Command Decision (43 page)

“Doesn’t matter,” Rafe said firmly. “Yes, you’ll need to stay in therapy—you’ve had terrible things happen, and everyone needs help after something like that. But I’m here, and I’ll help you.” She looked as if she might cry again; Rafe was too tired to deal with that, he told himself. “Good night, Tinkabear,” he said, softly. For a moment, her face lit up: it had been her nickname as a toddler.

In the morning, she was dressed and ready by the front door, holding a small suitcase, when he came down. He didn’t comment; he, too, was carrying a suitcase, packed with two of his new suits and other necessities. The house was silent; his parents, he hoped, were still asleep. Rafe tapped out the security code; the car outside answered. He opened the door for her, nodding as she went past, and called softly into the silent house “We’re on our way!” as cheerfully as if they were headed for a picnic.

On the ride into the city, she settled herself warily into the wide backseat; her face was pale and her fingers tightened on her case every time they went around a corner. Finally, in the last stretch up to the entrance, she said, “I’m not going back.”

“No one can make you,” Rafe said. “Certainly not me.”

“No one can—you just said that.”

“So I did. Now, what time is your usual therapy appointment, and do you go, or does someone come?”

“The doctor comes. At eleven.”

“We’ll call, to be sure the doctor comes here…unless you’d rather go to someone’s office—and by the way, do you like this therapist?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice had gone soft.

“Of course it does. You’ll get better faster with someone you like and trust.”

“Not…really. He’s all fatherly and comforting, but I can tell he thinks I’m just a spoiled girl who will always be too weak.”

Whether the therapist really thought that or not was not as important as his sister’s belief. Rafe felt the family bond tightening around his shoulders, a noose that would hold him here longer, keep him from Ky. And yet—this was Tinkabear, Pretty Penny, Pennyluck…all the silly childhood pet names came back to him. This was the little sister he’d smacked one time, and much good it had done her. She was his only remaining sister, all he had, really. He could not abandon her just because she was so unlike Ky.

“I’m sure that’s not the only good therapist in the city,” he said. “But first, let’s be sure Mother doesn’t panic when she finds you gone and the therapist is coming. Then we’ll find you a place to stay. Do you want an apartment, or would you feel safer here?”

“I won’t feel safe anywhere,” Penelope said. “But—I’d like to be near you for a while.”

He was not going to have her in his apartment…which meant they should both stay at headquarters for the time being. “Did you visit Father at work much?” he asked.

“No. Not at all since I married, and not much before that.”

“Well then: welcome to the executive life.” One of his bodyguards preceded them up the steps and through the door; Rafe led her to the security desk and spoke to the middle-aged woman there. “Hi, Sylvie. This is my sister Penelope; you will have her biometrics on file. We’ll need an all-shift pass for her. She’s going to be helping me out for a while.”

“Of course, sir.” Sylvie glanced up at Penelope. “If you would, please, put your hand in here and look into the hood. We need a current image for the tag.” In less than a minute, the machine spat out a laminated tag; Sylvie punched a hole in it, attached the clip and a lanyard, and handed it over. “There you are.”

Penelope clipped the tag to her jacket. Rafe waited as his bodyguard checked the lift and his fellow upstairs, then nodded. Rafe ushered Penelope into the lift with a low bow.

“Stop it,” she said, turning pink. “You’re being silly…people will look…”

“You used to like it when I played prince to your princess,” he said, leaning against the wall. “Don’t you remember the time you made me wear Linnet’s dance tights and that coronet?”

This time she giggled. “I’d forgotten that. It must have been a scene out of one of the videos. And you kept wrapping Mother’s evening cape around you, when it was supposed to trail out behind.”

“There are reasons,” Rafe said, putting on a scowl, “why I needed that cape…those blasted tights were too big.”

The elevator coasted to a stop; Penelope stepped forward, but Rafe blocked her. “Why—” she began, but he caught the nod from his guard and stepped back.

“After you, Princess.”

“You aren’t going to call me Princess—”

“Only when you deserve it,” Rafe said. “Now let’s find you a desk—”

“Are you serious? You’re really going to put me to work?”

Rafe shrugged. “Sitting around here doing nothing won’t help you any more than sitting around home…the house. Emil, this is my sister Penelope. Find her a place to work, will you? On this floor, close to me. She’s going to be helping me with some research. In the meantime, Penelope, come into my parlor…”

She gave him a weak, wavering smile.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

B
y the time Rafe had rescheduled Penelope’s appointment with the therapist, Emil had found her a quiet place to work, shifting an assistant one door farther away. Rafe cocked his head at Penelope. “Do you want me to call Mother, or—”

“Please,” she said. “And tell her…” Tears spilled over.

Rafe felt helpless. Any of the usual comforting phrases would be an insult. “I’ll tell her that you and I are both staying here for the time being. I think we can find a therapist who agrees that’s best for you, if yours doesn’t.”

