Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  “It’s always important,” Kinjon said.

  Before he knew he had moved, Rafe had the doctor’s collar in his hands; the man’s face went white with the shock of that sudden attack. “You don’t understand,” Rafe said. “It’s not just him; it’s not just my father…he was snatched for a reason, and that reason affects not just Nexus but a thousand other systems. Someone’s trying to bring down ISC—do you have any idea what that means?”

  “Gggghhh…”

  “Sorry.” Rafe let up the pressure, but didn’t let go completely. “Do you know who he is?”

  “A hostage that…that Gary rescued. That’s all I know; that’s all I’m supposed to know.”

  “And you rightly assume rich and powerful, and you wonder that you haven’t heard anything, am I right?” The man nodded; Rafe went on. “That’s the CEO of ISC. He was abducted on the orders of the next in succession…who certainly has hooks in the government, judging by their complicity in this. What you may not know is that hundreds, at least, of ansibles are out of service, and ISC personnel are involved in that…I believe on the orders of the man who kidnapped my father. People are dying because my father is here”—he nodded toward the room—“and not in his office. If that man isn’t stopped, none of us is safe.”

  “That still doesn’t give you the right to choke me,” Kinjon said.

  Rafe let go. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve been…distraught.”

  “I gathered.” To his surprise, Kinjon even chuckled. “Gary did warn me about you, but you just don’t look like the type. I’m sorry I upset you; we’ll be easing up on the sedation over the next twenty-four hours, and you should be able to talk to your father then.”

  Rafe had been given a room in the staff wing of the clinic; the next day, when he went down to the hospital level, Alaro met him outside his father’s room. “Let’s go see what the neuropsych says about your father’s implant. He’s done an initial neural assessment. He’s in the lab.”

  The neuropysch expert, introduced only as Tony, stared at the trace from Rafe’s father’s implant. “Mmm. Not liking this a bit.”

  “What?”

  “Well…they tried to probe the implant before they removed it. In lay terms, they ran too much power into it, trying to force it to work, and caused damage—and enough power that it heated up part of his brain.”

  “And that means—”

  “It means he has brain damage, possibly permanent but certainly something it’s going to take time to repair, and his implant cannot be replaced. Most people depend on an implant for a good part of their knowledge base: he can’t.”

  “But you can install another one, can’t you?”

  “Not anymore,” Alaro sighed. “Not with the brain damage. If we boost the signal enough to pass the damaged portion, we risk the same damage to something else. For now, we’re leaving the damaged implant in: it gives him some function he would not have otherwise. But it has to come out so we can start the repair of the brain itself, and at that point he will seem worse than he is now. How much worse, we won’t know until we take out the implant. Basically, he’s like a stroke patient, and in his case a serious stroke patient. Luckily, he chose to have his implant on the right side, so his language centers are relatively unaffected, but you’re looking at a long, slow, incomplete recovery.”

  “But he can talk?”

  “He can talk now, a few words at a time. He tires quickly; he’s still somewhat confused. It’s too early to test all his cognitive functions, and with the sedation he’s become disoriented. We’ve changed the setup of his room, which should help. I’ve tested his facial recognition: that’s intact, too. He recognized your face in a picture we showed him. So if you want to go in and talk—keeping it calm and not asking questions and not upsetting him—you can do that.”

  Rafe entered his father’s room with what he hoped was a pleasant expression.

  “Rafe…” His father’s face, with eyes open and focusing, looked more like his father, and yet unlike: for the first time, he was looking down on his father, and for the first time he had no fear, no anger, and no contempt, only a great sadness.

  “Father—you’re looking better.”

  “I can’t—I can’t sit up by myself.” His father’s voice sounded weak and querulous. “My left arm—”

  “Father, don’t worry. You’ll get better.”

  “Rafe, you have to know. It was Lew, Lew Parmina. He’s—I don’t know why, entirely, but he’s gone completely insane. That’s the only reason I can think of…he knew he would succeed me; I was going to retire in five years. He’s been my friend for years—I thought my friend—”

  “Father, don’t wear yourself out—”

  “But you have to know; you have to help me—”

  “Help you how?”

  “I told you, in my message—”

  “I never got your message. I came back because I hadn’t heard from you in too long and I was worried.”

  “You never got—” His father looked stricken. “But you came anyway…Rafe, I always knew you’d…but he said…but maybe…”

  Rafe felt old memories, snatches of overheard conversations, sequences of events, coming together in his mind. “Father, was it Lew who first told you I was dangerous? Was he the one who recommended that therapist?”

  His father’s gaze wavered again. “I—I can’t quite remember…I know later, when you were in trouble at that school, he was sympathetic. Said he knew it must be hard to be disappointed…and I was sure you’d come out of it, you’d been such a sweet child…”

  Sweet? Rafe had no memory of being sweet, even before the home invasion. Polite, well mannered, that was expected. But sweet?

  “You used to be so affectionate…when I came home you’d climb in my lap and butt your head against my chin…”

  His father’s expression now was pleading; he clearly wanted Rafe to remember those times, but he didn’t. “Mmm,” he said, just to make a soothing sound.

