“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.”
Chapter Three
By the time Sassinak arrived at Regg with Abe, she was as ready as he to praise the Fleet, and glad to think of herself as almost a Fleet dependent. The only thing better than that was to be Fleet herself. Which, she soon found, was exactly what Abe planned for her.
“You’ve got the brains,” he said soberly, “to make the Academy list and be a Fleet officer. And more than the brains, the guts. You weren’t the first I tried to help, Sass, but you were one of only three who didn’t fall apart when the time came to leave. And both of those were killed.”
“But how?” Sass wanted nothing more than to enter the gleaming white arches of the Academy gates… but that required recommendations from FSP representatives. How would an orphan from a plundered colony convince someone to recommend her?
“First there’s the Fleet prep school. If I formally adopt you, then you’re eligible, as the daughter of a Fleet veteran - and no, it doesn’t matter that I’m not an officer. Fleet’s Fleet.”
“But you’re - “ Sass reddened. Abe had been retired, over his protests; his gimpy arm was past treatment, and wouldn’t pass the Medical Board. He had argued, pled, and finally come back to their assigned quarters glum as she’d never seen him before.
“Retired, but still Fleet. Oh, Cousins take it, I knew they’d do it. I knew when the arm didn’t heal straight - after six months or so, it’s too late. But I thought maybe I could Kipling them into it.”
“Kipling?”
“Kipling. Wrote half the songs the Fleet sings, and probably most of the rest. Service slang is, if you’re sweet - talking someone into something, ‘specially if it’s sort of sentimental, that’s Kipling. Where you came from, they probably said ‘Irish them into it,’ and I’ll bet you don’t know where that came from. But don’t worry - I can’t be active duty, but disabled vets - “ His expression made it clear that he refused to think of himself as disabled. “ - we old crips can usually get work in one of the bureaus.” Sass asked again about the prep school.
“Three or four years there, ‘til you pass the exams - and I don’t doubt you will. Don’t worry about the letters you need. You impressed the captain more than a little, and he’s related to half the FSP reps in this sector.”
From there, things went smoothly: the adoption, the entry into the prep school. Although the other students were her age, none had her experience, and they were still young enough to show their awe. Sass found herself ahead of schedule in her math classes, thanks to the slave tech training, while Abe’s lessons in physical discipline and concentration helped her regain lost ground in the social sciences. She felt out of place at first in the social life of school - she could not regain the carefree camaraderie of younger years - but she looked forward to the Academy with such singleminded ambition that everyone soon considered her another Academy-bound grind.
Abe’s apartment, in a large block of such buildings, was unlike any place Sass had ever lived. Her parents’ apartment on Myriad had been a standard prefab, the same floor plan as every other apartment in the colony. Large families had had two or three, as needed, with doors knocked through adjoining walls. None of the living quarters were more than one story high, and few of the other buildings. At the slaver depot, all the buildings were even cheaper prefabs, big ugly buildings designed to hold the maximum cubage. There she had slept in a windowless barracks, in a rack of bunks.