Chapter Eighteen.

For a moment, following Aygar up into the more public tunnels, Sa.s.sinak thought how she could explain all this to a Board of Inquiry, if she survived long enough. There were no Rules of Engagement covering this sort of thing. She remembered something about "accepting civilian volunteers into a military mission" -not recommended, but it did happen-and more than one pa.s.sage strongly cautioning Fleet officers from involving themselves in local politics. And this was hardly local politics. She had taken on some part of the Federation itself and even though she considered the people involved to be traitors, they could say the same of her.

She dared not think too far ahead or the weight of it would crush her. A single Fleet captain against the most powerful families in the Federation, against the ma.s.sed pirates, plus the Seti? And with nothing but a ragged bunch of crazies and losers? How could she even be thinking of this? Yet the thought daunted her for only a moment. She had survived the raid on her home, against odds as high. She had survived battle after battle in s.p.a.ce where any mistake could have killed her, and some nearly had. She had survived the jealousy of other officers, a hundred mischances, to be where she was now. If not you, who? Abe had said more than once.

No time for letting her mind drift, not even to the things Fleur had told her. She would have time later for more such talks, for long reminiscences, for shared tears and laughter, or they would both be dead. For now, she had Aygar to get safely to the rendezvous with his student friend, and whatever came after. She patted her midsection where the extra bulk Fleur had insisted she stuff into the pale blue worksuit felt itchy and unfamiliar. Even worse was the slight dowager's hump that p.r.i.c.kled when she twitched her shoulders, trying to remember to slump. Although she'd seen in the mirror that the gray streaks Fleur had added to her hair as well as decidedly wrong makeup made her look years older, she kept thinking a more complete disguise would have been better. Aygar, whose height and shoulders made him unmistakable, had been turned into a male fashion plate. A voluminous magenta shirt unlaced halfway down his chest and tucked into tight gray shorts made him look like anything but fugitive. His mapper b.u.t.ton now looked like one of the jewels studding a huge medallion hung on stout chain around his neck.

The first "uptowners" they saw hardly glanced at them. The upsloping tunnel, linking one subway level with another, had streams of pedestrians scurrying in both directions. Most wore one-piece worksuits in grays, browns, and blues; the others were dressed as flamboyantly as Aygar. Homebound workers, Fleur had said, mingling with the pleasure-hunters who also tended to "change shifts" at rush hours. Sa.s.sinak trailed him, trying to look as if she merely happened to be going in the same direction. In that brief time below, she'd forgotten how noisy large groups could be. Announcements no one could have understood boomed from the levels below and above; the scurrying feet were overlaid by a constant roar of conversation. A flare of Ryxi screeched, threatening, and the humans parted around them. A gray uniform approached at a jog. At the next level, the upbound stream bifurcated, a third veering left and two-thirds right. Even more noise broke over them. The synthesized voice of the transportation computers announcing train arrivals and departures, warning pa.s.sengers away from the rails, repeating the same list of safety rules over and over. Friends met on the platforms with squeals of delight as if they had not seen each other at rush hour the day before. Less demonstrative workers glared at them or muttered brief curses. Aygar and Sa.s.sinak both turned right. Here, service booths backed the subway platforms: fountains, restrooms, public callbooths, even a few food booths. As he'd been directed, Aygar turned into the third of these. Sa.s.sinak paused as if to look over the menu displayed, then ducked in after him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am," Sa.s.sinak said very quietly. "Did you never hear of disguises?"

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

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

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

"Well, of course, but..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gerstan nodded, and gulped down his mouthful of fries.

"So fer. We've gotten all the way up to H-Level, and there's really tricky stuff from F-level on up. I've never been as far as H by myself. Erdra's done it, though."

"What's on H-level?"

Erdra tossed her head in a gesture not quite like Coldae's but close enough.

"Well, it lets you play model games with the lower levels. Like, what if all the water in the auxiliary reservoir is gone suddenly and the pumps on that line are about to seize. That's one thing, but it's not just games, because it's realtime, using their data, bollixing their sensors, overriding the safety interlocks. I've never done anything really dangerous..." The tone was that of someone who had indeed done something criminal, if not dangerous, but who wasn't about to admit it.

