Into the Fire

  Ky had said she should wear body armor; Rafe had agreed. They had looked up the best weapons shop in the city, before they left for Corleigh, and nagged until Stella ordered a set that combined both impact protection and a chameleon function. But she hadn’t worn it yet. Wearing it was an admission that she was not safe, that all her security measures might not be enough. She’d experienced a personal attack on Cascadia but…this was home. This was her childhood home, where she had always been—always felt—safe. She knew every centimeter of it, including those secret places even Ky didn’t know. Even the attack in the driveway hadn’t persuaded her.

  She looked at the nondescript gray undershirt with its discreet buttons on the cuffs to control the chameleon function, its hood that folded down into a low turtleneck. It had cost an incredible amount for something so plain, so…ugly. She hadn’t even been able to buy it in a color that suited her. She touched it, then shook her head.

  Nothing was going to happen tonight. Whatever happened would happen where they were. And yet—if she didn’t wear it and something did happen here, she would never hear the end of it. If she lived. Her thoughts veered back and forth.

  Finally, with a sigh, she pulled out the shirt and put it on. Lightweight, surprisingly soft, neither warm nor chill. She left the rest of the outfit in the drawer: the long pants, the gloves, the booties that could fit over her footwear. Sensible caution was one thing, but giving in to paranoia was another.

  She pulled on a pair of green wool slacks, tucking the shirt in, then one of her favorite sweaters over it. She looked in the mirror—no sign of the armor, of course. Her shoulder holster lay on the bed, another unwelcome reminder of danger. She put the harness on again, though it ruined the look of the sweater, and a short house wrap over it. Checked the pistol automatically, though she had checked it before leaving for home. Fully loaded. Spare magazine in the drawer of the bedside table, two boxes of ammunition in the cabinet below, along with her night-vision goggles and a wicked-looking knife she refused to consider, no matter what Rafe said.

  Downstairs, the usual lights were on in the usual rooms, all the shielding still on as it should have been. She selected her favorite music, a string quartet playing a concerto from two centuries before that Ky had always called boring. If she had to be in the house alone, she’d play what she pleased. She took her dinner out of the warming oven and decided to take it up to the upstairs office.

  She wondered, as she ate, if Ky had told Aunt Grace she was leaving and why. Surely Grace would know. Maybe she knew when it would be over. She called Grace most evenings between 2000 and 2030; a call couldn’t possibly be suspect, and besides Rafe and Teague had increased the security of all the Vatta communications. When she finished the excellent little lemon tart Allie’d made, she called Grace’s number.

  “Stella? Where are you?”

  “At home, Aunt Grace. Everything’s fine. Quiet, with all of them gone—”

  “Stella.” Aunt Grace’s tone stopped her. “Let’s talk about the business.”

  “The business? But what about—?”

  “Are you planning to open a new plant to manufacture the latest revisions of the shipboard ansible design, or can you retool?”

  Clearly Grace knew the others had left—had known before she did. Probably she knew the whole plan in detail. And clearly Grace did not want to talk about it. Stella struggled to keep her voice level over the anger that rose higher. Left out again, alone again in possible danger—“Is it the link or me you don’t trust, Auntie?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Never mind,” she said quickly, before Grace could say anything. “No, modification in ansible design won’t require a complete retooling but we’ll need to move one end of the line—since I anticipated there would be future changes, the facility was built with that in mind.”

  “Excellent,” Grace said. “Is Helen still on the Board?”

  “No; she asked to be removed, so she could concentrate on the children.” She did not want to talk about Helen, or the family, or the business. Before Grace could ask another deflecting question, Stella asked, “Do you have any time frame for returning to your house?”

  “I’m quite safe here, Stella, for the time being. Do you find it inconvenient to visit here?”

  “No—I’m just—” Thinking of you and Mac would not go over well. “Concerned,” she chose instead.

  “I’ll move back to the house when I’m discharged from physiotherapy. They come by every day to make me sweat.”

