Into the Fire

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Of course, yes.” Jaime’s voice. “Come in; she’s having dinner with us.” And something in a lower tone that Grace could not hear.

  Mac was in uniform, as he was only rarely these days. “Good evening, Rector,” he said, as if they didn’t call each other Grace and Mac all the time otherwise. “The department has a crew at your house, decontaminating it. The company apologizes for the error; they thought you had left for the weekend. You have a room reserved, or I can take you to your niece’s house, if you prefer.”

  “Thank you, Master Sergeant. I hate to intrude on my niece—” She turned to Alice Vance. “My niece—great-niece, really—Ky Vatta and her fiancé are staying there, and they’ve had hardly time to see each other since the rescue.”

  “You know her?” Chloris sat up straighter. “You know Ky Vatta?”

  “I’ve known her all her life,” Grace said.

  “But she’s famous! She’s an admiral! And then—”

  “Chloris.” Jaime smiled at her and shook his head slightly. “Sera Vatta knows all that.”

  “But—” Grace could see the effort made to calm down. “Just tell her we—our strings class—admires her most of all. Bela even wrote a little piece about her. If she’d ever like to hear it—”

  “Chloris. Later.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Grace said. “Master Sergeant?”

  “There’s also a call from Commandant Kvannis, Rector. It requires a secure line.”

  Grace sighed, intentionally loud enough to hear. “It was a lovely dinner, Alice, Jaime. Thank you—”

  “I’m sorry to have interrupted dinner,” MacRobert said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Sit down, join us,” Alice said. “Our oldest isn’t here, so there’s plenty—he’s at the two-hollow-legs stage.”

  “No thank you, Sera,” MacRobert said. “I’m sorry; it’s very kind of you, but I really should get the Rector to a secure line. She has important calls waiting.”

  The look on Mac’s face convinced Grace not to delay. Kvannis must really have his undies in a knot about something; perhaps it had to do with the personnel from Miksland. She felt much better, she told herself, not just because of Mac’s help down the steps. Yet the fragmented memory of Fulland, of Esterance, of the riots and the…things that had happened…that she had done…remained. She struggled to pull them together. Jaime Vance was from Fulland, from Esterance? Which side had his family been on? And had she run into any Vances back then? Mostly the people she’d known used only single names, often not their own—call names, they’d said. But she had been well known, especially postwar, after all the communications were back up. Her trial had been widely publicized.

  “You’re damn lucky you’re alive,” Mac said when they were back in the car. “Any symptoms?”

  “Pain in my throat and nose, temporary loss of voice—that’s why I didn’t call you immediately. Some dizziness, weakness—that passed off fairly quickly. I think I’m fine now.” She didn’t mention the tremor. He would be sure it meant something dire.

  “You’re going to the hospital. No arguments.” He said that last firmly though she hadn’t argued. She had felt better, but now—as the car moved swiftly through the streets, around turns, bouncing a little over the occasional pothole—she had an uncomfortable feeling that she ought not to have eaten before being checked out. That maybe being checked out was a good idea.

  “Did Kvannis really call me?” she asked to take her mind off her uneasy innards.

  “Yes. He wants to get hold of Ky and said he couldn’t reach her at the Vatta city house. Some questions about the people she knew in Miksland, he said. I didn’t give him her skullphone number.”

  “Good. Nobody should have that but those she chooses.” Grace paused. Her stomach really was upset, and she could feel the muscles in her arms and legs twitching now. Surely it wasn’t the food; the whole family had eaten from the same dishes. “What was that stuff in the house, anyway?”

  “MZT-43. Bad one, Grace. I wouldn’t be surprised if you threw up that dinner you just ate; it attacks mucous linings, among other things.”

  She should know what MZT-43 was, but it was hard to think, harder every minute.

  They reached the Marvin J. Peake Military Hospital before the worst happened; staff with a lift chair were waiting at the curb. “Rector—can you make it out of the car?”

  “Of course I can,” Grace said, but her voice was weak and harsh again. Her legs trembled when she tried to stand. Mac helped her, and she was in the chair, safe, but feeling much worse now. “Call the family,” she said as they pushed her inside, and he nodded.

