The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  Huh? Wasn’t that Huron’s family’s company? Hadn’t Mariwen told her that back on the Arizona, just after they met? Kris knew that proactive vaccines, along with what they called the Third Nanocyte Revolution, were the keys that allowed the widespread colonization that had occurred over the past hundred and seventy years or so—places like Parson’s Acre and most of the Methuselah Cluster—but she had no idea Huron’s family had played such a critical role in it. No wonder they were so rich. She popped up an info bubble.

  KKHR Control Group. One of the largest business enterprises in existence. Formed by the amalgamation of Ilmatar Neoforming, Prometheus Development Corp, Q3MM and Millennium Industries, the enterprise subsequently acquired . . .

  Kris skipped over the list of names, which meant nothing to her, and of business areas, which included just about everything, but primarily terraforming, settlement, finance, and teralogistics. Skimming through the text, she stopped at:

  While KKHR Control Group is relatively small compared to the state-owned SyrDaria Settlement Corporation (a Halith government enterprise), Gaia Group (owned by the Nedaeman government), and the Bahadur Holding Company (majority owned by the Belt government),* and is slightly smaller than Caelius-Protogenos, what is remarkable about the corporation is that a full 55% of the voting stock is under the personal control of the Huron family. In addition, the Huron family maintains sole ownership of TeraCon Heavy Industries, the largest privately-owned company, with unsheltered assets in excess of §500 billion.

  * The total assets of these enterprises are disputed, especially Bahadur Holding Company, whose asset position is complicated by its partially state-owned status.

  Kris closed the bubble. Damn! She knew Huron was rich, but this was—was . . . they weren’t kidding back on Nedaema when they’d told her about some of his holdings. And that was the little stuff. She shook her head and winced. They’d had their bi-weekly bout of unarmed combat training that afternoon and she was getting stiff from the exercise; her legs were starting to cramp and her back ached from landing hard on the mat. She stretched and her neck popped alarmingly.

  Baz looked up. “You know, you creep me the hell out when you do that.”

  “Sorry.” She stood up, tugged and wriggled her fatigues straight. “I gotta go get some sim time—this shit is giving me serious buffer overflow.” She rotated her torso with a suppressed groan, relaxed for a moment, and then did it again, pushing until her spine popped too. Baz rolled his eyes theatrically.

  “Baz, will you do some battlespace prep for me?”

  “If you knock it off with the gruesome noises, I might.”

  “Find out how much of this they’re gonna test us on. We’ll all sleep better.” She almost added a winning smile but caught herself at the last moment. She knew very well how Baz felt about her, and she didn’t want to lead him on. She liked Baz a lot and he was cute enough, and if she was ever really in the mood for some horizontal recreation, she just might—

  The unexpected physical reaction at that thought startled her. She held herself perfectly still, hoping she wouldn’t fall until the bout of dizziness passed, and as her vision cleared, she saw Baz looking up at her quizzically.

  “Okay. See what I can do.” He looked down.

  “Thanks, Baz.” Her voice quavered slightly. Had he noticed?

  “Don’t mention it,” Baz answered, his voice giving nothing away. He waved his hand through a cloud of tablet windows, closing them. “Go kill lotsa bad guys.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  The dying quail fluttered up over the net, and Kris faded back two steps with a predatory grin on her face. Timing her jump to perfection, she met the ball just past the top of its rise and slammed a winner so hard the tall, rangy cadet on the other side of the court actually ducked.

  “Point!” bellowed the automatic scorekeeper. “Game, set, match. Kennakris, ten. Nevers, two.”

  “Good try, Nevers. Pay the man.” She hooked a thumb at Basmartin, sitting courtside at a small table. Shaking his head ruefully, Nevers bounced across the court, stumbling a little at the edge where the gravity ramped up to a full gee, and handed his chit across to Baz, who stroked off Kris’s winnings and gave it back with a smile.

  “Two minutes!” Kris called to the crowd packed into the back of the court, holding two fingers aloft. She bounded to the edge of the court, took the gravity gradient with a smooth glide and landed next to Baz. He handed her a towel.

  “How we doing?” she asked, mopping her face, neck and chest with it.

  “Good! Up §1800. A lot of that’s from Nevers. That’s twice you’ve almost skunked him.”

  “Yeah, well—he’s rich and he likes to watch my tits jiggle.” She pulled out the front of the tight black exercise rig and fanned them.

  “Then I guess he’s getting what he paid for.”

  Kris tossed the towel aside. “How much longer we got?”

  “Call it half an hour.”

  “Sounds good.” Kris turned and took a leap back onto the court. “Okay, who’s next? Come on—ten points a match! Hundred a point! Who wants it? You! Lono. Atta’ boy! You can serve first and I’ll give you an extra fault . . .”

  * * *

  Commander Naomi Buthelezi, the senior Strategy and Tactics instructor and also Superintendent of Student Affairs, had just bitten into a beignet when her xel lit up with the face of her assistant, Lieutenant Kath Innis.

