Into the Fire

by Elizabeth Moon

  “They won’t believe you were drugged unconscious?”

  “My mother, maybe. My father—he’s very strict; he says people are so tempted by the ease of implants that they pretend they were drugged.”

  That was a complication Ky hadn’t anticipated. “Well, I think the best thing is to get it removed as soon as possible, and hope for the best. Surely it will be better if it’s out than in.”

  “That’s true,” Kamat said, but she didn’t look much happier.

  “For now, clothes for you—and me.” Ky called the store Stella had suggested and asked for the concierge shopping department. Since she had the sizes in hand, thanks to Stella’s questions at breakfast, it didn’t take long to order several outfits for all of them. She asked for delivery, and—offered a choice of times—selected late morning.

  She looked up to find Rafe watching her. “You didn’t order me any new clothes,” he said. “You like this shirt on me that much?”

  “I like that shirt off you,” Ky said, grinning. “But you can call Grace’s house and ask Teague to bring you something more suited to the weather. And my box, as well.”

  “I’ll do that,” Rafe said. “And if he hurries, I can change and one of us can pose as the house butler when that delivery arrives. Does your aunt have a butler?”

  “Not since Stavros died.”

  “We should have someone on the door,” Rafe said.

  Ky went down the passage to tell the others their new clothes were on the way. They stood up when she came into the room as if expecting an inspection. “Relax,” Ky said. She looked around. “Are you all comfortable enough? Need anything besides new clothes?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Rafe’s called in an associate of his, to bring our things from my aunt Grace’s house. He may be staying; I’ve met him and he’s safe. Don’t ask him questions about his past.”

  “No, sir, we wouldn’t,” Inyatta said. “Isn’t there something useful we can do? Cleaning or laundry or something?”

  “Well…yes, if you want to.” Keeping busy might be therapeutic. “All the equipment—”

  “We found some,” Kamat said. “Laundry?”

  “There’s an upstairs laundry on the other end; downstairs is just off the kitchen. And I expect it’s only an hour or two until your new clothes are here.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get busy.” They all looked happier.

  “When we’ve all changed clothes, I’ll want to hear all the details you remember about what happened to you.” Their faces tightened. “I want to find the others, get them to safety. You’re the only people I know who know anything.”

  Inyatta nodded. “I understand, sir, but we don’t know much.”

  “You may know more than you think you do,” Ky said. “You recognized that man—Bontier—as someone you’d seen before. I’m thinking those who kept the base on Miksland a secret may be the same as those who abducted you.”

  “What did the newsvids say about us?” Barash asked.

  Ky shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything—though I didn’t pay much attention. Like the Rector, I thought you’d been given leave and were home with your families. The lack of interviews—I thought you just didn’t want to be bothered.”

  “Come to think of it,” Rafe said, leaning on the doorframe, “I don’t recall any airing of those interviews you did, Ky. I didn’t watch every day, but—did you ever get notice of when they’d be on?”

  “No. I didn’t really think about it.”

  “Do they have censorship here?” he asked. The other three edged past him, carrying cleaning tools, and headed for the big suite where Ky and Rafe had slept. “I did notice, while I was staying with Grace, that your news shows are bland compared with those on Nexus. Cascadia’s are drenched in politeness, but even they show more sides to questions.”

  “Censorship?” Ky thought for a moment. “I don’t think so—at least, when I was kicked out of the Academy, it was for creating a public embarrassment for the government—but after I left, it would’ve died down fast.”

  “Or been suppressed,” Rafe said. “That war Grace was involved in—Stella seems to think of it as some minor little thing, but wasn’t that two continents rebelling against the planetary government? And didn’t it go on for years?”

  “That’s not what I was taught in school,” Ky said. “A minor uprising generated by a disagreement over fishing rights and a tax on shipping or something like that. Just some riots, some criminal elements taking advantage of disagreements.”

