“Official business first,” Ky said. She felt uncommonly good this morning.
“For hand delivery only,” MacRobert said, pulling a packet out of his inner pocket. “The Rector’s report to you on some pertinent bits of recent history.”
“That’s official?” Ky asked, taking the packet.
“It is now that she’s in the government,” MacRobert said. “Official, but not public. And I’m to answer any of your questions and make myself available until you’re satisfied.”
“My first question is, just exactly what was in that ship-model thing you gave me right before I left Slotter Key?”
“Oh, that. Well…it could have been the Slotter Key version of what your cousin’s now manufacturing…if it had worked. We were trying to build a miniaturized ansible or semi-ansible. More of a booster unit, actually. And there were some access codes I thought you might find handy—whatever happened to it?”
“Cannibalized for parts for the ship’s own communications,” Ky said, “when the mutineers had control of the ship for a time.”
“Ah. Well, that’s probably for the best.”
“I do know Aunt Grace lost an arm, and that the old government fell. I presume those were related?”
“Yes. The whole story’s in those data cubes, but basically Grace figured out early on—before the government imposed sanctions against Vattas—that someone high up had been bought out. Blackmailed, it turns out. I don’t know how much you knew about her position in Vatta Transport—”
“Not much,” Ky said.
“Nobody was supposed to, except your father and Stella’s. She headed corporate security—including threat assessment—and she knew the only way the plot against your family could have gotten past her was with government support.”
“But why?” Ky asked.
“We think that was your infamous relative Osman, but given that he’s dead I doubt we’ll ever know the whole story. Grace said he had a serious grudge against your father and Stella’s because they were the ones who got him expelled from the family.”
Grace. The man who had been a stickler for military courtesy as long as she’d known him called the Rector of Defense just plain Grace? And, as she looked at him, he was almost grinning at her, reading her reaction to that as he had once read cadets’ faces.
“So,” Ky said, yanking her mind firmly away from any consideration of Aunt Grace and MacRobert in the same situation as herself and Rafe, “what about the government connection?”
“That we did uncover. All governments have some level of corruption—power attracts those who want it, and if there’s been a completely honest government in the history of humankind, no history book’s ever mentioned it. So it was no surprise to find some shady stuff going on in Slotter Key—bribes offered and taken, evasions of tax laws and rules, and so on. And like all large societies, we had our organized crime, and it had its contacts with interstellar criminals. The former President had a choice, as he saw it, between exposure and prosecution for the illegalities of his time in office, or letting the Vatta family be attacked. For the tiny bit it’s worth, I don’t think he had any idea how big the attack would be, or what Turek’s real goals were.”
“And Aunt Grace—?”
He grinned openly now. “She managed to infiltrate all sorts of places the government thought were impregnable, including the President’s private quarters. She had taps left over from the Cape Girond Rebellion, and she’d never stopped keeping them updated. She had agents of her own, non-Vatta people she’d used to acquire information on Vatta’s competitors.”
“How did you get involved?” Ky asked.
“We—Spaceforce that is—knew someone in government must have been complicit because of the form of attack on your family’s Corleigh compound. The only way to land the kind of weapons used, and then clear away the evidence, was a shuttle landing—a shuttle landing that managed to go unrecorded. Someone in the government had to tell someone in Spaceforce when to shut off the satellite surveillance and fake the continuity of its data. With the attack coming so soon after the incident that got you in trouble…well, I saw connections. Grace worked out the way we could communicate unobtrusively—”
“Which was?”
“Fly-fishing. We met on a river—she’d moved Helen and Jo’s children to a country place, and I’d rented a cabin a few kilometers away. She was planning on doing it all herself, but after she lost her arm when assassins tried for the children—”
Ky blinked. “Slow down. Tell me the whole thing.”
MacRobert began with the layout of the country house and grounds, the security Grace had designed and planted around it, and the circumstances that had led up to that morning.
“We were going to meet on the river that afternoon; I’d started fishing early, as I usually did on our meeting days, checking both banks upstream and down for intruders or surveillance gear. I didn’t see or hear anything unusual until the first shot—it was far enough out in the country that the assassins didn’t bother with silencers. I went up the slope from the river as fast as I could without being obvious, and came out of the scrub just in time to see Grace shot. With the assassin between me and Grace and the child, I didn’t risk a shot—I just stabbed him with my fish-gutting knife.”
