Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER FIFTEEN}

On the way into base the next morning, Sergeant Major Morrison stopped by the vet clinic to see how Ginger was doing and bring her a treat.

“She’s doing well, considering. I wish someone would invent a regen tank for dogs—but their biometrics are just too different.”

Ginger whined and pushed her nose against the front of the cage. The bright-pink wrapping over the splint looked three times as big as her other legs. Morrison murmured to her and pushed a treat through the bars of the crate. Ginger gobbled it and licked Morrison’s fingers.

“How’s the other thing going?” Kris asked.

“Not as well as I’d like. Heard from MacRobert this morning?”

“He’s over on the other side with Jo-Jo. I’ll walk you through.”

MacRobert, measuring rations into numbered bowls in the facility’s big feed room, looked up as they entered. “Ah, Doc—how’s the Red Queen this morning?”

“Doing well. Owner would like to discuss her rations with you.” She took the bowl he had just filled and put it on a rolling cart with others. “I’ll take these out to Jo-Jo. Owner has some special treat she’d like to incorporate in Ginger’s feed.”

“Sure, Doc,” MacRobert said. Turning to Morrison, he said, “Sera?” as Kris rolled the cart out the door and shut it. Then he grinned. “Safe space. Here’s what’s I know at the moment. Someone did indeed kick Immigration into action. High-ranking military, but I don’t have a name yet, or any connections other than the obvious. They’ve tied the citizenship thing and the murder accusation up tight. Did you hear about the attack on Stella Vatta yesterday?”

“No. What happened?”

“Supposedly Immigration, but Immigration’s not confirming, rammed Stella’s vehicle as she was arriving home. Ky, Stella, and Rafe agree it was probably an attempt to get into the house and grab Ky.”

“They want her unable to plan a rescue of the other survivors,” Morrison said.

“Exactly. Given that attack, and the near-certainty that someone in the hospital’s bent, the Rector’s medical team has agreed that she’ll be safer somewhere else. We’ll take her out under cover and with luck Dihann won’t figure out she’s gone for another day or so. Plenty of time to get her into a safe place. There’s an apartment open in one of the towers about two blocks from where your off-base is; it’s been swept for her now. She wants to see you; you’ll be on the approved list.”

“Why not put her in my apartment?” Morrison asked. “Then anyone following me will see me going in and out of my own apartment—irregularly, as I do. I can use the other one you’ve rented if she wants to be completely alone.”

“She’s not going to be completely alone,” MacRobert said, a grim tone in his voice. “She’ll have permanent in-residence security, like it or not. But that’s a good idea, Sergeant Major, just for the first few days. Thank you for the offer.”

“It’s not that big,” Morrison said, thinking of the “in-residence security.”

“It’s big enough,” MacRobert said. “We have seen the layouts of all the apartments in that building. Since it’s known your office and quarters were hacked into, doing a sweep there shouldn’t arouse interest. And I’m presuming you had military-grade communications put in when you took the lease?”

“Yes.” Morrison paused, then went on. “Have you found out more about the personnel who transported and guarded the survivors—or the ones who will?”

“All taken from a group that did not join the rest of the those who’d been under Greyhaus’s command when that group went north for cold-weather training this past summer. Argument for using same group was possible contamination/infection. We are concerned that a flag officer arranged both their assignment and Greyhaus’s ‘accident.’”

“Do you know which flag officer?”

“You don’t need to know that at this time, Sergeant Major.” MacRobert smiled at her, an unexpectedly wistful look. “Thank you for the offer of your apartment; I’ll let you know if it’s feasible later today. And I can certainly adjust your dog’s rations to accommodate a favorite treat. Have some with you?”

Morrison took the sack of treats from her bag, fished out the duplicate key to her city apartment, dropped it in with the treats, then handed the treat sack to MacRobert. “I meant to give you that anyway,” she said. “For ease of communication.”

“Been a pleasure doing business,” MacRobert said. “The doc will contact you.”

