Sassinak Read online

  Paraden's attempt to explain himself, and put the blame for theft on the Wefts, did not work . . . although Sass wondered if it would have, given more time, or if she had not testified so strongly against him. When the first theft victim found that Paraden was involved, she realized that her "missing" dress insignia might have been stolen instead, and her testimony put the final seal on the case. Paraden had no chance to threaten Sass in person after that, but she was sure she'd earned an important enemy for the future. At least he wouldn't be in the Fleet. Paraden's clique, subject to intense scrutiny by the authorities after his dismissal, avoided Sass strictly. Even if one of them had wanted to be friendly, they'd not have risked more trouble.

  Sass came out of it with a muted commendation. "You'll not say anything of this to your fellow cadets," the Commandant said severely. "But you showed good judgment. It's too bad you had to resort to physical force—you were justified, I'm not arguing that, but it's always better to think ahead and avoid the need to hit someone, if you can. Other than that, though, you did exactly the right things at the right time, and I'm pleased. The others will be wary of you awhile, and I would be most unhappy to find you using that to your advantage . . . you understand?"

  "Yes, sir." She did, indeed, understand. It had been a narrow scrape, and could have gone badly. What she really wanted was a chance to get back to work and succeed the way Abe would want her to: honestly, on her own merits, without favoritism.

  "We may seem to be leaning on you a bit, in the next week or so: don't worry too much."

  "Yes, sir."

  No one had to lean; she seemed sufficiently subdued, and eager to return to normal, as much as Academy life was ever normal. Her instructors were not surprised, and she would not know for years of the glowing comments in her record.

  Chapter Four

  Graduation. Sassinak, scoring high on all the exam postings, came into graduation week in the kind of euphoria she had once dreamed of. Honor graduate, with the gold braid and tassels. Cadet commandant: and the two did not often go together. She felt on fire with it, crackling alive a centimeter beyond her fingertips, and from the way the others treated her, that's exactly how she looked. At the final fitting for graduation, she stared into the tailor's mirror and wondered. Was she really that perfect, that vision of white and gold? Not a wrinkle, not a rumple, a shape that—she now admitted—was nothing short of terrific, what with all the gymnastics practice. The uniform clung to it, but invested it with dignity, all at once. Nowhere in the mirror could she see a trace of the careless colonial girl, or the ragged slave, or even the rumpled trainee. She looked the way she'd always wanted to look. The mischievous brown eyes in the mirror crinkled . . . except that she'd never intended to be smug. She hated smug. Laughter fought with youthful dignity, as she struggled to hold perfectly still for the tailor's last stitches. Dare she breathe, in that uniform? She had to.

  Abe would be so proud, she thought, leading the formation into the Honor Square for the last time. He was there, but she didn't even think of glancing around to find him. He would see what he had made, what he had saved . . . for a mood went grim, thinking of the latest bad news, another colony plundered. Every time such news came in, she thought of girls like her, children like Lunzie and Janek, people, real people, murdered and enslaved. But the crisp commands brought her back to the moment. Her own voice rang out in answer, brisk and impersonal.

  The ceremony itself, inherited from a dozen military academies in the human tradition, and borrowing bits from all of them and the nonhumans as well, lasted far too long. The planetary governor welcomed everyone, the senior FSP official responded. Ambassadors from all the worlds and races that sent cadets to the Academy had each his or her or its speech to make. Each time the band had the appropriate anthem to play, and the Honor Guard had the appropriate flag to raise, with due care, on the pole beside the FSP banner. Sassinak did not fidget, but without moving a muscle could see that the civilians and guests did exactly that, and more than once. A child wailed, briefly, and was removed. Sunlight glinted suddenly from one of the Marine honor guard's decorations: he'd taken a deep breath of disgust at something a politician said. Sass watched a cloud shadow cross the Yard and splay across Gunnery Hall. Awards: Distinguished teaching award, distinguished research into Fleet history, distinguished (she thought) balderdash. Academic departments had awards, athletic departments had theirs.