  “What is it, Kath?” she answered on the voice-only circuit as she wiped powdered sugar off her chin. Naomi was an impressive-looking woman, with peerless jet-black skin and a clean-lined, high-cheekboned face with regal features: literally regal in her case, because the commander was a member of the KwaZulu Natal royal family. It was a face of no particular age: in Terran standard years she could have passed for forty or thirty-five or even younger, the impression of youth reinforced by an engaging smile. It didn’t need to be seen enhanced with powdered sugar, especially during duty hours.

  “It’s Cadet Kennakris. Ma’am.”

  “What’s she up to now?” Commander Buthelezi was, quite incidentally, the faculty rep for Class 1861 and had come to expect the unexpected from them, especially Cadet Kennakris.

  “I’m not sure how to view this, ma’am—it seems to be a gray area in the Ethics Code—but she’s playing low-gee racquetball for money.”

  “What exactly is she doing?” Betting was officially frowned on, but unofficially there were always pools and wagers on any number of things. Athletic contests generated the most activity—the All-Forces Unarmed Combat Championships created such a furor that anyone who didn’t have a stake in the outcome became practically a pariah—and small friendly bets, often quite amusing, were winked at. There was even a long-established floating poker game that had become a hallowed Academy tradition.

  “Well, ma’am, she’s playing games against all comers: so many points to win and the loser pays the winner the point differential.”

  “Doesn’t sound terribly criminal.”

  “No, ma’am, but . . . she’s playing for a hundred a point!”

  Naomi’s eyebrows went up at that. A hundred a point was serious money. “How much has she made on this little enterprise of hers? Any idea?”

  “I don’t know anything officially, of course, ma’am, but based on the matches we know she’s played, almost eleven thousand!”

  The gracefully curved eyebrows rose to unrecorded heights. Eleven thousand was close to twice the median monthly wage on any Homeworld except Earth—in the Outworlds it represented a fortune.

  “How long has she been doing this?”

  “A month, ma’am. We knew about the games—she holds them twice a week and they draw a crowd now—it was the extent of the betting I just learned.”

  “Did someone complain?”

  “No, ma’am. The matches are popular. I just happened to hear a group of cadets talking. Then I checked the resul
ts—they post them.” This last had a slight note of apology attached.

  Good Lord. With all the side bets that were certainly occurring, this could be taking on disturbing proportions. “Thanks, Kath. I think I’ll bring this up with Sergeant Major Yu. Take no official notice until you hear from me.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  * * *

  “You asked to see me, ma’am?” Sergeant Major Yu, standing at a comfortable parade rest, looked across the desk at Commander Buthelezi with an expression so carefully neutral it seemed to scream volumes. She didn’t know Yu especially well—it wasn’t clear that anyone did—but she certainly knew that when it came to discipline, there were rules and there were his rules. She also had to conclude that he, with his reputation for near-omniscience, must have been aware of Kennakris’s activities for some time. In fact, she had the distinct feeling that he knew why she’d asked to see him and, probably, what she was about to say next.

  So she took a breath and said, without preamble, “I did, Sergeant Major. I hear that your Cadet Kennakris is hustling low-gee racquetball.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Quite successfully.”

  “I should say so—to the tune of §11,000.”

  “A bit more, as I understand it.”

  The commander made a noncommittal noise deep in her throat. “You’ve been aware of this for a while, I take it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you have no problem with this behavior?”

  “If the underlying motive was money, I certainly would, ma’am.”

  “You conclude that is not the motive, Sergeant Major?”

  “I highly doubt it, ma’am. Ms. Kennakris is worth a little more than a million.”

  “Indeed?” That was very well off by any standard and the word came out in a higher pitch than she would have liked. “I was not aware.”

  “No, ma’am. That is not official info, ma’am.”

  “I see.” She tapped her index finger on the desktop. Icons scurried away and took refuge along the upper-left margins. “That aside, you don’t see any difficulties arising from the magnitude of the funds involved?”

  “In a year, we’ll be asking these cadets to bet their lives and the lives of their people, ma’am. Wagering a few hundred or even a thousand on their skills gives them a little perspective.”

  That was not the tack she’d expected Yu to take. “Is that the main reason, Sergeant Major?”

  “No, ma’am. Cadet Kennakris is a unique case. She has little or nothing in common with the other cadets—this was initially disruptive, especially given her capabilities. These matches have brought her better acquainted with the other cadets, and they are starting to develop more respect for her as a result. In my opinion, these matches are proving invaluable in developing the primary group bonds that, in her case, would be difficult to form otherwise.”

  That was an excellent point. Further, they pushed the kids hard and Commander Buthelezi could see that being stuck here on Deimos, with little beyond simulations to relieve the strain of constant study and endless drills, a vigorous athletic contest with something tangible on the line would have a lot of appeal. But that didn’t excuse taking advantage of the situation. A straight-up competition was one thing—hustling was something else. Of course, Kath might have been using the term loosely.

  “As you appear to be well informed, Sergeant Major, you see no issues with the way the matches themselves are conducted?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Cadet Kennakris does not refuse to play anyone, even cadets who consistently have the edge over her, and overall the cadets’ performance is improving. I believe that up-tick in readiness scores we’ve observed for the past few weeks may be partially in consequence.”

