course not. But that's what they may have counted on, to cover any lapses. Now, about the pod and Ensign Sa.s.sinak - "

Sa.s.sinak's supporters barely crammed into Cavery's quarters. Wefts, other ensigns, Erling from Engineering. After the first chaos, when everyone a.s.sured everyone else that she couldn't have done any of it, they concentrated on ways and means.

"We have to do it soon, because those d.a.m.n pods don't carry much air. If she's conscious, she'll put herself in coldsleep - and amateurs trying to put themselves in are all too likely to make a fatal mistake."

"Worse than that," said Makin, "we can't track her if she's in coldsleep - it'll be like death. We've got to get her before she does that, or before she dies."

"Which is how long, Erling?" Everyone craned to see the engineer's face. It offered no great amount of hope. He spread his hands.

"Depends on her. If she takes the risk of holding out on the existing air supply as long as she can, or if she opts to go into coldsleep while she's alert. And we don't even know if the person who ejected the pod sabotaged the airtanks or the coldsleep module, as well as the beacon. At an outside, maximum, - if she pushes it, hundred-ten to hundred-twenty hours from ejection." Before anyone could ask, he glanced at a clock readout on the wall and went on. "And it's been eight point two. And the captain's determined to make the rendezvous with the EEC ship tomorrow, which eats up another twenty-four to thirty." His glare was a challenge. The Weft ensign Jrain took it up.

"Suppose we can't convince the captain to break the rendezvous - what about going back afterwards? He might be in a more reasonable frame of mind then."

Erling snorted. "He might - and then again he might be hot to go straight to sector command. To go back - h.e.l.l, how would I know? You tell me you can find her, you and the Ssli, but I sure couldn't calculate a course or transit time. Even if we hit the same drop-point as the ejection - if that's not a ridiculous statement in talking of paralight s.p.a.ce - we'd have no guarantee we'd come out with the same vector. They found that out when they tried dropping combat modules out of FTL in the Gerimi System. Scattered to h.e.l.l all over the place, and it took months to clean up the mess. But again, a.s.sume we can use you as guides, we still have to maneuver the ship. Maybe we can, maybe we can't."

"We have to try." Mira rumpled her blonde hair as if she wanted to unroot it. "Sa.s.sinak isn't guilty, and I'm not going to have her take the blame. She helped others at the Academy - "

"Not your bunch," Jrain pointed out.

"So I grew up," Mira retorted. "My mother pushed me into that friendship; I didn't know better until later. Sa.s.sinak is my friend, and she's not going to be left drifting around in a d.i.n.ky little pod for G.o.d knows how long ..."

"Well, but what are we going to do about it?"

"I think Jrain had a good idea. Let Fargeon get this rendezvous out of his head, and then try him again. And if he doesn't agree ..." Cavery scowled. No one wanted to say mutiny out loud.

Chapter Seven.

When Sa.s.sinak woke up, to the dim gray light of the evacuation pod, she had a lump on her forehead, another on the back of her head, and the vague feeling that too much time had pa.s.sed. She couldn't see much, and finally realized that something covered her head. When she reached for it, her arm twinged, and she rubbed a sore place. It felt like an injection site, but . . . Slowly, clumsily, she pawed the foil hood from her head and looked around. She lay crumpled against the acceleration couch of a standard evac pod; without the hood's interference, she could see everything in the pod. Beneath the cushions of the couch was the tank for coldsleep, if things went wrong. She had the feeling that perhaps things had gone wrong, but she couldn't quite remember.

Slowly, trying to keep her churning stomach from outwitting her, she pushed herself up. It would do no good to panic. Either she was in a functioning pod inside a ship, or she was in a functioning pod in flight: either way, the pod had taken care of her so far, or she wouldn't have wakened. The air smelled normal . . . but if she'd been there long enough, her nose would have adapted. She tried to look around, to the control console, and her stomach rebelled. She grabbed at the nearest protruding k.n.o.b, and a steel basin slid from its recess at one end of the couch. Just in time.

She retched until nothing came but clear green bile, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. What a stink! Her mouth quirked. What a thing to think about at a time like this. She felt cold and shaky, but a little more solid. Aches and twinges began to a.s.sert themselves. She pushed the basin back into its recess, looked for and found the b.u.t.ton that should empty and sterilise it (she didn't really want to think about the pod's recycling system, but her mind produced the specs anyway), and turned over, leaning against the couch.

