The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

“My friends, I entered this chamber as a young man and I leave it now as an old one, with a task yet before us as great as we have ever faced. I am at a loss to express the depth of my feelings at such an occasion. Without the guidance of the Divine, which ever assisted our forbearers, we cannot succeed—with it, we cannot fail. Trusting in that Guidance, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. With these poor words I must leave you, and I bid you all an affectionate farewell.”

  * * *

  “Magnificent speech, Leon,” Speaker-Elect Hazen Gauthier, the senior Grand Senator from Hestia, said with her best smile, as Speaker Rafael L. Huron IV conducted her to the Speaker’s private chambers, there to formally surrender, in her presence, the Keys to the Grand Senate’s Sergeant at Arms. The new Speaker would receive them tomorrow, at the culmination of her inauguration with all due pomp and circumstance. He was glad he would miss it. “You know my aide, I believe? Ms. Pollit?” she added with an airy wave of one soft white hand.

  The Speaker nodded to the rather thick-bodied woman at the Speaker-Elect’s shoulder. He was indeed acquainted with Noelle Pollit, but that was years ago when she was Nowell Pollit: a beefy, hard-charging man who’d been a rising star in the Hestian Finance Ministry. Indeed, he’d first met Pollit when he was on the short list to become the next Hestian Finance Minister.

  Unfortunately, Pollit then became embroiled in a scandal over an election tampering scheme engineered by his good friend, Samantha Grace, deputy director of the census bureau. Not incidentally, Grace and her compatriots were also embezzling huge sums by directing government subsidies to parties who did not exist. On being indicted, Grace pled guilty, whereupon the court allowed her to select euthanasia instead of undergoing chemical interrogation. Denied this chance to prove his innocence, Pollit, while escaping indictment, was forced to resign, and thereafter disappeared from public life. It was only recently that Noelle Pollit had reemerged, as Grand Senator Gautier’s personal aide.

  “We have met once,” he said ambiguously. As they approached the Speaker’s chambers, he indicated the diminutive woman with fine straight black hair, tilted eyes, and pure ivory skin standing by the entrance. She was holding what appeared to be a small attaché case.

  “My chief of staff, Vaishali Kriesel-Roth,” he announced by way of introduction. “You know her, of course, Hazen. Vai, this is Noelle.”

  “Pleasure,” his chief of staff murmured with such a polite lack of inflection that the greeting could have meant most anything.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” replied Pollit, play acting not quite as well.

  “Where’s George?” the Speaker asked, referring to the Sergeant at Arms, who was to relieve him of his primary burden. For the object his chief of staff held with both hands was in fact, the Keys, and they unlocked much more than the odd door.

  “Right behind you, sir,” Kriesel-Roth said with a lift her chin and a smile on her delicate but expressive features.

  The Speaker looked around. “Ah, there you are, George”—addressing the tall imposing official making his way down the corridor. “I can’t tell you how I long to be shot of the beastly thing.”

  This last was spoken in the direction of Hazen Gauthier, who received it with a slight inclination of her head and pleasant half-smile. Receiving things pleasantly, be they bad news or satiric comments, was one of her main talents, along with looking dignified and even stately. Almost as tall as the Speaker, who had once been a rangy six-feet (though age had now claimed an inch or so), she had fine patrician features and white hair she wore in an elaborate coiffure that resembled a well-behaved corona. Speaker Huron, for his part, always thought it looked like it had been dipped in lacquer.

  “Here we go”—accepting the Keys from his chief of staff as George arrived. “Hazen, if you would please,” nodding to a spot beside him. “Noelle, you might as well crowd in too. All correct? Splendid.”

  Taking a small unmarked ingot of silver metal on a chain from around his neck, he applied it to the Key’s lock. His chief of staff then repeated the procedure with her identical ingot, and when the lock glowed amber, he pressed his thumb over it and held. The case opened a lit panel, on which the Speaker typed a passcode. It was accepted and the Sergeant at Arms leaned over to insert his dual keys into the panel’s matching receptacles, and turned them. The lights died, and on the two keys being removed, the panel closed with a loud click.

