The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  “Handlers?” In all her years as Trench’s slave, Kris hadn’t heard of that.

  “Handlers. When you’re special, you get handlers. I was special.” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “They keep you from scarring yourself. The re-gen marks still show to a connoisseur”—the venom in the inflection burned hot and acid-bright through the word—“and they keep you from killing yourself. And, yes, I thought about that. All the time.”

  Kris mashed her napkin under the table and said nothing.

  Mariwen asked where they were going. When Kris told her, Mariwen looked blank with surprise. “That’s where Lora is. We live in Nemeton.” That was a city on Nedaema, Kris gathered. “Christ, I hope she hasn’t gotten all worked up about this. I wonder what she’s heard . . .” Mariwen fretted over the thought. “I hope she hasn’t found out too much. She’ll have every goddamned producer within fifty light-years out to bid for my ‘story’. One week with the bad guys in a stinking little ship.” She shook her head. “I’ll be sick. Now if I had your story, that would be something—”

  “You don’t want my story,” Kris said, more harshly than she meant.

  Mariwen put hands in her lap, looked down at them. “I did it again, didn’t I? I’m sorry, Kris. I really am. I just keep forgetting. I don’t know why.”

  Kris touched her arm lightly. “It’s fine,” she lied. Then they talked about other things.

  After dinner, they went back to their quarters again. They were full this time; as crowded as she’d been led to expect. Commander t’Laren came in as promised and talked to them—addressed was maybe a better word. Isabeau t’Laren was a rather hard-looking woman with short roan-red hair, younger than middle-age and attractive in a muscular sort of way. She didn’t smile easily, and then only with the lower half of her face. She was polite but very formal. Most of the other women watched her with a kind of silent awe. She told them much of the same information that Lieutenant Huron had already given her and Kris listened with her eyes closed. She wasn’t sure if she liked the commander or not.

  After she spoke to the group, t’Laren progressed around the room and talked to each of them briefly. When she reached Kris she asked the expected have-everything-you-need questions, and Kris mentioned it would be nice to have some underwear.

  The commander smiled—she was warmer up close—and apologized. “We did up your kit on rather short notice. I’ll speak to the ship’s purser tonight. They will have something more suitable for you in the morning.”

  Why short notice? That was just weird . . .

  Kris decided she was acting paranoid, said thanks and t’Laren moved on. Kris thought that the warmth could go on and off like a light. Finally, she made a brief exiting address and left.

  Kris lay back on her bunk, reading a book on the swing-out viewer and trying to ignore the ripple of gossip that lapped at her ears. Lights-out sounded after awhile; she flipped off the viewer, rolled over, and went almost immediately to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning Kris got up late, ignoring reveille, and found the promised parcel by her bunk. It contained a woman’s green jumpsuit, a couple of changes of underwear and a note: “Hope these fit—Isabeau t’Laren, Exec.” Kris was oddly touched by the personal note. She dressed and showered and made it to sickbay only a little late for her appointment.

  There, she met the grim-faced medical director of yesterday and he didn’t look any happier this morning. If she had heard his name, she'd forgotten it. Perched on a chair in one of the examination rooms—the concept of relaxing seemed foreign to him—he asked her some preliminary questions: standard stuff like name, age, siblings, place of birth and where she went to school. Then he tersely explained how the tests would go. She would be asked three sets of questions; she could answer anyway she chose. Each set would be asked twice, the second time under examination. She could stop the testing at any time.

  “What happens if I do that?”

  “That depends on the context,” he answered gruffly. “It is usually better if you don’t.” He took out a device like a large stylus, unfurled it to the size of a standard sheet of plaspaper and began jotting notes on it. Kris didn’t recognize the thing but they seemed quite common here. The officers and noncoms all had one; some of the rates did too—specialists, she figured—and they were always using them. The device appeared to combine the functions of a cel and tablet or mempad, but this was the first time she’d seen one used in this particular configuration. Before, she’d only seen people expand theirs to a size bigger than a typical cel but a little smaller than a mempad. No one had told her a thing about them—the name or if they were strictly military issue—but they were clearly more powerful than anything you’d find in the colonies, especially in the Outworlds.

