The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  The story quickly made the rounds—Basmartin, who hadn’t bothered to hide his admiration for Kris, was the likely vector—irritating Minx and bringing Kris onto better terms with Tanner, the only other cadet whose experience of ships seemed to extend beyond the occasional pleasure cruise. It also caused no small amount of comment among her instructors, but it didn’t appear to faze Sergeant Major Yu, who merely made a laconic note in her file and awarded Kris an extra eight hours of sim time.

  Offering simulation time as a reward for superior performance was an Academy tradition of long standing. Class 1861 contained a healthy crop of gamers, as usual for incoming cadets, but the games they’d grown up with were nowhere near as challenging as the Academy simulations, nor did they take place in a genuine virtual-reality environment as the Academy simulations did. These used only a mild form of neural induction to produce their VR effects, and while those effects were not as vivid or realistic as the sensations produced by memory modules and direct-wired connections, they also did not produce the dementia that had resulted in VR technology being heavily restricted where it was not completely outlawed. Like AI technology, banned by interstellar treaty after the disastrous hacking events during the Formation Wars, virtual reality was something of a taboo topic in the Homeworlds, and even this benign introduction to it captivated the cadets with a taste of forbidden fruit. As intended, sim-runs rapidly became the favored form of recreation, spawning teams and competitions and even a degree of wagering which, as long as it was kept within sane limits, was duly noted and duly winked at.

  As this eventful first three months wound to a close, exams became the other great concern. They were approaching the Semi’s: the battery of tests that took place at the end of their first quarter. Basmartin had acquired a cramming guide, a common expedient, which Kris was at the moment borrowing. Just as she closed the unit on the history of early terraforming, Basmartin looked up and cried, “Unbelievable!” This was the third time he’d done that since Kris started her review.

  “Baz, are you reading about Apollo again?”

  “Kris, you really oughta look at this.” He gestured animatedly with his xel. “It’s chemical! They did this all with chemicals—liquid oxygen! Kerosene! Would you believe it? I mean . . . kerosene!”

  Baz was near-obsessed with ancient space flight and he had recently found scans, almost primordial, of some analog data records in the Academy archives that showed plans and specifications for chemical rockets from the very dawn of space flight. Baz was not shy about sharing his enthusiasms, and over the past few days Kris had promised herself that if he said, “Amazing! Unbelievable! Greatest instance of human ingenuity!” one more time, or cried out in rapture about the dazzling genius of these ancient giants of inspiration and intellect, she was going to stab him in the neck with a fork. So far, she’d managed to refrain, but as she put her tablet down and Baz beamed at her from across the room, his long legs dangling over the back of a chair as he lounged in his bunk, she felt herself slipping.

  “You know,” he said, for he was not terribly perspicacious when this mood was upon him, “I don’t think there’s anyone alive today who could do this. Just think of all the knowledge—the art!—we’ve lost. It’s criminal!”

  If so, it was a crime even older than civilization, and Kris thought it was like lamenting that people no longer knew how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together: another one of Basmartin’s favorite examples. She could imagine instances where starting a fire would be useful and two sticks might be the only resources at hand, but why anyone would ever have occasion to build a chemical heavy-lift rocket with tools that were barely more advanced than stone axes and braided plant fibers was beyond her.

  “Baz, don’t we have tests to study for?”

  He looked up. “What? There’s nothing till next week.”

  Kris looked hard at him, willing him to get the hint. She knew where there was a fork . . . “What about a pop quiz, maybe? I think we’re overdue. Shouldn’t you be brushing up on the muzzle energy of the three-ring surge gun or something?”

  “Oh.” Enlightenment dawned; Baz deflated. “Yeah, probably. Good idea.”

  Kris sunk back into her bunk, picked up her tablet again, and trying to quell her irritation at not even being half done with what they were expected cover, thumbed to the next section.

