Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO}

“I wish we knew more about Ky’s flag captain,” Grace said. She had come back from her office late, and she looked even tighter-strung than usual. “Are you sure he’s trustworthy?”

Rafe, a spoonful of consommé halfway to his mouth, raised his brows. “You expect me to know?”

“I thought Ky might have consulted you, with all your contacts—”

“I believe she consulted other contacts. But I have met him, and had no bad feelings about him. Ky doesn’t tolerate incompetence, and she has her own antennae about trustworthiness.”

“She wasn’t happy about using a Spaceforce shuttle.”

“I’m sure Pordre wasn’t, either. As it happened, they were both right. But Pordre… I don’t think he’s one of the worshippers who think she’s beyond fault and a genius at everything—”

MacRobert choked and covered it with a cough. Teague grinned, watching them all. Rafe ignored them and went on. “It’s healthier to be a little—not skeptical, I don’t think, but conservative—in his understanding of her.”

“There’s no chance he wants her dead so he can take over?”

“Pordre? No. He’s too junior. She’s been quite frank in discussing succession of command if anything should happen to her. The relevant governments, and the senior staff of the SDF, all made suggestions. She did consult me about that, because prior to Turek’s pirate consortium, the biggest fleet in this end of the galaxy had been ISC’s. She thought its organization was pretty good, despite the obvious problems; she didn’t want to invent a bad wheel to replace a broken one.”

“And?”

“I don’t know who she picked. I do know she laid out what she thought the various systems should do—how to allocate patrol sectors and so on—and how the overall command structure should be set up. Her staff back at SDF headquarters would know the details. She might have told me if we’d ever gotten that vacation.”

“I think he’s solid,” MacRobert said. He wiped his mouth and put his napkin down. “Like you, Rafe, I had no bad impressions of him.” He looked over at Grace. “What happened today? You’re strung tight.”

“Troop reassignments and a dead body,” Grace said. “We assumed all along that the opposition was using Spaceforce personnel.”

“Yes, they’re on the lists—”

“Well, they’re not now. All the personnel originally assigned to the research facility have been reassigned to joint maneuvers with the Twenty-Third Recon as part of Vermillion Cloud, the annual training exercise at Boole, up north.”

“But who—”

“And the dead body is their erstwhile commander, Greyhaus.”

“The same Greyhaus—”

“That Ky reported about, yes. Collapsed suddenly during a briefing, attempt at resuscitation unsuccessful. His exec, Major Gallinos, took over, pending official change of command. And that’s all I know.”

“You think—?” Teague spoke before anyone else got it out.

“I think treachery through and through,” Grace said. “I can’t determine who switched Greyhaus’ unit’s orders. Mac, that’s your assignment tomorrow. Who is going to be on those planes heading for Miksland? Nobody seems to know that, either. Are they civilians? Criminals? A private army?”

“How many?” Rafe asked.

“Two hundred,” Grace said. “I rousted out Personnel, who first insisted they were the same unit number and somebody’d made a mistake, and then said they were a recruit unit on the usual three-week field exercise. But they couldn’t tell me which recruit unit, where from. You don’t like me upsetting troops, Mac, so you figure it out.”

“We only have three enlisted recruit training bases,” Mac said. “It should be easy—but why would they send recruits to dig out the survivors? Unless they don’t expect any resistance.”

“It’s Ky,” Rafe said. “They’ll expect it.”

“It’s not recruits,” Mac said, frowning. “Recruits chatter; they don’t keep secrets reliably.”

“How qualified were those they replaced? How experienced?” Rafe asked.

“Well trained, but as I said before we haven’t had a serious problem in many decades—since I was young, in fact—and so they’ve never actually been in combat.”

“They’ll want combat-experienced troops because they know Admiral Vatta has that experience,” Teague said. He leaned forward. “Where would they get combat-experienced troops?”

“Mercs,” Rafe and Mac said simultaneously.

“Or pirates,” Teague said. “Didn’t Turek have some ground-pounders? And we know not all the pirates were killed in the war. Enough ships escaped—”

Mac looked at Teague, brows raised. “But why would anyone hire pirates? Especially pirates who’d lost a war?”

“Because they’ve worked with them before,” Grace said. Her fist came down on the table. “I am a blind idiot not to have seen it. We never did find out who was behind the original attack here, on Slotter Key. That the President was complicit, yes, but not where the weapons came from, who planted the bombs under the old headquarters, or who pushed the button on that drone.”

“You thought it was Osman, didn’t you?”

“Osman,” Grace said, “had sons. And allies.”