  —

  The kitchen had been closed off again, and they were all in the dining room listening to the survivors tell more about their experiences, when the house com warbled from the security office across the entrance hall. Stella went to answer it. “It’s probably from Vatta headquarters.”

  “Go on,” Ky said to Inyatta, who had stopped midsentence.

  “Then I opened the cell door,” Inyatta said. “That loudspeaker was still going about the emergency in Wing B. I gave Barash the door card, and she let Kamat out—we were all kind of shaky, so we raided the food cart and hoped that would help, and it did.”

  “And Kamat remembered we should be sure the evening dose was missing, so it looked like we’d taken it,” Barash said. “That curtain we hadn’t been able to see past was actually a kind of changing room—there were more suits like our guards wore hanging in it. We put the booties they wore over our slippers and that helped when we got outside—”

  “We almost didn’t,” Kamat said. She shuddered. Ky nodded encouragement. “But Inyatta just kept going, like she knew—”

  “I knew I’d rather die trying to escape than be drugged and helpless in that place,” Inyatta said. “It seemed to take hours to get out of the building, though, let alone out of the compound. We’d relocked the doors the card opened, but they had sniffers, if they’d thought to use them.”

  Stella hurried across the foyer to the dining room. “Ky—that was MacRobert. It’s Aunt Grace. She’s been poisoned!”

  “What?”

  “Someone put poison gas canisters in her house! It could have killed her—it should have killed her—and she could still die—” Stella’s breath came in gasps; she was trembling. Rafe stood up and went to her.

  “Stella—take a deep breath—easy now.” He took her arm and guided her to a chair. “Sit down. If Mac’s with her, she’ll be taken care of. Where is she?”

  “That big—that big military hospital in the city. He said stay here, stay safe, don’t come, but I—but we’re family—” She looked at Ky. “We should go.”

  “If she’s that sick, we can’t help,” Ky said. “Mac’s right; he’ll be sure nothing more happens to her.” The possibilities ran through her mind as if outlined in light. “We need to call your mother—if this is the start of new attacks on Vatta, she should stay on Corleigh but maybe not in the beach house.”

  “You don’t think anyone would kill the twins—”

  “And you need to alert Vatta headquarters,” Ky said. “All operations, here and elsewhere.”

  “Don’t you even care about Aunt Grace?”

  Ky bit back the first response and tried for something less antagonistic. “Stella, I do care about her. I care about the whole family as well. I can call headquarters, if you’d rather, while you call your mother.”

  “You’re not listed anymore,” Stella said. “You have no authority there. It’s my domain.” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, and the warn-off was clear.

  Ky could see, from the corner of her eye, the three survivors staring fixedly at the table. “You’ll want privacy for that,” she said, and stood, beckoning to the others. They followed her out of the room. To them she said, “I’m going down to the gym.” Rafe gave a slight nod toward Stella; she knew he would stay with her, try to calm her.

  “There’s a gym?” Kamat asked.
>
  “Yes,” Ky said. “My uncle Stavros put it in. Come see.” On the way down she considered explaining more about her background and Stella’s, but they didn’t need to know—yet, anyway—and she did want to hear more about their escape. Surely they knew something useful.

  They had all worked up a sweat on the machines by the time Rafe showed up at the door and beckoned Ky over. “I come in peace,” he said. He glanced past her at the others; they had been chatting at the other end of the room.

  “Of course,” Ky said. “Nobody’s mad at you. Has she calmed down yet?” She wiped her face.

  “She’s gone up to the office and wants to be alone. I suggest that you not bother her tonight.”

  “Wasn’t planning to,” Ky said. “Neither of us can do anything for Grace tonight. So I’m focusing on what we can do for the survivors who are being held captive. Our guests have some ideas—we were about to go across the hall to what Uncle Stavros called the bunker.”

  “Bunker?”

  “Situation room, it would be, in military terms.”

  Rafe gave her a puzzled look and said, “Do you want Teague down here?”