  “Sounds like a cover-up to me,” Rafe said. “You should ask Grace about it. Because if whoever kept Miksland a secret for so long was involved in it—and part of Slotter Key’s military was involved, as well—then it’s not really over.”

  Ky tried, and failed, to imagine Great-Aunt Grace in the middle of an actual war. As a young woman, of course; it was a long time ago and she would have been…maybe twenty? Younger? But surely she would have been the same upright, prim, proper girl that she’d been as an old woman in Ky’s youth. If she’d been involved, it would have been as a—a secretary or something. Someone in an office, organizing the files.

  “Maybe,” she said to Rafe. “I’ll ask her. But right now I need to look over those files in the office here.”

  And think. She needed to think what had happened to the other survivors, and why, and what she could do about it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DAY 2

  Instead, she stared for a moment at the files on the desk and then pulled them closer. Whatever this was—whatever she needed to do to protect the survivors—would cost money. Yes, she’d handed over her shares to Stella, and Stella claimed she lacked the money to pay Ky what was due, but that was exactly why she felt entitled to go through the reports on Stella’s desk. She was going to need some money—undoubtedly less than those shares had been worth—and something might have slipped her cousin’s attention.

  Stella, she realized, had revised some of the procedures Helen had used; Ky nodded as she read. Helen, the former CEO’s wife, whose own background was in science, not business, had run the business as simply as possible, and as a result skimped on in-depth analysis from the business viewpoint. She hadn’t done anything bad, exactly, but she had missed opportunities that Stella clearly did not intend to miss. Ky, who had seen Stella as the secondary headquarters CEO, was well aware of Stella’s gift for corporate leadership, and the uptick in profits from Helen’s resignation to the present proved how much better Vatta would do under Stella’s command. If, that is, the fines levied on Vatta could be overturned.

  In the silence of that hour, Ky remembered the quarrel of the previous night again and felt a twinge of remorse. Stella still rubbed her the wrong way, but she’d been at fault. And perhaps, as Rafe had suggested on Corleigh, she herself was in need of a consultation and analysis of the effects of that more than half year in Miksland. She queried the medical app in her implant and found a recommendation there for a tune-up by a specialist. Well. Maybe. Maybe she could take care of it herself. Moray was a long way away and right now she wasn’t sure which local specialists she could trust.

  The house system flashed an alert: someone was opening the front door. The speaker came on. Rafe’s voice. “Teague. Thank you. Come on in.”

  Ky relaxed, realizing only then that she was halfway out of the chair, her pistol in her hand. The medical app, still active, recommended a touch of neuroactive. She set it back on passive, holstered her pistol, and went to the head of the stairs. Below, Rafe and Teague were chatting; the door was closed and secured. Rafe looked up.

  “He’s going to answer when the delivery comes. I’ll change down here, and back him up if anything happens.”

  “Thanks,” Ky said. “I’ll come down now and get my box; we’ll stay upstairs after.”

  “Full brief?” Rafe asked.

  “Go ahead,” Ky said. “We’ll need him later.”

  “Right.”

  Ky went down to the
suite to tell the others that another man was in the house. They were through with the cleaning, and stood gathered around the spiral stairs up to the top level. The hatch that sealed the lockdown looked ridiculous protruding through the ice-blue ceiling.

  “What’s up there?”

  “Two more bedrooms, from when this was the children’s wing. Can’t get there now with the house locked down, but this, where we are, used to be the playroom and common study space. The older ones could retreat from the noise up there; there are two bedrooms with dormer windows.” Ky set her box on the sofa, took off the float pins, and unzipped the seal. “This is stuff from my ship; they sent it down when they left. Should be some clothes in here you can wear until the store delivery comes.”

  “It’s the fanciest house I’ve ever been in,” Barash said.

  “Same here,” Inyatta said. “Was yours like this?”

  “No,” Ky said. “Ours was on Corleigh, near the tik plantation, on the east coast. One story, sprawling out a bit. I could walk to the beach, though we also had a pool. My father had offices there in a separate building—mirroring the data here, so he could work from there much of the time. Coming to the mainland was a big deal.”

