Generation Warriors

Chapter Ten

FSP Escort Claw

Dupaynil led the way back toward the bridge, walking steadily and slowly. The young officer would still be wondering, might still wish he had Dupaynil under guard. Except that there was no guard. He would feel safer with Dupaynil in front of him, calm and unhurried. At the landing outside the bridge, Dupaynil said over his shoulder, "If you don't mind, I'd like to finish disabling the pod locks on pod three."

"Who's in there?"

"Your weapons tech. So far as I know, all the crew were in this with Ollery. They're all dangerous, but this one particularly so."

Pauls frowned. "Suppose we run into something we need to fight?"

"We'd better not. We can't trust him. I don't think he can get out by himself. At least not without your help. But he and Sins had the best chance of figuring out what I did and undoing it, even with the minimal toolkits standard in pods."

"You may be right, but, look, I want to log at least some of this first. And I want you with me."

Dupaynil shrugged and moved onto the bridge. He thought it would be hours before the weapons tech could possibly get out. At the moment, gaining Panis's confidence took precedence. They settled in uneasy silence, Panis in the command seat and Dupaynil in the one in which he'd first seen the master mate.

He said nothing while Panis made a formal entry in the ship's computer, stating the date and time that he assumed command, and the code under which he would file a complete report. The computer's response to change of command, Dupaynil noticed, was to recheck Panis's retinal scans, palmprint, and voiceprint against its memory of him. Dupaynil would have had a hard time taking over if something had happened to Panis. He asked about that.

"Not as ship commander, no sir. You might have convinced it that you were a disaster survivor. You were logged in as a legitimate passenger. But you wouldn't have been given access to secure files or allowed to make any course changes. It would've given you lifesupport access: water, food, kept the main compartments aired up. That's all. And the ship would have launched an automatic distress signal when it dropped out of FTL."

"I see. There are files in the computer, Captain, which will provide evidence needed to confirm Ollery's treachery."

Dupaynil noticed that Panis reacted to the use of his new title with a minute straightening; a good sign. He did not mention that he had penetrated some of the computer's secure files already. Maintenance wasn't what he would call secure. Panis glanced over.

"I suppose you'd like me to access them. Although I'd think that would be a matter for Fleet Security." Dupaynil said nothing and waited. Panis suddenly grimaced. "Of course. You are Fleet Security, at least part of it. Or so you say." Wariness became him. He seemed to mature almost visibly as Dupaynil watched.

"Yes, I am. On the other hand, since I am the officer involved, the one who killed Ollery, you have a natural reluctance to let me meddle in the files, just in case. Right?"

"Right." Panis shook his head. "And I thought I was lucky to be yanked off a battle platform where I was one of a hundred Jigs, to be executive officer on an escort! Maybe something will happen, I said."

"Something did." Dupaynil grinned at him, the easy smile that had won over more than one who had had suspicions of him. "And you survived, acquitted yourself well. I assure you, if you can bring in the evidence that shows just where the agents of piracy are in Fleet, you'll have made your mark."

"Piracy!" Panis started to say more, then held up his hand. "No, not this moment. Let me log the first of it, and we'll get into that later."

This was a ship's captain speaking, however inexperienced. Dupaynil nodded and waited. The Jig's verbal report was surprisingly orderly and concise for someone who had narrowly escaped death and still had ripening bruises on his face. Dupaynil's opinion of him went up another two notches, and then a third when Panis waved him over to the command input station.

"I'd like your report, too, sir. Lieutenant Commander Dupaynil, taken aboard Clow on resupply station 64, Fleet Standard dating… Computer?" The computer checked the date and time, and flashed it on Pani's screen. "Right! 23.05.34.0247. Transfer from the cruiser Zaid-Dayan, Commander Sassinak commanding, with orders from Inspector-General Parchandri to proceed to Seti space on a secret mission. Is that right, sir?"

"Right," said Dupaynil. Was this the time to mention that he thought those orders were faked? Probably not. At least, not without thinking about it a bit more. He didn't think Sassinak had intended to tangle him with planet pirates or their allies. If he said his orders were faked, that would drag her into it.

