Sassinak (13 page)

I'll drink at your funeral
, she thought to herself,
and dance on your grave, you murdering blackheart.

Sassinak wondered how she could get into the personnel files without being detected. And could she find out anything useful if she did? Certainly Achael wouldn't have "murderer" filling in some blank (secondary specialty?), and since she had no idea who or what had marked Abe for death, she wasn't sure she could recognize anything she found anyway. Still, she had to do something.

"Sassinak, can I ask you something?" Surbar, fellow ensign, was a shy, quiet young man, who nonetheless used his wide dark eyes to good advantage. Sassinak had heard, through Mira, that he was enjoying his recreational hours with a Jig in Weapons Control. Nonetheless, he'd given her some intense looks, and she'd considered responding.

"Sure." Sassinak leaned back, in the relaxed atmosphere of the second watch mess, and ran her hands through her hair. In one corner of her mind, she considered that it was getting a bit too long, and she really ought to go get it trimmed again. Tousled was one thing, but a tangled mass—which is what her hair did every chance it got—was another. The difference between sexy and blowsy.

"D'you know anything about 'Tenant Achael?"

Sassinak barely controlled her reaction. "Achael? Not really—he was on the landing party, but I was too busy with all my stuff to talk to him. Why?"

"Well." Surbar frowned and scratched his nose. "He's been asking about you. Lia wanted to know why, and he said you were too goodlooking to be running around loose. Thought you might be related to somebody he'd known."

Sassinak made herself chuckle casually. Apparently it worked because Surbar didn't seem to notice anything. "He's one of those, is he? After every new female on the ship?"

Surbar shrugged. "Lia said he made eyes at her, but backed off when she said no. Then he started asking about you—so I guess maybe he is that kind."

"Mmm. Well, then, I'll be sure to stay out of airlocks and closets and other closed spaces if Mr. Lieutenant Achael is around."

"Meaning you're not interested?" Surbar gave her his most melting look.

"Not in
him
," said Sassinak, glancing at the overhead and then letting her glance slide sideways to meet Surbar's. "On the other hand . . ."

"Lia's coming to play gunna tonight," said Surbar quickly. "Maybe another time?"

Sassinak shrugged. "Give me a call. Thanks, anyway, for the warning about Achael." On her way back to her compartment, she thought about it. Achael had enough seniority to cause her trouble, and as Weapons Officer he had high enough clearance to access most communications files. If he wanted to. If he thought he needed to. She wanted him dead, if he was Abe's killer, or in league with Abe's killer, but she didn't want to ruin herself in the process.

The next shift, Sassinak had her first IFTL message to process. Muttering her way through the protocol, she logged it, stripped the outer codes, and got it into the captain's eyes-only file without help. Cavery nodded. "Good job—you're doing well at that."

"Wonder what it's about."

"Ours not to know—they say your eyes turn to purple jelly and your brain rots if you peek at those things."

Sassinak chuckled; Cavery had turned out to have quite a sense of humor. "I thought ensigns didn't have brains, just vast pools of prediluvian slime—isn't that what I heard you tell Pickett, yesterday?"

"Comes from trying to decode IFTL messages, that's what I just said. Keep your mind, such as it is, on your work. You can't afford to lose more." His grin took all the sting out of it, and Sassinak went on logging in routine communications for the rest of the shift.

That night Fargeon announced in the wardroom that they were to intercept an EEC craft and pick up reports for forwarding. He spent a long time droning on about the delicate handling necessary to rendezvous in deep space, and Sassinak let her attention wander. Not so far as some, though, for Fargeon's rebuke fell on a Jig from Engineering, who had been doodling idly on her napkin. For some reason, Fargeon chose to interpret this as carelessness with classified information, and by the time he'd finished reaming her out, everyone in the room felt edgy. Of course deep-space rendezvous were tricky, everyone knew that, and of course the EEC pilot couldn't be depended on to arrive at a precise location, as the cruiser would do, but this was no different from any other time, surely. If the EEC ship fouled up badly enough, and they all made a fireworks display that wouldn't be seen anywhere for fifty years or so, too bad.

