“You are the nearest emergency service with the ability to handle toxic materials,” Ky said. “Although you are not military, you are listed as first response anywhere in the city. The Joint Services base is west of the city, and it would take much longer for them to arrive. That is why Tech Coston called you.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Tech Coston? He was not exposed.”
“The person who was exposed. Is he breathing?”
“Yes. But if the powder is any of several things I can think of, it’s imperative that he be decontaminated and taken to hospital quickly.”
“It’s just—a moment, my supervisor wants to speak with you.”
Ky heard voices in the background of the call. She punched her controls for video, but it was blocked.
“Commandant Vatta?” A deeper voice this time.
“Yes,” Ky said.
“We have a problem. You—well, not you personally but the Commandant before you—ordered Port Major law enforcement off the premises, threatened us if we ever intruded again. We’d had an emergency call and sent an ambulance—”
“Surely you’ve heard that former Commandant Kvannis is now a fugitive—”
“I knew he was gone—”
“Yes. And I’m the Commandant for the interim—no dates set yet—and we need you as quickly as you can get here. That Corporal Metis hasn’t fallen over yet is reassuring, but not conclusive proof that he, or even I, haven’t had exposure to a dangerous toxin or disease.”
“A crew’s on the way, Commandant; we just had to check that we weren’t walking into a trap.”
A trap? What kind of nonsense had Kvannis been pulling?
“No trap on my end,” Ky said. “Just a need for emergency response; glad you’ve dispatched one.”
Thanks to the city crew’s delay, the military response team arrived first, by two minutes. Ky made sure its commander was cleared by Major Hong as having no part in the conspiracy before letting them treat Metis—swathing him in a bubble half the size of the room, vacuuming his clothes and mask, and then taking him, in a tented gurney, off to the military hospital. When the civilian team arrived, Ky asked them to proceed with the analysis and search of that office; they also took samples from her.
“I don’t think it’s toxic,” one of them said finally. “I think it’s a marker of some kind. Intended to catch thieves or snoopers, not kill them. It’s been how long since you saw it puff out? Not an hour yet? If it’s what I think it might be, and if it got on your white uniform, you may have speckles—green or blue, usually—where it landed.”
“So I can take this mask off?”
“Yes, Commandant.”
“Why the delay? Why not an instant marker?”
“So the thief doesn’t know they’ve been marked right away. It reacts with protein slowly, creating an indelible mark that can’t be washed off.”
Ky looked at her sleeve. “You mean—it could ruin this uniform permanently?”
“If it’s an animal fiber, like wool. Mostly it marks skin. May I ask what you were searching for?”
“Evidence I had turned in to the military upon my return from Miksland. Former Commandant Kvannis claimed it had been misplaced or lost. We found some in my office, and another piece in that one. I think Kvannis was hiding it in various places; we think it will reveal who was responsible for the shuttle crash.”
“Why would Kvannis do that?”
Ky considered the risks and benefits of opening another gap in the conspiracy of silence and went ahead. “Miksland’s mineral resources and utility have been kept secret for several hundred years, exploited by the few who knew the secret. When we survived to land on it, and found one of the installations there, we—all the survivors—became targets for those who wanted the secret kept. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, so I had collected evidence I thought might be useful later. Kvannis was part of that conspiracy, so of course he suppressed it.”
“Why didn’t he just destroy it?”
“I have no idea. Maybe someone else told him to keep it, or maybe he had a use for it later. He absconded from here when he realized that the other survivors had been rescued from their imprisonment—”
“Imprisonment? What had they done?”
“Nothing. Supposedly they had some contagious disease that required them to be quarantined. Surely you’ve seen the newsvids about that in the last couple of days? The plan was to kill them and dispose of the bodies in sealed coffins.”
“You weren’t flying the shuttle, were you?”
“No. Nor did I sabotage it, or poison the pilots.”
“The pilots were poisoned?”
“The pilots, the Commandant, his aide—all the officers aboard, by a mechanism in their survival suits. If I hadn’t insisted on bringing my own suit with me from my flagship, I’d have died before the crash. I brought back samples of the poison and also saliva from the pilots, hoping it could be analyzed to find out who was responsible, but that’s part of the evidence that disappeared after I turned it in.” The officer opened his mouth but Ky went on before he could speak. “That investigation properly belongs to the military, and now that I’ve located some of the missing evidence I’m sure an inquiry will go ahead.”
“Well—the crime didn’t take place here in Port Major, so I don’t suppose anyone will ask for our help in it.”
Ky didn’t comment on that.
“But we are concerned with crimes within the city. You know about the Vatta house—?”
“The attack night before last? Yes, Stella and I have been in contact.”
“It was a near thing—damage inside the house, from the firefight. Sera Vatta did a fine job defending herself.”
“Firefight! She didn’t tell me about that.” She had cut Stella short, accepting her brief reassurance.
“Yeah. Vatta HQ called us to check when they lost contact with the house and couldn’t raise Sera Vatta. Our first people were attacked, but got off a call for backup. Vatta had a couple of crews on the way, but they’d been all the way out at the airport. In the end Sera Vatta was alive with only minor injuries, all the intruders on the scene were dead, and we captured some familiar faces from the Malines cartel downtown.”
