Stella nodded. “Ky, I’m sorry… I have bad news for you. Your parents—your mother died in the attack on the house; your father died of injuries received trying to save her and others.”

Ky felt her face stiffen. Now that tiny sliver of light, that window of hope, slammed shut. She had been so sure—she had hoped so much—that they had not died, or at least one of them survived—she thought she’d anticipated this, but… it was too much.

“And your brother San. I’m sorry, Ky. My father was killed, too, in the bombing of corporate headquarters. My sister Jo died in a separate attack.”

Ky felt each name as a separate weight falling on her, pushing her deeper into darkness. Her father, her mother, her brother, her uncle. “Aunt Helen?” she managed to ask.

“Mother was alive when I left Slotter Key,” Stella said. “So was Aunt Gracie Lane.”

Gracie Lane and her fruitcakes-with-diamonds were a poor substitute for the rest of the family. The memory of her father’s face, in that last call, the look in his eyes, came to her vividly. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think, not to see.

“Aunt Gracie sent me to find you,” Stella said.

“To find me!” Surprise almost melted the numbness; she opened her eyes. “She thinks I’m an idiot.”

“She thinks everyone our age is an idiot,” Stella said. “But she thinks you’re the one person who can sort this out, and she thinks I’m capable of helping you. She knew you needed more data and some help.”

Ky’s mind grabbed for this distraction from the news that her whole family was dead. “Aunt Gracie is—”

“Pretty smart, actually. Did you know she’d been in the war?”

“Aunt Gracie?” That seemed as likely as that Aunt Gracie had wings or gills.

“Yes. I didn’t know, either, until she told me. And showed me. At any rate, she told me to come find you and bring you the Vatta command database, to download into your implant.”

Ky’s hand went to her head. “I don’t have an implant. It was destroyed.”

“But I know your father sent you another one—”

“I haven’t put it in,” Ky said. “I’m not supposed to put one in for six months…” When she counted up the weeks in transit to Belinta, from Belinta to here, it was a lot closer to six months than she’d thought.

“Brain damage?” Stella asked.

“Possible neural instability,” Ky said. She didn’t even want to think about whether that constituted brain damage. “And how did you get hold of the command database? I mean, if my—your—our fathers were killed in the attacks…”

Stella looked away, and swallowed. “Your father lived a few days, Ky… and Aunt Gracie… took charge of the implant.”

Ky stared at her. Her stomach roiled; she did not want to consider what that meant, or how it had been done.

“At any rate, if you’re going to take over as the offplanet Vatta representative, you’d better find a way to use the implant information.”

“You could—” Ky began, but Stella shook her head vigorously.

“You have military training, Ky; I don’t. My expertise is all in another direction.”

Ky hadn’t heard that Stella had any expertise, but then she hadn’t seen Stella for years, what with school, the Academy, and all. “And that is?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

Stella grimaced. “If you access the database you’ll know. I’m not sure I should tell you here.” She glanced aside at Rafe and Toby. Ky felt a cold prickle run up her spine.

“As if you hadn’t learned half or more of it from me,” Rafe said. “But I suppose we must protect innocent young ears.” Toby turned to glare at him. Ky felt the same way, but didn’t let herself show it.

“Later, then,” she said. “If I’m the designated whatever, though, I’ll need to know.”

“Understood,” Stella said.

The others could be another distraction. Ky turned to the boy. “Toby, how far along in your apprenticeship were you? What kind of ship duties did you learn?”

The boy flushed, but met her eyes and answered steadily. “I was over half through, and had completed the training modules in all the specialties, so I was working full shifts under supervision. I’d done environmental and engineering, and was working on navigation and piloting. In port, of course, we all worked cargo.”

“Excellent,” Ky said. “I know you don’t have any of your scores, and unfortunately I need documentation of your training, but we have new crew who are working on their certification exams. Lastway has a complete roster of spacer certification courses, and the sooner you begin the better. What’s your strongest field?”

“Probably drives, ma’am. I did well in all the engineering subspecialties, but Piers—uh, Chief Barklin—said I had a good feel for space drives.”

“Good. I could definitely use a good backup drives specialist.” Any Vatta, however young and inexperienced, who had ship service would be better than Jim. “I’m going to assign you to that area; you’ll be informally assessed, and then start formal classes in a couple of days. That suit?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Toby said.

“I don’t know when we can get you back to a place where you can have regular formal schooling,” Ky said. “What were you planning on, or had you decided?”

“I was supposed to go to Terqua—the main engineering prep school on my home planet, ma’am—and then I hoped to get into Davisi Tech for advanced work, and then back to the fleet.”

“Um. I’ll download additional course work for you, for when we’re enroute. No sense in having you lose more educational time than necessary.” Ky turned to Rafe, who was watching this with a condescending expression. “Now you, sir. Your last name, if I may be so bold…”

“Of course, Captain,” he said, leaning forward, meeting her eye, and putting on what Ky assessed as a pseudo-honest expression. “Though you may as well know that I have several last names, by which I’m known on different worlds. I was born with Dunbarger, but haven’t used it for years. Stella first met me as Rafael Stoner Madestan.”

“Dunbarger!” Stella said.

“I said I haven’t used it for a long time,” Rafe said. “It’s not… euphonious. It is, however, my birth name if anyone were to track it down.”

“Dunbarger…,” Ky said. Where had she heard that name before? Somewhere that had meaning to this whole situation?

“ThatDunbarger,” Rafe said. “The one you’re so obviously trying to remember. ISC senior officer. Very senior, at the moment.”

Into Ky’s mind popped the memory of ISC’s command structure: Dunbarger stood right at the top.

“You might consider me a remittance man,” Rafe said. “If you know what that is.”

“You’re Garston Dunbarger’s son?” Stella said. “You?”

“I had to learn company manners somewhere,” Rafe said. “The knowledge of which fork to use and how to tie a cravat is easiest learned in the kind of home my… parents… kept.” He kept his gaze on Ky, nonetheless.

“Very interesting, if true,” Ky said.

“Oh, it’s true. I can even prove it, though I would prefer not to call down the kind of trouble that would bring on Lastway. At any rate, I was sent away, for cause I might add—no bad feelings on my side—and strongly encouraged to choose another name, or fifty. And later—here’s another new tidbit for you, Stella—later I was hired back, as it were, after a bit of good behavior, which somewhat softened my father’s attitude.”

“Hired back how?” Ky asked.

Rafe’s gaze dropped to his fingernails, which he appeared to study with great interest. “There are things that a supposedly disaffected, disinherited former member of a powerful family can find out—can elicit—that almost no one else can. If you know where both ends of the string are, as it were, untangling the mess someone’s made of it is far easier. By birth I know one end… by experience I discover the other.”

“You’re a company spy,” Ky said.

He gave her a straight look and shrugged. “That’s a bald word for a very… fluffy… concept. Let’s just say that I have been put in the way of finding out things ISC needs to know and have been well paid to transfer that knowledge to ISC. I’m still not welcome at home, but relations are, as it were, softening with time. None of my sisters has produced an heir, and Father would like a grandchild—well, actually it’s Mother who wants one worst, I suspect, but Father is putty in her hands.”