Part 42 (1/2)
Sev shook his head. ”Won't work. He's clever-there's a VIP tour arranged-the disfigured prisoners and the dangerous work lines are all kept well out of sight. Mostly at the secondary plants hidden backplanet. I know how to find one of the worst plants. I was there. But without me, he'll whisk you from one end of the central prison factory to the other, and you won't see anything, and every time you try to turn around there'll be six guards in your way. I'll have to go with you.” He tried to raise himself from the pillows, started coughing and fell back again.
”You can't!” Fa.s.sa exclaimed.
”May have to,” said Micaya Questar-Benn. ”Duty.” She and Sev nodded at one another. ”You two,” she jerked her head at Fa.s.sa and Alpha-”back to your cabins now. Nothing to do with you-shouldn't have let you hear this much.”
”Wait!” Fa.s.sa cried as Forister took her by the arm. ”There has to be another way. It won't work, taking Sev with you, can't you see that? Even if he were stronger, the sight of his face will warn Polyon at once that there's something wrong. None of you-none of us will get away alive.”
”Oh, come now,” said Forister gently. ”Your friend can't be that dangerous.”
Fa.s.sa's face hardened. ”If you don't believe me, ask the others. Alpha?”
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong nodded once, reluctantly.
Fa.s.sa looked up at the room sensor. ”Nancia, can you connect us with Blaize and Darnell? Just for a moment?”
Both men agreed with Fa.s.sa's a.s.sessment of the situation.
”Then what can can we do?” Forister demanded. ”d.a.m.n it, I'm not going to turn tail and run off-planet for fear of some spoiled High Families brat who's got hold of some dangerous toys!” we do?” Forister demanded. ”d.a.m.n it, I'm not going to turn tail and run off-planet for fear of some spoiled High Families brat who's got hold of some dangerous toys!”
”I think,” Fa.s.sa said slowly, ”that you're going to use me.” She was very pale. ”Take Alpha back to her cabin, and I'll explain what I think we can do.” She looked apologetically at Alpha.
”Traitor! When Polyon finds out-”
Fa.s.sa's lips were pinched. She was not pretty at all, now. But she was almost beautiful, in a cold remote way. ”I'll have to take that chance, won't I?”
”Better you than me,” Alpha said. She turned to go. ”All right. Lock me up. I don't even want to hear this plan. Maybe he won't hold it against me, if I'm not even here when you discuss it.” She didn't sound too hopeful of that.
When Fa.s.sa explained her plan, there was a brief silence while Forister, Nancia and Micaya all thought it over.
”You think he'll fall for it?” Forister queried.
”He thinks Nancia is an OG drone,” Fa.s.sa pointed out. ”He believes her pa.s.sengers cremated Sev for being a nuisance; if he hadn't swallowed that story, believe me, we'd be hearing from him by now.” She gave them a strained smile. ”Murderers in the escort of OG s.h.i.+pping-what better credentials could you have? And with me to front the introductions-”
”I won't let you!” Sev said hoa.r.s.ely.
”Fa.s.sa stays on board Nancia,” Micaya interrupted. ”That's understood.” She looked at the girl. ”No offense, Fa.s.sa. But from the s.h.i.+p, we can monitor what you say. And I think you'd better wear these.” She bent over briefly, fiddled with the prosthesis replacing her left leg, and straightened with two lengths of s.h.i.+ning, thread-fine wire. ”Hold out your wrists.”
Fa.s.sa obeyed and Micaya encircled each wrist with a length of the wire. Where she twisted the ends shut, the wires seemed to collapse and seal invisibly upon themselves.
”Tanglefield? Is that really necessary?”
Micaya nodded. ”Security measure, no more. Field won't be activated unless we run into trouble on Shemali. Clear, Nancia?”
”Affirmed.”
Micaya touched her synthetic arm. ”I've got a portable tanglefield generator built in here,” she told Forister. ”Might come in handy on Shemali. Want some wires?”
Forister took a handful of the gleaming wires and regarded them dubiously. ”I prefer to solve my problems more elegantly than this.”
”Me, too.” Micaya tugged her dark green pants leg down over the prosthesis. ”Isn't always possible, though. Everybody tells me there'll be terrible political complications if we harm a hair on the head of this High Families brat. So...” She patted her prosthetic leg again and straightened. ”I've stashed the needler. Agree with you, taking him out straightaway would be simpler, but you insisted on doing this by the book.”
”That wasn't,” Forister said, ”quite what I meant by an elegant solution.”
