A classic space opera with a great heroine. Available in e-book
Kylara Vatta is the only daughter in a family full of sons,
and her father’s only child to buck tradition by choosing a
military career instead of joining the family business. For
Ky, it’s no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta
Transport Ltd. shipping concern can’t hold a candle to
shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser.
It’s adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And
despite her family’s misgivings, there can be no doubt that
a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But
with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling
down. Expelled from the Academy in disgrace–and returning home to
her humiliated family, a storm of high-profile media
coverage, and the gaping void of her own future–Ky is ready
to face the inevitable onslaught of anger, disappointment,
even pity. But soon after opportunity’s door slams shut, Ky
finds herself with a ticket to ride– and a shot at
redemption–as captain of a Vatta Transport ship. It’s a simple assignment: escorting one of the Vatta
fleet’s oldest ships on its final voyage . . . to the
scrapyard. But keeping it simple has never been Ky’s style.
And even though her father has provided a crew of seasoned
veterans to baby-sit the fledgling captain on her maiden
milk run, they can’t stop Ky from turning the routine
mission into a risky venture–in the name of turning a
profit for Vatta Transport, of course. By snapping up a lucrative delivery contract defaulted on
by a rival company, and using part of the proceeds to
upgrade her condemned vehicle, Ky aims to prove she’s got
more going for her than just her family’s famous name. But
business will soon have to take a backseat to bravery, when
Ky’s change of plans sails her and the crew straight into
the middle of a colonial war. For all her commercial savvy,
it’s her military training and born-soldier’s instincts
that Ky will need to call on in the face of deadly combat,
dangerous mercenaries, and violent mutiny. . . .
Excerpt Chapter One Kylara Vatta came to attention in front of the Commandant's
desk. One sheet of flatcopy lay in front of him, the print
too small for her to read upside down. She had a bad feeling
about this. On previous trips to the Commandant's office,
she had been summoned by an icon popping up on her deskcomp.
Those had all been benign visits, the result of exams passed
in the top 5 percent, or prizes won, and the Commandant had
greeted her with the most thawed of his several frosty
expressions. Today it had been "Cadet Vatta to the Commandant's office,
on the double," blaring out over the speaker right in the
middle of her first class period, Veshpasir's lecture on the
history of the first century pd. Veshpasir, no friend to
shipping dynasties, had given her a nasty smirk before
saying, "Dismissed, Cadet Vatta." She had no idea what this was about. Or rather, she hoped
she didn't. Surely she had been careful enough . . . "Cadet Vatta," the Commandant said. No thawing at all, and
his left eyelid drooped ominously. "Sir," she said. "I won't even ask what you thought you were doing," he said.
"I don't want to know. I don't care." "Sir?" She hated the squeak in her voice. "Don't play the innocent with me, Cadet." Rumor had it that
if his left eyelid actually closed, cadets died. She wasn't
sure she believed that, but she hoped she wasn't about to
find out. "You are a disgrace to the Service." Ky almost shook her head in confusion. What could he be
talking about? "Going outside the chain of command like this"—he thumped
the sheet of paper—"embarrassing the Service." "Sir—" She gulped,caught between the etiquette that required
silence until she was given leave to speak, and a desperate
need to find out what had the Commandant's eyelid hovering
ever nearer to its mate. "You have something to say, Cadet?" the Commandant asked.
His voice, like his face, might have been carved out of a
glacier. "Do go ahead . . ." It was not a generous offer. "Sir, with the greatest respect, this cadet does not know to
what the Commandant is referring . . ." His lips disappeared altogether. "Oh, you can play the
innocent all you want, Cadet, and maintain that formal
folderol, but you don't fool me." He paused. Ky searched her
memory, and came up empty. "Well, since you insist, let's
try this: do you recall the name Mandy Rocher?" "Yes, sir," Ky said promptly. "Second year, third squad." "And you can think of no reason why I might connect that
name and yours?" "Sir, I helped Cadet Rocher locate a Miznarii chaplain last
weekend, when Chaplain Oser was away . . ." A dim glimmer of
what might be the problem came to her but she couldn't
believe there would be that much fuss about a simple little
. . . "And just how did you locate a Miznarii chaplain, Cadet?" "I . . . er . . . called my mother, sir." "You called your mother." He made it sound obscene, as if
only the lowest criminal would call a mother. "And told your
mother to do what, Cadet?" "I asked her if her friend Jucha could refer me to a
Miznarii chaplain near the Academy." "For what reason?" "I told her that one of the underclassmen was overdue for
confession and the Academy chaplain was out of town." "You didn't tell her what he wanted to confess?" Ky felt her own eyebrows going up. "Sir, I don't know what
he had to confess. I only know that he was in distress, and
needed a chaplain, and I thought . . . I thought it would
save trouble if I just got him one." "You're not Miznarii yourself . . . ?" "No, sir. We're Modulans." Actually, they were Saphiric
Cyclans, but that was such a small sect that nobody
recognized it, and Modulans were respectable and
undemanding. You could be a Modulan without doing anything
much at all, a source of some humor to more energetic sects.