Morrison left through the clinic door, stopped to let Ginger lick her fingers again, and went outside, thinking hard all the way. Who—which flag officer—would have the authority to assign a subgroup of Greyhaus’s command? Slotter Key’s military had a command structure that was not rigidly hierarchical, as a safety feature, she’d been taught. From recruit to one of a branch’s commanders, through the Senior Command Circle to the President, it was hierarchical. But there was a side branch, established shortly after the Unification War, described to her as a workaround when there was something seriously wrong with the main command structure. As there seemed to be now. The concern had been the sudden influx of volunteers from the former anti-Unification areas, a mutiny that could lead to another war.

It hadn’t happened. Both Dorland and Fulland thrived with Unification. So now, all this time later, why would it? Except, on the evidence from the three fugitives and Ky Vatta, someone had built a secret military base, trained a secret military force. It had been building up for… none of them knew how long. And clearly the target of the shuttle attack was the former Commandant of the Academy.

She unlocked and entered her vehicle. Started toward the base, still thinking. Her comunit chimed; she clicked on the vehicle’s sound system. “Sergeant Major Morrison,” she said.

“Sergeant Major, this is Major Hong. Where are you now?”

“Leaving Petsational—I dropped by to check on Ginger. I’m on the way to base.”

“There’s been more vandalism at your base residence, and your clerk reports that the seal we put on your office door was broken last night. Were you on base at any time last night?”

“No, I spent the night in the city.”

“I need to brief you on all this; if your schedule permits, could you come to my office? Security 2-351?”

“Just a second, sir.” Morrison flipped to her schedule. What she had was the work left over from two days ago, and there were no urgent requests from anyone. “Yes, sir; I’ll park in my regular spot—”

“Don’t. You’ll be stopped at the gate; I’ll have transportation for you there.”

This sounded more and more serious. Even dangerous. “Yes, sir.”

At the gate, she pulled into the designated parking lot just inside, and locked her vehicle. Major Hong was in the one that pulled up behind hers. He said nothing as he drove her to the headquarters complex; she followed him to his office. Once inside he turned on a scanning device first, then a jamming device, locked the door, and then waved her to a chair.

“Yes, things are this bad,” he said. “It turns out that for a unified planet with no declared enemies, we seem to have a lot of spying going on. Of course, corporations spy on one another, and presumably sometimes on the military, hoping to figure out how to get us to buy their proposed weapons systems, but this is different.” He unlocked and opened a drawer in his desk, and passed her a fat file in a battered green-and-black cover with EXTREME SEC on the front. “What do you know about the Unification War?”

Coincidence is a bitch, Morrison almost said. “Only what we were taught in military history classes, sir.”

“Incomplete,” he said. “Did you know, for instance, that the Rector was involved, as a civilian? And was later tried as a war criminal?”

“What? But that’s—I mean, she’s old, but she’s not that old.”

“She was very young. A teenager. On a visit to friends of her family in Esterance, on Fulland.”

Morrison nodded. “I’ve been to Esterance several times, visiting our base.”

“Yes. When she was there, she met a young man, and they started spending time together, as young people do, and he got her involved. Some street demonstrations, that kind of thing. Then she disappeared.”

Morrison tried to imagine the Rector as anything but the formidable old lady with gimlet eyes and a legendary memory, but couldn’t. What had she looked like as a girl? Like Ky Vatta? Surely not Stella; she was too short and too dark.

“Afterward—when the war ended—she was brought back to Port Major as a prisoner, under arrest for war crimes.”

“I don’t—it must have been a mistake.”

“Apparently not. You will find… what may be evidence, or not, but was accepted as fact at her trial. Pictures. Testimony of alleged witnesses. They could have executed her. Her family petitioned to have her declared insane; she spent years locked in a hospital for the criminally insane. Then her family took custody, promising that she would never intrude into politics again, and—look where she is.”

“In a hospital—oh. You mean she’s Rector. But her family died, and the President himself asked her—”

“He didn’t know. Records were sealed. But it occurs to me that her family dying opened the door for her. And there’s something else. She rescued a child during that war—it was one of the things her family claimed showed remorse. Guess who that was.”

