Cold Welcome

by Elizabeth Moon

  Droshinski raised her hand. “Inyatta was with me, but she’s—”

  “She’s going to be fine, Tech Lundin says. A few days in the medbox. Spec Gurton, I know it was your day off, but you’re our senior cook. Can you fix us something quickly?”

  “Right away, Admiral,” Gurton said. She got up and headed for the kitchen. “Ennisay, get the oven going.”

  Ky could feel the relaxation, the rising level of confidence, as Ennisay, Droshinski, and Gurton headed for the kitchen. “We’ll spend the rest of the day reorganizing schedules, seeing what mix of expertise we have now, doing routine maintenance, and then after dinner we’ll have another meeting to exchange ideas. The memorial service for Commander Bentik and Master Sergeant Marek will be tomorrow morning at 1000, here in the mess. That should allow time for you all to make sure you have a suitable uniform—”

  “You’re giving Marek a memorial service? After he tried to kill you?” Barash again.

  Ky felt her brows rising. “Certainly. I have praise for him; he worked hard to make things work for you.” She turned to Sergeant Cosper. “You may return Riyahn to confinement now, Sergeant.”

  “Does he get what they’re making?”

  “No,” Ky said. “He hasn’t earned it; the rest of you have. Basic rations only.” Riyahn looked ready to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MIKSLAND

  DAYS 50–56

  Over the next few days, Ky noticed a healthy change. Staff Sergeant Gossin came to her after the memorial service to thank her for recognizing Marek’s years of service. “You know I served with him once—thought I knew him. This—it was a shock. I wish I’d recognized something was wrong before, Admiral, but I didn’t. He didn’t exactly criticize you, not directly, so it didn’t strike me as disloyalty. He was sympathetic—said you were so young and it must be hard for you. But looking back—it made you seem less capable—and that was wrong.”

  The group outliers, Betange with his concern about his younger siblings, Kamat with her extraordinary beauty, interacted more with the others. Inyatta, after three days in the medbox, came out cheerful and ready to take hold again. Hazarika didn’t rush to support Droshinski’s drama, and Droshinski herself seemed steadier, less inclined to outbursts, though she was still more exuberant than most of the others. It became obvious which of them Marek had been grooming as conspirators, as attitudes shifted and tension eased. Several came to Ky individually to apologize. And it was also obvious that her aide had been thoroughly involved in Marek’s activities. Those who had never been swayed by Marek’s opinions had a far more negative opinion of Jen than Ky had realized.

  “He was flattering her and she was falling for it,” Droshinski said. Ky, just outside the mess, stopped to listen. Inyatta was on mess duty for the first time since she’d left the clinic. “That was obvious.”

  “I just couldn’t believe he was doing anything really bad,” Inyatta said. “I mean—a master sergeant. They’re—”

  “Human,” Droshinski said. “Just because he was married, you think he didn’t want some?”

  “Anya! They’re both dead—”

  “And so what I say can’t hurt them. I’m not saying he was all bad, or she was all bad. I’m saying they were just ordinary people, man and woman, trapped in a survival situation—both vulnerable—isolated from their families—” Droshinski’s voice took on the tone of a vid-thriller ad again.

  “He was planning to kill the admiral. He tried to kill the admiral. You don’t think that’s bad?” Inyatta sounded both amused and annoyed.

  “Of course I do. But you wouldn’t catch the admiral falling for a bit of flattery, now, would you? Her aide did. Of course her aide was older, getting to that age—”

  “She was the same age as Marek.”

  Droshinski shrugged; the shrug carried into her voice. “That’s different. She was single; remember when she said so? All prim and stiff, the way she was, as if however she lived was the one right way to live.”

  Inyatta laughed. “You didn’t like her because she came down on you for unprofessional conduct, you and Haz.”

  “She came down on me because she was a stuffed prune from Cascadia,” Droshinski said. “I wasn’t doing anything with Haz but letting him worship my aura. She’d have known that if she’d had any sense. But you notice she didn’t bother once she was getting sweet words from Marek. And then once he’d gotten her on his side, she started poking around, seeing what we said about the admiral, undermining her, trying to get us to agree she wasn’t any good. There’s unprofessional conduct, if you like!”