  Section 3.4. . . . Ancient History Module: Initial Colonization Failures

  {a} . . . The G-Barrier: Low-Gee Pregnancy—Sperm Motility—Effects on Fetal Development—Artificial gestation related to infanticide. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Not Read This Article

  {b} . . . Century of Failure: First Mars Failure—Confinement Issues—Religious tensions of colonization. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Not Read This Article

  {c} . . . First Hopes: Early Terraforming—Mars & Venus—The Mars Air Line. Belt Civilization: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Titan, Triton. 1st Nanocyte Revolution. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Read This Article

  Chapter Five

  NBPS HQ, Mare Nemeton

  Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  The story of the botched attempt to capture Nestor Mankho was now three months old, but damning details continued to dribble out, feeding the conflagration it had lit. The media had kept the story alive, the Archon’s supporters trading shot-for-shot with the pro-opposition outlets. The Scholai Michael addressed the Synalogue on the controversy, carefully couching his remarks in a tone more of sorrow than of anger. As head of state, these ‘private observations’ to an advisory and largely ceremonial body with no political remit carried no more than moral weight, but that weight was not inconsiderable.

  The Archon’s allies in the Proxenoi Council tried to spread some oil on the troubled waters by entering a resolution that a committee headed by a special investigator be stood up to look into the government’s handling of the raid. This jaded tactic came too late and served to highlight the Archon’s perceived failures rather than calm the furor, especially after some influential parties in the Nedaeman Senate savaged the proposal on the floor of the chamber, with one former supporter, hand raised imperiously, proclaiming that just such “half-witted half-measures” were responsible for the fiasco in the first place. The quote and the image made for top-line news for over a week and the Archon’s response, which was meant to sound measured and statesmanlike, instead came off as stuffy and ineffectual when presented through the media filter.

  As the increasingly rancorous debate built towards a fever pitch, Lysander Gayle, Nedaema’s junior Grand Senator and a man of immense ambition and considerable oratorical powers, delivered a carefully timed bombshell on the floor of the Grand Senate in the form of a proposal that the League issue an ultimatum to the Bannermans over their support for Mankho’s plot. This stroke, coming just as a vote of no-confidence on the Archon’s government appeared to be inevitable and the various claimants were jockeying for position, stole the limelight from his several competitors and sent half of them into eclipse. The very brass of the measure heightened its impact, coming as it did from a Grand Senator who was heretofore best known for his ability to straddle any issue and for his appeal to the often-contrarian backbenchers.

  It was also the first public revelation of Bannerman involvement, and it instantly elevated the issue from a Nedaeman political crisis to an interstellar one. The Bannerman ambassador returned to his capitol on Sephar the next day for consultations with the Confederacy’s President-for-Life, who ordered his navy to conduct a series of fleet exercises in the Hydra. Invited by the Bannermans, Halith sent observers.

  While the Bannermans explained the pacific nature of their exercises—training, nothing more—older heads grappled with the proposal, which they found absurd, especially as Gayle had said next to nothing about the specifics of his ultimatum. This very lack, which might have seemed irresponsible or obtuse at another time, buoyed Gayle up now. With nothing concrete to attack, those who criticized him were tar
red with the brush that had been so liberally applied to the Archon, as being against doing something. The Speaker, wise enough not to play Canute with the rising tide, bided his time.

  Stories about these developments circulated through the Chattering Classes and were sagely commented on and speculated about, but there was a general feeling that little would come of it; that the Grand Senate would dilute any proposed action through politically expedient compromises, and that once the media cooled off, the whole affair would reduce itself to just another tempest in a teapot.

  * * *

  Within the confines of NBPS headquarters in Nemeton on Nedaema, another opinion was heard. “Worse’n a reformed harlot out for blood,” said Chief Inspector Taliaferro to Commander Wesselby during another of their oh-dark-thirty meetings. “If they’d gone in and done this job when we had Mankho’s organization by the short hairs, I’d have cheered for them. But now that they’ve had all this time to refit and recoup and we don’t even know where the son of a bitch is, they wanna barge in and carry on like a Bashan bull.”