  Then the diplomas, given one by one, and then—at last—the commissioning, when they all gave their oaths together. And then the cheers, and the hats flying high, and the roar from the watching crowd.

  * * *

  "So—you're going to be on a cruiser, are you?" Abe held up a card, and a waiter came quickly to serve them.

  "That's what it said." Sass wished she could be three people: one here with Abe, one out celebrating with her friends, and one already sneaking aboard the cruiser, to find out all about it. Everyone wanted to start on a cruiser, not some tinpot little escort vessel or clumsy Fleet supply ship. Sure, you had to serve on almost everything at least once, but starting on a cruiser meant being, in however junior a way, real Fleet. Cruisers were where the action was, real action.

  They were having dinner in an expensive place, and Abe had already insisted she order the best. Sass could not imagine what the colorful swirls on her plate had been originally, but the meal was as tasty as it was expensive. The thin slice of jelly to one side she did know: crel, the fruiting body of a fungus that grew only on Regg, the world's single most important export . . . besides Fleet officers. She raised a glass of wine to Abe, and winked at him.

  He had aged, in the four years she'd been a cadet. He was almost bald now, and she hadn't missed the wince as when he folded himself into the chair across from her. His knuckles had swollen a little, his wrinkles deepened, but the wicked sparkle in his eye was the same.

  "Ah, girl, you do make my heart proud. Not 'girl,' now: you're a woman grown, and a lady at that. Elegant. I knew you were bright, and gutsy, but I didn't know you'd shape into elegant."

  "Elegant?" Sass raised an eyebrow, a trick she'd been practicing in front of her mirror, and he copied her.

  "Elegant. Don't fight it; it suits you. Smart, sexy, and elegant besides. By the way, how's the nightlife this last term?"

  Sass grimaced and shook her head. "Not much, with all we had to do." Her affair with Harmon hadn't lasted past midyear exams, but she looked forward to better on commissioning leave. And surely on a cruiser she'd find more than one likely partner. "You told me the Academy would be tough, but I thought the worst would be over after the first year. I don't see how being a real officer can be harder than being a cadet commander."

  "You will." Abe drained his wine, and picked up a roll. "You never had to send those kids out to die."

  "Commander Kerif said that's old-fashioned: you don't send people out to die, you send them out to win."

  Abe set the roll back on his plate with a little thump. "He does, does he? What kind of 'win' is it when your ship loses a pod in the grid, and you have to send out a repair party? You listen to me, Sass: you don't want to be one of those wet-eared young pups the troops never trust. It's not a game any more, any more than being hauled off by slavers was a game. You're back in the real world now. Real weapons, real wounds, real death. I'm damned proud of you, and that won't change: it's not every girl that could make it like you have. But if you think the Academy was tough, you think back to Sedon-VI and the slave barracks. I daresay you haven't really forgotten, whatever polish they've put on your manners."

  "No. I haven't forgotten." Sass stuffed a roll in her mouth before she said too much. He didn't need to know about the Paraden whelp, and all that mess. A shiver ran across her shoulderblades. He must know she hadn't changed that much . . . but he sure seemed nervous about something. As soon as they'd finished eating, he was ready to go, and she knew something more was coming. Outside, in the moist fragrant early-summer night, Sass wished again she could be two or three pe
ople. She'd had her invitation, to the graduation frolic up in the parked hills behind the Academy square. It was just the night for it, too . . . soft grass, sweet breeze. Mosquito bites where you can't scratch, she reminded herself, and wondered why the geniuses who'd managed to leave the cockroaches back on Old Terra hadn't managed the same thing with mosquitoes.

  Abe led her across town, to one of his favorite bars. Sass sighed inwardly. She knew why he came here: senior Fleet NCOs liked the place, and he wanted to show her off to his friends. But it was noisy, and crowded, and smelled, after the cool open air, like the cheap fat they fried their snacks in. She saw a few other graduates, and waved. Donnet: his uncle was a retired mech from a heavy cruiser. Issi, her family's pride: the first officer in seven generations of a huge Fleet family, all noisily telling her how wonderful it was. She shook hands with those Abe introduced: mostly the older ones, tough men and women with the deft precise movements of those used to working in a confined space.

