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  “There are some political complications you should be aware of,” the Commandant said.

  Ky dragged her mind back to here and now. “Yes?”

  “I don’t know if MacRobert briefed you on the situation on Slotter Key when you met him after the Nexus battle—”

  “Not entirely, no.”

  “Your great-aunt, now Rector, gathered most of the information about the origin of the attack on Vatta. She and MacRobert—whom I assigned to liaise with her—concluded that cover had come from the highest levels of government. She would have acted, if she had not been shot when assassins tried to kill the children she was guarding. And that is why I was the person to assist the former President to make a decision regarding his future.”

  Ky blinked, trying to parse that statement. Did he mean he’d talked to the man or—something else? MacRobert had told her little, really, about the change of government on Slotter Key, except that Aunt Grace had provided key information and the former President had committed suicide. Had it been suicide? And why would the Spaceforce Academy Commandant be involved?

  He continued before she could think what—and how—to ask.

  “What you do not know—what only a few other people now living know—is that your great-aunt and I became acquainted during that civil war when we were both young. I was just a boy, in fact.”

  That was not just a surprise; that was an immediate flare of curiosity. She didn’t know much about that war except that it had had something to do with the formation of the planetary government. It had been over long before she was born, and was barely mentioned in her school history class.

  “I don’t think you need to know much about that,” the Commandant went on. “But there are still political repercussions from that nasty little war, and she and I both feel that the attack on Vatta may have been motivated by more than Osman Vatta’s personal malice.”

  Ky could not think what to say; she was still struggling to imagine the Commandant and her great-aunt involved in a civil war.

  “Recent intelligence suggests that there may still be some conspirators we haven’t identified. Rector Vatta has had difficulties with elements of the military, though it may not be related. She rubs some people the wrong way.” Ky could easily imagine that. He shrugged and went on. “The current President, though amenable to reasonable suggestions when he succeeded to the role, has been less so after the elections that followed. There’s a faction that strongly opposed sending ships to support your force. We think they—”

  A loud chime interrupted him. The flight crew announcement light came on.

  “Commandant, we have a situation.” Ky could not tell which of the pilots it was, but the voice sounded tense.

  Ky forced herself not to ask questions. She looked at the port, still covered. She stared at it anyway. She hated being cut off from ship’s systems. She tried to imagine what would be below now, but without the course data the pilots had, it was only a wild guess.

  “We’re going to need to make an emergency landing, possibly wet.” That same tense, over-controlled voice.

  This was not her shuttle, not her command. The best thing to do was keep quiet and out of the way. She thought of her aide. This would only convince Jen that Slotter Key was a chaotic, undisciplined, dangerous place.

  “Why?” The Commandant’s voice rose a fraction. She glanced at him, then back at the blank gray of the shield just outside the port.

  “Threats, Commandant. Station Traffic Control reported credible threats during the previous orbit, and now there are anomalies in the instrument readings that were nominal before. We’ll be descending faster, and hoping to make it to Pingat Islands, the nearest field, but we’re getting more anomalies—some systems may fail. You will need to take steps—”

  “Sirs—with respect—” Vispersen came into their compartment. He carried two bulging packages in his arms and set them down on the table. “You need to change into survival suits. Commandant, this is yours. Admiral—”

  Ky looked at the packages, then back at him. Her suit, transported from her flagship, was in a blue duffel; both these were orange. “I need my own suit,” she said. “I can get it—” She started to release the safety harness.

  “Ours has our own codes loaded in its transponder,” Vispersen said. “We got your measurements from your ship. I understand you brought your own—insisted on it—but it’s not compatible with our emergency communications channels.”

  The Commandant was already pulling the tabs on the larger package. Spaceforce should be reliable, but—in light of the recent conversation and this emergency—she could not be certain. Survival suits could be sabotaged in any of a hundred ways, with fatal results to the user; she knew who had packed hers, back on Vanguard II. She glanced at the Commandant, and saw the same surmise in his eyes. Yet if they were going down they had to have the suits on. She stood up.

