"Elegant. Don't fight it; it suits you. Smart, s.e.xy, and elegant besides. By the way, how's the nightlife this last term?"

Sa.s.s grimaced and shook her head. "Not much, with all we had to do." Her affair with Harmon hadn't lasted past midyear exams, but she looked forward to better on commissioning leave. And surely on a cruiser she'd find more than one likely partner. "You told me the Academy would be tough, but I thought the worst would be over after the first year. I don't see how being a real officer can be harder than being a cadet commander."

"You will." Abe drained his wine, and picked up a roll. "You never had to send those kids out to die."

"Commander Kerif said that's old-fashioned: you don't send people out to die, you send them out to win."

Abe set the roll back on his plate with a little thump. "He does, does he? What kind of 'win' is it when your ship loses a pod in the grid, and you have to send out a repair party? You listen to me, Sa.s.s: you don't want to be one of those wet-eared young pups the troops never trust. It's not a game any more, any more than being hauled off by slavers was a game. You're back in the real world now. Real weapons, real wounds, real death. I'm d.a.m.ned proud of you, and that won't change: it's not every girl that could make it like you have. But if you think the Academy was tough, you think back to Sedon-VI and the slave barracks. I daresay you haven't really forgotten, whatever polish they've put on your manners."

"No. I haven't forgotten." Sa.s.s stuffed a roll in her mouth before she said too much. He didn't need to know about the Paraden whelp, and all that mess. A shiver ran across her shoulder blades. He must know she hadn't changed that much . . . but he sure seemed nervous about something. As soon as they'd finished eating, he was ready to go, and she knew something more was coming. Outside, in the moist fragrant early-summer night, Sa.s.s wished again she could be two or three people. She'd had her invitation, to the graduation frolic up in the parked hills behind the Academy square. It was just the night for it, too . . . soft gra.s.s, sweet breeze. Mosquito bites where you can't scratch, she reminded herself, and wondered why the geniuses who'd managed to leave the c.o.c.kroaches back on Old Terra hadn't managed the same thing with mosquitoes.

Abe led her across town, to one of his favorite bars. Sa.s.s sighed inwardly. She knew why he came here: senior Fleet NCOs liked the place, and he wanted to show her off to his friends. But it was noisy, and crowded, and smelled, after the cool open air, like the cheap fat they fried their snacks in. She saw a few other graduates, and waved. Donnet: his uncle was a retired mech from a heavy cruiser. Issi, her family's pride: the first officer in seven generations of a huge Fleet family, all noisily telling her how wonderful it was. She shook hands with those Abe introduced: mostly the older ones, tough men and women with the deft precise movements of those used to working in a confined s.p.a.ce.

It took them awhile to find a table, in that crowd. Civilian s.p.a.cers liked the place, too, and Academy graduation brought everyone out to raise a gla.s.s for the graduates. Even the hoods, Sa.s.s noted, spotting the garish matching jackets of a street gang huddled near the back door. She was surprised they came here, to a Fleet and s.p.a.cer bar, but a second, smaller gang followed the first in.

"Go get our drinks, Sa.s.s," said Abe, once he was down. "I'll just have a word with the Giustins." Issi's family . . . Sa.s.s grinned at him. He knew everyone. She took the credit chip he held out and found her way to the bar.

She was halfway back to him with the drinks when it happened. She missed the beginning, never knew who threw the first blow, but suddenly a row of tables erupted into violence. Fists, chains, the flash of blades. Sa.s.s dropped the tray and leaped forward, already yelling Abe's name. She couldn't see him, couldn't see anything but a tangled ma.s.s of Fleet cadet uniforms, gang jackets, and s.p.a.cer gray. Her shout brought order to the cadets, or seemed to. At her command they coalesced, becoming a unit; with her they started to clear that end of the room, in a flurry of feints and blows and sudden clutches. From the corner of one eye, as she ducked under someone's knife and then disarmed him with a kick, she saw a move she recognized from one of their opponents. For an instant, she almost recognized that combination of size, shape, and motion. She had no time to a.n.a.lyse it; there were too many drunken s.p.a.cers who reacted to any brawl with enthusiasm, too many green-jacketed, masked hoodlums. The fight involved the whole place now, an incredible crashing screaming ma.s.s of struggling bodies. She rolled under a table, came up to strike precise blows at a green-jacket about to knife a s.p.a.cer, ducked the s.p.a.cer's wild punch, kicked out at someone who clutched her leg. Something raked her arm; the lights went out, then came on in a dazzle of flickering blue. Sirens, whistles, the overloud blare of a bullhorn. Sa.s.s managed a glance back toward the entrance, and saw masked Fleet MPs with riot canisters.