  “There we are,” the now-former Speaker said with a satisfied sigh, handing the case to George along with his and Vaishali’s ingots. “Try not to lose it.”

  The Sergeant at Arms, who did not have the Speaker-Elect’s talent for receiving satiric comments pleasantly, frowned. Yet, perhaps the comment was not so satiric either: he’d held this post for only the last twelve of the former Speaker’s twenty-three-year tenure, and so had not yet performed this particular duty. He would be custodian of the Keys until tomorrow PM, when the inauguration ceremony ended, and should anything happen in the meantime, he would be on the hook to deal with it, insofar as notifying and cooperating with the proper authorities, and given the current atmosphere, he was discovering he did not relish the thought.

  But he gave Grand Senator Huron (as he now was—his retirement becoming official tomorrow) a proper bow, and stepping away, called for his marine escort. The Grand Senator brought out his card-key the Speaker’s chambers and offered it to Gauthier.

  “Perhaps you’d like to jump the gun a little.”

  With a vague nod, she took that card-key and opened the chambers, while Grand Senator Huron ushered them all inside. It was not a palatial space—nothing like the large octagonal office in the Speaker’s residence at Alexandria—and in fact a little drab. He preferred it that way, as had his predecessor, a man of simple tastes, and so had eschewed any elaboration.

  “Take the Big Chair”—gesturing to the Speaker’s seat while he himself took another one in the main sitting area.

  “Thank you, Leon. But tomorrow comes soon enough, doesn’t it?” Gauthier smiled—she was perpetually smiling, it seemed to him—and took a chair across from him.

  “Indeed. At times it comes sooner that you think,” he replied as his chief of staff and her aide found their seats.

  No sooner were they all settled, than he looked at the—not his—desk. That elicited a minor twinge, for in spite of his outward demeanor, he was not going with perfect willingness. Indeed, he’d fought to postpone his retirement until this present crisis was either resolved or past the point of no return, but his doctors had insisted, and for the first time since he assumed the Speakership of the Grand Senate, he had to admit he didn’t have the votes. This time no amount of backroom back-scratching, bargaining or arm-twisting was likely to change that. Finally, Vaishali had convinced him that a retired Speaker, unfettered by the need to maintain his majority and other parliamentary niceties, could have more influence over events than an embattled one.

  Hazen Gauthier had been the consensus choice to succeed him only because none of the other candidates could form a majority after days of often acrimonious wrangling and debate. She was a close ally of Lysander Gayle, and well enough liked (not to be confused with well respected), and the outgoing Speaker knew that her ascension was predicated on a degree of the malleability that each of the competing factions was convinced they could exploit. Privately, he wished them joy of that hope.

  Now he fixed an apologetic look on his chief of staff. “Vai, I’m afraid I was premature. Would you fetch it, please?”

  “Of course, sir.” She rose and retrieved a folder with a yellow cover from the desk. It was the missive the out-going Speaker traditionally prepared for the incoming one, listing the most critical issues and giving brief thoughts on each, along with any inside information on current activities relating to them. Privately, he called it his Letter to the Ephesians, and while he hoped that the new Speaker would pay more attention to it than history proved humanity-at-large had paid to Paul’s original, he did not think it terribly
likely.

  “You have this, of course,”—sliding the folder on the low table between them—“but we might as well observe tradition. I retain my faith in an analog universe, no matter what quantum physicists say.”

  The reference was more obscure than most, and Hazen Gauthier merely picked up the folder and flipped through the hardcopy inside. “I do,” she said. “Thank you, Leon. It was most illuminating.”

  Searching for a sign of what exactly might have been illuminated, he folded his hands in his lap. “Glad to hear it. When I took up this office and Old Meyer handed me his—did you ever meet him, by the way? Meinhard Meyer?”

  “I’m afraid I never had the pleasure.”

  “Fascinating fellow. Outstanding mathematician. Took up teaching afterward—University of Hesse, in the Ruhr.” Noting the rapid blinking that this digression was met with, he waved a hand as if dismissing it. “Anyway, as he handed me his, he gave me the benefit of a few private remarks, by way of some further—illumination, as it were. I thought I might extend the compliment.”