  “Or a braying ass full of mischief?”

  “I like that. A braying ass full of mischief—spot on. Where’d you hear that?”

  “Poetry. A braying ass of mischief full. I think that’s how it went.”

  “The Bible?”

  “No. An ancient named Douglass. He was an escaped slave who preached against slavery.”

  “I didn’t know you liked poetry.”

  “I have unsuspected depth. Do you think Gayle’s serious?” Trin disliked politics and followed it only inasmuch as it made her job more difficult when it wasn’t making it impossible.

  “The braying ass?” Nick smiled and Trin looked down, diplomatically covering an inward sigh; she had a feeling she’d be hearing that phrase a lot from now on. “Dunno. I kinda doubt it. If I had to guess I’d say he’s expecting the ultimatum to get hung up in committee. He needed a way to give the Archon the finger in public and see what sort of support he has when it comes to a no-confidence vote. An ultimatum isn’t something people can straddle the gate on.”

  Trin shook her head and then snapped in pure waspish exasperation. “But releasing the Bannerman data! Do they really have no idea what that cost us in terms of assets? What in the hell was he thinking? He set us back years!”

  An amazingly witty remark on the idea that a politician might actually think presented itself to Nick’s mind, but taking note of Trin’s expression, he forbore. “The way I heard it, the Archon pretty much told him to his face that he didn’t have the balls to go through with it. Now Gayle is well known for being spine-optional, but the Archon had to go and yank his chain on this one—overplayed his hand.”

  “Boys,” Trin snarled under her breath.

  “You ever meet him?” The question was purely rhetorical: serving CEF intelligence officers did not hobnob with Homeworld politicians.

  “He was a lawyer, wasn’t he?” Trin said, smoothing some strands of hair back distractedly.

  “Colonial law, I think. Got his start as head of this big charitable foundation, doing good works in underdeveloped colonies, y’see. He’s a queer fish—bit of a rabble rouser. Likes to champion this cause or that one—took up the antislavery cudgel for a while—then move on before the real work starts. Made a boatload of money doing it, too.”

  “Charming.”

  “They say he is. He was originally a pacifist too. Then just after the war, he claimed to see the light and switched sides, becoming a big proponent of defense and active measures. More ‘n likely, he just realized that the pacifists were never gonna get him elected Grand Senator. My read, though, is that he’s still a lawyer at heart. Thinks this is all just an academic exercise with real nice fringe benefits. He ain’t gonna take a threat seriously until he comes home to find it soaking in his hot tub, eating his last avocado.”

  An alarm chimed: someone requesting entrance to the building. Taliaferro got up, checked the monitors and excused himself. Two minutes later he was back with a large flat box that emitted wisps of steam. He put the box between them on his desk. “You hungry?”

  Trin leaned forward and inhaled expectantly. “You didn’t.”

  “I’m afraid I did.” He opened the box, revealing a large, flat round of baked dough slathered in red sauce and crowded with small rounds of sausage smothered in cheese, still bubbling.

  “Is that real?” Nedaemans were officially all vegetarians; what meat was allowed to be imported for consumption by foreign residents was strictly monitored, licensed and regulated. Only meat that was cultured according to very specific and exacting standards was permitted and certainly no variety of sausage was on the list.

  “Yep. It pays to know people.” He extracted a slice, the cheese pulling into long, sticky threads and a few drops of hot grease scattering onto his desk.

  “So much for the sacred principle of law enforcement not being above the Law,” Trin muttered, inhaling deeply of the warm, savory aroma.

  “I prefer to think of it as being below the Law. Help yourself. Plates under the coffee maker if you’re feeling civilized.”

  She was feeling civilized and they ate in silence for a while, Trin more cautiously after the first bite nearly blistered the roof of her mouth.

  “Like a beer?” Taliaferro asked, procuring one for himself. Trin shook her head; she preferred milk with this particular delicacy and Nick Taliaferro was emphatically not a milk drinker, although she assumed he knew what it was.