"DOWN ..." the bullhorn blared. Sa.s.s dropped, as all the cadets did, knowing what was coming. Most of the s.p.a.cers made it down before the MPs fired, but the hoods tried to run for it. A billowing cloud of blue gas filled the room; a thrown canister burst against the back door and felled the hoods who'd headed that way. Sa.s.s held her breath. One potato, two potato. Her hand reached automatically to her belt, and her fingernail found the slit for the release. Three potato, four potato. She flicked the membrane mask open, and covered her face with it. Five potato, six potato. Now she had the tube of detox, and smeared it over the nose and mouth portions of the mask. Seven, eight, nine, ten ... a cautious breath, smelling of nutmeg from the detox, but no nausea, no pain, and no unconsciousness. Beside her, a s.p.a.cer already snored heavily. She looked up, eyes protected by the mask. Already the gas had dissipated to a blue haze, still potent enough to knock out anyone without a mask, but barely obscuring vision.

The MPs spread around the room, checking IDs. Several other cadets were clambering to their feet, protected by their masks. Sa.s.s pushed herself up, looking for Abe. She wondered if he carried a Fleet emergency mask.

"ID!" It was a big MP in riot gear; Sa.s.s didn't argue but pulled out her new Fleet ID and handed it over. He slipped it into his beltcomp, and returned it. "You start this?" he asked. "Or see it start?"

Sa.s.s shook her head. "It started over here, though. I was coming across the room - "

"Why didn't you get out and call help?"

"My father - my guardian was over here."

"Name?"

Sa.s.s gave Abe's name and ID numbers; the MP waved her out to search. She veered around two fallen tables . . . was it this one, or that? Three limp bodies lay in an untidy pile. Sa.s.s shifted the top one; the MP helped. The next wore s.p.a.cer gray, a long scrawny man with vomit drooling from the comer of his mouth. And there at the bottom lay Abe. Sa.s.s nodded at the MP, and he took a charged reviver from his belt and handed it to her; she put it over Abe's gaping mouth. He looked so ... so dead, that way, with his mouth slack. The MP had dragged away the tall s.p.a.cer, and now helped her roll Abe onto his back.

They saw the neat black hole in his chest the same moment. Sa.s.s didn't recognise it at first, reached down to brush off the smudge on the front of his jacket. He'd hate that, dirt on the new jacket he'd bought for her graduation. But the MP caught her wrist. She looked at him.

"He's dead," the MP said. "Someone had a needler."

Even as the room hazed around her, she thought "Shock. That's what's happening." She couldn't think about Abe being dead ... he wasn't dead. This was another exercise, another test, like the one in the training vessel, when half the students had been made up to look like wounded victims. She remembered the realistic glisten of the fake gut wound, trailing a tangle of intestines across the deck plating. Easier to think about that, about the equally faked amputation, than that silly little black hole in Abe's jacket.

Later she heard, through an open doorway in the station, that she'd acted normally, not drugged, drunk, or irrational. She was sitting on a gray plastic chair, across a cluttered desk from someone who was busy at a computer. The floor had a pattern of random speckles, like every floor she'd seen for the past four years. She turned her head to look out the door, and an MP with his riot headgear under his arm gave her a neutral glance. She was Fleet, she hadn't started it, she hadn't had hysterics when they found Abe's body. Good enough.