  “Is that where you were until yesterday?”

  “The island, yes, but not that house. It was destroyed—along with the offices—in the attack after I left the Academy. I was in space, then. In fact, this visit was the first time I’ve been on Slotter Key since…I left.” They were all looking at her, waiting for more. She could feel herself growing hot. “Actually, I was on an ansible call back here, to talk to my uncle Stavros, when it happened. The call cut off; I didn’t know why until later.” She looked away, staring at the wall. “Everyone there—and in the headquarters here—was killed. Why they didn’t target this house we don’t know, but that’s why Aunt Helen, Stella, and Jo’s twins survived.”

  No one spoke for a long moment, then Inyatta said, “I’m sorry, Admiral.” The others murmured something.

  Ky shook her head. “It’s—not something one can forget. Even when not directly witnessed.” As she spoke, her fingers brushed the familiar case, the case that held the family-related files sequestered from her father’s implant. The files that recorded what her father had seen that day, before he died, that she had watched, seeing it as he had, engulfed in his recorded emotions.

  She pushed that memory down and lifted out the top layer of clothes. These women had their own more recent trauma to deal with. She would not impose any more of her own on them. “Here—see if any of these fit.” Inyatta and Barash could wear the exercise pants and tops; Kamat was too tall, even though she had to roll up the slacks Stella had lent her.

  Not long after, new clothes arrived in the store’s own delivery van. Rafe brought the boxes and bags upstairs. Ky pulled out her own choices from the boxes and left the rest for the others. They all came down to lunch in new clothes, including Ky. With scarves wrapped around their heads, socks and shoes on their feet, with the five of them around the larger table in the downstairs kitchen, eating off the yellow-and-green-striped plates, the three fugitives looked less like refugees. While they ate, Ky continued her mental list. Wigs, or time for the women to grow out their hair. She had no idea how long it would take. And Kamat needed surgery. Possibly they all did, depending on how badly their implants had been damaged. New implants, then. But the rest of them—how much time did they have to find the rest of the survivors? How long would it take to organize a rescue? With the military obviously complicit—or some of it—who could she ask for help?

  Her skullphone pinged. “Grace,” said the familiar voice. “Secure call. Now.”

  Ky slipped her feet into the new ship boots she’d ordered out of habit and headed back upstairs to Stella’s office. Rafe, coming out of the living room, looked a question and she gestured: urgent call.

  “Ky, where’s Stella?” Grace asked before Ky could do more than identify herself.

  “At the office, I suppose.”

  “Are those persons with you?”

  She must mean the survivors. “Yes.”

  “Don’t let them leave, for any reason, and don’t lower the house security. The situation is far worse than I thought. I have been stupid and careless; the danger is extreme. Do you know where Teague is? He’s not answering at my house.”

  “He’s here. What—”

  “Tell him to go back to my house and remove all of his and Rafe’s equipment. Quickly.”

  “Aunt Grace, what is it?”

  “That man—that captain—tried to kill me. His second yielded to interrogation. Tell Teague, Ky; keep Rafe with you. I must contact Stella immediately. I’ll call again.”

  The contact ended. Ky glared at the com set. “Dammit, Grace,” she said in the silent office. “I am not your baby niece anymore. And I’m not going to sit here doing nothing.”

  Out in the passage, she saw Rafe and Teague lounging near the head of the stairs, heads together. Before she could speak, Rafe’s gaze sharpened. “Trouble?”

  “According to Aunt Grace, yes. Teague, she wants you—just you—to go to her house immediately and remove all of your and Rafe’s ‘equipment,’ whatever that is. She wants Rafe to stay here, and me to await further instructions.” She could hear the impatience in her own voice. “That nosy officer with the search team tried to kill her, she said.”

  “Was she hurt?” Rafe asked.

  “She didn’t say, but I got the distinct impression the captain is dead, since she mentioned interrogating his second.”

  Rafe grimaced, then nodded. “Teague, you’d better go.”

