Victory Conditions (36 page)

It looked grotesque to Ky—the wrong size, the wrong color, a child’s arm stuck on an old woman’s body—but that was not something she could say.

“Ky—what I really want to ask—it’s—you’ve been through a lot. Lost a lot of friends. I know what that can be like.”

“Aunt Grace, it’s all right. I went into treatment at Moray. They have a rapid-cycle post-trauma treatment for military personnel.”

Grace scowled. “You sure it did the job?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Ky said. “But I think so. They took my implant, stripped a lot of stuff out of it into external storage, soaked me in one set of neurochemicals after another, dragged me through talk sessions, recalibrated the implant’s control functions, and told me I can’t put the externally stored things back in for a least a year.”

“Oh, my—I’m sorry, Ky. That’s my fault. I didn’t think to run a check on your father’s implant—it had all his recordings of that day, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ky said.

“It was so chaotic,” Grace said. “I should have—but I had to get Stella away safely, I knew you needed his command set, and so much was happening—I just didn’t think of that—”

“It’s all right,” Ky said. “I’m fine, now.”

“It makes me wonder if I am,” Grace said. “My brain, I mean.”

Ky had never seen Grace as anything but the indomitable old lady with no doubts at all that she was perfectly right in all circumstances; she wasn’t sure she wanted an Aunt Grace with vulnerability. “It’s all right now—”

“Oh, I know that. But even an old bat can express regret for a mistake. Your job is to say Thank you, Aunt Grace, and I’m fine now Aunt Grace, and Good-bye, Aunt Grace.”

Ky laughed. This was the Grace she remembered. “Thank you, Aunt Grace; I’m fine now; good-bye and take care. I hope to get back to Slotter Key and see you in person again.”

“Do that,” Grace said. “But not before you’ve dealt with that so-and-so.”

ISC Headquarters, Nexus II

“This is a mess,” Rafe said, staring down at ISC’s front entrance. Police cars. News vans. Helicopters hovering around trying to get pictures through the windows, not that they could. “We have a real threat that might wipe out the whole system in another tenday or so, and instead of dealing with that, they want my head for something I didn’t do.”

“Would it be better to
be
a murderer?” Gary asked.

“I was, according to some,” Rafe said. The news notes had painted him as the blackest villain, vicious from childhood, since only a truly vicious child could have killed two trained adults. Unrepentant after years in a reformatory. Exiled from home for years. Supposedly—given a nasty emphasis by the talking heads—returned to help his family escape from abductors, but where was the proof that he had not been colluding with Parmina all along?

“They’re sure it was poison? And administered by someone else?”

“So they say. Some metabolic thing to mimic a heart attack. Could be absorbed through the skin. I didn’t touch the man. I didn’t hand him anything. There should be surveillance tapes proving that, but they claim the tapes are fogged. I can’t prove they aren’t.”

“Do you think Isaacs was one of Turek’s agents?”

“No. I think he was lazy, greedy, and perfectly willing to take money from Parmina to ignore ISC’s deficiencies. Corrupt, but not a traitor.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Turek’s agents—or some of them—had an implanted suicide code of some kind? When you were with that Vatta woman, didn’t someone die?”

“Yes, but he was a low-level crook—someone’s henchman in a criminal gang. Under interrogation he started to say Turek’s name and that released the poison—a metabolic decoupler—” Rafe frowned, trying to remember if the man’s symptoms had been like Isaacs’. “It was faster, I think. And Isaacs wasn’t trying to say anything like that.”

“Did you see anyone hand him anything—did he pick up anything on his desk?”

Rafe thought back. “When I was let in, Malendy and a secretary came in, too. The secretary put a packet of data cubes on his desk. Nothing was passed hand-to-hand.” He paused, trying to re-see everything that had happened. “Isaacs didn’t—wait—he did. He started fidgeting, picking things on his desk up and laying them down. A letter opener. He—he opened the folder, fumbled with several of the data cubes, just running them through his fingers as he talked. I was reading that as agitation about our conversation—”

“It probably was, but it suggests how a contact poison might have gotten to him.”

“But the secretary must’ve put those cubes into the folder—”

“So maybe the secretary’s the murderer. Or maybe Isaacs knew they were poisoned, and chose that method of suicide, to cast suspicion on you even as he died. Or someone else gave the packet to the secretary. Wonder if anyone’s tested those things, or if they’ve been lost, perhaps by intention.”

“I suppose I should tell them that,” Rafe said.

“Yeah, but the question is how,” Gary said. “I don’t want you leaving this place. Once they have the proven bad boy in custody they aren’t likely to listen, and like you said there are far more serious things to worry about than a dead Secretary of Defense. You need them to listen—and by the way, which of your armchair admirals are you going to nominate to run the defense? Or do you think you can do it?”

“Jaime Driskill’s done the best so far—his ships were in better shape overall than anyone else’s, despite the budget cuts, and he responded quickly to my original suggestions. I have no idea how competent he is as a combat commander, though.”

“If you could get an experienced merc commander to talk to him?”

“That would help, certainly. But that all depends on the government agreeing to do something, not just scream at me.”

“Where’s Driskill now?”

“On his way here, with the best ships he has. I’ve also ordered the best of the other ISC units here. They should arrive insystem in four or five days.”

“Rafe—what’s going on?” Penny came into the office; she nodded politely to Gary. “And don’t try telling me it’s nothing for me to worry about when there are flashing lights, helicopters, and people switch off their screens and look away when I ask them.”

Rafe sighed. “You’re going to have to stay here at least overnight, Penny—”

“Answer my question,” Penny said.

Rafe looked at her. She had changed a lot in the past half year—no longer the frightened waif he’d rescued from abductors, or the grieving, depressed widow—but what he saw now surprised him. She looked—completely adult, completely competent, and completely determined to have her way. Like Stella, in fact, or Ky. He had never imagined her that way, as other than his little sister.