  “I’ll use my own suit,” she said, allowing a little edge to her voice. “It’s in the front locker; I can find it.”

  “No need, Admiral; I’ll bring it.” Vispersen snatched up the package she’d rejected and hurried forward, returning in a moment with her sealed blue duffel.

  She peeled back the closure. “There are enough suits for everyone?” she asked the steward, lifting the suit out.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Vispersen said. “Nobody left out.” He grinned. “Even me, when I’ve seen you safely suited. The aft stewards will be taking care of the other compartments.” He paused, then asked, “Will your aide be in her own suit?”

  The Commandant gave him a sharp look but said nothing; he had his suit unfolded now, and was unsnapping the front closure. Tiny alarm bells rang in Ky’s mind.

  “I’m certain she will,” Ky said, unfolding her own. “I know she brought it.”

  “You can leave your shoes on if you want, Commandant,” Vispersen said. “These new models accept any footgear that doesn’t have an aggressive sole. Admiral, yours—”

  “Is the same,” Ky said.

  Ky’s stomach lurched a little as the anti-gravity failed to compensate completely for the increase in deceleration. She struggled for a moment with the tabs on the suit; one was stiffer than the others. Then she put her legs into the suit legs and stood up, one hand automatically on the nearest grabon, the other pulling the suit up over her uniform. The shuttle jerked and rolled to starboard; the Commandant, who had both hands busy fastening the torso toggles on his, fell sideways, but Vispersen caught him.

  “AG compromised,” said a mechanical voice from above. “Expect unpredictable vector accelerations.”

  Ky worked her free arm into the suit arm, changed hands on the grabon without letting go, and worked her other arm into the suit before another lurch came. She saved herself a knock on the head by stiff-arming the bulkhead. Vispersen was helping the Commander attach the helmet and its connections. Ky maneuvered back into her seat, slid one arm under the emergency seat restraint webbing, and fastened her own torso closure. Then she dug into the suit bag for her helmet.

  “Secure for shuttle rotation. Expect zero G first, then hard Gs.”

  The artificial gravity cut out completely during rotation. Sandwiches and tea tried to wiggle up her throat, but Ky kept them down. To her surprise, the viewport screens retracted, letting daylight into the cabin. Shouldn’t they stay covered in an emergency? Vispersen, legs swinging above the deck briefly, moved from the Commandant to her.

  “Let me get that helmet hooked up and sealed for you.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said. The Commandant, now webbed into his seat across from her, helmet face-shield open, had the inwardly focused look of someone in serious discussion with his innards. Vispersen closed the tabs she hadn’t yet managed, then attached the helmet and its connectors. “I’ve got the display now,” she said. Her own familiar display, with all the readouts in the right places, including readouts Spaceforce would not have and a seamless integration with her implants.

  Vispersen opened an overhea
d locker and pulled out another suit, easing into it with practiced efficiency. Like Ky, he slid an arm through the seat webbing of the remaining seat before putting on his helmet.

  She felt pressure against her back as the shuttle braked hard. More, and then more. Something popped in her suit, and she felt a protective cushion expand. Her mind seemed to split into separate tracks: questions (who, why, what, when, how?), a stream of possible outcomes (if the shuttle blew up, if it made it to land, if it crashed in the ocean), and an inchoate swirl of animal emotion, frantic. She locked that into a mental cupboard. That was panic. This was real: here, inside the shuttle. She set aside the things she could not predict or control (would the shuttle explode? Would they crash?) and reviewed what resources she had. A functioning survival suit, her bulletproof armor under her uniform, her 10mm pistol, her implant stuffed with her father’s Vatta data and her own for both Vatta and her own organization. The ansible implant, and the cable for it she wore as a hidden necklace.

