Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR}

Ky made it back to Port Major and the Joint Services base shortly before dawn, exhausted from two nights with hardly any sleep and a lot of hard work. She would rather have been home in bed, but General Molosay insisted that all involved in the rescue of survivors stay on base for the time being. Ky wasn’t happy about being held at the base—for security reasons, they said, because of undefined unrest in the city itself. The Vatta residence had been attacked, she heard; Stella had had only minor injuries, but serious damage had been done to the house. She wasn’t happy about the condition of two of the survivors. Both Hazarika and Ennisay had been overmedicated, she was told, and might have residual damage when and if they woke up. Yamini appeared to be doing well now, but was still confined to bed. All had signs of abusive treatment, and all were now in the hospital. Some already had visitors; the families were streaming in, alerted by General Molosay that their lost had been found. She’d seen Betange’s siblings, escorted by a shy much older uncle, fall on him hugging and crying.

But Rafe had not reappeared, and her attempts to call his skullphone or the cranial ansible had no response. She wanted a shower, a change of clothes, a quiet meal sitting down somewhere, but most of all she wanted to know what had happened to Rafe. Teague had arrived in Port Major shortly after midnight with the next-to-last group, driving a vehicle some relative of Rodney’s had lent him, with the three survivors crammed into too small a backseat for hours, but aside from that both the survivors and he were fine. He knew no more about Rafe than she did.

“Uh—Admiral—?” A very young officer, looking embarrassed, tapped the doorframe.

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Ky had explained that she wasn’t an admiral anymore, but military courtesy prevailed.

“The general would like you to come to the situation room.”

“Thank you,” Ky said, pushing herself upright. She wished she’d managed to get clean and into her own clothes; she felt ridiculous in the stripes and ruffles and fringed shawl. Her hair, once released from the neat braid she usually wore, had reacted to freedom and the weather by forming a shapeless mass that she had to keep pushing back from her face. She followed the lieutenant down a passage.

“—and we still don’t know how many units are affected, sir.” A commander in Spaceforce blue looked out of the viewscreen; General Molosay waved Ky over to a seat near him.

“Have you found the lost evidence from Miksland yet?”

“No, sir. They could have destroyed it—”

“Or not. They will want to have something from there to substantiate their claim that a dangerous disease or toxin existed. Keep looking.”

“Yes, sir.”

The screen blanked. Molosay turned to Ky. “How much of Greyhaus’s log did you read?”

“Not enough,” Ky said. “I found the part that seemed to pertain directly to our situation and read that, but we were busy and I didn’t read the rest. I expected someone here would, when I turned it in.”

“Pity. Here’s the situation as we know it now. Kvannis left the Academy after midnight last night, checked out through the gate, told the guard he was going to his family home in the city, which isn’t unusual. He didn’t show up there, and he never came back to the Academy. When he didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, residence staff checked on him and found his quarters empty, with signs that someone—presumably Kvannis—had taken clothes, his portable comp, and all his IDs. He left no explanation with anyone at the Academy that we’ve been able to find. The safes in his quarters and his office have been drilled out and they’re empty. Since he had access to official secrets, including personnel records and strategic planning papers affecting force organization, we have to assume he has them now, and that unauthorized persons have access to them.”

“The former Commandant couldn’t have known—”

“No. I never knew Kvannis well, but we’ve bumped into each other often enough, and I never saw that coming. But I have a question for you, Admiral Vatta.” Ky waited. She’d never met Kvannis; she couldn’t imagine why Molosay thought she might answer any questions about him. Molosay swallowed, looked away, looked back at her. “Will you accept the post of Academy Commandant in this crisis? We have cadets who need someone they can recognize and trust, and someone who is familiar with the Academy’s routine.”

Ky stared at him, unable to answer at first. He waited. Finally she managed a raspy “Why?”

“Why you? Several reasons. You would have been the top graduate in your year. The situation that resulted in your resignation was an error of youth and inexperience, as the then-Commandant recognized. Your performance since then has shown that you learned everything we had to teach, and more from others; you have experience no one else on this planet has. And the fact that you’ve been away for so many years means that you, alone of all the officer corps here, cannot have been part of the conspiracy. The fact that your great-aunt is Rector of Defense is the only point against you, but it’s a small one in comparison with your overall qualifications. This is not a permanent post—I can’t imagine that you’d want to take on the job forever—but it would ensure competent, loyal leadership for our young cadets until we sort this mess out and can appoint someone else. So—will you take it?”

“Doesn’t the Commandant’s appointment also require the approval of the President and legislature?”

“Yes, but you have them, I’ve been assured.”