“When your party was interrupted last night,” he said, “it was to tell me that Turek’s fleet had attacked a military shipyard at Moray—a system about twenty days’ FTL flight from here. The Moscoe–Slotter Key allied fleet drove them off, but Admiral Vatta was…was killed.”

Penny paled. “You didn’t tell me!”

“No. I didn’t want to spoil your evening and I couldn’t—couldn’t talk about it then anyway.” He couldn’t talk about it now, either. He had no time for private feelings. “I was also warned that the Moray government believes Nexus will be Turek’s next target. This morning I had to meet with the Secretary of Defense. You know that I’d previously warned him about the deficiencies in ISC’s fleet, that we did not have the ships or weapons to defend this system. We were discussing options—he said the government wanted ISC to hire and pay for mercs to do the job we weren’t doing—when he suddenly collapsed, and subsequently died.” Rafe paused, not sure how to say the next bit.

“How awful,” Penny said. She was looking out the window, then her eyes widened and she turned to him. “Rafe—do they think
you
killed him—did something to him? Is that why—”

“Apparently,” Rafe said, “he died of poison, and yes, they think I did it. That’s why the media’s starting to paint me as the permanent blackest sheep in Nexus history. You might as well know—they’re even suggesting that I was involved with Parmina in your abduction and staged the whole thing just to gain power, killing Parmina to hide the evidence.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Penny said.

“It would be, if there weren’t all those official cars out there. Thank any god you care to that ISC territory is officially not Nexus territory, or they’d have special-security teams running down the corridors and I’d be dead in minutes.”

“You’re not giving up,” Penny said.

“Not giving up, but not sure what to do, either,” Rafe said. “I could tell them that they should be looking for contact poison on the data cubes Isaacs was fiddling with, but they won’t believe me. They say the surveillance tapes from his office are fogged and they think I did that, too, so even if they found and tested the cubes, and the poison was still there, they’d think I put it on them.” He sighed. “And I have messages from a majority of the Board, who want an emergency meeting. The only reason they’re not having one is that all that mess—” He waved at the window. “—won’t let them in. Another lucky break is that our charter specifies all binding Board votes must be taken on ISC territory.”

“What about Ser Box?”

“Ser Box is highly annoyed with me. I’m not sure he’d vote against me, but he’s not helping. And Emil’s father has already suggested that my resignation might be a good idea.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Penny said. Then, more doubtfully, “Would you?”

“Not planning to,” Rafe said. Though he wished that some miraculous storybook hero would come sailing in, take over, and tell him he could go back to a life that involved nothing more dangerous than the occasional assassination attempt. But that wouldn’t happen. “For one thing, who would succeed me? Nobody, including Vaclav, on the Board is really capable of doing what we need now. I can see it, but so far I haven’t gotten it across to them.”

“Well, I understand it,” Penny said. “And not just because I’m your sister. All that digging into the records you asked for…and the courses I’ve been taking—”

“You’re taking courses?”

She flushed a little. “My therapist suggested it, a way to keep busy in the evenings. And really, it’s fascinating…the way everything fits together. Dad never talked about business at home, and Mother was always talking music. She didn’t want him to talk business. Jared—” She didn’t even wince now saying her dead husband’s name. “—Jared just assumed I wouldn’t be interested, I think. We had other interests, we talked by the hour, but not about the company. So I never knew…”

Rafe could hardly believe this was the same Penny; not just from last fall and the rescue, but the same Penny he’d known all his life. Or not known, he realized. Now, eyes alight, voice eager, she looked like someone who had found the right place to be.

“Um…so you see yourself staying with ISC?” he said.

“Unless you fire me. I know you meant it to be just a temporary thing, Rafe, a way to get me out of that horrible house, but really—I want to stay here. In fact—” Her voice took on a mischievous tone. “—someday I may challenge you for that corner office.”

Penny as CEO? That was something he’d never imagined.

“Not yet, of course,” she went on. “I need more education; I need more experience. Not to mention age, because the Board certainly wouldn’t accept me now. They probably think of me as you do, just Rafe’s little sister, poor thing. But I can see, just as you can, what needs to be done to keep us afloat. More than afloat, in fact.”

Both Gary and Emil looked as startled as he felt. Rafe tried to think of the right thing to say, and found nothing coherent. “I guess,” he said finally, “I needed a good smack on the head where you were concerned. You just delivered it.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said quickly.

“No. I’m not hurt. Surprised, startled, amazed, all of those. But if you do aspire to the corner office someday, do you have any suggestions for how to handle this?” A wave of the hand toward the windows and the mess outside.

“Actually, I do,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

Rafe had the uneasy feeling she was right. “What, then?”

“I’ll talk to them. They’ll be sure I’m the little sister dazzled by your—” She looked him up and down. “—handsome face and slick manner, but remember that I’m the one who found the skeletons in the financial closets.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“Of course I would. Isaacs is dead. Can’t hurt him to explain why he might’ve committed suicide. Once they have something more juicy than old lies about you—and I will certainly be asking where they got that information, since it must’ve been passed on by someone other than Parmina—the pressure should come off. Besides, I’ll look good on camera. Just you wait and see.”

“I don’t think it’s wise—” Rafe began. Penny interrupted.

“I am of age, Rafe. And it’s my decision.” The grin she gave him then might have come out of his own mirror, in those days when he still led the life of a rogue. “Watch me, big brother.”

Penny swept out. Emil’s jaw had dropped; Gary merely looked rueful.

“I’m beginning to think you have a very strange effect on women,” he said. “That young lady had victim written all over her last fall and now—now she’s gone the way of your—” He stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I forget she had…um…”