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  “Yes,” Stella said. “Yes, I did. Didn’t you tell me once to find something enjoyable in any situation?”

  “No,” Helen said. “That was your aunt Grace.” And after a pause, “But I meant what I said. This is too much for me. I need you to take over. Now.”

  “Of course I will. It’s understandable you’d want to recover from another shock.”

  Stella opened the passenger door for her mother and took the driver’s side herself. Her mother entered the exit codes, but Stella drove them home.

  She said nothing on the way back to the house, her imagination presenting a series of vivid horrific pictures: the shuttle exploding, flaming shards falling into the sea, Ky’s dismembered body among them. The shuttle, whole, slamming into the sea, fragmenting, sinking, never to be found. She tried to force her imagination to something better, but had no idea how that could happen…could a shuttle settle quietly onto the surface of a calm sea? Was that sea calm? The only pictures she’d ever seen of the Oklandan had been storm images, news stories of ships battered and limping into port somewhere to the north of Miksland.

  “I really miss Onslow Seffater,” her mother said, into that silence. “Targanyan is such a difficult man.”

  Stella struggled with the name for a moment then remembered her father’s legal adviser, whom she’d met on the embarrassing occasion of the family silver disappearing from the country house vault. Ser Seffater had been gentler than her father as he coaxed her to admit she’d given the gardener’s son the combination. The silver had been recovered, the gardener’s son having been as feckless in his theft as she had been in her trust in him, but no one ever forgot that lapse. She had become “that idiot Stella” to the family just as Ky had been “Ky…well, at least she’s not like that idiot Stella.”

  “He was killed in the explosion, wasn’t he?”

  “He was just coming into the building,” her mother said. “Blown to pieces. At least they could find the pieces. Your father—”

  She knew about that, too. The upper floors had collapsed onto the lower floors and her father’s remains, all anyone found, were smears of blood and tissue identified as his by a gene scan.

  “I hope we can at least find Ky’s…” Her mother let that trail off.

  “She could be alive,” Stella said, over her own certainty that Ky must be dead. “She’s tough. I’ve seen her in emergencies.”

  “Gravity has no pity,” her mother said. “Nor physics. Relentless…”

  Stella glanced at her. Her mother’s gaze was straight ahead.

  SPACE DEFENSE FORCE HEADQUARTERS, GREENTOO

  With the news that the Grand Admiral had arrived safely in Slotter Key nearspace, tension in SDF headquarters had relaxed somewhat. She was safe; the Slotter Key ansible was working; they had real-time communication with her if they wanted. When eight of the admirals then at HQ met in the Senior Officers’ Club and settled around the big table in the meeting room with their favorite evening drinks after dinner, they were ready for a pleasant few hours of chat and discussion. Issues of some weight were set aside while the Grand Admiral was away; they could relax. Padhjan, the admiral who had retired from Slotter Key Spaceforce to serve under Ky Vatta, answered questions about Slotter Key protocol.

  “We’re not nearly as formal as Cascadians,” he said. “Fairly casual, in fact. I expect there might be a parade, and some politicians will shake her hand, but—”

  “Sir! Sir!” The pale-faced young officer who flung open the door to the Senior Officers’ Club meeting room had a printout in his hand. Dan Pettygrew, facing the door, scowled at him.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s—it’s a message for Admiral Driskill, sir. It’s really urgent—it’s bad—I mean—”

  “Spit it out, Hopkins,” Driskill said with a quick glance at Pettygrew. “Everyone in here has all the clearance they need.”

  “It’s the admiral—Grand Admiral Vatta, I mean. She’s—she’s gone, sir.”

  Pettygrew felt as if he’d been flash-frozen; for a moment he could not move or speak. The pleasant dinner he’d eaten earlier congealed in his stomach. Down the table, Admiral Hetherson of Moray System shifted in his seat; no one else moved. Pettygrew struggled and finally said, “What happened?” His own voice sounded strange to him.

  “The shuttle crashed on Slotter Key. Into the ocean. They don’t think anyone survived.”