"Then if you'll give your report, Commander," and Panis handed him the microphone.

Carefully, trying to think ahead to the implications of his report, Dupaynil told how his suspicions had been aroused by the length of time the crew had been together and the captain's attitude.

"Escort and patrol crews are never left unshuffled for more than one 24 month tour," he said. "Precisely because these ships are hard to track and very dangerous, and small enough for one or two mutineers to take over. Five years without a shuffle is simply impossible. Someone in Personnel had to be in the plot, to cover the records." He went on to tell about setting some surveillance taps and hearing the senior mate and captain discuss his murder. "They said enough about their contacts in both Fleet and certain politically powerful families to convince me that information we've been seeking for years could well be on this ship. Agents aren't supposed to write things down, but they all do it. Names, dates, places to meet, codes: no one can remember all of it. Either in hardcopy or in the computer. And they knew it, because they were afraid I'd get access to those files." He finished with a brief account of his sabotage of the escape pods, and his actions during and after the drill.

"Do you have any evidence now to support these allegations?" asked Panis.

"I have the recording from that audio tap. There may be data in the other taps. I haven't had time to look at diem."

"I'd like to hear what you have," Panis said.

"It's in my cabin." At Panis's expression, Dupaynil shrugged. "Either I would make it through alive to retrieve it or I'd be dead and it might, just might, survive me. Not on my body, which they'd search. May I get it for you?"

He could see uncertainty and sympathized. Panis had had a lot to adjust to in less than an hour. And to him, Dupaynil was still a stranger, hardly to be trusted. But he made the decision and nodded permission. Dupaynil left the bridge quickly, noting that all the partitions were retracted. He went direcdy to his cabin, retrieved the data cube, and returned. Panis was waiting, facing the bridge hatch. Without saying anything, Dupaynil slipped the cube into a player and turned it on. As it played, Panis's expression changed through suspicion to surprise to, at the end, anger.

"Bastards!" he said, when the sound ceased and Dupaynil picked up the cube again. "I knew they didn't like you, but I never thought… And then to be in league with planet pirates! Who's that Lady Luisa they were talking about?"

"Luisa Paraden. Aunt, by the way, of the Randolph Paraden who was expelled from the Academy because Commander Sassinak proved he was involved in theft, sexual harrassment, and racial discrimination against Wefts. They were cadets at the same time."

"I never heard that."

Dupaynil smiled sardonically. "Of course not. It wasn't advertised. But, if you ever wonder why Commander Sassinak has a Weft following, that's one reason. When Ollery was trying to get me to gossip about her, that's one of the things he mentioned. And it made me suspicious: he shouldn't have known. It was kept very quiet."

"And you think there's more evidence in the ship's computer?"

"Yes, you heard what they said. Probably even more in their personal gear. But you're the captain, Panis. You're in legal command. I believe that you recognize we're both in a very tricky situation. We have one dead former captain and eleven live crew imprisoned in escape pods. If we should run into some of the other renegades, especially some of Ollery's friends, we could be shot for mutiny and murder before we ever got that evidence to a court martial."

Panis touched his swelling face gingerly, then grinned. "Then we'd better not get caught."

In the time it took to lug Ollery's body to a storage bay and to disable the controls on the last occupied pod, Dupaynil figured out what to do about his faked orders. He could blame them on the traitor in the Inspector General's office. Sassinak would never reveal the real source. He was fairly sure he could never get Ssli testimony incriminating her. In fact, it was only a guess that she had done it. It was not in the interest of Fleet or the FSP that she be blamed, even though she'd done it. But it was entirely in the interests of the Fleet to bring as many charges as possible against those guilty of conniving at planet piracy.

He thought through the whole chain of events. Would it have made sense for such a traitor to assign him to Claw and get him killed? Certainly, if they considered Sassinak a threat and they knew he'd been working with her. They'd disrupted a profitable scam on Ireta. He'd uncovered one of their agents on the Zaid-Dayan. He was dangerous to them in himself, and they'd taken the opportunity to get him away from Sassinak.