  If she survived to landing, she was not without resources, not even counting what might be on the shuttle or in others’ kits. “I don’t think this is aimed at you, Admiral Vatta,” the Commandant said. “I have annoyed many people in my time, some of them quite dangerous.”

  “Two fish with one hook,” Ky said.

  He grinned; she could tell it took effort. “Possibly. But sabotaging this shuttle almost had to be internal, in Spaceforce, where you’re more popular than not. We’ve got good crew—and there’s a master sergeant in back. You got the full list in from my aide, right?”

  “Yes, Commandant.”

  “If anything—well, if you need to, take care of them.” If she survived and he didn’t, that meant. His trust in her gave her an instant’s warmth.

  Ky’s implant pinged her: Pordre, her flag captain. “Admiral—the course changes—are you in trouble?”

  “Sabotage,” she said. “Shuttle problems—”

  “We’ve launched one of our shuttles. Any chance of matching orbits? Doing a transfer?”

  “No, we’re already too far down,” Ky said. “Where’s ours?”

  “High and behind, but we’ve got an eye on you. Looks like you’re headed for a cluster of islands west of that line of cliffs—what is that, anyway?”

  “Small continent, terraforming failure,” Ky said. “Patch me through to the shuttle crew.”

  “Right away, Admiral. That’s Lieutenant Sonducco.”

  “Vanguard Two shuttle—this is Lieutenant Sonducco—Admiral?”

  “Vatta here,” Ky said. “You still have us visually?”

  “Yes, but you’re going into that cloudbank before we can get down to your altitude. It’s several layers deep—top’s at seventeen thousand meters. We’ll lose you to visual, and to scan until we lose some vee. Vanguard should be able to track you, and we’ve got a good probable trajectory.”

  “There should be islands ahead of us—how far?”

  “Not going to make it on that course, Admiral. You’ll be east of them, approx—”

  The transmission ended as if someone had flicked a switch: no hiss, no crackle, nothing. They were in cloud now, but cloud should not have interfered. Ky assumed another form of sabotage though she could not think what would have that effect, then remembered the Commandant had said something about Miksland itself affecting communications. She wished she’d told Pordre about that. They dropped through the first layer; beneath were more clouds, these showing more structure. Ky hadn’t paid much attention to planetary meteorology for years, not since she’d lived on Slotter Key; she could not read the clouds for clues to the weather. At least they were down in atmosphere, descending fast into breathable air, the first requirement for survival.

  She forced her attention back onto what she could do, assuming they landed safely and ignoring the possibility that the Commandant might not survive. The Commandant would take command; everyone knew him. The pilots and stewards, as the shuttle’s crew, would direct passengers; the shuttle had life rafts, and they would know how to deploy them. Once down, they would get into the rafts…she reviewed what she remembered about the raft drills her father had insisted on, those times he’d taken her and her brothers sailing.

  Her job would be to follow crew instructions, and then offer whatever assistance she could. How many of these people had sailing experience? Many of them, probably; most people on Slotter Key lived near enough to open water, and all the early colonists had built sailing craft. Some would have had cold-water experience she didn’t have. She ran through the contents of a typical life raft in her mind, wondering if Spaceforce rafts had additional supplies. An initial supply of fresh water, and then a desalinization pump to produce more from the ocean water. Another pump to remove water from the raft. Rescue rings, lines for various purposes, sea anchors, nonperishable food, warming blankets, transponders, signaling devices of several kinds, fishing tackle, paddles, first-aid kit—it was a long list, and she couldn’t remember some items, but trying kept her mind occupied as the descent continued.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SLOTTER KEY NEARSPACE, SPACE DEFENSE FORCE FLAGSHIP VANGUARD II

  “Signal cut out, sir.” Lieutenant Sonducco’s voice was steady but a half pitch higher. “Nothing from the transponder, either. They’re in the cloud, steep descent. We could follow them—”

  “Stay clear of the cloud,” Captain Pordre said. “We don’t want to lose contact with you. Scan what you can.”