  The medical director stopped writing and looked up. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  He had her recline on the padded sickbay bed, attached a blood-pressure monitor and several electrodes; one to the side of her neck, one just above her left breast, two to her forehead, one to right wrist. Then he slipped a small cuff over her left index finger. “You’ll feel a prick at sometime during the test—it’s a blood sample. It will only happen once, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you when.”

  She nodded.

  He placed a dim red light on a movable arm above her face, about the size and shape of a penlight. “This light will be lit when the examination is in progress. It will not seem steady—the brightness may vary and it may appear to move. That’s normal. You might get drowsy, and that’s normal too.

  “But if you start to feel nausea, or panic or extreme hostility—an urge to inflict harm on someone—me, for instance—that is not normal. Tell me immediately and we’ll stop the test. Do you understand?”

  She nodded—Yes.

  “Anything you want to ask before we begin?”

  A head shake—No.

  “Alright, I’ll begin.”

  The medical director went through his questions quickly, not giving her a chance to think and prodding her if she took too long. Some of the questions were banal: did she like the color blue? What did she think of the mess food? Some were more complicated: when was killing justified? Did she believe in God? Some were personal: was she, or did she think she might be, homosexual or bisexual? When did she think about sex? Love? When had she lost her virginity?

  She got pretty upset over those questions but decided he was asking them just to piss her off. A lot of the questions seemed designed to do that. Others just seemed silly: what did she want to do for a living? How much money was enough? Did she like children?

  He asked the questions again with the light on and Kris thought she gave the same answers, but more calmly because she was expecting them. Sometimes she wasn’t sure he asked all the questions, or what she said in response. The light would go off and she would snap to as if she’d dozed. Then he asked her if any of the questions particularly bothered her. She answered with a snappish affirmative and they talked about it for a few minutes, him scribbling all the while. Finally, they began the second set of questions. Some of the first set were repeated; some were similar, but reworded. She seemed to remember less of what happened with the light on.

  The last set went very quickly. Suddenly the light went off and he removed the blood pressure monitor and the electrodes. Her left index finger was slightly sore—she hadn’t noticed the prick at all. “That’s it?”

  “Yes. For now, Ms. Kennakris.”

  “For now? What’s that mean? Did I pass?”

  The question made him frown, a deeper expression than normally shaped his sour features. “That is not a term that is especially applicable in this case, but you are free to go.” He coiled up the wires and pushed the apparatus aside.

  What the hell did that mean? A shrink’s version of a simple affirmative?

  “I didn’t notice the blood sample,” she ventured.

  “I know. That’s a good sign.” He finished stowing the equipment.
“There will, of course, be another test of somewhat similar nature when we reach Cassandra. Although, because of the more sophisticated equipment, people generally find it pleasanter. Good day, Ms. Kennakris.”

  Kris went back to the bunk room and again found it empty except Mariwen reading alone—something she did quite a bit. “You’ve been to see the spook,” she said. “I can tell by your eyes.”

  “Angry?”

  “Crossed.”

  “Angry and crossed,” Kris declared.

  Mariwen laughed. “I didn’t enjoy it either. Mostly, I wanted to bite him.”

  A little shiver went down Kris’s back. “Did you say anything?”

  “No,” Mariwen answered off-handedly. “I wasn’t serious. He just made me mad. I always want to bite people when I’m mad. Mom used to say I was some kind of little furry creature in another life. Why?”

  “Nothing.” Kris shrugged. She’d gotten angry too. “What made you mad?”

  “Most of it, actually. But the questions about sex, in particular.”

  “Yeah,” Kris heartily agreed. “Those made me want to bite him myself.”

  “I got us invited to the NCO mess. Want to come?”

  Kris sat down heavily on her bunk. She liked Mariwen’s company but not the circus it engendered. That, she could do without. “I thought I’d rest a bit. Thanks though.”