It didn't feel good enough. Her mind raced back and forth over that minute or so the fight lasted, playing back minute fragments very slowly, looking for something she couldn't yet guess. Where had it started? Who? She had been carrying the drinks: Abe's square, squatty bottle of Priun brandy, and the footed gla.s.s for it, and a special treat for herself: Caprian liqueur. She'd been afraid the tiny cup of silver-washed crystal - the only proper receptacle for Caprian liqueur - would bounce off the tray if someone b.u.mped her, so she hadn't been looking more than one body ahead when the fight started. She'd looked up when . . . was it a sound, or had she seen something, without really recognizing it? She couldn't place it, and went on. She'd dropped the tray, and in her mind it fell in slow-motion, emptying its contents over the shoulders of someone in s.p.a.cer gray at the table she'd been pa.s.sing.

Suddenly she had something, or a hint of it. In the midst of that fight, someone to her right had blocked a kick with a move that had to come from Academy training ... a move that almost had to be learned in low-grav tumbling, although you could use it in normal G. Only it hadn't been one of the graduates, nor . . . her mind focussed on the anomaly . . . nor one of the s.p.a.cers. It had been someone in purple and orange, with blue sleeves ... a gang jacket. She'd tried to take a fast look, but like all the second gang, the fighter's face had been painted in geometric patterns that made identification nearly impossible. Eyes . . . darkish. Skin color . . . from the way it took the paint, neither very light nor very dark.

"Ensign." Sa.s.s looked up, ready to curse at the interruption until she saw the rank insignia. Not local police; Fleet. And not just any Fleet, but the Academy Vice-Commandant, Commander Derran.

"Sir." She stood, and wished she'd had time to change uniforms. But they hadn't run the scan over all the spots yet, and they'd told her to wait.

"I'm sorry. Ensign," the Commander was saying, "He was a good man. Fleet to the core. And on your graduation night, too."

"Thank you, sir." That much was correct; she couldn't manage much more through a tight throat.

"You're his only listed kin," Derran went on. "I a.s.sume you'll want a military funeral?" Sa.s.s nodded. "Burial in the Academy grounds, or - "

She had only half-listened when he'd told her, years ago, how he wanted it. "I don't hold with spending Fleet money to send sc.r.a.p into a star," he'd said. "s.p.a.ce burial's for those who die there. They've earned it. But I'm no landsman, either, to be stuck under a bit of marble on a hillside; I hold by the old code. My life was with Fleet, I had no homeland. Burial at sea, if you can manage it, Sa.s.s. The Fleet does it the right way."

"At sea," she said now. "He wanted it that way."

"Ashes, or - ?"

"Burial, sir, he said, if it was possible."

"Very well. The Superintendent's told me they'll release the body tomorrow; we'll schedule it for - " He pulled out his handcomp and studied the display. 'Two days ... is that satisfactory? Takes that long to get the arrangements made."

"Yes, sir." She felt stupid, stiff, frozen. This could not be Abe's funeral they discussed: time had to stop, and let her sort things out. But time did not stop. The Commander spoke to the police officer behind the desk, and suddenly they were ready for her in the lab. A long-snouted machine took samples from every stain on her uniform; the technician explained about the a.n.a.lysis of blood and fiber and skin cells to identify those she'd fought. When she came out of the lab, she found a Lt. Commander Barrin waiting for her, with a change of clothes brought from her quarters, and the same officer escorted her back to Abe's apartment. There, another Fleet officer had already opened the apartment, set up a file to receive and organize visits and notes that required acknowledgment. Already dozens of notes were racked for her notice, and two of her cla.s.s waited to see her before leaving for their new a.s.signments.

Sa.s.s began to realize what kind of support she could draw on. They knew what papers she needed to find, recognized them in Abe's files when she opened the case. They knew what she should pack, and what formalities would face her in the morning and after. Would he be buried from the Academy, or the nearby Fleet base? Would the circ.u.mstances qualify him for a formal military service, or some variant? Sa.s.s found one or the other knowledgable about every question that came up. Someone provided meals, sat her in front of a filled plate at intervals, and saw to it that she ate. Someone answered the door, the comm, weeded out those she didn't want to see, and made sure she had a few minutes alone with special friends. Someone reminded her to apply for a short delay in joining her new a.s.signment: she would have to stay on Regg for another week or so of investigation. Her rumpled, stained uniform disappeared, returned spotless and mended. Someone forwarded all required uniforms to her a.s.signment, leaving her only a small bit of packing to do. And all this was handled smoothly, calmly, as if she were someone of infinite importance, not a mere ensign just out of school.

