“Ky?” That was Quincy. “What’s happened—I can’t find Gary—”

“Gary’s—” Ky bent over the sink again, trying to rid herself of the guilt.

“Is he hurt?”

“He’s dead, Quincy.” Ky gulped a mouthful of water, washed her mouth out. “They had him—” Her vision blurred, and she braced herself against the counter. “Sorry… we have organic debris… need to get it cleaned up. Don’t send Alene.” Bad enough for the rest of them, but Alene worked with Gary—had worked with Gary—every day.

“I’ll… get to work,” Quincy said.

Ky washed her face and looked down at her uniform. Blood, some still glistening. She could feel it drying on her face. She would have to change. She had work to do… she had a ship to run. She had no time to spend on sorting out feelings.

As if from a distance, she heard MacRobert’s voice, back when she was a cadet. “Just do it.”

All right. She straightened, shook her head, pushed her hair back. Just do it. No excuses, no apologies… she went back out to the passage where the stench met her before she came in sight of the mess. Two of the crew, Lee and Seth, were standing with buckets and mops, looking sick. The bodies hadn’t been moved.

“What are we going to do with ’em?” Lee asked, gesturing.

A good question. She wasn’t about to put those bodies in with food in the cooler and freezer, but they couldn’t be left here.

“Space ’em,” she said. “We don’t have storage. I’ll document identity, and then we’ll put ’em in the escape hatch and open it.” The thought of kneeling beside them with the recorder, documenting prints and ID implants and so on sickened her, but it had to be done. She deserved to do it, after that surge of glee.

“All of them?” Lee asked, looking at Gary’s body.

“No,” Ky said, shaking herself out of that. “Of course not Gary… we’ll find room in the freezer for him. But the others. Get a small dolly from Alene, but don’t let her come up here and see this. When you’ve dumped them, ask Mitt what he wants to use to clean the mess. I’ve got to get it off me—” She paused. No, better do the ID first, while she was still dirty. She went back to the galley, washed her hands and face, put on gloves from beneath the sink, and looked up the protocols for “Death in Transit, Accidental, Victim, Certifying identity of” in the Code, which was the closest category she could find.

Then, when she had the information safely coded, she helped push the dolly down the corridor, helped pile the three bodies in the emergency access against the outside, pushed the controls to open the outer lock.

She felt better when the corpses were safely out in space, where they could do her no harm. Slightly better. She had Mitt shut off the showers to the passengers so that she could shower long enough to get really clean and run her uniform through the ’fresher. And still the shock, the grief she had no time to deal with hovered somewhere in the near distance, waiting to pounce when her attention wavered.

She would not let it waver.

Chapter Fifteen

Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation had shifted to a more familiar civilian style of corporate organization; clients seemed reassured to find out that MMAC had a business-suited CEO and CFO instead of a commander in uniform. So did the many civilian employees who kept MMAC’s central office working smoothly. Its city offices, two floors of the Sugareen Tower West, reflected the profitability of the business, from the polished marble paneling to the hand-woven Ismarin rugs and the leather-upholstered furniture. Pictures on the wall of the reception area were originals, exotic game animals and wilderness scenes, suggesting adventure without hinting at violence. All scenes of soldiers in uniform, or combat machinery, were elsewhere in the private offices of executives or in the conference rooms.

The current CEO, despite his elegant suiting, had been one of the four field commanders until five years before, when Old John Mackensee himself picked him for what they called “taking point with the clients.” Three years at a regional support headquarters, with TDY to the city offices, where the civvie staff got used to the quiet, almost cherubic redhead. A year as understudy to Stammie Virsh, who was as craggy as a storycube general.

And now Arlen Becker had the watch, and one of his operations had disappeared when the Sabine ansibles went down. Old John had been on the horn within an hour; Old John missed nothing.

“I don’t have to tell you we didn’t do it,” he’d said.

“Tessan has a good record,” Old John had said. “But ISC is going to be all over us when they figure out who’s there.”

“We could volunteer that,” Arlen said.

“Breach of confidentiality,” Old John said.

So Arlen sat on it, carrying on the day-to-day work of the corporation, which kept him busy even when there wasn’t a crisis. MMAC owned more than military matériel, and employed more than mercs. He was expecting the call that finally came from ISC, though not the rank of the individual who showed up in person in his outer office, demanding to see him.

“She says she’s a special adviser to the chairman of the ISC board,” his secretary murmured into his implant.

“What do we have to clear?” Arlen asked.

“You have that regional sales conference.” Boring, and he was just there to put pressure on the vice presidents.

“I won’t go—they can gossip among themselves. What else?”

The list flashed on the implant visual. Nothing that couldn’t be shifted a few hours…

“Send her in.” Arlen glanced around his office—immaculate as always—and set the perimeter safeties. ISC was rumored to employ assassins, but only as a last resort. He didn’t think they’d try one for a first contact, but no reason to be stupidly complacent.

ISC’s special adviser to the chairman was a short, dark-haired woman with a silver streak over the crown of her head. She wore a slightly crinkled dusty rose linen dress, shoes he recognized as stylish and expensive, and carried an old-fashioned ladies’ briefcase in tooled and beaded leather, a pattern of cabbage roses in soft pinks against maroon leather. Rings glittered on her hands; her earrings looked like natural emeralds; they matched her eyes. Her glance around his office missed nothing, he was sure.

He came around his desk, and she offered her hand; he shook it. Small, but firm and cool. She had the calluses of someone who had used a small firearm on a regular basis for a long time.

“Perhaps you’d like to sit here?” he asked, waving her to the cluster of chairs and low couch near a coffee table.

“First, I’d like a straight answer to one question,” she said, not moving. It was absurd; she barely came up to his chest, and yet he had the feeling that he was the schoolboy and she was the teacher.

“Certainly,” he said, inclining his head.

“Were you hired to blow up the communications and financial ansibles in Sabine system?”

“No,” Arlen said. “No one asked us to, and if they had we would not have taken the contract.”

“Did you blow them up by accident?”

“To my knowledge, we did not blow them up at all,” Arlen said. “And that’s two questions.”

“So it is,” she said, and moved to the seating area. She chose the seat Arlen would have chosen in her position, and set her briefcase on the low table. As she reached for the clasps, she said, “Why don’t you sit down, General? This is going to take a while.”

He was almost amused at her effrontery; he sat down anyway, and said, “I’m not a general anymore, you know.”

“Oh, but you are,” she said. She opened the briefcase flat; one side held a compact portable miniansible; the other a rack of data cubes. “Generals don’t quit being generals when they put on business suits. You commanded the third in the Wallensee affair, the Jerai border war, and the defense of Caris. Quite able as field commander though I have to wonder why you didn’t make use of your amphibious capabilities on Jerai… On paper it looks like you could have flanked the enemy…”