Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER THREE}

Grace Lane Vatta, Rector of Defense, would rather have brought her niece Ky down from the station in a Vatta shuttle, but politics made that impossible. The returning hero must have a proper military escort. It was her department, after all, and she was bound—however unwillingly—by its traditions. Her job was hard enough already, as a civilian whose last military position had been as a clandestine fighter in what she thought of as a civil war but history books preferred to call an insurrection.

At least she’d spoken to Ky when the Space Defense Force ship arrived insystem, and was reassured by her state of health. Clear-eyed, bronze skin glowing, black hair snugged tight in a short braid—she’d never seen Ky with that hairdo, and it showed off the sharp planes of her face. Not a girl anymore, but a woman to reckon with, a woman whose command presence Grace could feel through the screen.

She was delighted. Both her great-nieces, Ky and her cousin Stella, had matured into women she could respect, women capable of restoring and protecting the family. They weren’t much alike, but that didn’t matter. She’d watched Stella rebuild a large part of Vatta’s trade network from a separate headquarters in the Moscoe Confederation or Confederacy or whatever they called it. Ky’s military genius had already thwarted the greatest threat to interstellar trade in Grace’s lifetime, and Ky would, Grace was sure, make space safe for tradeships into the future. Her own responsibility as Rector of Defense, the space within Slotter Key’s home system, would be easier with an interstellar fleet operating between systems.

Ky would arrive in a few hours. Grace looked at the action items on her desk screens—scarcely time enough to clear everything before then. She checked briefly when Ky’s pinnace reached the station and when the Spaceforce shuttle undocked, and then settled to work again. The weather had turned foul before dawn; hailstones battered the reinforced windows of her office in between spurts of snow, and if she looked, she knew she’d see the mix whitening the lawn below. The shuttle would be delayed some hours to avoid the rough weather, but the forecast said a clear night would follow as the front pushed offshore and the storms went with it.

She was deep in the intricacies of the proposed biennial budget request when her implant pinged. “Yes?”

“MacRobert,” he said. “The shuttle’s had a problem.”

Ice ran down her spine. “It’s… gone?” Always expect the worst, then anything else would be good news; she’d learned that early.

“No. Emergency landing, a long way out in the Oklandan. They were trying to make the Pingat, but didn’t—”

“Sabotage?”

“Almost certainly, and internal at that. I’ve opened a case; I need your sign-off.”

“You have it.” She punched a sequence of buttons on her desktop and pressed her thumb to the reader. MacRobert was the one person in the Defense Department she trusted absolutely, as he trusted her. Two old spooks, she thought as her door opened; she touched her tongue to the correct molar, signaling MacRobert to wait a moment. Olwen, her personal assistant, looked in, her face pale.

“Rector, they’ve just reported a problem of some kind—a course change.”

“Malfunction?”

“Yes, Sera, but no details. They’re planning to land somewhere in the Pingat chain. I’ve notified Meteorology and the satellites, but… but the transponder went off.”

A line of curses crackled through Grace’s mind; she used none of them. “We’ll have to change the schedule,” she said, her voice steady. “I’ll need the President’s staff first, then Port’s militia, Spaceforce Academy, finally Vatta headquarters. Set up the calls, please.”

“Does this mean someone attacked us? Is it a war?” Olwen’s eyes were wide.

“No, it’s not war. I expect the shuttle had engine trouble,” Grace said. The war rumor had started as soon as Ky’s flagship showed up in the system. “Get me that line to the President’s staff, please.” Olwen nodded and shut the door. Grace’s heart was racing. She wanted to charge out of her office, do something, but she must not. One thing at a time. She spoke to MacRobert. “I’m shutting down the airfield reception here; ping me when you know anything definite. I’ll be back with you when I can.”

“Got it,” he said, and the connection blanked.

The President’s staff received the news that the welcoming ceremonies would be delayed due to a shuttle problem with their usual mix of whiny complaint (“but it was arranged…”) and demands for information she didn’t have (“Well, when will the shuttle arrive, then?”). She declined to talk to the President on the grounds of other urgent duties, and made the next call to the special events coordinator already waiting at the shuttle landing field near the city.

“I heard something,” he said. “But is there no ETA?”

“Not yet,” Grace said. “They’re not landing here in any case, so the ceremony should be postponed indefinitely.”

Next, Spaceforce Academy. She did not want to imagine losing the Commandant, who had been such a stalwart ally in the difficult time after the attack on Vatta, who had lent her MacRobert as a liaison and seen, himself, to the treasonous President. Since she had become Rector, they had become almost friends—as much as the Commandant admitted having friends. She knew this attack might have been aimed at him as much as at Ky or Vatta.

His second in command, whose appointment they had both approved, answered the call at once. “You’ve heard,” Iskin Kvannis said.

“I’ve heard they had trouble and went down. Do you have the location yet?”

“They didn’t reach the Pingat airfield and they were below its sensor net. Ditched, is what we assume. No contact so far, but the survival gear could have been sabotaged as well as the shuttle.”