She could never be alone without help, as long as she had Fleet: Abe had said that, drummed it into her, and she'd seen Fleet's help. But now it all came together. No enemy could kill them all. She would lose friends, friends close as family, but she could not lose Fleet.

Yet this feeling of security could not make Abe's funeral easier. The police had offered her the chance to be alone with his body, a chance she refused, concealing the horror she felt. (Touch the body of someone she had loved? For an instant the face of her little sister Lunzie, carried in her arms to the dock, swam before her.) Wrapped in a dark blue shroud, it was taken by Fleet Marines to the Academy mortuary. Sa.s.s had no desire to know how a body was prepared for burial; she signed the forms she was handed, and skimmed quickly over the information given.

The body of an NCO, retired or active, could remain on view for one day. That she agreed to: Abe had had many friends who would want to pay their respects. His flag-draped coffin rested on the ritual gun-cradle in a side chapel. A line of men and women, most in uniform, came to shake hands with Sa.s.s and walk past it, one by one. Some, she noticed, laid a hand on the flag, patted it a little. Two were Wefts, which surprised her . . . Abe had never told her about Weft friends.

The funeral itself, the ancient ritual to honor a fellow warrior, required of Sa.s.s only the contained reticence and control that Abe had taught her. She, the bereaved, had only that simple role, and yet it was almost too heavy a burden for her. Others carried his coffin; she carried her grat.i.tude. Others had lost a friend; she had lost all connection with her past. Again she had to start over, and for this period even Fleet could not comfort her.

But she would not disgrace him. The acceptable tears slid down her cheeks, the acceptable responses came from her mouth. And the old cadences of the funeral service, rhythms old before ever the first human went into s.p.a.ce, comforted where no living person could.

"Out of the deep have I called unto thee, 0 Lord - " The chaplain's voice rang through the chapel, breaking the silence that had followed the entrance hymn, and the congregation answered.

"Lord, hear my voice."

Whatever the original beliefs had been, which brought such words to such occasions, no one in Fleet much cared - but the bond of faith in something beyond individual lives, individual struggles, a bond of faith in love and honesty and loyalty . . . that they all shared. And phrase by phrase the old ritual continued.

"0 let thine ears consider well - "

"The voice of my complaint." Sa.s.s thought of the murderer, and for a few moments vengeance routed grief in her heart. Someday - someday, she would find out who, and why, and - she stumbled over a phrase about redemption following mercy, having in mind neither.

Readings followed, and a hymn Abe had requested, its mighty refrain "Lest we forget - lest we forget" ringing in her ears through another psalm and reading. Sa.s.s sat, stood, knelt, with the others, aware of those who watched her. It seemed a long time before the chaplain reached the commendation; her mind hung on the words "dust to dust ..." long after he had gone on, and blessed the congregation. And now the music began again, this time the Fleet Hymn. Sa.s.s followed the casket out through the ma.s.sed voices, determined not to cry.

"Eternal Father, strong to save ..." Her throat closed; she could not even mouth the words that had brought tears to her eyes even from the first.

Across the wide paved forecourt of the Academy, the flags in front of the buildings all lowered, a pa.s.sing squad of junior middies held motionless as the funeral procession went on its way. Out the great arched gates to the broad avenue, where Fleet Marines held the street traffic back, and the archaic hea.r.s.e, hitched to a team of black horses, waited. Sa.s.s concentrated on the horses, the buckles of their harness, the bra.s.ses stamped with the Fleet seal . . . surely it was ludicrous that a s.p.a.cegoing service would maintain a horsedrawn hea.r.s.e for its funerals.

But as they followed on foot, from the Academy gates to the dock below the town, it did not seem ludicrous. Every step of human foot, every clopping hoofbeat of the horses, felt right. This was respect, to take the time in a bustling, modern setting to do things the old way. As Abe's only listed kin, Sa.s.s walked alone behind the hea.r.s.e; behind her came Abe's friends still in Fleet, enlisted, then officer.