  “That’s good,” Stella said. Grace wasn’t going to give up a thing, that was obvious. “I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, Aunt Grace.”

  “Good night, Stella.” And Grace broke the connection.

  Stella stared at the handset before setting it down with unnecessary care. She was not fooled. She was not happy. Ky hadn’t had the elementary courtesy to warn her the house would be empty. Grace still treated her as an inexperienced child. She picked up the tray with care not to let the silverware rattle, and took it downstairs again. She put the dishes in the autowasher; she, unlike her cousin, never left dirty dishes lying around for someone else to clean. Ky could have left her Allie, at least.

  She put that thought aside with an effort. At least she had the rest of the evening to herself, and the music Ky found boring she found pleasant. In the security office, she checked all the outdoor video feeds. The street was empty now, the tracks of earlier traffic almost covered by snow. There might be light traffic later, when theaters closed and dinner parties were over. She imagined for a moment being young again, spending an evening out, dining, attending a concert or play, laughing and chatting with friends. She had enjoyed that. But that time was over, as long as this crisis lasted.

  The automatic timer turned lights off and on using its randomizing scheduler. Stella closed down the files on the office computer and opted for an early bedtime.

  —

  “Anything?” The night supervisor, Vogel, looked up from his report form when Archer took the headphones off and turned toward the desk.

  “Pressure tape on the Rector’s windows. Stella Vatta called, said the house was ‘quiet, with all of them gone.’ The Rector shut her down; Stella objected, and the conversation went elsewhere. Nothing new about the plant modifications that we didn’t already know. But it sounds like the Vatta house may be empty but for Stella.”

  “Ah. She is usually armed, and a good shot.”

  “Yes, sir, but at night? The house shielding is still full on, and as reported earlier—”

  “The weak bands are now fully functional, yes, Archer. I haven’t forgotten. What about the garage?”

  “Her car’s not there, but we know it’s still being repaired.”

  “Her ankle injury?”

  “It wasn’t broken, but one of the Vatta employees was overheard saying she was still limping.”

  “Well. Thank you. I’ll pass this on.” Vogel copied the recording and attached it to a report that went directly to Michael Quindlan. Aside from that it was a boring shift—no more communications in or out of Grace Vatta’s borrowed apartment, nothing from Stella Vatta’s house—until a half hour later he had a call from Michael Quindlan himself.

  “Patch into the team leader,” Quindlan said. “Call me on this link when something happens.”

  “Yes, ser. What—” But the link was already dead. He gave the assignment to Vogel; the other operators were monitoring other sites.

  “Do you want me to run a double on the house itself?” Vogel asked.

  “I wasn’t told,” he said. “But yes, you should if you can.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DAY 9

  Stella found the empty silence less restful than she’d expected. She dozed off, woke again, dozed off, woke again. She could not help wondering where exactly the others were, what was happening, what would happen. Ky was impetuous; Rafe was decisive; Teague she still couldn’t figure out. The three women fugitives would do anything Ky told them, being milit
ary. The others, the civilians and military she didn’t know about, because Ky had said she didn’t need to know…they included Vatta employees, which she felt strongly she did need to know about. Rodney, for instance. Shortly after midnight, still not sleeping well, she got up, pulled on her house boots, and went to the office down the passage. She called up the flight plans for Vatta. Routine cargo flights out of Port Major, delivering goods ordered for the next day, it looked like. But any of those flights might have carried up to eight passengers, some of them ten. And she knew Grace had connections with Traffic Control; passengers might or might not be listed on the manifests.

  She closed that search and tried to concentrate on the work she’d put in the transfer box.

  A light on the desk security display turned red. She stared at it a moment. When she didn’t press the response button, the system buzzed. She touched the button. ROOF. GABLE OVER C-WING. She stared at the readout. It couldn’t be. Was someone already in the house? Could they possibly get through the hull-strength protection of the main house? And she was alone. She hit the panic button on the desk, fear already rising to choke her. The direct line to Vatta HQ didn’t light up. She picked up the handset anyway, entered the number. Another red readout: no connection. She tried her skullphone. Nothing.