“I haven’t a clue,” Morrison said.

“The former Commandant, Armand Esteban Burleson.” Morrison had never heard anyone use the name before. “He testified at the hearing that saved her from execution—as a child, his testimony wasn’t given much weight. But some years later, he testified again at the petition to have her transferred to her family’s custody, when he was a military officer himself. And that did carry weight. They stayed in casual contact over the years. After the attack on Vatta, he assigned Master Sergeant MacRobert to liaise with her. There was speculation that she used MacRobert to persuade the Commandant to provide a suicide means to President Quindlan, because she’d lost an arm and couldn’t do it herself.”

“That seems far-fetched, sir,” Morrison said. She had opened the folder; the first page had only the file number and a repetition of the security level. The second had the ID photo of the young Grace Vatta—Graciela Miranda Vatta was her full name. She’d had a healthy young teenage face, striking mostly for its lively, intelligent expression. She had been happy and relaxed—not that common for ID photos. Not beautiful, but pretty in the way healthy young women often were. The next photo was different—a blurry image of a thin young woman holding a long-barreled firearm—too blurry to tell much about her or the firearm—while moving through thick vegetation. Face in profile, slightly blurred; it might have been Grace or someone else. A third—obviously using the firearm, the muzzle blast clearly visible, and the face in focus. Definitely Grace. Angry, determined, expressing—could that be contempt? A fourth, of the same face as the first, but different—older, gaunt, lips tight, brows down in a scowl, eyes narrowed and—even in that still image—hostile, dangerous.

“It does. And I’m not sure the speculation has any basis beyond those who hate Grace Vatta for what she did in the past. You know, the family she took refuge with after the gas attack—the man is from Esterance. His family was active in the war.”

“So—are you suggesting that he set up the gas attack?”

“No. What investigation we’ve had time for says he’s clean. And beyond the Rector’s history, there’s this rogue element of our military that’s been on and off Miksland for years, in a base deliberately hidden from satellite surveillance. Whose members, even with their commander dead, are surprisingly hard to talk to. They’re on maneuvers, they’re sick, they’re… anything but sitting down with the right officers to explain what the farkling hells they were doing down there, and why. And who’s behind it.”

Major Hong, it was clear, was close to losing his temper. Morrison waited. He took a deep breath, blinked once, and said, in a calmer voice, “You visited the Rector after she was in the hospital.”

“Courtesy visit, yes, sir, but I didn’t get to see her. I brought some flowers and a card, and the clerk at the intake desk said she wasn’t allowed visitors. I gave him the card and the flowers; he said he’d take care of it.”

“But you didn’t physically see her?”

“No, sir. I was told she wasn’t allowed visitors.”

“Ah. Your name was on the list of those who came to the hospital. It wasn’t clear who actually had access to her room. There’s a Colonel Dihann who should have had that list but claims he doesn’t. Another break in the chain.”

Morrison wasn’t sure which way Hong was going with all this, and decided that asking would be the simplest way to find out. “Sir, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

He shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure myself. But that file—” He nodded toward it. “—was on your desk in your base quarters when we got the alarm and went to check it out. Right on top, out in the open, where anyone could have gotten it and read it, since the door had been broken in. I’m going to guess that you didn’t leave it there.”

“No, sir. I’ve never seen it before. I didn’t know it existed, or that Rector Vatta had been involved in that war.”

He nodded. “I believe you. But someone wanted to make it look like you’d left a classified file lying there out in the open. Your safe was open, with the files you’d put in it—at least I suspect those were the same, as they all refer to your recent assignments—still there.”

“They broke into my safe? It’s military-issue, approved and installed by your division; that’s why I’m authorized to use it in my quarters!”

“Yes. I checked your authorization, of course. Whoever this is had an official passcoder, because they didn’t actually break the safe, just opened it. Now, here’s what I want you to do, because I can’t. I want you to contact Ky Vatta and let her know you have important information about the Rector. I will contact the Rector. She will probably want to talk to you, after that. On my authorization, you may tell Ky Vatta anything I’ve told you about this entire situation. Including my difficulty in contacting Ky Vatta’s fellow survivors.”

