“General Molosay’s office, Captain Gunsey speaking.”
“This is Commandant Vatta at the Academy, Captain. Is the general available for an urgent matter?”
“Commandant, he is still in the press conference. Can I be of assistance?”
“I need to speak with the general at his earliest convenience,” Ky said. “In fact, the matter concerns the Rector and the sergeant major as well. I have discovered documents in the former Commandant Kvannis’s desk that bear on military security; we have a prisoner, Colonel Stornaki, who was involved in the conspiracy, in custody as well. I will be presenting a charge of treason.”
“I see. Let me just check—”
Ky raised her brows at Palnuss. Gunsey was speaking again before she could say anything.
“Commandant, General Molosay can speak with you in five minutes; I have not yet ascertained if the Rector and sergeant major are available but I’m sure they will be. That gives time to set up a secured link for a conference call.”
“Excellent,” Ky said. “I will be waiting.”
She closed the connection, picked up the book on the desk, and stood. “I suggest, Major, that you check on Stornaki—make sure he has nothing on him for suicide. This is telling you your business, but I lost a prisoner that way once.”
“Yes, Commandant. I will be back within five minutes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When the signal came, Ky and Palnuss were both in her office. “Commandant Vatta,” Ky said. “Major Palnuss, the Security duty officer, is also present.”
“General Molosay,” he said. “At your request, Rector Vatta and Sergeant Major Morrison are also present, along with Major Hong of Base Security, and Captain Gunsey, my aide, who will be recording this discussion. What’s happened?”
“Colonel Stornaki, Kvannis’s second in command, is in custody, on my orders, for evidence of conspiracy. I found an intentionally mislabeled bound book in Kvannis’s desk containing information of operational significance: names, contact lists, dates, and at least one outlined plan of action for a mutiny within the military.”
“Is it the only copy?”
“I don’t know, General, but I doubt it. I believe Kvannis left this one for Colonel Stornaki to retrieve. We are concerned that this facility is not ideal for holding Colonel Stornaki; nor do we have the forensic and interrogation expertise.”
“You want to send him here?”
“Yes, General, if you have the facilities.”
A pause. “We have the facilities, technically, but we, too, have discovered disturbing problems in personnel. Major Hong?”
“Yes, General. Commandant, we also have identified a few individuals who appear to be involved with the same conspiracy to mutiny, but we are by no means certain we have found all of them. We’ve been working on this problem, as it regards this base, since the sergeant major returned from TDY—”
“I know about that,” Ky said.
“Yes, Commandant. That’s why I’m not at all certain we’ve found all the conspirators—we still don’t know how many there are, and we’re having to rely on self-reporting far more than is safe. Some of those we’ve detained have managed to suicide.”
“Do you have another suggestion for Colonel Stornaki?” Ky asked.
“No, Commandant. Just giving you the latest facts. I can arrange transportation by a team I trust, if that is your decision. What about the book? Do you want the forensic team here to go over it?”
“Yes. We will make plain copies here, then send the original to you. The Academy does not have multiband scanners and other forensic tools.”
“Understood. We don’t actually have much in the way of documentary evidence here, so it can go to the top of the stack at once. From your brief examination, is there immediate threat status in it?”
“I’m not sure,” Ky said. “I’ve looked at only a few of the pages. Though the header is in clear, dates appear to be encrypted.”
“Definitely an urgent concern. It will take me about an hour and a half to arrange for the prisoner transport.”
“We will make copies of the book—”
“Two witnesses, if you can, from separate organizations—”
“Understood, Major. If there’s nothing else—?”
“Not from me, Commandant. Sir?” Hong turned to General Molosay.
“We have a plan,” Molosay said, with a tight smile. “Rector?”
“I will contact the Commandant later,” Grace said.
“Then I’ll get my people busy on those copies and continue a detailed search of this room,” Ky said. “And of course Stornaki’s quarters.”
When she disconnected, Major Palnuss said, “There’s a copier on this floor, Commandant, just down the hall. We can snag a Student Services clerk on the way.”
The copying went smoothly and the clerk prepared affidavits for them all to sign and thumb-stamp. Back in the Commandant’s office, Major Palnuss did a quick search of the desk, finding another hidden compartment in the bottom drawer on the right. Both, when opened, held slim folders full of more information. The right-hand drawer’s compartment also held the little book Ky had last seen in Miksland, Colonel Greyhaus’s logbook.
“We won’t have time to copy all that,” Palnuss said when she showed it to him. “We could send it along—”
“I turned it in to the military once,” Ky said, “and it disappeared, along with the other evidence I’d brought.”
“What other evidence?”
“IDs from the pilots of the shuttle and everyone who died. Bio samples from those poisoned—”
“Poisoned! I didn’t hear anything about that.”
“No. Well, the pilots’ emergency suits—and the Commandant’s and his aide’s—were all sabotaged to inject poison when they closed the faceplate. I collected samples of foam—saliva—from their lips. And the shuttle’s black box. Carried all that everywhere we went, handed it over to the military on my return to Port Major.”
“So we should be looking for that, too?”
“If you see something like a flight recorder—it was in an orange case, by the way—it could prove that the shuttle itself was also sabotaged.”
“Right. And ID packets?”
“Yes. I imagine the samples taken from the dead were simply incinerated, but then here’s Greyhaus’s logbook.”
“And he’s dead, too…”
“Yes, so I was told.”
“I think I should go along and make sure that Colonel Stornaki and the other items reach someone reliable.”
“I was about to ask you to do just that, Major. I should not leave the Academy until things have settled out.”
“Agreed.”
After he left, Ky opened the door to her secretary’s office. “Sera, that disturbance you heard was Colonel Stornaki showing himself to be a conspirator; he is now under arrest.”
She looked frightened. “Am I—”
“You are not under arrest, Sera, but I do need some answers. Did you ever suspect Kvannis or Stornaki of wrongdoing?”
“N-no. Commandant—former Commandant—Kvannis hired me; he is—was—such a nice man. I was actually his wife’s social secretary for years. I thought they had only military personnel out here, but he knew I needed a job and said the military pay plus a little more from him would be better. And he said he’d be more comfortable with me than with the former Commandant’s secretary, who was—well, I gather they did not get along. Of course he would prefer someone who didn’t argue all the time.”
Ky nodded, to keep her going.
“It wasn’t a very taxing job, Commandant. Much the same as working for his wife—actually less stressful because I didn’t have to arrange parties or redecorating or anything. Of course he never gave me anything classified to work with—he did all that himself, he and Colonel Stornaki. Are you—are you sure that Colonel Stornaki did something bad?” She looked worried.