Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX}

The great hall was cold in the early-morning light, and the mass of second-year cadets standing in their ranks looked both hungry—they had not had breakfast—and sullen. Ky could feel the mood, as well as see it in their faces. Resentment, not just apprehension. Well… that was unity of a sort, however negative and transitory; all she had to do was make it positive and permanent. Major Hemins, beside her and a step behind, radiated determination, if not confidence in her.

“I was informed late last night that a new disturbance had broken out among the second-year class.” Ky paused to let that sink in. More apprehension, less resentment, for the moment. They didn’t know how much she knew. Good. “I was also informed that this is not the first disturbance among you, not the first sign you have not learned the importance of bonding among military officers. Why this was not handled promptly and effectively before, I neither know nor care. What I will tell you is that on my watch, your lack of ability and willingness to trust your classmates—and to be worthy of their trust—will not be tolerated.”

A vague stir among the cadets.

“By this time in second year, you should have shown more growth in character. No doubt there are individuals among you who have done better than the rest, and no doubt you are proud of yourselves. But excellence in your own accomplishments is not enough for an officer, and your excellence has not transferred to your classmates. You have not brought them up to your standard.

“And that is a vital part of leadership: to inspire, enforce, and enable excellence of character and skills in everyone who serves beside or under you. That is what your Academy training is for, not merely personal advancement.” She paused again, seeing chagrin on some faces, stubborn resentment on others, surprise on a few. What had Kvannis been doing, that these youngsters didn’t already know this?

“Now,” she said, “as far as the cause of various disturbances, it seems that some of you feel qualified to critique the actions of officers who are far senior to you. And you feel it appropriate to incite or take part in arguments and… disturbances… related to your opinions. I remind you of Section Fourteen, paragraph one, in the Joint Services Manual of Courts-Martial, as well as Section Three, paragraph one-f, in the Code of Conduct for this Academy: ‘Cadets are not to engage in discussions of politics outside those classes in which it is relevant.’ Inciting disturbances is an article within the Joint Services Code of Military Justice, an article that, if it appears in someone’s service record, whether a court-martial finds them guilty or not, permanently excludes that individual from having a security clearance above Basic Two. And thus, since officers must all possess a Senior Two or above, it excludes any person awaiting commissioning from being commissioned.”

Now the anxiety was more obvious. “It would be not be beyond the reach of the Code, on the basis of reports I have received as to your conduct in your second year so far, to consider the entire second-year class as guilty of willful incitement.” She let that sink in; and let the fourth-year cadet officers deal with the shifting and a few murmurs. “It would, however, be excessive to apply that standard immediately. It is your good fortune that last night’s incident did not rise to the level of physical violence, because I would have had to conduct a formal inquiry and very likely propose a formal court. Consider this your final warning. Future incidents—disturbances—will not be tolerated.”

Almost, but not quite, a universal sigh of relief. Too soon, too soon. “I expect immediate improvement, and a commitment to the spirit as well as the letter of the Code. By immediate I mean starting this moment. Though you will not face a formal court, you will face administrative punishment, also starting now.

“For the next thirty days, there will be no personal time, no Midwinter leave, and no communication outside the campus except in cases of serious illness or injury that require notification of families. Your formerly free periods will be spent on punishment details, including more physical training because some of you seem clumsy enough to walk into doors and damage yourselves.” She looked directly at the three arrayed in front of the group.

“You will have more supervision and more inspections. I have reminded the faculty and fourth-year cadet officers of their responsibility to ensure that all articles of the Code are strictly enforced. At the end of thirty days, you will either have begun an acceptable rate of improvement or other measures will be taken. Those who wish to withdraw from the Academy are reminded that doing so transfers them to a Basic class in one of the enlisted recruit centers and they will still be obligated for two years’ active service past Basic Training.” She turned. “Major Hemins, you have your class.” And walked off.

Colonel Stornaki waited for her outside. “You were pretty rough on them, Commandant.”

“You approve of fighting in the barracks?”

“No, but they’re young—”

“Major Hemins tells me they’re not where they should be, and they started backsliding after the Old Man’s death… are you arguing with that assessment?”

“Well, it was a shock to all the cadets.”

“And yet the fights have been confined to the second year. Tell me, Colonel, how would you have handled it?”

“Brought in the ones who actually fought, and reamed them out—punishment details for them, to be sure, but not the whole class.”

“And was that done for the previous incidents?”

“Well… that’s what Commandant Kvannis did.”

“And how has that worked? With multiple incidents reported, from loud arguments to at least two incidents of hazing, and three actual fights, including the one last night?”

Stornaki chewed his lower lip, clearly surprised to be confronted so firmly. Was he, as Ky half suspected, one of Kvannis’s accomplices?

