Chapter Two

Fleet. Sassinak held to that thought through the journey that followed, crammed as she was into a cargo hauler’s front locker with two other newly purchased slaves. She found out afterwards that that had not been punishment, but necessity; the hauler went out of the dome and across the barren, airless surface of the little planet that served as a slave depot. Outside the insulated, pressurised locker - or the control cab, where Abe drove in relative comfort - she would have died.

Their destination was another slave barracks, this one much smaller. Sassinak expected the same sort of routine as before, but instead she was assigned to a training facility. Six hours a day before a terminal, learning to use the math she already knew in mapping, navigation, geology. Learning to perfect her accent in Harish and learning to understand (but never speak) Chinese. Another shift in manual labour, working at whatever jobs needed doing, according to the shift supervisor. She had no regular duties, nothing she could depend on.

One of the most oppressive things was the simple feeling that she could not even see out. She had always been able to run outdoors and look at the sky, wander into the hills for an afternoon with friends. Now . . . now some blank ugliness stopped her gaze, as if by physical force, everywhere she looked. Most buildings had no windows: there was nothing outside to see but the wall of another prefab hulk nearby. Trudging the narrow streets from one assignment to another, she learned that looking up brought a quick scolding, or a blow. Besides, she couldn’t see anything above but the greyish haze of the dome. She could not tell how large the moon or planet was, how far she’d been taken from the original landing site, even how many buildings formed the complex in which she was trained. Day after day, nothing but the walls of these prefabs, indoors and out, always the same neutral gritty grey. She quit trying to look up, learned to contain herself within herself, and hated herself for making that adjustment.

But one shift a day, amazingly, was free. She could spend it in the language labs, working at the terminal, reading ... or, as most often, with Abe.

Fleet, she soon learned, was his history and his dream. He had been Fleet, had enlisted as a boy just qualified, and worked his way rating by rating, sometimes slipping back when a good brawl intruded on common sense, but mostly rising steadily through the ranks as a good spacer could. Clever, but without the intellect that would have won him a place at the Academy; strong, but not brutal with it; brave without the brashness of the boy he had been, he had clenched himself around the virtues of the Service as a drowning man might cling to a limb hanging in the water. Slave he might be, in all ways, but yet he was Fleet.

“They’re tough,” he said to her, soon after they arrived. “Tough as anything but the slavers, and maybe even more. They’ll break you if they can, but if they can’t...” His voice trailed away, and she glanced over to see his eyes glistening. He blinked. “Fleet never forgets,” he said. “Never. They may come late, they may come later, but they come. And if it’s later, never mind. Your name’s on the rolls, it’ll be in Fleet’s memory, forever.”

Over the months that followed, Sassinak began to think of Fleet as something other than the capricious and arrogant arm of power her parents had told her about. Solid, Abe said. Dependable. The same on one ship as on any; the ranks the same, the ratings the same, the specialties the same, barring the difference in a ship’s size or weaponry.

He would not say how long he had been a slave, or what had happened, but his faith in the Fleet, in the Fleet’s long arm and longer memory, sank into her mind, bit by bit. Her supervisors varied: some quick to anger, some lax. Abe smiled, and pointed out that good commanders were consistent, and good services had good commanders. When she came to their meetings bruised and sore from an undeserved punishment, he told her to remember that: some day she would have power, and she could do better.

She could do better even then, he said one evening, reminding her of their first meeting. “You’re ready now,” he said. “I’ve something to show you.”

“What?”

“Physical discipline, something you do for yourself. It’ll make it easier on you when things get tough, here or anywhere. You don’t have to feel the pain, or the hunger -“

“I can’t do that!”

“Nonsense. You worked six hours straight at the terminal today - didn’t even break for the noon meal. You were hungry, but you weren’t thinking about it. You can learn not to think about it unless you want to.”

Sass grinned at him. “I can’t do calculus all the time!”

“No, you can’t. But you can reach that same core of yourself, no matter what you think of. Now sit straight, and breathe from down here -“ He poked her belly.