Bilis snorted. "What about the time you convinced Uie Transport Authority a train had derailed out on the Yellow Meadow line?"

"That wasn't dangerous. They had time to stop the following trains. I set it up that way."

"Cost the taxpayers 80,000 credits, they said," Bilis said to Sa.s.sinak. "Lost time, damage from the emergency halts, hours of hunting the 'bases, looking for tampering. Never did find her."

"Never did find the tap at all," said Erdra who sounded much smugger than someone faking a train derailment should. "And if something blows when a train has to make an emergency stop, it needs finding. If there had been a wreck, that number 43 would've plowed right into it. They should thank me for finding their problems."

Sa.s.sinak eyed the girl, wishing she had her on the Zaid-Dayan for a few weeks. With all that talent, she needed someone to straighten her out.

"By the way," Erdra said sweetly, popping a couple of fries into her mouth and crunching them. "How come your ship left without you?"

"I beg your pardon?" It was the only alternative to the scream that wanted to erupt from her gut.

"Your ship. That cruiser. Newscast says it broke away from the Station and went zipping off blathering about an invading fleet. The captain or whoever you left up there is supposed to be crazy with whatever drug or spore or something you caught on Ireta. Whatever made you kill that admiral."

For a moment the whirl of Sa.s.sinak's thoughts found no verbal form. Rage: how dare they leave her! Fear: she had been so sure that if she could get a signal out, Arly would be there for her. Exultation: she had been right! There was more going on than anyone had thought and those blasted smug Internal Security fops were going to find something worse than a Fleet cruiser's guns to worry about.

She controlled all that, and her breathing, with an effort, and said, "I didn't kill any admiral." But I could cheerfully kill you, she thought at Erdra who clearly had no telepathic ability at all because she kept right on smiling.

"You nearly finished?" That came from an irritated clump of men in business jumpers, their fry packets leaking grease onto their fingers.

"Oh, sure." Gerstan stood up as quickly as the others did. "Let's go on to somewhere else and talk, huh?"

Sa.s.sinak felt very much the drab peahen among the flock but dealt with that by taking the lead. She trusted Aygar to keep them following.

Back down the sloping connecting tunnel to the narrow service tube and the un.o.btrusive door. Their last protest had been some distance back. Sa.s.sinak paid no mind to it. She had enough to think of. Arly would not have taken the Zaid-Dayan out without good reason. That she knew. But on top of her own concern, her own burning desire to be there when anything happened to her ship, the words "Court Martial" burned in her mind. There was no excuse short of death for a captain who was downside when her ship went into action.

She gave the signal knock to the door, and it opened at once. She led the others in, and when the door shut behind them, they faced the same weapons she had.

"What is this?" Gerstan demanded.

"Caution," Sa.s.sinak said. And to Coris, "No one noticed us and we had no problems. Some of these were fairly loose-tongued in a fry bar but the place was jammed with commuters. Shouldn't be a problem." She turned back to the students. "You wanted a conspiracy? You've just found one. These," and she waved an arm at her motley troop, "are fellow-conspirators. Refugees. Ex-slaves. The poor and homeless of this city which, according to Aygar, you hope to help by plotting a coup."

From their expressions, none of the students had actually met any of the undergrounders before. To their credit, none of them tried to bolt.

"You're sure about these four?" Coris asked.

"Not entirely, yet, but let's go down a bit and see if Erdra's as good as Gerstan says." Coris nodded, and waved Sa.s.sinak through the group. She spoke over her shoulder to Erdra. "Did they give any specifics about the ship leaving? Say what it was after?"

"Uh... not really." Erdra sounded much less smug. Perhaps the girl had recognized that those weapons were real. "Just that they-the people aboard-threw off the Security teams that make sure no weapons are usable. A shuttle was sent off and then the ship left the Station. They'd said something about an invasion, but there's been no word. But that got squashed. It's been confirmed that nothing's out there that shouldn't be."