Over the hatch, a digital readout informed her that the pod had been launched eight hours and forty-two minutes before. Launched! She forced herself to look at the rest of the information. Air supply on full; estimated time of exhaustion ninety-two hours fourteen minutes. Water and food supplies: maximum load; estimated exhaustion undetermined. Of course, she hadn't used any yet, and the onboard comp had no data on her consumption. She tried to get onto the couch and almost pa.s.sed out again. How could she be that weak if she'd only been here eight hours? And besides that, what had happened? Evac pods were intended primarily for the evacuation of injured or otherwise incapable crew. Had there been an emergency; had she been unconscious on a ship or something?

The second try got her onto the bench, with a bank of control switches ready to her hand. She fumbled for the sip-wand, and took two long swallows of water. (The recycling couldn't be working yet yet, she told her stomach.) A touch of the finger, and she cut the airflow down 15%. She might not tolerate that, but if she did it would give her more time. Another swallow of water. The taste in her mouth had been worse than terrible. She felt in her uniform pocket for the mints she liked to carry, and at that moment the memory came back.

The drill . . . E-bay . . . ducking to enter her a.s.signed pod . . . and something something, had jabbed her arm, and landed on her head. She rolled up her sleeve, frowning. Sure enough, a little red weal, slightly itchy and sore. She'd been drugged, and slugged, and dumped in a pod and sent off - As suddenly as that first memory, the situation on the cruiser came to her. Mysterious messages, someone using her her comm code, and her belief that Achael had had something to do with Abe's murder. If she'd had any doubts, they vanished. comm code, and her belief that Achael had had something to do with Abe's murder. If she'd had any doubts, they vanished.

With the wave of anger, her mind seemed to clear. Perhaps Achael or his accomplice had thought she'd die of the drug - or maybe they meant to force her into taking coldsleep, and intended the pod to be picked up by confederates.

You have such cheerful thoughts, she told herself, and looked around for distraction.

There, on the control console an arm's length away, a large gray envelope with bright orange stripes across it. Fleet Security, Cla.s.sified. Do Not Open Without Proper Authorization. The pressure seal hadn't quite taken; the opening gaped. Sa.s.sinak started to reach for it, then stopped her hand in midair. Whoever had dumped her in here must have left that little gift . . . which meant she wanted no part of it.

It might even become evidence. She grinned to herself. A proper Carin Coldae setup this was, and no mistake. Now what would Carin do? Figure out a way to catch the villain, without ruffling one hair of her head. Sa.s.sinak rumpled her own hair and remembered that she'd been planning to cut it.

Moment by moment she felt better. She'd suspected that something was going on, and she'd been right. She'd felt in danger, and she'd been right. And now she was helplessly locked into an evac pod, which was headed who knows where, and even with the beacon on no one was likely to find her until she'd run out of air . . . and she was happy. Ridiculous, but she was. A little voice of caution murmured that it might be the drug, and she shouldn't be overconfident. She told the little voice to shut up. But just in case . . . she found the med kit, and figured out how to lay her arm in the cradle for a venous tap. Take a blood sample, that should do it. If she had been drugged, and the drug proved traceable . . . the sting of the needle interrupted that thought for a moment. Beacon. She needed to check the beacon.

But as she had already begun to suspect, the beacon wasn't functioning. She looked thoughtfully at the control console. The quickest way to disable the beacon, and the simplest, required a screwdriver and three or four minutes with that console. Lift the top, giving access to the switches and their attached wiring. Then, depending on how obvious you wanted to be, clip or crosswire or remove this and that. She was not surprised to see a screwdriver loose on the "deck" of the pod.

And her first impulse would normally have been to check out the beacon, using that screwdriver to free the console top. After she'd picked up the envelope with Cla.s.sified all over it. Her fingerprints, her body oils, would have been on the tool, the envelope, the console, even the switches underneath, obscuring the work of the person who'd put her here.

Sa.s.sinak took another long swallow of water, and rummaged in the med kit for a stimulant tab. This was no time to miss anything.

