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.
Sassinak managed not to snicker. Innocent bravado deserved a passing 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."
Sassinak 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," he said, smiling brightly at her. "This is Gerstan, and this is Bilis, and our Coldae clone is Erdra." The girl gave Sassinak a long stare intended to impress.
"I thought you were supposed to be a cruiser captain."
"I am," Sassinak 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…"
Sassinak 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…"
Sassinak 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.
Sassinak 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 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 Sassinak. "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."
Sassinak 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 Sassinak'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 cops 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?"
Sassinak 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 unobtrusive door. Their last protest had been some distance back. Sassinak 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," Sassinak 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.