Micaya regarded him with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt on her solemn, dark face. ”Know it. Usually is the most 'elegant' way, though. Leave little tyrants to run loose, they grow up into big tyrants. Then you get the Capellan mess, or something like. Wars,” she pointed out, ”aren't elegant.” She nodded once to Fa.s.sa, by way of apology. ”Understand, not accusing you of treachery, just not taking chances. Want you to be warned-”
”That a secret signal to Polyon will do me more harm than good,” Fa.s.sa finished calmly. ”You don't trust me. That's all right. I I wouldn't trust me, either.” wouldn't trust me, either.”
She was white to the lips now, and her hands were shaking, but she led the way from the medtech room without pausing.
Nancia could see that Sev was fretting enough to damage himself by trying to go after them, so she switched displays to give him visual and auditory sensor taps to the main cabin.
Fa.s.sa was still pale when Nancia initiated the signal sequence that would open a comm link with planetside authorities, but she managed the promised introductions with perfect composure. For Polyon's benefit Forister and Micaya became Forrest Perez and Qualia Benton, a pair of potential hyperchip customers with cash to invest in the operation. She hinted delicately that ”Qualia Benton” was really a high-ranking general from Central, and Micaya started forward to stop her. Forister laid one hand on Micaya's arm. ”Trust the young lady, Mic,” he murmured. ”She has-er-more experience in this sort of thing than you or I.”
So it proved. Far from being alarmed by Micaya's military standing, Polyon accepted her presence with Fa.s.sa, on an OG s.h.i.+p, as proof that she was as corrupt as his friends. And he was clearly delighted to have made the contact. Within minutes he was arranging to meet Fa.s.sa's ”friends” and give them a tour of the newest hyperchip plant.
”I don't know why, but Polyon's always been eager to get more hyperchips sold to the military,” Fa.s.sa told the others after she cut the contact. ”It's not the money, either; he offered s.p.a.ce Academy a cut rate once, but the Ration Board stopped him. I knew your rank would be the thing to draw him in, Micaya. A back door into the military supply system is Polyon's dream.”
”I suppose he wants to impress his old teachers and cla.s.smates by making sure they all use his inventions,” Forister surmised.
Nancia was confused. ”But surely he doesn't imagine that selling hyperchips on the black market is the way to high standing in the Academy?”
All three softpersons laughed tolerantly, and Nancia heard a weak chuckle from the sensor link to the medtech cabin where Sev rested. ”Investigate the sources of a few High Families fortunes some time, Nancia,” Sev recommended to her. ”Money washes clean of most any taint-and more rapidly than you'd believe possible.”
”Not,” Nancia said, ”in the Academy. And not in House Perez y de Gras, either.”
Nancia fussed over Forister and Micaya until the last minute, fitting them out with contact b.u.t.tons, spyderplates, and every other remote protection device she could think of. ”I don't know what good you think this will do,” Forister complained. ”De Gras-Waldheim disabled Sev's spyderplate without alerting anybody, didn't he?”
”Sev didn't have me monitoring him,” Nancia pointed out.
She should have confined Fa.s.sa to her cabin before the other two left, but she didn't have the heart to. ”Somebody should stay with Sev,” Fa.s.sa pleaded.
”Oh, let the child stay with him,” Forister put in unexpectedly. ”She's not worth much as a hostage anyway. If even half of what Sev told us about the hyperchip factory conditions is true, Polyon de Gras-Waldheim is a murderer a dozen times over who'd think nothing of sacrificing a s.h.i.+p full of his former friends.”
Fa.s.sa nodded. ”Yes, that's about right. Except-I wouldn't say he'd 'think nothing of it.' He'd probably enjoy it.”
”Why didn't any of you tell us about Polyon before this?” Nancia demanded. ”You were all babbling your stupid heads off, pointing the finger at one another to get some credit for your own plea bargains, and you never warned us about Polyon.”
”Afraid to,” Fa.s.sa said sadly.
”So afraid that you let Sev go off to Shemali without a word of warning? I'd never have let him go unmonitored if I'd guessed.”
”I didn't know Sev had gone to Shemali,” Fa.s.sa defended herself. ”n.o.body told me anything. I didn't even know he wasn't on board when we left Bahati. All I knew was that he didn't come to see me again, and I thought, I thought...and quite right, too; why should he bother with someone like me?” Tears filled her eyes; Nancia thought that for once they were genuine.
”Fa.s.sa del Parma, you are a prime idiot!” Sev's weary, hoa.r.s.e whisper startled all of them; Nancia had forgotten that she'd left the connections between the main cabin and the medtech room wide open. ”Get in here and hold my hand and smooth my fevered brow. I'm an injured man. I need attention.”