“We will find her,” Kevil said, the rich trained voice loaded with the overtones that had moved courtrooms. “We must—”
“And if we don’t?” Thornbuckle felt his control wavering, and pushed himself up out of the chair. If he stood, if he walked, if he acted, perhaps he would not collapse in an agony that could not help Brun. “What am I going to tell Miranda?”
“For now, nothing,” Kevil said. “It might still be a fake—”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No. But I want someone expert with image enhancement to work on it before you tell her.”
“Look at those,” Thornbuckle said, gesturing at the pile of flatpics on the table. He stared out into the green and gold garden, the water dimpling as a breeze swept across it. Behind him, he heard Kevil’s breath catch, and catch again. Then the chair moved, and he felt more than heard Kevil come up behind him.
“We will get her back,” Kevil said, this time with no courtroom overtones. It was as if the rock itself had spoken. Not for the first time, Thornbuckle was aware of the depth of character that lay behind Kevil’s easy, practiced manner. “Do you want me to concentrate on the search, or the administration?”
“I have to go,” Thornbuckle said.
“Then I’ll work with—whom do you want to act as Speaker while you’re gone?”
“Could you?”
“I doubt it, not without starting a row. Your best bet would be a Cavendish, a de Marktos, or a Barraclough. I can certainly stay as legal advisor, and hold the carnage to a minimum. But you’re the only one everyone trusts right now. Almost everyone.”
“Your transportation is here, sir.” Poisson again.
“I’ll come with you this far,” Kevil said. It was not a question.
“Thank you.” Thornbuckle did not entirely trust his voice. “I’ll . . . just wash up, I think.” He gathered up the flatpics and the data cube, stuffing them back into the striped package. Kevil nodded and went on toward the side entrance.
Thornbuckle looked at his face in the mirror after splashing cold water on it. He looked . . . surprisingly normal. Pale, tired, angry . . . well, that he was. After the shock, the pain, came the anger . . . deep, and burning hotter every moment. Without his quite realizing how, it spread from the thugs who had perpetrated this most recent abomination to everyone who had contributed to it . . . the blaze spreading back down the trail Brun had taken, outlining in flame every person who had influenced her on that path.
When he left the dining room he was still in shock . . . by the time he arrived at the Admiralty, he was already beginning to think whom else to blame. Kevil, sitting beside him in the groundcar, said nothing to interfere with the inexorable progress of his rage.
At the Admiralty’s planetside headquarters, a commander awaited him . . . someone he remembered from the briefings of the past week, when the replacement of ships from the Xavier action had been under discussion. He realized with a shock that Poisson had not told them what this was about—and then that Poisson had been right.
He nodded to the commander, and as soon as they were inside said, “This is not about the budget; I need to speak to the highest ranking officer present.”
“Yes, sir; Admiral Glaslin is waiting. Secretary Poisson said it was confidential and urgent. But since I had met you before, he thought I should be your escort.”
Admiral Glaslin—tall and angular, with a heronlike droop of neck—met him in the anteroom and led them into the inner office. “Lord Thornbuckle—how may we help you?”
Thornbuckle threw the package on the desk. “You can find these . . . persons . . . and my daughter.”
“Sir?”
“Look inside,” Kevil said quietly. “Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter has been abducted and mutilated—”
The admiral’s mouth opened, then he shut it firmly and emptied the contents of the package onto his desk. At the sight of the flatpics, his face paled from its normal bronze to an unattractive mud color. “When did you get this?”
“Just now,” Thornbuckle said.
“It was delivered sixty-four minutes ago, at the palace, as part of the normal Hymail Express daily delivery; Secretary Poisson opened it because it was labelled Personal, and when he realized its nature, brought it immediately to Lord Thornbuckle.” Kevil paused in his recitation until the admiral nodded. “We were eating lunch, at the time. We have also viewed the data cube.”
“Same as the flatpics?”
“The data cube contains both a video record of the capture and an apparent surgical procedure, and audio threats against the government of the Familias Regnant.”
“Lord Thornbuckle?” The admiral looked at him.
“I—didn’t hear most of the words. Kevil will be correct, however. I want a copy, when you’ve made one—”
The admiral looked at Kevil. “Do you think that’s wise—?”
“Dammit, man! I’m the Speaker; I know what I need!”
“Certainly. But I must tell you—this will have to go to the Grand Admiral—”
“Of course. The sooner the better. You have to find her—” Thornbuckle forced himself to stand, to shake the admiral’s hand, to turn and walk out of the office, down the polished corridors, to the entrance where his car waited.
Twelve hours later, Thornbuckle woke from a fitful doze at the approach of the Grand Admiral’s aide.
“They’re here now, milord.”
The conference room, as secure as any room could be, was crammed with officers. Thornbuckle reminded himself that the blue shoulder-flashes were Intelligence, and the green were Technical. At one end of the long black table, Grand Admiral Savanche leaned forward, and at the other was the only empty seat in the room, waiting for the government’s senior civilian representative: himself.
He edged past the others to his place, and stood there facing Savanche.
“You’ve seen the recording,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “What I want to know is, what kind of force are you committing to getting her back?”
“There’s not a damn thing we can do,” Grand Admiral Savanche said. After a brief pause, he appended, “Sir.”
“There has to be.” Thornbuckle’s voice was flat, even, and unyielding.
“We can search,” Savanche said. “Which we’re doing. We have experts going through the intel database, trying to figure out who these people are, and thus where they might be.”
“You have to—”
“My Lord Thornbuckle. Your daughter has not made any official checkpoint since Podj, sixty-two days ago. We have already begun running the traffic records and sightings from all stations—but there are thousands, tens of thousands, of stations, just in Familias space alone. You have three orbiting your own Sirialis. With the staff we can release for this, that’s going to take weeks to months, just to sift the existing data.”
“That’s not good enough,” Thornbuckle said.
“With all due respect, my lord, given the recent incursions by the Compassionate Hand and the Bloodhorde, we dare not divert resources from our borders. They can certainly add surveillance for your daughter or her ship to their other duties; those orders have gone out. But it would be suicidal to put all Fleet on this single mission.”
“Tell me what else you have done,” Thornbuckle said.
“We know that she leased the yacht Jester from Allsystems; ten personnel identified as your personal militia boarded with her. Allsystems has provided us full identification profiles for that ship; if it shows up in Familias space, within range of any of our ships, we will know it. We know that she took it from Correlia to Podj without incident. Do you know where she was going next?”
“No.” He hated admitting that. “She—she said she wanted to visit several friends, and check into some of her investments, before coming to Sirialis. She had no itinerary; she said if she made one, the newsflash shooters would find her. She said she’d be at Sirialis for the opening day of the hunt.”