Kvannis was younger, blunter, than the Commandant; Grace appreciated the bluntness. “Survivable?” she asked.

“Depends,” he said. “It should have separated the passenger module, free-fallen to eighty-five hundred meters with a streamer chute, then come down more slowly with parachutes. I don’t know if you saw the demonstration video—”

“Yes, I did, before we approved the modification of more shuttles.”

“Well, this one should have had the full load of survival equipment: survival suits, rafts, supplies including advanced communications gear. But given the logical supposition that the shuttle drive and/or controls were sabotaged, so might the supplies have been. No way to know until we find… whatever we find. I’ve spoken to the safety officer here in Port Major; he says someone ticked the right boxes that everything had been inspected, but there would not have been another full inspection at the Station. Both survival suits and the rafts are fitted with transponders; we’ll hope Admiral Vatta used the one we customized for her.”

“Why didn’t she bring her own?”

“It didn’t have our transponder codes loaded. Her security people didn’t want our codes in her suit, and we wanted her to carry our codes in case of any mishap. Of course, she might have brought her own anyway, but her people approved the specs for ours and gave us her measurements.”

“Location codes. So you should be able to locate them?”

“If the suits weren’t compromised. Rector, the fact that we’ve had no contact—and it’s now over two hours since the transponder went off—we must assume that either the crash was fatal, or the communications capability of any rafts and suits was compromised, either by the crash—which would likely mean it was fatal—or by sabotage.”

Grace’s skullphone pinged before she had a chance to say what she thought about not being informed for over two hours. “Just a moment,” she said to Kvannis. “I’m getting info. Stay online.”

“Rector Vatta, this is Captain Pordre, Admiral Vatta’s flag captain. Are you aware—?”

“That the shuttle carrying Ky has gone down? Yes, Captain. Do you have new data?”

“We put a shuttle down as soon as hers made a radical course change and descent from the flight plan we’d been given. Our crew had eyes on it and we had contact with the admiral shortly before it descended into a heavy cloudbank, then we lost it. Our shuttle then circled just above that cloud layer; I wouldn’t let them go lower, since we were starting to have communications breakups as well.”

“You have a location?”

“Not precisely, though closer than you have probably. But Slotter Key’s air defense forces are hassling us now about having dropped a shuttle without a proper flight plan and pre-authorization. We tried to tell them where we think the shuttle went in, but I don’t think they’re listening.”

“I’ll take care of that. Send me all the data you’ve got; I’ll forward it to our Search and Rescue Service—” Grace went back to Kvannis. “I’ve got a location from Admiral Vatta’s flagship; they dropped a shuttle to keep an eye on ours when it went off-plan. Now I need to get AirDefense off their case and give SAR the location data. Talk to you later.”

“Yes, Rector. I’ll leave any new word with your staff.”

As Rector of Defense, Grace had oversight of all planetary defenses, but AirDefense and its emergency Armed Interdiction Unit had, until now, occupied the least of her time. It had shrunk, after the civil war in her youth, and had narrowly escaped elimination as unnecessary and expensive during budget cycles since. Slotter Key’s criminals preferred to use the sea-lanes and the complicated island geography for whatever they were up to. AirDefense had absorbed and expanded the Search and Rescue Service from the old Coastal Patrol, mostly in an effort to stay on the budget at all. Grace called Ilya Ramos, subrector for AirDefense, and asked for the name of the Region VII commander of AIU.

“You’d better talk to Admiral Hicks first,” Ramos said when she told him what had happened.

“No time,” Grace said. “If they take potshots at the SDF shuttle, we’ll have even more problems. Besides, we need to find our shuttle and any survivors now, not hours from now.”

“Commander Orniakos, then. Basil Orniakos; this is his direct line.”

The link came through. Grace said, “Thank you, Ilya,” and hit the link. “This is Rector Vatta, Commander,” she said, when she heard Orniakos answer with his name. “I need an immediate cease-and-desist order on that pursuit of the SDF shuttle.”

“You’re who? The Rector?” He sounded both grumpy and half asleep. She hadn’t thought to look up the time at his location; could it have been night there? “Why would the Rector contact me directly and not through my chain of command? Who are you, her secretary?”

“I am Rector Vatta and I’m contacting you directly because the matter is too urgent—”

“Prove it.” His tone was truculent, even defiant, rousing a responsive flare of white-hot anger. Not only had she not been told immediately about the shuttle’s problem, but now some boob less than half her age who had probably never seen combat was defying her.

“I assure you,” Grace said, as she sent her official seal, image, and right-hand fingerprints to him, “you do not want to wait for your senior to be involved in this. It will not benefit his career or yours.” She knew this was not the right approach, but Ky was down, and if she was alive—

“This is not the right way to contact me; I don’t take operational orders from you,” he said. “I don’t care what you—”

“If you fire upon a Space Defense Force craft of any kind,” Grace said as rage whited out her vision for a moment, “I will see that you lose your commission, if they don’t simply blow you to pieces.” She pressed the button that ended that call and called MacRobert.

