CHAPTER ONE
Kylara Vatta came to attention in front of the Commandant’s desk. One sheet of flatcopy lay in front of him, the print too small for her to read upside down. She had a bad feeling about this. On previous trips to the Commandant’s office, she had been summoned by an icon popping up on her deskcomp. Those had all been benign visits, the result of exams passed in the top 5 percent, or prizes won, and the Commandant had greeted her with the most thawed of his several frosty expressions.
Today it had been “Cadet Vatta to the Commandant’s office, on the double,” blaring out over the speaker right in the middle of her first class period, Veshpasir’s lecture on the history of the first century PD. Veshpasir, no friend to shipping dynasties, had given her a nasty smirk before saying, “Dismissed, Cadet Vatta.”
She had no idea what this was about. Or rather, she hoped she didn’t. Surely she had been careful enough . . .
“Cadet Vatta,” the Commandant said. No thawing at all, and his left eyelid drooped ominously.
“Sir,” she said.
“I won’t even ask what you thought you were doing,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care.”
“Sir?” She hated the squeak in her voice.
“Don’t play the innocent with me, Cadet.” Rumor had it that if his left eyelid actually closed, cadets died. She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she hoped she wasn’t about to find out. “You are a disgrace to the Service.”
Ky almost shook her head in confusion. What could he be talking about?
“Going outside the chain of command like this”—he thumped the sheet of paper—”embarrassing the Service.”
“Sir—” She gulped, caught between the etiquette that required silence until she was given leave to speak, and a desperate need to find out what had the Commandant’s eyelid hovering ever nearer to its mate.
“You have something to say, Cadet?” the Commandant asked. His voice, like his face, might have been carved out of a glacier. “Do go ahead . . .” It was not a generous offer.
“Sir, with the greatest respect, this cadet does not know to what the Commandant is referring . . .”
His lips disappeared altogether. “Oh, you can play the innocent all you want, Cadet, and maintain that formal folderol, but you don’t fool me.” He paused. Ky searched her memory, and came up empty. “Well, since you insist, let’s try this: do you recall the name Mandy Rocher?”
“Yes, sir,” Ky said promptly. “Second year, third squad.”
“And you can think of no reason why I might connect that name and yours?”
“Sir, I helped Cadet Rocher locate a Miznarii chaplain last weekend, when Chaplain Oser was away . . .” A dim glimmer of what might be the problem came to her but she couldn’t believe there would be that much fuss about a simple little . . .
“And just how did you locate a Miznarii chaplain, Cadet?”
“I . . . er . . . called my mother, sir.”
“You called your mother.” He made it sound obscene, as if only the lowest criminal would call a mother. “And told your mother to do what, Cadet?”
“I asked her if her friend Jucha could refer me to a Miznarii chaplain near the Academy.”
“For what reason?”
“I told her that one of the underclassmen was overdue for confession and the Academy chaplain was out of town.”
“You didn’t tell her what he wanted to confess?”
Ky felt her own eyebrows going up. “Sir, I don’t know what he had to confess. I only know that he was in distress, and needed a chaplain, and I thought . . . I thought it would save trouble if I just got him one.”
“You’re not Miznarii yourself . . . ?”
“No, sir. We’re Modulans.” Actually, they were Saphiric Cyclans, but that was such a small sect that nobody recognized it, and Modulans were respectable and undemanding. You could be a Modulan without doing anything much at all, a source of some humor to more energetic sects. Ky found Modulan chapel restful and had gone often enough to acquire a reputation for moderate piety—the level most approved by Modulans.
“Hmmph.” The Commandant’s eyelid twitched upward a millimeter; Ky hoped this was a good sign. “You had no idea that what he wanted to confess concerned the honor of the Service?”
Her jaw dropped; she forced it back up. “No, sir!”
“That he made a formal complaint to this Miznarii, in addition to his confession, which the chaplain took immediately to the Bureau of War, where it fell into the hands of a particularly noxious bureaucrat whose sister just happens to be on the staff of Wide Exposure, so that I found myself on the horn very early this morning with Grand-Admiral Tasliki, who is not amused at all . . . ?” It was not really a question; it was rant and explanation and condemnation all in one. “The bureaucrat spoke on Wide Exposure’s ‘Night Affairs’ program at 0115—clever timing, that—and this morning all the media channels had something on it. That’s only the beginning.”