  “No!” Argelos, seated on Pettygrew’s left, slapped a hand onto the table. “She can’t—it’s a mistake!” Then, before anyone else could answer, he went on. “What kind of shuttle? When? What kind of search have they done?”

  “This is all we’ve got,” Hopkins said. Now the first was out, he seemed to realize he’d burst in on the senior admirals without the slightest courtesy. “It’s from Captain Pordre on Vanguard Two.” He handed the hardcopy to Admiral Burrage, the Cascadian.

  Instead of reading it aloud, Burrage read it through silently, lips pursed, then handed it to Hetherson. As each admiral read it in silence, and passed it on up the table, Pettygrew felt his stomach knotting ever tighter. Ky Vatta could not be gone. Dead. She was the reason the Space Defense Force existed; she was the reason he was an admiral, and not just the captain of a single warship fleeing disaster. She had made them, willed SDF into being, commanded them in one after another engagement, against odds that no one else, he was sure, could have beaten. His own planet, Bissonet, though it had suffered badly under Turek’s domination, was free again, and though his immediate family had not survived, many people he’d known were alive because of her.

  The transcript, when he saw it for himself, made it clear Pordre did not know whether anyone had survived or not, and that he was annoyed with Slotter Key’s official response. “I have been in contact with their Rector of Defense, also named Vatta, and she has assured me of her full support, but confirmed my suspicions of sabotage in the shuttle failure. We are parked in a more distant orbit; from here we can do nothing but wait for permission to land one of our own shuttles. I intend to remain in Slotter Key space until search and rescue operations have finished.”

  Pettygrew handed the transcript on to Argelos and waited until it reached the far end of the table. When Driskill had read it, he spoke. “Hopkins, you will not speak of this to anyone else. Were you the one who decoded it?”

  “Yes, sir. The comtech called for an admiral’s aide with the relevant security key; I was already in the area.”

  “Good. Do you know where the others are?”

  “Outside this door, sir, I expect.”

  “This information will be shared in due time, but we need to communicate with Captain Pordre and with Slotter Key’s government to make more sense of it. Go tell the other aides to hold themselves in readiness—if any are not in the club, call them in. Do not reveal any of this message. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. I won’t, sir.”

  “You may go.”

  When the door shut behind him, Hetherson said, “I told her not to go back there. We needed her here. This is where she should be.”

  Pettygrew fought down a surge of temper. Hetherson was a former senior admiral of Moray’s space navy and still considered himself senior to them all, purely by time in grade, though he had not been part of the fleet that fought at Nexus.

  “She went, and now she’s been in a shuttle crash,” Pettygrew said, more harshly than he intended. “Until we know if she’s dead or alive, it’s our job to hold SDF together, in readiness for whatever comes, until she’s back.”

  “Or she’s dead and one of us takes over.” Burrage looked at each of them in turn.

  Trust Burrage to bring that up. The succession through the admirals had been a touchy issue ever since the end of the war. Each senior admiral had come from one of the contributing systems except Mackensee’s, since the mercenaries did not want to commit ships and personnel permanently to SDF. They had, however, recommended a couple of other systems from which SDF had acquired supplies, systems wi
lling to host SDF bases, though they had not actually been in the war against Turek. Ky had agreed, citing the strategic benefit of having more allies in more places. But the original member systems wanted to be sure their admirals took precedence, and within those, Moray and the Moscoe Confederation pushed hardest to be named first in succession should anything happen to Ky Vatta.

  Ky herself had chosen Pettygrew, when Argelos refused, on the basis of his lack of military background. And though most of the other admirals agreed he had been with her longest and knew her best, their system governments were less cooperative.

  “Right now,” he said, before anyone else could start more argument, “we need to ensure that SDF continues to function at high efficiency. In Admiral Vatta’s absence, she named me the senior admiral. Admiral Padhjan, you know more about Slotter Key than the rest of us. You will be our liaison with Captain Pordre and with the Slotter Key government. Admiral Driskill, make discreet contact with InterStellar Communications and find out what they’re planning to do about this. I can’t imagine their CEO will be twiddling his thumbs.” Someone coughed; someone else twitched. They all knew Rafe Dunbarger and Ky Vatta had some kind of relationship. Pettygrew finished giving out assignments. He could almost feel the currents of curiosity, sorrow, ambition, resentment, flowing back and forth around the room, but he didn’t comment on that. “It’s 2300 now. It’ll take time to get more information, and I would imagine Slotter Key news agencies will be saying something soon. We’ll meet in Briefing One at 0830. Call me if you need me; we all need some sleep.”