“What d’you have?” he asked.

“A likely location where they went down. And a base commander who needs to be relieved of command when I have a spare moment, which I don’t. A guy named Basil Orniakos—”

“Regional commander, not base commander. Son and grandson of Academy graduates, ranked thirteenth in his class, switched from space duty to planetary due to his father becoming disabled… that Basil Orniakos?”

“I suppose. I asked Ilya Ramos who was in charge of AirDefense in that sector—”

“That would be Orniakos. And you contacted him yourself? You didn’t call Admiral Hicks first?”

“Yes. He threatened Ky’s ship. It had launched a shuttle to shadow the one she was on when it seemed to be in trouble, and it had eyes on her until the shuttle went into thick clouds. They have the best location on the crash site. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Grace—Rector—I’ve tried to explain before—”

“That I shouldn’t try to break into the chain of command. I know. I know that, Mac. But we don’t have a lot of time.”

He said nothing. She could almost see the words forming in his mind: Time you’ve already wasted by alienating Orniakos. Then a sigh. “You need to give Air-Sea Rescue the location data you’ve got. It would be best to contact Admiral Sumia.”

“Pingat Base is closer to the location—”

“Admiral Sumia. Or I can do it for you. I know someone on that side.”

“Fine. You do it. I’m just a mere civilian Rector.” She hated the edge frustration gave her voice; Mac didn’t deserve it. But she was full of rage, old and new rage both.

“Just a moment until I’m at a secure desk,” Mac said. Then he said, “Ready now. My usual code.”

“Here goes,” Grace said. “Straight from Vanguard.”

“Got it,” Mac said, a moment later. “I’ll get hold of my contact right away. And Grace, be careful. If this is another deliberate attack on Vatta, you’re a major target. If it was aimed at the Commandant, or the Defense Department as a whole, you’re the Rector. Either way, take all precautions.”

“I’m always careful.”

“I’m always concerned.”

Grace sat back in her chair for a moment, not quite slumping. Ky gone. She had to think of it that way, face the likelihood that Ky had died in the crash, after all she had survived before, and that meant not only a great loss to the family but the frustration of the very plan that had brought Ky back to Slotter Key at all.

Unless she hadn’t died. Ky—who had come through so many perilous adventures—would not die easily if only she made it to the sea in one piece. Mostly one piece. With the experience of age, Grace tested the near-certainty of death against the splinter of hope that Ky lived. Which would she rather live with?

Hope, of course. She looked down at her left arm, now the same size as her right one but completely different to look at, with the skin she remembered from her distant youth—smooth, unmarked, so different from the uneven color and wrinkles of her right. She had been willing to lose that arm to save a child; she had fought to have a biological replacement grown in situ; she’d been told there was only a small chance it would live. And there it was—full-size, fully functional. She would believe Ky was alive.

Stella Vatta, acting head of Vatta Transport’s branch office in Cascadia, and soon to be CEO of the entire corporation, sat quietly in the car beside her mother, Helen Stamarkos Vatta, current CEO of Vatta Enterprises, as they drove to Vatta’s rebuilt headquarters in Port Major. Breakfast had been surprisingly pleasant, she thought, and with a little luck the rest of her visit would pass with no familial drama. Her mother looked older, to be sure, as expected in a woman who had lost three of her four children and her husband in the attack on Vatta several years before, but Stella sensed that her mother wanted a peaceful reunion as much as Stella did.

They had touched lightly on the family business during breakfast, each congratulating the other on what had been accomplished since that great upheaval. Now, as the car moved along familiar streets and neared the new headquarters building, Stella felt her skin tighten.

“Do you drive yourself every day?”

“Yes, but not the same route. Or the same car.” Her mother turned right for two blocks, then left. “We’ll go past the front, circle around. The entrance is in back, as before.”

Vatta’s new headquarters building, on the same site as the bombed-out former one, had a similar façade on State Street but a different footprint on the block as a whole. Stella eyed the new building, recognizing subtle differences from the old headquarters where she had been so often. As they entered the private access, she looked around the large open court.

“What’s this? The building’s not nearly as big.”

“Couldn’t afford it,” Helen said. “We’d lost too much, and the banks balked. Over on State, as you saw, it looks much the same. Here on Trade, it’s not as tall and only half as deep. Also, having had the basements mined, we’ve handled the underground portions differently.”

The car shuddered to a halt; Stella’s expression stiffened. “What—”

“It’s all right.” Helen touched the control panel, entering the codes. The car rolled forward a short distance and stopped. “We’re going to the belowground entrance,” Helen said. The car sank without any vibration. Stella stared as they passed through what looked like solid pavement, coming to rest in a well-lit space with uniformed guards.

“It’s an application of tractor beam technology,” Helen said. “Illegal onplanet, but it has many advantages. An intruder driving into that courtyard will fall into one of several holes.” She opened her door. “Don’t worry; this vehicle’s programmed to stop safely short of the entrance. We do have plans to fill in that space; the foundations are poured, but that can wait.”

