Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [245]
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. I 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.
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?"
All three softpersons laughed tolerantly, and Nancia heard a weak chuckle from the sensor link to the medtech cabin where Sev rested. "Investigate the sources of a few High Families fortunes some time, Nancia," Sev recommended to her. "Money washes clean 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."
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't he?"
"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 unexpectedly. "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 murderer a dozen times over who'd think nothing of sacrificing a ship full of his former friends."
Fassa nodded. "Yes, that's about right. Except—I wouldn't say he'd 'think nothing of it.' He'd probably enjoy it."
"Why didn't any of you tell us about Polyon before this?" Nancia demanded. "You were all babbling your stupid heads off, pointing the finger at one another to get some credit for your own plea bargains, and you never warned us about Polyon."
"Afraid to," Fassa said sadly.
"So afraid that you let Sev go off to Shemali without a word of warning? I'd never have let him go unmonitored if I'd guessed."
"I didn't know Sev had gone to Shemali," Fassa defended herself. "Nobody told me anything. I didn't even know he wasn't on board when we left Bahati. All I knew was that he didn't come to see me again, and I thought, I thought . . . and quite right, too; why should he bother with someone like me?" Tears filled her eyes; Nancia thought that for once they were genuine.
"Fassa del Parma, you are a prime idiot!" Sev's weary, hoarse whisper startled all of them; Nancia had forgotten that she'd left the connections between the main cabin and the medtech room wide open. "Get in here and hold my hand and smooth my fevered brow. I'm an injured man. I need attention."
"Call Alpha. She's a doctor," Fassa gulped.
"I want you. Now are you coming, or do I have to get up and get you?"
Fassa fled. And Nancia watched, satisfied, and feeling only a little bit like an eavesdropper, as she burst through the door of the medtech room. Hadn't Sev given her explicit instructions to keep full sensors open whenever he was with Fassa del Parma?
Those two were too wrapped up in each other for Fassa to pose any danger to anybody. All the same, Nancia kept those sensors open while she concentrated most of her attention on the images and sounds coming in from Forister's and