Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  Vaughn looked worried, as well he might, but nothing in his face or bearing suggested he felt guilty. Hard to imagine the senior assistant not being aware of Selwin’s corruption, but perhaps he felt no guilt because he approved. “I don’t know of anything, Sub-Rector,” he said. “Would you like me to call down and see if your car is waiting?”

  It was only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk, but protocol—and MacRobert—insisted that she be transported by official car. Grace bared her teeth in a formal smile. “Thank you,” she said. “That will be…appropriate. I am not sure how long I will be with the Rector and the President, and I have a medical appointment to follow; I will continue working on the same files when I return.”

  “Yes, Sub-Rector,” Vaughn said.

  Grace switched her mind from office problems to the possibility of assassination on the way through the building, evaluating each component of her journey in those terms and deciding how to respond. When a junior clerk—a mere child, she seemed, all pink cheeks and bright eyes and a fluff of dark hair—flinched away from her in the lower corridor, Grace almost laughed.

  Much more fun to be perceived as dangerous than as a dotty old woman. More dangerous, too, but that was part of the fun.

  Nonetheless, as she climbed the pinkish steps of the presidential palace, she schooled herself back into the identity that had served her so well the past few decades. Elderly, surely infirm with that missing arm, perhaps a little set in her ways…she was almost giggling by the time she had passed through the various security checkpoints between the entrance and the small dining room where the new President and the Rector of Defense waited for her.

  At one glance, she knew they had already disagreed about something. The Rector gave her a look thick with suspicion; the President came forward to greet her.

  “Grace—I’m so glad you accepted the appointment. I believe you’re just what we need in this difficult time.”

  “I’m honored,” she said. Was her appointment the problem? She had been told the Rector was neutral about it, but the tension in the room didn’t feel neutral.

  “Let’s eat first,” the President suggested, waving Grace forward. Erran Kostanyan, she reminded herself. Ten years her junior, he had bowed politely over her hand at any number of official functions, including the dedication of the new Vatta headquarters. Colorless and boring, some said. A good administrator, others said. What mattered now was the perception that Kostanyan had stood aside from political wrangling for decades. Grace wondered. People did not rise to the top of the cream pitcher without intent.

  Lunch had been laid out on a buffet along one side: sliced meats, shellfish on a bed of ice, dark and light breads, fruit. Two attendants stood by to pour tea or coffee or water; Grace noticed that no alcoholic beverage was on the buffet, or offered. That was a difference from the former Administration.

  For the duration of the meal, custom prevented discussing business. The Rector asked the President how his daughter was liking her university courses, and the conversation stayed on families—good news only—until the attendants removed the plates, laid out desserts on the buffet, and withdrew.

  “Donald and I have had several chats since I took office,” the President said to Grace. “So now I’d like your opinion. What do you see as our priorities in defense?”

  MacRobert had told her this President came to the point quickly; Grace had been thinking about this for days.

  “We must have ansible service,” she said. “It’s not just the isolation from the rest of human space, though that’s hurting us economically as well as militarily. It’s also a matter of communications within Spaceforce in our own system.”

  “We need an ISC technical crew to work on the ansibles,” the President said. “Without their permission, and their skills—”

  “Skills are replicable,” Grace said. “I’m sure we have technical brains in government somewhere who could get an ansible up and running.”

  “But ISC—no one else is allowed to touch their precious ansibles.”

  “We can’t ask their permission, but by the same token they can’t tell us no,” Grace said. “I don’t know why they haven’t sent a repair crew, but the fact is, our security and our economy depend on communications. We can’t be held hostage like this. What if another attack comes? Without ansible service, we’re limited to lightspeed communications in our system, and our space fleets are hours out of touch with the planet.”

  “But you know what they do to systems that touch their ansibles or their personnel,” the Rector said. “We can’t risk an ISC invasion—”

  “I don’t see that as likely,” Grace said. “They must be suffering some kind of widespread emergency, or they’d have repaired our ansible before now. After all, one of their ships left here to find out what had happened very shortly after our ansible failed. If it were only a local problem, they could have contacted their headquarters by ansible as soon as they reached the next system…and they’ve had time to go all the way to Nexus II and come back. That argues for some widespread trouble—perhaps much like ours. We must have communication; the only way to get it is to find out what’s wrong with the ansible and repair it.”

  “We could send out our own scouts,” the President said.

  “We could, if we wanted to weaken local defenses,” the Rector said. “If I weren’t concerned about ISC’s response, I’d back the Sub-Rector’s suggestion—”

  “We’ve been without ansible service for almost a year,” Grace said. “We have a legitimate complaint against ISC, for that matter.”

  “Well, if you’re willing to take responsibility—” the Rector began.

  “She can’t, Donald,” the President said. “Responsibility goes up; authority goes down. If I let her do it, it’s on my head.”

  Grace looked at him, surprised. He had a reputation for honesty, but her long experience in undercover work gave her little reason to trust anyone in power. He looked back, lips pressed tight. Then he shrugged.