  “Signal loss confirmed.” The com officer on the bridge worked on their com controls. “No response from the ansible relay satellites in that sector.”

  It had to be sabotage. It had to be more than just sabotage of the shuttle, if it affected ISC relay satellites. “See what you can scan of that landmass, anything to identify a probable landing zone.” He turned to his com officer. “Contact their Defense Department; I want to talk to Rector Vatta and offer our support.”

  SPACEFORCE SHUTTLE

  Down through layer after layer of cloud, until they finally dropped below it, into a dimmer world of dark water below with the distant cliffs of Miksland well off to port. Ky could not see much detail in the water surface. The Commandant, peering out the viewport in the direction they were going, shook his head. “I don’t see anything to land on. They should’ve tried for Miksland.”

  “Does it have a landing—?”

  “Attention-attention-attention.” A recorded voice, not one of the pilots, interrupted her. “Emergency—” A click, then another voice came over the com.

  “This is the pilot.” His voice sounded strained, as if he were in pain. Certainly he was busy. “We are about to jettison the passenger survival capsule; the shuttle controls are inoperable and we have reached low enough altitude. Take emergency positions immediately. On my count of ten, we will disengage—”

  Ky slapped her faceplate closed and locked it, as did the Commandant. Passenger survival capsule…that meant coming down without any controls at all, with only parachutes. If those had not been sabotaged as well. The thought of death intruded; she pushed it away. Nothing she could do now but follow procedures—as in the battle at Moray, when she’d survived something as dangerous as this, but without gravity. Or atmosphere. The shuttle would have all the standard tracking devices; the net of navigation, weather, and scan satellites around the planet would be receiving data, sending it on to multiple facilities. Someone was watching; someone would know exactly where they landed.

  “…four…three…two…disengage…” A loud bang, a jolt as if the shuttle had been hit by something—explosive bolts, Ky thought—and the passenger module slewed sideways then fell, tipping down and sideways. The dark water, flecked with foam, came nearer. Ky could not guess their height at first, but they were certainly not the ripples of the bay at Corleigh on a quiet day. This was not how she’d planned to die, but then she’d never planned to die. She realized the absurdity of those thoughts, then the module jerked again—once, twice, three times—and returned to level.
Their fall slowed. Ky could not see the parachutes out the viewport, but could think of nothing else that might have caused the change.

  “Chutes deployed,” said the recorded voice. “Do not leave your seats. Do not unfasten safety restraints. Do not unseal helmets until after landing, on crew instruction. Landing may be rough; module may tip or even roll. Items may fall or fly about the cabins. Landing cushions will deploy at three hundred meters above the surface.”

  The module swung beneath the chutes. Out the viewport, Ky could see water below and the coast of Miksland again; she could tell they were lower, but not how much lower. As they came down, she could see more of the water—that there were waves, large ones, the kind she associated with open ocean from her sailing experience as a teenager. Wind direction—she had no reference, but surely the wind would be acting on the parachutes, moving them downwind. Was that likely to be helpful or not? Something popped below the deck; out the port, Ky could now see an expanding curved shape—the landing cushions? She hoped they were flotation devices as well.

  Across the table from her, the Commandant’s expression—what she could see of it through his faceplate—was fixed, the same steady, emotionless look she had seen so often in her Academy years. She said nothing; if he wanted a conversation, surely he would speak first. The pilots, she supposed, were too busy to talk to the passengers; she heard nothing from the rear compartments.

  “Landing imminent, less than ten seconds.” The recorded voice again. Outside, the waves looked much bigger—bigger than she would have sailed in, in the small boat her family owned. She counted down silently. Eight, seven, six, five…a jolt; the shuttle tilted sharply nose-down as the aft cushions caught a wave crest, and again as the other cushions hit and splashed high enough to spatter on the windows, obscuring her view. She could feel the cabin roll as the crest of the wave passed under them, the forward end now tilting up. Through the blurry wet window she could see another wave bearing down on them.