“Sure.” Sassinak leaned back, in the relaxed atmosphere of the second watch mess, and ran her hands through her hair. In one comer of her mind, she considered that it was getting a bit too long, and she really ought to go get it trimmed again. Tousled was one thing, but a tangled mass - which is what her hair did every chance it got - was another. The difference between sexy and blowsy.
“D’you know anything about Tenant Achael?”
Sassinak barely controlled her reaction. “Achael? Not really - he was on the landing party, but I was too busy with all my stuff to talk to him. Why?”
“Well.” Surbar frowned and scratched his nose. “He’s been asking about you. Lia wanted to know why, and he said you were too good-looking to be running around loose. Thought you might be related to somebody he’d known.”
Sassinak made herself chuckle casually. Apparently it worked because Surbar didn’t seem to notice anything. “He’s one of those, is he? After every new female on the ship?”
Surbar shrugged. “Lia said he made eyes at her, but backed off when she said no. Then he started asking about you - so I guess maybe he is that kind.”
“Mmm. Well, then, I’ll be sure to stay out of airlocks and closets and other closed spaces if Mr. Lieutenant Achael is around.”
“Meaning you’re not interested?” Surbar gave her his most melting look.
“Not in him,” said Sassinak, glancing at the overhead and then letting her glance slide sideways to meet Surbar’s. “On the other hand…”
“Lia’s coming to play gunna tonight,” said Surbar quickly. “Maybe another time?”
Sassinak shrugged. “Give me a call. Thanks, anyway, for the warning about Achael.” On her way back to her compartment, she thought about it. Achael had enough seniority to cause her trouble, and as Weapons Officer he had high enough clearance to access most communications files. If he wanted to. If he thought he needed to. She wanted him dead, if he was Abe’s killer, or in league with Abe’s killer, but she didn’t want to ruin herself in the process.
The next shift, Sassinak had her first IFTL message to process. Muttering her way through the protocol, she logged it, stripped the outer codes, and got it into the captain’s eyes-only file without help. Cavery nodded. “Good job - you’re doing well at that.”
“Wonder what it’s about.”
“Ours not to know - they say your eyes turn to purple jelly and your brain rots if you peek at those things.”
Sassinak chuckled; Cavery had turned out to have quite a sense of humor. “I thought ensigns didn’t have brains, just vast pools of prediluvian slime - isn’t that what I heard you tell Pickett, yesterday?”
“Comes from trying to decode IFTL messages, that’s what I just said. Keep your mind, such as it is, on your work. You can’t afford to lose more.” His grin took all the sting out of it, and Sassinak went on logging in routine communications for the rest of the shift.
That night Fargeon announced in the wardroom that they were to intercept an EEC craft and pick up reports for forwarding. He spent a long time droning on about the delicate handling necessary to rendezvous in deep space, and Sassinak let her attention wander. Not so far as some, though, for Fargeon’s rebuke fell on a Jig from Engineering, who had been doodling idly on her napkin. For some reason, Fargeon chose to interpret this as carelessness with classified information, and by the time he’d finished reaming her out, everyone in the room felt edgy. Of course deep-space rendezvous were tricky, everyone knew that, and of course the EEC pilot couldn’t be depended on to arrive at a precise location, as the cruiser would do, but this was no different from any other time, surely. If the EEC ship fouled up badly enough, and they all made a fireworks display that wouldn’t be seen anywhere for fifty years or so, too bad.
Since everyone came out of dinner disgruntled, Sassinak didn’t pay much attention to her own mood. But the next morning she found that Lieutenant Achael had the bridge: Fargeon, Dass, and Lieutenant Commander Slachek were, he said, in conference. Sassinak glanced around the bridge, and ducked into the communications cubby. It was empty. A scrawled note on the console said that Perry had gone to sickbay: Achael had cleared it. Sassinak frowned, wondering if that’s why Cavery was late - perhaps he’d gone with Perry to sickbay. But communications hadn’t been uncovered long; the incoming telltales showed nothing in the queue in any system. Odd - they’d been getting regular bursts last shift, relayed position checks on the EEC ship. Sassinak pulled up the last entries in the incoming file, to check the log-in times - if they hadn’t had anything coming in for awhile, it might mean trouble with the systems.
She was so intent on the idea of a systems failure that she almost didn’t recognize her own initiation code when it flashed on the screen. What? Her nose wrinkled in concentration. She’d just gotten there, and yet her code was time-linked to a file query five minutes before. It couldn’t be - unless someone had entered her code by mistake… or for some other reason.
“Hey - sorry I’m late.” Cavery slid into his seat, took a look at the display, and recoiled. “I thought I told you not to go poking around in the incoming message files.”
“You did. I didn’t. Somebody used my code.”
“What!” After that first explosive word, his voice lowered. “Don’t say that, Sassinak. Probably every comm posting in the universe has snooped one time or another, but lying doesn’t make it better.”
“I’m not lying.” Sassinak laid her hand over his on the console. “Listen to me. I wasn’t here at the time that was logged; I came in right on time, not early as usual. Someone logged my code five minutes before I was here.”
“What’d Perry say?”
“He’s in sickbay. Nobody was here when I got here, just a note - “ She handed it over. Cavery frowned.
“Hardcopy, not on the computer. That’s odd. Who’s got duty -?” He craned to see around the angle, and snorted. “Oh, great. Achael. Where’s Fargeon?’
“In conference, Achael said. But Cavery, the thing is - “
“The thing is, your code’s on there, telling the whole world you were snooping in the IFTL files, and if you say you’re not either you’re a liar, which is one problem, or someone else is, which is another. Damn! All we needed, with the captain the way he is right now, is a Security glitch.”
“But I didn’t - “
Cavery looked at her, hard, then his mouth relaxed. “No, I don’t think you would. But with your code on the file, and - what the dickens is that?” He pointed to the realtime display, which was filling with the outgoing batch message for SOLEC transmission. “I don’t suppose you put your code on that one either?”
Sassinak looked and saw the other anomaly that Cavery had missed. “Or that quad code for the Inspector General’s office, either - it’s the same thing we had before, only outgoing, and using my code as originator.”
“That one, I will strip.” Cavery froze the display, keyed in the ranking codes, and displayed the message itself, along with its initiating and destination sequences, Sassinak noticed that he was copying all this into another file, sealed with his own code. He sat back, clearly baffled by the message.
“Subject unaware; no suspicious activity. Assignment coincidental. Will continue observation.”
Cavery looked over at her, brows raised. “Well, Ensign, are you keeping someone under surveillance, or is someone keeping you under surveillance?”
“I - don’t know.” Achael, she thought. It has to be Achael, but why? And who’s behind it?
“Well, I know one thing, and that’s where all this is going: straight to the captain.”