Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER TWELVE}

Ser Ventoven called Ky again an hour later. “Now then. You’re familiar with the contents of the summons you received, is that right?”

“Yes,” Ky said.

He went on to read it to her again anyway. “You can see how this will interact with the much simpler citizenship issue. As you are not now considered a Slotter Key citizen, but responsible for the deaths of Slotter Key military personnel and a foreign citizen, you are classified as both a foreigner and a potential criminal. Since foreign criminals are not eligible to apply for citizenship, Immigration is insisting that your application for reinstatement of citizenship should be deferred until your responsibility for the deaths is adjudicated. And since you admitted to having killed Master Sergeant Marek, and the witnesses to that event are all now classified as permanently mentally incompetent due to some toxin or disease acquired while in your presence on Miksland… I’m sorry, but your situation is very serious indeed.”

Ky could think of nothing to say, and Ventoven went on. “Unless you can find a witness who will testify that your shooting Marek was not murder but self-defense—and that the other deaths were accidental, beyond your power to prevent—I’m afraid we have no options. Legally, I must advise you to surrender to law enforcement—”

“I can’t,” Ky said. “Those people they claim are mentally incompetent have been drugged, kept imprisoned, away from their families…”

“How do you know that?”

She hesitated, trying to remember who had been told about that. Stella knew, of course; she had been there when the fugitives appeared. Aunt Grace—she had told Aunt Grace. MacRobert, Morrison, Teague, and Rodney. But could she tell this man? She had the fugitives themselves, and among them was the best possible witness for Marek’s death, Inyatta. Inyatta had been in the room—pushed into the room by Marek before he turned and shot at Ky. Inyatta had been wounded by a bullet from Marek’s gun, after he dropped it. But revealing these witnesses risked their freedom, if not their lives. “I need you to come here,” she said. “I do not trust the security of any communications device anymore.”

“What is it you know? Do you know where those fugitives are? I must know, if I’m to defend you.”

“Come here,” Ky said again.

“I can’t just leave now—I have a court appearance in twenty minutes. I could send a clerk—”

Ky’s patience snapped. “Come here yourself, or assign another attorney from the legal department to me. I won’t say anything to a clerk I wouldn’t shout into the open air.”

“I’ll come. Not until later today; I have other urgent work, you must understand.”

“Call ahead,” Ky said. “The house will be sealed unless we are expecting a visitor.” When she ended that call, she called the hospital and asked for Grace’s room.

“I’m sorry, Sera, that room is not available at present from this number. Communications must go through Security.”

“Please give me that number.”

“I’m sorry, Sera; that number is not available to the general public—”

“I’m not the general public. I’m Rector Vatta’s niece. I need to speak to either her or Master Sergeant MacRobert.”

“Oh—just a moment; I’ll see if you’re on the approved list. If you are not, you will need to apply in person through the hospital security desk, hours 0900 to 1700, bringing proof of identity.”

Ky waited out the half minute of silence, then the voice came back. “Is this Sera Stella Vatta or Sera Ky Vatta?”

Ky thought about the likelihood of herself being on someone’s “good” list and the possible consequences of being caught out in a lie. “This is Sera Ky Vatta calling on behalf of Stella Vatta—it’s family concern for a family member.”

“I see. Um… it’s actually Stella Vatta who’s approved, Sera, but if you’re calling on her behalf—and why would that be?”

“She’s very busy herself and I’m taking over some of the family duties for her. She’s CEO of Vatta Transport, you know.”

“Oh. Yes, I see that notation. Well… I’m sure it’s all right, but you probably should come in for a screening—”

So the entire rolling doughnut had not yet reached the hospital’s communications personnel. Ky yanked at her braid as if that would accomplish something.

“Wait just a moment—I see—” And muffled, Ky heard “Master Sergeant MacRobert—please—I have a question for you.” He must have come closer, because she also heard, “Would it be all right to allow Sera Ky Vatta the security code for Rector Vatta’s room? She says she’s calling on behalf of Sera Stella Vatta.”

“Certainly. But let me see if her message is something I can handle without interrupting the Rector’s therapy session.”

