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this is some ploy of hers?"
Blast. The boy was too smart. He'd seen through the screen. Dupaynil let the
worry he felt edge his voice.
"Who'd you hear that from?"
"Admiral Spirak. He captained the battle platform I v ."
"Spirak!" Relief and contempt mixed gave that more force than he'd intended.
Dupaynil lowered his voice and kept it even. "Panis, your admiral is the last
person who should complain of someone else's lack of respect for regulations.
I won't tell you why he's still spouting venom about Sassinak, even though
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she saved his ca-
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McCaffrey and Moon
reer once. Gossip was Ollery's specialty. But if you ever wondered why he's
got only two stars at his age and why he's commanding Fleet's only
nonoperational battle platform, there's a damn good reason.
I've seen Commander Sassinak's files, and it's true she doesn't always fight
an engagement by the book.
But she's come out clean from encounters that cost other commanders ships. The
only regulations she bends are those that interfere with accomplishing the
mission. She's fer more a stickler for ship discipline than anyone on this
ship was."
Now Panis looked as if he'd been dipped in boiling water.
"Sorry, sir. But he'd said if I ever did end up serving with one of her
officers, look out. That she had a following, but more loyal to her than to
Fleet."
"I don't suppose he told you about the promotion party he gave himself? And
nobody came? It's useless to tell you, Panis. Youll have to decide for
yourself. She's popular, but she's also smart and a good commander. As for
regulations, I felt that my duties entitled me to bend a few on her ship and
she straightened me out in short order."
"What'd you do? Put a tap on her?*
Dupaynil gave that a hard look, and Panis suddenly realized what that could
mean and turned even redder than before.
"I didn't mean . . . That's not what ..."
"Good." Dupaynil gave no ground with that tone. "I did attempt to monitor some
communications traffic
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without giving her proper notice. We were looking for a saboteur, as I told
you. I thought a little snooping along the corridors, in the crew's gym, and
so on, wouldn't hurt. She felt differently." That this was only distantly
related to what had really happened bothered him not at all. She had been
angry. He had put in surveillance devices without her permission. That much
was true. "I don't consider myself one of
Commander Sassinak's officers," Dupaynil went on. "My assignment to her ship
was temporary duty only, a special mission to unearth this saboteur."
GENERATION WARRIORS
167
He could not tell if this satisfied Panis, and he didn't really care. He had
liked the younger officer but suggestive questions about Sassinak rubbed him
the wrong way. Why? He wasn't sure. He had not been tempted to involve himself
with her. Her relationship with Ford was clear enough. So why did he feel such
rage when someone criticized? It was worth thinking over later, when they'd
found or not found the evidence he needed, and decided what to do with it.
Dupaynil's excursions into the ship's computers yielded all he could have
wished for. He knew his satisfaction showed. He insisted on sharing his
findings with Panis so the younger officer would know why.
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"Besides," he said, "if someone scrags me successfully, you'll still have a
chance to break up the conspiracy. "
"How?" Panis looked up from the hardcopy of one of the more startling files,
and tapped it with his finger. "If all these people are really part of it,
then Fleet itself is hopeless."
"Not at all." Dupaynil put his fingertips together. "Do you know how many
officers Fleet has? This is less than five percent. Your reaction is as
dangerous as they are. If you assume that five percent rotten means the whole
thing's rotten, then you've done their work for them."
"I hadn't thought of it that way."
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"No. Most people don't. But let's be very glad we have to evade only five
percent. And let's figure out how to get this information back to some of the
95% who aren't involved in it."
Panis had an odd expression on his face. "I'm not really ... 1 mean, my skills
in navigation are only average. And the computer in this ship holds only a
limited number of plots."
"Plots?"
"Pre-programmed courses between charted points. I'm not sure I could drop us
out of FTL, and then get us somewhere else that's not in the computer."
Dupaynil had assumed that all ship's officers were
168
McCaffrey and Moon
competent in navigation. He opened his mouth to ask what was Panis's problem,
and shut it again. He wasn't able to pilot the ship, or even maintain the
environmental system without Panis's instructions, so why should he expect
everything of a young Jig?
"Does this mean we're stuck with the course and destination Ollery put in?" A
worse thought erupted into his mind with the force of an explosion. "Do we
even know where we're going?"
"Yes, we do. The computer's perfectly willing to tell me that. We're headed
for Seti space, just as your orders specified." Panis frowned. "Where did you
think we might be going?"
"It suddenly occurred to me that Ollery might never have entered that course,
or might have changed it, since he was planning to kill me. Seti space! I
don't know whether to laugh or cry," Dupaynil said.
"Assuming my orders were faked, was that chosen as a random destination, or
for some reason?"
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Panis fiddled with his seat controls and glanced at something on the command
screen next to him.
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"Well . . . from where we were, that gives the longest stretch in FTL. Time
enough for Ollery to figure out what to do with you and how. Perhaps it was
that. Or maybe they had a chore for him in Seti space, in addition to
scragging you."
"So, you're saying that we have to go where we're going before we can go
anywhere else?"
"If you want to be sure of getting anywhere anytime soon," Panis said. "We've
been in undefined space FTL mode for a long time, and if we drop out before
the node, I have no idea where we might end up. We do have the extra supplies [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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