“She’s not… a member of Slotter Key military anymore, sir.”

“I know that.” The muscle in his jaw jumped again. “But I also know she knows what really happened in Miksland, and knows her aunt. Something needs to be done about both, and she’s the link between them. Or she could be. And I’m damn sick and tired of the shilly-shallying going on here. I know what my duty is, and I’m going to do it whatever—somebody—says.” He took another long breath. “So—you will meet with Ky Vatta, at your mutual convenience, and if that file should happen to travel with you, so much the better. She may know about it already.”

“Yes, sir,” Morrison said. “The other files that were in my quarters?”

“Here.” He pulled out a stack and handed it over. “You’ll want them. Your base quarters are off-limits for another ten days. I hope this time we’ve got enough surveillance on it to catch anyone who tries to break in again, even if they have every key in the box.”

Morrison thought about telling him the Rector might be sharing her city apartment, but was he cleared to know where the Rector was?

“What’s the status of my base office?”

“Closed today and tomorrow while I install better monitoring equipment in hopes that, again, we can catch whoever’s getting in.” He grinned. It was not a happy grin, more like Ginger showing teeth. “As you know, Sergeant Major, every department has its own internal… dominance disputes, you might say. I do not intend to drag you into ours, but will confess that the colonel you met at the hospital is neither my boss nor a friend of my boss. That’s all I can say.”

“Yes, sir,” Morrison said, tucking the information into a rapidly growing mental file of things that might be useful someday.

“I’m giving you all my contact numbers—well, all the ones I can. I’ve already arranged for calls to your clerks to be transferred to their skullphones, so they can let you know when other things show up. Everyone in the building knows that your office was illegally entered—twice—and that your quarters on base were also entered, vandalized, and entered again. They know you’re not supposed to visit your office or your quarters without my permission and an escort. The flags have all contacted me, and I’ve explained what I feel they need to know. So nobody expects you to be there. My advice—and this is not an order, but advice—is that you quietly go someplace you’re not expected to be, read that file on the Rector, deal with the other files as you normally would, and contact me when you’re done. I can have my people remove anything from your quarters you need—”

“Thank you, Major, but my city apartment’s pretty well stocked. With my dog in the clinic, I don’t have to worry about space for her. Though—this may be trivial, but there’s an open sack of dog food in the pantry, and a box of dog treats. I could take that by the vet clinic; it’s a brand they use.”

“I can have it picked up now, and you can take it with you. Save everyone a trip.”

And she’d have an excellent excuse to go by Petsational again, where he knew she’d been before. “Thank you, sir. That would be helpful.”

Once back in her own vehicle, she contacted the clinic and told them she was bringing in some feed that had been in her quarters.

“You don’t have to do that,” Kris said.

“I know, but I really don’t want open dog food in there. Attracts pests. Be there in a few.”

She also contacted her clerks. “Where are you set up?”

“We’re over in Building H, Procurement. That Major Hong brought our files and everything and there’s a safe, but it’s awfully cramped, Sergeant Major. There’s barely room for two desks and only one of us can move in or out at a time.”

“I’ll be working off-base,” Morrison said. “I can’t get back in my quarters, either, so I’ll either be downtown or with friends who live closer. Anything urgent right now?”

“No, Sergeant Major. Nothing that needs your ID, just routine. I was wondering—there’s really not a lot to do—”

“If you can take turns? Yes. Half-hour overlap to change over; keep Major Hong informed who’s there and where the other one is, in case he needs you. And me.”

“Thanks, Sergeant Major. We’ll double up the moment there’s a load.”

Grace Vatta eyed the plan for her transfer from hospital to apartment with suspicion. “Why does it have to be a military ambulance?”

“Because they’re in and out of here all the time,” MacRobert said. “You’re the only civilian patient here, and if we use a civilian ambulance it will be obvious who’s inside it.”

“And why are we going there?” She pointed at the address of Sergeant Major Morrison’s apartment in the city. “I thought you’d found a place in the Towers.”