In the end, the med kit provided most of what she needed. Forceps, with which to lift the screwdriver and put it into a packet that had held headache pills. It occurred to her that while she was unconscious, her a.s.sailant might have pressed her fingers against the envelope, or the screwdriver, but she couldn't do anything about that. She found the little pocket scanner that was supposed to be in every evac module, and shot a clip of the envelope as it lay on the console. When she had all the evidence secured, she suddenly wondered how that would help if she were in coldsleep when she was found. Suppose her a.s.sailant had confederates, who were supposed to pick her up? They could destroy her careful work, incriminate her even more. That gave her the jitters for awhile, and then she remembered Abe's patient voice saying "What you can't change, don't cry over: put your energy where it works, Sa.s.s."

Right now it had to go into prolonging her time before coldsleep.

Which meant, she remembered unhappily, no eating. Digestion used energy, which used oxygen. No exercise, for the same reason. Lie still, breathe slow, think peaceful thoughts. You might as well spend the time in coldsleep, she grumbled to herself, as try to act as if you were in coldsleep. But she took the time to clean herself up as well as she could, using the tiny mirror in the med kit. The slightly overlong hair could be tied back neatly, the stains wiped from her uniform. Then she lay down on the couch, pulled up the coverlet, and tried to relax.

She had not been hungry like this since her slave days. Her empty stomach growled, gurgled, and finally settled for sharp nagging pains. She chivvied her mind away from the food fantasies it wanted to indulge in, steering it into mathematics instead. Squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, visualizing curves from equations, and imagining how, with a shift in values, the curve would shift ... as a loop of hose shifts with changing water pressure. Finally she slipped into a doze.

She woke in a foul mood, but more clear-headed than before. Elapsed time since ejection was now 25 hours, 16 minutes. Clearly the cruiser hadn't stopped to look for her, or hadn't been able to find her. She wondered if the Ssli could sense such a small distortion in the fields they touched. Or could the Wefts detect her, as a living being they'd known? But that was idle speculation. She gave her arm to the med kit's blood sampler again; she remembered being told that each drug had a characteristic breakdown profile, and that serial blood tests could provide the best information on an unknown drug.

For a moment, the pod seemed to contract around her, crushing her to the couch. Had some unsuspected drive come on, to flatten her with acceleration? But no: the pods had the same artificial gravity as the cruiser itself, to protect injured occupants. She knew that; she knew the walls weren't really closing in ... but she suddenly understood just how Ensign Corfin might have felt. She couldn't see out; she had no idea where she was or where she was going; she was trapped in a tiny box with no way out. Her breath came fast: too fast. She fought to slow it. So, this was claustrophobia. How interesting. It didn't feel interesting; it felt terrible.

She had to do something. Squares and square roots seemed singularly impractical this time. Could she figure out a way to ensure that the evidence couldn't be faked against her? Any worse than it already was, she reminded herself. That brought another chilling thought: maybe the cruiser hadn't come looking for her because Commander Fargeon was already convinced she was an enemy agent and had absconded with the pod.

Her stomach growled again; she set herself to enter the first stages of control Abe had taught her. Hunger was just hunger; in this case, nothing to worry about. But she did need to worry about her career.

In the long, lonely, silent hours that followed, Sa.s.sinak spent much of her time in a near-trance, dozing. The rest she spent doing what she could to make tampering with the evidence as hard as possible. If the pod were picked up by enemies, with plenty of time at their disposal, none of her ploys would work . . . but if a Fleet vessel, her cruiser or another, came along, it would take more than a few minutes to undo what she'd done and rework it to incriminate her.

When the elapsed-time monitor read 100 hours, and the time to exhaustion of her air supply was less than five hours, she pulled out the instruction manual for the coldsleep cabinet. Evac pods had an automated system, but she didn't trust it; what if the same person who had sabotaged the beacon had fiddled with the medications? She pushed aside the thought that sabotaging the entire coldsleep cabinet wouldn't have been that hard. If it didn't work, she'd never wake up, and that was that. But she had to try it, or die of oxygen starvation . . . and the films they'd been shown at the Academy had made it clear that oxygen starvation was not a pleasant way to go.

She filled the syringes carefully, checking and rechecking labels and dosages. With the mattress off the acceleration couch, she looked the cabinet over as well as she could. Ordinarily, cold sleep required only an enclosed s.p.a.ce; she could go into it using the whole pod as the container. But for extra protection in the pods, the reinforced cabinet had been designed, and was strongly recommended. She looked into that blank, shiny interior, and shuddered.

