Generation Warriors by Anne McCaffery and Elizabeth Moon

593 Pages·2016·1.2 MB·English

by  McCaffrey Anne

GENERATION WARRIORS

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright # 1991 by Bill Fawcett and Associates

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, N.Y. 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72041-4

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, March 1991
Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New
York, N.Y. 10020

Printed in the United States of America
Chapter One

On the FSP Fleet heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan

"We have resources they don't know about," Sassinak said, and not for the first
time. It did not reassure her.

The convivial mood in which Sassinak and Lunzie had first made their plans to
combine forces against the planet pirates had long since evaporated. They had
been carried by the euphoria following the incredible Thek cathedral which had
dispensed right justice to Captain Cruss who had illegally landed a heavyworlder
colony transport ship on the planet Ireta, right under the bows of Sassinak's
pursuing cruiser. The Thek conference had elicited considerable fascinating
information about the Captain's superiors. Apart from sorting out the problem of
which race "owned" Ireta, the Thek had departed without reference to bringing
the perpetrators of planet pirating to a similar justice.

Neither Sassinak nor Lunzie felt they would be lucky enough to obtain more
support from the Thelcs, even if that long-lived race were the oldest of the
spacefaring species. Theks rarely interfered with members of the various
ephemeral species that they had discovered over the centuries. Only when, as on
Ireta, some ancient plan of their own might be jeopardized would they intervene.
As a rule, Thek permitted all their client races, from the lizard-like Seti, the
shapechanging Wefts, the marine Ssli down to humans, to "dree their ain
weirds," No sooner than the Thek had resolved the matter of Ireta then they had
departed, leaving Sassinak and Lunzie with an irresistible challenge: to seek out
and destroy those who indulged in the most daring sort of piracy--the rape and
pillage of entire planets and the mass enslavement of their legally resident
populations. The problems were immense. Sassinak was too experienced a
commander to ignore real problems, and Lunzie had seen too many good plans
go wrong herself. Lunzie, sprawled comfortably on the white leather cushions in
Sassinak's office, watched her distant ofispring with amusement. She was so
young to be so old.

"So are you," Sassinak retorted.

Lunzie felt herself reddening.

"There's no such thing as telepathy," she said. "It's never been demonstrated
under controlled conditions."

"Twins do it," Sassinak said. "I read that somewhere. And other close relatives,
sometimes. As for you and me . . . nobody knows what that many deepfreezes
have done to your brain, and what my life's done to me. You were thinking I'm
young to be so old, and I was thinking exactly the same thing about you. You're
younger than I am ..."

"Which doesn't give you the right to play boss," said Lunzie. Then she wished
she hadn't. Sassinak's fece had hardened . . . and of course to her, she did have
the right. She was the captain of her ship, one step below her first star, and she
had ten more years of actual, awake, living-experience age.
"I'm sorry," Lunzie said quickly. "You are older, and you are the boss ... I'm just
still adjusting."

Sassinak's quick smile almost reassured her. "Same here. But I do have to be the
boss on this ship. Even if you are my great-great-great, you don't know which
pipes hold what."

"Right. Point taken. I will be the good little civilian." And try, she thought to
herself, to adjust to having a distant offspring not only older than herself but
quite a bit tougher. She leaned forward, setting her mug down on the table.
"What are you thinking of doing?"

"What we need/' said Sass, frowning at nothing, "is a lot more information. The
kind of proof we can bring before the Council meeting, for instance. Take the
Diplo problem. Who's been contacting whom, and whose money paid for that
heavyworlder seedship? Which factions of heavyworlders are involved, and do
they all know what they're doing? Then there's the Paraden family. I have my
own reasons to think they're guilty, root and branch, but no proof. If we could
get someone into position, some social connection ..."

Lunzie picked up her mug, gulped down the last of her drink, and tried to ignore
the hollow in her belly. Was she about to do something stupid, or brave, or both?

"I ... might be able to help with the Diplo bit."
"You? How?"

Sassinak had been thinking of her own heavyworlder friends, but she hated to
use any of them that way. It would be too risky for them if some agent within
Fleet caught on.

"They don't let many lightweights visit Diplo, but because of their continuing
medical problems, genetic and adaptive, medical researchers and advisors are
welcome. As welcome as lightweights ever are. I'd need a refresher course with
a Master Adept ..."

Sassinak pursed her lips. "Hmmm. That's reasonable, the refresher part. If
anyone were watching you, they'd expect you to. You've gone a stage or so
beyond your rating, haven't you? And you people go back fairly regularly, once
you're in the Adept rating, so I've heard. ..."

She let that trail away, in case Lunzie wanted to ofier more information, but
wasn't surprised when Lunzie simply nodded and went on to talk about Diplo.

"Doctors are expected to ask questions. If I were on a research team, perhaps
statistical survey of birth defects, something like that, I'd have a chance to talk to
lots of people as part of my job."

Sassinak cocked her head to one side; Lunzie barely stopped herself from
making the same gesture.
"Are you sure you're not doing this just to exorcise your own heavyworld
demons? From what you've said ..."