Ky felt hot, then cold, then hot again. “S-sir . . . ,” she managed.
“So even if you did not know, Cadet Vatta, what Cadet Rocher wanted to confess, you may be able to grasp that by going outside the chain of command you have created a very very large public relations problem, embarrassing the entire general staff, the Bureau of War, and—last but not least—me personally.”
“Yes, sir.” She could understand that. She could not, she thought, have anticipated it, and now she was consumed by curiosity: what, exactly, had Mandy Rocher said? They weren’t allowed access to things like Wide Exposure except on weekends.
“You are an embarrassment, Cadet Vatta,” the Commandant said. “Many, many people want your hide tacked on the wall and your head on a pike. The only reason I don’t—” His eyelid was up another millimeter. “The only reason I don’t, is that I have observed your progress through the Academy and you have so far been, within the limits of your ability, an exemplary cadet. When I thought you’d done it on purpose I was going to throw you to the wolves. Now—since I suspect that you simply fell for a sob story and your entire barracks knows you have a soft spot for underdogs and lost lambs—I’m simply going to take the hide off your back in strips and see your resignation on my desk by 1500 hours this afternoon.”
“S-sir?” Resignation . . . did that mean what it sounded like? Was he kicking her out? Just because she’d tried to help Mandy?
Now the eyelid came all the way back up. “Cadet Vatta, you have—unwittingly, perhaps—created a major mess with implications that could damage the Service for years. Your ass is grass, one way or the other. You could be charged, for instance, with that string of articles beginning with 312.5—I see by your expression that you have, belatedly, remembered them . . .”
She did indeed. Article 312.5 of the Military Legal Code: failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner of potentially harmful personnel situations. Article 312.6: failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner of breaches of security involving sensitive personnel. Article 312.7: failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner of . . . rats, rats, and flying rats. She was majorly doomed.
“I . . . wasn’t thinking, sir.” That was not an attempt at apology, merely a statement of fact.
“Fairly obvious. What did you think might happen?”
“I thought . . . Mandy—Cadet Rocher—was so upset that day—I thought if he could see a chaplain and confess or whatever, he’d settle down until the regular chaplain got back. He had those exams coming up, and they were group-graded; if he didn’t do well, his squad would suffer for it . . .”
“What you don’t know, Cadet, is that Rocher had been avoiding the regular chaplain’s cycle; his so-called emergency was of his own making. He wanted to talk to someone outside the Academy, and you made that possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone at all about this, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Easier to get forgiveness than permission, is that what you were thinking?”
“No, sir . . . not really.” One of the places where Modulans and Saphiric Cyclans disagreed was about the giving of aid. Modulans felt that moderate assistance should be moderately public—one did not make a huge display of charity, but one allowed others to know charity was going on, to set a good example. Saphiric Cyclans, on the other hand, believed that all help should be given as anonymously as possible. Now was probably not the time to talk about that difference.
“I am so reassured.” The Commandant’s eyelid quivered. “Cadet Vatta, it is unfortunate that you have to suffer for a generous impulse, but we need naval officers with brains as well as kind hearts. You will not return to class. You will, as I said, present a letter of resignation which does not mention any of this, and cites personal reasons as the cause, by 1500 hours. Sooner, Cadet, is better than later, but first you will go to Signals, and make contact with your family, so that you will be able to leave quietly and quickly when that resignation is approved.” The look he gave her now was warmer by a few degrees, but still not cordial. “Staff will pack up your things; they will be at the gate when you depart.”
“I . . . yes, sir.”
“And yes, you infer correctly that you are not to speak to any of your former associates. Your departure will be explained as seems most expedient for the Service.”
“Sir.” Not speak to anyone. Not to Mira or Lisette . . . not to Hal. Only another few months, and we can—but not now, not ever. Please, please, let no one figure out . . .
