“What!” Clearly he hadn’t heard that before.
“It’s not general knowledge, but a couple of races are pushing for mandatory quotas at the Academy. Even the Ryxi - “
‘Those featherdusters!”
“I know. But you’re Fleet, Currald: you know humans need to stick together. Heavyworlders have a useful adaptation, but they couldn’t take on the rest of FSP alone.” He nodded, somber again. Sassinak wondered what went on behind those opaque brown eyes. Yet he was trustworthy: had to be, after the past week. Anything less, and they’d not have survived.
Her next visitor was Hollister, with a report on the extended repairs and probable performance limits of the ship until it went in for refitting. Even though the portside pods had not been as badly damaged as they’d originally thought, he insisted that the ship would not stand another long FTL chase. “One hop, two - a clear course into Sector - that we can manage. But the kind of maneuvering that the Ssli has to call for in a chase, no. You’ve no idea what load that puts on the pods - “
Sassinak scowled. “That means we can’t find out where they go when they leave?”
“Right. We’d be as likely to end up here as there, and most likely to be spread in between. I’d have to log a protest.”
“Which would hardly be read if we did splatter. No, never mind. I won’t do that. But there must be something more than sitting here. If only we could tag their ships, somehow…”
“Well, now, that’s another story.” He’d been prepared to argue harder, Sassinak realized, as he sat back, brow furrowed. “Let’s see… you’re assuming that someone’ll come along to evacuate, and you’d like to know where it goes, and we can’t follow, so…”
His voice trailed off; Sassinak waited a moment, but he said nothing. Finally he shook himself, and handed her another data cube. “I’ll think about it, but in the meantime, we’ve got another problem. Remember the trouble we were having with the scrubbers in Environmental?”
“Yes.” Sassinak inserted the cube, wondering why he’d brought a hardcopy up here instead of just switching an output to her terminal. Then she focussed on the display and bit back an oath. When she glanced at him, he nodded.
“It’s worse.” It was much worse. Day by day, the recycling efficiency had dropped, and the contaminant fraction had risen. Figures that she’d skimmed over earlier came back to her now: reaction equilibrium constants, rates of algal growth. “One thing that went wrong,” Hollister went on, pointing to the supporting data, “is that somehow an overflow valve stuck, and we backflushed from the ‘ponics into the supply lines. We’ve got green crud growing all along here - ‘ He pointed to the schematic. “Cleaned it out of the crosslines by yesterday, but that’s nutrient-rich flow, and the stuff loves it. We can’t kill it off without killing off the main ‘ponics tanks, and that would mean going on backup oxygen, and we lost twenty percent of our backup oxygen in the row with that ship.”
Sassinak winced. She’d forgotten about the oxygen spares damaged or blown in that fight.
“Ordinarily,” Hollister went on, “it’d help that we have a smaller crew, with the prize crew gone. But because we weren’t sure of the biosystems on that transport, I’m short of biosystems crew. Very short. What we need to do is flush the whole system, and replant - but it’d be a lot safer to do that somewhere we could get aired up. In the meantime, we’re going to be working twice as hard to get somewhat less output, and that’s if nothing else goes wrong.”
“Could it be sabotage?” asked Sass.
Hollister shrugged. “Could be. Of course it could be. But it could just as easily be ordinary glitches.”
Chapter Thirteen
Day by day the biosystems monitors showed continued system failure. Sassinak forced herself to outward calmness, though she raged inwardly: to be so close, to have found a slaver base, and perhaps a line to its supporters, and then - not to be able to pursue. Hollister’s daily reports reinforced the data on her screens: they had no reserves for pursuit, and they could not hold station much longer.
She hung on, nonetheless, hoping for another few ships to show up, anything to give her something to show for this expedition. Or, if Huron’s relief expedition arrived, they could take over surveillance. She spent some time each day digging through the personnel files, checking every person who should have been in the quadrant from which the missile came, and who might have had access to a signalling device. There were forty or fifty of them, and she worked her way from Aariefa to Kelly, hoping to be interrupted by insystem traffic. Finally a single ship appeared at the edge of her scanning range, just entering the system. Its IFF signal appeared to be undamaged, giving its mass/volume characteristics straightforwardly.
“Hmm.” Sassinak frowned over the display. “If that’s right, it should have the new beacon system installed.” “Can we trip it?”
“We can try.” The new system functioned as planned, revealing that the ship in question had come from Courcy-DeLan: before that it had hauled “mixed liquids” on the Valri-Palin-Terehalt circuit for eighteen months. “Mixed liquids” came in ten-liter carboys, what-ever that meant. Fuels? Drugs? Chemicals for some kind of synthetic process? It could be anything from concentrated acids to vitamin supplements for the slaves’ diet. Not that it was important right then, but Sassinak wished she could get a look at the ship’s manifest.
Two more transports entered the system, and cautiously made their way down to the planet surface. TheZaid-Dayan’s sensitive detectors were able to pinpoint the ships’ locations on the surface, confirming that they had both settled onto the original contact site. Then a huge ship appeared, this one clearly unable to land on-planet. A Hall-Kir hull, designed for orbital station docking, settled into a low orbit. Now Sassinak was sure they were going to evacuate the base. A Hall-Kir could handle an enormous load of machinery and equipment. But the ship was at least twelve years old, and lacked the new beacon; nor could Sassinak figure out a way to tag it for future surveillance. Its IFF revealed only that it was leased from General Systems Freight Lines, a firm that had nothing on its records. Since the IFF reported only serial owners, Sassinak could not tell who had it under lease, or if it had been leased to doubtful clients before.
“Fleet signal!” Sassinak woke from her restless doze at the squawk in her ear, and thumbed down the intercom volume control.
“What is it?”
“Fleet signal-inbound light attack group. Commodore Verstan commanding. It’s on a tight beam, coded - but they’re sure to have noticed - “
“I’m on my way.” Sassinak shook her head, wondering if the slight headache was an artifact of worry, or really a problem with the air quality. Into the shower, fresh uniform, then onto the bridge, where alertness replaced the slightly jaded look of the past few days.
“It was aimed for this planet’s local system,” said the Corn officer. “They must know we’re - “
Sassinak shook her head. “They’re hoping - they don’t know for sure.”
“Well, aren’t you going to send a return signal?”
“What’s our window?”
“Oh. That’s right.” Shoulders sagged. “We just barely picked it up, and now that miserable planet’s in the way.”
“And their moon station should have intercepted it, right?”
“Yes, but - “
“So we lie low a little longer,” said Sass. “Give me a plot to the nearest Fleet position, and your best guess at its course.”
That came up in light blue on the system graphics. Sassinak tried to think what she’d heard about Commodore Verstan. Would he ease cautiously into the system on the slower but very accurate insystem drives, or would he take FTL chunks across, as she had? How many were in his battle group - would he send a scoutship or escort vessel ahead? Surely Huron would have warned him about the falsified IFF signals, and he’d be ready for trouble… but some flag officers tended to downplay the warnings of juniors.