  “By all means.” Having made her show of scanning the pages, she closed the folder.

  “Do you know the story of Ptolemy Auletes, by any chance?”

  “Indeed, I don’t. He was a Nedaeman, I take it?”

  “King of Egypt, actually. Back in the Hellenistic period. The original Ptolemy was Greek—one of Alexander the Great’s generals. He seized the Egyptian throne after Alexander’s death and established a dynasty there. Ptolemy Auletes was the twelfth, I believe. Your residence—the Speaker’s residence, that is—is built over his palace in Alexandria.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yes, I always liked that. The point is that by the time Auletes, as he was known, assumed the throne, Egypt, which had been a great power, was not in great shape. She was rich—breadbasket of the Mediterranean, they called her—but militarily weak. Rome, on the other hand, was militarily strong, but unable to feed itself. Rome needed Egyptian grain. Now Auletes is a Greek word—means flute player. Historians like to think the nickname meant the king was a music lover. They can’t seem to get their heads around the idea that the ancients also had a sense of humor. It’s pretty clear, in fact, that the flute they were referring to back then was not a musical instrument. You see, Auletes just wanted to keep his throne. Those were unsettled times, and if he had to get down on his knees for Rome, he’d do it. It’s that attitude toward Romans that earned him the nickname—he thought that by a combination of Egypt’s grain and his flute-playing abilities, he could keep his throne and come out top. So to speak.”

  “Truly fascinating.” The Speaker-Elect brushed at her buoyant hair.

  “Glad you think so. Because in the end, Auletes died unhappy, having sold his economy down the river. Egypt became a Roman vassal state and eventually a Roman province. Flute-playing got him what it usually does: sore knees and a wet chin before you’re shown the door.”

  Gautier was now blinking even more consistently. He sighed inwardly, and nodded at the document she held loosely curled in her lap. “I might direct your attention to the CEF Fleet readiness numbers on page three. You’ll find the corresponding ONI appraisal of the Halith military at the bottom of page four—underneath CID’s estimates for their current gross domestic output and a five-year economic forecast, showing their accumulated deficits.”

  The Speaker-Elect stopped blinking and favored him with one of those half nods as she passed the folder to her aide. “Of course, Leon. I’ll give it every attention.”

  He answered the nod with one of his own. “As I thought.”

  * * *

  Within the hour, the office cleared out and his archives secured, Grand Senator Huron, leaning on the arm of his chief of staff, stooped to enter the armored groundcar that would take him to his private shuttle, then to the heavy cruiser LSS Hyperion which would convey him into retirement at his estate in Washington Territory, on the western coast of North America. There he would watch over his vineyards, enjoy his art collection, and—if he could manage it—finally listen to his doctor’s advice, for although he was not yet raising ninety, he was genetically resistant to regeneration treatments and standard geriatrics could only do so much in the face of an indifferent diet, irregular sleep and eighteen-hour days.

  She sat by him now in the roomy passenger compartment, preparing two cups of tea (Snow Leopard Pai-Mu Tan for herself and Fenghuang Mountain with osmanthus flowers for him), and when they were ready, remarked: “Well, that was interesting.” She’d been the grand senator’s closest political advisor and confidant for over thirty years, she knew his moods through and through, but she was still a bit surprised he’d come that close to calling Hazen Gauthier a cocksucker.

  “A damn fiasco, Vai,” Senator Huron replied. “I couldn’t find the right note in there. Now they’ll go do some damned fool thing and we’ll blunder into war when we’re least ready for it.” He accepted the tea gratefully. “Half of ‘em are out for blood, the other half have their heads in the sand, and none of ‘em can tell their ass from a hot rock.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  The alarm went off, a mad undulating shriek that had Kris out of her straps and alongside her rack, scanning the environmental indicators, before she was fully awake. They were in null-gee—her dreaming mind had known that—the emergency lamps were lit and most of the indicators were blinking ominous shades of red and amber. Did they have ship power? No—the forward hatch light showed open. It should have automatically secured itself and dogged down at the first sign of trouble. Radiation? Not yet . . .