It was both harder and easier than she’d expected. Easier to slip into a trancelike state of concentration on something - a technique she’d learned at home, she thought, studying while Lunzie and Januk played. Harder to withdraw from the world without that specific focus.

“It’s in you,” Abe insisted. “Down inside yourself, that’s where you focus. If it’s something outside, math or whatever, they can tear it away. But not what’s inside.” Sass spent one frustrating session after another feeling around inside her head for something - anything - that felt like what Abe described. “It’s not in your head,” he kept insisting. “Reach deeper. It’s way down.” She began to think of it as a center of gravity, and Abe nodded when she told him. “That’s closer - use that, if it helps.”

When she had that part learned, the next was harder. A simple trance wasn’t enough, because all she could do was endure passively. She would need, Abe explained, to be able to exert all her strength at will, even the reserves most people never touched. For a long time she made no progress at all, would gladly have quit, but Abe wouldn’t let her.

“You’re learning too much in your tech classes,” he said soberly. “You’re almost an apprentice pilot now - and that’s very saleable.” Sass stared at him, shocked. She had never thought she might be sold again - sent somewhere else, away from Abe. She had almost begun to feel safe. Abe touched her arm gently. “You see, Sass, why you need this, and need it now. You aren’t safe: none of us is. I could be sold tomorrow - would have been before now, if I weren’t so useful in several tech specialties. They may keep you until you’re a fully qualified pilot, but likely not. There’s a good market for young pilot apprentices, in the irregular trade.” She knew he meant pirates, and shuddered at the thought of being back on a pirate ship. “Besides,” he went on, “there’s something more you need to know, that I can’t tell you until you can do this right. So get back to work.”

When she finally achieved something he called adequate, it wasn’t much more than her normal strength, and she exhausted it quickly. But Abe nodded his approval, and had her practice almost daily. Along with that practice came the other information he’d promised.

‘There’s a kind of network,” he said, “of pirate victims. Remembering where they came from, who did it, who lived, and how the others died. We keep thinking that if we can ever put it all together, everything we know, we’ll find out who’s behind all this piracy. It’s not just independents - although I heard that the ship that took Myriad was an independent, or on the outs with its sponsor. There’s evidence of some kind of conspiracy at FSP itself. I don’t know what, or I’d kill myself to get that to Fleet somehow, but I know there’s evidence. And I couldn’t put you in touch with them until you could shield your reactions.”

“But who-“

“They call themselves Samizdat - an old word, some language I never heard of, supposed to mean underground or something. Maybe it does, maybe not. That doesn’t matter. But the name does, and your keeping it quiet does.”

Study, work, practice with Abe. When she thought about it - which she did rarely - it was sort of a parody of the life she’d expected at home on Myriad. School, household chores, the tight companionship other friends. But flunking a test at home had meant a scolding; here it meant a beating. Let Januk spill precious rationed food - her eyes filled, remembering the sugar that last night - and her mother would expostulate bitterly. But if she spilled a keg of seeds, hauling it to the growing frames, her supervisor would cuff her sharply, and probably dock her a meal. And instead of friends her own age, to gossip about schoolmates and families, to share the jokes and dreams, she had Abe. Time passed, time she could not measure save by the subtle changes in her own body: a little taller, she thought. A little wider of hip, more roundness, even though the slave diet kept her lean.

It finally occurred to her to wonder why they were allowed such freedom, when she realised that other slave friendships were broken up intentionally, by the supervisors. Abe grinned mischievously. “I’m valuable; I told you that. And they think I need a lovely young plaything now and then -“

Sass reddened. Here girls younger than she were taught arts of love; but on Myriad, in her family’s religion, only those old enough to start a separate family were supposed to know how. Although they’d all complained mildly, life on a pioneer planet kept them too busy to regret. Abe went on.

