“Somewhere else.” His look challenged her to figure it out.
“Give me a one-minute pitch while I contact them,” Grace said. For Mac she need only ping him and tap twice.
“Three families, eight organizations within the military, two possible choke points to prevent this thing blowing up too big. It’s going to blow—can’t stop it—but we can, if we move fast, have a controlled explosion in a confined area.”
By the end of the one-minute pitch, Grace had both MacRobert and General Molosay on conference mode. Several hours later, the conference mode had expanded, and Grace had agreed with Molosay that Orniakos should command the government’s forces on Dorland.
“There will be casualties,” Orniakos warned. “I’ll try to keep it confined to the actual traitors—the civilian population down there doesn’t want another war—but the butcher’s bill may be expensive.”
“If you can save the planet, I’ll pay the bills out of my own pocket,” Grace said. “Were you far enough up the chain that they showed you my file?”
He flushed a little. “Part of it, yes, Rector. In fact it’s the reason I trusted you enough to come to you instead of to the general. I understand combat trauma; easy to see how a youngster without training, caught in that mess, would be messed up for years. And how some things would rub you wrong later. But that’s beside the point. What we’ve discussed will hold the carnage to a minimum, although—in my day the Academy was supposed to protect the government centers. Your niece Ky—brilliant commander in space—does she know anything about surface warfare?”
“She has advisers,” Molosay said before Grace could reply. “And she is heeding them.”
Orniakos gave a half shrug. “Good. I have nothing against her.” He turned to Grace. “Quindlan really hates you, Rector—not only you, but all Vattas. And so do several others.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Michael Quindlan had waited impatiently for this day, and now at last it was happening. Quindlan ships had brought the troops; Quindlan influence and Quindlan money had finally—finally—resulted in his being given a position in the upper echelons of the resistance. He would rather, he told himself, have been out there leading a squad or platoon or whatever they called it of Greyhaus’s soldiers, but Kvannis wouldn’t allow it. Ridiculous, the way the military pretended civilians knew nothing. He’d watched the movies and vid shows.
In lieu of that, he’d taken action within his own family. His niece Linny had done the second-level check on Benny that he’d ordered her to perform—her first official duty, one she knew might get her promoted. Those two had been antagonists since childhood, so if there was a dirty spot on Benny’s apparently perfect character, she’d find it. And she had.
Benny had betrayed him. Linny had befriended Benny’s idiot wife—well on the way to alcoholic if not there already—and pried out of her the fact that Benny had handed over a secret file to Stella Vatta. The boy had had a crush on Stella back when he was eleven or so, but supposedly his father had beaten it out of him. Not hard enough. Well, Benny would find out what happened to Quindlans who disobeyed the head of the family. He would find out in stages, starting with a tragedy he would not, initially lay at Michael’s feet. With luck, he might even blame the Vattas for the vicious attack on his wife that left her alive, but permanently damaged, and his children dead. He should be hearing about it any time now.
“Weather looks difficult,” Molosay’s meteorologist said. “This is a serious snowstorm moving in—”
“It won’t bother them,” Ky said. “They trained both on Miksland’s southern half and up north.”
“But dark and snow—”
“They’ll be more used to it than our troops,” Ky said. “This may be why they hung around an extra day or so before heading into port. They want the dark and snow; they figure it will hurt us.”
On the way back to the Academy, Ky watched the shelf of high clouds as it closed in the sky, horizon-to-horizon. Beneath it, the first softer clouds moved out of the northwest like rolls of fluff. Sleet rattled on the roof of the car as it turned into the Academy gates to the Commandant’s Residence. It had stopped by the time she walked to the door.
She was halfway to her office when Rafe pinged her. “We lost visual satellite surveillance with the clouds, but the ships are not stealthed or silenced. Both ships picked up pilots; Xonsulat is within the harbor and will dock on the north side, near the foot of Ertanya Street. There’s an open berth behind that I’d bet Xonsulor will take.”
“As we expected. Weather says snow starting after dark, with mixed sleet, rain, and freezing rain until then.”
“That’ll make the streets slippery,” Rafe said.
“No problem for them with their tracked vehicles. I need to make calls now.”
In her office, she found messages from Joint Services Command, Neese Base, Harbor Point Base, and the President, who wanted to know if her removal from the Palace was really necessary since nothing had happened since she’d moved out.
“It’s happening now,” Ky said. “The suspect vessels are docking as we speak.”
“Oh. Then I suppose you won’t let me go home—”
“No—your home address is too well known and just about indefensible. Please stay where you are and do not contact me. Your security troops will be with you very soon now.”
Molosay, at Joint Services Command, knew about the ships and wondered if Ky had put any surveillance drones up.
“No, General; we would rather they were less suspicious than more. It’s still too light—” Though the light was dimming as the lower clouds thickened. A snowflake danced by the window, followed by a shower of sleet.
“You expect them tonight.”
“Yes, General. Why would they wait? They’ve come in under cloud cover and it’s almost full dark now; what better time to surprise us? How are things at the base?”
“Trouble at Ordnay—fighting between the loyalists and the insurgents. We expect to be attacked here—” On a sprawling headquarters base that, like the government complex, had never been designed for defense in a serious war.
Ky reminded herself not to give advice that hadn’t been asked for and ended the call. She called a meeting of the faculty and staff who had passed MacRobert’s deep screening—they’d run out of time to screen them all—and gave them a heads-up. The engineer group reported all vehicles fueled and ready to position; that would begin within the hour.
She looked in on the cadet mess hall. No way—since the cadets had no implants—to give them four hours or so of good sleep before the action she expected this night. How long would it take the invaders to get all their equipment off the ships? How long to form up? She went back to the residence, changed into the base layers of her combat gear, and set her implant for four hours, with an override if her skullphone pinged earlier.
Ky’s skullphone pinged, and her implant informed her it was a half hour to midnight. Even as she rolled over and sat up, the red line’s light came on. “Commandant—Unit One. Cattle arriving at stockyard.”
“Enough for that Academy banquet?”
“Would think so. Send them on to processing?”
“Go ahead.”
Ky alerted her local commanders without using the main alarm system. Someone in the Academy was almost certainly on the conspiracist side and in contact with Kvannis. She went to the window: silence outside, and snowflakes dancing in the light from the room. In the distance, soft blurs of light; the forecast had predicted snowfall starting around midnight and becoming heavier toward the morning.