“Then yes. But only if I can shower, change clothes, and contact a military tailor for a uniform. This—” She spread her arms, shook her head to move the mass of hair, and looked down at her flamboyantly striped outfit. “—is not what I call command presence.”

Molosay grinned at her. “That’s not a problem. The best officers’ outfitter in the city has sent their senior tailor and a dress white uniform they were making for an officer near your size. There’s a small suite in this building where you can clean up and he can work. We can arrange for someone to retrieve civilian clothes from the Vatta house, and the base stores have everything you’d need for a couple of days. I know you must be short of sleep, but the situation at the Academy is not entirely stable. MacRobert is over there, but he’s not an officer.”

Two hours later, Ky was wearing Commandant’s whites with the Commandant’s insignia in shiny gold on her shoulders, and its attendant layers of braid on sleeves and cap. It fit well, though the tailor promised better for the rest, and delivery of another uniform the next day. Today she had better not spill anything on it.

Her hair was back in its snug braid, and she had seen the last, she hoped, of the dance costume. She wrote its owner a thank-you note and pinned it to the blouse. She had a good black briefcase, borrowed from General Molosay, and data cubes full of information she hadn’t yet loaded into her implant.

As the official car took her to the Academy, she reviewed the scant data known about the other officers serving there. Second to Kvannis was a Colonel Stornaki in the ground forces. That alone created suspicion, since Greyhaus and the troops stationed seasonally in Miksland had to be part of whatever conspiracy this was. Stornaki’s official photo showed a narrow face, gray eyes, beige skin, the usual left-sided ridge from an implant under his light-brown hair. His background had been unremarkable; the only flag at all was his distant relationship to one of the rebel leaders during the Unification War.

The car moved smoothly through the streets; Ky could see out, but the mirrored windows meant others could not see in. Did not mean no one else knew who the new Commandant was, of course. She knew the streets around the Academy and the amount of traffic was suspiciously low. There was the gray wall she remembered, with the Hall—the largest building in the complex—looming above it. The car turned left, then right as a gate in the wall opened and sentries came to attention. Her stomach clenched; she took a long breath and relaxed consciously. She had left by the public entrance, those years ago; she was coming back by the Commandant’s private entrance. If she had ever dreamed of a triumphal return, this was it… but she hadn’t, and this didn’t feel triumphal at all. Despite the uniform and the official car and security detail, it felt rushed and not entirely organized. She would rather have been paying a call on the Commandant who had died in the same act of sabotage she barely survived.

A man in a master sergeant’s uniform came down the steps of the Commandant’s Residence and stood waiting. Her driver opened the door for her. As she stepped out she recognized MacRobert. She returned his salute and walked up the steps into the residence.

“Cadets are assembled in the Hall, Commandant,” MacRobert said. “The general called ahead. The inside route is to your right, just there. You’ll meet the residence staff afterward, then an hour break and then Academy staff meeting in your residence, with refreshments.”

“Good,” Ky said. It was beyond strange to be addressed as Commandant by MacRobert. “Cadet mood?”

“Fourth-years confused, wary, trying to look professional, fairly successfully. Third-years confused and alarmed, also trying to look professional, with less success. Second-years openly worried and tense. First-years probably wish they’d never applied and look like it.”

“What have they been told?”

“That Kvannis resigned without notice and is gone. That a new interim Commandant would be appointed at once, and would speak to them. Rumors are flying, but I don’t know if there’s a definite leak, even though you’ve been mentioned.”

“Academy staff?”

“Harder to read, as you’d expect. I’m fairly sure some are bent in some way, but I came back only this morning, as soon as Kvannis was reported missing. Not enough data.” More softly, he added. “If I may, Commandant—”

“Go ahead, Master Sergeant.”

“You will be a great Commandant. Grab ’em by the throat.”

She had not expected that; she felt a lift in spirits. “That was my battle plan, Master Sergeant.”

Still, when she stepped out on the dais at the front of the Old Hall, once more standing under the arches of its tall nave, once more seeing the masses of cadets arrayed in their classes, memory caught her by the throat for an instant. By the time her second in command, Colonel Stornaki, introduced “Commandant Vatta,” it was gone.

“Cadets, faculty, staff,” she began. “Good morning. You may be surprised how fast an interim Commandant was appointed, but nobody wants to leave cadets to their own devices for even a day. And your instructors need someone to blame when things go wrong. That would be me.” She could feel the different emotional tones in the cadets, arranged mostly as MacRobert had said, from near-professional control among the eldest to wavering on the edge of panic in some of the youngest.