Lunzie didn't want to go into that again. "I know. I have reason to hate and fear
them. Some of them. But I've also known good ones; I told you about Zebara."
Sassinak nodded, but looked unconvinced. Lunzie went on. "Besides, 111 have
time to talk to the Master Adept renewing my training. You know enough about
Discipline to know that's as good as any psych software. If a Master says I'm not
stable enough to go, 111 let you know."

"YouTl discuss it with him?" By Sassinak's tone, she wasn't entirely happy with
that.

Lunzie sighed internally. "Not everything, no. But my going to Diplo, certainly.
There are certain special skills which can make it easier on a lightweight."

"Just be sure a Master passes you. This is too important to risk on an emotional
storm, and with the trouble you've had ..."

"I can handle it." Lunzie let her voice convey the Discipline behind it, and
Sassinak subsided. Not really Impressed, Lunzie noticed, as most people would
be, but convinced for the time being.
"That's Diplo, then," Sassinak gave a final minute shrug, and went on to the
other problems. "You're going off. And you don't know how long that will take,
either, do you? I thought not. You're going off for a refresher course and a visit
to Diplo, and that leaves us with digging to be done among the suspect
commercial combines, the Seti, and the inner workings of EEC, Fleet, and the
Council. It would be handy if we had our own private counterintelligence
network, but..."

Lunzie interrupted, feeling smug. "You know Admiral Coromell, don't know?"

Sassinak's jaw did not drop because she would not let it, but Lunzie could tell
she was surprised. "Do you know Admiral Coromell?"

"Quite well, yes." Lunzie watched Sassinak struggle with the obvious
implications, and decide not to ask. Or perhaps the implications weren't obvious
to her. By now Coromell would be as old as his father had been; Sassinak would
have known him as an old man. Lunzie fought off yet another pang of sorrow,
and concentrated on the present moment. "Coromell actually recruited me,
temporarily, back before the Ambrosia thing."

"Recruited you!" Was that approval or resentment? Lunzie did not ask, but gave
as brief a synopsis as possible of the circumstances of that recruitment, and what
followed. Sassinak listened without interrupting, her eyes focussed on some
distant vision, and shook her head slightly when Lunzie finished.
"My dear, I have the feeling we could talk for weeks and you'd still surprise me."
There was nothing in the tone to indicate whether this most recent surprise had
been pleasant or not; Lunzie suspected that respect for Coromell's stars might be
part of Sassinak's reticence. To underscore that reticence, Sassinak pushed away
from her desk. "I feel like stretching my legs, and you haven't really seen the
ship yet. Want a tour?"

"Of course." Lunzie was as glad to take a break from their intense conversation.
She followed Sassinak out into the passage that led nearly the length of Main
Deck.

"It's so different," Lunzie said, as Sass led her down the aft ladder to Troop
Deck. She wondered why the walls--bulkheads, she reminded herself--were
green here, and gray above.

"Different?"

"I hadn't had time to mention it, but when we were rescued from Ambrosia that
time, the Fleet cruiser that came was this one. The Zaid-Dayan. I never saw the
captain, but it was a woman. That's why I used the name in the cover I gave
Varian and the others back on Ireta. It was a deja-vtt situation, you and this ship
..."

Sassinak grunted. "Couldn't have been this ship. Wasn't the Ambrosia rescue
before Ireta and your coldsleep? Forty years or so back? That must have been the
'43 version . . . that ship was lost in combat the year I graduated from the
Academy." She nodded to the squad of marines that had flattened themselves
along the bulkhead to let her by, and waited for Lunzie to catch up.

Lunzie felt cold all over. Another reminder that she had not grown naturally
older, when she would know things, but had simply skipped decades. "Are you
sure? When I heard this was the Zaid-Dayan, with a woman captain, I thought
maybe ..."

Sassinak shook her head. "I'm not that much older than you. No--the Ambrosia
rescue--we were taught that battle, in TacSim II. That was Graciela Vinish-
Martinez, her first command and a new ship. She caught hell from a Board of
Inquiry at first, bringing it back needing repairs like that, but someone on
Ambrosia, some scout captain or something ..."

"Zebara," said Lunzie, hardly breathing.

"Whoever it was wrote a report that got the Board off her neck. I thought of that
when I had to go before a Board. I saw her." Sassinak's expression was strange,
almost bemused. She punched a button on the bulkhead, and a hatch slid open: a
lift. They entered, and Sassinak pushed another button inside before she said
more. Lunzie waited. "She gave us--the female cadets--a lecture on command
presence for women officers. We all thought that was a stupid topic. We were
muttering about it, going in; the room was empty except for this little old lady in
the corner, looked like the kind of retirement-age warrant officers that swarmed
all around the Academy, doing various jobs no one ever explained. I hardly
glanced at her. She had an old-fashioned clipboard and a marker. We sat down,
wondering how late Admiral Vinish-Martinez was going to be. We knew better
than to chatter, but I have to admit there was a lot of quiet murmuring going on,
and some of it was mine." Sassinak grinned reminiscently. "Then this little old
lady gets up. Nobody saw that; we figured she was taking roll. Walks around to