A moment later, Ky heard his voice on the handset. “Admiral—sorry, Sera. The Rector is doing very well now. We expect her to be released in a few more days. Her physicians want her to be steady on her feet and capable of walking at least 300 meters and climbing five steps without any evidence of cardiac strain. Is that what Sera Stella wanted to know?”

He sounded perfectly matter-of-fact, no hint of strain in his voice.

“Part of it,” Ky said. “She also wanted to know what to do about her house—she said it wasn’t clear to her whether it was safe for occupancy again, and if she should do anything particular with the clothes Aunt Grace might want while still in the hospital. Do they need decontamination, or something?”

“I’m sure the toxins have dissipated by now. Running them through a standard ’fresher unit should be enough,” MacRobert said. “But airing them outside for several hours would be better, ridding them of any chemical residue from the counter-treatment. However, her residence does not have any facility for that, and no staff to supervise it.”

The open door she’d been hoping for. “Then could you possibly bring some over here? There’s a walled back garden where they could be aired, quite private. You could ask what she wants, and bring it here. I’ll take care of the airing.”

“An excellent idea,” he said. “I’ll go up and ask her, then bring the items over to—that is the registered address for Helen and Stella Vatta?”

“Yes,” Ky said.

“I… mmm…” His tone was suddenly different, subdued and apologetic. “As it is the Rector’s private residence… I’m not entirely comfortable rummaging through her… through some of her… I’m wondering if you might come along and advise me.”

“I’m sorry,” Ky said. “But I’ve been strongly advised to stay here. But Stella does have a cook here who would be perfect.”

“Um… a woman?”

“Oh, yes.” And this was even better. Allie could pass on the critical new information to MacRobert, in private. “She’ll be fine in Aunt Grace’s underwear drawer. When can you pick her up? I need to be sure she’s not in the middle of making pastry or something.”

“Half hour, about.”

“See you then,” Ky said. The day looked better already. She had witnesses to what had happened in Miksland, and MacRobert might know how to protect them from being incarcerated and mistreated again. So might Vatta’s legal staff. She explained this to Rafe on the way downstairs. Allie was indeed making pastry, but said she’d be done in a few minutes.

Ky intercepted MacRobert when he arrived, before introducing her guests, and gave him a fast précis of her legal situation.

“None of this is the Rector’s fault,” he said. “She would never do that, any of it.”

“I know. But the fact is I do have the fugitives under my protection here. They’ve told me how they were treated once they were back with our military, and we’ve located the place Sergeant Major Morrison visited, where she saw the supposedly incompetent NCOs. She gave us the other addresses, too. But I’m worried that whoever’s behind this will harm the others if too many people know about them. We need to rescue them soon.”

“I’ve got to find a way to communicate with Morrison safely,” MacRobert said. “There’s that very suspicious Colonel Dihann at the hospital; I know the phones are tapped, but I’m not sure even skullphones are safe.”

“Nor am I,” Ky said. “We need a code. But you shouldn’t stay here too long. Come meet Allie—Corporal Barash, with a new ID Stella fixed for her.”

“You’ve been busy,” he said. Allie, in the kitchen, had taken off her apron and now wore a gray tunic with the Vatta insignia and her name embroidered on the collar over blue slacks.

“Allie, this is Master Sergeant MacRobert; he will take you to the Rector’s house and bring you back here to air the clothes before he takes them to the Rector.”

“Yes, Sera,” Allie said. “There’s a pie in the oven; it will be done in just over a half hour—if it takes us longer, can you—”

“I won’t let it burn, Allie,” Ky said.

When they’d left, Ky called Stella. “MacRobert and our cook have gone to pick up some clothes for Aunt Grace,” she said. “MacRobert says she’s feeling well enough to get dressed now.”

“Oh, good,” Stella said. “Is Legal staying in touch with you?”

“Yes. I’m to stay inside. One of them’s coming over sometime today.”

“I’ll be home at the usual time for supper. I’ll bring along a couple of presents.”

Ky could think of nothing to say to that. “See you tonight, then,” she said.

