Into the Fire

by Elizabeth Moon

“It wasn’t a very taxing job, Commandant. Much the same as working for his wife—actually less stressful because I didn’t have to arrange parties or redecorating or anything. Of course he never gave me anything classified to work with—he did all that himself, he and Colonel Stornaki. Are you—are you sure that Colonel Stornaki did something bad?” She looked worried.

  Ky said, “Even though you’ve been very helpful today—”

  “Oh, please!” Sera Vonderlane looked ready to cry. “Please don’t fire me! My daughter—I mean, I’m sure I can please you, just give me a chance.”

  “Sera, you have not given me cause to fire you.” Ky kept her voice soft with an effort. “But the situation is such that I must have you checked out before you continue, because the person who hired you is absent without leave—and in the military that presupposes an ill intent. Before you become my permanent secretary, for however long I’m here, I must be sure that you are not secretly passing information outside this office.”

  “I wouldn’t! That would be wrong!” Vonderlane’s eyes were wide open.

  “Yes,” Ky said. “It would be. And that’s why you need to pass a security check.” She paused. The woman was trembling and a tear ran down her cheek. Genuine fear of losing a job or good acting? “Tell me—what is it about your daughter?”

  That brought on a flood of tears and a narrative broken by gasps and sobs. “She—she was out with her children—for a break—the train to Falls Park and this car—it derailed—and they died—and she can’t—can’t work—and has no one—the house—her pension—”

  “I see,” Ky said. “I understand; I’m so sorry. Listen carefully now. I am not firing you. Your salary will continue—though not the subsidy Kvannis was providing. But you cannot be working for me, in this office, until you have been cleared by security. I will do my best to find you a place to work in the meantime, but you will still get your salary regardless. Do you understand?”

  “I—I will be paid?”

  “Yes. Now, I want you to stay right there while I make a few calls. Can you do that?”

  She wiped her eyes. “Yes, Commandant.”

  “I will talk to you again shortly.”

  “Yes, Commandant.”

  Ky went back to her desk, leaving the door open. Sera Vonderlane was crying again, but softly. Now what? The woman was older than her own mother would have been. What could she do? Secretarial work, obviously. But where? It was irregular for her to be the Commandant’s secretary, and Ky would have preferred a military appointment for that post. But she could not toss the woman out to deal with a disabled adult daughter on her own, either. And she doubted Kvannis’s wife would take her back as a social secretary.

  Vonderlane’s employment record was available to her: she could look up any of the staff. Sure enough, the woman had not undergone a background check when Kvannis hired her as his secretary. That was a breach of security and standard protocol. Her prior employment, as his wife’s social secretary, was on the record, but her references were all civilian women listed as “longtime family friends.” No credit check had been reported, no check of political connections or conflicts of interest. Clearly both Kvannis and his wife had counted on his rank and appointment to cover this breach. Which meant that someone in security was bent; she hoped it was not here at the Academy. Not, for instance, Palnuss, who now had the Greyhaus diary.

  She used her skullphone to call the Rector again. Grace listened to Ky’s report. “Obviously she can’t stay as your secretary,” Grace said. “If she passes the security check, I’ll see if we can find her another place in the department. Do you think Kvannis is the one who hid all the evidence you brought back?”

  “I suspect so, since we found Greyhaus’s log in his desk. Why he kept that I don’t know. My guess is that he incinerated the samples I hoped would help determine what poison was used. But we didn’t find the flight recorder, and those things won’t burn.”

  “Someone’s got it, or threw it into the ocean,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s somewhere around the Academy. You should look for it.”

  Ky closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. “This place is a warren,” she said. “There are far too many hiding places. But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Put the students on it. A reward to the one who finds it.”

  “Aunt Grace, I’m not going to tell a bunch of young people to go poking around when some of them may have families who are part of the conspiracy. Besides, they’re on strict schedules. Military academy, remember?”

  “Oh. Well, do your best.”