Ky found Modulan chapel restful and had gone often enough to
acquire a reputation for moderate piety—the level most
approved by Modulans. "Hmmph." The Commandant's eyelid twitched upward a
millimeter; Ky hoped this was a good sign. "You had no idea
that what he wanted to confess concerned the honor of the
Service?" Her jaw dropped; she forced it back up. "No, sir!" "That he made a formal complaint to this Miznarii, in
addition to his confession, which the chaplain took
immediately to the Bureau of War, where it fell into the
hands of a particularly noxious bureaucrat whose sister just
happens to be on the staff of Wide Exposure, so that I found
myself on the horn very early this morning with
Grand-Admiral Tasliki, who is not amused at all . . . ?" It
was not really a question; it was rant and explanation and
condemnation all in one. "The bureaucrat spoke on Wide
Exposure's ‘Night Affairs' program at 0115—clever timing,
that—and this morning all the media channels had something
on it. That's only the beginning." Ky felt hot, then cold, then hot again. "S-sir . . ." she
managed. "So even if you did not know, Cadet Vatta, what Cadet Rocher
wanted to confess, you may be able to grasp that by going
outside the chain of command you have created a very very
large public rela- tions problem, embarrassing the entire
general staff, the Bureau of War, and—last but not least—me
personally." "Yes, sir." She could understand that. She could not, she
thought, have anticipated it, and now she was consumed by
curiosity: what, exactly, had Mandy Rocher said? They
weren't allowed access to things like Wide Exposure except
on weekends. "You are an embarrassment, Cadet Vatta," the Commandant
said. "Many, many people want your hide tacked on the wall
and your head on a pike. The only reason I don't—" His
eyelid was up another millimeter. "The only reason I don't,
is that I have observed your progress through the Academy
and you have so far been, within the limits of your ability,
an exemplary cadet. When I thought you'd done it on purpose
I was going to throw you to the wolves. Now—since I suspect
that you simply fell for a sob story and your entire
barracks knows you have a soft spot for underdogs and lost
lambs—I'm simply going to take the hide off your back in
strips and see your resignation on my desk by 1500 hours
this afternoon." "S-sir?" Resignation . . . did that mean what it sounded
like? Was he kicking her out? Just because she'd tried to
help Mandy? Now the eyelid came all the way back up. "Cadet Vatta, you
have—unwittingly, perhaps—created a major mess with
implications that could damage the Service for years. Your
ass is grass, one way or the other. You could be charged,
for instance, with that string of articles beginning with
312.5—I see by your expression that you have, belatedly,
remembered them . . ." She did indeed. Article 312.5 of the Military Legal Code:
failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner of
potentially harmful personnel situations. Article 312.6:
failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner of
breaches of security involving sensitive personnel. Article
312.7: failure to inform superior officer in a timely manner
of . . . rats, rats, and flying rats. She was majorly doomed. "I . . . wasn't thinking, sir." That was not an attempt at
apology, merely a statement of fact. "Fairly obvious. What did you think might happen?" "I thought . . . Mandy—Cadet Rocher—was so upset that day—I
thought if he could see a chaplain and confess or whatever,
he'd settle down until the regular chaplain got back. He had
those exams coming up, and they were group-graded; if he
didn't do well, his squad would suffer for it . . ." "What you don't know, Cadet, is that Rocher had been
avoiding the regular chaplain's cycle; his so-called
emergency was of his own making. He wanted to talk to
someone outside the Academy, and you made that possible." "Yes, sir." "And you didn't tell anyone at all about this, did you?" "No, sir." "Easier to get forgiveness than permission, is that what you
were thinking?" "No, sir . . . not really." One of the places where Modulans
and Saphiric Cyclans disagreed was about the giving of aid.