  She swung around to face Basmartin, who was up and struggling out of his tee shirt. Like most mariners, Kris slept naked—it saved vital seconds getting into an EVA suit in an emergency—but her study mates had not yet adopted this prudent habit. Tanner was still extricating himself and swearing in sleep-blurred tones, while Minx was just sitting up, wild-eyed and disoriented, fumbling with her straps. Baz, free of the shirt now, was reaching for his suit.

  “No!” Kris barked. “The ventilators!

  “Huh?” Baz blinked.

  “Shut down the ventilators!” The number-one rule of ship life was that compartment integrity came first. It was critical to keep radiation and toxic or explosive gasses—or even hostile boarders—from spreading to the next compartment. But the inexperienced often wasted a minute or more getting into their suits, by which time things could easily get to the point where being in a suit hardly mattered.

  “Oh!” Baz finally understood and lunged for the controls as Kris shot through the open door and somersaulted off the far bulkhead towards the open forward hatch. The alarms were still screaming, at a higher pitch now; the indicators over the hatch were angry red and her ears told her the pressure was dropping fast. She smashed the cover of the hatch controls with her elbow, and crumbs of glass, impelled by the pressure differential, spattered all over her bare skin. Grabbing the long manual locking lever in both hands, she braced one foot on the hatch combing and the other on the near bulkhead and heaved. The locking mechanism protested, gave grudgingly, then released, and the hatch leaves slammed shut. She rammed the dogging lever down and kicked back to their berth, almost colliding with Baz in the entrance.

  “It’s not responding! There’s no power—”

  “The override, dammit!” Kris pointed, flinging a spray of globules from the cuts in her elbow, glistening black in the dull red light, throughout the cabin. “Use the manual override! Tanner, will you get Minx into her fucking suit? Now!”

  Tanner, half into his own, grabbed Minx and pulled her out of her rack as Kris flipped herself into her waiting suit. She kept it open, gelled and partially inflated to allow just such a maneuver, but it took years of practice to slide into a suit that way. Kris was practiced and she mated the attachments with an instinctive writhe. Baz finally had the ventilators shut and was pulling his suit on as Kris grabbed her h
elmet. Tanner had just shoved Minx’s legs into the bottom half of her suit—she yelped—as Kris grabbed one arm and Baz took hold of the other. Together, they got Minx sealed in while Tanner jammed her helmet down on the neck ring and locked the visor, hiding her white, appalled face.

  “Go!” She shoved Baz into the passageway, coming along close behind him as Tanner took Minx around the waist and followed. The pressure felt close to stable for the moment, and she locked her helmet down with the visor open. Their Evac station was just beyond the sealed after-hatch and Baz coasted up to it, grabbing for the manual release.

  “Don’t!” Kris yelled.

  “What?” He looked back. “The pressure indicators are okay!”

  “Don’t trust that!” She wedged in beside him. “Gimme that lever!”

  “This?” He held up the steel bar he was about to undog the hatch with. She snatched it from his gloved hand, closed her visor and braced herself, pressing her helmet against the hatch. Then she slammed the bar into it. Hearing the dim reverberation from the other side, she handed the bar back with a thumbs-up. Baz popped the hatch dogs, and together they levered it open to reveal two instructors and Sergeant Major Yu, wearing a grin and consulting a stopwatch.

  “Twenty-three seconds to spare. I guess you’ll live to have breakfast after all.”

  * * *

  “What’s up with hitting the hatch with that bar?” Baz asked as Tanner wrapped a pressure bandage around Kris’s lacerated elbow. “You should take this to sickbay,” Tanner interjected. “I don’t think we got all the glass out.”

  Kris ignored Tanner’s input. “It’s the echo, dummy. It means there’s still air on the other side—the compartment’s not open to space.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “There’s a hammer, y’know,” Tanner remarked as he finished tucking in the ends of the bandage. “Under the access panel for the hatch controls. It’s for breaking the glass.”

  “Oh.” So that’s why it’s there. Kris looked around. “Where’s Minx?”