“Th-thanks,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “I’m sorry—” She stood up. “I—I want to find a room—”

“Emil will show you,” Rafe said. “If you need a restroom, or something to drink, or anything—”

When she had left his office, Rafe called home. His mother answered. “Rafe—where’s Penny? Did she go with you? Is she all right?”

“Yes, she’s fine. She’s here with me. Her therapist is coming here today. We’re going to stay here for a few days at least. She needs to get away for a while.”

“Away? But this is her home; she’s safe here.”

“She was abducted from that house,” Rafe said. “She doesn’t feel safe.”

“I—I don’t—” Her face seemed to melt into grief. “I couldn’t stop them…my little Penny.”

“She’ll be fine here, Mother,” Rafe said. “I’ll take care of her. There’s a lovely apartment…and now, I’m sorry, I must go.”

Emil had set up a call with System Defense, whose civilian chief had known his father well. “I was sorry to hear about his condition,” Humphrey Isaacs said. “But he is expected to recover fully, isn’t he? And return to work?”

“We certainly hope so,” Rafe said. “But the damage was severe. The doctors can’t tell us how long it will be, or whether any of the problems will remain. In the meantime, I have data vital to our systems security.” Isaacs said nothing, and Rafe gave him a brief summary of the situation.

“ISC’s fleet isn’t more than a match for them?”

“No. It will take the combined forces of several systems to eradicate this threat. They have already overwhelmed several systems. Most of them weak and underpopulated, but one at least—Bissonet—mounted what we all thought was a sizable and effective space defense. Now they have Bissonet’s ships as well as their own.”

“Well…this is not what I wanted to start my workday with,” Isaacs said, scowling. “You know—or at least your father knew—what our system defenses are. We depended heavily on ISC to round out our numbers.”

Rafe knew more about Nexus’s defense establishment than his father, but it would not be prudent to say so. Officially, here on Nexus, he had never had an identity who was supposed to know anything like that. “I will forward you the data gathered from the recent engagement,” he said. “It is clear that the enemy have a variety of advanced technologies that give them an edge, ship for ship. We at ISC will be upgrading our fleet as quickly as possible; I would suggest you do the same.”

“You don’t think they’d attack Nexus, do you?” Isaacs asked. “We’re one of the biggest, most powerful systems—”

“We’re the richest target around,” Rafe said. “And now that they’ve found ISC vulnerable, I expect they’ll try to amass enough force to do just that. That may have been their aim all along. Capture Nexus and you have a central location already equipped as a communications center for all—or most—human-occupied space. Every system they capture gives them more resources—more ships, more weapons, more wealth. And every capture hurts the legitimate governments and organizations—economically as well as militarily, with the decline of trade. Even if the population resists, there will always be some who see personal profit in joining up.”

“That’s a frightening prospect.” Isaacs looked more thoughtful than frightened, however.

“Yes. I believe it’s going to require immediate consultation and cooperation with other systems to prevent serious consequences not just for us but for all civilized and peaceful systems.”

“Can’t ISC release some of its experimental technology to give us back that edge?”

“I haven’t had time yet to look into our research program and see what would be suitable,” Rafe said. “I do know there’s a technology newly patented over in the Moscoe Confederation that would be of immense benefit. When I’m through talking to you, I’ll be talking to the patent holder to find out how fast it can be produced.”

“Get a license to make it here,” Isaacs said.

“I tried,” Rafe said. “The patent holder has a preexisting deal with the Moscoe government for local manufacture. But I’m hoping we can reserve the first production run.”

“What is it?” Isaacs asked.

“I’d rather not say until I’ve locked in an order,” Rafe said. “But if you can come by my office tomorrow—”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. Talk to you then.”

Rafe took a few minutes to check on Penelope. She was ensconced behind a desk, staring into a screen.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what you want me to look for, Rafe. Emil gave me a stack of financial records…am I looking for embezzlement or…or what?”

“We have several problems, Penny, and I don’t know which you’d be best suited to detect.” Rafe hitched a hip onto her desk. “Embezzlement is one of them. I started by looking for Parmina’s accomplices at the higher levels, the easiest way first: comparing their lifestyles with their known legal income. I figured he had to be paying them, or they had to be stealing from the company. Found one that way. But there are other problems with the company right now, and they’re not necessarily the result of illegal actions. What I’d like you to do is analyze the relative amounts we’ve spent in the main divisions over the past thirty years. I think Research and Enforcement may have been consistently underfunded, but I don’t know where the cream has gone.”

“You want me to concentrate only on the main divisions?”

“Not if you find something that looks strange. Follow your nose. I need a better idea of where the money went—in all ways—and I need to know if it’s fraud or stupidity or just inertia.”

“Is ISC really in trouble?” she asked, as she had the night before. “And…is it Father’s fault?”

“It’s in trouble,” Rafe said. “That much is certain; it’s what I told the Board. There’s new technology loose that has broken our monopoly, though not everyone realizes it yet. We could have had that technology and marketed it ourselves. Instead, we didn’t even patent it, and now someone else has the rights to it and has improved it. We’re so far behind the curve, it’s…it’s as if we weren’t on the same track. About Father—I don’t know. One of the things I need to find out is if he made bad decisions, or if he didn’t get the right data to make good decisions, or if his orders weren’t followed.”

