Элизабет Мун - Into the Fire

Inyatta nodded. “I understand, sir, but we don’t know much.”

“You may know more than you think you do,” Ky said. “You recognized that man—Bontier—as someone you’d seen before. I’m thinking those who kept the base on Miksland a secret may be the same as those who abducted you.”

“What did the newsvids say about us?” Barash asked.

Ky shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything—though I didn’t pay much attention. Like the Rector, I thought you’d been given leave and were home with your families. The lack of interviews—I thought you just didn’t want to be bothered.”

“Come to think of it,” Rafe said, leaning on the doorframe, “I don’t recall any airing of those interviews you did, Ky. I didn’t watch every day, but—did you ever get notice of when they’d be on?”

“No. I didn’t really think about it.”

“Do they have censorship here?” he asked. The other three edged past him, carrying cleaning tools, and headed for the big suite where Ky and Rafe had slept. “I did notice, while I was staying with Grace, that your news shows are bland compared with those on Nexus. Cascadia’s are drenched in politeness, but even they show more sides to questions.”

“Censorship?” Ky thought for a moment. “I don’t think so—at least, when I was kicked out of the Academy, it was for creating a public embarrassment for the government—but after I left, it would’ve died down fast.”

“Or been suppressed,” Rafe said. “That war Grace was involved in—Stella seems to think of it as some minor little thing, but wasn’t that two continents rebelling against the planetary government? And didn’t it go on for years?”

“That’s not what I was taught in school,” Ky said. “ A minor uprising generated by a disagreement over fishing rights and a tax on shipping or something like that. Just some riots, some criminal elements taking advantage of disagreements.”

“Sounds like a cover-up to me,” Rafe said. “You should ask Grace about it. Because if whoever kept Miksland a secret for so long was involved in it—and part of Slotter Key’s military was involved, as well—then it’s not really over.”

Ky tried, and failed, to imagine Great-Aunt Grace in the middle of an actual war. As a young woman, of course; it was a long time ago and she would have been… maybe twenty? Younger? But surely she would have been the same upright, prim, proper girl that she’d been as an old woman in Ky’s youth. If she’d been involved, it would have been as a—a secretary or something. Someone in an office, organizing the files.

“Maybe,” she said to Rafe. “I’ll ask her. But right now I need to look over those files in the office here.”

And think. She needed to think what had happened to the other survivors, and why, and what she could do about it.

Instead, she stared for a moment at the files on the desk and then pulled them closer. Whatever this was—whatever she needed to do to protect the survivors—would cost money. Yes, she’d handed over her shares to Stella, and Stella claimed she lacked the money to pay Ky what was due, but that was exactly why she felt entitled to go through the reports on Stella’s desk. She was going to need some money—undoubtedly less than those shares had been worth—and something might have slipped her cousin’s attention.

Stella, she realized, had revised some of the procedures Helen had used; Ky nodded as she read. Helen, the former CEO’s wife, whose own background was in science, not business, had run the business as simply as possible, and as a result skimped on in-depth analysis from the business viewpoint. She hadn’t done anything bad, exactly, but she had missed opportunities that Stella clearly did not intend to miss. Ky, who had seen Stella as the secondary headquarters CEO, was well aware of Stella’s gift for corporate leadership, and the uptick in profits from Helen’s resignation to the present proved how much better Vatta would do under Stella’s command. If, that is, the fines levied on Vatta could be overturned.

In the silence of that hour, Ky remembered the quarrel of the previous night again and felt a twinge of remorse. Stella still rubbed her the wrong way, but she’d been at fault. And perhaps, as Rafe had suggested on Corleigh, she herself was in need of a consultation and analysis of the effects of that more than half year in Miksland. She queried the medical app in her implant and found a recommendation there for a tune-up by a specialist. Well. Maybe. Maybe she could take care of it herself. Moray was a long way away and right now she wasn’t sure which local specialists she could trust.

The house system flashed an alert: someone was opening the front door. The speaker came on. Rafe’s voice. “Teague. Thank you. Come on in.”

Ky relaxed, realizing only then that she was halfway out of the chair, her pistol in her hand. The medical app, still active, recommended a touch of neuroactive. She set it back on passive, holstered her pistol, and went to the head of the stairs. Below, Rafe and Teague were chatting; the door was closed and secured. Rafe looked up.

“He’s going to answer when the delivery comes. I’ll change down here, and back him up if anything happens.”

“Thanks,” Ky said. “I’ll come down now and get my box; we’ll stay upstairs after.”

“Full brief?” Rafe asked.

“Go ahead,” Ky said. “We’ll need him later.”

“Right.”

Ky went down to the suite to tell the others that another man was in the house. They were through with the cleaning, and stood gathered around the spiral stairs up to the top level. The hatch that sealed the lockdown looked ridiculous protruding through the ice-blue ceiling.

“What’s up there?”

“Two more bedrooms, from when this was the children’s wing. Can’t get there now with the house locked down, but this, where we are, used to be the playroom and common study space. The older ones could retreat from the noise up there; there are two bedrooms with dormer windows.” Ky set her box on the sofa, took off the float pins, and unzipped the seal. “This is stuff from my ship; they sent it down when they left. Should be some clothes in here you can wear until the store delivery comes.”

“It’s the fanciest house I’ve ever been in,” Barash said.

“Same here,” Inyatta said. “Was yours like this?”

“No,” Ky said. “Ours was on Corleigh, near the tik plantation, on the east coast. One story, sprawling out a bit. I could walk to the beach, though we also had a pool. My father had offices there in a separate building—mirroring the data here, so he could work from there much of the time. Coming to the mainland was a big deal.”

“Is that where you were until yesterday?”

“The island, yes, but not that house. It was destroyed—along with the offices—in the attack after I left the Academy. I was in space, then. In fact, this visit was the first time I’ve been on Slotter Key since… I left.” They were all looking at her, waiting for more. She could feel herself growing hot. “Actually, I was on an ansible call back here, to talk to my uncle Stavros, when it happened. The call cut off; I didn’t know why until later.” She looked away, staring at the wall. “Everyone there—and in the headquarters here—was killed. Why they didn’t target this house we don’t know, but that’s why Aunt Helen, Stella, and Jo’s twins survived.”

No one spoke for a long moment, then Inyatta said, “I’m sorry, Admiral.” The others murmured something.

Ky shook her head. “It’s—not something one can forget. Even when not directly witnessed.” As she spoke, her fingers brushed the familiar case, the case that held the family-related files sequestered from her father’s implant. The files that recorded what her father had seen that day, before he died, that she had watched, seeing it as he had, engulfed in his recorded emotions.