“I told ‘em I’d instruct you myself. Didn’t want any of their teachings getting in my way.” Sass stared at the floor, furious with him and his amusement. “Don’t fluff feathers at me, girl,” he said firmly. “I saved you a lot of trouble. You’d never have been assigned that full-time, smart as you are, and saleable as tech-slaves are, but still ...”

“All right.” It came out in a sulky mutter, and she cleared her throat loudly. “All right. I understand -“

“You don’t, really, but you will later.” His hand touched her cheek, and turned her face towards his. “Sass, when you’re free-and I do believe you’ll be free some day - you’ll understand what I did and why. Reputation doesn’t mean anything here. The truth always does. You’re going to be a beauty, my girl, and I hope you enjoy your body in all ways. Which means you deciding when and how.’*

She didn’t feel comfortable with him for some time after that. Some days later, he met her with terrifying news.

“You’re going to be sold,” he said, looking away from her. “Tomorrow, the next day - that soon. This is our last meeting. They only told me because they offered me another - “

“But, Abe -“ she finally found her voice, faint and trembling as it was.

“No, Sass.” He shook his head. “I can’t stop it.”

Tears burst from her eyes. “But  -but it can’t be -“

“Sass, think!” His tone commanded her; the tears dried on her cheeks. “Is this what I’ve taught you, to cry like any silly spoiled brat of a girl when trouble comes?”

Sass stared at him, and then reached for the physical discipline he’d taught her. Breathing slowed, steadied; she quit trembling. Her mind cleared of its first blank terror.

“That’s better. Now listen-“ Abe talked rapidly, softly, the rhythm of his speech at first strange and then compelling. When he stopped, Sass could hardly recall what he’d said, only that it was important, and she would remember it later. Then he hugged her, for the first time, his strength heartening. She still had her head on his shoulder when the supervisor arrived to take her away.

She passed through the sale barn without really noticing much; this time the buyer had her taken back to the port, to a scarred ship with no visible registration numbers. Inside, her escort handed her collar thong to a lean man with scarlet and gold collar tabs. Sass recalled the rank-senior pilot-from a far-distant shipping consortium. He looked her over, then shook his head.

“Another beginner. Bright stars, you’d think they’d realise I need something more than a pilot apprentice. And a dumb naked girl who probably doesn’t even speak the same language.” He turned away and poked the bulkhead. With a click and hiss, a locker opened; he rummaged inside and pulled out rumpled tunic and pants, much-mended.

“Here. Clothes. You understand?” He mimed dressing, and Sass took the garments, putting them on as he watched. Then he led her along one corridor, then into a pop-tube that shot them to the pilot’s “house” - a small cramped compartment lined with vidscreens and control panels. To Sass’s relief, her training made sense of the chaos of buttons and toggles and flicking lights. That must be the Insystem computer, and that the FTL toggle, with its own shielded computer flickering, now, in not-quite-normal space. The ship had two Insystem drives, one suitable for atmospheric landings. The pilot tweaked her thong and grinned when she looked at him.

“I can tell you recognise most of this. Have you ever been off-station?” He seemed to have forgotten that she might not speak his language. Luckily, she could.

“No . . . not since I came.”

“Your ratings are high - let’s see how you do with this ...” He pointed to one of the three seats, and Sass settled down in front of a terminal much like that in training - even the same manufacturer’s logo on the rim. He leaned over her, his breath warm on her ear, and entered a problem she remembered working.

“I’ve done that one before,” she said.

“Well, then, do it again.” Her fingers flew over the board: codes for origin and destination, equations to calculate the most efficient combination of travel time, fuel cost of Insystem drive, probability flux of FTL . . . and, finally, the transform equations that set up the FTL path. He nodded when she was done.

“Good enough. Now maximise for travel time, using the maximum allowable FTL-flux.”

She did that, and glanced back. He was scowling.