At the quay, the escort commander called the band to march, and they began playing, music Sa.s.s had never heard but found instantly appropriate. Strong, severe, yet not dismal, it enforced its own mood on the procession. On all the ships moored nearby, troops and officers stood to attention; ensigns all at half-mast. The Carly Carly Pierce Pierce, sleek and graceful. Fleet's only fighting ship (a veteran of two battles with river pirates in the early days of Regg's history, before it became the Fleet Headquarters planet). The procession halted; from her position behind the hea.r.s.e, Sa.s.s could barely see the pallbearers forming an aisle up the gangway. Exchange of salutes, exchange of honors: the band gave a warning rattle of drumsticks, and the body bearers slid the casket from the hea.r.s.e. Sa.s.s followed them toward the gangway. Such a little way to go; such a long distance to return . . .

And now they were all on the deck, the body bearers placing the casket on a frame set ready, lifting off the flag, holding it steady despite a brisk sea breeze. Sa.s.s stared past it at the water, ruffled into little arcs of silver and blue. She hardly noticed when the ship cast off and slid almost soundlessly through the waves, across the bay and around the jagged island in it. There, in the lee of the island, facing the great cliffs, the ship rested as the chaplain spoke the final words.

" - Rest eternal grant to him, 0 Lord - " And the other voices joined his, "And let light perpetual shine upon him."

The chaplain stepped aside; the escort commander brought the escort to attention and three loud volleys racketed in ragged echoes from island and cliffs beyond. Birds rose screaming from the cliffs, white wings tangled in the light. Sa.s.s clenched her jaw: now it was coming. She tried not to see the tilting frame, the slow inexorable movement of the casket to the waiting sea.

As if from the arc of the sky, a single bugle tolled the notes out, one by one, gently and inexorably. Taps. Sa.s.s shivered despite herself. It had ended her days for the past four years - and now it was ending his. It had meant sunset, lights out, another day survived - and now it meant only endings. Her throat closed again; tears burned her eyes. No one had played taps for her parents, for her sister and brother and the others killed or left to die on Myriad. No one had played taps for the slaves who died. She was cold all the way through, realizing, as she had not ever allowed herself to realize, that she might easily have been another dead body on Myriad, or in the slaver's barracks, unknown, unmourned.

All those deaths . . . the last note floated out across the bay, serene despite her pain, pulling it out of her. Here, at least, the dead could find peace, knowing someone noticed, someone mourned. She took a deep, unsteady breath. Abe was safe here, "from rock and tempest, fire and foe," safe in whatever safety death offered, completing his service as he had wished.

She took the flag, when it was boxed and presented, with the dignity Abe deserved.

BOOK TWO.

Chapter Five.

"Ensign Sa.s.sinak requests permission to come aboard, sir." Coming aboard meant crossing a painted stripe on the deck of the station, but the ritual was the same as ever.

"Permission granted." The Officer of the Deck, a young man whose reddish skin and ice-blue eyes indicated a Brinanish origin, had one wide gold ring and a narrow one on his sleeve. He returned her salute, and Sa.s.s stepped across the stripe. Slung on her shoulder was the pack containing everything she was permitted to take aboard. Her uniforms (mess dress, working dress, seasonal working, and so on) were already aboard, sent ahead from her quarters before her final interview with the Academy Commandant after Abe's funeral.

Her quarters were minimal: one of two female ensigns (there were five ensigns in all), she had one fold-down bunk in their tiny cubicle, one narrow locker for dress uniforms, three drawers, and a storage bin. Sa.s.s knew Mira Witsel only slightly; she had been one of Randolph Neil Paraden's set, a short blonde just over the height limit. Sa.s.s hoped she wasn't as arrogant as the others, but counted on her graduation rank to take care of any problems. With the other ensigns, they shared a small study/lounge (three terminals, a round table, five chairs). Quickly, she stowed her gear and took a glance at herself in the mirror strip next to the door. First impressions . . . reporting to the captain . . . she grinned at her reflection. Clean and sharp and probably all too eager . . . but it was going to be a good voyage . . . she was sure of it.

"Come in!" Through the open hatch, the captain's voice sounded stuffy, like someone not quite easy with protocol. Fargeon. Commander Fargeon - she'd practiced that softened g, typical of his homeworld (a French-influenced version of Neo-Gaesh). Sa.s.s took a deep breath, and stepped in.