He could almost believe that. It made sense, criminal sense. But if it were true, Ollery or the mate who he suspected of being the senior within the criminal organization, should have known from the beginning about him, should not have needed to discover his taps to suspect him. Of course, there were always glitches in the transfer of data within an organization. Perhaps the message explaining him to Ollery was even now back at the supply station.

Panis had let him do a bit of first aid, a sign of trust that Dupaynil valued. The jig's bruised face wasn't all the damage. He had a massive bruise along his ribs on one side.

"Ollery," he said when Dupaynil raised his eyebrows at it. "That's when I realized, or at least, I didn't know what was going on. Siris had me down, and then I saw the captain with the needier. He yelled for Siris to roll aside, and kicked me, and then you…"

"Yes," said Dupaynil, interrupting that. "And it's going to hurt you to breathe for awhile. Well have to keep an eye on your color, make sure you don't start collecting fluid in that lung. Why don't you start teaching me what I need to know to do the heavy work while we're going wherever we're going? You don't need to be hauling up and down ladders."

He had had Panis fetch a clean uniform from his quarters, and now helped him into it. Ice for the bruises. At least they had plenty of that. He mentioned the bay fiill of water ice and suggested thawing some for showers.

"I'll tell you another thing that bothers me," Dupaynil said with disarming frankness when they were back on the bridge. "I'm no longer sure that my orders to leave the Zaid-Dayan and board this ship were genuine."

"What? You think someone sent false orders?" Dupaynil nodded. "My orders carried an initiation code that really upset Commander Sassinak. She claimed she'd seen it before, years ago, right before someone tried to kill her, on her first cruise. I always thought that initiation code simply meant the Inspector General's office. One particular comp station, say, or a particular officer. But even she thought it was strange that she had to put in at a supply station. That I was being yanked off her ship when she had previous orders that all of us were to appear as witnesses in the Ireta trial." He had explained the bare outline of that to Panis. "I could hardly believe it, but they'd come by IFTL link. No chance of interference. But you heard what they said on tape and what Sins said. If there are high-placed traitors in Fleet, especially in Personnel Assignment, and there'd almost have to be for this crew to have stayed together so long, it would be no trick at all to have me transferred."

"Hard to prove," Panis said, sipping a mug of hot soup.

"Worse than that." Dupaynil spread his hands. "Say that's what happened and they expected me to be killed, with a good excuse, like that malfunctioning escape pod. They still might take the precaution of wiping all records of those orders out of the computers. Suppose they try to claim Commander Sassinak or I faked those orders. Then, if I turn up alive, they can get me on that. If I don't, they can go after her. She's caused them a lot of trouble over the years, and I'd bet Randy Paraden still holds a big, prickly grudge where she's concerned. Faking orders or interfering with an IFTL link is big enough to get even a well-known cruiser captain in serious trouble."

"I see. It does make sense they'd want you away from her, with the evidence you'd gathered. And if they could discredit her later…"

"I wonder how many other people they've managed to finagle away from her crew," Dupaynil went on, embroidering for the mere fun of it. "If we find out that one officer's been called away for a family crisis, and another's been given an urgent assignment? Well, I think that would prove it."

Panis, he was glad to see, accepted all this without difficulty. It did, after all, make sense. Whereas what Sassinak had done, and Dupaynil was still convinced she had done it, made sense only in personal terms: he had trespassed on her hospitality. At least his new explanation might clear her and laid guilt only on those already coated with it.

"So what do you think we should do, aside from avoiding all the unknown friends of the late Major Ollery?"

Dupaynil smiled at him. He liked the way the young man referred to Ollery, and he liked the dry humor.

"I think we should find out who they are, preferably by raiding Ollery's files. And then it would be most helpful if we'd turn up at the Ireta trial. Tanegli's trial, I should say. Then we ought to do something about your prisoners before their pod air supplies run out."

