"I say he's spying on us, and I say dump him." That was the mate. Dupaynil shivered at the quietly deadly tone.
"He's got IG orders. They'll want to know what happened." That was Ollery, not nearly so sure of himself.
"We can't just space him. We have to figure out a way."
"Emergency drill. Blow the pod. Say it was an accident." The mate's voice carried the shrug he would give when questioned later.
"What if he figures it out?"
"What can he do? Pod's got no engine, no decent long-range radio, no scan. Dump him where hell fell down a well, into a star or something else big. Disable the radio and beacon. That way no one'll know he's ever been there. 'Sides, I don't think his orders are real. Think about it, sir. Would the IG haul someone off a big cruiser like the Zaid-Dayan - an IFTL message, that'd have to be - and stick 'em on a little bitty escort? To go to Seti space? C'mon. You send a special envoy to the Seti, you send a damn flotilla in with 'em, not an escort. No, you mark my words, sir, he's here to Spy on us and this proves it."
Dupaynil could not tell through the audio link which of his taps had been found, but he wished ardently that be had not planted it, whatever it was. Once again he had out-smarted himself, as he had with Sassinak. Never underestimate the enemy and be damned sure you know who the enemy is; a very basic rule he had somehow violated.
He felt a trickle of sweat run down his ribs. Sassinak had been dumped in an evac pod, rescued by the combined efforts of Wefts and a Ssli. He had no Wefts or Ssli to back him up; he would have to figure this out himself.
"You're sure he hasn't got the good stuff out of comp?"
"Pretty sure." The mate's voice was even grimmer.
"Security's got good tools, though. Give him all the time between here and Seti space, and he'll have not only the basics but enough to mind-fry the lot of us, all the way up to Lady Luisa herself. "
Dupaynil almost forgot his fear. Lady Luisa? Luisa Paraden? He had always been able to put two and two together and find more interesting things than four. Now he felt an almost physical jolt as his mind connectected everything he'd ever heard or seen; including all the information Sassinak had gathered. As bright as a diagram projected on the screen of a strategy meeting, all connections marked out in glowing red or yellow… Luisa to Randolph, who had ample reason to loathe Sassinak. That had been Randolph vengeance, through his aunt's henchman, a washed Fleet officer once held captive on the same outpost as an orphan girl. Dupaynil spared a to pity that doomed lieutenant: Sassinak never, even if she learned the whole story. Luisa would do something that potentially dangerous just for idolph, though. It must have been vengeance for Abe's part in disrupting her operation, a warning to others. Perhaps fear that he would cause her more trouble.
Abe to Sassinak, Sassinak to Randolph, Randolph to Luisa, whose first henchman partially failed. Where was Randolph now, Dupaynil wondered suddenly. He should know and he did not know. He realized that he had not ever seen one bit of information on Randolph in the system since that arrogant young man had left the Academy. Unnatural. A Paraden, wealthy, with connections: he should have done something. He should have been in the society news or been an officer in one of Aunt Luisa's companies.
Unless he had changed his identity some way. It could be done, though it was expensive. Not that that would bother a Paraden. And why had they stopped with one attack on Sassinak? Dupaynil wished he had her file in hand. They would have been covert attempts, but knowing what to look for he might be able to see it. But of course! The Wefts. The Wefts she had saved from Paraden's accusations in the Academy; the Wefts who had saved her from death in the pod. Wefts might have foiled any number of plots without bothering to tell her.
Or perhaps she knew, but never made the connection, or never bothered to report it, rules or no. She was not known for following the rules. He leaned on the wall of his cubicle, sweating and furious, as much with himself as the various conspirators. This was his job, this was what he had trained for, what he had thought he was good at; finding things out, making connections, sifting the data, interpreting it. And here he was, with all the threads woven into the pattern and no possible way to get that information out.
You're so smart, he thought bitterly. You're going to your death having won the war but lost the brawl. He knew - it was in her file and she had confided it as well - that Sassinak still wondered about the real reason Abe had been killed. She had never forgotten it, never laid it to rest. And he had that to offer her, more than enough to get her forgiveness for that earlier misunderstanding. But too late!
Thinking of Sassinak reminded him again of her experience in the escape pod. It had made chilling reading, even in the remote prose her captain had used. She had gone right up to the limit of the pod's oxygen capacity, hoping to be conscious to give her evidence. He shuddered. He would have put himself into coldsleep as soon as he realized what happened, and he'd probably have died of it. Or, like Lunzie, been found decades later. He didn't like that scenario either. He fairly itched to get his newly acquired insights where they could do the most good.
Sassinak, now. What would she do, cooped in an escort full of renegades? He had trouble imagining her on anything but the bridge of the Zaid-Dayan, but she had served in smaller ships. Would she find a weapon (where?) and threaten them from the bridge? Would she take off in an escape pod before she was jettisoned, with a functioning radio, and hope to be found in time? (In time for what? Life? The trial?) The one thing she wouldn't do, he was sure, was slouch on a bunk wondering what to do. She would have thought of something, and given her luck it would probably have worked.
The idea, when it finally came to him hours later (miserable, sweaty hours when he was supposed to be sleeping), seemed simple. Presumably they would have a ship evacuation drill as the occasion of his murder. The others would be going into pods as well, just to make it seem normal. They had found one of his taps, but not all (or surely they'd have blocked the audio so he couldn't hear). And therefore he could tap the links again, reset the evac pod controls, and trap them - or most of them - in the pods. They would not be able to fire his pod; he could fire theirs.
He was partway through the reprogramming of the pod controls when he realized why this was not such a simple solution. Fleet had a name for someone who took illegal control of a ship and killed the captain and crew. An old, nasty name leading to a court martial which he might well lose.
I am not contemplating mutiny, he told himself firmly. They are the criminals. But they were not convicted yet, and until then what he planned was, by all the laws and regulations, not merely mutiny but also murder. And piracy. And probably a dozen or so lesser crimes to be tacked onto the charge sheet(s), including the things Sassinak might say about his tap into her com shack. And his present unauthorized reprogramming of emergency equipment. Not to mention his supposed orders to proceed into Seti space: faked orders, which no one (after he pirated a ship and killed the crew) would believe he had not faked for himself.
What would Sassinak do about that, he wondered. He remembered the holo of the Zaid-Dayan with its patched hull, with the scars of the pirate boarding party. She had let the enemy onto her ship to trap them. Could he think of anything as devastating? All things considered, forty-three years of cold sleep might be the easy way out, he thought, finishing off the new switching sequences.
Sassinak's great-great-great might complain but a little time in the freezer could keep you out of big trouble. His mind bumped him again, hard. Of course. Coldsleep them, the nasties. Drop the charges to mere mutiny and piracy and et cetera, but not murder (mandatory mindwipe for murder), and he might merely spend the next twenty years cleaning toilet fixtures with a bent toothbrush.