Into the Fire

by Elizabeth Moon

  “It does. And I’m not sure the speculation has any basis beyond those who hate Grace Vatta for what she did in the past. You know, the family she took refuge with after the gas attack—the man is from Esterance. His family was active in the war.”

  “So—are you suggesting that he set up the gas attack?”

  “No. What investigation we’ve had time for says he’s clean. And beyond the Rector’s history, there’s this rogue element of our military that’s been on and off Miksland for years, in a base deliberately hidden from satellite surveillance. Whose members, even with their commander dead, are surprisingly hard to talk to. They’re on maneuvers, they’re sick, they’re…anything but sitting down with the right officers to explain what the farkling hells they were doing down there, and why. And who’s behind it.”

  Major Hong, it was clear, was close to losing his temper. Morrison waited. He took a deep breath, blinked once, and said, in a calmer voice, “You visited the Rector after she was in the hospital.”

  “Courtesy visit, yes, sir, but I didn’t get to see her. I brought some flowers and a card, and the clerk at the intake desk said she wasn’t allowed visitors. I gave him the card and the flowers; he said he’d take care of it.”

  “But you didn’t physically see her?”

  “No, sir. I was told she wasn’t allowed visitors.”

  “Ah. Your name was on the list of those who came to the hospital. It wasn’t clear who actually had access to her room. There’s a Colonel Dihann who should have had that list but claims he doesn’t. Another break in the chain.”

  Morrison wasn’t sure which way Hong was going with all this, and decided that asking would be the simplest way to find out. “Sir, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure myself. But that file—” He nodded toward it. “—was on your desk in your base quarters when we got the alarm and went to check it out. Right on top, out in the open, where anyone could have gotten it and read it, since the door had been broken in. I’m going to guess that you didn’t leave it there.”

  “No, sir. I’ve never seen it before. I didn’t know it existed, or that Rector Vatta had been involved in that war.”

  He nodded. “I believe you. But someone wanted to make it look like you’d left a classified file lying there out in the open. Your safe was open, with the files you’d put in it—at least I suspect those were the same, as they all refer to your recent assignments—still there.”

  “They broke into my safe? It’s military-issue, approved and installed by your division; that’s why I’m authorized to use it in my quarters!”

  “Yes. I checked your authorization, of course. Whoever this is had an official passcoder, because they didn’t actually break the safe, just opened it. Now, here’s what I want you to do, because I can’t. I want you to contact Ky Vatta and let her know you have important information about the Rector. I will contact the Rector. She will probably want to talk to you, after that. On my authorization, you may tell Ky Vatta anything I’ve told you about this entire situation. Including my difficulty in contacting Ky Vatta’s fellow survivors.”

  “She’s not…a member of Slotter Key military anymore, sir.”

  “I know that.” The muscle in his jaw jumped again. “But I also know she knows what really happened in Miksland, and knows her aunt. Something needs to be done about both, and she’s the link between them. Or she could be. And I’m damn sick and tired of the shilly-shallying going on here. I know what my duty is, and I’m going to do it whatever—somebody—says.” He took another long breath. “So—you will meet with Ky Vatta, at your mutual convenience, and if that file should happen to travel with you, so much the better. She may know about it already.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morrison said. “The other files that were in my quarters?”

  “Here.” He pulled out a stack and handed it over. “You’ll want them. Your base quarters are off-limits for another ten days. I hope this time we’ve got enough surveillance on it to catch anyone who tries to break in again, even if they have every key in the box.”

  Morrison thought about telling him the Rector might be sharing her city apartment, but was he cleared to know where the Rector was?

  “What’s the status of my base office?”

  “Closed today and tomorrow while I install better monitoring equipment in hopes that, again, we can catch whoever’s getting in.” He grinned. It was not a happy grin, more like Ginger showing teeth. “As you know, Sergeant Major, every department has its own internal…dominance disputes, you might say. I do not intend to drag you into ours, but will confess that the colonel you met at the hospital is neither my boss nor a friend of my boss. That’s all I can say.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morrison said, tucking the information into a rapidly growing mental file of things that might be useful someday.