  “Pull everything? Even the internal house surveillance?”

  “Yes. We don’t want any of that available to whoever this is.”

  “But that will leave—”

  “Just her stuff. Yes. But it’s good.”

  “What about placing an external nearby?”

  “Better not since she wants all our equipment gone.”

  “And bring your clothes, too,” Ky said. “You’ll be staying here for a while.”

  “I need the combination to the back gate,” Teague said. Ky gave it to him. Teague smiled, his rare and rather sweet smile. “This will be fun. I’m gone.” And he was running down the stairs. Ky and Rafe followed more slowly.

  “What does she think it is?” Rafe asked.

  “She didn’t explain. Just gave me orders. Stay inside. Don’t let our friends out. Don’t let the house security lapse. Send Teague. Keep you here. And wait for her next call.”

  “You’re still annoyed with her.”

  “Well, yes. You’d think I was twelve years old again and Missy Bancroft had just fallen off the roof and broken her arm. Do this, do that, wait, do the other thing. Even at twelve, I knew what to do when someone fell off a roof.”

  “That really happened?”

  “It did.” Ky could not help relaxing as she remembered the details. “She climbed the tree in our front yard and then jumped down onto the porch roof. I knew the roof was slippery. We all yelled at her not to. But she wouldn’t listen, and sure enough she slipped. And Aunt Grace heard us yelling and came out just in time to see Missy slide off, taking a length of gutter with her, and land in the flower bed. I jumped out of the tree—”

  Rafe grinned. “You were up the tree?”

  “Yes, of course.” Caught in the memory, Ky went on. “We’d started out racing each other up the tree to where the balloon had gotten stuck—”

  Rafe laughed; she glared at him. “I can’t help it,” he said. “You and some other gangly tomboy clambering around in a tree…”

  “She was taller than me,” Ky said. “Most of them were, the girls in that group. Daughters of my mother’s friends.”

  “And you…you instigated that race up the tree, didn’t you?”

  “Only because Vera Smittanger let go of the balloon string and the package tied to it. Anyway, after Missy fell off the roof, that was the end of the party. Aunt
Grace told us all what to do before she even found out if we’d have done it on our own.” Ky shook her head. “At the same time lecturing us for not being young ladies now that we were approaching what she called the gateway to maturity.”

  Rafe laughed again, shaking his head. “It’s not funny,” Ky said. But it was; she could feel laughter bubbling inside. “All right, it wasn’t funny then. In hindsight—” She could see them, the group of girls all appalled by Missy’s fall, and then smarting under Grace’s lecture. “Then all the mothers came out—and we hadn’t had time to brush the leaves and dirt off our party clothes. They all got on us.” She chuckled.

  “Speaking of clothes,” Rafe said. “Did you notice that your new outfit is remarkably like a uniform?”

  Ky looked down at herself, the dark-blue pullover and slacks. “No, it’s not; it’s just the dark color.”

  “Not entirely.” He reached out to touch her hair in its snug braid. “Admiral to the core. I like it.”

  “Good,” Ky said. She leaned on him a moment. “I’d better go tell the others we’re not going anywhere.” And how was she going to plan a rescue, let alone perform one, if she was stuck inside the house?

  —

  Stella Vatta answered the call in her office at Vatta headquarters. A chill ran down her back at Grace’s first words; she realized an instant later that she had her other hand on the pistol she carried in a concealed holster under her perfectly tailored suit even as she answered the question.

  “Yes, Aunt Grace. What’s happened?”

  “That fellow who was at your house tried to kill me,” Grace said. “I’ve contacted Ky; Teague should be collecting all that equipment from my house and going to yours—”

  “You’re sending the trouble to my house?” A flash of anger she controlled quickly. But still. First Ky, then Grace, assuming that Stella and everything she owned would be at their disposal.

  “No, I’m hoping it hits mine first. Stella, I’m serious. What’s the security setting at headquarters?”

  “Highest. After last night, I called the late shift and had it raised.”