  Panic grew; her breath came short. She had her pistol, but how many intruders were there? She fumbled at the drawers, opening the one with spare magazines ready-loaded, one of her father’s habits, and pocketed them before remembering that his pistol used different ammunition from hers—and his pistol had been lost in the explosion. She looked at the wall behind which the secret room lay. She could go there. She could wait it out. Unless they found the codes. Unless they blew up the house. She was up, halfway to her bedroom, before she realized it. Now what?

  She linked her implant to the house internal security system—that worked, at least. Now she could see from the sensors that several people were on the roof, already entering one of the dormer windows. Others were below, near every ground-level exit. Suddenly the four near the front door disappeared as she saw the lights of a vehicle approaching along the street. It passed by; the figures reappeared as if by magic.

  Chameleon suits. They had full chameleon suits. So did she, but she’d put on only the top. She kicked off her house boots, yanked off her slacks, fumbled in the drawer for the pants and pulled them up, sealed them to the shirt, pulled on her wool slacks again. Took off the sweater, shivering a bit with fear and the chill. It seemed to take hours, but the glowing clock face on the bedside table clicked the seconds off slowly. It hadn’t taken even a full minute yet. Back into socks and boots. A dark close-fitting top, the shoulder holster, the dark padded jacket Rafe had insisted on, with pockets for the extra ammunition. Two and a half minutes. Only one had gone into the window so far; others were doing something up there but she couldn’t tell what. There were ways to cut through ship hulls, if you had time and the right tools.

  Where could she go? And how many would she have to deal with? She turned off the bedroom light, as if she were going back to bed, switched her implant to night-vision amplification, and made her way back down the passage toward the staircase. On the left, a door concealed in paneling let her into a storage room stacked with office supplies. She ducked under the shelving at the far end, pulled open the low door, and crawled into the passage behind it, shutting it after her. Straight ahead to the outer wall, then right.

  The intruders had already entered the second attic bedroom, the one that had been Jo’s. Light flared in the video pickup: they were using a torch to cut through the shielding that covered the staircase access. So they must have known about it, or hacked into the house system. It would take them minutes…she thought of hurrying downstairs to the security office, trying to punch a signal through somehow, but that kind of work wasn’t in her skill set. If only Rafe or Teague had been there. She cursed Rafe and Ky silently, for leaving her alone with no warning. Not even Rodney, not even a day’s warning to let her get someone else in. It wasn’t fair!

  A muffled thud from the far end of the children’s wing. They were through. Shadows flowed down the staircase, opened the guest suite door. She saw them clearly now, heads covered in helmets—she didn’t have one and her head felt naked, exposed, even behind the secret space’s armored walls. She reached back and tugged her suit’s hood out of the collar and over her hair, for all the good that would do. The finer mesh of the face shield fell down, tickling her nose on the way.

  She looked through the peephole set in an elaborate piece of artwork on the other side of the wall. Two entered each of the bedrooms closer to the stairs: a fast search. If anyone spoke she couldn’t hear it.

  And now that group—six—were in the passage, and more were landing on the roof. Her heart pounded; her breath came short. Too many; she couldn’t possibly win. And yet…she wanted to live. Her body felt as if it were shrinking in on itself. She forced a deep breath then another. They were to the staircase. Two started down. The other four waited, and four more came out of the guest suite.

  Stella sighted on the nearest and got off two shots—both targets jerked, but did not fall—before one of the others responded with a spray of bullets that knocked chips off the carving but did no real damage to the wall or her. Of course they had armor…but her enhanced sight showed the weakened hot spots where the first bullets had hit. Her next two hit the same spots; the two after that took out the faceplates on the helmets of the other two. Now the following four were flattened into the bedroom doorways, and more chips came off the carving. From below came a whump and her implant’s icons for the house security went dead. Now she had no video contacts to know where they were.