  “I’m giving you all my contact numbers—well, all the ones I can. I’ve already arranged for calls to your clerks to be transferred to their skullphones, so they can let you know when other things show up. Everyone in the building knows that your office was illegally entered—twice—and that your quarters on base were also entered, vandalized, and entered again. They know you’re not supposed to visit your office or your quarters without my permission and an escort. The flags have all contacted me, and I’ve explained what I feel they need to know. So nobody expects you to be there. My advice—and this is not an order, but advice—is that you quietly go someplace you’re not expected to be, read that file on the Rector, deal with the other files as you normally would, and contact me when you’re done. I can have my people remove anything from your quarters you need—”

  “Thank you, Major, but my city apartment’s pretty well stocked. With my dog in the clinic, I don’t have to worry about space for her. Though—this may be trivial, but there’s an open sack of dog food in the pantry, and a box of dog treats. I could take that by the vet clinic; it’s a brand they use.”

  “I can have it picked up now, and you can take it with you. Save everyone a trip.”

  And she’d have an excellent excuse to go by Petsational again, where he knew she’d been before. “Thank you, sir. That would be helpful.”

  Once back in her own vehicle, she contacted the clinic and told them she was bringing in some feed that had been in her quarters.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Kris said.

  “I know, but I really don’t want open dog food in there. Attracts pests. Be there in a few.”

  She also contacted her clerks. “Where are you set up?”

  “We’re over in Building H, Procurement. That Major Hong brought our files and everything and there’s a safe, but it’s awfully cramped, Sergeant Major. There’s barely room for two desks and only one of us can move in or out at a time.”

  “I’ll be working off-base,” Morrison said. “I can’t get back in my quarters, either, so I’ll either be downtown or with friends who live closer. Anything urgent right now?”

  “No, Sergeant Major. Nothing that needs your ID, just routine. I was wondering—there’s really not a lot to do—”

  “If you can take turns? Yes. Half-hour overlap to change over; keep Major Hong informed who’s there and where the other one is, in case he needs you. And me.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant Major. We’ll double up the moment there’s a load.”

  MARVIN J. PEAKE MILITARY HOSPITAL

  Grace Vatta eyed the plan for her transfer from hospital to apartment with suspicion. “Why does it have to be a military ambulance?”

  “Because they’re in and out of here all the time,” MacRobert said. “You’re the only civilian patient here, and if we use a civilian ambulance it will be obvious who’s inside it.”

  “And why are we going there?” She pointed at the address of Sergeant Major Morrison’s apartment in the city. “I thought you’d found a place in the Towers.”

  “I did. Morrison will be staying there instead. She’s from Esterance,
Grace. So her offer for you to use her apartment is either exceptionally generous or exceptionally devious…and in either case gives us an opportunity to check her out. She’d been ordered to leave her quarters on base—” He shrugged.

  “Ordered before or after her offer to me? By whom?”

  “A Major Hong. And I’m not sure when. Ready?”

  “Very,” Grace said. “And I don’t recognize the name Morrison from Esterance.”

  “That’s good.” MacRobert beckoned to the guard at the door.

  To Grace’s relief, her transport went smoothly. The only complication was the chill drizzle now falling as another front moved past, and that turned out to be an advantage. The ambulance crew pulled the retractable hood up over the gurney, and it fogged with her breath. She heard MacRobert speak to the door guard. “Sergeant Major Morrison’s auntie—I believe she called?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Here—you’ll want the service elevator—”

  She saw and heard no one else but the two handling the gurney and MacRobert on the way to the apartment. Once inside, Mac helped her sit up and move from the gurney to a chair; she thanked the ambulance attendants as they wheeled the gurney back out to the hall. She looked around. Perfectly tidy and clean, as she’d expected, but with a few touches of comfort and color that improved on beige walls and mid-brown carpeting. The living room sofa was a pull-out bed in a pleasant blue; the chair she sat on matched it. A low bookcase ran under the long window; the daylight coming in was chill.