“I did. Morrison will be staying there instead. She’s from Esterance, Grace. So her offer for you to use her apartment is either exceptionally generous or exceptionally devious… and in either case gives us an opportunity to check her out. She’d been ordered to leave her quarters on base—” He shrugged.

“Ordered before or after her offer to me? By whom?”

“A Major Hong. And I’m not sure when. Ready?”

“Very,” Grace said. “And I don’t recognize the name Morrison from Esterance.”

“That’s good.” MacRobert beckoned to the guard at the door.

To Grace’s relief, her transport went smoothly. The only complication was the chill drizzle now falling as another front moved past, and that turned out to be an advantage. The ambulance crew pulled the retractable hood up over the gurney, and it fogged with her breath. She heard MacRobert speak to the door guard. “Sergeant Major Morrison’s auntie—I believe she called?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Here—you’ll want the service elevator—”

She saw and heard no one else but the two handling the gurney and MacRobert on the way to the apartment. Once inside, Mac helped her sit up and move from the gurney to a chair; she thanked the ambulance attendants as they wheeled the gurney back out to the hall. She looked around. Perfectly tidy and clean, as she’d expected, but with a few touches of comfort and color that improved on beige walls and mid-brown carpeting. The living room sofa was a pull-out bed in a pleasant blue; the chair she sat on matched it. A low bookcase ran under the long window; the daylight coming in was chill.

“Security glass,” MacRobert said. “View’s not great, but it’s not a hospital room, either.”

The bedroom had a smaller window, bed, chair, chest of drawers, dresser. Blue-and-red small-patterned bed cover; a blue blanket with a red stripe folded neatly at the foot. Grace sat on the bed. Firm, but not hard. Pillows soft but not smothering. The closet held uniforms, with polished shoes and boots racked below, a uniform coat. In the kitchen, the foods in the cooler and shelves were the only sign of luxury.

A second bedroom—or office, as it was furnished—had a desk, a bookcase, a desk chair, and a seat that also unfolded into a narrow bed.

“So I can get some work done,” Grace said. “I’ve got to keep digging into that mess with the other Miksland survivors.”

“That’s why Sergeant Major Morrison wants to talk to you. At least, that’s the ostensible reason. She’s talked to Ky.”

“How secure is this place?” Grace looked around.

“Secure as our people could make it early this morning. I had it swept. It would be better if we could use Rafe and Teague, but if they leave the house they’ll be arrested.”

“So Morrison and Ky are working together?”

“Not exactly. They’ve had only one meeting before today and it was short. Morrison can’t work openly with Ky without higher authorization. And she did sign off on the committee report suggesting permanent confinement for the survivors. She felt that her own freedom of movement and even life were at risk if she didn’t, and that it was more important to make it back to Port Major—and you.”

“She’ll be here later today?”

“Yes. And the apartment we rented for you is where she’ll stay, at least for a few days. Her life may also be in danger, so she, too, will have security coverage in that building.”

Grace settled herself at the desk and looked at the files MacRobert had delivered, the service records of all the personnel who had been on the shuttle, including—to her surprise—Ky’s record from her entrance to the Academy to the day she resigned from it. She’d never hunted it down; she knew Ky’s father hadn’t asked to see it, either.

Curiosity overtook her. The picture from Ky’s application misted her eyes. She had been so young, so enthusiastic, so much like Grace herself at the same age. They’d both left home hoping for adventure—and for both, that adventure had involved tragedy and loss. Well. The past didn’t change. She flipped the pages quickly, past pictures of Ky as a first-year, second-year, third-year cadet, solemn and determined. Not as bad a first three years away from home as her own had been; she was glad of that. Rankings always high—first or second in every class. Honor cadet her final year, pictured with the loop of gold braid on her shoulder. And then, at the end, her handwritten letter of resignation stapled to the back of the terse explanation for it, what she had done. She had jumped the chain of command, gone outside it to help a junior cadet she’d been mentoring. A political embarrassment followed.

