Victory Conditions (12 page)

“What!” That got out before Ky could stop it. “I’m sorry,” she said at once. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

“No offense taken,” Veniers said. “The father thinks the young man’s judgment is clouded by an infatuation, and this has blinded him to the evils committed by your family. We—our government, that is—do not see it the same way, and yet we would not force a breach. The current CEO himself denies the charge publicly, claims to have respect for you but nothing more. But before we go further in any kind of…understanding…with you, we do feel it important to clarify the relationship you have with Rafael Dunbarger.”

Ky managed to hold her temper in check, partly because it was so ridiculous. They were threatened with annihilation or invasion; they needed to be focused on that very real threat and ways to prevent it. Yet they were fixated on the notion that young people must always be in a ferment of lust or something? But she couldn’t put it that way. “You all know that Rafe was on a ship with me for some time, from Lastway to here. So yes, I know him. But the fact that we were on the same ship does not mean we had a relationship.” Just a shared cranial ansible, but that was still a secret.

“So you have no emotional attachment?”

“If you mean, am I in a romantic entanglement with him, the answer is no,” Ky said. “As Ser Dunbarger told you. As he told a Mackensee officer in my presence.” She felt her face warming at that memory. “We were in a crisis situation together, more than once. That creates a very different kind of…” She stumbled over the word. “Relationship.”

“Ah.” A glance passed from person to person, notably skipping past Stella, who stared at the table. “But it is not uncommon…I do not mean to be discourteous, sera—Captain—but in this case your private feelings, should you have any, have political implications.”

“I don’t have any,” Ky said quickly. Firmly. Ignoring the treacherous little voice inside that told her she certainly did, that she had spent more time imagining what it would be like to see Rafe again than someone with no feelings would.

“If I might,” Major Douglas said.

“You are the Mackensee liaison, are you not? Go ahead, please.”

“Brilliant young officers, such as Captain Vatta, are often expected to have corresponding emotional weaknesses. For what it’s worth,
our
professional assessment—made prior to an attempt to recruit her to MMAC—is that this is not the case with Captain Vatta.”

“Thank you,” Ky said, with an edge to her voice that she could not suppress.

“You’re welcome,” he said blandly. “It seemed relevant.”

“It is,” the Chairman said. “An independent, professional assessment like that is completely relevant.” He sighed. “To be honest, if somewhat less than flattering, I was almost hoping you did have such an infatuation, Captain Vatta. It would then have been easy to insist that however valid your thinking about the military situation, you personally must be distanced from any response we make. We have been close allies to Nexus for…well, almost since the first Moscoe and other shareholders set up a colony that later became this…” He waved to indicate the entire system. “They will be angry with us, I fear.”

No one spoke for a long moment. The Chairman shook his head sharply. “Facts are facts, whatever we might wish. The material you shared with us, on the weakness of ISC’s fleet, is…shocking. I won’t insult you by asking if you’re sure, and anyway, Mackensee corroborates your account of the battle. I have spoken personally to the current CEO of ISC, Ser Dunbarger, and he tells me that we cannot expect much aid from Nexus, as ISC has always served as their external force, and ISC’s resources are no longer sufficient. That being so, we must consider our own welfare, and choose the stronger ally. We must consider how you and we can work together, seeking for some way that will allow Nexus to accept the situation.”

“I understand that you have tried to hire some of our resources,” Major Douglas said.

“Yes, we have, and so has Nexus. Ordinarily, we would coordinate those requests, giving you, the professionals, the choice of assigning assets as a unified command saw fit. Unfortunately, if Nexus remains obdurate about the Vatta connection, we will have no access to whatever force they hire, and I imagine we will retain ours nearby.”

CHAPTER

SIX

Slotter Key

Grace Vatta, now Rector of Defense for Slotter Key but always a Vatta at heart, looked at the background report on Vatta’s new senior staff. All of the most promising successors to Stavros and Gerard had been killed in the initial attack on Vatta, and two in the next tier had been assassinated while she herself had been busy protecting Helen and the children, setting up the demise of those who had been in on the attack, and managing the day-to-day affairs of Vatta. But she had spotted the few likely candidates early on. With the change in government, with no new assassination attempts in the past half year, they were now running Vatta’s much-reduced business: the tik orchards and the onplanet transport services—surface, sea, and air—that moved the tik harvest to market.

For some reason—Grace could not be sure because the ones who knew or might have known were now dead—the attackers had missed Vatta’s newer installations at the air-and spaceports, as well as the two Vatta Transport ships docked at the planet’s commercial orbital station when the attack occurred. One of those had been lost later, on its arrival in another port. Only one Vatta Transport ship remained in contact with Slotter Key, traveling a restricted circuit.