  “You’re right, Grace,” he said. “The economy’s foundering without good communications for our outsystem trade—and even our insystem trade. We have financial assets out of system that we can’t use because we have no financial ansible. Our defense is compromised when we can’t get immediate response from our outlier platforms and ships. I didn’t expect…” He shook his head, clearly changing direction. “I’ll authorize an attempt to repair the ansibles, both financial and general communications, with the proviso that we advise ISC as soon as they’re online, direct to their headquarters, what we did and why. Acceptable?”

  “Acceptable,” Grace said.

  “I’ll draft the order this afternoon; you have my verbal consent to start the operation.”

  The Rector looked sour but said nothing. “Donald,” the President said. “You know we need your expertise, but things have changed. If you can’t work with us, I’ll accept your resignation.”

  “I—” The Rector’s round face had reddened; Grace looked at him and it paled again. So. Would the President recognize what that meant? Would it matter to him? “I may find,” the Rector said, “that the strains of the past few weeks have told on my heart. In that case—”

  “In that case I would not presume to place more burdens on you,” the President said. “Perhaps you should check with your physicians and let me know—”

  “Yes. I’ll do that.” And with a vicious glance at Grace, the Rector pushed away from the table and left the room.

  “Dear me,” Grace said, and bent to sip her tea.

  “That’s going to cause trouble,” the President said. “I think perhaps you should return to the Annex.”

  “By all means,” Grace said. She wanted time alone to analyze what had just happened…and she would have time, if she went straight to the Annex now, to dig into different files and see if she could determine why the Rector had chosen to leave. Had he intended this from the beginning?

  She had an appointment that afternoon with her reha
b team, an appointment she had rescheduled three times already. Her arm-bud’s sustaining capsule needed its fluids changed, her doctors insisted. She left the Annex shortly after three, arriving at the clinic by three thirty, and found her doctor pacing the floor.

  “I was afraid you’d reschedule again,” he said. “And that would not have been good for your arm.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Grace said.

  “It won’t hurt until it’s too late,” he said. He nodded to one of the technicians, who inserted a fine needle through the cap and drew off a sample of fluid. In the analyzer, the fluid produced a series of colored blips, meaningless to Grace.

  “Just as I thought,” the doctor said. “Electrolytes are borderline. We’ll start with a flush. Lie down here.”

  The flush itself was not unpleasant. Fluid ran out as other fluid ran in; it felt a little cool. The arm-bud looked as if it had grown a couple of centimeters; the doctor confirmed this.

  “It’s growing normally, but you must make every scheduled visit,” he said. “As growth accelerates, there’s less margin for error in the chemical milieu. If you want to have a functional arm—”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then you must cooperate, however busy your schedule. Remember, this is not normal embryonic and fetal development; not only is it a graft onto an adult body, it’s being pushed to develop faster, in a less natural environment.”

  That would serve as a metaphor for her nieces, Grace thought as she was driven back to the Annex. Grafted onto adult responsibilities and pushed to develop faster in a less natural environment. She hoped they were doing as well as her arm-bud.

  When she finally got home that night, she found MacRobert waiting for her. He had said he might drop by, but wasn’t sure; she was slightly alarmed at how glad she was to see him.

  “I thought you might be tired,” he said. “How does soup and hot bread sound?”

  “Excellent.” Grace slipped out of her shoes. “I’m going to go get comfortable.”

  “It’ll be ready when you are,” MacRobert promised.

  Grace came back to find steaming bowls of soup on the table, and hot bread wrapped in a towel. Custom or no custom, she could not resist telling him about her day, including the meeting with the Rector and President.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” Grace said at the end. She bit off the end of a warm roll.

  “Of course you do,” MacRobert said. “You’ve been giving orders for ages.”

  “Not that,” Grace said. “It’s finding out who knows what without doing it my way, the back-door way. I need to find reliable communications technicians who might be able to repair the ansibles, and I don’t even know whom to ask.”

  “You asked me,” MacRobert said, smiling. “That’s a good start.”

  “That’s another thing,” Grace said. “This business of coming to you first. I haven’t been dependent on a single source of information for…years. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just habit.”

  “And a very good habit,” MacRobert said, nodding. “Just as my telling you you’re an extraordinary woman is not flattery. We both know it’s true. And we both know that this particular setup is stressful for you…just not as stressful as being shut out. You’re not comfortable working out of cover—and neither am I, for that matter. I hadn’t realized quite how much I depended on being the invisible—in my own way—senior NCO at the Academy, pulling strings from behind the scenes. You were behind two layers—well, three, if I count the visual one of acting the batty old lady, which you do so well. How many people in Vatta knew?”

  “Two. They’re both dead.” Grace pushed away the rage she still felt at the former President and his minions, and wished she still believed in an afterlife where an angry deity would torment them for eternity.

  “Fortunately, you’re not,” MacRobert said. “And we’re both having to cope with coming out into the open where people know who we are, what our jobs are. But not everything.”

  “Not everything?” Grace said. “When there are people all around, all the time, watching everything I do and no doubt logging it?”

  “Not everything.” He grinned at her. “An old spook like me isn’t going to open up all the files, and neither are you. All we have to do is act the part.”