“She’s more like me than I thought,” Grace said as Mac came in with a cup of tea for her, one of the sergeant major’s expensive teas.

“You didn’t know the story?”

“I knew her father’s version of it. Gerry—her father—was so angry. He gave me a look and said, ‘Don’t ask any questions. I can only hope she’s as tough as you said she was when you advised me to let her apply, and that she survives.’” Grace sipped the tea and set the cup back down. “I told him she would. But since he hadn’t told me the whole story, I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know what had happened.”

“But the press—”

“I didn’t watch the media then. I didn’t know what she’d supposedly done, or if she had actually done it or been framed.” She drank the rest of the tea. “I should have asked and found out before she came back. Our meeting—brief as it was—felt off somehow and I now see it’s because she thought I knew, and then realized I didn’t, and interpreted my not knowing her own way.”

“I covered for you,” MacRobert said. “Told her what you’d been dealing with, missing the Commandant, fighting with the various commands to push for rescue.”

“Kind of you,” Grace said. “And I’ll know the next time I see her. She can’t leave the house, can she?”

“No, but Stella can. And as your niece, Stella has a family reason to see you and carry word back and forth.”

“Mac, do you know everything about my past?”

“Everything?”

“You know what I mean. I know you know I was in a psychiatric hospital for years, but—do you know all the background?”

“All of it—no. I know you were in the Unification mess, and bad things happened, and you were considered mentally unfit—with a suggestion that you had previously had, if not a breakdown, some instability.”

“My defense team thought that might mitigate my sentence. And it did, eventually. Mac, somewhere in the military is the file on me. I wasn’t officially military, but that’s who gathered the information, and supported the charges against me. I don’t know myself exactly how my father’s legal team got me off—and later got me out of that mental hospital. He didn’t tell me—he told my brother, who became my guardian after my father died. My brother didn’t tell me, either, and I didn’t ask. Then he died unexpectedly, of a fever. I asked his older son, Stavros, but he said he knew nothing about it. But what I feel now is that my crimes—and they were crimes—have come back to haunt the family.”

“So are you going to tell me?”

Grace looked at him. No condemnation so far in his gaze; he had not shrunk from any of the things he knew she’d done to protect the family in the years since the big attack on them. He knew she’d killed. He approved of those kills. He was not going to approve of the old ones, from the Unification War.

But she had to tell him. He deserved to know. Was this the right time?

“Did the Commandant ever tell you why he asked you to liaise with me?”

“Sure. The Vatta family had been helpful to him when he was a boy, an orphan from Fulland. Brought him in, educated him, paid his entrance to the Academy. He considered you to be smart and tough, politically astute, the best contact among the Vattas but one that wouldn’t be obvious to others.”

“I saved his life in the war. He was just a kid. His parents…” She looked away, at the small window with rain smearing the glass. “His parents died in a firefight. I found him hiding. Brought him along.” After a pause, she said the words. “I killed his parents.” This time, when she looked at Mac’s face, his eyes widened, then closed for a moment.

“Did he know?”

“No. He knew there were shots; crawled to the closet where I found him hiding. He didn’t see it; it was at night. The others—the others I was with wanted to kill him, too, but I was sick—sick of the whole thing—and I—I was their commander; I said we were taking him along and the person who hurt him would die. They believed me. With reason.”

MacRobert nodded. “I believe you, too.” He sighed. “Well, we’d better take another look at the Vance family, and Morrison’s, before you’re alone with either.”

“Mac… I’m tired of the hunt. If it takes my death to ease their pain and let everything die down—”

“You weren’t the only one tried as a war criminal, on either side.”

“No, but I’m still here. Most have died. I don’t know how much of this mess is vengeance aimed at me, or why nothing for decades until now, but I want Ky and Stella and even that idiot Maxim to be able to live good lives. Easy choice.”

“No. You never went in for easy choices, and I won’t approve it now. You can still do good—you already have; the military is better off now because of you, and you’re the only one who can do certain things.”

Grace pulled herself up in the chair. “All right. While I can do good. But, Mac, I’ve had death sitting on my shoulder for days, and I don’t expect to make another ten years.”