  “Yes, both of you. He worked for the guy who got your parents out.”

  Rafe paused to call Teague on the house com, then followed her across the hall into the bunker. “Stella knows a lot more background on politics than you do—” he began.

  “I’ve been gone for ten years.”

  “And were busy the whole time. I know. She says Grace isn’t popular. Widely believed to be behind the former President’s apparent suicide, after the attack on Vatta, even though it was the Commandant with him at the time. Apparently there’s a rumor she and the Commandant had a connection in the past. Lovers or something.”

  “Aunt Grace?” Ky stared at him. “She’s at least ten years older than he was, maybe twenty, and she never had any interest in men after her husband died. That’s what my father told me.”

  “Stella said the same—that it was ridiculous, but a rumor nonetheless. And Vatta did use her as a corporate spy of some kind. Stella’s afraid some enemy—corporate or political or a mix—may be targeting Vatta again, rather than this having anything to do with these three.” Rafe smiled at them; they smiled back, a little stiffly. “I’m less sure. If she were just Vatta’s master spy, sure, but she’s administrative head of the Defense Department—surely an attack on her is more related to that. After all, we know they’re interested in this house because of our friends here.”

  “That man, that officer who was here today—Aunt Grace ordered him to come to her office with his team. Could that have triggered an attack?”

  “Possibly. Ky, from what you’ve told me about Miksland, the evidence you’ve found—both a civilian and a military component were involved. Maybe they were intentionally involved—maybe there’s one enemy with two faces.”

  “Or three,” Teague said, turning around from the map he’d been looking at since he’d arrived downstairs. “Mac wasn’t kidnapped by the military or the Quindlans…that was a criminal organization, not a legitimate corporation.”

  “Malines,” Rafe said, nodding. “But maybe they’re all allies. Ky, were there any military personnel named Quindlan or Malines when you were here before?”

  “There was a Cadet Quindlan in the senior class when I entered—I didn’t have any problems with him. I don’t remember his first name. Dad said the Quindlans weren’t friends but weren’t all bad—and back then the President was a Quindlan. Dad had voted for him. I think the cadet was his son, or maybe nephew.”

  Kamat said, “A Lieutenant Varian Quindlan supervised the shop I worked in on my first cruise. Seemed like a good officer. That would have been…maybe nine years ago.”

  “I knew a Malines—Dexter—in Basic, but he washed out, straight into the brig. He stole from our platoon sergeant.” Inyatta shook her head. “Really stupid.”

  “So there is some infiltration of two suspect organizations into the third,” Rafe said. “Over time, could have been a lot more.”

  “I take your point,” Ky said. “Not one enemy, but several working together. Still, we need to figure out where the other survivors are being held, and then how to get them out. And quickly.”

  DAY 4

  Stella was pleasant at breakfast before leaving for her office. Rafe gave her a list of equipment they would need to upgrade the house security and include the kitchen in it.

  “And we’re going to need more people,” Teague added. “There’re more than a dozen people to locate and rescue, and we don’t have Gary’s—” He stopped and shook his head.

  “If you have someone in Vatta’s security section,” Rafe said, “someone you trust, with experience in…locating missing persons or shipments, a really good hand with electronics—”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Stella said. “I’d usually ask Grace, but—” She picked up her case and edged toward the door.

  “But surely there’s someone you can ask. Grace ran your security for years; there must be—”

  “Most died in the explosion, but I will look.” She had her hand on the door.

  “Stella, may I continue to use Vatta’s legal department about this summons thing?” Ky half stood to get Stella’s attention.

  “Yes, of course, Ky. I saw that notation on the bottom of the memo and sent word down to give you whatever you needed. Just call them.” Stella went out, and Teague followed, turning down the driveway to open the gate and spot for her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MARVIN J. PEAKE MILITARY HOSPITAL

  DAY 4

  By the next morning, Grace wished she could forget the preceding hours, a string of unpleasant, painful, humiliating moments without any respite between them. The dinner, she was assured, was not the problem at all, though everything she threw up was collected and later analyzed. Her head ached, then the first injection site turned into a row of red lumps before the staff figured out an allergen had been added to the toxic gas. It itched, then burned. She finally fell asleep around 0500, only to be woken at 0530 by a nurse demanding that she take an immediate vision test.

