Sassinak returned shortly from the bridge, listened to Lunzie's report on Aygar's visit, and nodded.
"You put exactly the bee in his ear that I wanted. Good for you."
"But he said ally…"
"And I say fine. Better for us, better for what we want to do. Look, Lunzie, he's got the best possible reason for stirring around in the databases: he's entitled. His curiosity is natural. We said that." Sassinak put in a call to the galley for a snack, and started to say more, but her com buzzed. She turned to it - "Sassinak here."
"Ford. May I come in? I've had an idea."
"Come ahead."
Sassinak punched the door control and it slid aside. Ford gave Lunzie the same charming smile and nod as always, and lifted an eyebrow.
"You know you can speak in front of her," Sassinak told him. "She's my relative, and she's on the team."
"Did I ever tell you about Auntie Q?"
Sassinak frowned. "Not that I remember. Was that the one who paints birds on tiles?"
"No, that's Auntie Louise, my mother's sister. This is Auntie Quesada, who is actually, in her right name, Quesada Maria Louisa Darrell Santon-Paraden."
"Paraden!"
Sassinak and Lunzie tied on that one, and Sassinak glared at her Executive Officer in a way Lunzie hoped would never be directed at her.
"You never told me you were related to the Paradens," she said severely.
"I'm not. Auntie Q is my father's uncle's wife's sister, who married a Paraden the second time around, after her first husband died of - well, my mother always said it was an overdose of Auntie Q, administered daily in large amounts. My father always said it was gamboling debts, and I mean gambol," he said, accenting the last syllable.
"Go on," said Sassinak, a smile beginning to twitch in the corner of her mouth.
Ford settled one hip on her desk. "Auntie Q was considered a catch, even for a Paraden, because her first husband's older brother was Felix Ibarra-Jimenez Santon. Yes, those Santons. Auntie Q inherited about half a planet of spicefields and a gold mine: literal gold mine. With an electronics manufacturing plant on top. Then in her own right, she was a Darrell of the Westwitch Darrells, who prefer to call their source of income 'sanitary engineering products' rather than soap, so she wouldn't have starved if she'd run off with a mishi dancer."
"So what about this Paraden?"
"Minor branch of the family, sent out to find an alliance worth the trouble; supposedly he met her at an ambassadorial function, ran her through the computer, and the family said yes, by all means. Auntie Q was tired of playing merry widow and looking for another steady escort so they linked. She gave him a child by decree - it was in the contract - but he was already looking for more excitement or freedom or whatever, and ran off with her dressmaker. So she claimed breach of contract, dumped the child on the Paradens, kept the name and half his stocks and such, and spends her time cruising from one social event to another. And sending the family messages."
"Aha," said Sassinak. "Now we come to it. She's contacted you?"
"Well, no. Not recently. But she's always sending messages, complaining about her health, and begging someone to visit her. My father warned me years ago not to go near her; said she's like a black hole, just sucks you in and you're never seen alive again. He had been taken to meet her once. Apparently she cooed over him, rumpled his hair, hugged him to her ample bosom, and talked him out of the chocolates in his pocket, all in about twenty seconds. But what I was thinking was that I could visit her. She knows all the gossip, all the socialites, and yet she's not quite in the thick where they'd be watching her."
Sassinak thought about that. Wouldn't an efficient enemy know that Sassinak's Exec was related to an apparently harmless old rich lady? But she herself hadn't. They couldn't know everything.
"I'd planned to have you do the database searches at Sector HQ," she said slowly. "You're good at that, and less conspicuous than I am..
Ford shook his head. "Not inconspicuous enough, not after this caper. But I know who can… either Lunzie here, or young Aygar."
"Aygar?"
Ford ticked off reasons on his fingers. "One, he's got the perfect reason to be running the bases: he's new to the culture, and needs to learn as much as he can as fast as he can. Two, no one's ever done a profile on him, so no one can say if any particular query is out of character. In that way, he's better than Lunzie; anyone looking for trouble would notice if she ran queries outside her field or the events of her own life. Three, even an attempt at a profile would cover exactly those fields we want him to be working on anyway."
"But is he trustworthy?" Lunzie asked it of Ford, as she had been about to ask it of Sassinak. Ford shrugged.
"What if he's not? He needs us to get access, and keep it; he's bright but he's not experienced, and you know How long it took any of us to learn to navigate through one of the big databases. And we can put a tag on him; it'll be natural that we do. We shouldn't seem to trust him."
Sassinak laughed. "I do like a second in command who thinks like I do. See, Lunzie? Two against one: both of us see why Aygar is ideal for that job."
"But he's expecting something more from us - from me, at least. If he doesn't get it…
"Lunzie!" That was the command voice, the tone that made Sassinak no longer a distant relative but the captain of a Fleet cruiser on which Lunzie was merely a passenger. It softened slightly with the next words, but Lunzie could feel the steel underneath. "We aren't going to do anything to hurt Aygar. We know he's not involved in the plotting… of all the citizens of the Federation, he's one of the few who couldn't be involved. So he's not our enemy, not in any way whatever. Stopping the piracy will help everyone, including Aygar's friends and relatives back on Ireta. Including Aygar. We are on his side, in that way, and by my judgment - which I must remind you is ten years more experienced than yours - by my judgment that is enough. We can handle Aygar; we have dangerous enemies facing all of us."
Lunzie's gaze wavered, falling away from Sassinak's to see Ford as another of the same type. Calm, competent, certain of himself, and not about to change his mind a hairsbreadth for anything she said.
Chapter Two
Lunzie carried her small kit off the Zaid-Dayan, nodded to the parting salute of the officer on watch at the portside gangway, and did not look back as she crossed the line that marked ship's territory on the Station decking. It was so damnably hard to leave family again, even such distant family. She had liked Sassinak, and the ship, and… she did not look back.
Ahead were none of the barriers she'd have faced coming in on a civilian ship. She had Sassinak's personal authorization, giving her the temporary rank and access of a Fleet major, so exiting the Fleet segment required nothing but flashing the pass at the guard and walking on through. No questions to answer, no interviews with intrusive media.
Sassinak had made reservations for her on the first available shuttle to Liaka. Lunzie followed the directions she'd been given, in two rings and right one sector, and found herself in front of the ticketing office of Nilokis InLine. Lunzie's name and Sassinak's reservation together meant instant service. Before she realized it, Lunzie was settled in a quiet room with video-relay views of the Station and a mug of something hot and fragrant on the table beside her. A few meters away, another favored passenger barely glanced up from his portable computer before continuing his work. The padded chair curved around her like warm hands; her feet rested on deeply cushioned carpet.
She tried to relax. She had not lost Sassinak forever, she told herself firmly. She was not going to have a disaster on every spaceflight for the rest of her life, and if she did she would just survive it, the way she'd survived everything else. Her steaming mug drew her attention, and she remembered choosing erit from the list of beverages. One sip, then another, quieted her nerves and settled her stomach. Four hours to departure and nothing to do. She thought of going back out into the Station but it was easier to sit here and relax. That's why she'd asked for erit. She closed her eyes, and let the steam clear her head. After all, if something happened this time, she'd know who'd come after her and with what vigor. Sassinak was not one to let someone muck about with her family, not now. Lunzie felt her mouth curving into a grin. Quite a girl, that Sassinak, even at her age.