  Ky, overhearing this from outside the mess, agreed with Droshinski’s final statement, but enough was enough. She stepped through the doorway, and that broke up the conversation. Droshinski and Inyatta stood up. Ky greeted them. “And now for the usual daily inspection, which I’m sure you’ve prepared for.”

  “Yes, sir,” they both said. “Kitchen’s all squared away.”

  “Come on, then.” They followed Ky into the kitchen, where the counters, sinks, and cooktops gleamed, stools were pushed neatly under the main workspace, all equipment was off, cords coiled, all pots and dishes clean and put away. Ky had expected that; this pair worked well together. She found nothing amiss; when she’d finished gave them a nod and “Well done.” The day’s menu was posted on the cabinet nearest the cooktop. “So we’re having—what is this?”

  Inyatta spoke up. “So far we’ve just had steamed rice or steamed barley to put stew over. I found enough farlo meal in the pantry for maybe ten meals, so I wanted to use it. We use it at home a lot. Ishbani is a stew served over it; I’m going to use one of the dehydrated packets for that, and steam the farlo. It’ll be spicy—” She gave Ky a questioning look.

  “Nice change,” Ky said. “We had something similar at home but called it mother-in-law; my parents always laughed when they said it. It took all morning; my mother had everything made from scratch.”

  Droshinski laughed. “Mother-in-law stew? Whose mother-in-law?”

  “I have no idea,” Ky said. “Apparently someone back in the families.”

  Ping.

  “Did you hear that?” Inyatta put a hand to her head and looked back and forth from Ky to Droshinski.

  Ky nodded. “I did indeed.”

  “So did I…It’s my skullphone but it can’t be.”

  “Mine’s greenlined now,” Inyatta said, grinning. “I can call—home, I guess—” She looked at Ky.

  “Wait,” Ky said. “Didn’t Marek tell you—?” Her mind whirled. Of course he hadn’t passed on her order. Nor Jen. “Listen—don’t use your phones, any com device. I know—I’ll explain later—that the com block was intentional and someone lifted it, hoping to find out who’s here. We have to tell the others—nobody call home, or anywhere else.”

  “You’re worried about the people who kept this a secret? Staff Sergeant Marek’s friends?” Droshinski frowned.

  “Employers, I suspect, but yes.”

  “But if we can call our friends, they can help us. Stop them—” Inyatta looked from one to the other.

  “Our friends don’t know who the bad people are any more than we do.” Droshinski raised her brows at Ky. “You want us to wait? What if the others are already calling home?”

  “They may be,” Ky said. “Need to find out.” She headed out into the main passage. Anyone with an implant had probably heard the ping and very shortly figured out what it meant. Her next thought was that she wouldn’t have to find a safe outlet and secure time alone to contact Rafe. Much safer for them both if she could use ordinary communications, even though the ansible-implant connection was the most secure. Her implant gave her an analysis of the available connections, public and private, carried by the repeater satellite now in range.

  “Admiral!” That was Gossin, in the duty office as usual this time of morning. “There’s a signal in my implant—”

  “I know—it just pinged me, too,” Ky said. “And Droshinski
and Inyatta, so it’s a general one. I’ve asked them not to call anyone yet—we need to locate everyone and find out if someone’s been hasty.”

  “Showing initiative,” Gossin said, grinning.

  “That’s right,” Ky said. “But I’m hoping for some impulse control, and a chance to contact the Rector first. We do have enemies.”

  “I’ll go find them—or I could just call—” She looked at Ky.

  “Better not. Anyone tracking might listen in. Know how many we are.”

  “Right.” Gossin hurried out the door calling for an assembly. Ky checked the barracks—no one there, this time of day. No one in any of the smaller rooms, or in the showers; Gossin, she saw, had brought people out of Stores and Maintenance. And here came Ennisay down from the upper entrance. “We’ve got a signal!” he yelled, before seeing Gossin and the group in the passage. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing yet,” Ky said. “Assembly in the mess, right now.” She turned to Gossin. “Riyahn—we don’t want him calling, either.”