“Die of poison or die of blade or gun, but don’t die of self-loathing,” Mac said. He squeezed her shoulder, then picked up the empty teacups and walked out.

Grace folded her hands and thought about it. Was it the near-death of toxins and coma that jarred loose these vivid memories? Not yet all of them; there were still holes, still sudden stabbing pain in her head when she tried to remember. But vivid enough. From the face that first brought her into it, the boy she’d met in a café, her third day in Esterance. She’d felt so mature, shopping by herself in a strange city on another continent—another country, actually, as it was then. She’d bought her lunch, found a table, and then—he’d spoken to her. Politely, but with interest. They’d talked. They’d agreed to meet again.

And only thirteen days later he’d been killed, right beside her, dead in the street with his guts falling out of his belly, and people yelling and screaming and someone else grabbed her arm, dragged her away, made her run for safety.

Safety. Nothing had been safe from then on. Angry, frightened, disgusted, shocked—she had survived, using all the intelligence, cunning, and physical ability she possessed. She’d made it back to her parents’ friends’ house a few days later, hungry, scared, exhausted, hoping to find them, hoping to be rescued, but the house was a shattered ruin, with no sign of Gretchen and Portia and Miran. After that, in a city where both sides had roving gangs of supporters, she’d joined one at the point of a gun and ended up… standing before a court to explain how a well-brought-up daughter of a wealthy, respectable merchant family could have any excuse for what she had done.

She had no excuse. Girls like her were supposed to be immune to the seductions of handsome strangers, violent emotions, even the pressures imposed by captors. She was, according to the court, a monster who deserved death—and she’d expected it, until the day she was taken from her cell and transferred to a facility for the criminally insane, where she was drugged, probed, subjected to “reconditioning” for years. Endless years, they’d seemed. When finally the years and exhaustion quieted the turmoil inside, and suicide attempts led only to more pain, she grew numb, unresisting.

She looked at her hands. One still bore the scars—faded now—of wounds inflicted in that war. The other, almost indecently young with its smooth, unmarked skin still soft, the arm above it also young, full-sized now… had been lost to another attack and regrown from her own cells. Both her hands and arms had looked like that, before… everything. “I was beautiful,” she whispered, looking at the young arm. “I was.”

But not after. Her father, her mother had exclaimed over her, the one time they were allowed to spend a short time with her. “You look so old,” her mother had said, patting her cheeks. She had flinched; her mother had looked frightened. Her father had shaken his head. “Graciela… I don’t understand how… why. You were so pretty.” Meaning, You are so ugly now. Meaning, You ruined yourself, your value to the family.

And somewhere a file still existed, she was sure, with pictures of her young face. When she was finally released, when she could finally get to the family homes again, after her father and uncle died, she had destroyed every one of the portraits made during her girlhood. She could not bear to see them. She could not bear to answer more questions.

She pushed herself upright again, and opened the files on her desk. Enough of that. If retribution came, she would accept it. In the meanwhile, she would do what good she could for others.

The inquiries she’d put in place before the attack had produced only partial, unsatisfactory answers. The Miksland survivors were listed as “disabled, pending disposition” in two responses, but in the most recent—two days old—their status had changed to “disabled permanently, custodial care necessary.” That sounded ominous. No location was given. She had eight requests from family members and three from official sources for their location and information about them. Sergeant McLenard’s wife wanted to know why he wasn’t answering her mail. Sergeant Cosper’s father angrily demanded to know where his son was and why he hadn’t come home on leave. The family court judge dealing with the guardianship of Tech 1st Class Betange’s siblings wanted to know why Betange was ignoring the legal summons to appear. A prosecutor wanted to know when and where charges would be filed in the murder of Master Sergeant Marek, because Marek’s wife was considering a civil suit. Still another wanted copies of all the evidence returned to Port Major by Admiral Vatta, to see if she could be held responsible for the shuttle crash.