Stella watched her mother’s progress through the building with a mixture of grief and trepidation. Most of her time in the old headquarters had been with her father—a few times with both her parents—and what she remembered overlaid the present building like a transparency. Only the wall-stripe in the passages, the familiar red and blue against cream walls, was the same.

“The public entrance—almost as large as before—and the executive offices need to look prosperous,” her mother said as they rode the lift up from one floor to the next. “So those offices are up high and they seem to have windows to the outside. But the apparent windows on the outside aren’t, and on the inside the blast-shielded rooms have viewscreens.”

When the lift door opened, Helen nodded to the security station across from it—another change from the old days—and led the way to the CEO’s office down the hall. Stella followed, into an office smaller than her father’s had been, though still impressive. The viewscreens, framed as windows, gave the same view of State Street, the financial centers, and, at a little distance, the pink stone of the Presidential Palace.

Helen moved to a black-and-gold desk positioned diagonally and sat down, touching the active surface. Stella looked around; the room had changed in more than size. Her father’s oversize tikwood desk, its bold red-and-black grain gleaming above the two slabs of green marble that held it up: gone. Gone also the handsome hand-knotted carpets on the floor, the colorful tapestries and paintings from a dozen or more worlds, souvenirs he’d brought home when he still captained a Vatta ship. Everything bold, intense, colorful… like him. Gone, like him, in the explosion that destroyed the building and so many lives.

Now pastel prints of sailboats, seaside cottages, and flowery gardens with small children or furry, big-eyed pets hung on bland pale walls. Helen’s desk, half the size of Stavros’, looked delicate enough to be in a lady’s boudoir. Stella remembered it from their country house, as well as the two chairs that sat near it. The carpet, matching the walls, reinforced the bland, almost colorless effect.

Helen spoke without looking up. “I couldn’t match it, Stella. To have it like Stavros’ but not quite… I couldn’t stand that. I had to make it completely different. And this cost less.”

“I understand,” Stella said.

“Ky should be boarding the shuttle about now,” Helen said. “Grace was going to give us a signal—there it is—” She pointed to one light on the desk display. “She’s made it safely from her ship to the Spaceforce shuttle. It’ll be hours yet before she’s down. Might as well give you the grand tour.”

The rooms, the arrangement of departments, all different from her memory. All the new division heads were strangers, as were all the people sitting at desks working, entering or retrieving data. All equipment was new, and the rooms could have belonged to any business. Stella’s offices on Cascadia looked much the same, she realized.

They were in the small executive lunchroom when Stella saw her mother stiffen and set down her glass of white wine. She waited, dread rising up her chest like a tide. Her mother’s face had paled.

“The shuttle went down,” Helen said, her voice not quite steady.

“Ky?”

“They don’t know. It was in the ocean. They don’t have any location other than that.”

“So she could still be alive.”

“She could. But they—we—don’t know—”

“Was that Grace calling, or someone else?”

“Grace. She’s canceled all the ceremonies and said we should leave here. Go home, was her suggestion, before the news crews start stalking us.”

“Do we have a secure connection to the local ansible?” Stella asked. She put down her fork and pushed back her chair.

“Whom do you want to call?” And why, Helen’s expression said.

“My people on Cascadia need to know, and I want to let Toby’s parents know. If someone did this to kill Ky, they might be after Vatta as a whole again. All our ships and facilities need to be warned.”

Her mother stared. “Stella, wait! I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but you need to know now—”

“What?” Stella had already stood up; she paused. Her mother still sat, looking as if she might faint. “What is it?”

“I didn’t want to upset you—” Her mother shook her head. “Sorry. It’s about Osman. I can’t—we don’t know—”

“What?” Stella sat back down. “Just tell me!”

Her mother’s voice was low, choked with tears. “Osman. His sons. We mostly found girls. We were sure he had sons, but they weren’t in orphanages. Maxim—he’s one. There must be more; he may have had them nearby—”

Stella closed her eyes a moment as the information sank in. Boys—of course he would have kept them where he could influence them—the most promising ones anyway—and aim them like invisible weapons at the family.

“You’ve no idea how many? Or where?”

“No. Don’t be angry with me, Stella; I was going to tell you on this visit, but—”

“Never mind.” Stella opened her eyes; her mother’s face had crumpled as if made of wet paper, tears running down her face. Across the room one of the waiters hovered in the doorway, looking worried. “I’m not angry,” Stella went on, pitching her voice low. “But you need to dab some cold water on your eyes, and we need to get up and walk out together. Staff are noticing.”

That worked, as it had in other emergencies when her father had said it. Her mother took a long breath, touched her napkin to her eyes, and then took another long breath.

Stella went on. “I need to notify my office and have all Vatta facilities put on alert. I’m sure this will affect the legal procedures as well, so we’ll need to consult on that. Can you stand now?”

“Y-yes. Of course.” Her mother’s voice firmed; she moved to push back her chair.

Stella stood again and came around the table. Her own eyes were dry, burning dry, and her hands were steady as she helped her mother up. She caught the waiter’s eye. “Mother’s not feeling well; don’t worry.”

