"Abe used to say to me," Fleur said, now patting at her hair, "that growth and development can't stop for stars, rank or travel. You keep growing and keep Abe's memory green. Don't let the Paradens shape the rest of your life, as they shaped the first of it."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Now tell me, what do you plan to do with all this scruffy crowd?"
Sassinak grinned at her, half-rueful and half-determined.
"Chase pirates, ma'am, and then worry about whether I've gotten too rigid."
But when it came down to it, none of them actually knew where The Parchandri was located in a physical sense. Sassinak frowned.
"We ought to be able to get that from the data systems, with the right codes," she said. "You said you had people good at that."
"But we don't have any of the current codes. The only times we've tried to tap into the secure datalines, anything but the public ones, they've sent police after us. They can tell where our tap is, an' everything."
"Sassinak?" Aygar tapped her shoulder. She started to brush him aside, but remembered his previous good surprises. "Yes?"
"My friend, that student…"
"The one who boasted to you he could slap through the datalinks without getting caught? Yes. But he's not here and how would we find him?"
"I have his callcode. From any public comsite, he said."
"But there aren't any - are there? Down here?"
She glanced at the ragged group. Some of them nodded, and Coris answered her.
"Yes, up in the public tunnels. There's a few we might get to, without being spotted. Not all of us, of course."
"There's that illegal one in the 248 vertical," someone else said. "This maintenance worker put it in, patched it to the regular public lines so he could call in bets during his shift. We used to listen to him."
"Where's the 248 vertical?" Sassinak asked.
Not that far away, although it took several hours of careful zigging about to get to it. Twice they saw hunting patrols, one in the blue-gray of the city police, and one in the Pollys' orange. Their careless sweep of the tunnels did not impress Sassinak. They seemed to be content to walk through, without investigating all hatches and side tunnels. When she mentioned this to Coris, he hunched his shoulders.
"Bet they're planning to gas the system. Now they're looking for easy prey, girls down on their luck, kids… something to have fun with."
"Gas! You mean poison gas? Or knockout gas?"
"They've used both, before. 'Bout three years ago, they must've killed a thousand or more, over toward the shuttle station area. I was clear out here, and all it did to us was make us heave everything for a day or so. But I heard there'd been street crime, subways hijacked, that land of thing."
Sassinak fingered the small kit in her pocket. She had brought along the detox membrane and primer that Fleet used against riot control gas, but would it work against everything? She didn't want to find out by using it, and she had only the one She put that thought away and briefed Aygar on what to tell, and what not to tell, his student friend. If only she'd had a chance to evaluate that friend for herself. No telling whose agent he was, unless he was just a student playing pretend spy games. If so, he'd soon find out how exciting the real ones could be.
Two of the group went through the hatch into 248 vertical ahead of Aygar, and then called him through. This shaft, they'd explained, had enough regular traffic to keep the group out of it, except on special occasions.
Sassinak waited, wishing she could make the call. Aygar was only a boy, really, from a backwoods world: he knew nothing about intrigue. It would be like him to call up this 'friend' and blurt out everything on an unsecured line. She kept herself from fidgeting with difficulty. She must not increase their nervousness. How many hours had slipped by? Would Arly be worried yet? Would anyone?
Aygar bounded back through the hatch, his youthful strength and health a vivid contrast to the underworlders' air of desperation.
"He wants to meet me," Aygar said. "He says the students would like to help."
"Help? Help what?"
Sassinak knew nothing of civilian students, except what the media reported. It was clear they weren't anything like cadets.
"Help with the coup," Aygar said as if that should explain it. "End the tyranny of greed and power, he says."
"We aren't starting a coup," Sassinak said, then thought about it.
While in one sense she didn't think she was overthrowing a government, the government had certainly sent riot squads after her, as if she were. Did they think she was working with a bunch of renegade students? Did someone else have a coup planned… and had they stumbled into it, and was that,..?
Her brain seemed to explode, as intuition and logic both flared. Aygar was giving her a puzzled look, as she went on, more quietly.
"At least, not the one he's thinking about. Exactly. Now, what kind of help can he give us? Can he find The Parchandri?"
"He just said to meet him. And where." Aygar was looking stubborn again, he could not fail to realize that he was being used, and no one liked that.
"In public territory. Great. And you're about as easy to disguise as a torn uniform at inspection."
"Fleur's the one who taught us all about disguises," Coris said. "Although, it won't be easy with that one."
Sassinak felt almost too tired to think, but she had to. She pulled herself together and said, "We'll go ask her. We certainly can't stroll out looking like this. And we'll get some rest before we go anywhere, because I notice that Aygar looks almost as exhausted as I feel. In the meantime, Coris, if you have any maps of the underground areas, I'd like to see them."
She hoped that would give them all the idea that she had a specific plan in mind.
Chapter Seventeen
FSP heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan
"I do not like this." Arly tapped her fingers on the edge of the command console. One of its screens displayed the local news channel. "How could anyone think Sassinak would murder an admiral?"
The senior officers, including Major Currald, were ranged around her while the bridge crew pretended to pay strict attention to their monitors.
"Civilians." Bures looked almost as disgusted as she felt. "You know, if they're so scared of Fleet that they won't let us use our own shuttles up and down, then they probably think we're all born with blood in our mouths and fangs down to here." He gestured at his chin. "Long pointed ones. We go around covered with weapons, just looking for a chance to kill someone."
"News said the guy might not have been Coromell after all," said Mayerd who had come up to the bridge to watch the news with them. "Not that that helps. Good thing we don't have trouble in the neighborhood. It'd be worse if we had action coming."
Arly frowned at her. Doctors were the next thing to civilian, as far as she was concerned. "You know what she said. She thought there might be trouble…"
"Like what? An invasion of mysterious green-tentacled slime monsters? We're at the center of as big a volume of peaceful space as anyone's ever known. Barring a few planet pirates, and I'm not minimizing that. But the last big stuff was decades back. Even the Seti haven't dared Fleet reprisals since the Tonagai Reef encounters. They may be gamblers, but they aren't stupid. I suppose, if the Paraden got all their pirate buddies to come blowing into FedCentral at once, they might cause us trouble, but they're not stupid either. They need a fat, peaceful culture to prey on. A shark has no advantages in a school of sharks."
Arly and Bures had crossed glances above Mayerd. Arly had to admit she had never considered a whole pirate fleet. They just didn't operate that way. Two or three raiders at once, more only in defense of an illegal installation. But now, with Sassinak lost somewhere below, the whole weight of the ship rested on her shoulders. She wished Ford would show up from wherever he'd been. She wished Sassinak would come back. Blast that admiral, she thought. Coromell, or whoever it had been, luring her away. And why? The trial? To have the Zaid-Dayan helpless?