Ky felt another stab of guilt for not warning Stella they’d be leaving the house empty, and remembered she’d agreed to call Stella herself sometime today.
“Sir—there’s a box here with a lock that might fit this key.”
“Try it,” Ky said when one of the officers glanced at her. She watched from across the room. No puff of powder, nothing threatening at all until the lid came up and she saw what was inside: the samples she’d taken in the shuttle that first day.
“That looks like biological waste,” the officer said. “It’s got numbers on it—important, Commandant?”
Her voice caught for a moment, then she cleared her throat. “Yes. Those are the samples I collected. Let me see—I labeled them, and when I handed them over they were stamped with a number—”
“Pilot Hansen? Copil…that must mean copilot?” Another glance at Ky.
“The shuttle was rocking around on the waves,” Ky said. “I didn’t have time for more.”
“Sunyavarta,” the officer said. “And these tissues had their saliva? You collected it?”
“Yes—they had foam at their lips. We had a med tech aboard, she drew blood samples—those tubes.”
“We have a competent forensic lab—you still think all this should go back to the military—?” Who “lost” it in the first place, was the clear unspoken message.
“I do,” Ky said. “Since the survivors have been freed, and their stories are going public—and the military isn’t all bent, after all—these things need to be investigated there. They have the data on personnel that you don’t, and it’s someone on the inside who sabotaged the shuttle and the survival suits. For all we know it was someone up on the station.”
“All right—but I’ll want to
observe a clean chain of possession to retain the evidentiary value of this evidence.”
“Absolutely,” Ky said. “I would prefer that your personnel remain here until my security officer gets back from the base to take possession of it, and then we’ll certify that your people didn’t tamper with anything.”
“Fine. How long will that be?”
“Several hours—I’m sorry, but this office didn’t have a large security staff, and they were transporting a prisoner. I’ll call and see if they can cut him loose earlier.”
He left her in her office, and she called the officer’s outfitter to find out what to do about her uniform.
“That powder? Can you change immediately? We were about to deliver your second uniform.”
“Yes,” Ky said. “I hope you can save this one.”
“Do not put it into the ’fresher; that could set the stain. And avoid daylight.”
Which meant cutting through the inside corridors above ground level. Circuitous, and added almost ten minutes to the usual time.
She left word that she was going back to the residence to change and wash off any residual marking powder. By the time she had arrived there, the tailor she had first seen at the base was there to deliver her second uniform and take away the first. Ky cleaned up, dressed in her new uniform—it fit even better—and called Major Palnuss from her quarters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DAY 12
“I’ll come back right away,” Palnuss said when Ky told him about the evidence she’d found. “Major Hong’s taken over the investigation, reporting to General Molosay. Everything I brought out has been logged and is as secure as they can make it. Stornaki’s not going anywhere; he’s been screened for suicide and is presently sedated and prepped for interrogation. They don’t need me, really.”
“Good,” Ky said. “I hate to keep the police here too long but we want that chain of custody—”
“Of course. An hour at most, depending on traffic.”
Ky offered the police refreshments—it seemed the decent thing to do—and went on dealing with the items on her desk that needed work. Her driver came back after delivering Sera Vonderlane to her home and seeing her to the door. About a half hour later, her skullphone pinged.
“I’m safe,” Rafe said. Ky felt her shoulders relax, tension she hadn’t recognized in the midst of everything else. “I’m exhausted, hungry, dirty, and wearing the clothes of a mountainous thirteen-year-old farm kid. I’m being driven from place to place by friends of the first farmer. Can’t take other transport without ID. Just got in range for calling again. Where is everybody? Where are you?”
“In the Commandant’s Residence at the Academy,” Ky said, over the pounding of her pulse.
“Why?” Rafe demanded. “Are you in trouble?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Ky said, in the most honeyed tone she could manage. “I’m the new Commandant.”
Silence for a moment, then a snort of laughter. “You. The new Commandant. What happened to the old one?”
“Ran away in the nighttime,” Ky said. “Where were you?”
“Running from trouble up and over a small mountain. Then it got dark. Not just dark: cold, wet, and full of big hairy monsters with horns and hard hooves, and I did battle with them. Outnumbered, I fell, was trampled, and rescued by heroes—”
“In other words you stumbled into a pasture and bumped into some cattle and the farmer drove them away.”
“No, I drove them away, but they chose to run over me first. Also, it was a total dead zone for communications. Some of these farms don’t even have electricity. Right now I need a faster way home than from farmhouse to farmhouse, and a change of clothes. But when I finally get to Port Major, I can come over there and rescue you.”
“I don’t need rescue,” Ky said. “I’m fine—new uniform and all.”
“You really are the Commandant of the Academy?”
“Yes. With a full schedule and add-on excitement. Police, military security, attempted assassinations, traps—”
“Gods. Any chance you can arrange a free ride on a Vatta truck for me? I’m a few kilometers outside some town called Stone Crossing.”
“May be much later, but yes. I’ll call you. Or Stella will. Stay where you can catch a ping.”