MacRobert dropped Allie and two cases of Grace’s clothes off before heading back to the hospital. Allie and Rodney—clearly bemused at being asked to help air clothes—set up the folding drying racks and spread clothes on them. Ky watched out the French doors, wishing she could go out in the garden. It was one thing to spend weeks on a ship going somewhere, with only remote camera views of the exterior, and quite another to be inside when outside was a planet. Her planet. The last time she’d experienced autumn days and nights here, she’d been a cadet, and at this time of day she’d have been in afternoon PT, in the scratchy shorts and jersey, finishing up with ten laps around the playing field.

She sighed and turned away. Plenty of work to do here, now, including deciding how much to tell Ventoven when he came.

“Admiral?” Inyatta came out of the dining room.

“Yes—” Ky said, heading toward her. She’d not broken any of the fugitives of calling her Admiral. She’d quit trying; it seemed to reassure them.

“I think we—all three of us—should write down our statements about what happened in Miksland. In case—in case something bad happens. So it’s recorded somewhere. Maybe at Vatta?”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Ky said. She should have thought of that herself. Or Rafe should have, or Stella. “Or we could record it, downstairs—video and sound—and you could also write something. Or—” The thought hit her suddenly. “A lawyer’s coming from Vatta’s legal department later today. If he saw the recording being made, he could be a witness.”

“Yes, Admiral. It would be better to have both a recording and our written statements, I think.”

“Probably. Yes. All right, Allie’s working on supper, but you and Kamat can write statements—you shouldn’t be working on them together, I know that much. Is she downstairs?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Then you come upstairs with me; you can use Stella’s office, and then I’ll go down and tell Kamat. Don’t answer the phone, though.”

“I won’t, Admiral.”

Downstairs, Ky found Rodney—back inside from laundry-airing—and Kamat working on aerial scans of the area around the compound where Morrison had told them all the remaining survivors would eventually be held.

“It’s remote and rugged,” Rodney said when she came in. “Going to be difficult to get a team into.”

“It’s forested, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That makes it hard to detect all the surveillance they’ve got. I’m sure it’s more than what I’m seeing.”

“Get Rafe on it, too, Rodney. And start looking at places transport could be stopped on the way in.” His expression changed. “Yes, a different approach. If the compound is remote, but has no airfield, that means ground transportation. Roads to remote places usually have remote stretches.” He nodded. Ky turned to Kamat. “Meanwhile, Kamat—I want you to write out your version of what happened in Miksland. At least get started on it. Eventually you’ll be called to testify, and we need current proof that you’re of sound mind. They may have messed up your records—lost them or falsified them—from when you were drugged.”

“Yes, Admiral. Should I start now?”

“Yes. Here’s paper and pen.”

Barash, in her role as Allie the cook, was busily chopping things—a delivery of fresh produce—on the kitchen table. Ky explained the need for a written report, then realized that the records she herself had turned in to the authorities might also have been compromised. She settled in to write her version of events.

The afternoon passed quietly. Shortly before Ky expected Stella home, a woman from Vatta’s legal department called to say she was coming: “Sera Lane, another attorney at Vatta, and familiar with your case, Sera. Ser Ventoven cannot leave court at present; the justice has extended the hours. But he said it was vital to see you today.”

“Yes. We can open the gates for you and you can park near the garage.”

“Excellent. I’m in a small green two-seater.”

Sera Lane clambered out of her small car and unfolded into a tall, lanky, slightly stooped woman with steel-gray hair braided around her head. She came in the kitchen door and sniffed appreciatively. “Who’s the baker?”

“Our cook, Allie,” Ky said. “Let’s go through to the dining room—we can spread things out there.”

“Howard left me all his notes,” Lane said. She set her briefcase on the table, opened it, then sat down. “I’ve perused them, and the other information we have on you. As he did, I fear this is a very difficult situation, if—as you say—those personnel who might be witnesses on your behalf are in some kind of illicit custody and not free to help your case.”

“In Slotter Key law, are attorney–client communications privileged?”

“Yes, with a few exceptions: threats of harm to another person are not privileged and will be communicated. Why do you ask?”