“So if she was minus an arm, I’m guessing she didn’t kill the President—did you?”
“He killed himself,” MacRobert said. “When Grace let me access her network of agents, their data plus what we in Spaceforce had been able to compile was enough to bring down the government. The Commandant, I believe, visited the President and at some point the President decided that it would be preferable to end his own life rather than face the kind of charges he would have faced.” MacRobert paused, then went on. “By the way, the Commandant sent his personal congratulations to you. He always thought a lot of you, and said to tell you he’s not surprised at your successes.”
“I have been,” Ky said.
“You Vattas are remarkable,” MacRobert continued. “Your enemies wanted you destroyed, but those of you not actually killed just would not give up.”
“Speaking of those not actually killed,” Ky said, “we learned yesterday that Toby’s parents are still alive on Elmendorf. Their ansible’s been down, but they’re fine. They want him to come home and finish school. With that dog, of course. Stella says he’s a nice boy but it’ll be a relief to have a place to herself again. A teenage boy and a dog are really not her idea of interior décor.”
“Isn’t he smitten with that girl whose father was—”
“One of Turek’s agents, yes. Nice girl,” Ky said. She still wasn’t sure what she’d said that helped Zori. “Toby’s parents are helping her and her mother relocate to Elmendorf—apparently the mother’s not welcome here with her own family due to the scandal. I expect those two, if they stick together, will end up running the manufacturing end someday.”
MacRobert nodded. “Nothing will surprise me about your family, after the last few years.”
It was not their first night together, but it might be their last. Any night might be their last and they made the most of this one. Still, the approach of separation led to talk of the future.
“How do you define when the war is over?” Rafe asked. “Vatta’s won, but what about you?”
“How do you define when your job is done at ISC?”
Rafe ran a finger down her face. “A fair question. We both won, but different things. I can’t leave ISC yet; there’s too much to do, too many people who depend on me. And Stella was right about one thing—you aren’t meant to be an executive’s wife. Your fleet needs you as much as my people need me.”
“I don’t want to leave this,” Ky murmured.
“Nor I. But we both know we will.”
“But not tonight,” Ky said. “And there are plenty of limes in the cooler.”
Rafe looked at her. “My dear admiral…you’ve never seen what I can do with a pear…”
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Former marine ELIZABETH MOON is the author of many novels, including Engaging the Enemy, Marque and Reprisal, Trading in Danger, Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark, and Remnant Population, a Hugo Award finalist. After earning a degree in history from Rice University, Moon earned a degree in biology from the University of Texas, Austin. She lives in Florence, Texas. Visit her at www.elizabethmoon.com.
Also by Elizabeth Moon
THE DEED OF PAKENARRION
Sheepfarmer’s Daughter
Divided Allegiance
Oath of Gold
THE LEGACY OF GIRD
Surrender None
Liar’s Oath
PLANET PIRATES (WITH ANNE MCCAFFREY)
Sassinak
Generation Warriors
Remnant Population*1
THE SERRANO LEGACY
Hunting Party
Sporting Chance
Winning Colors
Once a Hero
Rules of Engagement
Change of Command
Against the Odds
The Speed of Dark*2
VATTA’S WAR
Trading in Danger*3
Marque and Reprisal*4
Engaging the Enemy*5
Command Decision*6
Victory Conditions*7
SHORT-FICTION COLLECTIONS
Lunar Activity
Phases
Victory Conditions is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Moon
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moon, Elizabeth.
Victory conditions / Elizabeth Moon.
p. cm.—(Vatta’s war)
eISBN: 978-0-345-50482-1
1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Space warfare—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.O557V53 2008
813'.54—dc22 2007034795
www.delreybooks.com
v1.0
FOOTNOTES
*1Published by Ballantine Books
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*2Published by Ballantine Books
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*3Published by Ballantine Books
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*4Published by Ballantine Books
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*5Published by Ballantine Books
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*6Published by Ballantine Books
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*7Published by Ballantine Books
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Victory Conditions Page 42
