“Academy staff?”
“Harder to read, as you’d expect. I’m fairly sure some are bent in some way, but I came back only this morning, as soon as Kvannis was reported missing. Not enough data.” More softly, he added. “If I may, Commandant—”
“Go ahead, Master Sergeant.”
“You will be a great Commandant. Grab ’em by the throat.”
She had not expected that; she felt a lift in spirits. “That was my battle plan, Master Sergeant.”
Still, when she stepped out on the dais at the front of the Old Hall, once more standing under the arches of its tall nave, once more seeing the masses of cadets arrayed in their classes, memory caught her by the throat for an instant. By the time her second in command, Colonel Stornaki, introduced “Commandant Vatta,” it was gone.
“Cadets, faculty, staff,” she began. “Good morning. You may be surprised how fast an interim Commandant was appointed, but nobody wants to leave cadets to their own devices for even a day. And your instructors need someone to blame when things go wrong. That would be me.” She could feel the different emotional tones in the cadets, arranged mostly as MacRobert had said, from near-professional control among the eldest to wavering on the edge of panic in some of the youngest.
“Some of you,” she said, “probably came to the Academy hoping your lives would be more adventurous than that of a teacher or merchant or farmer. I came here for exactly that reason. My brothers and cousins were all satisfied with being on a tradeship crew, or working on the family farms or offices. I—” She paused for effect, and let her occasional ridicule of her younger self show on her face. “I wanted adventure. Excitement. All those adventure vid series—you know the ones—were more my speed than learning how to read profit and loss statements.” Now she could feel a softening in the tension; the faces nearest hers had relaxed a little, and a few even smiled.
“Luckily for me,” she said, “when I was in the Academy the only adventures we had were planned by the more senior cadets, the faculty, and the military personnel who taught us combat skills and took us on shuttle trips to experience space. Those felt like adventures to us—growing up on what we thought was a safe planet with predictable seasons and predictable politics. But those weren’t real adventures.” They were all intent now, and behind her, the rows of faculty and staff might have been focusing real lasers on her back; she felt the burn.
“Adventures are not predictable and moderately exciting, with predetermined outcomes. Adventures are things going wrong: situations you don’t expect, friends who betray you, equipment that fails when you most need it, enemies who are stronger and even smarter than you, and the possibility—no, the certainty, at times—that you will be injured or die. And it is for the real adventures—the ones where your knowledge, your skills, and your strength of character are necessary to complete your assigned mission—that the carefully designed training adventures here in the Academy prepare you.
“Some of you know that I did not in fact graduate from this Academy, that I left shortly before graduation. Some of you may know why. But everything I have done since has been possible because of what I learned here. And in the time we have together, before a permanent Commandant is appointed, whether me or someone else, I will continue the traditions that shaped me, that gave me the foundation from which to take one small, slow, old tradeship and build the interstellar fleet that you’ve heard something about.
“I expect some of you were upset, even worried, by the sudden change in Commandants. Hear me now. Nothing else changes. Classes, physical training, rules for correct conduct and military courtesy: the traditions do not change. The people in them may change, but the Academy will be here for you—and I will be here for you. And when you graduate, you will have the skills, the knowledge, the physical fitness, and the character to do what needs to be done.”
She let her face relax into a full smile, a bit rueful she hoped. “I know from experience, some of it very hard indeed, how important this training is. I respect this place—” She lifted her gaze to the intricate vaulting of the roof, shifted it from place to place within the walls. “And I respect all it has done for so many, not just me. That is all.”
Colonel Stornaki stepped forward; the cadet officers called their classes to attention. Salutes exchanged, she left the dais, somewhat surprised at how little anxiety remained. MacRobert waited to guide her back to the residence.
“Well done, Commandant,” he said as they walked. “That was some masterful throat-grabbing.” He guided her a different way at the first branch of the passage. “The living quarters are upstairs; you have a master suite, a separate study, and guest suites mostly used as quarters for visiting scholars. The master suite is unfortunately still under forensic lock for another hour or so; they want every hair, every fiber, every surface that will take a fingerprint gone over. They’ve been at it since 0730. You’ll have it by this evening, at the latest. So your things, what we have, are in this guest suite.” He stopped and opened the door. A small sitting room, a bedroom and attached bath. “You will have a security detail, one guard on duty in this upper hall, until the forensic team leaves. You’re due downstairs in one hour to meet the household staff, and then it’s the reception with the faculty and teaching staff.”
Ky shook her head. “To keep the continuity for cadets, that reception should be moved to after class hours. They should be back on their usual schedule as soon as possible.”
“That would be better for them, but the faculty asked for—demanded is more like it—sooner access.”
“Grabbing the faculty by the throat as well as cadets is part of my plan,” Ky said. “Reception fifteen minutes after the end of classes, while the cadets are out on the drill field. I doubt household staff will mind having it delayed.”
He shook his head while grinning. “I said you’d be a good Commandant and you already are. I will inform the staffs, both of them.”
Someone had put fresh coffee and fresh tea on a tray in the sitting room, along with a tray of cookies; the small cooler held a variety of other drinks. Ky chose tea and—having missed both breakfast and lunch by this time—a couple of cookies. The bathroom held a reasonable array of toilet articles; she looked at herself in the mirror and retied her braid into the shape that best suited her new uniform cap. She wished she’d asked MacRobert if the communications lines in and out of the residence were as secure as those from the headquarters building.
Ky put her feet up on a convenient stool and leaned back in the chair. The new shoes that had come with her new uniform were still stiff. When her implant pinged, giving her ten minutes to check the details and get downstairs to meet the house staff, she needed only a quick glance in the mirror to know that her braid was still secure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She met Mac coming up at the head of the stairs. “Minor problem, Commandant,” he said. “Two of the former military on the house staff are missing, presumed to have left sometime earlier this morning. One was supposedly on a supply run; the vehicle has been found, but the supplier says he never showed up. The other simply walked out; the guard at the gate assumed he was off-shift. Both were kitchen staff; both had done prep work on the refreshments for the faculty reception. Chef says nothing could be wrong…”
“Dump it anyway,” Ky said. “We can get cookies and pastries at any large grocery—”