Cold Welcome
Page 43
There were other planes on Corleigh, charter craft in town. She had money. “What’s the current charter service’s contact?”
“Admiral—” What might have been a gulp; the voice now sounded strained. “Um—you don’t want to leave. The others are coming; they’ll be here by noon. You could fly back then.” A pause, then, “The plane can be serviced and ready to take off again in a half hour.”
She did want to leave. If wishes grew wings…“Who exactly is coming?”
“Your aunt and your cousin, Admiral. I thought they would have notified you.”
“All they told me was that I could have the house for a while and would not be disturbed.” She could hear the edge in her own voice and softened it deliberately. “Perhaps they will call before they arrive. I hope nothing has happened.”
“Nothing on the news summary,” the voice said.
“Thank you,” Ky said. When she turned, Rafe was watching her from the doorway. “Best-laid plans,” she said. “We’re stranded, and the next arrival is Stella, Helen, and the twins.”
“That’s an odd definition of you won’t be disturbed.”
“My thought exactly. We could call town for transportation and charter a flight out, but I expect they’ll call here and panic if we don’t answer.”
She and Rafe had just time to eat breakfast before the house phone rang again.
—
Five hours later, the little electric podcar rolled up to the back of the house. Stella and Helen climbed out, and then the twins erupted, shrill voices sending every bird in the trees rocketing away as they ran toward the house.
“Were you like that?” Rafe murmured in Ky’s ear.
“Probably,” Ky said. “But there was only one of me. We’d better help.”
“Not much in this load,” Helen said. “The rest will come later.” She looked around, her expression tense. “Where are the—Oh.” The twins appeared around the corner of the house, one chasing the other, both shrieking, and disappeared again around the next corner.
“We need to tire them out,” Stella said, pulling a couple of insulated cases from the podcar. “Here—this one’s food, Ky. Rafe, the other is your black bag from Aunt Grace’s.”
Once everything was out of the podcar, Stella reset its instructions and it trundled back toward the airstrip. Ky, Rafe, and Stella moved everything inside.
“What’s going on?” Ky asked. Her duffel and Rafe’s were still by the door.
“Problems,” Helen said. “You know that flight recorder you brought back?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“It’s gone missing. And someone broke into our house yesterday when Stella and I had taken the children for their yearly checkups. Nothing was taken, but the alarm didn’t go off and nobody noticed anything wrong until we got back and the side door had been kicked right off the hinges. I’m sorry we interrupted you, but—”
“You didn’t, really,” Ky said. “We were going to leave this morning. New plans, Rafe and I. If you hadn’t arrived, we’d have been in Port Major by now—”
“What plans?” Stella asked, stacking fruit from the cooler onto a platter.
“Well—we’re both at loose ends, so we’re going to buy a ship and go—do things. Explore. Learn new things. Have smaller adventures.” She didn’t want to explain what she’d thought of. This morning it sounded less rational than it had the day before.
“Just how do you plan to finance this?”
Ky grinned. “Space Defense is giving me severance pay and back pay; you owe me for my shares in Vatta, and Rafe’s got money coming from the same kind of sources, since his sister’s taking over as CEO. We realized we could buy a reasonably sized ship, and decided to grab it while we could.”
“Well, you can’t,” Stella said. She glanced sideways at Helen. “Moscoe Confederation has slapped a lien on your Cascadian accounts, pending a court hearing on damages due the family of your aide. I had a call from the local branch of Crown & Spears. Since you’re still a Slotter Key citizen, they won’t allow a foreign government to seize the funds you have here, but they can’t guarantee it’s safe to transfer them to other branches in other jurisdictions. More than that, because I transferred my permanent residence to Cascadia, if your account there isn’t enough to cover whatever a court decides, I’ll have to pay it out of Vatta funds there. My accounts aren’t frozen, but I’ve been served notice of intent to collect on your behalf.”
“That’s—ridiculous.”
“It’s their laws. You’ve been there; you know what they’re like. And Slotter Key’s Budget Director has declined to pay Mackensee’s fee for their contract here—claiming Grace had no right to make such a contract without prior approval, and she can just pony up the money on her own. Which means, of course, Vatta has to pay it, and that means—I’m sorry to say—that I don’t have the money I owe you for your shares. Because I don’t want to go to jail and don’t want Grace to go to jail and don’t want Helen to lose her house.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m very serious. There’s a fight in the legislature right now whether to try to assign us damages for the people who died on Miksland, because you didn’t get them all out alive and well. Besides the money problem, which Rafe perhaps could solve, the government won’t let you leave until they’ve satisfied all their legal wrangling.” She wiped out the cooler, set it back on the floor, and turned back to Ky.
“But I want to get away from Slotter Key!” And never come back, not ever.
Rafe stepped to her side, put an arm around her. “If you’re broke, I can’t buy us a spaceship. I could buy us tickets offplanet, but if you can’t leave, I’m staying, too. And if we’re stuck here, we might as well amuse ourselves.”
“It’s not funny!”
“No, but it’s interesting.”
“I’m not interested—”
“I am. I am because it affects you, and because I am a shameless meddler who can’t pass up a good mystery. Tell you what. Why don’t we take the children for a swim, let Stella and Helen cook us all a good supper—” He stopped, swung her around, looked at her. “You aren’t buying this.”
“No.” She felt petulant. She felt the way she had as a child, unfairly manipulated by adults who refused to understand how important something was, and how right she was—she felt the corner of her mouth twitch before she recognized the change of mood. “It’s not funny,” she said again, daring him to argue. “It may be funny later; it may be interesting later, but right now—”
“You want to hit somebody. I understand. We’ll take the children swimming. Maybe you can hit a shark.”
