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Sev with you, can't you see that? Even if he were stronger, the sight of his
face will warn Polyon at once that there's something wrong. None of you# none
of us will get away alive."
"Oh, come now," said Forister gendy. "Your friend can't be that dangerous."
Fassa's face hardened. "If you don't believe me, ask the others. Alpha?"
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong nodded once, reluctandy.
Fassa looked up at the room sensor. "Nancia, can you connect us with Blaize
and Darnell? Just for a moment?"
Both men agreed with Fassa's assessment of the situation.
"Then whatom we do?" Forister demanded. "Damn it, I'm not going to turn tail
and run off-planet for fear of some spoiled High Families brat who's got hold
of some dangerous toys!"
"I think," Fassa said slowly, "that you're going to use me." She was very
pale. "Take Alpha back to her cabin, and I'll explain what I think we can do."
She looked apologetically at Alpha.
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259
"Traitor! When Polyon finds out# "
Fassa's lips were pinched. She was not pretty at all now. But she was almost
beautiful, in a cold remote way. "I'll have to take that chance, won't I?"
"Better you than me," Alpha said. She turned to go.
"All right. Lock me up. I don't even want to hear this plan. Maybe he won't
hold it against me, if I'm not even here when you discuss it." She didn't
sound too hopeful of that.
When Fassa explained her plan, there was a brief silence while
Forister,NanciaandMicaya all thoughtit over.
"You think he'll fell for it?" Forister queried.
"He thinks Nancia is an OG drone," Fassa pointed out "He believes her
passengers cremated Sev for being a nuisance; if he hadn't swallowed that
story, believe me, we'd be hearing from him by now." She gave them a strained
smile. "Murderers in the escort of
OG shipping # what better credentials could you have? And with me to front
the introductions# "
"I won't let you!" Sev said hoarsely.
"Fassa stays on board Nancia," Micaya interrupted.
"That's understood." She looked at the girl. "No of-
fense, Fassa. But from the ship, we can monitor what you say. And I think
you'd better wear these." She bent over briefly, fiddled with the prosthesis
replacing her left leg, and straightened with two lengths of shining,
thread-fine wire. "Hold out your wrists."
Fassa obeyed and Micaya encircled each wrist with a length of the wire. Where
she twisted the ends shut, the wires seemed to collapse and seal invisibly
upon themselves.
"Tanglefield? Is that really necessary?"
Micaya nodded. "Security measure, no more. Field won't be activated unless we
run into trouble on
Shemali. Clear, Nancia?"
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"Affirmed."
Micaya touched her synthetic arm. "I've got a port-
able tanglefield generator built in here," she told
Forister. "Might come in handy on Shemali. Want some wires?"
Forister took a handful of the gleaming wires and regarded them dubiously. "I
prefer to solve my problems more elegandy than this."
"Me, too." Micaya tugged her dark green pants leg down over the prosthesis.
"Isn't always possible, though. Everybody tells me there'll be terrible
political complications if we harm a hair on the head of this
High Families brat. So ..." She patted her prosthetic leg again and
straightened. "I've stashed the needier.
Agree with you, taking him out straightaway would be simpler, but you insisted
on doing this by the book."
"That wasn't," Forister said, "quite what I meant by an elegant solution."
Micaya regarded him with a hint of amusement on her solemn, dark face. "Know
it. Usually is the most
'elegant' way, though. Leave little tyrants to run loose, they grow up into
big tyrants. Then you get the Capel-
lan mess, or something like. Wars," she pointed out, "aren't elegant." She
nodded once to Fassa, by way of apology. "Understand, not accusing you of
treachery, just not taking chances. Want you to be warned # "
"That a secret signal to Polyon will do me more harm than good," Fassa
finished calmly. "You don't trust me. That's all right. / wouldn't trust me,
either."
She was white to the lips now, and her hands were shaking, but she led the way
from the medtech room without pausing.
Nancia could see that Sev was fretting enough to damage himself by trying to
go after them, so she switched displays to give him visual and auditory sen-
sor taps to the main cabin.
Fassa was still pale when Nancia initiated the signal se-
quence that would open a comm link with planetside authorities, but she
managed the promised introduc-
260
Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball tions with perfect composure. For Polyon's
benefit
Forister and Micaya became Forrest Perez and Qualia
Benton, a pair of potential hyperchip customers with cash to invest in the
operation. She hinted delicately that
"Qualia Benton" was really a high-ranking general from
Central, and Micaya started forward to stop her. Forister laid one hand on
Micaya's arm. "Trust the young lady, Mic," he murmured. "She has # er # more
experience in this sort of thing than you or I."
So it proved. Far from being alarmed by Micaya's military standing, Polyon
accepted her presence with
Fassa, on an OG ship, as proof that she was as corrupt
as his friends. And he was clearly delighted to have made the contact. Within
minutes he was arranging to meet Fassa's "friends" and give them a tour of the
newest hyperchip plant
"I don't know why, but Polyon's always been eager to get more hyperchips sold
to the military," Fassa told the others after she cut the contact. "It's not
the money, either; he offered Space Academy a cut rate once, but the
Ration Board stopped him. 1 knew your rank would be the thing to draw him in,
Micaya. A back door into the military supply system is Polyon's dream."
"I suppose he wants to impress his old teachers and classmates by making sure
they all use his inventions,"
Forister surmised.
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Nancia was confused. "But surely he doesn't imagine that selling hyperchips on
the black market is the way to high standing in the Academy?"
AU three softpersons laughed tolerandy, and Nancia heard a weak chuckle from
the sensor link to the med-
tech cabin where Sev rested. "Investigate the sources of a few High Families
fortunes some time, Nancia," Sev recommended to her. "Money washes dean of
most any taint# and more rapidly than you'd believe possible."
"Not," Nancia said, "in the Academy. And not in
House Perez y de Gras, either."
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Nancia fussed over Forister and Micaya until the last minute, fitting them out
with contact buttons, spyderplates, and every other remote protection device
she could think of. "I don't know what good you think this will do," Forister
complained. "De Gras-Waldheim disabled Sev's spyderplate without alerting
anybody, didn'the?"
"Sev didn't have me monitoring him," Nancia pointed out.
She should have confined Fassa to her cabin before the other two left, but she
didn't have the heart to.
"Somebody should stay with Sev," Fassa pleaded.
"Oh, let the child stay with him," Forister put in unex-
pectedly. "She's not worth much as a hostage anyway. If even half of what Sev
told us about the hyperchip factory conditions is true, Polyon de
Gras-Waldheim is a mur-
derer a dozen times over who'd think nothing of sacrificing a ship full ofhis
former friends."
Fassa nodded. "Yes, that's about right. Except # I
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