“A glass of something, Sera?”

“No thank you.”

As they cleared the door, Stella said, “The secured combooth?”

“That way.” Her mother nodded to the right.

“Please contact Legal and tell them we’ll need an immediate conference when I’m through here,” Stella said.

The combooth bore the familiar ISC logo, and Stella’s implant gave her the list of codes to use and the local time at the destination for each. Her own office now had round-the-clock coverage; she recognized the second-shift operator’s voice when he answered and identified herself.

“Yes, Sera Vatta?”

“We’ve had an incident here; I want you to raise the security status in the office and our docksides, and warn any Vatta ships insystem. Take all precautions.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. The shuttle with Admiral Vatta aboard has gone down; that’s all we know so far. But I have received information that makes tighter security essential. We must start checking DNA on all employees, and all applicants for employment, as of today. Priority emergency.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Osman Vatta’s other children,” Stella said. “I’ll explain when I get back.”

“Got that,” he said. “You do realize, Sera, that under Cascadian laws, you will have to do this openly, or get a judicial order to review existing employee medical records?”

She hadn’t. “Is anyone from Legal still in the office?”

“No, Sera. But I can give you Ser Brogan’s number; it’s not that late.”

“Please do,” Stella said. She read it into her implant. That would be another call. “Please do transmit to all the ships based from Cascadia that we now require a gene match against Osman Vatta’s DNA for all new hires; it will trigger a deeper background investigation.”

“Yes, Sera.”

“And thank you for your service this shift, Aldon. You have been most helpful.”

“My pleasure, Sera. May you be safe in your travels.”

Stella closed that link and opened another to Toby’s parents’ home. It was after midnight there, but she did not want to risk the boy’s safety by waiting; Toby’s genius was one of Vatta’s most precious resources. To her surprise, Toby himself answered and she heard the sounds of people talking in the background.

“Toby, it’s Stella Vatta. Are you all right?”

“Cousin Stella!” He turned from the com and she heard him speak to his parents. “It’s Cousin Stella! She didn’t forget!”

Didn’t forget? What was she supposed to have remembered? Then she did. The invitation to Toby’s graduation and after-party. It was on her calendar back on Cascadia—office and house both—but she hadn’t put it in her implant, and events had driven it from her mind.

“I’m glad the party’s still going on,” she said. “Congratulations, Toby.”

“Can I have that job now?”

The job she’d promised him when he finished his basic schooling, a lab of his own to tinker in. “Toby, right now I can’t. I’m on Slotter Key, and there’s a situation. Let me talk to your parents, either of them.”

“Oh. Sure.”

The next voice was Toby’s father. “Cousin Stella.”

“Cousin Ted. I’m sorry not to have called earlier, but we’ve had an emergency here on Slotter Key, and I’m raising the security level of all Vatta facilities.”

“Not another bomb—”

“No.” Not yet. She hoped not ever. “But you remember I was coming here to firm up some company legal stuff—”

“Yes.”

“My cousin Ky, as you know, is a major shareholder. She was to meet me here and formally agree to the rearrangements in person as required by Slotter Key law. Unfortunately, the shuttle she was on went down somewhere in the ocean. We must suspect sabotage until we know better, and I will not be able to leave here until we know whether she survived the crash.”

“Do we still—do you really think we still have enemies?”

“Yes,” Stella said. “And you need to take care, individually and in your department. From now on, all new hires must be tested for genetic linkage to Osman Vatta. And if your world permits, run the existing employees’ gene scans as well. If not, when I can, I’ll start dealing with the legality of that—”

“It’s not a problem here. Our laws take into account the frequent use of short-lived DNA reboots. Everyone, or everyone of a certain age, or—?”

“Anyone young enough to be Osman’s get,” Stella said. “To be safe, anyone under fifty.”

“I’ll see to that locally,” he said. “Do you want to talk to Toby again? He’s pretty excited. He tied for first in his class. Guess who with.”

“Zori,” Stella said. “Except perhaps in a tech class.” Zori, Toby’s girlfriend, was every bit as smart, but hadn’t had the same early education.

“Yes. He tutored her in that one and she tutored him in law.”

“Are they still so close, then?”

“Indeed. Sera Louarri seems resigned to it now, though we parents all think they should wait longer. Not that young love can’t succeed, but they’re still so young.”

Stella, remembering herself at that age, agreed. “Is Rascal still alive?”

“That dog! I know how important he is to Toby, but how did you stand him in an apartment? We have space and he’s still a menace.” A pause, then, “And still bringing in an income, so I shouldn’t complain.”

Stella laughed, surprising herself. “He’s a handful, true. Listen, I’m not going to tell Toby that Ky’s missing,” she said. “But I would like to talk to him.”

Toby came back on the line with Zori beside him, as she could hear. She heard about their academic triumphs, about Zori’s decision to go on to university, and Toby’s wish to go straight back to the lab. “We can do both,” he said, his voice dropping a tone. “We can live near the university—a lab can be anywhere, can’t it?”

