Part 73 (2/2)

”Heir? s.h.i.+ps aren't personal property! Fleet would a.s.sign another ...” She stopped short, struck by another possibility. ”Aygar, you re a genius, and you don't even know it. Testimony is one thing: a s.h.i.+p of the line .

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is another. My Zaid is possibly the most dangerous s.h.i.+p of its cla.s.s. If it's the s.h.i.+p they fear and want to render helpless, then by taking me out or even keeping me onplanet while Coromell's death is investigated, that would do it. It would be Standard weeks before another captain arrived. They might even seal the s.h.i.+p in dock.”

And why would someone be that upset about a cruiser at the orbital station, a cruiser whose weapons were locked down? What did someone fear that cruiser could do? Cruisers weren't precision instruments, Despite her actions on Ireta, cruisers were designed as strategic platforms, capable of dealing with, say, a planetary rebellion, or an invasion from s.p.a.ce. Or both.

Sa.s.sinak was up again before she realized she was going to move. ”Come on,” she said. ”We've got to get back to the s.h.i.+p.”

As if that were going to be easy She started looking for another access port. Soon enough this tunnel would come to someone's attention, even if they didn't find the escape hatch from that . place Her mind was working now, full-speed, running the possibilities of several sets of plotters It could reduce to one set, if they had some way to interfere with Coromell's return and thought the singed corpse could pa.s.s as his for long enough to get her in legal trouble. Or suppose they'd captured the real Coromell and could produce his body.

Not her problem. Not now Now all she had to do was find a way out, to the surface, call Arly and get a shuttle to pick them up. She longer cared about the legal aspects of action.

The next access port led them down, deeper into the city's underground warren of service tunnels. This one was lighted and the single rail down the middle of the Boor indicated regular maintenance monorail service. Plastic housings covered the bundled cables along one wall, the pipes running along the other Sa.s.sinak noted that the symbols seemed to be the same as those used in Fleet vessels, the colored stripes and logos she knew so well, but she didn't try to tap a water pipe to make sure. Not yet. They could walk along the catwalk beside 222.

the monorail without stooping. With the light, they could move far more quickly.

That didn't help if they didn't know where they were going, Sa.s.sinak thought grimly. The port they'd come out of had a number on the reverse: useless information without the map reference.

”We're still going the same way,” Aygar said.

She stared at him, surprised again. He was taking all this much better than she would have predicted.

”It's easy to lose one's way without references,” she began, but he was holding up a little b.u.t.ton. ”What's that?”

”It's a mapper,” Aygar said. ”One of the students I met at the Library said I should have one or I'd get lost.”

”A locator transmitter?” Her heart sank. If he was carrying that, their unknown enemies could simply wait, watching the trace on a computer, until they came up again.

”No. He said there were two lands, the land that told people where you were so they could find you and help you, and the kind that told you where you were for yourself. Tourists carry the first kind, he said, and rich people who expect their servants to come pick them up, but students like the second. So that's what I bought.”

She had not realized he'd been on his own long enough to do anything like that. Thinking back . . . there were hours and hours in which he'd been left at the Library entrance. She'd taken him there, or the FSP prosecutors had, between depositions or conferences. She hadn't even known he'd met anyone else.

”How does it work?”

”Like this.” He flicked it with a thumbnail and a city map, distorted by the casing of the cables, appeared on the wall of the tunnel. A pulsing red dot must be their position. The map seemed to zoom closer, and letters and numbers replaced part of the criss-cross of lines. ”E-84, RR-72.” Aygar flicked the thing again and a network of yellow lines appeared. There they were, in .

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what was labelled Maintenance access tunnel 66-43-V. ”Where do we want to go?”

”I'm . . . not sure.” Until she knew who their enemies were, she didn't know where it might be safe to surface and call Arly. Or if even that would be a good idea. ”Where's the nearest surface access?”

The red dot distorted into a line that crept along the yellow of their tunnel, then turned orange.

”That means go up,” Aygar said. ”If we have to go down to get somewhere, our line will turn purple.” It made sense, in a way.

”Let's go, then.”

She let him lead the way. He seemed to know how the mapper worked. She certainly did not. She wanted to ask about scale, but they'd been in one place too long already. Her neck itched with the certainty that pursuit was close behind.

”If you have any more little goodies, like the light, or die mapper, why not tell me now?” It came out a bit more waspish than she intended.

”I'm sorry,” he said. He actually sounded abashed. ”I didn't know . . . There hasn't been time.”

”Never mind. I'm just very glad you opted for this kind of mapper and not the other.”

”I didn't think I'd need it, really,” he said. ”I don't get lost easily. But Gerstan was being so friendly.” He shrugged.

Sa.s.sinak felt another bubble of worry swell up beside die cl.u.s.ter that already filled her head. A friendly student who just happened to take an interest in the well-being of a foreigner?

”Tell me more about Gerstan,” she said as calmly as she could.

Gerstan, it seemed, was ”a lot like Tim.” Sa.s.sinak managed not to say what she thought and hoped Aygar had made a mistake. Gerstan had been friendly, open, helpful. He had sympathized with Aygar's position. Because, of course, Aygar had explained all about Ireta. Sa.s.sinak swallowed hard and let Aygar go on talking as they walked. Gerstan had helped him use the Library 224.

computers to access the databases, and he had even said that it was possible to bypa.s.s the restriction codes.

”Really?” said Sa.s.sinak, hoping her ears weren't standing right straight out. ”That's pretty hard, I'd always heard.”

Aygar's explanation did not rea.s.sure her. Gerstan, it seemed, had friends. He had never explained just who they were: just friends whose specialty was intercepting data transmissions and diverting them.

”What land of transmissions?”

”He didn't say, exactly.” Aygar sounded slightly grumpy about that, as if in retrospect Gerstan didn't seem quite as helpful. ”He just said that if I ever needed to get into the databases, or ... or slip a loop, whatever that is, he could help. Said it was easy, if you had the knack. All the way up to the Parchandri, he said.”

An icy spike went straight down Sa.s.sinak's back at that. ”Are you sure?” she said, before she could stop it.

”Sure of what?” Aygar was lolloping ahead, apparently quite relaxed.

”That he said 'all the way up to Parchandri?' ”

”The Parchandri. Yes, that's what he said. Why?”

He glanced back over his shoulder and Sa.s.sinak hoped her face revealed nothing but calm interest. Parchandri. Inspector General Parchandri? Who should not be here anyway, but at Fleet Headquarters. As if they were printed in the fiery letters in the air before her, she could see that initiation code, supposedly coming from the Inspector General's office. . .

”I'm just trying to figure things out,” she said to Aygar who had glanced back again.

Should she explain any of this to Aygar? His own problems were complicated enough, and besides he had no real right to Fleet's darker secrets. But if something happened . . . She shook her head fiercely. What was going to happen was that she would be laughing at The Parchandri's funeral. If, in fact, The Parchandri was guilty of Abe's murder.

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