  She backed away, slid through another hidden door into the adjoining room, opened the door into the passage, and saw one of them running toward her. She fired the rest of that magazine and the man went down hard only a meter away. She darted out, grabbed his weapon, tried to get his helmet but it wouldn’t come off and it was taking too long. She jumped back into the room and closed and barred the door. Slammed her second magazine into her pistol. Back to the passage. One of them was within ten centimeters of the peephole, faceplate lifted. She fired directly into his face, then into the faceplate of the one behind him. Then at the two coming back upstairs. They flinched but didn’t fall. Five down, but there were more. And she had used up all her pre-loaded ammunition.

  Her fingers shook as she reloaded the first magazine, slammed it home, reloaded the second. Why hadn’t she followed her father’s practice, kept more loaded magazines? Filling them both cut her down to one box. She had that weapon she’d taken from the man in the passage, and it had a huge magazine, but she had never used a gun like that.

  Point the open end at the target; your hand will find the trigger. Her father’s voice. Another deep breath; she found the comfortable place to hold it, and the trigger to pull, then set it down beside her. Then she fingered the chameleon suit’s sleeve control to full concealment and saw the carpet instead of her arm—she’d forgotten to do that before—and her hands floating in the air. Gloves. She’d forgotten the gloves that extended the field. And the booties. They’d see hands and feet and intuit where her body must be.

  The gloves and booties were in her bedroom. Down the passage, around the corner—too far, she was sure, to make it before one of them saw her and shot her. Could she could make it across the passage into her father’s office and the secret room undetected? But then she would be trapped. It had no other exit.

  The hidden passage she was in wound around to the row of bedrooms—if no one detected the void in the walls or the entrances to it. The entrance to her bedroom was through the desk in the corner; the drawer with the gloves and booties across the room, in the closet. And had she left her bedroom door open or closed? Would she come crawling out of the desk’s keyhole to find them standing over her? She picked up the larger weapon and edged that way, trying not to make a sound, trying to fix her mind on pra
ctical things. Someone at Vatta headquarters should have noticed that the house was cut off from the security grid. Wouldn’t they send a team to check? How long would that take?

  DAY 10

  After midnight, the Vatta HQ Security Watch spent most of their time checking buildings: Vatta warehouses, the headquarters building itself, the hangars and offices of Vatta Transport’s space at Port Major’s airport. They could do much of the work remotely, as computers at headquarters pinged the buildings’ security systems and received alarms. Mobile teams then checked out any anomalies. Someone always sat in the control room, watching for any signal that one of the buildings had been broken into, fences cut, or the like.

  Georg Bakli and Ferran Hallen had the watch, and Ferran had stepped out for a few minutes when one of the boards beeped. Georg punched the RECORD button and called up the incident description. The Vatta town house had failed to respond to the regular ping sent by Vatta’s computers.

  Such failures weren’t common, but they weren’t rare, either. Usually they self-repaired in a few minutes, or a branch had brought down a wire, something like that. But since the house had been broken into only eleven days before, Georg didn’t wait for self-repair but queried the house’s system, to interrogate its own security system. CONNECTION NOT AVAILABLE. That was unusual. The house’s security system not responding on either hardwired or wireless suggested something more serious.

  He looked on the log. Supposedly seven—no eight—people were staying at the house. If anything was wrong—invasion, fire, equipment failure—the backup would alert them. They would then call the security center and report it. Ferran came back in the room. “What’s wrong, Georg?”

  “Vatta town house—not responding and I can’t get to the house system either way.”

  “They’ve had that ISC man there messing with the system—maybe he screwed something up.”

  “It was working fine a half hour ago.” Georg pulled up the log on his screen. “Until three minutes twenty seconds ago.” Had it really taken him that long to look up the residents in-house?