"I forgot about that." Panis's eyes flicked to the computer. "Oh, they're still on ship's air. Unless you did something to that, too."

"Didn't have time. But they don't have recycling capacity for more than a hundred hours or so, do they? I don't think either of us wants to let them out, even one by one."

"No. But I can't…"

"You can offer them coldsleep, you know. The drugs are there, and the cabinets. They'd be perfectly safe for as long as it takes us to get them to a Fleet facility."

Panis nodded slowly. "That's a better alternative than what I thought of. But what if they won't do it?"

"Warn them. Wait twelve hours. Warn them again and cut them off ship's air. That'll give them hours to decide and prepare themselves. Are these the standard pods, with just over 100 hours of air?"

"Yes. But what if they still refuse?"

Dupaynil shrugged. "If they want to die of suffocation rather than face a court martial, that's their choice. We can't stop it without opening the pods and I can't advise that. Only Siris has any injuries, and his aren't bad enough to prevent his taking the induction medications."

When push came to shove, though most of them blustered, only three waited until the ship ventilators cut out. The senior mate, Dupaynil noticed, was one of them. All the crew put themselves into coldsleep well before the pod air was gone. When the last one's bioscans went down, Dupaynil and Panis celebrated with the best the galley offered.

Dupaynil had found that the crew kept special treats in their quarters. Nothing as good as fresh food, but a tin of sticky fruitcake and a squat jar of expensive liquor made a party.

"I suppose I should have insisted on sealing the crew quarters," Panis said around a chunk of cake.

"But you needed to search them for evidence."

"Which I'm finding." Dupaynil poured for both of them with a flourish. "The mate kept a little book. Genuine pulp paper, if you can believe that. I'm not sure what all the entries mean… yet… but I doubt very much they're innocent. Ollery's personal kit had items far out of line for his Fleet salary, not to mention that nonissue set of duelling pistols. We're lucky he didn't blow a hole in you with one of those."

"You sound like a mosquito in a bloodbank," Panis grumbled. "Fairly gloating over all the data you might Sid."

"I am," Dupaynil agreed. "You're quite right; even without this," and he raised his glass, "I'd be drunk with delight at the possibilities. Do you have any idea how hard we normally work for each little smidgen of information? How many times we have to check and recheck it? The hours we burn out our eyes trying to find correlations even computers can't see?"

"My heart bleeds," said Panis, his mouth twitching.

"And you're only a Jig. Mulvaney's Ghost, but you're going to make one formidable commodore."

"If I survive. I suppose you'll want to tap into the computer tomorrow?"

"With your permission." Dupaynil sketched a bow from his seat. "We have to hope they were complacent enough to have only simple safeguards on the ticklish files. If Ollery thought to have them self-destruct if a new officer took command…"

Panis paled. "I hadn't thought of that."

"1 had. But then I thought of Ollery. That kind of smugness never anticipates its own fall. Besides, you had to log a command change. It was regulation."

"Which you always follow." Panis let that lie, a challenge of sorts.

Dupaynil wondered what he was driving at, precisely. They'd worked well together so for. The younger man had seemed to enjoy his banter. But he reminded himself that he did not really know Panis. He let his fece show the fatigue he felt, and sag into its age and his usually-hidden cynicism.

"If you mean Security doesn't always follow the letter of regulations, then you're right. I freely admit that planting taps on this ship was both against regulations and discourteous. Under the circumstances…" Dupaynil spread his hands in resignation to the inevitable.

Panis flushed but pursued the issue. "Not that so much. You had reasons for suspicion that I didn't know. Anyway it saved our lives. But I'd heard about Commander Sassinak, that she didn't follow regulations as often as not. If 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 she saved his career 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 far 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. You'll 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 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."

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.

"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."

"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… I 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 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?"

Panis fiddled with his seat controls and glanced at something on the command screen next to him.