“The issue of bonding is critical, as I’m sure you know,” Ky said. “A class is supposed to cohere on the basis of the behaviors and attitudes the service needs. A divisive class bodes ill for cooperation and trust among fellow officers later on. This class is divided, and divided along both political and religious lines—yes, I have read the reports on all the previous incidents, and reviewed the records of all the cadets involved.”

His brows went up. “When?”

“Very early this morning,” Ky said. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“Apologies, Commandant. No, I did not think you were negligent—no one who’s won the battles you won could be that.”

Flattery or sincerity? She wasn’t sure. He had not chatted with her at the reception the day before or provided any useful information.

“It’s just that Commandant Kvannis—well, you didn’t know him. A fine officer, I always thought. I still think he may have been abducted—it just isn’t like him to abscond in the night.”

“You will excuse me,” Ky said, “but I have other appointments this morning. We’ll have to discuss Kvannis another time.”

And she would have to find a new second in command for the Academy.

Grace Vatta looked at President Hester Saranife across the wide presidential desk, waiting for her response. Saranife, elected only two years before, had been, in Grace’s opinion, a competent, if reserved, head of state. Nothing had gone badly wrong until the shuttle crash, and no one had blamed the President or the Saranife administration for it. Now, however, the President sighed, shifted in her seat, and did not meet Grace’s gaze. That, Grace thought, was not promising. “It’s difficult,” she said. “This whole situation. My predecessor—”

“Did not know about the terms of the release. Neither did I.”

“So you said. I find that difficult to believe. Surely you’d have been told.”

“I was still considered incompetent, under medical supervision. I was given orders, not explanations.”

“Even at home?”

“Yes. Confined to the house and grounds, with a nurse-companion for the first years, until I was married off and my husband took over the supervisory duties.”

“And the others in the family didn’t know?”

“Not the details. It was to be a secret, you see. The government at the time—over fifty years ago—would have found it embarrassing to admit I had been freed. I was supposed to disappear into the family as thoroughly as I had disappeared into the psychiatric ward of the prison. The other adults knew only that they were responsible for my staying ‘out of trouble.’ The children knew only that I’d been in some kind of hospital—they didn’t know about the war crimes trial at all. When the government decided to downplay the war in the interests of unity, it wasn’t discussed in any detail in schools.”

“But why wasn’t someone told—?”

“I believe my father expected to tell his heir, and that heir would tell his, and so on. But through accident and sudden illness, two generations of family leaders died without passing the information on. I had begun doing some work for the family from home—an idea of my husband’s, before his death—so when Gerard and Stavros took over, they saw no reason why they shouldn’t use me in a more active role.” She shrugged. “It was pretty clear that I wasn’t crazy anymore; even the nightmares had worn themselves out, at least until the big attack on our family.”

“And then?”

“And then the nightmares came back.”

“Did you kill the President?” That was stark enough; Grace was glad she could answer honestly.

“No. Wanted to, yes, because I’d learned he’d allowed the attack on Vatta in return for, supposedly, no attack elsewhere on the planet, but I’d lost an arm to an assassin trying to kill Stavros’s grandchildren.”

“What? I heard you’d lost the arm in an accident.”

“That attack wasn’t publicized, for safety’s sake. It nearly succeeded. The twins had run out to sneak an early-morning pony ride. I heard shots—screams—one of the ponies was down. There were two assassins. I shot the first; the second shot me, and was coming for us—Shar and I were both on the ground, easy prey—when a nearby fisherman, who’d heard the noise, came up behind the assassin and killed him.” No need to say who that was. MacRobert’s part had always been kept dark. “At any rate, when the President died, I was flat on my back in a trauma ward.”

“Did you tell the Commandant to offer him a suicide pill?”

“No.”

“But you knew the Commandant well. Why else would he have done it?”

“Possibly because he also recognized the danger to Slotter Key from a head of state who was in league with outside powers. I had shared information with him because I did not know who else to trust in the military system. If the President was corrupt, so also might be the Rector of Defense, or any of the officers that I knew very slightly.”

“And just how did you know the Commandant?”

“I saved his life when he was a boy. Got him out of a bad situation. Our family took care of him—not me, because I was in prison. When I was released, he wrote me a note, and we corresponded at least twice a year from then on.”

“About?”

“Personal things: his promotions in Spaceforce, the girl he was interested in at the time, his family life when he married—his wife was killed in a traffic accident while he was in space; she was pregnant at the time. He never married again. I told him about birthday parties, marriages, children born. He corresponded with other family members, too. He knew them better than he knew me, but I was the one who had stood between him and those who wanted to kill him. And the rest of the family was willing to let me take over the correspondence, for the most part.”