Since everyone came out of dinner disgruntled, Sassinak didn't pay much attention to her own mood. But the next morning she found that Lieutenant Achael had the bridge: Fargeon, Dass, and Lieutenant Commander Slachek were, he said, in conference. Sassinak glanced around the bridge, and ducked into the communications cubby. It was empty. A scrawled note on the console said that Perry had gone to sickbay: Achael had cleared it. Sassinak frowned, wondering if that's why Cavery was late—perhaps he'd gone with Perry to sickbay. But communications hadn't been uncovered long; the incoming telltales showed nothing in the queue in any system. Odd—they'd been getting regular bursts last shift, relayed position checks on the EEC ship. Sassinak pulled up the last entries in the incoming file, to check the log-in times—if they hadn't had anything coming in for awhile, it might mean trouble with the systems.

She was so intent on the idea of a systems failure that she almost didn't recognize her own initiation code when it flashed on the screen. What? Her nose wrinkled in concentration. She'd just gotten there, and yet her code was time-linked to a file query five minutes before. It couldn't be—unless someone had entered her code by mistake . . . or for some other reason.

"Hey—sorry I'm late." Cavery slid into his seat, took a look at the display, and recoiled. "I thought I told you not to go poking around in the incoming message files."

"You did. I didn't. Somebody used my code."

"What!" After that first explosive word, his voice lowered. "Don't
say
that, Sassinak. Probably every comm posting in the universe has snooped one time or another, but lying doesn't make it better."

"I'm not lying." Sassinak laid her hand over his on the console. "Listen to me. I wasn't here at the time that was logged; I came in right on time, not early as usual. Someone logged my code five minutes before I was here."

"What'd Perry say?"

"He's in sickbay. Nobody was here when I got here, just a note—" She handed it over. Cavery frowned.

"Hardcopy, not on the computer. That's odd. Who's got duty—?" He craned to see around the angle, and snorted. "Oh, great. Achael. Where's Fargeon?"

"In conference, Achael said. But Cavery, the thing is—"

"The thing is, your code's on there, telling the whole world you were snooping in the IFTL files, and if you say you're not either you're a liar, which is one problem, or someone else is, which is another. Damn! All we needed, with the captain the way he is right now, is a Security glitch."

"But I didn't—"

Cavery looked at her, hard, then his mouth relaxed. "No, I don't think you would. But with your code on the file, and—what the dickens is
that
?" He pointed to the realtime display, which was filling with the outgoing batch message for SOLEC transmission. "I don't suppose you put your code on that one either?"

Sassinak looked and saw the other anomaly that Cavery had missed. "Or that quad code for the Inspector General's office, either—it's the same thing we had before, only outgoing, and using my code as originator."

"That one, I will strip." Cavery froze the display, keyed in the ranking codes, and displayed the message itself, along with its initiating and destination sequences. Sassinak noticed that he was copying all this into another file, sealed with his own code. He sat back, clearly baffled by the message.

"Subject unaware; no suspicious activity. Assignment coincidental. Will continue observation."

Cavery looked over at her, brows raised. "Well, Ensign, are you keeping someone under surveillance, or is someone keeping you under surveillance?"

"I—don't know."
Achael
, she thought.
It has to be Achael, but why? And who's behind it?

"Well, I know one thing, and that's where all this is going: straight to the captain."

"But—" Sassinak stopped herself; if she protested, he'd have reason to think she knew more. Yet she wasn't near ready to accuse Achael of involvement with Abe's death . . . how could she? No matter how it came out, she'd lose: ensigns don't get anywhere accusing lieutenants of murder months back and somewhere else.

Cavery waited, his expression clearly daring her to object.

"I know," she said finally, "that Captain Fargeon has to be informed. But he's not on the bridge, and I don't . . . really . . . want to involve any more officers than necessary."

"I remember whose number was on those quad-coded messages, Ensign Sassinak—" Cavery nodded toward the main bridge area. "You needn't try to be obscure."

"Sorry, sir. I wasn't trying to be obscure, I was just—" She paused, as near waving her hands in confusion as she'd ever been. Then inspiration hit. She saw by Cavery's expression that her own had changed with her idea. "Sir, if all this ties together, right now is a bad time to go charging out of here to the captain, isn't it? And if it doesn't, it would still . . . confuse things, wouldn't it?"

Cavery leaned back fractionally, considering. "You have a point." He sighed, and cleared the display. "I can't see that it would hurt to wait until midwatch break, anyway, and maybe later. Depends on the captain's schedule."