  Next Ky called back to the Academy security team. “I need an escort to take Sera Vonderlane home,” she said. “And start a background check on her—no background check was done at the time she was hired. And do you know who a Colonel Dihann is? Was he ever on staff here?”

  “Commandant, there’s only me and Corporal Metis here right now; Major Palnuss took the others with him out to the base because they’d been witnesses to making those copies. We’re not supposed to have fewer than two here in the Academy at any time…” His voice trailed away.

  “Then who do you suggest I have escort her home? Any spare bodies around? She’s upset and worried, and I want her to get home safely.”

  “Yes, Commandant, I can find someone, easy. Maybe ten minutes?”

  “That will do. You can start running a proper background check on her. Her only former employment listed in her file here is working for Kvannis’s wife. And—Colonel Dihann?”

  “Yes, Commandant. Colonel Dihann—no, he wasn’t ever assigned here. He came to talk to the former Commandant or Colonel Stornaki. Him and the major didn’t see eye-to-eye sometimes. The major thought there was something wrong about him, but we didn’t dig anything up.”

  “Dihann signed off Vonderlane’s employment application,” Ky said. “On Kvannis’s word.” She glanced at the file again. Vonderlane had started at the Academy as soon as Kvannis took over…immediately after the shuttle went down.

  “That’d be because he and Kvannis were buddies. He told the major they’d worked together in Dorland, at Joint Services Headquarters South.”

  Dorland. Capital Makkavo. Had Aunt Grace been there, or at Esterance, when the Unification War started? “I’ll get back to you later; I need to speak to Sera Vonderlane again, make sure she understands she cannot take anything out of the Academy.”

  Sera Vonderlane looked slightly better; she wasn’t actually crying and she remained calm while Ky explained what she would need to do. “You’ll have an escort to your residence; your pay can be sent there, or deposited automatically, as you prefer.”

  “It goes to my bank now, Commandant. The military pay, I mean. Commandant Kvannis gave me the extra himself, in cash.”

  So—under the table, what could easily be construed as a bribe for her silence. “It will be a few days before I talk to you again,” Ky said. “I have a lot to do, and I’m sure you deserve some days off. And you must not take anything from here—your keys to this room and the files, for instance. I have begun a background investigation, but I don’t expect to find anything amiss. Please do not leave the city, however.”

  “I wouldn’t!”

  “Good. I—” She paused as a tap came on the secretary’s door to the passage. “Come.”

  It was her own assigned driver; she wished she’d thought of that herself. “Ah—Corporal, Sera Vonderlane wasn’t feeling well and will be taking a few days off. Take her to her residence and see her to the door.”

  “Yes, Commandant.”

  Sera Vonderlane looked at Ky, her expression pleading, but Ky had already given her what she could. “Take care of your daughter,” Ky said. “This will all work out, one way or another.” Vonderlane nodded and followed the driver out. Ky picked up the keys from the desk and locked both doors to the secretary’s office. She would need a new secretary, but before that the office would have to be searched. She was tempted to do it herself, but she needed a witness.

&n
bsp; —

  Stella Vatta stared at the surface of her desk, having finally cleared the morning’s items, and wondered whether the change she felt would last or fade away. For now, it was still vivid in her mind—the attack, her fear, her determination to survive, her realization that she had to walk on blood and broken glass past men she had killed, through the destruction the intruders had wrought inside the house, and finally the moment when she saw herself in the mirrors flanking the door—the mirrors her mother had made her check every time to be sure she was fit to be leave the house—and had seen herself whole, real, for the first time.

  Grimy, bloodstained, disheveled, her good clothes fouled past cleaning, everything she had been brought up to avoid—what should have completed her dismay—but still herself. Out of the dirt and blood and fear she had found a new self emerging, familiar and new at the same time. Stella Vatta, CEO of Vatta Enterprises, a woman whose strength was not her beauty, whose elegance was not her wardrobe, who could enjoy beauty and clothes and a fine house, but did not need them.