Still no sign of where that evidence had gone after Ky turned it in. She called her office and asked her clerk to send her Ky’s debriefing statement, only to be reminded that it, like the items Ky said she’d delivered to Spaceforce, had disappeared as if it never existed.

Time to call Ky directly. She recognized Teague’s voice when he answered. “Teague, is Ky there?”

“Good morning, Rector. Yes, she’s here. You wish to speak with her?”

She could tell from his voice that he was in a mischievous mood, and she had no time for mischief. Mayhem, perhaps, but not mischief. “Yes,” she said. “I need to ask her a question.”

Ky sounded tense. “Aunt Grace? Why didn’t you call my skullphone?”

“Because I might want to talk to others in the house without a separate call,” Grace said. “Do you remember who you gave your initial statement to, that first week?”

“Um… I’ll check.” A very brief pause. “My implant says it was a Colonel Vertres, in Commandant Kvannis’s office. Is that missing, too?”

“Yes. We should have had a copy—I asked Spaceforce HQ for it, but they said they couldn’t find it.”

“I have my own recording of it. Would that help?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Bless the child, she’d had the sense to do that. Even a low-density implant recording was evidence. “If you can transfer it, I can print it out here.”

“Print—”

“Easier for old eyes to read, but also hardcopy to send elsewhere as evidence. What about the other items?”

“I read only part of Greyhaus’s log, Aunt Grace, so my implant has a record only of those pages. I should’ve made another copy but—we were rushing to find a way out before the bad guys came.”

“And the evidence of the shooting—do you have any independent copy of that?”

“No… but I have a witness.”

Grace’s mind blanked for a moment, as it had been doing since the gas attack, but then she remembered: the fugitives Ky had talked about, that she herself had not yet met. “One of them was there?”

“Yes. But we have to keep them hidden. The military wants them—you know that.”

“Yes. Ky, I have to admit, the gas attack seems to have left some blanks in memory. The doctors said it might. I tested okay on their cognitive exams, or they wouldn’t have let me out, but the questions weren’t complex. I need you to tell me things again if I don’t remember.”

“Of course,” Ky said.

“Just a hint—back up everything about your time in Miksland in some other form than your implant. I can understand if you don’t want to trust it to me, but—”

“Agreed. I’ll run external backups—you know that takes awhile—from leaving my flagship to the present. Duplicate backups.” Ky sounded more cheerful suddenly.

“Mac says you’ve met Sergeant Major Morrison?”

“Yes, she was here, very briefly.”

“Stella has reason to visit me, so if you have information for Morrison, or she for you, I can be the exchange point. Is Stella there?”

“No, at the office.”

“Then let me speak to Rafe, please. I want to ask him some security questions.”

Rafe, when he answered, sounded calmer than she’d ever heard him. “We can’t get back in your house yet,” he said. “Our legal situation is still serious, and we’ve been told by counsel to stay put. What can I help you with that doesn’t involve stepping outside?”

“Ky has data on her implant that duplicates what she reported officially—in reports now missing. I need to know how far we can push an inquiry based on her data—especially who she gave the first reports to, who took custody of the physical evidence, if she knows that. She’s going to be downloading her implant data and making copies; can you start working on the investigation from that?”

“Of course,” Rafe said. “Even one or two names would give us something. Um—there’s another possible source. The Mackensee troops that pulled her and the others out of that mountain valley may know—might have seen and even recorded—where the hard evidence she left with the others changed hands. You could contact them about it. She told me she left the recorder with the data on the shootout she had with Marek with the sergeant who was there and the tech who did the recording, when Mackensee flew her up to meet with us.”

“Excellent,” Grace said. “I didn’t know that, and Mac has a contact with Mackensee, so he should be able to find out if anyone noticed. It’s a chance, anyway.”

She called Mac in and told him what Rafe had suggested. He nodded. “I’ll contact Master Sergeant Pitt. It may take awhile to hear back. I doubt they’re out of FTL flight on the way home.”

“Whatever we can find out helps,” Grace said. “Ky’s downloading her implant’s recording of the interview she gave a Colonel Vertres on Commandant Kvannis’s staff that first week she was back here.”