“Because I have scant experience with Slotter Key’s legal system—I left here young and very naïve. Within that privilege I can tell you that the best possible witness to my shooting Master Sergeant Marek in self-defense has escaped from custody intended to silence her, and will be available to testify if we can protect her from recapture and the kind of treatment she endured before.”

“How do you know this?”

“She is here,” Ky said.

“Here? Where?” Lane looked around as if someone might pop out of the dining room paneling.

“In this house, presently writing up her account of what happened. So is another witness, not quite as well placed to testify to everything that happened. We have recording equipment downstairs; I wondered if you would be willing to witness a recording of their accounts.”

“I—I had not expected this. Does the military know they are here?”

“No. It would risk their lives. Revealing their location could be fatal to them and to others still in captivity.”

“Where are the others?”

“In several remote locations, originally designed for long-term confinement of the criminally insane,” Ky said. “So far, they have been drugged and refused contact with anyone outside the facilities. They were carefully dispersed so they could not have contact with one another, or their families, under the guise of their being contaminated by something in Miksland. Their implants were removed and replaced by others with less function; Miznarii personnel had implants forcibly inserted.”

“That’s—that’s against our Constitution!” Lane glared at Ky. “No adult individual can be required to accept any internal electronic device.”

“It happened,” Ky said. “I don’t know who did it, or why, except that Miksland and its base was a huge secret for centuries and someone does not want that secret to come out. Consider that no media interviews with the survivors from Miksland—except for the very brief one I gave—ever appeared. The evidence I preserved has been ‘lost’—such as the logbook of the former base commander, who conveniently died before he could be interrogated.”

“Do you think this is why Grace Vatta was attacked?”

“Yes,” Ky said. “And not only with poison gas in her house. Before that, one of the squad that came here seeking fugitives tried to attack her physically in her office. So I suspect that much of the legal mess I’m facing is intended to force me into detention where I, too, can be silenced.”

“That seems far-fetched,” Lane said. “I see where you might think so, but in fact, by a strict interpretation of the law, you are in violation of the citizenship requirements. The fugitives—are you sure they are not harboring some dangerous pathogen?”

“You need to meet them, and—if she can get here—the person who witnessed the incarceration of some others.”

Lane shook her head. “I can see this is going to be a long, long session. It’s a good thing Howard wasn’t free; he becomes quite testy when he has to work late. Better the judge in that case should deal with it than you.” She pulled a voice recorder from her briefcase. “I’d like to start with you, and hear your account of all the events leading up to the death of Master Sergeant Marek.” She turned the recorder on.

Ky had been over this enough, both in the recent past and in her head, to give a clear summary, from the moment she realized her electrical outlets had been sabotaged through her analysis of who might have done it, and what could be done about it, under the conditions at that time.

“I had two main problems,” she said. “First, I had no way to commission a court to try Master Sergeant Marek; the only other officer there was Commander Bentik, even less attached to Slotter Key than I was. And she had been partly suborned by him—”

“How do you mean?”

“He had lied to her, and attempted to convince her that I was sexually attracted to him and wanted a relationship. She was apparently convinced that I had had sex with him one afternoon—the afternoon that I believe my outlets were sabotaged—because she saw him come out of my quarters.”

“You didn’t lock your quarters?”

“I did, but as we found later, he had a master key.”

She nodded; Ky went on. “Commander Bentik was my second problem, both because she was foreign to Slotter Key and the procedures and traditions of Slotter Key’s military, and because she was so influenced by Master Sergeant Marek. That may well have been, at least partially, the result of her unfamiliarity with our culture. At any rate, she was older than I, and had already shown herself inclined to dispute my decisions—”

“But she was staff, wasn’t she? Had she combat experience?”

“None. But she was older, and felt that gave her natural seniority. I was already considering how to replace her without alienating her family—prominent politicians on Cascadia Station—when we came to Slotter Key. I had not succeeded in gaining her wholehearted support, and though she was an expert organizer, good with paperwork, she had managed to cause problems with the Moray government on an official visit there.”

“I thought Cascadians were supposed to be super-polite.”

“They are—or think they are.” Ky huffed out a sigh. “They’re polite in their own terms, but they are convinced their terms are the only terms. It has given them a homogeneous and peaceful population, on the whole, but they can get prickly with outsiders.”