Now a new problem had arisen. Vatta Transport had one corporate headquarters here, on Slotter Key, where its registered legal presence had been for the past several hundred years. And it had another corporate headquarters on the Moscoe Confederation, on Cascadia Station, where Stella had set up her offices. With the system ansibles out, that had made sense—had been, in fact, the only way to keep going. But now, with ansible service restored—at least temporarily—it meant that two head offices were a confusion instead of a godsend.

Maxim Vatta-Termanian, running the local office, seemed to be honest, hardworking, and just barely capable of handling his new job. He was Vatta by marriage, had taken the Vatta name only after the disaster in which his wife—an accountant at corporate headquarters—was killed. Maxim, a botanist, had been halfway through a ninety-day internship at a remote research lab on the far side of the planet that day, working on a project to make tik trees more resistant to follicle rust. When first appointed, he’d expressed doubt that he could do the job, citing his lack of training and his love of research. So Grace would have expected Maxim to be happy for a chance to get back to a lab somewhere, and turn over leadership of the company to Stella…but that wasn’t proving the case.

“I’m not doing that badly and I’m learning every day,” Maxim said. “I’m a quick learner.” He was thin, intense, leaning forward into the video pickup, his fingers drumming on the arms of the chair.

Grace looked at the pulse in his throat. Was he on something?

“Just because Stella’s his daughter doesn’t mean she should inherit his job,” Maxim went on. “I mean, look at her past. And Stavros made mistakes…if he hadn’t, none of this would’ve happened.”

And Maxim would have been just another married-in scientist. “Do you really blame Stavros for what happened?” Grace asked. “What mistake do you think he made?”

“He didn’t see the threat coming. He didn’t know about the charges—”

“That wasn’t his job, Maxim.”

“Well, putting someone in charge of company security was his job, and he didn’t do a very good job of picking whoever it was—”

“That would be me,” Grace said.

Maxim paled. “You!”

“Yes. And before you try to get your foot out of your mouth by saying something else, let me give you a few reality checks. I was not tasked to infiltrate the Slotter Key government and find out if elements in it were cooperating with offplanet criminals determined to attack Vatta headquarters and personnel. If you want to blame me for not knowing that the President, senior officers in Spaceforce, and others in the administration were involved…fine. Blame me. But that—the collusion of Slotter Key’s government—is what made the attack possible and continued to make attacks on our people possible until I brought down the government.”

“You…brought down the government?” Now he was even paler, sitting back away from the pickup as if to put as much distance between himself and Grace as possible.

“With some help from others, of course. But yes, the reason you are still alive today is that I acted in Vatta’s best interest.” Maxim said nothing; Grace waited a long moment, then went on. “The job of a corporate security chief is complex enough without considering that a government that has always been friendly and cooperative may be yielding to blackmail or other pressure, and becoming hostile. I dealt with internal matters specific to Vatta and with longstanding threats from without, such as piracy. The day of the attack, I had a new report to show Stavros…but never had the chance to deliver it.”

“Well…all right…but that still doesn’t mean Stella should be CEO. She’s not even here—”

“No, she’s established a successful branch of Vatta where she is—where she started alone, with minimal resources, and now has sixteen tradeships up and running and a very successful manufacturing program for a unique and highly desirable product. Her profit ratio’s climbing fast; yours isn’t.”

“But she’s—she’s—”

Grace broke in on whatever unforgivable thing he was about to say. “Maxim, you don’t have the votes. You can either fight and lose what you have, or leave gracefully.”

“I have more votes than you think. Lots of people don’t think Stella would be that good. They remember what an idiot she was.” He still sat back, but with the kind of mulish expression Grace knew meant a mind made up in spite of evidence. It was a shame. He wasn’t a bad man, but he would have to learn that in some things, Grace had far more power than showed on the surface.

Within a few hours she had arranged for Stella to vote her shares via Helen, for Helen to be fully briefed on what to do, and had checked up on her other family allies and enemies. On a whim, she looked up Maxim’s genetic profile, and stared at a sequence now too familiar.

Maxim, like Stella, was another of Osman’s bastards. He’d been placed with a non-Vatta family, so he hadn’t made it onto her private list. And how had he come to marry a Vatta? She checked further. He had gone to the same university, having grown up in a respectable family—Grace could find nothing wrong with the Termanians on Slotter Key. Why hadn’t someone at noticed his gene scan before they married? Everyone had gene scans before marriage, to find out if they carried a genetic disease and thus their DNA would need some cleanup surgery. But of course, that was the only purpose of such screening, to find genetic problems. Habit alone made her dig deeper. Where had the Termanians come from?