  “But Lew said it was rare for children who killed to change, that it was usually a sign of deep-seated personality disorders…he had references. The therapist agreed. He said I had to be realistic, be concerned for the welfare of ISC, both employees and those who depended on our services. Then when I was given the job of CEO, and you were…on remittance…” His father’s voice trailed off. He looked suddenly grayer.

  “I’ll come back later,” Rafe said. “Just rest.”

  The next morning, Dr. Alaro spoke to Rafe in the corridor. “I don’t know what you’re planning, and I don’t need to. But if it involves, for instance, transporting this patient and expecting him to…oh, to speak to a group about business, for instance, you had better do it within the next ten days. We can’t risk leaving the damaged implant in longer than that.”

  “Can he survive travel so fast?”

  “With the right supports, yes. He’s getting a little stronger each day. You can expect that his concentration will vary, however, and your visits should be short.”

  “I think,” Rafe said, “that Lew has had something like this in mind from the beginning.”

  “He couldn’t,” his father said. He had said it before. “It’s impossible—”

  “They never traced the intruders that night,” Rafe said. “They never found who hired them, right?”

  “Well…no…”

  “Lew found that therapist for you, I would bet on it. The therapist and Lew chose the school you sent me to. I know for a fact that Lew set me up with girls when I went to college—”

  “I didn’t know that!” his father said.

  “I thought it was with your approval, since he was your assistant. He gave me money; he gave me names and numbers. When he sent me money later—my remittance—he used to tell me how disappointed you were, and then give me contacts to…elements I found surprising.”

  “But he was always so nice…”

  “To you, I’m sure he was. You were his ladder, to be kicked away when h
e thought he had his hands firmly on the top of the tree.” Rafe shook his head. “And I didn’t see it. I was too hurt, too angry, and mostly I was not here. Which I’m sure was his intent.”

  His father’s gaze had sharpened, almost to the intensity Rafe remembered. “I think…you may be right. I can’t quite…this blasted implant thing. There’s information in there that would help me think clearly about it but I can’t…it’s not working right. I need a new one.”

  “You can’t,” Rafe said. “Not yet, anyway. When they’ve done the neural repairs to your…head…”

  “My brain,” his father said with surprising energy. “I know…I can’t think. That’s why I need your help. And you’re as sharp as ever—it didn’t take you long to find Lew’s trail in our lives. You’re going to have to take over—”

  “Take over?” Panic swallowed him; Rafe struggled to stay calm. “You can’t mean take over ISC?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. We can’t let Lew have it. I don’t know all he’s planned, but what they did taunt me with, while I was hostage, was bad enough. He’s determined to maintain the monopoly and he’s working with some kind of military leader, someone named Gammis Turek. The ansible outages—”

  “—are his fault. And I know something about Gammis Turek—”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “No. But a bad guy we—uh, more on that later—ran into over in Sector Five had a suicide circuit implanted to keep him from revealing the name. And supposedly it was Turek’s people who attacked Bissonet and took over its system government. I suspect something similar almost happened at Slotter Key.”

  “Lew has friends on Slotter Key,” his father said. “The Vatta family—Vatta Transport, Ltd. You must know their ships.”

  “They’re mostly dead,” Rafe said. “I’ve been traveling with a couple of them.”

  “Probably his spies,” his father said. “Fed you any number of lies.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rafe said. “I’ve known Stella for years, and it wasn’t through Lew. Her cousin Kylara—very much the straight arrow, Ky.”

  “I thought Lew was,” his father said. “Right now I wouldn’t trust anyone Lew called a friend. The Slotter Key ansible’s still down, isn’t it?”

  “As far as I know, yes.” No use trying to explain how he was sure that Stella and Ky weren’t lying about their families—or that Vatta had been an innocent dupe, not complicit.

  “So you can’t check what they told you. But that’s another problem for another day. Right now, Rafe, you simply must get to the Board and convince them of Lew’s perfidy. You can’t let him take over. At the least, your life and ours will be in danger.”

  “But—I don’t know anything about running a corporation—let alone one as vast as ISC.” Even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t quite true. He’d had his own businesses; he understood how business worked. He had grown up in ISC, he had done work for them. “And I can’t—why would you trust me? Why would they?”

  “Because,” his father said, “if I was that wrong about Lew, then I assume I was that wrong about you, too. If I think of the little boy you were, all that intelligence and fire and sweetness—yes, sweetness, don’t flinch like that—the way you never did a single underhanded thing other than the usual ‘She broke it’ when a dish dropped, and that was only the once, then I see the potential in the man to be as intelligent, capable, honest as you were then.”

  Tears sprang to Rafe’s eyes; he blinked them back. “I’m not that little boy anymore, Father.”

  “No, and a good thing you’re not, or we’d all be dead,” his father said. “You’ve had a hard life; you’ve learned hard lessons, harder than some of mine. It will take someone like you; I’m sure Lew has collaborators on the Board and elsewhere in ISC. I want you to find a secure way to reach the next board meeting—what’s the date?”