“Just about,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until I get back to Cascadia, Toby. It shouldn’t be too long; you can work in the local Vatta lab until then, but I can’t set up a new one until the legal complications here are worked out.”

“That’s all right,” Toby said. “It’s just—I have some new ideas. Dad says not to talk about them, even on a secure line.”

“Good,” said Stella. “I’m sorry, Toby, but I must go—I have appointments waiting. When I get back to Cascadia we’ll talk again about a lab for you. Be well.”

“Be well, Cousin Stella.”

Despite the gravity of the shuttle crash, Stella realized she was smiling as she closed that link. It was almost impossible to be gloomy around Toby and Zori. Who to call next? Ser Brogan, certainly, though that could wait until she got to the house, since it was late on Cascadia Station and he was probably in bed. Grace, though she would be busy; certainly they needed to talk. She didn’t need the combooth for that. Rafe. Her breath came short. She had to call Rafael Dunbarger, current CEO of InterStellar Communications. Once he heard that Ky was in danger, he would do something—something that might be disastrous.

She should ask Grace first. No, she should most definitely not ask Aunt Grace. She didn’t have time for that; she had to contact Rafe, convince him not to intervene, before he heard about this via one of his clandestine communications networks and intervened on his own. She placed the call, after checking the time in his zone on Nexus II. Text, not voice: she did not want to talk to him; she had no answers for the questions he would ask. She tapped out the message, stark and plain. Before she was done, a knock on the combooth door distracted her. A screen came up, her mother on the typepad, fingers busy.

ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? COME OUT NOW. I NEED YOU.

She ended the call quickly and unsealed the booth.

Her mother stood nearby, talking to a tall, dark, distinguished-looking man with graying hair. Helen turned to her.

“This is Ser Targanyan, head of our Legal Department. He’s briefing me on the legal and tax problems we’ll face if Ky—or her body—can’t be found.”

The last thing Stella wanted to think about. But she recognized the need. “In a secure office,” she said. Targanyan nodded and led them to Legal, and his office within it.

“We’re shielded here,” he said. “I’m very sorry, Sera Vatta, Madam Chair, to bring this up when a search cannot even have been mounted, but we’ve already filed the preliminary papers for Sera Stella Vatta to become the CEO of Vatta Enterprises, Ltd., and whichever division is subordinate to have a subordinate executive. Here is the schematic Madam Chair and I had worked up—it will have to be approved, Sera Stella, when you take over.” A holo appeared between them. With a flick of his finger, he rotated it so that Stella could read the labels.

“It looks like a reasonable organization,” Stella said.

“Thank you, Sera. The difficulty is not in this so much—you can change it, of course, as you think best—but in the fact that we have this as part of the filing. And we set the date for a court appearance, based on your and your cousin Admiral Vatta’s presence here over the next several days. If she is not quickly found and transported here, I’ll have to change the court date, and we may need to re-file. That will delay things across your fiscal year boundary, with tax consequences. It might be better to let the court know now that we won’t make the hearing because of the accident.”

“We’ll need to talk to the Rector,” Stella said. As he started to speak, she shook her head. “I know, she’s not holding Ky’s proxy, and she hasn’t the shares to overturn any decisions my mother and I make, but she should be in the loop. This is a political and military matter now: Ky was coming down on a Spaceforce shuttle. Releasing information about the crash should at least have her permission.” And the sooner Grace knew that Rafe knew, the better, painful as that interview might be.

He frowned. “I see—yes, Sera, that is quite correct. But unfortunate.”

“The crash is unfortunate,” Helen said. “This is merely inconvenient.” Her gaze was steady, her eyes dry.

“Exactly,” Stella said. “And it may be that Grace can give us an answer immediately.” She hated using a skullphone, but in this instance its security features tipped the scale—no one could tap into Grace’s end of the conversation. She entered Grace’s office number, and argued her way through two layers of underlings before Grace came on.

“Yes, Stella, what?”

Stella ignored the tone. “Ser Targanyan at Vatta HQ Legal says we need to inform the court if Ky isn’t going to be there for the filing on the new organization. Ideally, today or tomorrow, because the judge is an idiot—”

“I did not say that,” Targanyan said, eyes wide.

“No, I did,” Stella said. “So, Aunt Grace, can we do that, or do you have the shuttle crash under some kind of security wrap?”

“It just came unwrapped,” Grace said. If she was as angry as she sounded, Stella was very glad not to be in the same building, let alone the same office. “I got a call from a media outlet wanting confirmation that the shuttle had gone down. And I have a strong suspicion who the leak came from, and he is—” A pause. Grace’s voice, now mellow as cream, finished with, “So, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to inform the court of a possible—no, call it a probable—delay in the filing of that paperwork. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have visitors.” The contact ended.

Stella smiled at Targanyan, who was still glaring at her. “See how quick that was?” she said. “Aunt Grace said go ahead and inform the court of a probable delay. You can do that right away. Mother and I need to return to the house for now; it’s a security matter.”