  They demolished three-quarters of the pizza in religious silence. Trin declined a final piece and brushed crumbs from her lap. Watching them scatter—they were more profuse than she’d thought—she asked suddenly, “Nick, do you know how they were planning to handle Mankho’s interrogation if the op succeeded? They didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory with Larson and his cohorts.”

  “Screwed the pooch is more what I’d call it.”

  Larson was the name—obviously a codename—of the one good-sized fish Nick’s people had netted, along with a shoal of minor ones, in the aftermath of Mankho’s plot. Then, once the heavy lifting was done, the Nedaeman Foreign Office moved in and claimed jurisdiction. They demanded that the captured terrorists be turned over to the counterterrorism task force, which the Foreign Office led. The claim was perfectly valid, given the interstellar nature of the plot, but a sensible approach would have taken into account that the task force, being an interagency organization, lacked its own assets and was ill-equipped to handle prisoners or undertake their interrogations.

  The obvious solution—to include the Bureau of Public Safety in the task force and let Nick’s well-trained people conduct the interrogations—was rejected in favor of bringing in the Nedaeman Directorate of Intelligence and Analysis. NDIA was not, strictly speaking, a field organization, so they in turn brought in teams of contractors, who were not sufficiently diligent in testing the terrorists for tripwires, as anti-interrogation implants were commonly known. So the NDIA and Foreign Office reps watched as the brains of several subjects, including the man called Larson who’d led the cell that carried out the operation, literally melted before their horrified eyes.

  Trin had managed to get her hands on the forensic analysis—the actual raw data, not the sanitized version that made it into the official report—and it was painfully obvious to her professional eye just when and where and how the operators hired by NDIA had gone wrong. Interrogation was a delicate business, requiring at least a day or two by a skilled operator, and tripwires were, by their very nature, touchy things to deal with. To disable them took at least twice as long, maybe even a week.

  The implants Larson and the others had been fitted with were good but not the best she’d seen. Any halfway decent CEF interrogator would have found them and known how to handle them. Which meant that either the contractors selected by NDIA were not halfway decent or that something else was going on. And the more she looked at the situation as a whole, from the botched interrogations to the faile
d raid, the more the possible dimensions of that something else grew to disturbing proportions.

  “Weren’t going to bring in any of your people, were they?” She offered to the silence.

  “Never got that far. The grumbles said SOCOM was gonna try to keep it in-house this go.” Nick wagged the forefinger of his beer-holding hand at the last slice. “Sure you don’t want to split that?”

  “Thanks, but you go ahead.”

  Nick did and Trin watched as the last of the pizza fulfilled its destiny. “Who was read in on this op?” She asked as the last bite of crust disappeared. “Anyone new?”

  He looked at her over his glass. “What’s on your mind, Trin?”

  She wiped her mouth again on a napkin, scrubbing at more than just pizza grease, and dropped the crumpled cellucine wad into a trash receptacle. “It’s just that . . . Nick, have you ever known an op to go so wrong?”

  “Not above a couple dozen.”

  “No, I mean so precisely wrong. The plan was timed to the minute, from insertion to extraction. Look at this.” She brought a small envelope out of the breast pocket of her uniform.

  Taliaferro’s eyebrows climbed high up the dark-tanned forehead. “You printed it?”

  She nodded. “My paranoia is rising to a new pitch. Look.” She unsealed the envelope, extracted two folded flimsies and spread one out on top of the pizza box. “This is the timeline, as far as we’ve been able to reconstruct it. The more I look at it, the worse it seems—like they had a precise list of targets and were just waiting for them to show themselves so they could take them out.” She ran her fingers down the list of events, showing the planned and actual timing. “See the tolerances? Now here’s what we think happened.” She overlaid the second sheet on the first. “Note this delay? Another couple of minutes and they almost certainly would have aborted. But they were pushed right to the edge, where they’d have the least amount of time to adapt if anything went wrong. Then they walked straight into what must have been a trap.”