  Grace felt her muscles loosening. “So you don’t expect—”

  “—you to be totally dependent on me? No, of course not. In this case, though, I do have what you need—I know where the best techs are in Spaceforce, and they’re almost certainly the best for this particular job. You won’t know that one of Spaceforce’s clandestine activities was trying to devise an ansible small enough to be carried aboard ship. We suspected that ISC had them—it explained their quick response to threats against the system—and we wanted them. We had a breakthrough shortly before your niece’s little difficulty, and I actually sent her some components, just to see what she’d do. She’s quite good at tech, when she puts her mind to it.”

  “Ansibles aboard ships?” Grace wasn’t that interested in Ky’s former technical ability, but the implications of shipborne ansibles were obvious. “Do you think the ships that attacked us—that disrupted ansible service—had those?”

  “Might have, but they definitely weren’t ISC. It’s possible that someone else was on the same track. And you’re right, we have to get ours back up.”

  “And on our ships,” Grace said. “If your research went that far.” The concept unfolded in her mind, opening out more and more, revealing infinite possibilities. “And trade—ships could always stay in touch with headquarters, even if they were in systems without ansibles. Do they work in FTL flight?”

  “Not that we know of,” MacRobert said. “Nothing works in FTL flight; theory says the ship’s in a sort of enclosed kernel. Nothing gets in; nothing gets out.”

  “Too bad,” Grace said. “That could be really handy. But how long do you think it’ll take to get the system ansibles up? Assuming we find someone who can do it?”

  “Days to weeks. We have to get someone there, physically, and then it depends on what’s wrong.”

  “All right,” Grace said. “Now for the big question.”

  “Yes?”

  “If the Rector resigns, and the President offers it to me, should I take it?”

  “You? In charge of the entire Defense Department? The batty old lady, the auntie who makes fruitcakes stuffed with diamonds?”

  Grace felt herself flushing; she wanted to kick him, but he was too far away. He grinned at her.

  “Our enemies should be very, very afraid,” he said.

  “You didn’t really answer me,” Grace said.

  “Grace, I’d have to be crazy to tell you what to do. You’ll make whatever decision seems right to you at the time. And it will be.”

  Eleven days later, MacRobert stopped by her office with the news.

  “They’re back up,” MacRobert said. “It was software after all. The apparent physical damage was all surface stuff, for show.”

  “ISC’s own people sabotaged it?” Stella had gone off with an ISC courier; at the time, she’d thought that was the safest way to get Stella offplanet, but now…

  “I don’t think so. I think they’d have done a better job of making it look like the main damage. This was mostly to impress flybys, I think, and our people also think it was done from space. Impossible to date it, at this point, but I’d hazard a guess it was the same mission that took out your people on Corleigh. The software end was much more sophisticated, and I’d bet that it did come from somewhere within ISC, a long time before failure. At any rate, our people have both ansibles back up, but not yet patched into the local networks or transmitting readiness. Yes, they managed to block the automatic alert function. We wanted to test the waters, as it were. See what’s happening before we broadcast anything.”

  “You know the President wanted immediate notification of ISC,” Grace said.

  “He would,” MacRobert said. “Bu
t this is safer; ISC isn’t our enemy.” He smiled at her, the smile covering all that had happened in the intervening days. The former Rector, citing reasons of health, had resigned. Grace, with only three days’ experience as Sub-Rector, had been named Acting Rector.

  “Go on,” Grace said. He knew what she most wanted to know, and she was determined not to ask.

  “You’ll be interested to know that Vatta Transport lists a new headquarters, in the Moscoe Confederation—”

  “The idiot tree people!” Grace said. “I was there once—”

  “S. Vatta, CEO, the listing says. They’re running four ships: Katrine Lamont, Gary Tobai, Marcus Selene, and Mary Alice.”

  “So Ky decided to work for Stella,” Grace said. “That surprises me.”

  “She isn’t listed as captain of any of those ships,” MacRobert said, amusement shading his voice. “However, the newsfeeds mention a Ky Vatta who is apparently recruiting for an interstellar military force, who’s on a ship called Vanguard that used to belong to—you won’t believe this—one Osman Vatta. One of our other privateers is with her—”

  “Ky took Osman?” Grace felt her heart stutter and then go on. “Osman Vatta?”

  “It says she’s on a ship that used to be his. Who is Osman Vatta?”

  “The worst piece of slime my family ever had to deal with,” Grace said. She could hear the loathing in her voice. “If she’s got his ship, she had to kill him to get it.” She didn’t want to imagine the circumstances that had brought Ky and Osman together, but someday she would have to hear how Ky had bested him. Osman! After all these years, that bastard was finally dead. Surely he was finally dead.

  “The news said she claimed the ship was hers by right, that it had been stolen—is that true?”

  “Oh, yes,” Grace said, remembering those days all too clearly. “The family threw him out, disinherited him. He snatched a ship, one of the new ones, just commissioned. Killed three people getting away, and that’s not a tithe of what that man did in his time. And his children—” She stopped just in time. Even MacRobert didn’t need to know about Osman’s bastard children and what became of them. Of the ones they could find. She hoped that secret would never come out.