When they came back inside, the children far less worn out than any of the adults had hoped, Ky had in fact thumped a small shark for swimming too close. She came back up through the gritty broken shells fringing the high-tide line, brushing the sand off her feet on the way up the steps to the veranda. The smells from the house were meat and spices and something sweet in the oven.
After supper the twins were handed books and papers to work on at the table; the adults left them complaining about homework and adjourned to the seaward side of the veranda with a plate of cookies.
“Our investigations while you were missing didn’t get as far as we’d hoped—as we were closing in, we realized someone had called in mercs, and they were going to land on Miksland earlier,” Stella said.
“Right,” Rafe said. “And we thought blowing the server farm—”
“You blew a server farm?” Ky turned to him.
“Yes. Thought it would slow them down, disrupt the attack, but it didn’t. We hadn’t been able to penetrate far enough. Mackensee was due to arrive any day, but we didn’t know if they’d get here in time, which is why I sounded so frantic that time.”
“And right now,” Stella said, “the important thing is that evidence has disappeared—in the hands of Spaceforce and civilian law enforcement both—so we know both are involved. All Vatta facilitie
s are buttoned up as tight as possible and still carry on the business—though we hope the enemies are all here on Slotter Key.”
“Do you think it connects with the earlier attack?” Ky looked from Rafe to Stella and back.
Rafe tipped his hand from side to side. “Maybe. It’s tempting to think so, but there’s been no sign so far of any action off this planet.”
“Aunt Grace and MacRobert are holed up in her office at the Defense Department. Grace is positive that no one mined Vatta’s headquarters this time, so my department heads are staying in the building. Teague’s guarding Grace’s house.” Stella reached for a cookie.
“How long will you stay here?” Ky asked Stella. Despite herself, she felt curiosity and determination both rising. She and Rafe could stay in Helen’s house, guarding that property, and be close enough to work with Grace.
“I’m heading back tomorrow morning, now that I’m sure you’re safe. That’s why I brought Rafe’s other kit; you and he can safely work from here—”
“No!”
“Ky, be reasonable. You can’t leave the planet.”
“I am not going to stay here, lolling around at a beach house, with nothing much to do but stare at a screen. I’m coming back with you. Rafe and I can stay in Grace’s house or Helen’s.”
“But that leaves Helen and the twins—”
“I’m not a babysitter.” One swim with the twins had convinced her of that.
“Fine, then.” Stella gave her the familiar I’m the grown-up cousin look. “You can come with me in the morning. Someone in the office here can help Helen with the twins until I can locate reliable staff. Can they use your house, Helen?”
“Of course. Though it’s already been broken into—”
“It won’t be once I upgrade the security,” Rafe said. “So—that’s settled.” He turned to Ky. “I told you another day would be better timing for going back to the mainland.”
“For buying a spaceship,” Ky said. She glared at him, no longer angry, but hoping to seem ferocious.
Rafe laughed. “For catching bad guys. Perfect timing for that.”
Ky grinned at him; she couldn’t help it. “Bad guys it is, then. But later, there’d better be a spaceship.”
For Anne Groell and Joshua Bilmes, Editor and Agent, for their constant care and assistance.
And for Karen Shull, High School Librarian, whose background added perspective both professional and private.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once again, many people helped with specific points of this book, and I will undoubtedly miss mentioning a few whose contributions, in casual conversations, slipped my memory days later. Myke Cole, writer and officer in the USCG reserve, saved me from a massive mistake and pointed me at a couple of websites that helped prevent more. Laurence Gonzales’ book Deep Survival, along with other books specifically on cold-weather/cold-water survival, including two on Shackleton’s incredible journey, kept me oriented to the various tasks, attitudes, and decisions that make for success. David Watson and others provided advice on the feasibility of hunting certain largish creatures (trying to avoid spoilers here) with a pistol and limited ammunition. Ellen McLean, David Watson, Karen Shull, and Richard Moon tackled (variously) alpha-reader and nitpicker duties on chunks of it. PBS kindly broadcast two shows that came at exactly the right moment for me, one of them about the re-creation of Shackleton’s voyage. Manufacturers of life rafts and useful equipment (including hand-pumped desalinators) put not only ads, but videos, up online—I did not have to travel to find them. A scientist I follow on Twitter posted a link to a video of a particular point of “freeze-up” that provided visual and audio of that phenomenon and answered my warm-climate questions about cold-climate issues.
Where you find mistakes, they are mine; the good stuff was poured into my head (and out through my fingers) by the many (known and unknown) whose words, images, and videos tried to fill the vast caverns of ignorance.
DEL REY BOOKS BY ELIZABETH MOON
Cold Welcome
VATTA’S WAR
Trading in Danger
Marque and Reprisal
Engaging the Enemy
Command Decision
Victory Conditions
LEGEND OF PAKSENARRION
Oath of Fealty
Kings of the North
Echoes of Betrayal
Limits of Power
Crown of Renewal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Former Marine ELIZABETH MOON is the author of many novels, including Echoes of Betrayal, Kings of the North, Oath of Fealty, the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy, Victory Conditions, Command Decision, Engaging the Enemy, Marque and Reprisal, Trading in Danger, the Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark, and Remnant Population, a Hugo Award finalist. After earning a degree in history from Rice University, Moon went on to earn a degree in biology from the University of Texas–Austin. She lives in Florence, Texas.
elizabethmoon.com
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