“You are dismissed.”
“Sir.” Ky saluted, rotated correctly on her right heel, and left his office, her mind a blur. Signals. She knew where Signals was. She passed without really seeing an enlisted man in the passage, and another at the head of the stairs down to the classroom level. Halfway to Signals, her mind clicked on long enough to panic . . . She had to call her family, tell her father and, oh heavens, her mother that she was disgraced, dismissed . . . Her brothers would all . . . her cousins . . . Uncle Tomas . . . Aunt Grace, worse than Uncle Tomas, who would say again all she had said when Ky first went to the Academy, laced with I told you so . . .
She felt the tremor in her hands, and fought to still it. Now, for this short period of time, she was still a cadet, and now, for this short period of time, she would act like one. Even as the dream went down in smoke and ashes, even then . . . her stomach looped wildly once and settled.
At the door of Signals, a uniformed guard stared past her.
“Cadet Vatta, on order of the Commandant,” she said.
He stepped aside, and she heard him murmur into his comunit “Cadet Vatta at Signals, sir.”
Commander Terry had the watch in Signals; his expression suggested that her family were loathsome toads, and she was toad spawn. “Vatta,” he said, minus the honorific.
“Sir.”
“Which contact number?” As if having more than one number were also a crime.
“Vatta Enterprises,” Ky said. “They have a relay—” Wherever her father was, they could reach him, or give her a link to the senior Vatta onplanet.
“We would prefer that you make a direct call.”
She knew her father’s mobile number, of course, but he’d often said he hated the damned thing, and would leave it on the bedside table as often as not. That meant her mother might pick it up, the last person she wanted to talk to. Vatta Enterprises would ring his skullphone, which he couldn’t take off. She didn’t have that number; no one did but the communications computer at VE.
She rattled off the string for the mobile, and mentally visualized the arc of blue, best fortune, of the Saphiran Cyclan wheel, as Commander Terry nodded to the rating who entered the string.
“Name?” Terry asked abruptly. Ky startled. “The name of the person you are calling,” he said.
“Sir, my father, sir. Gerard Avondettin Vatta. But if my mother—”
“You are permitted one call, to one recipient, Cadet Vatta.” Commander Terry picked up the headset and held the receiver to his ear. Ky waited, the blue arc fading in her mental eye. Then his hand twitched. “This is Commander Terry at the Naval Academy; I need to speak to Gerard Avondettin Vatta.” A pause, then: “Kylara Vatta will speak with you.” He held the headset out to Ky.
She was not even allowed to speak from a privacy booth. She had known the call would be recorded, but at least a semblance of normal courtesy would have helped. She could feel tears swelling now, stuffing her nose. She fought for calmness as she took the headset and put it on. Enough of this; she turned her back on Commander Terry without permission.
“Dad, listen—”
“Ky, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Dad, no, I’m fine, please listen. I have to leave, I have to leave today. Can you send somebody to the gates?”
“Ky, what is it?”
“Dad, please. I have to resign. I have to leave. I don’t have any money for transport; I need a way to get home—”
“What—!” She could hear the explosion building up, the familiar prelude to the famous roar. Then it ended, surprising her into silence. His voice gentled to a soft growl. “Ky, listen, whatever it is, we can help. Let me call the Commandant—”
“No, Dad. Don’t do that. I’ll explain when I get there, only help me get there, please?”
“When do you need transport?”
She looked at the chronometer. Only 0935. Surely she could write a resignation that would satisfy the Commandant by noon.
“By noon, if that’s possible.”
“For you, Kylara-mish, five minutes would be possible. Only tell me, has someone hurt you?”
Later, she would consider whether Mandy Rocher had hurt her; now she wanted only to get away. And even if Mandy had, she had made it possible; it was her own fault. “It’s not that, Dad.”
“Good. Because if any one of those fisheaters had laid a finger on you—”
“Dad, please. Noon?”
“At the gates. On Vatta honor.”
“Vatta honor.” The signal died, and she handed the headset back to Commander Terry. He took it without comment, and gave a curt nod.
“Get on your way, Vatta.”