“Yes, Commandant.” Lilting, sweet.
Relief felt like the bubbles in wine. All the people from Miksland had been rescued. And now Rafe was safe. Or would be, when she’d found him transport. She called Stella.
“Rafe’s called; he’s stuck out on a farm near…uh…Stone Crossing. With no ID, and his visa status still not fixed. Does Vatta have anything nearby he could hitch a ride on?”
“Let me look—Stone Bay, Stone Center, Stone…there it is. We don’t have a warehouse there, and the daily eastbound truck went through there two hours ago; the next truck is westbound, in an hour. He could connect to an eastbound at…um…that’s another four hours and then more hours back. Stone Crossing has a small general-aviation field, no commercial flights. It would take one of the little planes. Is that safe? I heard one of our long-haul planes was threatened.”
“It should be safe; they don’t have any checks on passengers there, do they?”
“Not in their listing. It’s only Rafe? Just one passenger?”
“Yes…”
“I’ll send the Pug. Two-seater, no Vatta logos on it. It’ll be…a two-hour flight or more depending on weather, plus prefight prep. Dark there when it arrives. Can he be there in three hours?”
“I’m sure. But does the field have anyone there at night?”
“Probably not. Morning, 0900. It’ll be light by then. Still the Pug. Let him know.”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “Where can he go when he gets here? Not the Vatta house, obviously.”
“Aunt Grace’s. Rafe can stay there if he can get in undetected. Ummm—he should come here, to Vatta headquarters, the freight entrance. I’ll let the airfield know to have someone drive him in.”
“Thank you,” Ky said.
“Got an appointment,” Stella said. “Talk to you later.”
Ky shook her head. Stella sounded different—none of the usual edge in her voice. She called Rafe back; he assured her he could find a safe place to stay overnight and make it to the airfield on time.
—
When Major Palnuss arrived, he took custody of the other items, and after a discussion between Palnuss and the senior police officer, the police departed.
“Tell me what other searches you think we need to do. Stornaki’s office—?” Ky still felt energized by hearing from Rafe.
“A more thorough search, yes. And his clerk. What are you doing about Sera Vonderlane? You need some kind of assistant—”
“Military, but I don’t know how previous clerks were selected.” Ky glanced at the paperwork already stacking up.
“Kvannis insisted on her,” Palnuss said. “Said we didn’t need to do a full security screen; she was part of his household and he vouched for her.”
“Yes, she told me that. I may find her a job over at Vatta, depending on the results of a security screen. She’s got a disabled daughter, and is disposed to be loyal to anyone who pays her. At least, that’s my interpretation. You?”
“Not much initiative, not too bright, worshipped the ground Kvannis walked on. I can find you a decent clerk pretty quickly—say a day or so.”
“That’ll do,” Ky said. She nibbled on a cookie on the tray she’d had sent up for the police. “You know…Kvannis could’ve destroyed the evidence we found. Whatever his reasoning was, maybe he saved all of it. Want to go looking for the flight recorder?”
“Would you mind if I grabbed something to eat first?”
Ky blinked. She hadn’t had anything but the cookie since—a scant and hurried breakfast. “Good idea. First food, then search.”
“And that list of things you had to do?”
“It’s only my second day. How far behind can I get? And if I�
��m seen stalking around and peering into things, everyone will know I’m here and working.” She watched his reaction: surprise, then humor, then appreciation. “Now—that food you mentioned. I don’t suppose you can nudge the kitchen into producing some quick, sustaining food, preferably with protein?”
—
“So where do we start?” Palnuss asked, after they had demolished a tray of sandwiches and Ky had dealt with four calls.
“It’s about this big,” Ky said, demonstrating with her hands. “Bright orange, with a striped design in a band around it. Not too heavy; I carried it around in the chest pocket of my survival suit for ages.”
“About twenty by twenty-five centimeters, then? Not quite as thick as that briefcase? Looks like a part of something mechanical?”
“I guess. It’s a box, basically.”
“So it would look out of place in an office, unless it was inside a safe or something like that. And the safe here was drilled out—and the one in the residence, too, right?”
“Right.”
“So I think we should look in places where something like that would fit in.”
“Machine shop?”
“And every other place here that has boxes about that size.”
“And where things aren’t inventoried on a regular basis,” Ky said, thinking of various stores units she’d seen. “Maybe where flight recorder spares are, or things waiting repairs…”
They set off through the Academy. Despite her desire to find the flight recorder, Ky paused to look into one classroom after another—not to search, but to show herself present and interested. Finally they reached the labs where cadets learned to maintain and repair those machines they would use later—a large lab for each branch—and the shops where skilled technicians maintained all the military equipment and machines the Academy used, from firearms to robots. They prowled through one after another, almost as if they were an IG team.
Palnuss called attention to several surveillance modules that were not working properly in a passage that connected two storage rooms in the Land Forces lab and suggested to Ky that a complete inventory of that stockroom might be a good idea. The tech 2 behind the counter of the first started sweating. Ky nodded. “Best call in your team, perhaps.”
Into the Fire Page 40