"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 that the crew would have needed, but…"

"All right. On to Seti space. I suppose I could find something to do there, in the way of digging up dirt, although what we have already is more than enough." Dupaynil stretched. "But you do realize that while the personnel listed as on duty with the embassy to the Seti are not on Ollery's list of helpers, this means nothing. They could be part of the same conspiracy without Ollery having any knowledge of it."

The outer beacon to the Seti systems had all the courteous tact of a boot in the face.

"Intruders be warned!" it bleated in a cycle of all the languages known in FSP. "Intruders not tolerated. Intruders will be destroyed, if not properly naming selves immediately."

Panis set Claw's transmitter to the correct setting and initiated the standard Fleet recognition sequence. He was recovering nicely, Dupaynil thought, from the shock of his original captain's treachery and the necessity of helping in a mutiny. He did not blurt out everything to the Fleet officer who was military attache at the embassy nor did he request an immediate conference with die Ambassador. Instead, he simply reported that he had an officer with urgent orders insystem and let Dupaynil handle it from there.

"I'm not sure I understand, Commander Dupaynil, just what your purpose here is."

That diplomatic smoothness had once seemed innocuous. Now, he could not be sure if it was habit or conspiracy.

"My orders," Dupaynil said, keeping his own tone as light and unconcerned as the other's, "are to check the shipping records of the main Seti commercial firms involved in trade with Sector Eighteen human worlds. You know how this works. I haven't the foggiest notion what someone is looking at, or for, or why they couldn't do this long distance."

"It has nothing to do with that Iretan mess?"

Again, it might be only ordinary curiosity. Or something much more dangerous. Dupaynil shrugged, ran his finger along the bridge of his nose and hoped he passed for a dandified Bretagnan.

"It might, I suppose. Or it might not. How would I know? There I was happily ensconced on one of the better-run cruisers in Fleet, with a woman commander of considerable personal ah… charm…"He made it definitely singular, but with a tonal implication that the plural would have been more natural, and decided that a knowing wink would overdo his act. "I would have been quite satisfied to finish the cruise with her… her ship." He shrugged again, and gave a deep sigh. "And then I find myself shipped out here, just because I have had contact with the Seti before, without arousing an incident, I suppose, to spend days making carefully polite inquiries to which they will make carefully impolite replies. That is all I know, except that if I had an enemy at headquarters, he could hardly have changed my plans in a way I would like less."

That came out with a touch more force than he'd intended, but it seemed to convince the fellow that he was sincere. The man's face did not change but he could feel a subtle lessening of tension.

"Well. I suppose I can introduce you to the Seti Commissioner of Commerce. That's a cabinet level position in the Sek's court. It'll know where else you should go."

"That would be very kind of you," said Dupaynil. He never minded handing out meaningless courtesies to lubricate the daily work.

"Not at all," the other said, already looking down at the pile of work on his desk. "The Commissioner's a bigot of the worst sort, even for a Seti. If this is a plot of your worst enemy at headquarters, he's planning to make you suffer."

The conventions of Seti interaction with other races had been designed to place the inferior of the universe securely and obviously in that inferior position and keep them there. To Seti, the inferior of the universe included those who tampered with 'Holy Luck' by medical means (especially including genetic engineering), and those too cowardly (as they put it) to gamble. Humans were known to practice genetic engineering. Many of them changed their features for mere fashion - the Seti view of makeup and hair styling. Very few wished to gamble, as Seti did, by entering a room through the Door of Honor which might, or might not, drop a guillotine on those who passed through it… depending on a computer's random number generator.

Dupaynil did not enjoy his crawl through the Tunnel of Cowardly Certainty but he had known what to expect. Seated awkwardly on the hard mushroom shaped stool allowed the ungodly foreigner, he kept his eyes politely lowered as the Commissioner of Commerce continued its midmoraing snack. He didn't want to watch anyway. On their own worlds, the Seti ignored FSP prohibitions and dined freely on such abominations as those now writhing in the Commissioner's bowl. The Commissioner gave a final crunch and burp, exhaled a gust of rank breath, and leaned comfortably against its cushioned couch.