Termanian had first shown up in Slotter Key census records eighty or ninety years before, listing Nexus, of all places, as their system-of-origin. Medary Termanian, specialist in industrial colorants and dyes; he’d been recruited by Cosax Chemicals right out of university. A brother, Esarn, had followed four years later, to work for the same company. The next generation, born on Slotter Key, were all involved in science or technology—men and women both. Nothing that looked like an attempt to move into power positions—they had been both lab bench and field scientists, plant managers, that sort of thing. Grace did notice that there was a pattern of adoption, including adoption from relatives back on Nexus, and even then families were small. In that family, Maxim had seemed to fit—botany for an agribusiness job.

So…had he been adopted from Nexus, like others? And how had Nexus come by one of Osman Vatta’s by-blows?

Now that the Slotter Key ansible was back up, she could query Nexus’ own database for information on the Termanians. There, they were a prominent, wealthy family with strong influence in government and ISC both. A Termanian had been on the Board of ISC until very recently…until, in fact, he’d been shot dead by Rafe Dunbarger for being allied with Lewis Parmina.

It was beyond belief that an Osman bastard, adopted into same family that had produced a traitor in ISC, married a Vatta girl and ended up safe during the catastrophe, rising to become—even temporarily—CEO of Vatta, by accident.

The only question now was whether Maxim Vatta-Termanian knew he was a mole. He could have had his implant programmed to hide that from him, when he was a child. Still, the important thing was to get him out of his present position, and under surveillance. And to comb the databases for any more of Osman’s surprises.

“Mac.” She called MacRobert on their very private and very secure com.

“Problem?”

“Yes.” Grace explained all the connections. “I’m thinking total surveillance until I can get a quorum together and get him voted out.”

“You’re sure you have the votes and he’s sure he has the votes?”

“Stella’s and Ky’s shares tip it easily.”

“But they aren’t here.”

“But Helen is Stella’s proxy, and Ky gave permission for Stella to vote hers when she left Stella at Cascadia. Just took care of that.”

“We put a guard on Helen,” MacRobert said. “I’ll do that first. What about your other votes?”

Grace sent a datafeed of the list. “You don’t think I’m being paranoid?”

“Only as much as you should be. Make sure they all have protection. And I want you to take precautions, too.”

“More than I am?”

“Yes. I’ll be at the office before you leave.”

Days earlier, she had invited Helen to bring the twins over for a visit. Now she could have used more time for research.

“Don’t fret,” MacRobert said. He walked on her left, and the rest of her security team, before and behind, knew which way to jump if she needed to use her own weapon. “The visit won’t take that long. You’ll figure it out.”

“You’re becoming a mind reader,” Grace said.

“Practice,” MacRobert said. “And innate talent.”

She chuckled. “I may need to talk to Helen privately. Can you handle the twins?”

“I would like to think that having herded all those cadets, I can handle two young children. On the other hand, they are Vattas. I promise nothing.”

Helen tried not to look at Grace’s arm; the twins stared. Jo’s children, now centimeters taller than they had been the summer before. They would have inherited her intellectual curiosity, Grace thought.

“It’s grown quite a bit,” she said. “Come on over and take a look.”

“Gramma said we shouldn’t stare,” said Shar, who had been.

“It’s not staring if I say you can look,” Grace said. They both came over, wide-eyed; Helen grimaced behind them. “They saw the worst,” Grace said to her. “They might as well see the healing.”

“What’s the green stuff?” Justin asked. “Shouldn’t it be pink, like our insides?”

“Or clear?” Shar asked. “So you can see better?”

“Children—” Helen began. Grace waved her hand:
Hush.

“It was almost clear pinkish until two tendays ago,” Grace said. “It’s grown enough that they switched to the green—I don’t completely understand it myself, but it has something to do with enhancing skin formation. Because the bones and muscles are growing faster than normal, the skin must grow faster, too, and it can dry out and split more easily at this stage.”

“Oh.” Justin frowned. “Is the skin going to look like a young woman’s skin, when it comes out? Or wrinkly like the rest of yours?” Grace didn’t have to look to know that Helen was rolling her eyes at this breach of manners.

“It will look smooth,” Grace said. “And yes, it won’t match. I don’t care.”

“I thought it would be baby-sized,” Shar said. “And it’s as big as our arms now. Can you wiggle the fingers?”

Grace wiggled her fingers; both children drew in a breath. “I have to wiggle my fingers; I have to bend the elbow and everything, or it would come out too weak to be useful,” she said. “It’ll be in the sheath only another four tendays, and then I’ll start serious work with it.” She didn’t mention the painful therapy she was already getting three times a week. Some things children didn’t need to know.

“It has
fingernails,
” Shar said.

Grace almost laughed. The twins looked so interested, and so like Jo at that age, and Helen looked just as horrified as she had when she’d found Grace showing Jo how to field-strip a pistol. “How would you like some cake?” she said instead. Two little noses wrinkled.