“Yes, sir.” She needed a place to write the resignation; if she was forbidden to return to her quarters, where could she go? Outside, she found the answer, of sorts: the wiry gray-haired senior NCO who had been her year’s nemesis in the first four quarters, and an increasingly valuable resource ever since. She had not, she remembered, taken MacRobert’s advice on the matter of Mandy Rocher.
“Commandant’s library is empty, Cadet Vatta,” he said now. “Fully equipped.”
“Right,” she said. She would not cry. She would certainly not cry in front of this man. He turned to lead the way and she followed.
“Right mess you made of things,” he said, when they were around a corner from Signals.
“Yes,” Ky said.
“I won’t say I told you so,” he said. He just had, of course, but she didn’t answer. “I daresay you feel bad enough already.”
A shadow of a question in that. Anger stirred suddenly, beneath the anguish. “Yes, I do,” she said, hearing the sharp edge to her own voice.
“Thought so,” he said. “Here you are.” He opened the door for her. She had never been in the Commandant’s private library before; the long narrow room held not only racks of ordinary books and journals, but shelves of ancient books like those in her family’s oldest house. A long table ran down the middle of the room, and at one end someone had set out a stack of white paper and a selection of pens. “It’s appropriate that a resignation of this type be handwritten,” MacRobert told her. “You can use the voice recorder or the keyboard to rough it out, but it’s better to stick to the simplest format . . .” Someone had also laid out a copy of Naval Etiquette: Essentials for Officers, and the hand reader.
“Thank you,” Ky said. It was still not 1000 hours. Her world had ended less than an hour ago. She had another couple of hours . . .
“What time did you arrange transport for?” MacRobert asked.
“Noon,” Ky said.
“I’ll see that your gear is at the gate by 1130,” MacRobert said.
“Thank you,” Ky said again. She felt unreal, still, as if this were a dream, as if she were floating a few centimeters off the floor.
“I’ll leave you alone,” MacRobert said. “When you’re finished, you can leave the resignation here—”
“The Commandant said on his desk,” Ky said.
“That’s right. And so it will be; just tell me when you’re finished.” He nodded and went out, shutting the door silently behind him.
She put Naval Etiquette: Essentials for Officers into the reader and found that someone had already bookmarked the section on resignations. Voluntary and involuntary, sections of the legal code relating to, forms of appropriate and inappropriate . . . She paused there and looked at the appropriate wording for resigning one’s commission while in command of a ship, while in command of a flotilla, while between commands, while on leave, while suffering an incurable mental or physical condition precluding further duty . . . That’s me, Ky thought. Suffering from an incurable tendency to trust people in trouble and help lame dogs.
She turned to the keyboard—she didn’t trust her voice to use the speech-activated system—and copied in the phrasing. “I, [name], hereby resign my [cadetship/commission] for reasons of [reason.]” “I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign my cadetship for reasons of overwhelming stupidity and weak sentimentality.” No, that wouldn’t do. “For reasons of totally unfair blame for something I didn’t do.” That wouldn’t do either. “For reasons of a mental illness called gullibility?” “Softheartedness?” No.
Tears blurred her vision suddenly; she blinked them back. Memory stirred, bringing her Mandy Rocher’s image as he sat, shoulders hunched, hands trembling a little, telling her that he had to find a chaplain, he really did. Had his hands trembled with secret laughter that she was so easy to fool? Had he looked down to hide the scorn in his eyes? He was such a little . . . little . . . she searched her vocabulary for a sufficiently descriptive phrase. Insignificant. Forgettable. Boring. Pitiful. Nonentity. And to lose her cadetship because of him!
She would get him someday. Vengeance, said her grandmother, was an unworthy goal, but this was a special case. Surely this was a special case.
“I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign from the Academy for reasons that reflect on my ability to carry out the duties of a naval officer.”
Close. Not quite yet.
