“If he’d lived longer; if he’d foreseen his death. But if he had, I’m fairly sure my brother would have told me, and his own heir.”
“Mmm.” Morrison thought about that. It seemed a risky approach, but after all the family was civilian. And yet this file existed, with all the data. Where had it come from? Who had left it at her house?
“I’m wondering where this file has been all these decades,” the Rector said, echoing her thought. “Someone’s had it, or known where it was. If they knew what was in it, why didn’t they protest when I was brought into the government? A protest would have succeeded—I’d have refused the appointment. It couldn’t have been kept at Vatta headquarters; that was utterly destroyed in the explosion, and so were the libraries on Corleigh.”
“I don’t know,” Morrison said. “But I’m willing to bet that whoever placed it in my quarters made a copy.”
“Oh, obviously,” the Rector said. “Of course they would. More than one. I wonder who they most wanted to get in trouble, me or you? If someone had found you reading it and told me—they might think I’d suspect you of something dire.”
“Meaning you don’t.”
“Meaning I don’t, that’s right. Why would I?”
“Rector, I’m from Esterance. I might have known something about you through the family—”
“Did you?”
“No. Well before my time. Even before my parents’ time. I knew very little of you at all, until you became Rector and intersected with my duties.”
“Well, then. You’ve read it, or some of it, and you know what I was charged with—and was guilty of—so let’s get to the meat. Will you work with me to get those people free of the mess they’re in and back with their families, beyond harm?”
“If that’s your intent, absolutely.”
“Good. I don’t know how long I’ll remain Rector, but we need to fix this quickly, before someone else with different… um… priorities takes over. Stella Vatta, who has reasons to visit me, and lives in the house where Ky and the three who escaped are staying, can carry word from here to there. You know where they’re held now, or soon will be held, I gather?”
“Yes. And we have at most ten—no, five days now—before the first of the dispersed groups is moved there. The place was full; it’s taken time to move the others out quietly and without notice to make room for them.” Morrison looked down at the Rector’s hands, folded now on the desk; she had pushed the file aside. One old, dry, wrinkled; the other smooth, obviously young. For a moment she wondered how it felt to live with one limb so obviously younger than the others.
“Do you have any information on what they’ll use for transportation or more details on the schedule?”
“My guess is they’ll use vehicles that look civilian, at least part of the way, if they’re worried about a rescue attempt,” Morrison said. “And the committee did not define a particular schedule, only an end point. Which they might well ignore. We must hope they don’t expect a rescue.”
“They tried turning off the vehicles’ tracking codes originally,” the Rector said. “Ky’s got a crew who managed to locate some of them, including Clemmander, that way. But they could use more information from you.”
“I’ll write them for you.” Morrison reached across to the pad of paper and quickly wrote down all the names, locations, and contact codes she had. “I don’t know many of the names. We were introduced to a Lieutenant Colonel Oriondo and a Doctor Hastile at Clemmander. Oriondo was supposed to be the military watchdog for all the rehab centers in that region; I haven’t enough access through my office to find out if he’s got a history of that assignment or not. I didn’t like Doctor Hastile, if that means anything. When I asked permission to meet with the survivors separately, he made it clear that if I did I’d have to be quarantined for ten days or more. I took it as a threat.”
“Wise,” the Rector said, nodding. “Do you know their first names?”
“Only the initials that were on their badges. M. T. Oriondo and R. J. Hastile.”
“That’s a big help, Sergeant Major.”
“Rector, I’d be careful doing deep searches on them. If they’re involved in some kind of conspiracy, they’ll be watching.”
The Rector grinned. “Grandmothers. Eggs.”
“Sorry, Rector.”
“Don’t be. I appreciate warnings. But as Rector I can decide we need to… oh… review all contracts related to military rehabilitation, starting way over on the other side of the planet and working our way back to this continent, where of course we don’t expect to find any irregularities because it’s the main one and the seat of HQ.”
“I worry—they’d be so easy to kill in the state they’re in now. And if the others move up the timing…”
The Rector’s expression sobered. “Yes. I know that. It’s my intention to probe only enough to come up with a feasible plan to get them out before that happens, and then go after the bad guys.”
“You’ll need some military personnel with valid IDs to help,” Morrison said. “But they must not be associated with anyone in the conspiracy—that will take time.”
“Will it?” The Rector leaned forward. “I suspect if we check with the three survivors who got out, we can get some names of those colleagues who would be reliable.”
“Unless they were assigned to that shuttle not as an honor but to get rid of them,” Morrison said.
“That… had not occurred to me.” The Rector scowled at the desktop. “I wonder what kind of mind would think that up. I suppose similar to the one that decided to destroy the Vatta family to… accomplish something I still haven’t quite figured out. Still, there’s got to be some high-level person who could help us with this. Someone other than me, that is. Or you, since you’ve already been targeted by someone involved.”
“There are the branch sergeant majors,” Morrison said. “We all know each other, and—it’s hard to think of any of them being involved in something like this.”
“Ky found it hard to believe Master Sergeant Marek was the traitor in Miksland,” the Rector said. “He nearly killed her.”
“I thought she killed him. Wondered what for.”
“For his second attempt to kill her. Briefly, he rewired her quarters to make using the outlets lethal. She discovered the problem. He realized she was suspicious; she anticipated that, and when he shot at her, she killed him. She can tell you more.”
“How did the others take it?”
“Shocked. Horrified. Ky ordered Gossin, as senior NCO, to make a full investigation for later judicial inquiry and gave her custody of the data. That, and the fact that Marek had clearly shot first, settled things down. If we had the evidence Ky had insisted be collected, we’d know whether the Cascadian woman was killed by a ricochet or a direct hit.”
“Marek wouldn’t have had a weapon on the shuttle—”
“No—this was after they were underground. There was an armory, and a former commander in that secret base had also left a weapon in his desk. Marek got a junior enlisted to change the code so it could be palm-locked to Marek.”
Morrison could scarcely believe a master sergeant would do that. But the Rector went on.
“Ky thinks he was threatened, sometime earlier, and that’s what pushed him to it. Says she knew he was conflicted, and figures he was trying to save the others from the people who had pressured him. He might talk them into keeping a secret, but Ky—well, you don’t know Ky, but—”
“I’ve met her,” Morrison said. “She wouldn’t lie.”
“Not even when it’s in her interest,” the Rector said. “We had the hardest time pounding manners into that girl. Said what she thought. I will say, she never shirked the consequences.” She shook her head, then looked at Morrison, those old gray eyes fierce. “We are going to get those people out. If you think of anything, any clue, any new bit of information, call me or come, day or night. We can’t do it without you; you have the current knowledge. And none of us can do it alone.”