"And you believe that?" Sa.s.sinak didn't wait for an answer, but let her annoyance work itself out. "You, who created a fake train wreck? Who could've hidden a real one as easily?"

"But I didn't. And that means someone else..."

"Is as smart as you are. Right."

"Then is there really something out there?" That was Gerstan, bouncing up alongside her. Sa.s.sinak refrained from slapping him back into place.

"Arly would not take the Zaid-Dayan without good reason. She's not any crazier than I am. So I think something's out there. What, I couldn't guess."

Actually, she could: a pirate incursion or a Seti fleet. Either one might be part of a larger conspiracy and she had to hope only one of them had materialized. Her mind reverted to something else Erdra had said. A shuttle? Why had Arly released a shuttle?

Then she grinned: obvious. And she would wager she could name the pilot aboard, but not what that very brash young man would do next.

"So you're saying," Gerstan went on, "that the Federation itself is involved in concealing the approach of some danger from deeps.p.a.ce?"

Sa.s.sinak nodded. "Yes, because some faction thinks that will give it control. In such cases you have two possibilities. The present rulers want to use force to give themselves absolute power because they fear a challenge, or a faction not quite in control wants to tip the balance its way."

"Which is it?"

"I don't know." She grinned at their confusion. "It doesn't really matter. If Arly detected the incoming fleet at the edge of the Zaid-Dayan's scan range, it can't be here for days. It won't just launch missiles at the planet. To do that it could have lobbed a pa.s.sive from far outside scan." Their faces were blank. Sa.s.sinak reminded herself that none of these people had military training. "Never mind," she said gently. "Hie point is that whatever's going on up there isn't our problem. Our problem is the group here that's concealing it. That, we can do something about, if we're quick enough. Then the existing defense systems should be able to handle the invaders." She wasn't at all sure she believed that. Would Arly think to call for more Fleet aid? Or would she be worried that what came might not be on their side?

"Now," she said, putting enough bite in it that they all, students and undergrounders alike, gave her their full attention. "First we must locate The Parchandri and neutralize him. That's your task, Erdra. Get into the links and liases, and find out where his hideyhole is. Get control of the lifesupport and communications lines. I'd wager next year's pay that h.e.l.l be underground but not completely self-contained."

"But..." The girl looked around. "Where's an access port? I've always used one of the Library carrels to get in."

"Coris. Take her down and help her get to one of the trunkline 'ports. Bilis can go with her and you'll need a ten squad for guards. If you run into trouble, run! And get her to another 'port. Two runners, for messages, until we get our communications set up. Gerstan, you told Aygar that there were a lot more students who wanted to get involved?"

"Yes, ma'am." That honorific came out slowly as if he hadn't planned it. Sa.s.sinak smiled at him.

"Good. We'll find you a 'port and you can let them know. We need communications links topside so we can keep track of what the media's saying and what's going down on the streets. We'll also need some small portable corns, like those the police have." From his expression, he was finding real action scarier than he'd expected. And he hadn't seen real action yet.

"You mean, steal... ? Like, from a... a policeman? A guard?"

"Whatever it takes. I thought you were eager to start a revolution. Did you think you'd do that without getting cross ways with the police?"

"Well, no, but..."

"But talk let you feel brave without doing anything. Sorry, lad, but the time for that's all gone. Now it's time to act or go hide someplace very deep until it's over. Can you do it? Will your friends?"

"Well... yes. Some of'em we've even had to sit on, practically, to keep from doing something stupid."

Sa.s.sinak grinned. "Change stupid to useful and get 'em rounded up. Let's go, everyone."

Coris had already left with Erdra and Bilis. Now Sa.s.sinak led the others at a good pace back to the lower levels. After the first shock of hearing that the Zaid-Dayan had left, she felt an unaccountable lift of spirits. The whole situation was impossible, but it would come out right.