She looked around the room, squinting to bring the titles of the old books into focus. Herren and Herren’s Chronicles of the Dispersion, all ten volumes. Her family owned III through X, but I and II were very rare indeed in paper form. Cantabria’s Principles of Space Warfare, evidently a first edition. She longed to pull it down and check, but was afraid to. A row bound identically in blue-gray cloth . . . logbooks, the old-fashioned kind. Those would be centuries and centuries old; she got up and looked at the names on the spines. Darius II, Paleologus, Sargon, Ataturk . . . she felt the gooseflesh come up on her arms, and looked quickly at the last, least-faded volume. Centaurus. Not in fact centuries old, not even one century: these were logs that the Commandant had kept, his personal logs from every ship on which he’d served. She’d once memorized the sequence on a dare. Her fingers twitched. What had he thought, felt, done as a young man on his first ship?
She would never know. She had no right to know. The adventures she had hoped to write into such logs herself would never come her way now. She made herself step away from that shelf and look at another. History here, biography there, reference works on all the neighboring states, on the biota of First Colony, on the ecology of water gardens . . . Water gardens? The Commandant studied water gardens?
A sound outside in the passage startled her and sent her back to the table, but the footsteps passed by. She stared at the screen again. “For reasons of . . .” Back to the hand reader. Alternate phrasing: “due to.” Clumsy.
Never say more than you need, her father had said; her mother had muttered that Kylara always said more than she needed.
She’d stop that right now.
“I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign from the Academy for personal reasons.” Short and . . . not sweet. Nothing about this was sweet.
She stared at the screen a long time, glaring at the tiny blue words on the gray screen. Then she moved the paper over and copied the words very carefully, in her best script, the handwriting of a properly-brought-up child and good student.
Panic gripped her when she had signed it. She did not want to do this. She could not do this. She must do this. She looked at the time, 10:22:38. Had destroying her life really taken so little time?
A tap on the door, then it opened. MacRobert again, this time with a large silver tray. A teapot, incongruously splotched with big pink roses. A pair of matching cups, gold-rimmed, on saucers. A small plate of lemon cookies, and another of tiny, precisely cut sandwiches.
“The Commandant will be joining you,” MacRobert said. He set the tray on the end of the library table, picked up her resignation, and walked out with it. Ky sat immobile, staring at the steam rising from the teapot’s spout, trying not to smell the fragrance of cookies obviously fresh from the oven, trying not to think or feel anything at all.
The Commandant’s entrance brought her upright, to attention; he waved her back down. “You’ve resigned, sit down.” He sighed. His left eyelid was back up where it should be, but his whole face sagged. “Pour out, will you?”
Ky carried out the familiar ritual, something she didn’t have to think about, and handed him his cup of tea. He waited, and nodded at her. She poured one for herself. It was good tea; it would be, she thought. He took a sandwich and gave her a look; she took one, too.
He ate his sandwich in one bite, and sipped his tea. “It’s a shame, really,” he said. “Here I had a perfectly good excuse to remove your internal organs and hang them from the towers, make an example of you . . . It’s my job, and I’m supposed to relish it, or why did I ask for it? But you were a good cadet, Mistress Vatta, and I know you intended to be a good officer.”
Then why did you make me resign? That was a question she must never ask; she knew that much.
“In consideration of your past performance, and on my own responsibility, I’ve chosen to let you keep your insignia and wear it as you depart; I trust your sense of honor not to wear it again.”
“No, sir,” she said. The bite of sandwich she had taken stuck in her throat. She had not even considered that he might demand their removal. The class ring on her finger—Hal’s ring, as he wore hers—suddenly weighed twice as much.
“It’s hard for you to believe now, I’m sure, but you will survive this. You have many talents, and you will find a use for them . . .” He took a long swallow of his tea, and actually smiled at her. “Thank you for not making this harder than it had to be. Your resignation was . . . masterful.”
The sandwich bite went down, a miserable lump. She wasn’t hungry; she couldn’t be hungry. She ate the rest of the sandwich out of pure social duty.
“I understand you’ve arranged transport for noon?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to say sir, Ca—Mistress Vatta.”
“I can’t help it,” Ky said. Tears stung her eyes; she looked away.
“Well, then. I would advise that you go out at 1130, while classes are in session. MacRobert will remain with you until your transport arrives, to deal with any . . . mmm . . . problems that may come up. Since the story broke on the early news, the media have been camped at our gates; it’ll be days before that dies down.”