  By the time he reached his quarters, the brandy fumes had left him to a familiar cold, hollow feeling, now colder and more hollow than before. He did not want to believe she was dead. She had survived her ship being blown apart around her; surely she would survive a shuttle crash. But how many near misses could someone survive?

  And most of all, what if she was dead and he had to take over the SDF and hold it together until the next major attack? Could he do it? He was older; he had assumed he’d die first, that his appointment as her successor was a courtesy, a recognition of their long cooperation. But if he did not, who would? Hetherson, who had never actually been in combat, who was a senior admiral because he had run the shipbuilding program on Moray? Hot-tempered Driskill, a competent combat commander under Ky, but only in one battle, the defense of Nexus II, often at odds with both civilians and military? Padhjan, older, military-trained, perhaps the obvious choice? But he knew that Moray, Cascadia, Nexus, and Bissonet would not consent to another ruling admiral from Slotter Key, not right away. And he knew that with no obvious enemy like Turek, governments were beginning to question whether SDF needed to be so big and expensive…if it was still needed at all.

  And what should he do about Ky’s flagship, still in Slotter Key nearspace? Recall Pordre? Leave him there? He left his quarters and headed for the headquarters communications center. “Get me Captain Pordre on Vanguard Two,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SLOTTER KEY, OKLANDAN SOUTH OF MIKSLAND

  DAY 1

  “Passengers may open faceplates and breathe cabin air.” That impersonal recorded voice, after Jen’s hysterical scream, made the landing seem unreal for a moment. Ky opened her faceplate; Jen clambered up from the deck, both hands clutching the table, lurching with every pitch and roll of the shuttle. Her gaze was unfocused and her mouth still open.

  “Commander Bentik!” That got Jen’s gaze back to Ky. “Sit down there, behind Sergeant Vispersen.” Ky pointed to the seat behind the steward, who now had his faceplate open. Jen made it to the seat and pulled herself into it. “Right arm-pocket, sick-pill, under your tongue, now.” Jen followed these instructions. Ky looked across at the Commandant, who had left his faceplate closed. Perhaps he also felt seasick and was accessing an implant drug.

  The module pitched steeply again, slid down the back of one wave, wallowed in the trough, and then rolled to port riding up the next. Ky’s stomach roiled in spite of the dose her implant had given her. But she was alive, with air to breathe, and the ship wasn’t immediately disintegrating. Better than a hull breach in space. She turned to Vispersen.

  “Do the parachutes release on landing, or are they dragging us around?”

  “I don’t know, Admiral. I’ve never been—done it—only read about it—” His face glistened with perspiration and his lips were pale.

  She needed him alert and thinking. “Seasick meds,” Ky said. “You have them?”

  “Yes, Admiral. Let me get you—”

  “For you; I’m fine. You need ’em.”

  Lips tight, he opened a pouch on his sleeve and pulled out a packet, but could not open it. Ky unfastened her safety webbing and carefully—dealing with the pitch and roll of the module—made it across the aisle to open the packet and put one of the chewables in his mouth. He nodded his thanks. In seconds, his face was a better color and he unfastened his safety harness. She looked at Jen, who looked less green.

  “Commander, are you better now?”

  “Yes, but you didn’t listen to me! He’s dead!”

  “I heard you. How do you know?”

  “He didn’t answer me when I spoke; I reached over and shook him and he—his head—it just flopped. I thought he needed air; I opened his faceplate and he’s—he’s dead.” Her voice rose.

  “Commander Bentik, stay where you are.” Dread added to the cold lump in her belly. What if the Commandant— She turned to look at him again.