  And that, she was sure after another brief consideration, was not going away. She didn’t want to be attacked—no sane person did. She would rather be clean, well groomed, wearing comfortable and attractive clothes—any sane person would. But never again would she feel incomplete without them. Never again would she feel guilty just because something had dirtied her face. She had earned that internal stability, not just by surviving the attack, but by all the years she’d lived, all the challenges met—even the ones she’d met badly. She had no mirrors in her office, but she didn’t need them. She knew who she was, and being a bastard, adopted, daughter of a monster—was not her identity. She thought of Osman, this time without shame or horror. “I’m not you,” she said quietly. “And you can’t define me.”

  She took a deep breath, glanced at the time—three whole minutes?—and looked at the latest security analysis that had just popped up on her screen: threats detected, threats averted, threats reported to authorities. On Cascadia six incidents against the Vatta factory making shipboard ansibles, four of them traceable to the Bentik extended family. Jen’s relatives blaming Ky—and then Vatta—for her death. Somewhat to her surprise, Stella saw that although local law enforcement went warily on the first two, the next incidents had brought the usual swift and efficient response, senatorial family or not. Two family members were under arrest, and the family had been assessed a fine and a financial hold. Only two Vatta employees had been injured, and both were now in stable condition.

  Stella sent personal notes to their families and commendations to her security staff and the Cascadian law enforcement. The other two threats hadn’t been traced yet.

  Here on Slotter Key, other attacks had continued, at least partly in response to the rescue of the Miksland survivors. Besides the attack on the Vatta aircraft the day of the rescue, Vatta trucks had had tires slashed, resulting in one wreck. The home of a Vatta senior manager in Dorland was broken into and vandalized, with substantial property damage, but the family had been on vacation. She contacted Bry Skinner and promised that he and his family would be getting a Vatta Security detail as soon as possible. They were staying in a remote forest lodge.

  “I’d like to send the family to live with my parents in Arland for a while,” he said. “If this gets worse—”

  “Absolutely,” Stella said. “Have you been in contact with your parents?”

  “Yes, Sera. They have a large house—it was on the market but they’ll be just as glad to stay there as long as it’s not just the two of them. They’re in Arsinine.”

  “When can you get to a transport hub?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m leery of hiring private transport in an area I don’t know well; ideal would be a VTOL of some sort, but the resort lists only local operators.”

  “We’ll send info with the security team.”

  She realized, in the midst of making calls to charter a VTOL craft with the range to extract them, arranging a charter flight for the family to Arsinine, letting Bry know that help was on the way, and ensuring ground transportation from the Arsinine airport to his parents’ house—that this was much like what Ky had done. That her care for Vatta employees was like Ky’s for her soldiers. Well. Another new idea, and one she would have to share with Ky when the Commandant had time.

  —

  Ky and Corporal Metis began searching Sera Vonderlane’s office. “Tech Coston will call if he needs us,” Metis said. “Did you turn out her purse?”

  “Had her do it. I’m sure I have all the keys but the one she said opened her apartment. Also two datacards, the probe with the access built in, a couple of letters. Nothing in her pockets but lint.”

  “She seemed like a nice lady,” Metis said. “Of course, I saw her only occasionally.”

  “I think she is a nice lady,” Ky said. “But she’s been economically dependent on Kvannis for years. As his wife’s social secretary, she apparently did him some favors, too. And he was paying her another twenty-five percent on top of her salary.”

  “That’s…illegal, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think she knew. She’d started working for his wife because of her daughter’s injuries; he already knew about her medical expenses from that. She’d be doing him a favor to come to the Academy; he wouldn’t let her income suffer. That kind of thing.”

  “I wonder what he wanted her to do,” Metis asked. They had found nothing in the center desk drawer but what should be there: styluses, pencils, notepads, some with notes and some not. A printed list of the Academy faculty and staff, faculty with blue checks beside their names and staff with orange. Metis opened the left-hand drawer. “Well. Here’s something.”