For a moment she had been furious—had he thought she’d do something wrong?—but the mention of media steadied her. Of course they would be trying to get in, trying to interview cadets. Of course the daughter of the Vatta family would interest them, even if Mandy hadn’t mentioned her, and someone would be bound to have a face-recognition subroutine that would pop out her name.
“And there’s another thing.” She had to look at him again, had to see the expression of mingled annoyance and pity that was worse than anything he might have said directly. “The Bureau demands—I realize this isn’t necessary—a statement that you will consider all this confidential and not communicate with the media.”
As if she would. As if—but she took the paper he handed her and scrawled her name on it in a rough parody of her usual careful handwriting.
“You have almost an hour,” the Commandant said. “MacRobert will fetch you when it’s time.” He drained his cup and picked up one of the lemon cookies. “And—if you’ll take advice—drink the rest of that tea, and eat those sandwiches. Shock uses up energy.” He rose, nodded to her, and went out, shutting the door softly behind him.
To her shame, Ky burst into tears. She snatched the tea towel off the tray and buried her face in it. She could always claim she’d spilled the tea; she wasn’t a cadet; she didn’t have to tell the strict truth. Five hard sobs, and it was over, for now. She wiped her face, spread the tea towel out again, and set everything back on the tray in perfect order. No—her cup was almost full. She drank the tea. She ate another sandwich. Disgusting body, to want tea and food at such a time.
The silent room eased her, made calm possible. She got up and paced the circuit, looking at the titles again. Then she took down the logbook labeled Darius II on the back. Just this once—and what could they do to her if they disapproved?
When MacRobert came for her at 1127, she was deep into the logbook, and calm again.
Outside, the weather had changed, as if her fortune changed it, from early morning’s sunshine and puffy clouds to a dank, miserable cold rain with a gusty wind. Her luggage made a pile in the relative safety of the gateway arch; she stood in the shelter of the sentry’s alcove, where she could just see the street beyond, and the gaggle of reporters on the far side. She was still in cadet blue; the sentry ignored her, and MacRobert checked off her bags on a list before turning to her.
“They’ll be near on time?” he asked.
“I expect so,” Ky said. The lump in her throat was growing now; she had to swallow before she could speak.
“Good. We’ll have to frustrate the mob over there . . .” He cocked his head. “You’re not half-bad, Vatta. Sorry you stepped in it. Don’t forget us.” His voice seemed to carry some message she couldn’t quite understand.
“I won’t,” she said. How could he even suggest she might forget this? Her skin felt scorched with shame.
“Don’t be angrier than you have to be.”
“I’m not.” She might be later, but now . . . anger was only beginning to seep toward the surface, through the shock and pain.
“Good. You still have friends here, though at the moment there’s a necessary distance—” He looked at the clock. 1154. “Excuse me for a few moments. I’ll be back at 1200 sharp.”
Ky wondered what he was up to, but not for long. The chill dank air, the gusts of wind, all brought back to her the enormity of her fall from grace. She was going to have to go out there, in the cold rain, and pick up those bags and put them in the vehicle in front of everyone in the universe, obviously disgraced and sent away, and be driven home to her parents like any stupid brat who’s messed up. Like, for instance, her cousin Stella, who had fallen in love with a musha dealer and given him the family codes. She remembered overhearing some of that, when she was thirteen, and telling herself she would never be so stupid, she would never disgrace the family the way Stella had.
And now it was on all the news, whatever had actually been said, and it was all her fault.
A huge black car whizzed past the entrance, flags flapping from its front and rear staffs, and she saw the reporters across the way turn, and then rush after it. “The back entrance!” she heard one of them yell. Their support vans squealed into motion, turned quickly across the street, and sped after the black car. She glanced at the clock. 1159. She stepped out of the alcove into the archway and saw a decent middle-aged dark blue car swerving over to stop at the archway. Twelve hundred on the dot. Two men—the driver and escort—got out of the car.