“Did he visit your family?”

“While he was still a junior officer, yes. Less as he advanced, and not after he was appointed Commandant. He needed other connections; everyone understood that.”

“What I’m trying to get at, Rector Vatta, is why your niece was accepted into the Academy—if you or he influenced that decision—”

Grace laughed. “Like at least half the other cadets who used influence to get in? Did you think it was all about the entrance exams? Ky topped them that year, but she was also—is—a member of a wealthy family, daughter of the CFO at that time and niece of the CEO. Merchanter’s brat or not, she’d have been accepted, but the family reputation certainly helped, and the Commandant’s notice got her put in the most competitive of the entering units. I didn’t do anything but push back against her desire enough to make her stubborn and even more determined.”

“Why that?”

Grace shrugged. “I’d been in a war. Ky was intelligent, spirited, stubborn by nature, but also warmhearted. She was always getting into scrapes trying to rescue others, take care of someone weaker. I didn’t want her hurt the way I had been, and I knew how bad it could be. So I wanted to be sure that if she went, it was a genuine desire, not one of her juvenile rescue fantasies.”

“Hmmm.” The President looked grave, then nodded; Grace felt like poking her with a pin. That was such a pose of noble public-servanthood. No politician was that noble. When the President’s expression changed, as if a switch had been flicked, Grace felt vindicated. It was all an act. “Well, then,” she said. “Back to you and this problem. You admit that if you had known, you would not have taken the post of Rector—”

“I would not have taken the post of Assistant Rector,” Grace said. “Or the promotion to Rector. I was certainly as qualified as the man who held it before me… except for the fact that I was never supposed to become involved in politics at all. I would not have risked the situation we’re in now, where my past is doing damage to the entire government.”

“But here we are,” the President said. “And so far I don’t see the damage.”

“Someone will release that file publicly,” Grace said. “That’s why it’s surfaced again. Whoever put it in official hands may wait a short time, but you know they’ll push the issue, and soon. When they do, I won’t be the only target of their chosen revenge. I’m old; it doesn’t matter much what happens to me. But the fallout will affect my family and your government as well.”

“Did you appoint your niece Ky to be Commandant?”

“No. I had nothing to do with that; I was informed of it after the fact. General Molosay, commanding Port Major Joint Command HQ base, was faced with an emergency—Kvannis’s clandestine departure—and asked Ky to take the Commandant’s position as an interim post since he did not know what other officers in the Academy might be part of whatever conspiracy Kvannis was in.”

“But didn’t he know she killed Master Sergeant Marek?”

“Of course he knew. And he knew why. He had the testimony of the three survivors who had escaped from isolation, one of whom had witnessed the incident and been wounded by Marek.”

“I haven’t heard any of the details.”

“I’m sure you’ll be briefed as soon as the other survivors—only just rescued from the same confinement—have been interviewed.”

“Do you think it means there’s any serious disaffection within the military?”

Grace managed not to snort in disgust and did her best to keep her expression neutral. How could the woman—reputed to be brilliant about many things—be that stupid? And why were so many people in positions of power that stupid? She picked her words carefully. “The existence of a military base on Miksland kept a closely held secret for so long suggests it. The use of military personnel to fox the satellite data suggests it. The treatment of those survivors—trying to keep them permanently isolated from everyone, with a plan to gradually kill them off under cover of a dangerous communicable disease—suggests it.”

The President glared, huffed, and jerked forward in her chair, which squealed in protest. “But how could there be a conspiracy that big without anyone knowing? Someone—”

“The people in it knew it. The evidence so far—”

“All derived from your family’s activities—”

“The evidence,” Grace repeated in a flat voice that startled the President enough to keep her still, “is that the family first discovering Miksland’s potential, via a family member who explored the north coast in his personal yacht, chose to keep it a secret, aided by a decade of particularly harsh winters. That discoverer died unexpectedly; his privately published journal of that voyage, and the map he drew, were suppressed. Master Sergeant MacRobert found them in the special collections of a university library. The family opened small-scale mining operations there for another forty or fifty years, but had difficulty selling the product when it was known no such deposits lay in their recorded holdings. They made the error of working through a less legitimate partner—”

“Who?”

“It will be in the report. A criminal enterprise. They sold the refined mining products offplanet. Cargoes Vatta refused, by the way. Vatta didn’t have a clue where it really came from, but we didn’t want anything we couldn’t provide full provenance for. We were beginning to compete in the interstellar transport market and needed a clean reputation. And we suspect that was one reason for the attack on Vatta, since one of our own was involved.”

“Osman,” the President said, nodding. “Trouble early on, right?”