“You’d travel a .35 flux path? Where’d you get that max from?” Sass blushed; she’d misplaced a decimal. She placed the errant zero, and accepted the cuff on her head with equanimity. “That’s better, girl,” he said. “You youngers haven’t seen what a high flux means - be careful, or you’ll have us spread halfway across some solar system, and you won’t be nothin’ but a smear of random noise in somebody’s radio system. Now - what’s your name?”

She blinked at him. Only Abe had used her name. But he stared back, impudent and insistent, and ready to give her a clout. “Sass,” she said. He grinned again, and shrugged.

“Suits you,” he said. Then he swung into one of the other seats, and cleared her screen. “Now, girl, we go to work.”

Life as an indentured apprentice pilot - the senior pilot made it clear they didn’t like the word “slave” - was considerably more lax than her training had been. She wore the same collar, but the thong was gone. No one would tell her what the ship’s allegiance was - if any - or any more than its immediate next destination, but aside from that she was treated as a crew member, if a junior one. Besides senior pilot Krewe, two junior pilots were aboard: a heavy-set woman named Fersi, and a long, angular man named Zoras. Three at a time worked in the pilot-house when manoeuvring from one drive system to another, or when using Insystem drives. Sass worked a standard six hour shift as third pilot under the others. When they were off, one or the other of the pilots gave her instruction daily - ship’s day, that is. Aside from that, she had only to keep her own tiny cubicle tidy, and run such minor errands as they found for her. The rest of the time she listened and watched as they talked, argued, and gambled.

“Pilots don’t mingle,” Fersi warned her, when she would have sought more interaction with the ship’s crew. “Captain’s due respect, but the rest of ‘em are no more spacers than rock is a miner. They’d do the same work groundside: fight or clean or cook or run machinery or whatever. Pilots are the old guild, the first spacers; you’re lucky they trained you to that.”

History, from the point of view of the pilots, was nothing like she’d learned back on Myriad. No grand pattern of human exploration, meetings with alien races, the formation of alliances and then the Federation of Sentient Planets. Instead, she heard a litany of names that ran back to Old Terra, stories with all the details worn away by time. Lindberg, the Red Baron, Bader, Gunn - names from before spaceflight, they said, all warriors of the sky in some ancient battle, from which none returned. Heinlein and Clarke and Glenn and Aldridge, from the early days in space ... all the way up to Ankwir, who had just opened a new route halfway across the galaxy, cutting the flux margin below .001.

If she had not missed Abe so much, she might almost have been happy. Ship food that the others complained about she found ample and delicious. She had plenty to learn, and teachers eager to instruct. The pilots had long ago told each other their timeworn stories. But long before she forgot Abe and the slave depot, the raid came.

She was asleep in her webbing when the alarm sounded. The ship trembled around her; beneath her bare feet the deck had the odd uncertain feel that came with transition from one major drive to another.

“Sass! Get in here!” That was Krewe, loud enough to be heard over the racket of the alarm. Sass staggered a little, working her way around to her usual seat. Fersi was already there, intent on the screen. Krewe saw her and pointed to the number two position. “It’s not gonna do any good, but we might as well try ...”

Sass flicked the screen to life, and tried to make sense of the display. Something had snatched them out of FTL space, and dumped them into a blank between solar systems. And something with considerably more mass was far too close behind.

“Fleet heavy cruiser,” said Krewe shortly. “Picked us up awhile back, and set a trap-“

“What?” Sass had had no idea that anything could find, let alone capture, a ship in FTL.

He shrugged, hands busy on his board. “Fleet has some new tricks, I guess. And we’re about out. Here -“ He tossed a strip of embossed plastic over to her. “Stick that in your board, there on the side, when I say.”

Sass looked at it curiously: about a finger long, and half that wide, it looked like no data storage device she’d seen. She found the slot it would fit, and waited. Suddenly the captain’s voice came over the intercom.