He answered her formal greeting in the same slightly stuffy voice: not hostile, but standoffish. Tall, angular, he leaned across his cluttered desk to shake her hand as if his back hurt him a little. "Sit down. Ensign," he said, folding himself into his own chair behind his desk, and flicking keys on his desk terminal. "Ah . . . your record precedes you. Honor graduate." He looked at her, eyes sharp. "You can't expect to start on the top here. Ensign."

"No, sir," Sa.s.sinak sat perfectly still, and he finally nodded.

"Good. That's a problem with some top graduates, but if you don't have a swelled head, I don't see why you should run into difficulties. Let me see - " He peered at his terminal screen. "Yes. You are the first ensign aboard, good. I'm putting you on third watch now, but that's not permanent, and it doesn't mean what it does in the Academy. Starting an honor cadet on the third watch just ensures that everyone gets a fair start."

And you don't have to listen to complaints of favoritism, Sa.s.sinak thought to herself. She said nothing, just nodded.

"Your first training rotation will be Engineering," Fargeon went on. "The Exec, Lieutenant Da.s.s, will set up the duty roster. Any questions?"

Sa.s.s knew the correct answer was no, but her mind teemed with questions. She forced it back and said "No, sir."

The captain nodded, and sent her out to meet Lieutenant Da.s.s. Da.s.s, in contrast to his captain, was a wiry compact man whose dark, fine-featured face was made even more memorable by light green eyes.

"Ensign Sa.s.sinak," he drawled, in a tone that reminded her painfully of the senior cadets at the Academy when she'd been a rockhead. "Honor cadet ..."

Sa.s.sinak met his green gaze, and discovered a glint of mischief in them. "Sir - " she began, but he interrupted.

"Never mind. Ensign. I've seen your record, and I know you can be polite in all circ.u.mstances, and probably work quads in your head at the same time. The captain wanted you in Engineering first, because we've installed a new environmental homeostasis system and it's still being tested. You'll be in charge of that, once you've had time to look over the system doc.u.mentation." He grinned at her expression: "Don't look surprised, Ensign: you're not a cadet in school any more. You're a Fleet officer. We don't have room for dead-weights; we have to know right away if you can perform for us. Now. It's probably going to take you all your off-watch time for several days to work your way through the manuals. Feel free to ask the Engineering Chief anything you need to know, or give me a holler. On watch, you'll have the usual standing duties, but you can spend part of most watches with the engineering crew."

"Yes, sir." Sa.s.s's mind whirled. She was going to be in charge of testing the new system? A system which could kill them all if she made a serious mistake? This time the flash of memory that brought Abe to mind had no pain. He'd told her Fleet would test her limits.

"Your record says you get along with allies?"

Allies was the Fleet term for allied aliens; Sa.s.sinak had never heard it used so openly. "Yes, sir."

"Good. We have a Weft Jig, and several Weft battle crew, and that Weft Ensign: I suppose you knew him at the Academy?" Sa.s.sinak nodded. "Oh, and have you ever seen an adult Ssli?"

"No, sir."

"We're Ssli-equipped, of course: all medium and heavy cruisers have been for the past two years." He glanced at the timer. "Come along; we've time enough to show you."

The Ssli habitat was a narrow oval in cross-section: ten meters on the long axis, aligned with the ship's long axis, and only two meters wide. It extended "upward" from the heavily braced keel through five levels: almost twenty meters. The plumbing that maintained its marine environment took up almost the same cubage.

At the moment, the Ssli had grown only some three meters in diameter from its holdfast, and its fan was still almost circular. Two viewing ports allowed visual inspection of the Ssli's environment. The Executive Officer's stubby fingers danced on the keyboard of the terminal outside one viewing port.

"Basic courtesy - always ask before turning on the lights in there."

Sa.s.sinak peered over his shoulder. The screen came up, and displayed both question and answer, the latter affirmative. Da.s.s flipped a toggle, and light glowed in the water inside, illuminating a stunning magenta fan flecked with yellow and white. Sa.s.sinak stared. It seemed incredible that this huge, motionless, intricate object could be not only alive, but sentient. . . sentient enough to pa.s.s the FSP entry levels. She could hardly believe that the larval forms she'd seen in the Academy tanks had anything to do with this . . . this thing.