First, the protocol said, program the automatic dispenser, and then have it start an IV. But she wasn't doing that. Her way would mean getting into the cabinet, with the syringes in hand, giving herself the injections, pulling down the lid, turning the cylinder controls, and then . . . then, she hoped, just sleeping away whatever time it took before someone found her.

Nor could she wait until the last moment. Oxygen starvation would make her clumsy and slow, and she might make fatal mistakes. She set the medication alarm in the medkit for one hour before the deadline. The last minutes crept by. Sa.s.sinak looked around the pod interior, fighting to stay calm. She dared not put herself in trance, yet there was nothing to do to ease her tension. There was the tape she'd made, her log of this unplanned journey with all her surmises about cause and criminal. In the acceleration couch mattress was a handwritten log, in the hope that redundancy might help.

When the alarm sounded, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the syringe and reached for the alarm release. But it didn't work. Great, she thought, I'll go into coldsleep with that horrible noise in my ears and have nightmares for years. Then she realized it wasn't the same buzzer at all - in fact, it wasn't time for the med-alarm - she had fifteen more minutes. She looked wildly around the pod, trying to figure it out, before her mind dredged up the right memory. Proximity alarm: some kind of large ma.s.s was nearby, and it might be a ship, and they might even have compatible communications gear.

Only she had carefully set up the console to trap additional evidence while she was in coldsleep, and if she touched it now she'd be confusing her own system.

And what if it wasn't a Fleet vessel? What if it was an ally of her a.s.sailant? Or worse, suppose it wasn't a ship at all, and the pod was falling into a star?

In that case, she told herself firmly, you still don't have to worry; you can't stop it, and it'll all be over very quickly. She found the override switch for the proximity alarm, and cut it off. Now it was a matter of deciding whether to ride it out blind, or try to communicate. She decided to save her careful work, and then realized this meant she wouldn't know if whatever it was could rendezvous before her air ran out. It wouldn't take much error, on either side: ten minutes without oxygen would do as well as four days.

Ten minutes left. Five. She had left herself that safe buffer: dare she use it now? Zero. Sa.s.sinak looked at the syringe, but didn't pick it up. She'd feel silly if she lost consciousness just as someone came through the door. She'd be flat stupid if she died because she cut it too close. But she could - and did, quickly - tape an addition to her log.

Now she was using her safe margin. Minute by minute went by with no clue from without, of what was happening. She had just picked up the syringe, with a grimace, when something clunked, hard, against the pod. Another thump; a loud clang. Sa.s.sinak put the syringe down, lowered the lid of the coldsleep cabinet, and sat on it. She could not - could not - miss whatever was going to happen. What happened first was total silence as the blower in her oxygen system went out. She had a moment to think how stupid she'd been, and then it cut in again; the readout flickered, and shifted to green. "Exterior source" it said now. "Unlimited. Tanks charging." It smelled better, too. Sa.s.sinak took a second long breath, and unclenched her fingers from the edge of the cabinet. Other lights flickered on the control console. "Exterior pressure equalised" said one. She didn't trust it enough to open the hatch . . . not yet. "Exterior power source confirmed" said another.

Finally she heard various clicks and bangs from the hatch, and braced herself, not sure what she would do if she found enemies when it opened. But the first face she saw was familiar.

"Ensign Sa.s.sinak." Familiar, but not particularly welcoming. The captain himself had chosen to greet her, and behind him she saw both friendly and scowling faces. And a squad of marines, armed. Sa.s.sinak stood, saluted, and nearly fell as the hours of inactivity and fasting caught up with her all at once. "Are you hurt?" Fargeon asked when she staggered.

"Just a knock on the head," she said. "Excuse me, sir, but I must warn you - "

"You, Ensign, are the one to be warned," he said stiffly, that momentary warmth gone as if it had never happened. "Charges have been made against you, serious charges, and it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you."

Sa.s.sinak stared at him, momentarily speechless. Had he really believed Achael's (it must have been Achael's) accusations? Wasn't he going to give her a chance? She caught herself, shook her head, and went on. "Captain, please - it's very important that this pod be sealed, and all contents handled by forensic specialists."

That got his attention. "What? What are you talking about?"

Sa.s.sinak waved her hand at the pod's interior. "Sir, I've done my best to secure it, but I really don't know how. Someone knocked me out during evac drill, dumped me in this pod, jettisoned it, and planted it full of items I was supposed to handle, to incriminate myself. I believe those same items may carry traces of the perpetrator - " She nearly stumbled over the word, catching sight of Lieutenant Achael in the group behind the captain. His face was frozen in an expression of distaste. Then it changed to eagerness, and he leaned forward.