“Krewe - got anything for me? They’re demanding to board -“

“Maybe. Hang on.” Krewe nodded at Sass, and slid an identical strip into the slot of his board. Sass did the same, as did Fersi. The ship seemed to lurch, as if it had tripped over something, and the lights dimmed. Abruptly Sass realised that she was being pressed into the back of her seat - and as abruptly, the pressure shifted to one side, then the other. Then something made a horrendous noise, all the lights went out, and in the sudden cold dark she heard Krewe cursing steadily.

She woke in a clean bunk in a brightly lit compartment full of quiet bustle. Almost at once she missed a familiar pressure on her neck, and lifted her hand. The slave collar was gone. She glanced around warily.

“Ah . . . you’re awake.” A man in a clean white uniform, sleeves striped to the elbow with black and gold, came to her. “And I’ll bet you wonder where you are, and what happened, and - do you know what language I’m speaking?”

Sass nodded, too amazed to speak. Fleet. It had to be Fleet. She tried to remember what Abe had told her about stripes on the sleeves; these were wing-shaped, which meant something different from the straight ones.

“Good, then.” The man nodded. “You were a slave, right? Taken in the past few years, I daresay, from your age -“

“How do you know my -“

He grinned. He had a nice grin, warm and friendly. ‘Teeth, among other things. General development.” At this point Sass realised that she had on something clean and soft, a single garment that was certainly not the patched tunic and pants she’d worn on the other ship. “Now - do you remember where you came from?”

“My . . . my home?” When he nodded, she said, “Myriad.” At his blank look, she gave the standard designation she’d been taught in school, so long ago. He nodded again, and she went on to tell him what had happened to the colony.

“And then?” She told of the original transport, the training she’d received as a slave, and then her work on the ship. He sighed. “I suppose you haven’t the faintest idea where that depot planet is, do you?”

“No. I-“ Her eyes fixed suddenly on the insignia he wore on his left breast. It meant something. It meant . . . Abe’s face came to her suddenly, very earnest, speaking swiftly and in an odd broken rhythm, something she had never quite remembered, but didn’t worry about because some-day- And now was some-day, and she found herself reciting whatever he had said, just as quickly and accurately. The man stared at her.

“You -! You’re too young; you couldn’t -!” But now that it was back out, she knew . . . knew what knowledge Abe had planted in her (and in how many others, she suddenly wondered, who had been sold away?), hoping that someday, somehow she might catch sight of that insignia (and how had he kept his, hidden it from his owners?) and have the memory wakened. She knew where that planet was, and the FTL course, and the code words that would get a Fleet vessel past the outer sentinel satellites ... all the tidbits of knowledge that Abe had gleaned in years of slavery, while he pretended obedience.

Her information set off a whirlwind of activity. She herself was bundled into a litter and carried along spotless gleaming corridors, to be set down at last, with utmost gentleness, in a cabin bunk. A luxurious cabin, its tile floor gentled with a brilliant geometric carpet, several comfortable-looking chairs grouped around a low round table. She heard bells in the distance, the scurry of many feet . . . and then the door to the cabin closed, and she heard nothing but the faint hiss of air from the ventilators.

In that silence, she fell asleep again, to be wakened by a gentle cough. This time, the white uniform was decorated with gold stripes on the sleeves, straight ones that went all the way around. Rings, she thought vaguely. Four of them. And six little somethings on the shoulders, little silvery blobs. “Stars are tops,” Abe had said, “Stars are admirals. But anything on the shoulders means officer.”

“The Medical Officer says you’re well enough,” said the person with all that gold and silver. “Can you tell me more about what you remember?” He was tall, thin, grey-haired, and Sass might have been frightened into silence if he hadn’t smiled at her, a fatherly sort of smile.

She nodded, and repeated it all again, this time in a more normal tone.

“And who told you this?” he asked.

“Abe. He ... he was Fleet, he said.”

“He must be.” The man nodded. “Well, now. The question is, what do we do with you?”

“This - this is a Fleet ship, isn’t it?”