  Commander Buthelezi had noticed the mild jump in scores too. She also thought she’d detected a heightened degree of alertness, especially in Kris’s class, which she had chalked up to War Week approaching, but it was certainly true that wagering on this level would tend to focus the mind, and maybe that was spilling over into the cadets’ training.

  “Any other observations, Sergeant Major?”

  “Yes, ma’am. These matches are wholly theirs. Everything else the cadets do is an official activity or has official sanction. This allows them to conduct themselves independently and experience the real-world consequences. It’s not a bad habit for them to start developing.”

  That also was quite true. She half expected Yu to opine next that if Kennakris had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her. Nonetheless, it was a delicate business, contemplating turning a blind official eye to something of this magnitude. Elliptically, she was reminded of a situation that had arisen years ago during her last active duty posting, when she was Tactical Action Officer on the battlecruiser LSS Athena Nike, Admiral Sabr’s flagship.

  One of their carrier group’s recon wings has been posted downside on a largely uninhabited planet far out in the Hydra, near Tyrsenian space—the kind of assignment flyers hated most—and both the duty and the environment had been unusually harsh. Discipline suffered, largely because the maintenance crews improved their leisure hours by sneaking into the wilds outside their compound and constructing stills in which they brewed dubious liquors, resulting in a greater-than-usual incidence of drunkenness, fighting, and injuries that weakened morale and produced a sick-list that would have been excessive in a dreadnought.

  The wing’s CO, a good officer but something of a martinet, took all the usual steps: he cracked down on drinking, he posted extra guards over his stores, he sent out patrols regularly to find and destroy the stills. Of course, the situation continued to deteriorate.

  Then the CO invalided home unexpectedly and the executive officer took over. This officer immediately did three things: he zealously enforced the regs against rendering oneself unfit for duty but otherwise turned a mostly blind eye to off-duty drinking, he removed the extra guards from the storage depot, and he stopped the still-busting patrols while making sure he knew exactly where they were. When he needed the stores that the stills were using, mostly fuel cells and meters of valuable tubing, he simply led a detail into the wild and broke some up until they had what was needed.

  He explained all this at the informal inquiry, on which Naomi sat, by saying that a still was a trivial drain on a fuel cell, and the tubing might just as well be stored in one—he’d referred to it as dynamic storage—as in the depot. And the discipline issues stopped.

  The executive officer had been none other than Senior Lieutenant Rafael Huron and the planet had been Mananzas Cay. The action that transpired there against a Tyrsenian fleet—the inquiry had been held at Huron’s hospital bedside—was starred in the annals of CEF history.

  “I see.” Commander Buthelezi nodded. “I will leave this situation in your hands and officially know nothing about it.”

  Yu inclined his head but his expression did not change.

  “That is all, Sergeant Major. Of course, my door is always open, should there ever be anything you wish to convey to me.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.” Yu saluted with his trademark precision and exited smartly, but he didn’t take Naomi’s vague feelings of unease with him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Grand Senate Chamber

  League Capitol Complex, Nereus, Mars

  The old man’s voice was still strong, still resonant. “Senators, it has been my privilege for the past five decades to address this chamber. It has been your burden to suffer through those addresses, and a sad burden I fear it has sometimes been, too. One would think that half a century of doing anything might give a man some proficiency in it—alas, I stand before you now as proof that is not always so.

  “So today, as I lay down that privilege and you, that burden, I will have done with attempts at eloquence, and speak plainly. We are—again—at the brink of war. A more momentous question has never tested—nor will ever test—the mind of Man. And never more do passions reign than when cold calculation is
needed.

  “Senators, I beg for that calculation now. An ultimatum is urged that the government of the Bannerman Confederacy shall give over to our justice the terrorist Nestor Mankho and certain of his supporters—or face, as we choose to call it, maximum measures. Maximum measures.” Here he paused to read the faces of his colleagues and saw, with a sinking heart, precisely what he had expected. He forged on. “Now, you know and I know damn well that if we were to locate Mankho, Ardennes and Rubicon together could boil his host planet down to the bedrock—half a morning’s work. To what end? To what final end? A wiser man than me once said: The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

  “And so it shall. We all know what is at stake here and we also know—and should not be afraid to say—that we, as a body, are not much accustomed to being at the sharp end of events. Yes, it is true that Mankho came this close”—he raised a hand with thumb and index finger less than a finger’s width apart—“of ending the lives of some dozens of us. But let us weigh that carefully in the balance of the actions we take into contemplation.

  “Justice must be done—that is not the question. The question is the means—and, yes, other means were tried, and the failure”—he would not say blunder, though blunder it had certainly appeared to be—“was grievous, but let us not give in and allow that to compel us to blindly grab for the biggest, bluntest tool that comes to hand. An ultimatum is such a tool—it compels us to either surrender our judgment to events, or to appear impotent if we back down.” Pausing again, he noted the discreet squirming, the small rustles, about the chamber. “Colleagues, I will close. If war is upon us—if our adversaries are so determined—this measure will not prevent it. If they are not yet so determined, this measure can only make them so. I urge you, Senators: prepare for war with all speed but calculate with deliberation.” This last seemed to deflate him and he looked even older: old with years, deeds and cares.