The inquiries she’d put in place before the attack had produced only partial, unsatisfactory answers. The Miksland survivors were listed as “disabled, pending disposition” in two responses, but in the most recent—two days old—their status had changed to “disabled permanently, custodial care necessary.” That sounded ominous. No location was given. She had eight requests from family members and three from official sources for their location and information about them. Sergeant McLenard’s wife wanted to know why he wasn’t answering her mail. Sergeant Cosper’s father angrily demanded to know where his son was and why he hadn’t come home on leave. The family court judge dealing with the guardianship of Tech 1st Class Betange’s siblings wanted to know why Betange was ignoring the legal summons to appear. A prosecutor wanted to know when and where charges would be filed in the murder of Master Sergeant Marek, because Marek’s wife was considering a civil suit. Still another wanted copies of all the evidence returned to Port Major by Admiral Vatta, to see if she could be held responsible for the shuttle crash.
Still no sign of where that evidence had gone after Ky turned it in. She called her office and asked her clerk to send her Ky’s debriefing statement, only to be reminded that it, like the items Ky said she’d delivered to Spaceforce, had disappeared as if it never existed.
Time to call Ky directly. She recognized Teague’s voice when he answered. “Teague, is Ky there?”
“Good morning, Rector. Yes, she’s here. You wish to speak with her?”
She could tell from his voice that he was in a mischievous mood, and she had no time for mischief. Mayhem, perhaps, but not mischief. “Yes,” she said. “I need to ask her a question.”
Ky sounded tense. “Aunt Grace? Why didn’t you call my skullphone?”
“Because I might want to talk to others in the house without a separate call,” Grace said. “Do you remember who you gave your initial statement to, that first week?”
“Um… I’ll check.” A very brief pause. “My implant says it was a Colonel Vertres, in Commandant Kvannis’s office. Is that missing, too?”
“Yes. We should have had a copy—I asked Spaceforce HQ for it, but they said they couldn’t find it.”
“I have my own recording of it. Would that help?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Bless the child, she’d had the sense to do that. Even a low-density implant recording was evidence. “If you can transfer it, I can print it out here.”
“Print—”
“Easier for old eyes to read, but also hardcopy to send elsewhere as evidence. What about the other items?”
“I read only part of Greyhaus’s log, Aunt Grace, so my implant has a record only of those pages. I should’ve made another copy but—we were rushing to find a way out before the bad guys came.”
“And the evidence of the shooting—do you have any independent copy of that?”
“No… but I have a witness.”
Grace’s mind blanked for a moment, as it had been doing since the gas attack, but then she remembered: the fugitives Ky had talked about, that she herself had not yet met. “One of them was there?”
“Yes. But we have to keep them hidden. The military wants them—you know that.”
“Yes. Ky, I have to admit, the gas attack seems to have left some blanks in memory. The doctors said it might. I tested okay on their cognitive exams, or they wouldn’t have let me out, but the questions weren’t complex. I need you to tell me things again if I don’t remember.”
“Of course,” Ky said.
“Just a hint—back up everything about your time in Miksland in some other form than your implant. I can understand if you don’t want to trust it to me, but—”
“Agreed. I’ll run external backups—you know that takes awhile—from leaving my flagship to the present. Duplicate backups.” Ky sounded more cheerful suddenly.
“Mac says you’ve met Sergeant Major Morrison?”
“Yes, she was here, very briefly.”
“Stella has reason to visit me, so if you have information for Morrison, or she for you, I can be the exchange point. Is Stella there?”
“No, at the office.”
“Then let me speak to Rafe, please. I want to ask him some security questions.”
Rafe, when he answered, sounded calmer than she’d ever heard him. “We can’t get back in your house yet,” he said. “Our legal situation is still serious, and we’ve been told by counsel to stay put. What can I help you with that doesn’t involve stepping outside?”
“Ky has data on her implant that duplicates what she reported officially—in reports now missing. I need to know how far we can push an inquiry based on her data—especially who she gave the first reports to, who took custody of the physical evidence, if she knows that. She’s going to be downloading her implant data and making copies; can you start working on the investigation from that?”
“Of course,” Rafe said. “Even one or two names would give us something. Um—there’s another possible source. The Mackensee troops that pulled her and the others out of that mountain valley may know—might have seen and even recorded—where the hard evidence she left with the others changed hands. You could contact them about it. She told me she left the recorder with the data on the shootout she had with Marek with the sergeant who was there and the tech who did the recording, when Mackensee flew her up to meet with us.”
“Excellent,” Grace said. “I didn’t know that, and Mac has a contact with Mackensee, so he should be able to find out if anyone noticed. It’s a chance, anyway.”
She called Mac in and told him what Rafe had suggested. He nodded. “I’ll contact Master Sergeant Pitt. It may take awhile to hear back. I doubt they’re out of FTL flight on the way home.”
“Whatever we can find out helps,” Grace said. “Ky’s downloading her implant’s recording of the interview she gave a Colonel Vertres on Commandant Kvannis’s staff that first week she was back here.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sera Lane looked up from the stacks of papers she and Ky had been discussing when the call came in. “What was that about?”
“Aunt Grace. She’s out of the hospital and not surprisingly full of things for other people to do.” Ky grinned. “When I was little, she would visit our house and keep us all busy. We had a cook and a gardener, but she found things that she thought needed doing, and she was not tolerant of what she called ‘idle hands.’” Ky sat down at the table. “Actually, we did learn things from that—aside from hiding from grown-ups with agendas—and her suggestion today is good. She wants me to download my implant’s record of the interview I gave Spaceforce and make multiple copies in case of any other mishaps.”
“Excellent idea,” Sera Lane said. “I was going to suggest you continue writing out your memory of what transpired, but pulling data directly from your implant will be faster. Do you have the equipment here?”
“Yes,” Ky said. “It’ll take some time—”
“No matter. I have plenty to do and we can continue our meeting later. If I finish the petition to the court on the citizenship matter by 1500, I could get it filed today. I believe Sera Stella has spoken to our head of Legal and they’re supposed to call me with the names of the additional attorneys the entire project will require.”
“Will you be working from here, or going back to Vatta headquarters?”
“Here, unless you’d rather I left.” She smiled at Ky. “It’s not entirely because your cook is so skilled, but that does add a point in your favor.”