“I’ll help with these.” MacRobert was back, and already had two of her bags in hand. “Vatta, you get in the car. Jim, get her trunk,” he said to the sentry. In moments, Ky was in the backseat, her luggage stowed in the trunk or beside her, and the two men were back in the car.
“Take care, Vatta,” MacRobert said. “And remember what I said; you have friends here . . .”
At the last moment, she stripped off the class ring and handed it to him. “You’ll know where this should go,” she said. She couldn’t keep it; she could only hope that MacRobert would get it back to him discreetly, that Hal would understand.
The car moved off, sedately, rejoining the traffic stream, and turning at the first corner; Ky glanced to the right and saw a crowd of news vans partway down that block. What, she wondered, did MacRobert want her to remember? That he was kind as well as brusque? Or how stupid she’d been?
The Vatta employees in the front seat didn’t talk on the way to their first stop, the warehouse office at 56 Missalonghi. There, the escort got out and her uncle Stavros climbed into the backseat with her.
“Kylara, my dear . . . are you all right?”
“I’m . . .” She did not want to come apart in front of Uncle Stavros, father of the notorious Stella. “I’m fine.” A lie, and they both knew it, but the right thing to say.
“We’re going over to the airfield—” That would be the private airfield, of course. “You’ll be on a flight to Corleigh; your parents had to run over there to take care of some business a week ago.”
Ky put her mind back to work: Corleigh. Tik plantations. Source of both wealth and problems, because the labor force knew all too well what tik extract brought on the interstellar market, and felt they weren’t getting enough of the profits. “Pickers or packers?” she asked.
Her uncle nodded approvingly. “Packers. The pickers got a new contract last year, and the packers insist they add more value and need another two percent on top of the five percent increase year before last.”
She hadn’t seen the sales figures for tik extract since the holiday before last. “So . . . what’s the quote running?”
“Thirty-eight two seven—down a hundredth from last year; Devann’s come into production, though we judge their product only third-rate. I think the market’ll be back up, but we’ll see.”
Ky knew her uncle had brought this up mostly to distract her, but it did make the journey easier. “What’s their production base?”
“Twenty thousand hectares, five thousand in eight-year-olds, five each in seven, six, and four. Rumor has it they lost their entire planting five years ago, and all the surviving trees lost a year’s maturity. Soil’s good, climate’s marginal.”
“Labor force?”
“Well, now, that’s more of a problem for them than they want to admit, and that’s where their quality falls off. They recruited from the immigrant lists, and none of ’em are experienced. Most of the ag-credentialed immigrants are row croppers who know nothing about trees. What I hear from the market is that their pickers are damaging the fruit, and the packers aren’t tossing the damaged stuff. It’s been a year longer than they planned, after all, getting any income off the place at all, so they’re trying to make it up.”
Ky glanced out the window as the car swerved; they were nearing the private airfield now, and a truck with the blue and red Vatta Transport insignia had slowed for the turn into the cargo bays. Their car sped on to the passenger entrance, paused at the check station for their driver to flash the scans, then followed the service road past the elegant little charter terminal with its tropical garden and colonnade, for those departing or arriving on chartered flights, and on around past the private terminals to the Vatta Transport complex, all in blue with red trim. Sitting out on the apron was the sleek little twin-engine craft in which Kylara had flown from island to island most of her life.
“You can’t pilot yourself today, Ky,” her uncle said, as the car slowed. “Under the circumstances—”
Her vision blurred. She knew she wasn’t safe to pilot anything, not like this, but—
“It’s Gaspard; you remember him.” She did; Gaspard Ritnour had been her first flying instructor, though the family wasn’t supposed to know that. “Let’s get you aboard.” Kylara moved quickly from the car to the aircraft. Automatically she put her feet in the right places on the step and wing, and started to slide into the copilot’s seat.
“You’d better ride in the passenger compartment,” her uncle said.
Ky felt herself flushing. “I won’t try to grab the controls,” she said.
“It’s not that, Ky,” her uncle said. “Gaspard—explain it to her; if she’s going to ride up front you’ll have to take steps. I need to get back—”
Ky buckled in and one of the ground crew slammed the door.