  “Security glass,” MacRobert said. “View’s not great, but it’s not a hospital room, either.”

  The bedroom had a smaller window, bed, chair, chest of drawers, dresser. Blue-and-red small-patterned bed cover; a blue blanket with a red stripe folded neatly at the foot. Grace sat on the bed. Firm, but not hard. Pillows soft but not smothering. The closet held uniforms, with polished shoes and boots racked below, a uniform coat. In the kitchen, the foods in the cooler and shelves were the only sign of luxury.

  A second bedroom—or office, as it was furnished—had a desk, a bookcase, a desk chair, and a seat that also unfolded into a narrow bed.

  “So I can get some work done,” Grace said. “I’ve got to keep digging into that mess with the other Miksland survivors.”

  “That’s why Sergeant Major Morrison wants to talk to you. At least, that’s the ostensible reason. She’s talked to Ky.”

  “How secure is this place?” Grace looked around.

  “Secure as our people could make it early this morning. I had it swept. It would be better if we could use Rafe and Teague, but if they leave the house they’ll be arrested.”

  “So Morrison and Ky are working together?”

  “Not exactly. They’ve had only one meeting before today and it was short. Morrison can’t work openly with Ky without higher authorization. And she did sign off on the committee report suggesting permanent confinement for the survivors. She felt that her own freedom of movement and even life were at risk if she didn’t, and that it was more important to make it back to Port Major—and you.”

  “She’ll be here later today?”

  “Yes. And the apartment we rented for you is where she’ll stay, at least for a few days. Her life may also be in danger, so she, too, will have security coverage in that building.”

  Grace settled herself at the desk and looked at the files MacRobert had delivered, the service records of all the personnel who had been on the shuttle, including—to her surprise—Ky’s record from her entrance to the Academy to the day she resigned from it. She’d never hunted it down; she knew Ky’s father hadn’t asked to see it, either.

  Curiosity overtook her. The picture from Ky’s application misted her eyes. She had been so young, so enthusiastic, so much like Grace herself at the same age. They’d both left home hoping for adventure—and for both, that adventure had involved tragedy and loss. Well. The past didn’t change. She flipped the pages quickly, past pictures of Ky as a first-year, second-year, third-year cadet, solemn and determined. Not as bad a first three years away from home as her own had been; she was glad of that. Rankings always high—first or second in every class. Honor cadet her final year, pictured with the loop of gold braid on her shoulder. And then, at the end, her handwritten letter of resignation stapled to the back of the terse explanation for it, what she had done. She had jumped the chain of command, gone outside it to help a junior cadet she’d been mentoring. A political embarrassment followed.

  “She’s more like me than I thought,” Grace said as Mac came in with a cup of tea for her, one of the sergeant major’s expensive teas.

  “You didn’t know the story?”

  “I knew her father’s version of it. Gerry—her father—was so angry. He gave me a look and said, ‘Don’t ask any questions. I can only hope she’s as tough as you said she was when you advised me to let her apply, and that she survives.’ ” Grace sipped the tea and set the cup back down. “I told him she would. But since he hadn’t told me the whole story, I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know what had happened.”

  “But the press—”

  “I didn’t watch the media then. I didn’t know what she’d supposedly done, or if she had actually done it or been framed.” She drank the rest of the tea. “I should have asked and found out before she came back. Our meeting—brief as it was—felt off somehow and I now see it’s because she thought I knew, and then realized I didn’t, and interpreted my not knowing her own way.”

  “I covered for you,” MacRobert said. “Told her what you’d been dealing with, missing the Commandant, fighting with the various commands to push for rescue.”