  Gossin nodded. “Understood, Admiral. He doesn’t have an implant, so no skullphone, and we made sure he had no pocket com on him when we locked him in. There’s nothing in that closet he could make one from, either.”

  “Good,” Ky said. “But bring him along.”

  When they were gathered, she laid out the situation as she saw it. “We don’t know why the communications shutdown was cleared at this time, or who did it. We do know the shuttle was sabotaged and Master Sergeant Marek was associated with whoever runs this secret establishment. We know they’re not friendly to anyone being here.”

  “Wish we had an aircraft or something.”

  “So do I,” Ky said. “But we don’t. So I don’t want anyone calling home until I’ve seen if there’s a way to make contact with the Rector—”

  “Are you sure she’s not involved?”

  “If Aunt Grace wanted me dead, she’d make me eat a whole fruitcake,” Ky said. A few chuckles, probably from those who didn’t like fruitcake. “But seriously—if she wanted all of us dead, including the Commandant, she’d have had the shuttle blow up above atmosphere. Failproof, simple, complete.”

  A few nods, this time.

  “So: some of you have probably heard that I’m acquainted with Ser Dunbarger, the current CEO of ISC—” Nods. “Before he took over that organization, he was a passenger on a ship I captained—my cousin Stella brought him aboard and he was going under an assumed name—”

  “I heard he was a criminal,” Ennisay said. “Is that true?”

  “All I know is that he helped two of my cousins escape from assassins during the widespread attack on Vatta family members,” Ky said. “He was helpful as well while aboard my ship. And what is useful now is that he taught me a way to shield a skullphone-to-ansible connection from interference or a data-suck.” She had promised Rafe not to reveal the internal ansible, but this—she hoped—was a suitably disguised description of what she wanted to do.

  “You can do that?”

  “I hope so,” Ky said. “I’ll need to input more power into my skullphone; I’ll be using a powerjack. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  “You’ll want privacy,” Gossin said. “We can clear out—”

  “No—just wait here, please. I’ll use Commander Bentik’s quarters.”

  She opened the door to Jen’s room; she had checked it only briefly after Jen’s death, looking for names she would need to contact later, to explain. The room had the faint stale odor of disuse; Jen’s few personal belongings were neatly laid out on the desk, including her comunit. Ky sat in the desk chair, unwound the cable from her neck, and plugged it into the wall socket, then stared at the connection in her hand, the baleful red light glowing there. But surely Marek would not have killed an ally.

  She pulled the plug from the socket and sat a moment, thoughts swirling. Marek would have killed Jen. He would have killed Jen intentionally, in the same way he had tried to kill her, if Jen had used her own external power cord. Once she was dead, Jen would have been next. And how many others?

  She sat until she was certain she had her face back under control, and then returned to the group now assembled in the mess. “Commander Bentik’s room outlets were also compromised. Staff Sergeant Gossin, we need a check of all outlets here, even those that seem to be functioning normally with kitchen equipment and the like.”

  “Yes, sir; immediately. There’s a set of tools in Maintenance—” She looked around the table. “Hazarika, you’re with me.” She stood and turned to leave.

  “I could help,” Riyahn said. “I could undo what Marek told me to do—”

  “Nobody would trust you,” Cosper said.

  “Sergeant,” Ky said. He subsided, glaring at her. Riyahn looked near tears again. “Corporal, you do realize that you are under suspicion. Why didn’t you volunteer to help us earlier?”

  “Yes, sir—Admiral—I’m sorry, I just—I was scared—”

  “Rabbit,” muttered Cosper. Ky gave him a look that stopped whatever else he was about to say. “Sorry, Admiral.”