"Ahhh. And now, Misss-ter Du-paay-nil. You wish to ask a favor of the Seti?"

"With all due respect to the honor of the Sek and the eggbearers," and Dupaynil continued with a memorized string of formalities before coming to the point. "And, if it please the Commissioner, merely to place the gaze of the eye upon the trade records pertaining to the human worlds in Sector Eighteen."

Another long blast of smelly breath; the Commissioner yawned extravagantly, showing teeth that desperately needed cleaning, although Dupyanil didn't know if the Seti ever got decay or gum disease.

"Ssector Eighteen," it said and slapped its tail heavily on the floor.

A Seti servant scuttled in bearing a tray piled with data cubes. Dupaynil wondered if the Door of Honor ignored servants or if they, too, had to take their chances with death. The servant withdrew, and the Commissioner ran its tongue lightly over the cubes. Dupaynil stared, then realized they must be labelled with chemcodes that the Commissioner could taste. It plucked one of the cubes from the pile, and inserted it into a player.

"Ahl What the human-dominated Fleet calls Sector Eighteen, the Flower of Luck in Disguise. Trade with human worlds? It is meager, not worth your time."

"Illustrious and most fortunate scion of a fortunate family," Dupaynil said, "it is my unlucky fate to be at the mercy of admirals."

This amused the Commissioner who laughed immoderately.

"Sso! It is a matter of luck, you would have me think? Unlucky in rank, unlucky in the admiral who sent you? But you do not believe in luck, so your people say. You believe in… What is that obscenity? Probabilities? Statistics?"

The old saying about 'lies, damn lies, and statistics' popped into Dupaynil's mind, but it seemed the wrong moment. Instead, he said "Of others I cannot speak, but I believe in luck. I would not have arrived without it."

He did, indeed, believe in luck. At least at the moment. For without his unwise tapping of Sassinak's com shack, he would not have had the chance to find the evidence he had found. Now, if he could just get through with this and back to FedCentral in time for Tanegli's trial… That would be luck indeed! Apparently even temporary sincerity was convincing. The Seti Commissioner gave him a toothy grin.

"Well. A partial convert. You know what we say about your statistics, don't you? There are lies, damn lies, and…"

And I'm glad I didn't use that joke, Dupaynil thought to himself, since I don't believe this guy thinks that it is one.

"I will save your eyes the trouble of examining our faultless, but copious, records regarding trade with the Flower of Luck in Disguise. If you were unlucky in your admiral, you shall be lucky in my support. Your clear unwillingness to struggle with this unlucky task shall be rewarded. I refuse permission to examine our records, not because we have anything to conceal, but because this is the Season of Unrepentance, when no such examination is lawful. You are fortunate in my approval for I will give you such refusal as will satisfy the most unlucky admiral."

Again, a massive tail-slap, combined with a querulous squealing grunt, and the servitor scuttled in with a rolling cart with a bright green box atop. The Commissioner prodded it and it extruded a sheet of translucent lime green, covered with Seti script. Then another, and another.

"This is for the human ambassador, and this for your admiral, and this, o luckiest of humans, is your authorization to take passage in a human-safe compartment aboard the Grand Luck to human space. To attend a meeting of the Grand Council, in fact. You will have the great advantage of enjoying the superiority of Seti technology first-hand, an unprecedented opportunity for one of your… ah… luck."

It reached out with the sheets and Dupaynil took them almost without thinking, wondering how he was going to get out of this.

"My good fortune abounds," he began. "Nonetheless, it is impossible that I should be honored with such a gift of luck. A mere human to take passage with Seti? It is my destined chance to travel more humbly."

A truly wicked chuckle interrupted him. The Commissioner leaned closer, its strong breath sickening.

"Little man," it said, "I think you will travel humbly enough to please whatever god enjoys your crawl through the Tunnel of Cowardly Certainty. With choice, always a chance. But with chance, no choice. The orders are in your hand. Your prints prove your acceptance. You will report to your ambassador, and then to the Grand Luck where great chances await you."