  Mariwen drew her face into a pouty little frown—an excessively cute expression. “They’ll all be disappointed. I actually think they like you better than me. I believe I’m jealous.”

  Kris scowled at her.

  “I’m joking—about being jealous, anyway.” Her face softened. “Please, would you come?”

  Kris felt the scowl slipping. Mariwen was damn hard to resist. “Always get your way, don’t you?”

  “No!” Then a smile, one-sided and a little sheepish. “Well, yeah. Maybe.” She reached out a hand to Kris’s shoulder. Mariwen touched people so comfortably. Unconsciously, Kris shrugged her shoulder aside. “If you’d really rather not—”

  “No,” Kris said, chagrined when she realized what she’d done. “Just being bitchy. I’ll go.”

  “Great!” Mariwen beamed. “I did promise them I’d bring you. I didn’t know how I was going to face them all.”

  Kris was tempted to throw a pillow at her. “You are insufferable!”

  “I know,” Mariwen giggled. “Ain’t it grand?”

  Lunch in the NCO mess was vastly better. It was, in fact, better than her first meal; that one must have come from the officer’s mess. So the little yeoman had been right. The circus Kris had wanted to avoid did not materialize either: Mariwen’s public was appreciative but there was none of the hectic adoration of the day before. Lunch went by quickly and Kris was sorry when it ended.

  As they walked back from the mess, they met Huron in a passageway. To Kris, he seemed rather hurried and distracted, but he stopped anyway and asked solicitously after their well-being. He talked rather more to Mariwen than to her, and Kris thought she detected a manner in Mariwen she had not seen before. Something like deference. As he left, she asked, “Do you know him?”

  Mariwen looked a little surprised. “Rafe Huron? Not really. I know of him, of course. He’s one of the Huron family.”

  Kris shook her head.

  “The Huron family,” Mariwen repeated. “KKHR Control Group—they’re the ‘H’. You know—TeraCon Heavy Industries, Ilmatar Neoforming, Prometheus Development . . .”

  Those were names that penetrated even into the far-flung corners of Kris’s world. “Oh.”

  “They probably own more dirt than anyone. And his daddy’s Speaker of the Grand Senate, too.”

  “Oh,” Kris repeated. Most colonists couldn’t vote, so politics didn’t mean much to them but she still knew what being Speaker meant. As leader of the Grand Senate, he was an immensely powerful man. While he couldn’t actually order things done as say, the Proconsuls of Halith or the President of the Bannerman Confederacy could, he could certainly suggest a course of action and most of the time that amounted to the same thing.

  “. . . and he’s a famous fighter pilot and genuine war hero—just for frosting.”

  “What?” Kris meant she hadn’t heard the first part of the sentence but Mariwen misunderstood.

  “Yeah, he did something at a place called Mananzas Cay—it was all over the media for weeks. That would have been about a year ago, I guess.”

  Mananzas Cay. Kris remembered Mangle, the half-Max surgeon’s mate, coming back from downside with a load of booze and wild stories of a disaster at Mananzas Cay, way out in the Hydra. He and Trench had gotten roaring drunk that night—too drunk to make much sense—but Mangle kept repeating parts of the story and bad mouthing someone he called “Fuck’n Flyboy.”

  The news made it all through the crew. They’d been pissed off for a month. She never managed to hear any details—just a lot of mess-carping and elaborate plans for Fuck’n Flyboy should they ever get their hands on him. They never used his name. Maybe they didn’t know it.

  Rafe Huron. Fuck’n Flyboy. Kris smiled a little tightly. “So he’s a fucking paragon, is he?”

  Mariwen laughed. “Oh yes, they say he’s that, too. I forgot to mention that part.”

  Kris frowned a little crossly. “Is that why he’s so nice to you?”

  Mariwen shook her head, still laughing. “No, he knows better than that. But he’s from Michigan and I’m from California—that gives us some connection, I guess.”

  “Michigan? California?”

  “Yeah, you know. The States. The old U.S. of A.”

  Kris’s eyes went round. “You’re Staters? Both of you? From old Terra?”