“Yes. Stavros evicted him from the family business, so he stole one of our ships and used it for piracy.”

“He died in the war?”

Grace considered. Was the President likely to know the truth? Maybe. “He attacked Ky and Stella in deep space; he had a larger, faster, heavily armed ship. He attempted a hostile boarding; Ky fought and killed him.”

“Hand-to-hand?”

“Yes.”

“She likes to kill?”

Irritation got past her guard. “He was trying to kill her. What do you think she should have done?”

“But she killed that sergeant.”

“Master Sergeant Marek,” Grace said. “Yes. He was trying to kill her and her aide both.”

“But violence—she could have negotiated with him—”

“You were never in combat, were you?”

The President flushed. “No. But—”

Grace overrode her. “It’s different. That’s all I can say. You can’t possibly understand. It’s not about liking to kill or not liking to kill; it’s about survival, and—in Ky’s case—protecting those that depend on you.” Though, as she knew well, she and Ky both had enjoyed killing. Ky, as far as she knew, had never misused it, as she herself had. “And anyway, Ky is not the current problem. I am. I can resign from the Defense Department—”

“No! We need you, at least until this mess with the survivors and this, this—whatever it is—in the military is straightened out.”

“You need someone, but I may be making things worse.”

“Grace, I trust you even when I don’t agree with you.” The President had large, dark, slightly protuberant eyes that seemed to plead for understanding.

“But others don’t,” Grace said. “That’s the problem. And even if I resigned, it’s not enough. What matters is that I broke a legal contract my family had with the government. That contract stated that if I became involved in the government in any way, with or without the knowledge of my family, the agreement to terminate my confinement would lapse and I would be returned to custody, to be adjudicated by a court.”

“I don’t even know what court that would be—”

“Neither do I, but I know that’s what’s called for, and I know some court will take it on.”

“But you can’t—I mean, at your age, going back to prison, or a psychiatric hospital—it’s a risk to your life.”

Grace shrugged. “Many things have been risks to my life, including the recent assassination attempt, and yet here I am. Besides, I’m old. Old even by the standards of modern medicine. I’m not afraid of death, and I know from experience that I can survive in confinement. I’m not afraid of that, either.”

“It’s not fair—you spent decades without causing any trouble—”

“Except being a thorn in the side of those who never forgave my family for letting me have as much freedom as they did. And possibly, because of that, giving encouragement to those still unsatisfied with the results of the Unification War.”

The President stared at her, clearly unwilling to countenance the decision that seemed so obvious. She herself was the problem; she was guilty of those deaths she had dealt; she had broken a contract and thus dishonored her family.

“You need to call a Council meeting and have me explain it to them, then start proceedings to determine the correct legal actions,” Grace said.

“So who would you recommend as your replacement?”

“I can’t make any recommendation. It would taint the process. If I’m ineligible to serve, then I’m ineligible to advise, as well.”

“I can’t—I can’t make a decision now,” Saranife said. “And I don’t want changes in the administration with a possible crisis coming. What if they just kill you?”

“Then I’ll be dead,” Grace said. She could not resist the temptation to poke the woman again. “You do realize, don’t you, that everyone does die? Of something? I’m going to die; you’re going to die; everyone dies.”

The President actually shivered, visibly. Well, she was only forty-seven, and her children were still in school. Grace softened her voice. “It’s been the human condition since long before we left Old Earth. And keep in mind that it doesn’t bother me. Hasn’t for a long time. So even if the court decrees an execution, I won’t be making a spectacle about it.”

“Do you have any feelings? Anything you enjoy, that you’d miss?” Saranife was looking at her again. “A reason to stay alive?”

She had not expected that. But then, people still surprised her, and she knew she surprised them. “Yes,” she said, making sure her voice softened. “I love my relatives. The twins—well, they’re at one of the difficult ages right now, but they’ll grow out of it, if assassins don’t get them. I’m fond of my friends. I like cooking, the process of it. I used to like gardening—the colors of flowers and leaves, the fragrance of soil and healthy plants—but these days my knees hurt.”

“So if you hadn’t accepted my predecessor’s invitation, you’d be perfectly safe enjoying your family, cooking, gardening—it’s not your fault, dammit!”

“True. But now that I know, continuing on a course that will inevitably harm my family and my planet would be my fault. And your letting me do so, now that you know, will be your fault. Don’t wait too long to make your decision. Let’s limit the harm as much as we can.” Grace stood up without a dismissal and walked toward the door.

“Grace.” The tone of the President’s voice made her turn around. “I promise you I will do my best to make the right decision at the right time. For everyone.”

Grace bowed, her mismatched hands together. “Thank you,” she said. “I will await your word.”