But there would be more deaths, of that he was sure. The ones he knew were bad enough. His wife, his son, the household staff, the men and women in the office building.
He pushed the memories away. Myris was dead, drowned in the midst of a fireball, her skull crushed by some piece of debris. San was dead, with all but two in the office building. And he still had responsibilities, work to do that could not wait for him to recover either physically—from the burns and broken bones—or emotionally.
The remaining Vatta family members on Slotter Key were all present, crammed into the storm bunker under a tik warehouse now a pile of twisted blackened steel overhead. It was the safest place he could think of, but his skin crawled at the thought that someone else might know of it, and even now might be about to blow them all away.
“What about communications?” he asked.
“The ansible message bins are stuffed,” Helen said. “Timmis Hollander” —the local ISC manager; Gerard knew him well—” doesn’t know why, he claims. I suspect whatever the cause, it’s affecting more than Slotter Key. This list is just the ones who got through before—” She looked at her list. “—before 1453 Capital Standard Time yesterday.”
“All right.” Gerard took a deep breath. It hurt; he struggled not to cough. The family physician wanted him in a hospital, but he wasn’t about to sit still in so obvious a target. “We still have local communications with our remaining people on the mainland. Perry Adair is positioned in this system, not docked at the Slotter Key main station, and nothing has attacked the ship.” He didn’t have to add yet. “We have one remaining shuttle, now docked at the station, under local guard. We have been advised that permission to transit planetside will not be granted at this time.”
“So we’re stuck here,” said Gracie Lane.
“Not… completely. Commercial carriers have agreed to transport less… er… prominent family members to the station for a hefty surcharge.” They would not transport him, or Helen, or any other officer of the company.
“Does anyone know why we were attacked?” Gracie asked. “Other than our being rich and powerful and making a move on Pavrati last year?”
“No,” Gerard said. “No definite indication has come. I suspect that it is not unconnected to the problems ISC is having, since we have long been public in our support of ISC’s monopoly, and opposition to it has been growing for the past few decades.”
“Is it because Kylara got involved with those pirates in the Sabine mess?” she asked, with an unerring instinct for the one thing he did not want to think or talk about.
“She did not get involved, as you put it,” he said. “She had no choice—”
Gracie sniffed. “She doesn’t see choices, that girl. She sees openings.” Then she grinned. “Not a bad way to fight a war, actually.”
Gerard blinked. He remembered suddenly that the scrawny, pestiferous old woman, the bane of the family in some ways, creator of the least edible but most valuable fruitcakes in the universe, was enough older that she had been in the last war. He wasn’t sure as what, but he remembered his father saying something… he queried his implant and there it was, her military file. Gracie? Behind the lines? Somehow he had not connected her expertise in surveillance and information collecting—suitable civilian activities for a nosy old lady—with their military equivalents.
“Well, don’t stare like that,” she said, misreading the cause of that stare. “It is a war, isn’t it? We have an enemy, whether we knew it or not. They killed our people, attacked our business and our homes, broke our line of communication. Did it fairly well, you have to give them that… we certainly weren’t prepared. But now—it’s a war, and we’d better win it. I do not intend to spend the rest of my days sitting in some smelly, stuffy bunker under the wreck of a tik processing plant.”
“I… hadn’t thought of it as war, Gracie,” Gerard said. “I mean… of course it was an attack—is an attack—but wars are for… for governments.”
“War is war,” Gracie said. “And our government is doing damn-all about it. Just as well young Ky had those years in the Academy, and just as well she didn’t graduate. She couldn’t help us then.”
“She can’t help us now,” Gerard said. “If she’s even still alive.” He wanted to pray that she was, but he had no prayers to speak, not after losing Myris, San, Stavros, the others…
“We’ll see,” Gracie said. “I will say, she’s not an idiot.”
That was a concession, considering how she’d spoken of Ky before. Gerard cleared his throat with difficulty, and went on with what he thought the agenda should be.
“The point is, what we have left of Vatta Enterprises is now in serious trouble. Vatta Transport in space is out of communication, except for Perry Adair. Insurance reimbursements on our Slotter Key planetary assets—land, improvements, movable property—will have to be used to cover contractual obligations. If we’re lucky, if they actually pay out in a reasonable amount of time, it won’t exceed contractual obligations. Out of system—as of our last incoming data burst—we have lost insurance coverage on our ships, and as a result we have lost contracts. And as you know, we had purchased fifteen new hulls in the last four years… well, now those loans are being called in. Ordinarily, we would be able to cover that. Now… we can’t.”
“So… you’re talking bankruptcy?” Gracie asked.
“I’m talking ruin,” Gerard said. “You talk about war, and winning… Gracie, we have nothing to fight with. We have no money. We have no credit. We have no capital assets with which to make money.”
“Nonsense! We have Vatta ingenuity, Vatta drive—”
“We don’t even know if we have Vattas, other than ourselves,” Gerard said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “My best estimate, prior to this, is that we’ve lost eighteen percent of our interstellar tonnage—but if we can’t get insurance, and no one trusts us with cargo, that’s eighty-two percent useless and expensive junk. Can we sell the ships? Certainly, at a loss, to our competitors… but only if we regain communications with their captains. We don’t have any procedures whereby captains can sell Vatta-owned ships on their own responsibility. And more—the Slotter Key government is distancing itself from our problems, just when we need it. There have been mutters in the Circle that we brought trouble here by being so obvious a target. We have been informed that protecting Vatta interests is a drain on taxpayer resources.”
“We aren’t nearly as conspicuous as some I could name,” Gracie said. “President Varthos—”
“Yes, I agree,” Gerard said, cutting off what he was sure was her usual rant about the President and his family. He himself thought the pink shellstone presidential palace was a bit overdone, but quite attractive in detail. “But the point is that we were attacked and they weren’t, and they don’t want to give us the kind of protection we want—and need—for fear of becoming targets themselves. I’ve tried pointing out that we are also taxpayers, but right now we aren’t likely to be major contributors to anyone’s campaign budget.”
“He’s been got at,” Gracie said.
“Possibly, but it will do no good to say so.” Gerard pinched his nose again. Gracie was so talented at giving headaches—he wished he could sic her on whoever their enemy was. “Here’s what we have to decide. Our private funds are still intact, so far as I know. Banks on Slotter Key haven’t failed, and though there may be problems related to the failure of the financial ansibles, I’m assured that my own accounts, for instance, are available. We here can choose to put our own money back into the company and try to keep Vatta afloat, at least here, or we can take our money and… and run, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“How much would we need?” Helen asked.