Элизабет Мун - Into the Fire

The door opened; she recognized him from his image, loaded into her implant more than a half year ago.

“Rector Vatta,” he said; he stood stiffly.

“Please sit down,” she said, waving to a chair. “And forgive me for not rising to welcome you; this is my first day back in the office.”

“I was appalled when I heard you’d been poisoned,” he said, pulling a chair a little closer to the desk before sitting down. “Have you found out who stole the toxin from the military?”

“Not yet, though I suspect the instigator was Michael Quindlan. According to my great-niece, who had the message fairly directly, he intends to kill us all—me, my great-nieces still alive, and my other great-niece’s two children.”

“Rector, you may be wondering why I am here, and not contacting you in a more… conventional way.”

“I assume you have a good reason,” Grace said. “Besides showing that you, as well as I, could jump the chain of command. A mistake, in my case.”

A glint of humor flashed in his face, then vanished. “I hope this will not prove to be one. I believe I have information that should go immediately to this office.” He opened the briefcase he carried. “This is a letter I received shortly after our previous… encounter… from someone who believed I was ripe for recruitment to their faction. Their research was inadequate; though I was angry with you on that day, and sore about it for a week or so, in the long run nothing could turn me from a loyal officer to a traitor. However—I let them think I was tempted. And this is what I found.” He laid the letter and a data cube on her desk. “I have the names of what I believe are ringleaders in an attempt to restore Separatist territories. Miksland was to be the first. I did not know that until after the breakout there.”

Grace picked up the letter, looked at the signature, and looked back up at Orniakos. “Greyhaus?”

“Yes. I—one of the reasons I hadn’t contacted you, Rector, following that… disagreement we had was that I’d had subtle signals that if I was in your doghouse, someone else might turn it into a mansion. I waited, to see what would happen. And this came. Interesting, I thought, that it came from someone of the same rank, in another branch.”

“And it came as an actual letter, not electronically?”

“Yes. This is, as you see, a copy; the original self-destructed after an hour. So no fingerprints or other biological evidence, except—” Orniakos grinned, a feral grin, and laid down a photographic enlargement of fingerprints. “I had anticipated that real conspirators would take precautions. So there was ample time to copy this letter photographically under several filters. Now that Greyhaus is dead, it might be useful to compare the fingerprints that were not his and not mine with the military database.”

“It might indeed,” Grace said.

“The data cube has lists and dossiers on all the personnel I found whom I believe are associated with the plot. The further communication between us—Greyhaus was supposedly my handler—” Again, the feral grin. “—is also in that data cube, composed on a machine that has never been connected to any other. You will have to take my word for it, however, because I never received paper communication once they became sure of my allegiance.”

“Interesting, that they thought they had such secure electronic links.”

“Yes, I thought so. They disappeared about the time the second mercenaries were heading down to Miksland. What I did get then was word of a fire on a server farm somewhere on Dorland and another on Fulland.” He lifted one eyebrow.

Grace nodded. “Yes, such fires did occur. A less-than-perfectly-successful effort to disrupt communications between Pingat Base and the Black Torch mercenary company.”

“Rector, I can leave this information with you—or, if you wish, give you my summary.”

“Please do give me your summary. Are you willing to have another person—to whom I’d pass it on anyway, I must tell you—hear it as well?”

“Certainly. That would be Master Sergeant MacRobert, would it not?”

“I was thinking also of General Molosay.”

“Fine, if he can come here. I would rather not be seen on the base right now.”

“Where does your command think you are?”

“Somewhere else.” His look challenged her to figure it out.

“Give me a one-minute pitch while I contact them,” Grace said. For Mac she need only ping him and tap twice.

“Three families, eight organizations within the military, two possible choke points to prevent this thing blowing up too big. It’s going to blow—can’t stop it—but we can, if we move fast, have a controlled explosion in a confined area.”

By the end of the one-minute pitch, Grace had both MacRobert and General Molosay on conference mode. Several hours later, the conference mode had expanded, and Grace had agreed with Molosay that Orniakos should command the government’s forces on Dorland.

“There will be casualties,” Orniakos warned. “I’ll try to keep it confined to the actual traitors—the civilian population down there doesn’t want another war—but the butcher’s bill may be expensive.”

“If you can save the planet, I’ll pay the bills out of my own pocket,” Grace said. “Were you far enough up the chain that they showed you my file?”

He flushed a little. “Part of it, yes, Rector. In fact it’s the reason I trusted you enough to come to you instead of to the general. I understand combat trauma; easy to see how a youngster without training, caught in that mess, would be messed up for years. And how some things would rub you wrong later. But that’s beside the point. What we’ve discussed will hold the carnage to a minimum, although—in my day the Academy was supposed to protect the government centers. Your niece Ky—brilliant commander in space—does she know anything about surface warfare?”

“She has advisers,” Molosay said before Grace could reply. “And she is heeding them.”

Orniakos gave a half shrug. “Good. I have nothing against her.” He turned to Grace. “Quindlan really hates you, Rector—not only you, but all Vattas. And so do several others.”

Michael Quindlan had waited impatiently for this day, and now at last it was happening. Quindlan ships had brought the troops; Quindlan influence and Quindlan money had finally —finally— resulted in his being given a position in the upper echelons of the resistance. He would rather, he told himself, have been out there leading a squad or platoon or whatever they called it of Greyhaus’s soldiers, but Kvannis wouldn’t allow it. Ridiculous, the way the military pretended civilians knew nothing. He’d watched the movies and vid shows.

In lieu of that, he’d taken action within his own family. His niece Linny had done the second-level check on Benny that he’d ordered her to perform—her first official duty, one she knew might get her promoted. Those two had been antagonists since childhood, so if there was a dirty spot on Benny’s apparently perfect character, she’d find it. And she had.

Benny had betrayed him. Linny had befriended Benny’s idiot wife—well on the way to alcoholic if not there already—and pried out of her the fact that Benny had handed over a secret file to Stella Vatta. The boy had had a crush on Stella back when he was eleven or so, but supposedly his father had beaten it out of him. Not hard enough. Well, Benny would find out what happened to Quindlans who disobeyed the head of the family. He would find out in stages, starting with a tragedy he would not, initially lay at Michael’s feet. With luck, he might even blame the Vattas for the vicious attack on his wife that left her alive, but permanently damaged, and his children dead. He should be hearing about it any time now.