  “I can see you perfectly well,” Grace said. “Let me sleep.”

  “First the test.”

  After the test, it was only fifteen minutes until 0600, when the day staff arrived and the hall lights brightened. Brisk footsteps went up and down; voices in the hall were not muted. A different attendant came in to take vital signs. Grace wondered, not for the first time, if anyone could sleep while having their blood pressure taken. Only in a coma, she was sure. At 0700, the first doctor of the day arrived, closely followed by Commandant Kvannis and his aide, for whom Grace presented an intentionally groggy old-lady persona. She didn’t really suspect him of anything, but giving away information went against her principles.

  “I don’t know,” she said in answer to every question about Ky. “I can’t remember…I hope it’s the gas…” She hoped she looked as bad as she felt, and apparently she did, or close enough, because Kvannis left, still unsatisfied but convinced the Rector had narrowly escaped death.

  At 0915, Dr. Hermann, who had supervised her arm’s growth from bud to full functionality, came by. “I’m not lead on this,” he said. “But you’ve got a very good specialist in poisonings; she’s a friend of mine, and she flew in overnight from Makkavo. I told her how easy you are to work with, how compliant—” He grinned at her; her noncompliance in the matter of regular checkups once her arm was growing well had been, he once told her, unprecedented. “—so you can expect the same level of gentle pressure from her.”

  “I’m touched,” Grace said. “I feel much better, and I have a lot of work to do. Important work.” She lifted her head to glare at him and wished she hadn’t. Neck muscles spasmed; she saw his gaze sharpen.

  “Yes, of course you have important work. But you also have the residue of a quaternary toxin in your body—the stuff’s damned hard to root out. You will not be leaving the hospital today. Or tomorr
ow. Or the next day. So get your tantrum about that over with before Sylvie arrives, because as I said she’s a friend of mine and doesn’t deserve the worst side of your tongue.”

  “I need sleep,” Grace said, head back on the inadequate pillow. Her right foot cramped; she ignored it. “They kept me up all night.”

  “Sometimes it takes that,” he said.

  “A vision test at 0530?”

  “The stuff attacks nerves, including the optic nerve. Once you’re blind, it’s too late.”

  “They didn’t tell me that.”

  “Standard procedure. Some people go skewy worrying about it. Ah—here’s Sylvie. Doctor Maillard.”

  Sylvie Maillard was a short, dark woman whose intensity reminded Grace of an older Ky. “Good news or bad news?” she said.

  “Bad first,” Grace said.

  “That hiss you reported wasn’t a gas canister starting to spread it in your house; it had been open for at least a half hour. It was supposed to be a knockdown dose as you came in the door. So you got more than you would otherwise, even with only a single breath.”

  “I held my breath—”

  “When you heard it, yes. But like most people, you undoubtedly took a relaxing breath as you walked in. Everyone does that when they get home. The Ahhh Reflex, we call it. What that means—in terms Doctor Hermann says are meaningful to you—is that you won’t be getting out of this hospital room for at least six days—and quite possibly longer. Given the intake, you have done well so far, but there are possible late complications. Later today, after another battery of tests and if I deem it appropriate, you can have communications equipment moved in here, so you can work from bed for a limited time each day. And I do mean limited. If not, we’ll take an alternative tack and you won’t be working at all.”

  Grace met Maillard’s gaze, every bit as determined as her own. “I don’t like it, but clear. If I’m in that bad shape, why do I feel better? I’m just tired.”

  “It’s not just broken sleep. Typical of this class of poisons, MZT-43 continues to damage systems until you die, but its effects are not immediately lethal with the dose you received. Victims of a light dose typically feel upper-respiratory irritation at first, but that encourages them to drink and eat—which gives some components more time in the gut. You need to be monitored closely until it’s all gone, with appropriate treatment for the various complications as they emerge.”