  “Kind of you,” Grace said. “And I’ll know the next time I see her. She can’t leave the house, can she?”

  “No, but Stella can. And as your niece, Stella has a family reason to see you and carry word back and forth.”

  “Mac, do you know everything about my past?”

  “Everything?”

  “You know what I mean. I know you know I was in a psychiatric hospital for years, but—do you know all the background?”

  “All of it—no. I know you were in the Unification mess, and bad things happened, and you were considered mentally unfit—with a suggestion that you had previously had, if not a breakdown, some instability.”

  “My defense team thought that might mitigate my sentence. And it did, eventually. Mac, somewhere in the military is the file on me. I wasn’t officially military, but that’s who gathered the information, and supported the charges against me. I don’t know myself exactly how my father’s legal team got me off—and later got me out of that mental hospital. He didn’t tell me—he told my brother, who became my guardian after my father died. My brother didn’t tell me, either, and I didn’t ask. Then he died unexpectedly, of a fever. I asked his older son, Stavros, but he said he knew nothing about it. But what I feel now is that my crimes—and they were crimes—have come back to haunt the family.”

  “So are you going to tell me?”

  Grace looked at him. No condemnation so far in his gaze; he had not shrunk from any of the things he knew she’d done to protect the family in the years since the big attack on them. He knew she’d killed. He approved of those kills. He was not going to approve of the old ones, from the Unification War.

  But she had to tell him. He deserved to know. Was this the right time?

  “Did the Commandant ever tell you why he asked you to liaise with me?”

  “Sure. The Vatta family had been helpful to him when he was a boy, an orphan from Fulland. Brought him in, educated him, paid his entrance to the Academy. He considered you to be smart and tough, politically astute, the best contact among the Vattas but one that wouldn’t be obvious to others.”

  “I saved his life in the war. He was just a kid. His parents…” She looked away, at the small window with rain smearing the glass. “His parents died in a firefight. I found him hiding. Brought him along.” After a pause, she said the words. “I killed his parents.�
� This time, when she looked at Mac’s face, his eyes widened, then closed for a moment.

  “Did he know?”

  “No. He knew there were shots; crawled to the closet where I found him hiding. He didn’t see it; it was at night. The others—the others I was with wanted to kill him, too, but I was sick—sick of the whole thing—and I—I was their commander; I said we were taking him along and the person who hurt him would die. They believed me. With reason.”

  MacRobert nodded. “I believe you, too.” He sighed. “Well, we’d better take another look at the Vance family, and Morrison’s, before you’re alone with either.”

  “Mac…I’m tired of the hunt. If it takes my death to ease their pain and let everything die down—”

  “You weren’t the only one tried as a war criminal, on either side.”

  “No, but I’m still here. Most have died. I don’t know how much of this mess is vengeance aimed at me, or why nothing for decades until now, but I want Ky and Stella and even that idiot Maxim to be able to live good lives. Easy choice.”

  “No. You never went in for easy choices, and I won’t approve it now. You can still do good—you already have; the military is better off now because of you, and you’re the only one who can do certain things.”

  Grace pulled herself up in the chair. “All right. While I can do good. But, Mac, I’ve had death sitting on my shoulder for days, and I don’t expect to make another ten years.”

  “Die of poison or die of blade or gun, but don’t die of self-loathing,” Mac said. He squeezed her shoulder, then picked up the empty teacups and walked out.

  Grace folded her hands and thought about it. Was it the near-death of toxins and coma that jarred loose these vivid memories? Not yet all of them; there were still holes, still sudden stabbing pain in her head when she tried to remember. But vivid enough. From the face that first brought her into it, the boy she’d met in a café, her third day in Esterance. She’d felt so mature, shopping by herself in a strange city on another continent—another country, actually, as it was then. She’d bought her lunch, found a table, and then—he’d spoken to her. Politely, but with interest. They’d talked. They’d agreed to meet again.