There was no outflanking Grace Lane Vatta; he knew that by now. “It’s something to think about,” he said mildly, patting her hand.
She yanked it away. “Mac—”
“Without bothering your pretty little head,” he said, ducking ahead of her swipe with the spoon. He was out of his chair before she made it out of hers, but the end of the spoon got him anyway. She was that fast. “Plausible deniability,” he said from a distance he knew was not safe if she wanted to hurt him. “You’re still in the government. Needed.”
“True.” She sat back down, tapped the spoon handle on the table. “So don’t tell me what you think would get me in trouble, but I’m glad to see that our crooked minds still wander in the same directions.”
“You have corrupted me,” Mac said, with a little bow, not taking his eyes off that spoon. “You are the elder—”
“Oh, stop it. We have other games to play now.”
“Which you like. Yes. Rafe’s working on making our tight-beam more secure. I’ll be talking to Ky’s flag captain when he’s ready.”
“Good. Tell me, is there any way to get a few kilos of edibles down to Pingat Base?”
“Now?”
“Not quite now. A few tendays.”
“Why?”
“It occurs to me that the base commander there had reason to be angry with me. Perhaps a special treat would… soften his attitude.”
“Fruitcakes?” Mac said. “You forget, I’ve heard about your fruitcakes.”
“There are fruitcakes and fruitcakes,” Grace said. “Some you want to last a very long time and some you want to be eaten rather sooner.” She grinned at him. “No diamonds in these; it would not do for a Rector of Defense to bribe a base commander so openly.”
“Let me taste one.”
“They need to soak in brandy,” Grace said. “And none of this batch is for you. Not one bite. I’ll make you something else.”
Something in the seriousness of her tone rang a tiny bell. “Grace?”
“Don’t worry, dear Mac.” Now she patted his hand, knowing he hated that as much as she did. “All will be well.”
“In the end,” he said. His stomach clenched for a moment. Surely… best not even think of what she might do. Or had done. Joining a Vatta, as she had explained several years ago, was a perilous choice.
Rafe reappeared from the hall. “Link’s ready,” he said. “I do have a pick on it, so I can monitor from another set to detect any interference, but it should hold and I will be studiously ignoring the conversation.”
“Of course you will,” Grace said. She patted his shoulder as she went back to the kitchen. Rafe looked startled, then lifted an eyebrow to Mac.
“She’s making fruitcake,” Mac said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did. “We are warned not to steal the smallest nibble; she will make something for us later.”
“Who’s she poisoning?” Rafe asked, going straight for the obvious.
“I hope I’m wrong in my surmises,” Mac said. “It may be a simple gesture of friendship. Come, let us go persuade that no-doubt-very-upright flagship captain to do doubtful deeds.”
“You’ve both been reading real literature,” Rafe said. “Stop it.”
Vanguard II’s captain, initially chilly and formal, warmed up as Mac explained why communications previously had been so limited. “I’ve got an ISC tech monitoring this line to be sure it’s clean and stays so. If I break off suddenly, someone tried to put a ferret down the hole.”
“What’s the word on the admiral? All I know is that you told me you’re sure she’s alive. Surely not still in a life raft?”
“She is alive; she’s on that continent that you can see bare-eyed near our south pole but that we haven’t been able to get a scan of until recently.”
“We noticed that. What happened?”
“We think the same people who sabotaged the shuttle have a secret installation there. The admiral is inside it, with the survivors from the life rafts. For the moment, they’re safe: they have supplies, they’re underground, and she thinks the power source is geothermal. They can’t go anywhere else; the weather’s too severe. We can’t go there for the same reason.”
He went on to tell the captain what Ky had told Rafe—what she had found out, and what she suspected. “So,” he finished, “when the weather moderates, come the austral spring, we expect the bad guys to show up to kill them all and try to keep the place secret.”
“But you can mount a mission as well, can’t you? And why doesn’t she contact us?”
“We’re afraid any communications from there might be compromised. She has a… a device she can use for secure contact to the ISC tech, but it’s nonstandard and doesn’t interface with anything else. At least, that’s what he told us. The installation has com equipment, she said, but she suspects it’s all being monitored by the enemy. So what we’ve come up with—”
“We who? You and the admiral?” Suspicion colored Pordre’s voice again.
“The Rector of Defense and I. We’re trying to keep communications with the admiral to a minimum, on her suggestion.”
“Did she say to call me?”
“Yes, if we were sure the tight-beam wasn’t compromised. She also said she appreciated your steadfast support, and if worse came to worst, and her death was confirmed, she knew you would take care of everything properly. Commander Bentik was killed in a firefight with a traitor among the survivors. Sorry, sir, I should have reported that earlier.”
“A firefight… was the admiral wounded?”
“No, sir.” Mac stopped there. Would the captain ask for details? A longish pause suggested the captain was considering doing just that, but he did not. Well, then, now came the ticklish bit. “Captain, there’s a… an unusual request. It’s not directly from the admiral, because—since she hasn’t contacted us for several days, not an unusual gap—she is unaware of some of the Rector’s staff’s discoveries about the probable saboteurs.”
“So—this is from the Rector? You’re in her residence, aren’t you? Why doesn’t she talk to me herself?”
A very reasonable question. He wished he knew more about this Captain Anton Pordre. But surely Ky would have picked someone with political acumen for this particular trip. “Plausible deniability, Captain. She would like this to be known as your initiative.”
“Would she?” Another long pause. “Well, then, tell me.”
“She suspects that her office’s communications with subordinate commands may not be secure—and thus gathering a ground combat force large enough to handle the force being assembled by the saboteurs without alerting them is not likely. And starting a civil war is… unhealthy.”
“We don’t have ground troops aboard.” Pordre sounded both annoyed and stubborn now. “We have only ship security; they’re not infantry.”
“That’s not what the Rector was going to ask,” Mac said, keeping his own voice calm.
“Well?”
“You might consider hopping out of the system—out of range of local eavesdropping, if there is any—and contacting Mackensee to see if they would take a contract here. Short-term, and very soon.”
“You—the Rector wants me to bring mercs onto her own planet?”
“I can’t say what the Rector wants. Personally, however, given what we don’t have and what we’re facing, I think some good mercs to put down an insurrection would be a fine idea.”
“Do you happen to have any contact data? A particular individual?”
“I believe, Captain, that going through their main portal and mentioning the admiral’s name should get a quick response, but if you want someone who knows me—your local contact—there’s a Master Sergeant Pitt. We had some productive conversations back on Cascadia after the Battle of Nexus Two.”