  Rafe told him. “But, Father—I’m just not cut out to be an executive—”

  “Nonsense. You’re my son. You’re also the only weapon I’ve got. You have to do this, Rafe. Or millions—probably billions—of people will die, and more will be ruined, because of Lew and his allies.”

  He had never wanted the job. He had told himself that over and over: he was a free lance, a lone wolf, a wild rogue adventurer, able to go and come as he pleased, only partly dependent on that remittance credit once he found he could support himself one way and another. He felt the weight of it pressing on him now, all that responsibility he didn’t want. And yet—

  “I trust you, Rafe,” his father said. “Not just because you saved my life—our lives—just now. Not just because you were a good child. But in part because you killed those intruders, and in part because you have survived on your own and developed skills I never needed—or thought I needed. I am trusting you with this, and you will not let me down.”

  Whatever his father had lost, he had not lost the ability to inspire loyalty and delegate…Rafe took a long breath, feeling now the full weight of what his father wanted him to do firmly on his shoulders.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll talk to Gary—and we also need to get the accounts open so I can pay him and his team.”

  “When you are sure you can get to the meeting without being killed, I will make a shielded video call…I have to show myself to them, to convince the ones Lew hasn’t already corrupted. He’ll probably try to tell them that you kidnapped me and have pressured me—”

  “Thought of that,” Rafe said. “I’ll bring them here, one at a time, by roundabout routes, to talk to you.”

  “I think most of ISC’s loyal,” his father said. “I just don’t know who.”

  “Where are your implant backups?” Rafe asked. “Did you have them?”

  “I did. He got them. But although they might contain information to convict him, they wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t know.”

  “My…er…cranial ansible,” Rafe said. “The access code for it?”

  His father’s eyes closed briefly. “I’m sorry, Rafe. They got that out of me when they threatened to kill the baby…and then they did anyway.”

  “What about Linnet and Deri?” His older sisters, who had never married as far as he knew. The night of the attack, they had been off at boarding school.

  “Dead,” his father said. “Supposedly both accidental, though now of course I wonder about that. Linnet had gone on a ski trip with her boyfriend…Lew’s cousin, now I think of it. She was a good skier, but there was an avalanche…no one’s that good.”

  “The cousin?”

  “Also died, along with fifteen others who were on that slope. Deri—Deri had taken a commerical flight with several friends to go to a wedding; it crashed with no survivors. Pilot error, the safety board ruled: a night landing and the pilot undershot the runway—altimeter wasn’t set properly, and there was a little hill, hardly a hundred meters high…” His eyes sagged shut, then opened again. “I see now…either one could have been arranged, if you didn’t mind killing a lot of other people.”

  “So there was just Penelope left. And me. What about Penelope’s husband?”

  “He died when we were taken. Tried to defend her. Nice boy. Lew hadn’t thought much of him; he wasn’t ISC at all. His father was a wholesale grocer, decent fellow, very down-to-earth. We got along fine. Penelope adored Jared; they were so excited about the pregnancy—” Tears rolled down his face.

  Rafe let him cry a moment, turning aside to look at the cheery picture of a woman cradling a child by a window that overlooked a pleasant green field.

  “All right,” his father said, a few moments later. “Let’s get to work.”

  Lew’s tentacles had reached far into the government as well as ISC’s power structure, as Rafe’s discreet inquiries proved, but Vaclav Hewitt Box, one of his father’s oldest friends, was clean of that taint.

  “Garston!” he said the moment Rafe’s father called. “Where in thunder are you? Lew’s been telling us you’re in safekeeping for fear your demo
n son will kill you, but he won’t tell us where.”

  “I’m at a secure clinic, recovering from the treatment Lew Parmina’s goons gave me. Ardath is alive, and so is Penelope, but Jared and the baby are both dead.”

  “What!”

  “Listen. I don’t think any communication on this planet is truly secure, Vaclav, so I don’t know how long we can talk without the call being traced. If it is, your life is in danger, too. I believe that Lew engineered the deaths of my other daughters as well. Rafe saved our lives—”

  “That sounds like hogwash, Garston. He went bad; bad boys stay bad.”

  “Poppycock,” his father said. “He didn’t go bad without help, and he’s not bad now. He saved our lives; he got us out of the hellhole where Lew put us with his goons. Vaclav, remember Christine?”

  “Ah, yes, Christine of the flowers…”

  “Christine of the owls, you nitwit.”

  Vaclav’s expression changed. “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want Rafe to take over for me, for now. I’ve got serious injuries, and my implant’s fried.”

  “You sound sane enough.”

  “Right-sided installation. No speech damage, and yes, I can think. But my left side is involved, and I can’t change implants until they’ve done some repairs.”

  “Good—grief. You really were—”

  “That close to death, yes. I don’t know who on the board are Lew’s plants…Termanian, probably, Oster, maybe Wickins? But Lew’s the real danger. I need to meet you in person—you’ll know then that I’m not some zombie plant of Rafe’s.”

  “Where is Rafe? Do you know?”

  “He’s here, with me. Like I said, he got us out.”

  “By himself?”

  “No. But this is going on too long, Vaclav. Will you come? Quietly?”

  “Yes. Anywhere. Tell me.”

  “I can’t. But I can tell you what to say.”