  “You could have been responsible for multiple deaths,” Ky said to Riyahn. “No credit to you that you weren’t. I can think of a half dozen charges that should be filed against you once we’re back in contact with Spaceforce. If you think undoing the sabotage will make all that go away, I can tell you it will not.” Riyahn stared, eyes brimming. “But,” she said, holding up a finger, “if you are willing to work with Staff Sergeant Gossin, identify all the sockets you sabotaged, and repair them—and if she reports that you worked well—I will include that in my report on your performance since the shuttle crash. Sergeant Cosper”—she gave him a brief glance—“will accompany the work party, and should you be tempted to do anyone mischief—” That phrase taken directly from the Military Code, archaic as it was. “He will deal with you summarily. Is that clear?”

  “Y-yes, Admiral. I want to help, really I do.”

  “Well, then.” Ky stood. “The rest of you, wait here—I’ll only be a few moments, and I have several ideas to put forward.”

  Out in the passage, she pulled Cosper aside. “Corporal Riyahn will be very useful to both me and Spaceforce if he switches his allegiance all the way. He’s not particularly brave—”

  “That’s obvious,” Cosper said, with a sidelong glare at Riyahn, standing close to Gossin like a chick cowering near a mother hen.

  “So you don’t need to try to scare him; he’s already scared. I want—and Spaceforce will want—his cooperation to uncover more about whatever group uses this place. We cannot trust him, certainly, but if he is treated fairly, he may attach to us. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Grudging, that was.

  “I know you’d like to pound him into mush, Sergeant, but that’s not going to get me or Spaceforce what’s needed. Lay off unless he actually does something wrong. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned toward the others, then back to her. “Do you really think he knows anything useful?”

  “He might. My guess is there’s a seventy percent chance he does.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Ky turned back to the mess as the little work party started down the passage. “Well, now. I don’t know how many outlets Riyahn and Marek sabotaged, but I’m glad no one found out the hard way. I’m especially glad the mess hall appliances all work.” That brought a chuckle. “For now, we’re fairly secure, or think we are. We’re warm enough, we have water and food and power. But we also know we have enemies. Until I found out about the sabotage, I thought it was reasonable to stay here, on this level, as Master Sergeant Marek had advised. But knowing he was part of whatever conspiracy’s going on here, we need to know what’s behind those doors we haven’t opened yet. Yes, it might be a dangerous defense…but it might equally be something that explains what’s going on, something that gives us an edge over whoever shows up to kill us.”

&
nbsp; A hand went up, Staff Sergeant Kurin. Ky nodded to her. “Admiral, are you sure they would kill us?”

  “After what Marek did, yes. Someone spent a lot of money over a lot of years setting up this scam, and I’m certain they do not want it discovered now. You’ve seen the animals on the surface. We don’t even have a name for those huge hairy things, but they’re here, along with the ones we do have names for, which means they’re Old Earth–based life-forms.”

  “Or from somewhere else that’s where Old Earth got its biota,” said Droshinski. “What if—”

  “For now, we’re sticking to the what-ifs of the present,” Ky said before Droshinski had a chance to make a dramatic story out of her idea. “I’m willing to entertain ideas aimed at increasing our chances of surviving past the arrival of either the conspirators or a rescue party. You can come to me privately, or bring something up in one of our open meetings. To start with, how many of you are curious about what’s behind those locked doors?”

  All the hands went up.

  “Good. We’ll start with the door Marek showed the most concern about. We’re not all going at once, just in case, though I frankly think Marek was lying about the danger. Staff Sergeant Kurin, Spec Gurton, Spec Kamat, you’re with me on this one. I’m hoping we find a control room for the power system, maybe a communications center, and information about the technical specifications that will give us a clue who’s responsible.”

  Out in the passage, they met the first working party coming back; Staff Sergeant Gossin had a grim expression, and Riyahn looked even more scared than before.

  “What is it, Staff?” Ky asked.

  “Compromised outlets anywhere you or Commander Bentik might have gone to plug something in privately,” Gossin said. “Riyahn told us about them—they’re all marked now, and some are fixed. I thought we should come tell you before fixing the rest, as there are three in the women’s bathing area and one in the watch office.”