“Just a moment,” her mother said. “Stella, Ser Targanyan—please, I simply cannot go on as before. Stella, please take over. I’m—I’m done.” Her eyes filled with tears again. She stood up, wavering a little. Stella moved quickly to offer her arm.

“Come, Mother; I’ll help you downstairs.” She looked back to see Ser Targanyan openmouthed behind them.

“You enjoyed that,” Helen said when they were in the lift.

“Yes,” Stella said. “Yes, I did. Didn’t you tell me once to find something enjoyable in any situation?”

“No,” Helen said. “That was your aunt Grace.” And after a pause, “But I meant what I said. This is too much for me. I need you to take over. Now.”

“Of course I will. It’s understandable you’d want to recover from another shock.”

Stella opened the passenger door for her mother and took the driver’s side herself. Her mother entered the exit codes, but Stella drove them home.

She said nothing on the way back to the house, her imagination presenting a series of vivid horrific pictures: the shuttle exploding, flaming shards falling into the sea, Ky’s dismembered body among them. The shuttle, whole, slamming into the sea, fragmenting, sinking, never to be found. She tried to force her imagination to something better, but had no idea how that could happen… could a shuttle settle quietly onto the surface of a calm sea? Was that sea calm? The only pictures she’d ever seen of the Oklandan had been storm images, news stories of ships battered and limping into port somewhere to the north of Miksland.

“I really miss Onslow Seffater,” her mother said, into that silence. “Targanyan is such a difficult man.”

Stella struggled with the name for a moment then remembered her father’s legal adviser, whom she’d met on the embarrassing occasion of the family silver disappearing from the country house vault. Ser Seffater had been gentler than her father as he coaxed her to admit she’d given the gardener’s son the combination. The silver had been recovered, the gardener’s son having been as feckless in his theft as she had been in her trust in him, but no one ever forgot that lapse. She had become “that idiot Stella” to the family just as Ky had been “Ky… well, at least she’s not like that idiot Stella.”

“He was killed in the explosion, wasn’t he?”

“He was just coming into the building,” her mother said. “Blown to pieces. At least they could find the pieces. Your father—”

She knew about that, too. The upper floors had collapsed onto the lower floors and her father’s remains, all anyone found, were smears of blood and tissue identified as his by a gene scan.

“I hope we can at least find Ky’s…” Her mother let that trail off.

“She could be alive,” Stella said, over her own certainty that Ky must be dead. “She’s tough. I’ve seen her in emergencies.”

“Gravity has no pity,” her mother said. “Nor physics. Relentless…”

Stella glanced at her. Her mother’s gaze was straight ahead.

With the news that the Grand Admiral had arrived safely in Slotter Key nearspace, tension in SDF headquarters had relaxed somewhat. She was safe; the Slotter Key ansible was working; they had real-time communication with her if they wanted. When eight of the admirals then at HQ met in the Senior Officers’ Club and settled around the big table in the meeting room with their favorite evening drinks after dinner, they were ready for a pleasant few hours of chat and discussion. Issues of some weight were set aside while the Grand Admiral was away; they could relax. Padhjan, the admiral who had retired from Slotter Key Spaceforce to serve under Ky Vatta, answered questions about Slotter Key protocol.

“We’re not nearly as formal as Cascadians,” he said. “Fairly casual, in fact. I expect there might be a parade, and some politicians will shake her hand, but—”

“Sir! Sir!” The pale-faced young officer who flung open the door to the Senior Officers’ Club meeting room had a printout in his hand. Dan Pettygrew, facing the door, scowled at him.

“What is it?”

“It’s—it’s a message for Admiral Driskill, sir. It’s really urgent—it’s bad—I mean—”

“Spit it out, Hopkins,” Driskill said with a quick glance at Pettygrew. “Everyone in here has all the clearance they need.”

“It’s the admiral—Grand Admiral Vatta, I mean. She’s—she’s gone, sir.”

Pettygrew felt as if he’d been flash-frozen; for a moment he could not move or speak. The pleasant dinner he’d eaten earlier congealed in his stomach. Down the table, Admiral Hetherson of Moray System shifted in his seat; no one else moved. Pettygrew struggled and finally said, “What happened?” His own voice sounded strange to him.

“The shuttle crashed on Slotter Key. Into the ocean. They don’t think anyone survived.”

“No!” Argelos, seated on Pettygrew’s left, slapped a hand onto the table. “She can’t—it’s a mistake!” Then, before anyone else could answer, he went on. “What kind of shuttle? When? What kind of search have they done?”

“This is all we’ve got,” Hopkins said. Now the first was out, he seemed to realize he’d burst in on the senior admirals without the slightest courtesy. “It’s from Captain Pordre on Vanguard Two.” He handed the hardcopy to Admiral Burrage, the Cascadian.