The man nodded again. “The Baghir, a heavy cruiser. Let me brief you a little. The ship you were on - know anything about it?” Sass shook her head. “No - they just stuck you in the pilothouse, I’ll bet, and put you to work. Well, it was an independent cargo carrier. Doubles as a slave ship some runs; this time it had maybe twenty young, prime tech-trained slaves and a load of entertainment cubes - if you call that kind of thing entertainment.” He didn’t explain further, and Sass didn’t ask.

“We’d heard a shipment might be coming into a neighbouring system, so we had a fluxnet in place. You don’t need to know how that works, only it can jerk a ship out of hyperspace when it works right. When it works wrong, there’s nothing to pick up. Anyway, it worked, and there your ship was, and there we were, ready to trail and take it. Which we did. The other slaves - and there’s two from Myriad, by the way - are being sent back to Sector HQ, where they’ll go through Fleet questioning and court procedures to re-establish their identities. They’re innocent parties; all we do is make sure they haven’t been planted with dangerous hidden personalities. That’s happened before with freed slaves; one of them had been trained as an assassin while under drugs. Freed, and back at school, he went berserk and killed fourteen people before he could be subdued.” He shook his head, then turned to her.

“You, though. You’re our clue to what’s really happened, and you know where the slave depot is. You’ve told us what you know - or what you think you know - but I’m not sure your Fleet friend put all he had to say in one implanted message. If you were willing to come along when we go -“

Sass pushed herself upright. “You’re going there? Now?”

“Well, not this instant. But soon - in a few shipdays, at the most. The thing is, you’re a civilian, and you’re underage. I have no right to ask you, and no right to take you. But it would be a help.”

Tears filled her eyes; it was too much too soon. She struggled to regain the discipline Abe had taught her, slowing her breathing, and steadying against the strain. The officer watched her, his expression shifting from concern through puzzlement to something she could not define. “I ... I want to go,” she said. “If ... if Abe -“

“If Abe is still alive, we’ll find him. Never fear. And now you, young lady, need more sleep.”

There had been another implanted message, one that came out under the expert probing of the ship’s medical team. This one, Sass realised, gave details of the inner defences, descriptions of the little planet’s surface, and the name of the trading combines which dealt in the slaves . . . including the one which had purchased and trained her. She came from that session shaken and pale, regaining her normal energy only after another long sleep and two solid meals. For the rest of the journey, she had nothing to do but wait, a waiting made more bearable by the friendly crew-women who showered her with attention and minor luxuries - real enough for someone who’d been a slave for years. Although the captain would not let her join the landing party, when the cruiser had cleared the skies and sent the marines down, she was on hand when Abe returned to the Fleet. Scarred and battered as he was, wearing the ragged slave tunic, and carrying nothing but his pride, he marched from the shuttle into the docking bay as if on parade. The captain had come to the docking bay himself. Sass hung back, breathless with awe and delight, as they went through the old ritual. When it was over, and Abe came to her, she was suddenly shy of him, half-afraid to touch him. But he hugged her close.

“I’m so proud of you, Sass!” He pushed her away, then hugged her again.

“I didn’t do much,” she began, but he snorted.

“Didn’t do much! Well, if that’s the way you want to tell the story, it’s not mine. Come on, girl - soon’s I’ve changed into decent clothes -“ He looked around, to meet the grins of the others in the bay . . . kind grins, Sass noticed.

One of the men beckoned to him, and he followed. Sass stared after him. He belonged here; she could tell that. Where would she belong? She thought of the captain’s comments on the other freed slaves . . . Fleet questioning and court procedures . . . hardly an inviting prospect.

“Don’t worry,” one of the men said to her. “There’s enough wealth here to give every one of you a new start - and you most of all, being as you found the place.”

Still she worried, waiting for Abe to reappear, and when he did, clad in the crisp uniform and stripes of his rank, she was even more worried, A new start, somewhere else, with strangers . . . she knew, without asking for details, that none of her family were left.

“Don’t worry,” he echoed the other man’s comment. “You’re not going to be lost in the system somewhere. You’re my girl, and I’m Fleet, and it’s going to be fine.”