In only a few hours, the fragile bond between the various groups began to strengthen. A trickle of students appeared, from one access tunnel and another, all with necessary equipment. Haifa dozen standard 'phone repair kits, with the official connectors that wouldn't trip any alarms no matter where they were plugged in. Two police-issue belt-comps that included both communicators and tiny computers. Nineteen gas-kits similar to the Fleet-issue one Sa.s.sinak carried.

"Where'd you get these?" she asked the short, chunky youth who brought them in. He blushed a deep rose and muttered something about the drama department. "Drama department?"

"We did Hostigge's Breathless last year and the director wanted realistic props. She's friendly with a guy at the local station who said these weren't really any good without the detox." At which point, he handed over a sackful of detox tubes. "Now these I got scrounging around in the junk stores over on Lollipi Street. Most of 'em have been used once, but I thought maybe..."

"How long have you been collecting them?" Some-tiling about the earnest sweating face impressed Sa.s.sinak. He reminded her of the best supply officers: longsided and sticky-fingered.

"Well, even before the play I thought maybe they'd be good for something, if somebody could synthesize the membranes. Then when we got the membrane masks and they didn't take 'em back, I thought..." His voice trailed away, as if he still didn't realize what he'd done.

"Good for you," she said.

She hoped he'd survive the coming troubles. He'd be worth recruiting. Of course, nineteen gas kits among hundreds didn't help much, but he'd had the right idea.

Meanwhile, with communications access to the topside, they knew what the news media were telling everyone. Erdra had tapped into the lower-level secured lines so they knew where the police patrols were. Sa.s.sinak found herself yawning again and when she counted the hours, realized she'd run over twenty-four again. Aygar was snoring in a corner of the crowded little maintenance area their group was in. She would have to sleep soon herself.

"Got it," came Erdra's triumphant cry.

Sa.s.sinak struggled up. She'd fallen asleep at some point and somebody had covered her with a blanket. She raked her fingers through her hair and wished she could have thirty seconds in her own refresher cabinet.

"Are you sure?" she heard someone else ask.

"Yes, because it's guarded like nothing else we've seen. It's not in the central city, though, where I'd have thought, but over here, map coordinates 13-H. Below the main tunnels. But look, it's not directly under any of them. So I got into an archive file and found the building specs." She was waving a hardcopy sheet and Sa.s.sinak grabbed it.

"It's a ship!" The others stared at her.

"It can't be," Erdra said. "It's underground."

"Silo construction." From the blank looks, none of diem knew what that meant. "Look," and Sa.s.sinak pointed to her proof, "the stuff on top's designed to look like real buildings, but it's just sh.e.l.l. Probably even folds back. Down here, this is a lot more than self-contained habitat for a planet... this, and this," her finger stabbed at the plans. "Framing of a standard midsize personal yacht. My guess would be Bollanger Yards, maybe a hundred-fifty years ago. When was that section of the city built up?"

Erdra scowled, fiddled on the keyboard she now carried, and said, "Eighty-two years ago, subdivided for light industry. Before that, nothing but a single ware-bouse and... a derelict shuttle station, from back when private shuttles were legal."

"But a ship couldn't last that long, could it?" asked Gerstan.

"Easily, protected like that. They've maintained it. They'll have replaced obsolete equipment with new. No problem to them. And nothing wrong with the hull design. The question is, do they keep it fitted to launch?"

"Launch? From underground?"

Civilians I Did they not even know that most planetary defenses used some silo-sited missiles, often placed on moons or asteroids in the system, safe from random bombardment by stray rocks?

"Launch. As in, escape. If things get too hot. Which is precisely what we were planning to make them."

"How could we tell? And what will it do if it does launch? Will it start a fire?"

"Erdra, do you have a hardcopy of all the connection data?"

Wide-eyed, the girl handed over a sheaf of them. Sa.s.sinak began paging through as she talked.

"If it's the hull I think it is, and if it's got the engines it should have, then it will do more than start a fire if it launches. They won't have intended that silo to be used more than once. Its lining will combust to produce part of the initial lift and since they would only do it in an emergency, it's probably set to backblast down any communicating tunnels. Even though that wastes thrust, I doubt they'll care."