Instead of reading it aloud, Burrage read it through silently, lips pursed, then handed it to Hetherson. As each admiral read it in silence, and passed it on up the table, Pettygrew felt his stomach knotting ever tighter. Ky Vatta could not be gone. Dead. She was the reason the Space Defense Force existed; she was the reason he was an admiral, and not just the captain of a single warship fleeing disaster. She had made them, willed SDF into being, commanded them in one after another engagement, against odds that no one else, he was sure, could have beaten. His own planet, Bissonet, though it had suffered badly under Turek’s domination, was free again, and though his immediate family had not survived, many people he’d known were alive because of her.

The transcript, when he saw it for himself, made it clear Pordre did not know whether anyone had survived or not, and that he was annoyed with Slotter Key’s official response. “I have been in contact with their Rector of Defense, also named Vatta, and she has assured me of her full support, but confirmed my suspicions of sabotage in the shuttle failure. We are parked in a more distant orbit; from here we can do nothing but wait for permission to land one of our own shuttles. I intend to remain in Slotter Key space until search and rescue operations have finished.”

Pettygrew handed the transcript on to Argelos and waited until it reached the far end of the table. When Driskill had read it, he spoke. “Hopkins, you will not speak of this to anyone else. Were you the one who decoded it?”

“Yes, sir. The comtech called for an admiral’s aide with the relevant security key; I was already in the area.”

“Good. Do you know where the others are?”

“Outside this door, sir, I expect.”

“This information will be shared in due time, but we need to communicate with Captain Pordre and with Slotter Key’s government to make more sense of it. Go tell the other aides to hold themselves in readiness—if any are not in the club, call them in. Do not reveal any of this message. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. I won’t, sir.”

“You may go.”

When the door shut behind him, Hetherson said, “I told her not to go back there. We needed her here. This is where she should be.”

Pettygrew fought down a surge of temper. Hetherson was a former senior admiral of Moray’s space navy and still considered himself senior to them all, purely by time in grade, though he had not been part of the fleet that fought at Nexus.

“She went, and now she’s been in a shuttle crash,” Pettygrew said, more harshly than he intended. “Until we know if she’s dead or alive, it’s our job to hold SDF together, in readiness for whatever comes, until she’s back.”

“Or she’s dead and one of us takes over.” Burrage looked at each of them in turn.

Trust Burrage to bring that up. The succession through the admirals had been a touchy issue ever since the end of the war. Each senior admiral had come from one of the contributing systems except Mackensee’s, since the mercenaries did not want to commit ships and personnel permanently to SDF. They had, however, recommended a couple of other systems from which SDF had acquired supplies, systems willing to host SDF bases, though they had not actually been in the war against Turek. Ky had agreed, citing the strategic benefit of having more allies in more places. But the original member systems wanted to be sure their admirals took precedence, and within those, Moray and the Moscoe Confederation pushed hardest to be named first in succession should anything happen to Ky Vatta.

Ky herself had chosen Pettygrew, when Argelos refused, on the basis of his lack of military background. And though most of the other admirals agreed he had been with her longest and knew her best, their system governments were less cooperative.

“Right now,” he said, before anyone else could start more argument, “we need to ensure that SDF continues to function at high efficiency. In Admiral Vatta’s absence, she named me the senior admiral. Admiral Padhjan, you know more about Slotter Key than the rest of us. You will be our liaison with Captain Pordre and with the Slotter Key government. Admiral Driskill, make discreet contact with InterStellar Communications and find out what they’re planning to do about this. I can’t imagine their CEO will be twiddling his thumbs.” Someone coughed; someone else twitched. They all knew Rafe Dunbarger and Ky Vatta had some kind of relationship. Pettygrew finished giving out assignments. He could almost feel the currents of curiosity, sorrow, ambition, resentment, flowing back and forth around the room, but he didn’t comment on that. “It’s 2300 now. It’ll take time to get more information, and I would imagine Slotter Key news agencies will be saying something soon. We’ll meet in Briefing One at 0830. Call me if you need me; we all need some sleep.”

By the time he reached his quarters, the brandy fumes had left him to a familiar cold, hollow feeling, now colder and more hollow than before. He did not want to believe she was dead. She had survived her ship being blown apart around her; surely she would survive a shuttle crash. But how many near misses could someone survive?

And most of all, what if she was dead and he had to take over the SDF and hold it together until the next major attack? Could he do it? He was older; he had assumed he’d die first, that his appointment as her successor was a courtesy, a recognition of their long cooperation. But if he did not, who would? Hetherson, who had never actually been in combat, who was a senior admiral because he had run the shipbuilding program on Moray? Hot-tempered Driskill, a competent combat commander under Ky, but only in one battle, the defense of Nexus II, often at odds with both civilians and military? Padhjan, older, military-trained, perhaps the obvious choice? But he knew that Moray, Cascadia, Nexus, and Bissonet would not consent to another ruling admiral from Slotter Key, not right away. And he knew that with no obvious enemy like Turek, governments were beginning to question whether SDF needed to be so big and expensive… if it was still needed at all.

And what should he do about Ky’s flagship, still in Slotter Key nearspace? Recall Pordre? Leave him there? He left his quarters and headed for the headquarters communications center. “Get me Captain Pordre on Vanguard Two,” he said.