Free Marque and Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon Page B

he had no time to deal with his pain or his grief at the many losses. Or to worry about his youngest child, who had just survived a nearly disastrous first voyage. He had to think of the future, what could be salvaged from the bleak reality of loss.
    “It is a disgrace.” Gracie Lane Vatta, inimitable and invincible, sat bolt upright in her seat. “I cannot imagine what the government is thinking of, to let such things happen.”
    A question Gerard didn’t want to consider yet was just how much the government had been involved. Or part of the government. Or what the disasters still falling on Vatta heads meant to the part of the government he had thought he influenced.
    “How’s the roll call going?” he asked his brother’s widow, Helen Stamarkos Vatta. He liked Helen; he respected her abilities, but he could still hardly believe that Stavros was gone, that he would never have that steadying hand on his arm again.
    “Two hundred nineteen responses,” Helen said. The dark rings around her eyes were the only sign of grief; those, and the mourning band she wore around her hair. She had lost her husband, her elder daughter, a son. “We know of thirty-seven deaths.”
    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.