Элизабет Мун - Into the Fire

She closed the call without answering. Typical. Benny looked at his schedule, told his clerk to hold calls from anyone junior to him, unlocked the safe, and opened the file. A day-after-tomorrow meeting meant his uncle would expect an outline of his presentation by noon tomorrow.

Two hours later, a call buzzed through. “How’s it going?” asked his uncle. “What page are you on?”

“One oh five,” Benny said.

“Good. That chart on one oh three?”

“Yes?”

“New data. I’ll send it to your desk, unlabeled. You can figure it out.”

And that was all. Benny allowed himself a moment of rubbing his temples and wishing he’d been born into another family before pulling up the new data.

Mac sat down in the chair beside the bed and took Grace’s hand. He could see the tiny red marks on her face, on her arms, and Maillard had told him privately what they meant. Her gaze was hazed, as if she was in pain, or sedated, but she hadn’t had the sedative yet. Across the room, two nurses organized a tray of equipment and drugs. He hated seeing her like this, and he knew she hated being here, needing to be here.

“I hope what Maillard does will clear this out,” Grace said.

“I’m going to trust that it will, and that your usual hardheaded stubbornness will pull you through anything. Most people your age wouldn’t have survived having their arm shot off.” He squeezed her hand, but felt her wince and let up his grip.

“I was younger then. Every year counts.”

He softened his voice before asking, “Are you really worried, Grace?”

“Not exactly worried. Just… taking it seriously.”

“Anything else?”

“Past things. Memories floating up. I think the records were all sufficiently slagged, but—”

He put a finger to her lips. “I’ll be here. If you start babbling about something you shouldn’t, I’ll see that nobody hears it, if I have to sing opera at the top of my lungs.”

Grace laughed; she couldn’t help it. And at that moment, Maillard walked in at the head of a line of assistants, all ready.

“Good to hear you laugh, Rector. This is the team that will be working on you. Jess, give the master sergeant custody of the implant support box. Rector, you will have a sedative and then local anesthesia for the process of removing your implant, because although it is not physically painful, it can be quite disorienting. Then general anesthesia for the chill-down and flush of the toxin.”

Grace did not argue. That in itself told Mac she was not anywhere close to being well.

Stella called Ky in early afternoon. “Grace is getting some complicated procedure; Mac is staying with her. I’ve been told not to come to the hospital, not to send flowers, just to wait. She’s our relative. I hate waiting.”

“And I hate being locked out of official channels,” Ky said. “There’s nothing at all on the news about the other survivors. Plus Rafe and Teague looking at me as if I’m supposed to pull the stuff they want out of the air.”

“I can help you with that,” Stella said. “I have access to Grace’s old Vatta files, so I know now who else she handpicked for Vatta Security. I’m sending someone over within the hour with the equipment Rafe asked for.”

“Fine,” Ky said. “How will we know he’s the right one?”

“You’ll know.” Stella cut the connection abruptly, and Ky managed not to snarl at her absence.

Stella had been right. Ky recognized the man as family the moment she saw him on the viewscreen. For one horrified instant, she thought it was her brother San, killed in the attack on Corleigh years before, but this man was a little taller. She let Teague open the door while she got her face back under control.

“I’m Rodney Vatta-Stevens,” he said. “Sera Stella Vatta sent me with some equipment to upgrade security here, after the trouble at Sera Grace’s.”

He looked like San in the face, the same build, the same way of moving when he walked in, nodding to Teague and then to Ky. “It’s been a long time since we last saw each other, at the country house one year, a birthday party. You may not remember me.” His voice was not like San’s, more tenor than baritone.

“I don’t remember you specifically,” Ky said. “The Vatta-Stevenses—didn’t you live somewhere south of Port Major?”

“Southwest,” he said. “Stevens Crossing. My great-grandfather part-owned a copper mine there.” He went on, explaining at more length than Ky cared about how he was related to several branches of the family.

“I never heard of Couray-Vatta,” Ky said, then wished she hadn’t. Was he about to start a lecture on the ancestral history of the Couray-Vattas? He was.

With a cheerful grin, he shared all he knew about the Vatta-Stevens and Couray-Vattas as he opened his equipment case and lifted out tray after tray of instruments, finishing up with “Anyway, that’s my family lineage. My parents live in Port Major now. My father’s down in the bowels of the new headquarters building keeping the big servers running. That’s where I was when Sera Stella called me up.”

“What’s your background in surveillance and countersurveillance?” Rafe asked. He sounded grumpy. He would have even less interest in the genealogy of Vattas than Ky.

“Sera Grace in Corporate Security recruited me out of school. My degree’s from Thensantos U, right here in Port Major. Then came the attack—I was on a training mission at the time. Put me through the toughest eight weeks of my life, because so many had been lost. When she was tapped for Rector of Defense, she recommended to Sera Helen that I be moved out of Security for a few years, given more background in communications and computer technology, so that’s where I’ve been. But I’ve kept up my physical training and martial arts, as a hobby, and I’ve kept reading.”

They moved into the front sitting room, following Teague, and Rafe nodded at one of the chairs; Rodney sat down, then they all did.

“What kind of martial arts?” Teague asked.

Rodney named five or six. “Our club rotates, so we don’t get stale. Every half year we change instructors, learn something new or ways to combine what we’ve been doing with what’s being taught.”

“So… what did Stella tell you about this situation?”

“Two jobs. The first, to bring a list of equipment to upgrade the house security. It’s all in the case here, plus some adapters in case something doesn’t fit. The second… she didn’t tell me much, because she said you’d tell me if you wanted me for it.”

“Briefing time,” Ky said. “We’ll go down in the basement; the charts are there.” She led the way to the lift installed in the house core and punched in the code. Down there he wouldn’t be able to see or hear the fugitives.

Rodney’s eyes widened when he saw the displays. “This is like a military mission briefing.”

“Exactly,” Ky said. “And for that reason, we need your agreement that you want to be in on it.”

“Without knowing any more?” He looked at Ky, then Rafe and Teague, and shrugged. “I say yes. Could be dangerous, right?”

“Very,” Rafe said drily.

“Just the four of us?”

“Maybe. You have someone else to suggest?”

“Depends. But I do know some people, mostly in my martial arts group. And some cousins back home, on the Stevens side mostly.”

“Well, then,” Ky said. “Here’s what we need to do. First we need to find the people who were with me in Miksland. We think they’re all locked up in various military psych wards and/or prisons. Then we need to free them.”