  Ky looked over. He held up a small machine. “What’s that?”

  “Something she shouldn’t have had. A fully programmable franking printer. She could make something look like it came from any government agency.” He pulled a pad from the center drawer, fiddled with the controls, and inserted a sheet; the machine emitted a beep and then the image of a Slotter Key stamp imposed on the Department of Defense logo. Another sheet; he changed the controls and that one printed out OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT. “These are coded, supposed to be strictly controlled.” He put it into the trolley he’d brought along for evidence.

  Also in the drawer were preprinted envelopes with the return addresses of a dozen or more governmental agencies and offices in the military.

  “Look at this,” Metis said. On the point of each envelope flap was a small irregular spot, a smudge as if it had been touched by a soiled finger. “A signal that these envelopes weren’t what they seemed?”

  “Could be,” Ky said. Her drawer had produced a box of stationery, completely blank, a box of pens printed with the Commandant’s name and title—Kvannis, not Vatta, of course—and at the very back, a small envelope attached to the back of the drawer. “Bet this has a key in it,” she said.

  “Let me, Commandant,” Metis said, as she reached for the envelope. He pulled a set of tongs out of his kit and tugged gently at the envelope. It ripped and a cloud of white powder flew out. He dropped the tongs and turned away, scrabbling at his pocket; Ky slapped her own emergency mask on and a second on him before he got his own out.

  “Hurry,” she said, pulling him toward her office. Eyes wide, he followed her, but stopped at the door, pointing to his shirt front, speckled with white. “I’ll call,” Ky said. Tech Coston answered from the security office. She told him what had happened, what they needed.

  “Closest tox scanner is city emergency response,” he said, sounding worried. “There’s a team out at the base, of course, but that’s twice as far—”

  “Call the closest. Corporal Metis has visible powder on his uniform. I’m at my desk and will answer any questions.”

  “Yes, Commandant.”

  This was going to take hours, even if it turned out to be face powder. “Call’s going in to the city team,” she said to Metis, still standing at the doo
rway. He looked fine, though worried, as well he might be. “I’m going to check for emergency supplies in this office.”

  There was, in fact, an emergency box mounted on the wall of the little sitting room, and another in the toilet. More emergency masks, a fire hood and mask, fire-resistant gloves, in both places. She put on the fire hood and brought the other one to Metis. He shook his head. “Even with tongs, my hands might be contaminated. I’m better off with the one I’m wearing.”

  “I can put it on you without touching you,” Ky said. “It’ll protect your face better. Turn around.”

  She had put these things on in drills—on herself, on someone else—and in seconds his face was protected. She went to the window of her office and looked out. Flashing lights approached.

  “That was fast,” she said. “Something’s coming.”

  “Maybe we don’t need them,” he said. “I don’t feel anything. It’s probably nothing. And you slapped that mask on me really fast.”

  “I certainly hope so. But you’re going to be checked over and the stuff analyzed, anyway.” She went back to the window. A single vehicle, not any larger than a personal car, had pulled up below. Her desk com chimed. She answered. “Commandant Vatta.”

  “This is Port Major Emergency Response. Please state your name, address, and the nature of your emergency.”

  “This is Commandant Vatta. I’m in my office in the headquarters building of the Academy, and one of your vehicles just pulled up to the door. The nature of the emergency is possible exposure to a dangerous substance unknown at this time.”

  “Oh…this is the actual Commandant? Not a secretary?”

  “Yes, this is Commandant Vatta. Two persons were exposed; one of them has particles of a white powder on his uniform. I was in the room but not immediately adjacent to the release of the powder.”

  “What was it released from?”

  “An envelope. We need—”

  “We understand your needs, Sera; please calm down.” She hadn’t raised her voice; she had an urge to raise it now, when the voice added, in the same tone, “Why were we called? The Academy is outside our jurisdiction.”