“So this is one giant fishing expedition,” Penelope said.

“Yup. And a lot of work. Work that needs to be done by someone I can trust. Right now there’s no one in our financial divisions I can be sure of.”

“I see,” she said. “Well…I’ll do my best.”

“I’m sure you will,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to the other stuff—we can talk about that later.”

“What did Mother say?”

“What you’d expect. Don’t worry about it. You’re here and she’s there. Later on, when I take a break, I’ll take you over to the apartment and let you get your things settled. Or I can have someone take them now.”

“No. I’d rather do it myself. If you’re busy, where can I get something for lunch?”

“Ask Emil. He can order something up, or you can eat in the executive dining room. If you do that, one of my bodyguards will go with you.”

She nodded. “It’s…it is better here. I’m not seeing…that…”

“Good. Get yourself back to work, then. Your therapist will be here in about two hours; I’ll want to talk to him as well.”

As he went back to his office, Rafe was aware that one problem was—if not solved—maybe moving toward solution. At least Penny wasn’t crying, and she looked more alive than she had at home.

He looked up the temporal conversions. It was evening on Cascadia Station. Stella might be having dinner with someone; she would not want to be interrupted. But he had to talk to her. He placed the call.

“It’s Rafe,” he said when she answered.

“I didn’t think anyone else from Nexus would be calling,” she said crisply. “We will announce the successful licensee tomorrow at noon, as previously stated.”

“That’s not what I called about,” he said. “Are you in a secure location?”

Her face paled. “What—is Ky all right?”

“As far as I know, yes. But what I have to say concerns her.”

“I believe this facility is secure, yes,” Stella said. “Go on.”

“The pirates ran into an ISC fleet. Ky was there. Actually, Ky was the reason the ISC fleet was there—not by my orders, by the way. Against them. But anyway—the pirates chewed up our fleet with ridiculous ease.”

“And Ky got away?”

“Ky and a small number of Mackensee ships managed to drive the pirates away.”

“That idiot!” Stella said. “She should have run for it.”

“That’s what I told her,” Rafe said. “When I was told an ISC fleet was headed her way, I…” He stopped. Stella didn’t know about their shared cranial implant. How could he cover that? “Ky’s people had repaired a system ansible, a relay. That’s what alerted our enforcement division; they sent the fleet, standard procedure, to capture whoever had done the repair. When I found out it was too late to stop the fleet, I contacted her and warned her. It’s complicated—she’d already been in one battle, helping some mercenary ships fight off a pirate attack. She wouldn’t leave the system because the remaining mercenary ship wouldn’t leave. She said a merc relief convoy was on the way to bring supplies and change out trainees, but if the pirates returned in the meantime, the one ship would be helpless.”

“So she didn’t listen to you,” Stella said. “That sounds like Ky.”

“A very stubborn woman,” Rafe said. “I think it runs in the family.”

“You may think that,” Stella said. “I prefer to call it perseverance.”

“Apparently, everyone showed up in the system within a few hours: the ISC fleet, the merc convoy, and the pirates, who were calling themselves the Blueridge Defense Alliance. And using, according to an after-battle report I got from Ky, captured Bissonet military vessels.”

“That’s not good.”

“No. But the real reason I’m calling you now is to ask if it’s possible to preorder onboard ansibles in quantity. I know you haven’t awarded any contracts, but how fast do you think you could scale up production, if you had the cash in hand?”

“ISC wants them?”

“Everyone’s going to want them, but yes: ISC and also Nexus Defense. I’m sure Moscoe’s defense will also want some, but I see Nexus as a prime target. It’s clear from the post-battle data that ships without them are nearly helpless against ships that have them.”

Stella frowned. “Until we have a test run, I don’t know what the real production rate will be. If there’s enough demand, we could expand to another factory, I suppose…”

“I spoke to someone high in our System Defense this morning; I believe by tomorrow I can get you a firm commitment. And I’m going to be in contact with a respectable mercenary company as soon as we can get their ansible up and running—”

“Mackensee?”

“Well…yes. They were involved in the incident with Ky, and their commander on the scene says they’ll definitely want some.”

“Rafe, this is going to shred ISC’s monopoly.”

“I know that. I’ve already informed our Board. We’ve got to find another way to survive—but letting the pirates take over isn’t it.”

“What does your father say?”

“I…he’s still not…capable…”

“So it’s up to you?”

“Yeah. That’s a joke, isn’t it? The exile returns and is supposed to take over and perform a rescue.”

“You will,” Stella said. “How’s the rest of your family?”

Rafe shrugged. “About like you’d expect. My mother’s determined to get things back to normal—which is impossible—and my sister’s deep in depression.” He stopped. “Which reminds me, I need to talk to her therapist and change her appointment for her. I’ll call you later.”

That was abrupt, but the best he could do, he felt.