"That's exactly what she would say, sir. That someone tried to frame her - "

"I can see that for myself, Mr. Achael." Fargeon's expression soured even more.

"I could hardly have planted someone else's fingerprints on the interior of the console while disabling the beacon," Sa.s.sinak said crisply. Achael paled; she saw his eyes glance sideways.

"You disabled the beacon?" asked Fargeon, missing the point.

"No, sir. I realized the beacon was disabled, and also realized that if I made an attempt to repair it, I would destroy evidence pointing to the person who did disable it. That evidence is intact." She looked straight at Achael as she spoke. He flinched from her gaze, took a step backward.

Fargeon's head tilted minutely; she had surprised him with some of that. "There's a doc.u.ment missing," he said.

Sa.s.sinak nodded. "There's a cla.s.sified doc.u.ment envelope, not quite sealed, in this pod. I found it when I woke - "

"Likely story," said Achael. This time the captain's response was clearly irritated, a quick flip of the hand for silence.

"And did you handle it?" asked the captain.

"No, sir, I did not. Although it's possible that whoever dumped me in there put my fingers on it while I was unconscious,"

"I see." The captain pulled himself up. "Well. This is . . . unexpected. Very well; I'll see to it that the pod is sealed, and the contents examined for evidence of what actually happened. As for you. Ensign, you'll report to Sickbay, and then to your quarters. I'll want a full report - "

"Sir, I taped a report while in the pod. May I bring that tape?"

"You did?" Again this threw him off his stride. "Very good thinking. Ensign. By all means, let me have it now."

Sa.s.sinak picked up the tape, and started forward. Her vision blurred, and she nearly hit her head on the hatch rim. A hand came forward, steadied her arm. She ducked under the hatch, and came out into the chilly air of E-bay. It smelled decidedly fresher than the pod. Fargeon peered at her.

"You're very pale - are you sure you're not ill?"

"It's just not eating." The bulkheads seemed to shimmer, then steadied. She was conscious of having to concentrate firmly on the here and now.

"You - but surely there were emergency rations in the pod?"

"Yes, but - to make the air last - " She fought to stay upright, with a soft blackness folding itself around her. "I didn't - trust the coldsleep cabinet - if the same person had tampered with it - "

"G.o.ds!" That was Cavery, she realized as she looked toward the voice. But the blackness rose around her, inescapable, and she felt herself curling into it.

"Don't forget the blood samples," she heard herself say, and then everything disappeared.

The medician's face hung over hers, suspended in nothingness. Sa.s.sinak blinked, yawned, and found the rest of the compartment in focus again. Sickbay, clearly. An IV line ran from her left hand to a bag; wires trailed across her chest.

"I'm fine," she said helpfully.

"You're lucky," said the medician, pinching back a smile. "You came close to the edge - you can't use Discipline like that and not eat."

"Huh?"

"Don't try to tell me you weren't using it, either - nothing but a crash from it would have sent you that far down'. Here - have a mug of this." A flick of the hand, and Sa.s.s's couch lifted her so that she could take the mug of thick broth the medician offered.

"What did the blood samples show?" asked Sa.s.sinak between sips. She could practically feel the strength flowing back into her.

"You're lucky," the medician said again. "It was a coldsleep prep dose. If you'd hit the tank controls by mistake, you might have been in coldsleep immediately ... or if you'd chosen to enter coldsleep early, the residual in your blood could have killed you. It didn't completely clear until the third day."

"The cabinet?" She remembered her fear of that featureless interior.

"Nothing: it was normal." The medician looked at her curiously. "You're in remarkably good shape, all things considered. That lump on the back of your head may still hurt, but there's no damage. You're not showing any signs of excessive anxiety - "

Sa.s.sinak slurped the last bit of broth and grinned. "I'm safe now. And not hungry. When can I get up?"

Before the medician could answer, a voice from the corridor said, "That's Sa.s.s, all right! I can tell from here."

"Not yet," said the medician to Sa.s.s. Then, "Do you want visitors? I can easily tell them to let you rest."

But Sa.s.sinak could hardly wait to find out what had happened so far. Mira, all trace of fashionable reserve gone, and Jrain, almost visibly shimmering into another shape in his excitement, were only too glad to tell her.