“I’ve got it,” she said. From her console, her command set blocked the computer’s own, briefly, as she isolated and locked out all executing logic loaded in the past seventy-two hours. That would undo some things that would have to be redone, but it should safely contain the problem. And that second startup took it well beyond the parameters she’d set; someone had interfered. Interfered with her ship, on her drill. . . . Rage filled her, along with the exultation that conflict always brought. This was an enemy she could fight. She knew exactly whom to blame for this one, and he had been ordered off her bridge only sixty-three hours before.
The fan had stopped for good, this time, and she went on with the drill, noting that the crew had responded well even to this more complicated problem.
The question was whether to tell Cecelia. She liked Cecelia, she’d decided, and it wasn’t her fault that she had a bratty nephew or even that she’d been stuck with him for this trip. If she could contain Ronnie without bothering Cecelia . . . but on the other hand, she was the owner, and the owner had a right to know what was going on. If it had been an admiral’s nephew, she’d have known what to do (not that any admiral’s nephew would have gotten so far with mischief still unchecked).
But the first thing to do was find out how he did it, and when.
“Sirkin, you’re cross-training in computer systems. I want you to crawl through every trickle in the past . . . oh . . . sixty hours or so, and identify every input.” Sirkin blinked, but did not look daunted. The young, Heris thought to herself, believed in miracles.
“Anything in particular, Captain?”
“I entered a problem set for the drill yesterday. What just happened was not within parameters. . . . Someone skunked them. I want to know when, from what terminal, and the details of the hook. Can do?”
“Yes—I think so.” Sirkin scowled, in concentration not anger. “Was it that—that young idiot who got himself caught in the storage compartment?”
Heris glanced around; the entire crew was listening. “It might have been,” she said. “But when you find out suppose you tell me, not the whole world.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ronnie threw himself back in the heavily padded teal chair in his stateroom and stretched luxuriously. George, in the purple chair, looked ready to burst with curiosity.
“So?”
“So . . .” Ronnie tried to preserve the facade of cool sophistication, but the expression on George’s face made him laugh. “All right. I did it, and did it right. You should have seen them, trying to turn off a fan that wouldn’t turn off.”
“A fan.” George was not impressed, and since he’d been decanted looking cool and contained, he could do that look better than Ronnie. The only thing, Ronnie maintained, which he did better.
“Let me explain,” Ronnie said, taking a superior tone. That came easily. “The little captain had scheduled another emergency drill, this one for the crew alone. I’d already put my hook into the system—remember?—and had a line out for just this sort of thing. I reeled it in and rewrote it—actually, all I had to do was put a loop in it—and sent it on its way.”
“So the fan kept turning back on,” George said. “And they couldn’t stop it. . . .” A slow grin spread across his face. “How unlike you—it’s so gentle. . . .”
“Well,” Ronnie said, examining his fingernails, “except for the stink bomb.”
“Stink bomb?”
“Didn’t I mention? The little captain had put three scenarios in the computer; it would generate one of them, using her parameters. I sort of . . . mixed two. One was a contamination drill . . . and it wasn’t that hard to change a canister which would have released colored smoke for one releasing stinks.” Ronnie smirked, satisfied with the look on George’s face as well as his own brilliance. “The little captain was most upset.”
“When she figures it out . . .” George went from gleeful to worried in that phrase.
“She’ll never figure it out. She’ll think it’s her own problem set—even if she calls it up, she’ll see that loop. Everyone makes mistakes that way sometimes.”
“But that canister?”
“George, I am not stupid. I spent an entire day repainting the drill canisters so they have the wrong color codes. All of them. She’ll assume it’s something left over from the previous captain—like that great mysterious whatever that held us up at Takomin Roads. That’s the first thing I did, right after we decided to scrag her. She can look for prints or whatever as much as she likes: she picked that canister up herself, and put it where it went off.” Ronnie stretched again. Sometimes he could hardly believe himself just how brilliant he was. “Besides—she thinks I’m a callow foolish youth—that’s what Aunt Cecelia keeps telling her—and she won’t believe a spoiled young idiot—my dear aunt’s favorite terms—could fish in her stream and catch anything.” As George continued to look doubtful, Ronnie leaned forward and tried earnestness. If George got nervy, his next intervention would be much harder. “We’re safe, I promise you. She can’t twig. She can’t possibly twig, and if she even thinks of it, Aunt Cecelia’s blather will unconvince her.”
Chapter Eight
“We have a slight problem,” Heris said to Cecelia. It had not been easy to spirit her employer away along paths she knew were safe, but she managed. They were now in the ’ponics section reserved for fancy gardening. Cecelia had banished the gardeners.
“Again?” But Cecelia said it with a smile.
“Your nephew,” Heris said. “I can deal with him, but he may come running to you, if I do. Or I can try to ignore him out of existence, but he may cause the crew some inconvenience.”
“Somehow when you say ‘inconvenience,’ what I hear is much worse.” Cecelia looked down her nose as if she were wearing spectacles and had to peer over them. She reminded Heris of one of the portraits of her ancestress.
“Well . . . I can probably keep it to inconvenience.” Heris reached out to feel the furry leaf of a plant she didn’t recognize. It had odd lavender flowers, and it gave off a sharp fragrance as she touched it.
“I hope you’re not allergic to that,” Cecelia said. “It makes some people itch for days.”
“Sorry.” Heris looked at her fingers, which did not seem to be turning any odd color or itching.
“It’s got an edible tuber, quite a nice flavor.” Cecelia looked at the row of plants as if blessing them with her gaze. “I hope Bunny will trade for this cultivar; that’s why we’re growing it now. We had to replant, of course, after the . . . mmm . . . problem.”
Heris had not considered what, besides convenience, might have been sacrificed. “Did you lose all the garden crops?” she asked. “I thought they’d be unharmed.” She also wondered what this had to do with Ronnie, and hoped it meant Cecelia was thinking on two levels at once.
“We lost some . . .” Cecelia’s voice trailed away; she was staring at another row of plants, these covered with little yellow fruits. “I don’t know what they’re thinking of; half those are overripe. And they’re not fertile; there’s no sense wasting them. . . .” She picked one, sampled it, and picked another for Heris. “You’re asking about Ronnie. I’ve told you before—I’m sick of that boy. If he’s done something that deserves response, do what you will, short of permanent injury. I do have to answer to Berenice and his father later; it would be awkward to admit that I sanctioned his death. But aside from that—” She made a chopping motion at her own neck.