Modulans felt that moderate assistance should be moderately
public—one did not make a huge display of charity, but one
allowed others to know charity was going on, to set a good
example. Saphiric Cyclans, on the other hand, believed that
all help should be given as anonymously as possible. Now was
probably not the time to talk about that difference. "I am so reassured." The Commandant's eyelid quivered.
"Cadet Vatta, it is unfortunate that you have to suffer for
a generous impulse, but we need naval officers with brains
as well as kind hearts. You will not return to class. You
will, as I said, present a letter of resignation which does
not mention any of this, and cites personal reasons as the
cause, by 1500 hours. Sooner, Cadet, is better than later,
but first you will go to Signals, and make contact with your
family, so that you will be able to leave quietly and
quickly when that resignation is approved." The look he gave
her now was warmer by a few degrees, but still not cordial.
"Staff will pack up your things; they will be at the gate
when you depart." "I . . . yes, sir." "And yes, you infer correctly that you are not to speak to
any of your former associates. Your departure will be
explained as seems most expedient for the Service." "Sir." Not speak to anyone. Not to Mira or Lisette . . . not
to Hal. Only another few months, and we can—but not now, not
ever. Please, please, let no one figure out . . . "You are dismissed." "Sir." Ky saluted, rotated correctly on her right heel, and
left his office, her mind a blur. Signals. She knew where
Signals was. She passed without really seeing an enlisted
man in the passage, and another at the head of the stairs
down to the classroom level. Halfway to Signals, her mind
clicked on long enough to panic . . . She had to call her
family, tell her father and, oh heavens, her mother that she
was disgraced, dismissed . . . Her brothers would all . . .
her cousins . . . Uncle Tomas . . . Aunt Grace, worse than
Uncle Tomas, who would say again all she had said when Ky
first went to the Academy, laced with I told you so . . . She felt the tremor in her hands, and fought to still it.
Now, for this short period of time, she was still a cadet,
and now, for this short period of time, she would act like
one. Even as the dream went down in smoke and ashes, even
then . . . her stomach looped wildly once and settled. At the door of Signals, a uniformed guard stared past her. "Cadet Vatta, on order of the Commandant," she said. He stepped aside, and she heard him murmur into his comunit
"Cadet Vatta at Signals, sir." Commander Terry had the watch in Signals; his expression
suggested that her family were loathsome toads, and she was
toad spawn. "Vatta," he said, minus the honorific. "Sir." "Which contact number?" As if having more than one number
were also a crime. "Vatta Enterprises," Ky said. "They have a relay—" Wherever
her father was, they could reach him, or give her a link to
the senior Vatta onplanet. "We would prefer that you make a direct call." She knew her father's mobile number, of course, but he'd
often said he hated the damned thing, and would leave it on
the bedside table as often as not. That meant her mother
might pick it up, the last per- son she wanted to talk to.
Vatta Enterprises would ring his skullphone, which he
couldn't take off. She didn't have that number; no one did
but the communications computer at VE. She rattled off the string for the mobile, and mentally
visualized the arc of blue, best fortune, of the Saphiran
Cyclan wheel, as Commander Terry nodded to the rating who
entered the string. "Name?" Terry asked abruptly. Ky startled. "The name of the
person you are calling," he said. "Sir, my father, sir. Gerard Avondettin Vatta. But if my
mother—" "You are permitted one call, to one recipient, Cadet Vatta."
Commander Terry picked up the headset and held the receiver
to his ear. Ky waited, the blue arc fading in her mental
eye. Then his hand twitched. "This is Commander Terry at the
Naval Academy; I need to speak to Gerard Avondettin Vatta."
A pause, then: "Kylara Vatta will speak with you." He held
the headset out to Ky. She was not even allowed to speak from a privacy booth. She
had known the call would be recorded, but at least a
semblance of normal courtesy would have helped. She could
feel tears swelling now, stuffing her nose. She fought for
calmness as she took the headset and put it on. Enough of
this; she turned her back on Commander Terry without permission. "Dad, listen—"
Our Past Week of Fresh Picks
|