  It took them awhile to find a table, in that crowd. Civilian spacers liked the place, too, and Academy graduation brought everyone out to raise a glass for the graduates. Even the hoods, Sass noted, spotting the garish matching jackets of a street gang huddled near the back door. She was surprised they came here, to a Fleet and spacer bar, but a second, smaller gang followed the first in.

  "Go get our drinks, Sass," said Abe, once he was down. "I'll just have a word with the Giustins." Issi's family . . . Sass grinned at him. He knew everyone. She took the credit chip he held out and found her way to the bar.

  She was halfway back to him with the drinks when it happened. She missed the beginning, never knew who threw the first blow, but suddenly a row of tables erupted into violence. Fists, chains, the flash of blades. Sass dropped the tray and leaped forward, already yelling Abe's name. She couldn't see him, couldn't see anything but a tangled mass of Fleet cadet uniforms, gang jackets, and spacer gray. Her shout brought order to the cadets, or seemed to. At her command they coalesced, becoming a unit; with her they started to clear that end of the room, in a flurry of feints and blows and sudden clutches. From the corner of one eye, as she ducked under someone's knife and then disarmed him with a kick, she saw a move she recognized from one of their opponents. For an instant, she almost recognized that combination of size, shape, and motion.

  She had no time to analyze it; there were too many drunken spacers who reacted to any brawl with enthusiasm, too many greenjacketed, masked hoodlums. The fight involved the whole place now, an incredible crashing screaming mass of strugghng bodies. She rolled under a table, came up to strike precise blows at a greenjacket about to knife a spacer, ducked the spacer's wild punch, kicked out at someone who clutched her leg. Something raked her arm; the lights went out, then came on in a dazzle of flickering blue. Sirens, whistles, the overloud blare of a bullhorn. Sass managed a glance back toward the entrance, and saw masked Fleet MPs with riot canisters.

  "DOWN . . ." the bullhorn blared. Sass dropped, as all the cadets did, knowing what was coming. Most of the spacers made it down before the MPs fired, but the hoods tried to run for it. A billowing cloud of blue gas filled the room; a thrown canister burst against the back door and felled the hoods who'd headed that way. Sass held her breath. One potato, two potato. Her hand reached automatically to her belt, and her fingernail found the slit for the release. Three potato, four potato. She flicked the membrane mask open, and covered her face with it. Five potato, six potato. Now she had the tube of detox, and smeared it over the nose and mouth portions of the mask. Seven, eight, nine, ten . . . a cautious breath, smelling of nutmeg from the detox, but no nausea, no pain, and no unconsciousness. Beside her, a spacer already snored heavily. She looked up, eyes protected by the mask. Already the gas had dissipated to a blue haze, still potent enough to knock out anyone without a mask, but barely obscuring vision.

  The MPs spread around the room, checking IDs. Several other cadets were clambering to their feet, protected by their masks. Sass pushed herself up, looking for Abe. She wondered if he carried a Fleet emergency mask.

  "ID!" It was a big MP in riot gear; Sass didn't argue but pulled out her new Fleet ID and handed it over. He slipped it into his beltcomp, and returned it. "You start this?" he asked. "Or see it start?"

  Sass shook her head. "It started over here, though. I was coming across the room—"

  "Why didn't you get out and call help?"

  "My father—my guardian was over here."

  "Name?"

  Sass gave Abe's name and ID numbers; the MP waved her out to search. She veered around two fallen tables . . . was it this one, or that? Three limp bodies lay in an untidy pile. Sass shifted the top one; the MP helped. The next wore spacer gray, a long scrawny man with vomit drooling from the corner of his mouth. And there at the bottom lay Abe. Sass nodded at the MP, and he took a charged reviver from his belt and handed it to her; she put it over Abe's gaping mouth. He looked so . . . so dead, that way, with his mouth slack. The MP had dragged away the tall spacer, and now helped her roll Abe onto his back.