  “The Commandant?” Vispersen unhooked his safety restraints.

  “Hasn’t said anything.” Ky lurched back across the aisle. “Commandant? Sir? Are you all right?”

  The Commandant didn’t reply, didn’t move. She could not see his color through the faceplate; Vispersen slid it back. The Commandant’s face was gray, his expression fixed. His lips were bluish, with a little white foam at the corners of his mouth.

  “No!” the steward said. “Did he—it must have been a heart attack—” He felt for a pulse and found none. “He’s so cold—”

  “He’s dead, then?” Ky felt a chill too deep for her suit to compensate. The Commandant and his aide? What about the flight crew? The rest of the passengers? What would have happened to Jen and her if they’d worn the Spaceforce survival suits? And who, now, was in command?

  “It’s just like his aide.” Jen was up out of her seat again, crowding in next to the steward to look. “That foam at his lips.”

  Ky agreed on dead. She’d seen it before. “Let me check his pulse. Get his helmet off and his survival suit open.” The steward gave her a startled look, then unlocked the neck ring, pulled off the helmet, and peeled open the upper third of the suit.

  Ky stared at the Commandant’s neck, where a steel needle was embedded; when she leaned to look, another needle had penetrated the other side of his neck. “Poison,” she said. “It’s murder.” She glanced at the steward. He looked stunned, confused. She turned to Jen. “Did you see a needle like this in his aide’s neck?”

  “N-no. I didn’t open his suit, just the faceplate. What if—what if the suit they wanted me to wear had poisoned me?”

  “You’d have been dead,” Ky said. “And so would I. But we don’t know that those suits were rigged to kill.” She was sure they had been; she was sure whoever had done this had intended to kill at least all the officers aboard. She pulled a stylus from her sleeve pocket and poked into the neck of the suit. “Quick-acting, didn’t let him thrash—didn’t activate just from putting the suit on, because we were talking after that. When he closed the faceplate maybe…” She looked inside the helmet and prodded the inside, near the faceplate.

  “Admiral, we need to exit the module—” Vispersen touched her arm. He still had that stunned expression, the words coming out of his mouth in a monotone, as if read from an instruction card. Perhaps they were—one he had seen many times.

  “We need to find out who else is alive,” Ky said. “The flight crew; the other passengers.” Jen, wi
th a bruise rising visibly on her forehead, would be best sitting down for now. “Commander, sit back down over there. Sergeant—Vispersen, isn’t it? Check the aft compartment and get a count of survivors and any injuries. I’ll check the flight crew.”

  Ky made her way forward and opened the hatch to the cockpit. Both pilots were immobile and unresponsive in their protective gear. One was dead—no vital signs readout on his helmet nor, when she opened the faceplate and unlocked the helmet, any pulse in his neck. Like the Commandant, his face was gray, his lips blue with a line of foam. The copilot’s face was the now-familiar gray, but she could hear his staccato grunts. Not dead yet.

  She looked back and saw the steward, whose expression now was more alert, and, she thought, appropriate. Except that he wasn’t where she’d told him to go.

  “Same as the Commandant. Poison,” she said.

  He nodded. “The suit was sabotaged?”

  “Yes. Go check the aft compartment, Sergeant.” She put more bite in her voice. He stared at her.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Retrieve the flight recorder and the crew’s IDs. Gather evidence. Go on now. We need to get the life rafts ready to deploy and I’ll need a medtech up here if there’s one aboard.”

  Vispersen headed back down the aisle; Ky turned her attention to the copilot again. She unlocked his helmet, opened the neck ring, and saw that only one needle had penetrated his neck. Would he live?

  She lacked the training to do anything; she hoped they had a medtech aboard who could. Meanwhile, that flight recorder…there, a compartment with the familiar orange stripes. She opened the latch and unhooked the connections, then pulled the flight recorder out of its hole, slightly reassured by the blinking light on its top surface. It might have been sabotaged as well, but unless it contained no data at all, it should have something useful. It just fit into the external chest pocket of her protective suit. She put the pilot’s ID tags and the shuttle’s command wand into one of the leg pockets.