“Some of you,” she said, “probably came to the Academy hoping your lives would be more adventurous than that of a teacher or merchant or farmer. I came here for exactly that reason. My brothers and cousins were all satisfied with being on a tradeship crew, or working on the family farms or offices. I—” She paused for effect, and let her occasional ridicule of her younger self show on her face. “I wanted adventure. Excitement. All those adventure vid series—you know the ones—were more my speed than learning how to read profit and loss statements.” Now she could feel a softening in the tension; the faces nearest hers had relaxed a little, and a few even smiled.

“Luckily for me,” she said, “when I was in the Academy the only adventures we had were planned by the more senior cadets, the faculty, and the military personnel who taught us combat skills and took us on shuttle trips to experience space. Those felt like adventures to us—growing up on what we thought was a safe planet with predictable seasons and predictable politics. But those weren’t real adventures.” They were all intent now, and behind her, the rows of faculty and staff might have been focusing real lasers on her back; she felt the burn.

“Adventures are not predictable and moderately exciting, with predetermined outcomes. Adventures are things going wrong: situations you don’t expect, friends who betray you, equipment that fails when you most need it, enemies who are stronger and even smarter than you, and the possibility—no, the certainty, at times—that you will be injured or die. And it is for the real adventures—the ones where your knowledge, your skills, and your strength of character are necessary to complete your assigned mission—that the carefully designed training adventures here in the Academy prepare you.

“Some of you know that I did not in fact graduate from this Academy, that I left shortly before graduation. Some of you may know why. But everything I have done since has been possible because of what I learned here. And in the time we have together, before a permanent Commandant is appointed, whether me or someone else, I will continue the traditions that shaped me, that gave me the foundation from which to take one small, slow, old tradeship and build the interstellar fleet that you’ve heard something about.

“I expect some of you were upset, even worried, by the sudden change in Commandants. Hear me now. Nothing else changes. Classes, physical training, rules for correct conduct and military courtesy: the traditions do not change. The people in them may change, but the Academy will be here for you—and I will be here for you. And when you graduate, you will have the skills, the knowledge, the physical fitness, and the character to do what needs to be done.”

She let her face relax into a full smile, a bit rueful she hoped. “I know from experience, some of it very hard indeed, how important this training is. I respect this place—” She lifted her gaze to the intricate vaulting of the roof, shifted it from place to place within the walls. “And I respect all it has done for so many, not just me. That is all.”

Colonel Stornaki stepped forward; the cadet officers called their classes to attention. Salutes exchanged, she left the dais, somewhat surprised at how little anxiety remained. MacRobert waited to guide her back to the residence.

“Well done, Commandant,” he said as they walked. “That was some masterful throat-grabbing.” He guided her a different way at the first branch of the passage. “The living quarters are upstairs; you have a master suite, a separate study, and guest suites mostly used as quarters for visiting scholars. The master suite is unfortunately still under forensic lock for another hour or so; they want every hair, every fiber, every surface that will take a fingerprint gone over. They’ve been at it since 0730. You’ll have it by this evening, at the latest. So your things, what we have, are in this guest suite.” He stopped and opened the door. A small sitting room, a bedroom and attached bath. “You will have a security detail, one guard on duty in this upper hall, until the forensic team leaves. You’re due downstairs in one hour to meet the household staff, and then it’s the reception with the faculty and teaching staff.”

Ky shook her head. “To keep the continuity for cadets, that reception should be moved to after class hours. They should be back on their usual schedule as soon as possible.”

“That would be better for them, but the faculty asked for—demanded is more like it—sooner access.”

“Grabbing the faculty by the throat as well as cadets is part of my plan,” Ky said. “Reception fifteen minutes after the end of classes, while the cadets are out on the drill field. I doubt household staff will mind having it delayed.”

He shook his head while grinning. “I said you’d be a good Commandant and you already are. I will inform the staffs, both of them.”

Someone had put fresh coffee and fresh tea on a tray in the sitting room, along with a tray of cookies; the small cooler held a variety of other drinks. Ky chose tea and—having missed both breakfast and lunch by this time—a couple of cookies. The bathroom held a reasonable array of toilet articles; she looked at herself in the mirror and retied her braid into the shape that best suited her new uniform cap. She wished she’d asked MacRobert if the communications lines in and out of the residence were as secure as those from the headquarters building.

Ky put her feet up on a convenient stool and leaned back in the chair. The new shoes that had come with her new uniform were still stiff. When her implant pinged, giving her ten minutes to check the details and get downstairs to meet the house staff, she needed only a quick glance in the mirror to know that her braid was still secure.