  They saw the neat black hole in his chest the same moment. Sass didn't recognize it at first, reached down to brush off the smudge on the front of his jacket. He'd hate that, dirt on the new jacket he'd bought for her graduation. But the MP caught her wrist. She looked at him.

  "He's dead," the MP said. "Someone had a needler."

  Even as the room hazed around her, she thought "Shock. That's what's happening." She couldn't think about Abe being dead . . . he wasn't dead. This was another exercise, another test, like the one in the training vessel, when half the students had been made up to look like wounded victims. She remembered the realistic glisten of the fake gut wound, trailing a tangle of intestines across the deck plating. Easier to think about that, about the equally faked amputation, than that silly little black hole in Abe's jacket.

  Later she heard, through an open doorway in the station, that she'd acted normally, not drugged, drunk, or irrational. She was sitting on a gray plastic chair, across a cluttered desk from someone who was busy at a computer. The floor had a pattern of random speckles, like every floor she'd seen for the past four years. She turned her head to look out the door, and an MP with his riot headgear under his arm gave her a neutral glance. She was Fleet, she hadn't started it, she hadn't had hysterics when they found Abe's body. Good enough.

  It didn't feel good enough. Her mind raced back and forth over that minute or so the fight lasted, playing back minute fragments very slowly, looking for something she couldn't yet guess. Where had it started? Who? She had been carrying the drinks: Abe's square, squatty bottle of Priun brandy, and the footed glass for it, and a special treat for herself: Caprian liqueur. She'd been afraid the tiny cup of silver-washed crystal—the only proper receptacle for Caprian liqueur—would bounce off the tray if someone bumped her, so she hadn't been looking more than one body ahead when the fight started. She'd looked up when . . . was it a sound, or had she seen something, without really recognizing it? She couldn't place it, and went on. She'd dropped the tray, and in her mind it fell in slow-motion, emptying its contents over the shoulders of someone in spacer gray at the table she'd been passing.

  Suddenly she had something, or a hint of it. In the midst of that fight, someone to her right had blocked a kick with a move that had to come from Academy training . . . a move that almost had to be learned in low-grav tumbling, although you could use it in normal G. Only it hadn't been one of the graduates, nor . . . her mind focussed on the anomaly . . . nor one of the spacers. It had been someone in purple and orange, with blue sleeves . . . a gang jacket. She'd tried to take a fast look, but like all the second gang, the fighter's face had been painted in geometric patterns that made identification nearly impossible. Eyes . . . darkish. Skin color . . . from the way it took the paint, neither very light nor very dark.

  "Ensign." Sass looked up, ready to curse at the interruption until she saw the rank insignia. Not local police; Fleet. And not just any Fleet, but the Aca
demy Vice-Commandant, Commander Derran.

  "Sir." She stood, and wished she'd had time to change uniforms. But they hadn't run the scan over all the spots yet, and they'd told her to wait.

  "I'm sorry, Ensign," the Commander was saying. "He was a good man, Fleet to the core. And on your graduation night, too."

  "Thank you, sir." That much was correct; she couldn't manage much more through a tight throat.

  "You're his only listed kin," Derran went on. "I assume you'll want a military funeral?" Sass nodded. "Burial in the Academy grounds, or—"

  She had only half-listened when he'd told her, years ago, how he wanted it. "I don't hold with spending Fleet money to send scrap into a star," he'd said. "Space burial's for those who die there. They've earned it. But I'm no landsman, either, to be stuck under a bit of marble on a hillside; I hold by the old code. My life was with Fleet, I had no homeland. Burial at sea, if you can manage it, Sass. The Fleet does it the right way."

  "At sea," she said now. "He wanted it that way."

  "Ashes, or—?"