Trading in Danger

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 oneMoon, Elizabeth is the author of 'Trading in Danger', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345447609 and ISBN 0345447603.