  “Well, yes,” Mariwen answered, surprised at her reaction. “We prefer to think of it as Earth, though.”

  “Oh. Oh. Sorry. I never met—I mean—on Parson’s Acre, we didn’t—well, you know—”

  “It’s okay,” Mariwen interrupted her stammer. “We can’t walk on water and we only bite when aroused. It’s not a big deal.” Kris nodded mutely. “Oh, don’t be silly—I’m teasing,” Mariwen scolded. “Come on, let’s go do something fun.”

  Chapter Five

  LSS Arizona

  entering the Cepheid-Sagittarian Belt

  CEF warships were not designed with fun in mind, but they persevered. They went to the library, checked out six hours of old Wayfarer serials that had been popular when Kris was a kid, and watched them all at once. The next morning, they got up, skipped breakfast and found out they could play low-G racquetball on the hanger deck. Kris had won trophies in school and it was one of the few things Trench would let her do, but she soon found out that Mariwen, for all her model’s looks and seeming softness, was in excellent shape and could play mean when she had to. They played a dozen games and Mariwen won the set: 7 to 5. Afterwards, they sat together on the court’s floor—limp and calves cramping, sweat stinging their eyes and dripping off their elbows—and Mariwen said, “That’s the last time that’s going to happen.”

  “Yeah,” Kris agreed. “Next time I won’t win five.”

  “Bullshit,” Mariwen laughed, a little harshly because her throat was raw from panting. “Help me up.”

  As they struggled to their feet, Mariwen slipped and stumbled into Kris. Their bodies came together in a clash of thin sweat-soaked cloth as Kris caught Mariwen around the shoulders to keep them both from falling and Mariwen wrapped her arms around Kris’s waist.

  “God, you smell good,” Mariwen murmured huskily in her ear. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to—”

  “Hey!” Kris protested. “You promised.”

  “I know,” Mariwen sighed. “I’m such a bad girl.” Her breath tickled the side of Kris’s neck. “Goddamn, you make me wet . . .”

  Kris shifted her hands to Mariwen’s upper arms and pushed firmly. “Come on. You said you wouldn’t, okay?”

  Mariwen stepped back, shook her dark sweat-plastered hair out of her face and ran her finge
rs through it so that it sleeked back against her temples. The motion arched her back, pressing her full breasts tightly against the stressed fabric of her tank top. Her eyes burned into Kris’s core with their look, making her breath catch in her throat. No wonder Mariwen was paid so much for what she did.

  Mariwen blinked and the heat in her eyes began to fade. She let out a huge sigh. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s the exercise.” Then she shrugged, her eyes returning to normal. “Alright, lousy excuse. Don’t hate me.”

  Kris was moved to touch her, but dared not. “I don’t hate you, Mariwen. It’s just . . . I mean, I—um . . . it’s not—” She looked away, suddenly shy and embarrassed.

  “Sorry, Kris.” Mariwen reached out and curved her hand around Kris’s shoulder in a neutral fashion and Kris didn’t flinch it off. “I really am. Please forgive me?”

  Kris nodded, throat tight. Mariwen slipped her hand off Kris’s shoulder, flashed one of her old safe teasing smiles. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be interested to see if the old cold-shower trick works.”

  Being teased allowed Kris to regain some equilibrium. She returned the volley with a smirk. “You don’t know yet?”

  “Never had to find out before,” Mariwen shot back.

  “Mariwen!”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Mariwen said archly. “Your fault.”

  Kris conceded defeat. “Alright, alright. Let’s go. I’ll even let you shower first.”

  “So gracious.” Mariwen flounced out ahead of her, swaying her hips and blowing a kiss.

  On the way back, they passed Huron in the corridor again. His face had a rigid set to it and there were lines around the mouth and eyes as if he had been missing sleep. He nodded to them politely, touching the brim of his peaked cap, but did not stop. Kris read tension and frustration in even that brief gesture. Something was going on.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” she called after him. “Something’s up, isn’t it?” Huron paused a moment, indecision momentarily stiffening his back. Then he turned.