“Closest tox scanner is city emergency response,” he said, sounding worried. “There’s a team out at the base, of course, but that’s twice as far—”
“Call the closest. Corporal Metis has visible powder on his uniform. I’m at my desk and will answer any questions.”
“Yes, Commandant.”
This was going to take hours, even if it turned out to be face powder. “Call’s going in to the city team,” she said to Metis, still standing at the doorway. He looked fine, though worried, as well he might be. “I’m going to check for emergency supplies in this office.”
There was, in fact, an emergency box mounted on the wall of the little sitting room, and another in the toilet. More emergency masks, a fire hood and mask, fire-resistant gloves, in both places. She put on the fire hood and brought the other one to Metis. He shook his head. “Even with tongs, my hands might be contaminated. I’m better off with the one I’m wearing.”
“I can put it on you without touching you,” Ky said. “It’ll protect your face better. Turn around.”
She had put these things on in drills—on herself, on someone else—and in seconds his face was protected. She went to the window of her office and looked out. Flashing lights approached.
“That was fast,” she said. “Something’s coming.”
“Maybe we don’t need them,” he said. “I don’t feel anything. It’s probably nothing. And you slapped that mask on me really fast.”
“I certainly hope so. But you’re going to be checked over and the stuff analyzed, anyway.” She went back to the window. A single vehicle, not any larger than a personal car, had pulled up below. Her desk com chimed. She answered. “Commandant Vatta.”
“This is Port Major Emergency Response. Please state your name, address, and the nature of your emergency.”
“This is Commandant Vatta. I’m in my office in the headquarters building of the Academy, and one of your vehicles just pulled up to the door. The nature of the emergency is possible exposure to a dangerous substance unknown at this time.”
“Oh… this is the actual Commandant? Not a secretary?”
“Yes, this is Commandant Vatta. Two persons were exposed; one of them has particles of a white powder on his uniform. I was in the room but not immediately adjacent to the release of the powder.”
“What was it released from?”
“An envelope. We need—”
“We understand your needs, Sera; please calm down.” She hadn’t raised her voice; she had an urge to raise it now, when the voice added, in the same tone, “Why were we called? The Academy is outside our jurisdiction.”
“You are the nearest emergency service with the ability to handle toxic materials,” Ky said. “Although you are not military, you are listed as first response anywhere in the city. The Joint Services base is west of the city, and it would take much longer for them to arrive. That is why Tech Coston called you.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Tech Coston? He was not exposed.”
“The person who was exposed. Is he breathing?”
“Yes. But if the powder is any of several things I can think of, it’s imperative that he be decontaminated and taken to hospital quickly.”
“It’s just—a moment, my supervisor wants to speak with you.”
Ky heard voices in the background of the call. She punched her controls for video, but it was blocked.
“Commandant Vatta?” A deeper voice this time.
“Yes,” Ky said.
“We have a problem. You—well, not you personally but the Commandant before you—ordered Port Major law enforcement off the premises, threatened us if we ever intruded again. We’d had an emergency call and sent an ambulance—”
“Surely you’ve heard that former Commandant Kvannis is now a fugitive—”
“I knew he was gone—”
“Yes. And I’m the Commandant for the interim—no dates set yet—and we need you as quickly as you can get here. That Corporal Metis hasn’t fallen over yet is reassuring, but not conclusive proof that he, or even I, haven’t had exposure to a dangerous toxin or disease.”
“A crew’s on the way, Commandant; we just had to check that we weren’t walking into a trap.”
A trap? What kind of nonsense had Kvannis been pulling?
“No trap on my end,” Ky said. “Just a need for emergency response; glad you’ve dispatched one.”
Thanks to the city crew’s delay, the military response team arrived first, by two minutes. Ky made sure its commander was cleared by Major Hong as having no part in the conspiracy before letting them treat Metis—swathing him in a bubble half the size of the room, vacuuming his clothes and mask, and then taking him, in a tented gurney, off to the military hospital. When the civilian team arrived, Ky asked them to proceed with the analysis and search of that office; they also took samples from her.
“I don’t think it’s toxic,” one of them said finally. “I think it’s a marker of some kind. Intended to catch thieves or snoopers, not kill them. It’s been how long since you saw it puff out? Not an hour yet? If it’s what I think it might be, and if it got on your white uniform, you may have speckles—green or blue, usually—where it landed.”
“So I can take this mask off?”
“Yes, Commandant.”
“Why the delay? Why not an instant marker?”
“So the thief doesn’t know they’ve been marked right away. It reacts with protein slowly, creating an indelible mark that can’t be washed off.”
Ky looked at her sleeve. “You mean—it could ruin this uniform permanently?”
“If it’s an animal fiber, like wool. Mostly it marks skin. May I ask what you were searching for?”
“Evidence I had turned in to the military upon my return from Miksland. Former Commandant Kvannis claimed it had been misplaced or lost. We found some in my office, and another piece in that one. I think Kvannis was hiding it in various places; we think it will reveal who was responsible for the shuttle crash.”
“Why would Kvannis do that?”
Ky considered the risks and benefits of opening another gap in the conspiracy of silence and went ahead. “Miksland’s mineral resources and utility have been kept secret for several hundred years, exploited by the few who knew the secret. When we survived to land on it, and found one of the installations there, we—all the survivors—became targets for those who wanted the secret kept. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, so I had collected evidence I thought might be useful later. Kvannis was part of that conspiracy, so of course he suppressed it.”
“Why didn’t he just destroy it?”
“I have no idea. Maybe someone else told him to keep it, or maybe he had a use for it later. He absconded from here when he realized that the other survivors had been rescued from their imprisonment—”
“Imprisonment? What had they done?”
“Nothing. Supposedly they had some contagious disease that required them to be quarantined. Surely you’ve seen the newsvids about that in the last couple of days? The plan was to kill them and dispose of the bodies in sealed coffins.”
“You weren’t flying the shuttle, were you?”
“No. Nor did I sabotage it, or poison the pilots.”
“The pilots were poisoned?”
“The pilots, the Commandant, his aide—all the officers aboard, by a mechanism in their survival suits. If I hadn’t insisted on bringing my own suit with me from my flagship, I’d have died before the crash. I brought back samples of the poison and also saliva from the pilots, hoping it could be analyzed to find out who was responsible, but that’s part of the evidence that disappeared after I turned it in.” The officer opened his mouth but Ky went on before he could speak. “That investigation properly belongs to the military, and now that I’ve located some of the missing evidence I’m sure an inquiry will go ahead.”