“So—you and she did not get along.”

“I wouldn’t say that, not until the very end, when she joined with Marek in opposing my command. I don’t think she had anything to do with the sabotage—in fact, her electrical outlets had also been sabotaged, I found out afterward. That part was all Marek, and he was prepared to kill her as well as me, as that sabotage proved. But I found her…” Ky thought for a moment. “Prissy and rigid, is the best way I can put it. When we crashed, she did not—I suppose could not—rise to the occasion, and panicked more than once, endangering others as well as herself. It was a very scary situation, of course, but nearly all the others remained calm and tried to cope.”

“She knew you disapproved of her behavior?”

“I suppose… though I suspect that did not bother her. She was more focused on my failings; she regarded the hardships of our time in the life rafts, and on the coast of Miksland, almost as insults to her personally.”

“There’s been nothing about that in the media,” Lane said.

“I didn’t notice. When I arrived back in Port Major I was plunged at once into the legalities of transferring my shares to Stella—conferences with lawyers, two court appearances—and the official interviews with Slotter Key Spaceforce about the crash and the evidence I’d managed to save. I didn’t have the time—or frankly the interest—to see how the media handled it. I was, if you’ll forgive me, exhausted from the survival itself.”

“We can skip that now, but I must have a better idea of what the whole sequence was, in some detail. You say that evidence has gone missing?”

“So Aunt Grace—the Rector—said. Those interrogations didn’t originate in her office, though she expected to be copied in on results, and wasn’t. When she asked, she was told that two or three essentials had been lost. But Rafe and I were desperate for some time alone, so as soon as we could we flew to Corleigh.”

Lane smiled. “I hope you had a good vacation.”

Ky smiled but didn’t answer. “It doesn’t matter. Let me get back to the day of Marek’s death.” Lane nodded and Ky started in again with the next morning’s accusations from Commander Bentik, her choice of the armory as a safe and private place for what had become a shocking and acrimonious conversation, and then Marek’s attempt to kill her and what followed.

“And you say this Corporal Inyatta was a direct witness to this?”

“Yes.”

“By your account I would say it was clearly self-defense, and—in the long run—defense of the other personnel. With a direct witness, we should be able to petition for dismissal of the murder charge, at least.”

“I had Staff Sergeant Gossin—who is now in custody and under heavy sedation—collect evidence for a future legal investigation. Recordings of the place, of the deceased, of the weapons, and so on.”

“Are you certain that Gossin is in custody somewhere?”

“As of yesterday, yes. Someone who actually saw Gossin in custody wanted to contact Aunt Grace, but she was in the hospital and not available. That person spoke briefly to Master Sergeant MacRobert, who sent her to me, here. The gas attack on Aunt Grace came shortly after I had met the three who escaped, and she had begun her own investigation into what happened.”

“Do you think these attacks are directed at Vatta itself, or a reaction to your discoveries in Miksland?”

“The latter,” Ky said. “I think we stepped right in the middle of someone’s profitable activities. Though I don’t know what the profit was, it was clear that both politics and money were involved. Someone had managed to get the resources to build a shuttle landing strip, and convert the part of the underground system they could reach into a base large enough to hold, at a short estimate, fifty to a hundred troops. When we flew back, I was in a Mackensee—um, mercenary company—shuttle, and we flew over the length of the continent: there was at least one open-pit mine, and some kind of settlement along the north coast.”

“Do you have documentation of that?”

“Not anymore. I turned it in, just as I did the flight recorder from the shuttle, blood samples from the pilot and copilot, the base commander’s log, and the evidence relating to Marek’s death. Mackensee probably has the documentation of the surface data; I know their recorders were going; I bought my copy from them.”

“And the communications blackout that was supposed to be keeping anyone from flying over it?”

“There was a strong magnetic field in places, but the real problem was someone putting the regular planetary surveillance satellites on a loop whenever they were overhead. My fiancé undid that.”

“Well. I’d like to meet your witness… um… Corporal Inyatta now, if I could.”

“Certainly,” Ky said. “We’ll need to go upstairs.”