Sassinak sald nothing more, but settled to her work. Thank whatever gods there were she hadn't meddled with the Personnel files or the message banks: Achael didn't know she suspected anything. Assignment coincidence? What else could it be, when she had no powerful family to pull strings for her . . . or had that been Abe's secret, perhaps? More than ever, she needed to see Achael's file, but how was she going to do that?

The shattering clamor of the emergency alarm brought her upright. Fast as she was, Cavery's hand almost covered hers as they shut the console down for normal use and flicked on the emergency systems. After the first blast of noise, the siren warbled up, down, up twice: evacuation drill.

"Stupidest damn drill in the book," grumbled Cavery as he fished under the console for the emergency masks. "Here—put this on. Nobody ever evacuates a cruiser; as long as it takes to get everyone in the shuttles and evac pods, whatever it is will have blown the whole place up. Now remember, Ensign, you close the board when you leave, and that's not until the duty officer clears the bridge." His voice was muffled, now, through the foil and plex hood and mask. Sassinak found that hers cut off all vision to the side and rear. As she fastened the tabs to the shoulders of her uniform, Cavery grunted. "Ah, good: Fargeon's taken the bridge. Soon as this damn drill's over, we can get this other taken care of—" His voice sharpened. "Yes, sir; communications secured, sir."

Although Cavery's acid comments implied that pirates could have boarded the ship and flown it to the far side of the galaxy before their turn came, Sassinak thought it wasn't long at all before she was jogging forward along the main portside corridor from the bridge to the transport bays where the shuttles and evac pods were docked. A stream of hooded figures jogged her way, and another jogged back; once you were logged into your assigned evacuation slot, you had to return to your duty post. It did seem illogical. She looked again at the strip of plastic giving her assigned pod: E-40-A. Here, along a side corridor, through a narrow passage she'd never explored. Bay E: someone in full EVA gear glanced at her assignment strip and waved her to the right; section 40 was the last one at the end. Someone else, also suited up, pointed out Pod A, one of a row of hatches still dogged shut. Sassinak struggled with the hatch lock, checked to see that the telltales were all green, and pulled the heavy lid open. Inside the little brightly lit compartment, she could see the shape of an acceleration couch, shiny fittings, a bank of switches and lights.

She ducked her head to clear the hatch opening. Suddenly a sharp pain jabbed her arm, and when she tried to turn it felt like the weight of the whole cruiser landed on her head. She could do nothing but fall forward into darkness.

Commander Fargeon in a rage was no pleasant sight. His officers, ranged around his desk at attention, had no doubt of his mood. "What I want to know," he said icily, "is
who
dumped that pod. Who sent it out there, and what's that ensign doing in it, and why isn't the beacon functioning, and what's all this nonsense about communications security leaks."

Eyes slid sideways; no one volunteered. Fargeon barked, "Cavery!"

"Sir, Ensign Sassinak had reported an incident of duplicate transmissions with unusual initiation codes—"

"I know about
that
. That's got nothing to do with this, has it?"

Cavery wasn't sure how far to go, yet. "I don't know, sir: I was just starting at the beginning." He took a breath, waited for Fargeon's nod, and went on. "Today she reported that someone had used her initiation code to attempt access to a restricted file—"

"Ensign Sassinak? When?"

"Apparently it happened about five minutes before she came on duty. She reported it to me when I arrived—" Cavery went on to explain what had happened up until the drill alarm went. Fargeon listened without further comment, his face expressionless. Then he turned to another officer.

"Well, Captain Palise: what did you see in E-bay."

"Sir, we logged Ensign Sassinak into E-bay at 1826.40; she logged off the bridge on evac at 1824.10, and that's just time to go directly to E-bay. As you know, sir, in an evac drill we have personnel constantly shifting about; once someone's logged into the bay, there's no way to keep watch on them until they're into their assigned shuttle or pod. When the hatches are dogged, then they're logged as onboard evac craft, and they're supposed to return to duty as quickly as possible. Within two minutes of Ensign Sassinak's bay log-in, we show fifty-three individuals logging into the same bay—about what you'd expect. Eight of them were in the wrong bay—and that's about average, too. We had two recording officers in E-bay, but they didn't notice anything until Pod 40-A fired."