“Possibly because he also recognized the danger to Slotter Key from a head of state who was in league with outside powers. I had shared information with him because I did not know who else to trust in the military system. If the President was corrupt, so also might be the Rector of Defense, or any of the officers that I knew very slightly.”
“And just how did you know the Commandant?”
“I saved his life when he was a boy. Got him out of a bad situation. Our family took care of him—not me, because I was in prison. When I was released, he wrote me a note, and we corresponded at least twice a year from then on.”
“About?”
“Personal things: his promotions in Spaceforce, the girl he was interested in at the time, his family life when he married—his wife was killed in a traffic accident while he was in space; she was pregnant at the time. He never married again. I told him about birthday parties, marriages, children born. He corresponded with other family members, too. He knew them better than he knew me, but I was the one who had stood between him and those who wanted to kill him. And the rest of the family was willing to let me take over the correspondence, for the most part.”
“Did he visit your family?”
“While he was still a junior officer, yes. Less as he advanced, and not after he was appointed Commandant. He needed other connections; everyone understood that.”
“What I’m trying to get at, Rector Vatta, is why your niece was accepted into the Academy—if you or he influenced that decision—”
Grace laughed. “Like at least half the other cadets who used influence to get in? Did you think it was all about the entrance exams? Ky topped them that year, but she was also—is—a member of a wealthy family, daughter of the CFO at that time and niece of the CEO. Merchanter’s brat or not, she’d have been accepted, but the family reputation certainly helped, and the Commandant’s notice got her put in the most competitive of the entering units. I didn’t do anything but push back against her desire enough to make her stubborn and even more determined.”
“Why that?”
Grace shrugged. “I’d been in a war. Ky was intelligent, spirited, stubborn by nature, but also warmhearted. She was always getting into scrapes trying to rescue others, take care of someone weaker. I didn’t want her hurt the way I had been, and I knew how bad it could be. So I wanted to be sure that if she went, it was a genuine desire, not one of her juvenile rescue fantasies.”
“Hmmm.” The President looked grave, then nodded; Grace felt like poking her with a pin. That was such a pose of noble public-servanthood. No politician was that noble. When the President’s expression changed, as if a switch had been flicked, Grace felt vindicated. It was all an act. “Well, then,” she said. “Back to you and this problem. You admit that if you had known, you would not have taken the post of Rector—”
“I would not have taken the post of Assistant Rector,” Grace said. “Or the promotion to Rector. I was certainly as qualified as the man who held it before me… except for the fact that I was never supposed to become involved in politics at all. I would not have risked the situation we’re in now, where my past is doing damage to the entire government.”
“But here we are,” the President said. “And so far I don’t see the damage.”
“Someone will release that file publicly,” Grace said. “That’s why it’s surfaced again. Whoever put it in official hands may wait a short time, but you know they’ll push the issue, and soon. When they do, I won’t be the only target of their chosen revenge. I’m old; it doesn’t matter much what happens to me. But the fallout will affect my family and your government as well.”
“Did you appoint your niece Ky to be Commandant?”
“No. I had nothing to do with that; I was informed of it after the fact. General Molosay, commanding Port Major Joint Command HQ base, was faced with an emergency—Kvannis’s clandestine departure—and asked Ky to take the Commandant’s position as an interim post since he did not know what other officers in the Academy might be part of whatever conspiracy Kvannis was in.”
“But didn’t he know she killed Master Sergeant Marek?”
“Of course he knew. And he knew why. He had the testimony of the three survivors who had escaped from isolation, one of whom had witnessed the incident and been wounded by Marek.”
“I haven’t heard any of the details.”
“I’m sure you’ll be briefed as soon as the other survivors—only just rescued from the same confinement—have been interviewed.”
“Do you think it means there’s any serious disaffection within the military?”
Grace managed not to snort in disgust and did her best to keep her expression neutral. How could the woman—reputed to be brilliant about many things—be that stupid? And why were so many people in positions of power that stupid? She picked her words carefully. “The existence of a military base on Miksland kept a closely held secret for so long suggests it. The use of military personnel to fox the satellite data suggests it. The treatment of those survivors—trying to keep them permanently isolated from everyone, with a plan to gradually kill them off under cover of a dangerous communicable disease—suggests it.”
The President glared, huffed, and jerked forward in her chair, which squealed in protest. “But how could there be a conspiracy that big without anyone knowing? Someone—”
“The people in it knew it. The evidence so far—”
“All derived from your family’s activities—”
“The evidence,” Grace repeated in a flat voice that startled the President enough to keep her still, “is that the family first discovering Miksland’s potential, via a family member who explored the north coast in his personal yacht, chose to keep it a secret, aided by a decade of particularly harsh winters. That discoverer died unexpectedly; his privately published journal of that voyage, and the map he drew, were suppressed. Master Sergeant MacRobert found them in the special collections of a university library. The family opened small-scale mining operations there for another forty or fifty years, but had difficulty selling the product when it was known no such deposits lay in their recorded holdings. They made the error of working through a less legitimate partner—”
“Who?”
“It will be in the report. A criminal enterprise. They sold the refined mining products offplanet. Cargoes Vatta refused, by the way. Vatta didn’t have a clue where it really came from, but we didn’t want anything we couldn’t provide full provenance for. We were beginning to compete in the interstellar transport market and needed a clean reputation. And we suspect that was one reason for the attack on Vatta, since one of our own was involved.”
“Osman,” the President said, nodding. “Trouble early on, right?”
“Yes. Stavros evicted him from the family business, so he stole one of our ships and used it for piracy.”
“He died in the war?”
Grace considered. Was the President likely to know the truth? Maybe. “He attacked Ky and Stella in deep space; he had a larger, faster, heavily armed ship. He attempted a hostile boarding; Ky fought and killed him.”
“Hand-to-hand?”
“Yes.”
“She likes to kill?”
Irritation got past her guard. “He was trying to kill her. What do you think she should have done?”
“But she killed that sergeant.”
“Master Sergeant Marek,” Grace said. “Yes. He was trying to kill her and her aide both.”
“But violence—she could have negotiated with him—”
“You were never in combat, were you?”
The President flushed. “No. But—”
Grace overrode her. “It’s different. That’s all I can say. You can’t possibly understand. It’s not about liking to kill or not liking to kill; it’s about survival, and—in Ky’s case—protecting those that depend on you.” Though, as she knew well, she and Ky both had enjoyed killing. Ky, as far as she knew, had never misused it, as she herself had. “And anyway, Ky is not the current problem. I am. I can resign from the Defense Department—”