Somehow the reality was much stranger than just seeing tapes on it. I wonder what it feels like, she thought. How it thinks, and - "How did they ever figure out ... ?" she said, before she thought.

"I don't know, really. Thek discovered them, of course, and maybe they're more likely to suspect intelligence in something that looks mineral than we are." Da.s.s looked at her closely. "It bothers some people a lot - how about you?"

"No." Sa.s.sinak shook her head, still staring through the viewing port. "It's beautiful, but hard to realize it's sentient. But why not, after all? How do you communicate with it?"

"The usual. Biocomp interface . . . look, there's the leads." He pointed, and Sa.s.sinak could see the carefully shielded wires that linked the Ssli to the computer terminal. "Want an introduction?"

When she nodded, he tapped in her ID code, asked her favorite name-form, and then officer crew: general access.

"That gives it access to the general information in your file. Nothing cla.s.sified, just what any other officer would be able to find out about you. Age, cla.s.s rank, s.e.x, general appearance, planet of origin, that kind of thing. If you want to share more, you can offer additional access, either by giving it the information directly, or by opening segments of your file. Now you come up here, and be ready to answer."

On the screen before her, a greeting already topped the s.p.a.ce. "Welcome, Ensign Sa.s.sinak; my name in Fleet is Hssrho. Have been installed here thirty standard months; you will not remember, but you met me in larval stage in your second year at the Academy."

Sa.s.sinak remembered her first introduction to larval Ssli, in the alien communications lab, but she'd never expected to meet the same individual in sessile form. And she hadn't remembered that name. Quickly she tapped in a greeting, and apologies for her forgetfulness.

"Never mind ... we take new names when we unite with a ship. You could not know. But I remember the cadet who apologized for b.u.mping into my tank."

From the Ssli, Lieutenant Da.s.s led her through a tangle of pa.s.sages into the Engineering section. Sa.s.sinak tried to pay attention to the route, but had to keep ducking under this, and stepping over that. She began to wonder if he was taking a roundabout and difficult way on purpose.

"In case you think I'm leading you by the back alleys," he said over his shoulder, "all this junk is the redundancy we get from having two environmental systems, not just one. As soon as you've got the new one tuned up to Erling's satisfaction - he's the Engineering Chief - we can start dismantling some of this. Most of it's testing gear anyway."

Even after the study of ship types at the Academy, Sa.s.s found it took awhile to learn the geography of the big ship. Cruiser architecture was determined by the requirement that the ships not only mount large weapons for battles in s.p.a.ce or against planets, but also carry troops and their support equipment, and be able to land them. Cruisers often operated alone, and thus needed a greater variety of weaponry and equipment than any one ship in a battle group. But to retain the ability to land on planet in many situations, and maneuver (if somewhat clumsily) in atmosphere, cruiser design had settled on a basic ovoid shape. Thanks to the invention of efficient internal artificial gravity, the ships no longer had to spin to produce a pseudo-gravity. The "egg" could be sliced longitudinally into decks much easier to use and build.

In their first few days, all the new ensigns took a required tour of each deck, from the narrow silent pa.s.sages of Data Deck, where there was little to see but arrays of computer components, to the organized confusion of Flight Two, with the orbital shuttles, drone and manned s.p.a.ce fighters, aircraft, and their attendant equipment, all the way down to the lowest level of Environmental, where the great plumbing systems that kept the ship functioning murmured to themselves between throbbing pump stations. Main Deck, with the bridge, nearly centered the ship, as the bridge sector centered Main Deck. Aft of the bridge was Officers' Country, with the higher ranking officers nearer the bridge (and in larger quarters), and the ensigns tucked into their niches near the aft cargo lift that ran vertically through all decks. Lest they think this a handy arrangement, they were reminded that regulations forbade the use of the cargo lift for personnel only: they were supposed to keep fit by running up and down the ladders between decks. Main Deck also held all the administrative offices needed. Between Data Deck and Environmental was Crew, or Troop Deck, which had, in addition to crew quarters, recreation facilities, and mess, the sick bay and medical laboratory. When the ship landed on planet, a ramp opening from Troop Deck offered access to the planet's surface.