"Commander!"
"Is Sassinak aboard?" That had an intensity she couldn't quite interpret.
"No. She's onplanet."
"Thank the…" he paused. "The luck, I suppose. Or whatever. I…" He staggered and the waiting medics came forward. He waved them off. "I don't need anything but a shower - a long shower - and some rest."
"But what happened to you?"
Dupaynil gave her a look somewhere between anger and exhaustion. "One damn thing after another, Arly, and the worst of it is it's all my fault for thinking I was smarter than your Sassinak. Now please?"
"Of course."
He did reek and she felt her nostrils dilate as he passed her. She wondered how long he'd been in that pressure suit. She hardly had all the survivors settled when the Weft liaison to the Thek called her back to the bridge. One last chore remained. The humans most responsible had escaped the planet in a fast yacht, and although a Fleet vessel had kept it in sight, it could not stop it.
"Tim and that shuttle!" Arly said. "I forgot him. Com, get us a link!"
Tim had the yacht's position and the Ssli flicked the cruiser in and out of FTL space in a minute jump that put them well in range. Her weapons officer reported that the yacht lacked anything to penetrate the cruiser's shields. Too bad Sassinak wasn't here. She would enjoy this. But she'd had the onplanet fun. Arly put their message on an all-frequency transmission.
"FSP Cruiser Zaid-Dayan to private vessel Celestial Fortune. Going somewhere?"
"Let us alone, or you'll regret it!" came the reply. "You're nothin' but a lousy little short-range shuttle tryin' to play big shot."
"Take another look," suggested Arly and cut back the visual screens. "Do you want to argue with this?"
She sent a missile past their bows, and heard a yelp from Tim on one of the incoming lines. A spurt of annoyance. He should have had sense enough to get out of the way.
"Get that shuttle back in here," she told him.
"Sorry, ma'am "
"What do you mean, sorry?"
"I… uh… It was the only way I could think of."
"What did you do?"
"I… locked shields with "em."
Arly closed her eyes and counted to ten. So that's why they hadn't gone into FTL yet. But it meant that blowing the yacht would mean blowing the shuttle, and Tim. Nor could he pull away. Locking shields was hard enough going in. She'd never heard of anyone getting back out, unless both ships agreed to damp the shields simultaneously.
"Who's with you?" asked Arly.
"Nobody," came the reply.
From his tone he knew exactly what that meant. If Sassinak had been aboard… but one ensign, who had been unable to think of any way to impede the enemy but bonding to it? He was very expendable.
"You suited up?"
"Yes. But…" But what good would it do?
Shuttles had no escape pods, for the very good reason that in normal operation they were useless. And being blown out of an exploding shuttle was a little more than hazardous.
"I can flutter their shields, Commander. Give you a better chance of getting 'em with the first shot."
"Dammit, Tim, don't be so eager to die."
It would help, though, and she knew it.
"I'm not," he said. Was that a quaver in his voice?
He was not going to die if she could help it. But the yacht had meanwhile refused to cut its acceleration outsystem or change course. Its captain seemed sure he could make his FTL jump anyway.
"Even if I do scrape a louse off our hide."
"Do that and you're dead for sure. We've followed more than one through FTL flux." She flipped that channel off. "And why can't the blasted Thek help us now?" Arly demanded of the Weft at her side. "I hate the way they pick and choose. If these are the bigshots…"
The Zaid-Dayaris proximity alarms blared. The artificial gravity pulsed. Arly swallowed hastily, clutching the arms of her chair. Small objects tumbled about and a dust haze rose, to be sucked rapidly away by the fans.
"Do me a favor, Captain, and don't bad-mouth the Theks any more," said the Weft.
This time he'd shifted completely and hung now from the overhead, bright blue eyes gleaming at Arly. Then he shifted back, leaving a mental image of strings of innards trailing down in a most abnormal way to reassemble into a living person.
"I just said…"
"I know. But you people complain all the time about how slow the Thek are and how they don't pay attention. You should rejoice that they're now paying attention and you've had a demonstration of how they can move."
"Right. Sorry. But the yacht…"
The Thek had absorbed all the yacht's considerable inertia, flicking Tim and his shuttle off as a housewife might flick an ant off a plate. When he hailed them, Arly could hear astonished relief in his voice.
"Permission to land shuttle?"
Should she bring him in, or send him back to FedCentral? A glance at the readouts told her the shuttle wouldn't make it back safely.
"Permission granted. Bring 'er aboard, Ensign."
And he did, without any hotdog flourishes.
Arly looked around the bridge, and wondered if she looked as disshelved as the others. Far more ragged than Sassinak had ever looked, she thought. Well have to get this place cleaned up before she sees it and everyone rested. But we still have to get back down there, just in case.
Convincing the Dockmaster at the FedCentral Station that the Zaid-Dayan was not an agent of doom required the rough side of Arly's tongue.
"We saved your tails from a 'catenated Seti fleet. And you're going to gripe at me because I left without your fardling permission?"
"It was highly irregular."
"So it was, and so were the Seti. So were the traitors in your system that wanted to let 'em in. It's not my fault you wouldn't believe the truth. Now you can let us dock or watch us sit out here using your station for target practice."
"That's a threat!" he said.
"Right. Going to take us up on it?"
"Ill file a complaint." Then his face sagged as he realized to whom that complaint would go: Sassinak, now in command of the loyal Federation forces onplanet, Acting Governor. "It's all very irregular…" His voice trailed away into a sigh. "All right. Bays twelve through twenty, orange arm."
"Thank you," said Arly, careful to keep her voice neutral. Never push your luck, Sassinak always said, and she felt her luck had been working overtime lately. "If you have any fresh forage for Bronthin, we have an individual in bad shape who's been a Seti prisoner."
This the Dockmaster could handle. "Of course. With so much diplomatic traffic, we pride ourselves on keeping full supplies for every race in the FSP. Any other requirements?"
"A Ryxi which is suffering from 'feather pit,' whatever that is, and a pair of Lethi who seem all right, although our medical team isn't familiar with Lethi."
"Only two Lethi? That's very bad. Lethi need to cluster in larger numbers."
"Plus a larval Ssli," Arly said. "It's complained that its tank needs recharging."
"No problem with any of that," said the Dockmaster, suddenly cordial. "If you'll send the allied races to bay sixteen, that'll be the quickest access for our specialty medical services."
"Will do." Arly shook her head as she looked around the bridge, "Can you believe that? He was willing to stand us off as if we were pirates, but he's got specialty medical teams for our aliens."
Arly had been in communication with Sassinak for the past several hours. The situation onplanet had stabilized with the loyalists firmly in control, and only scattered pockets of resistance.
"And I think most of that's confusion," Sassinak had said. "We're finding that many of the Parchandri/Paraden supporters had been blackmailed into it. Others just didn't know any better. Right now the Thek are calling for a formal trial."
"Not another one!"
"Not like that one, no. A Thek trial." Sassinak had looked exhausted. Arly wondered if she'd had any rest at all since her disappearance. "Another Thek cathedral is all I need! But considering what they've done, we really can't argue. They want those prisoners you rescued from the Seti, especially the Bronthin, Ssli, Weft, and Dupaynil."