The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  Hoste turned back to Kris. “So you took the commander’s statement as essentially permissive?”

  “I did, sir. I thought anything we could do to win was fair game, sir—unless it was specifically prohibited.”

  Hoste nodded, but looked to Commander Kelleher. “That’s a fair reading, sir,” Kelleher allowed. “The exercise rules stipulate prohibited actions as opposed to permitted actions: the text is worded in the permissive sense, especially when reinforced by an instructor’s statement.”

  “Very well, Ms. Kennakris,” Hoste addressed her again. “Can you please tell us for the record how you obtained the new jump convolutions for the route you selected?”

  Kris took a deep breath. “I did them in my head, sir.” The chorus of muffled exclamations that broke out confirmed that her study mates had kept quiet on the subject.

  “You realize that is an extraordinary claim, Ms. Kennakris—”

  “I didn’t at the time, sir.”

  Hoste blinked, but let it pass. “Perhaps you can explain more exactly how you accomplished this?”

  “More exactly, sir?”

  “What tools—resources—you used to perform this calculation.”

  “I downloaded the local TSAO catalog for Lacaille space onto my xel, sir. Then I used a copy of Tesseract with a mapping module to give me the available manifolds. I downloaded the nav data from the corvettes to get the key points I needed, and then I worked out the new convolution. Once I had it, I manually entered it into my simulator and linked it to the others.”

  “So the only tools you used were a copy of Tesseract and a mapping module on your xel, and the only data you required was the TSAO catalog and the exercise nav data supplied to the corvettes?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  Hoste looked right and left to his stone-faced colleagues on the dais. “Any comments?”

  “Well, sir,” Commander Olson spoke up. “Tesseract’s not a program we would expect an underclassman to be able to use, but it’s certainly available to anyone who wants to install it. As long as she used it legitimately—without outside assistance—I don’t see a problem with that.”

  “Any further comments? No? Then let us continue.” He activated the screen above the dais. “Ms. Kennakris, are you willing to demonstrate this ability for the members of the inquiry?”

  “I am, sir.” This is where the dog-and-pony show begins, she thought, wondering if she could actually concentrate with a hoard of eyes boring into the back of her skull.

  “Very well,” the Commandant pronounced, and as Kris waited, trying not to fidget, the process of formally testing her claim was set in motion. She thought it was a silly, tedious and irritating bit of theatre: first, they called for a few randomly selected upperclassmen to surrender their xels—for a moment it seemed they might even resort to rolling dice, for gawd’s sake—then went through the ritual of verifying that the tools she’d need were properly installed; setting the right permissions; having Commander Olson test them; having the class president and Lieutenant Commander Fulton, the head of the Academy’s IT department, witness and endorse all these procedures; and finally presenting her with the approved device. Hoste then asked for a selection of test problems from the audience; these were displayed on the screens, and another randomly selected student made the choice.

  Kris refocused her eyes as the Commandant addressed her—she’d been calming herself by creating a mental catalog of all the ways these ridiculous attempts at ‘proving’ the test would be fair and unbiased might be defeated—and replied automatically, “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you find this an acceptable problem, Ms. Kennakris?”

  She looked up at the displays for the first time. The problem posed was straightforward: a transit from Nedaema in the Pleiades to Antigua in the Fomalhaut Sector. “Yes, that’s fine, sir.”

  He nodded for her to proceed and she opened Tesseract and started loading data into it, then imported the results into the mapper for display. The xel was linked to big auditorium screens and she had to resist glancing at them, while the room became unnaturally silent. Accessing the function menu and bringing up a basic transform, she felt the tension focused on her becoming more acute, and for a moment she had to stop. Closing her eyes, she tried to shut out the room with its many pairs of invasive eyes and the bated breathing in the pregnant quiet, filling it instead with a simple rhythm that she slowly elaborated on until, at last, she could visualize the convolution operators, each with its own melody, and begin to harmonize them.

  After what seemed an immensely long time—perhaps a minute—she had her answer. She input the convolution into the plotting module and tapped PLOT. The thin red trace of the transit arced through the xel’s display volume, neatly connecting Nedaema with Antigua. She held the xel out. “That’s it, sir.”

  No one spoke. All their attention was riveted on the auditorium screens, as if spellbound by some particularly odd conjuring trick, at once unbelievable yet not quite satisfying. Hoste recovered first. “Commander Olsen, please verify this result. Ms. Huston”—calling on the class president—“would you observe, please?”

  Eleanor Huston came down from her seat and peered officiously over Commander Olson’s shoulder as he took out a xel and ran the convolution the normal way. So how do you like it? Kris thought maliciously as his operations unfolded across the display and Ms. Huston did her best to look keenly serious. Merging his plot with Kris’s, Olson looked up. “Perfect, sir,” he reported in a strangely pinched tone of voice.

  Murmuring broke out and Kris sternly suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. She wished she could give a little bow and pull a coin from her ear—or maybe make the xel disappear . . . by shoving it up someone’s—

  “Thank you, Ms. Kennakris.” Hoste’s manner suggested that he might have been following her thoughts. To his left, Kris saw that Naomi Buthelezi had a little glint in her eye—she probably was too. “Would you object to doing another problem, for confirmation?”

  “If it will help expedite the proceedings,” Kris answered, keeping her tone just this side of snide, “I’m happy to undertake another problem.”

  Her tone was not lost on Hoste but he could not well say anything, and they went through the Kabuki dance of selecting a new problem set again. These were more challenging, and when the final selection was made—by Minx, and Kris wondered if she’d been looking up navigation problems while the deliberations were going on—it made Kris smile inwardly.

  The transit Minx picked was from Anson’s Deep to the Ivoria-controlled junction at Winnecke IV. It was really two transits because there was no direct route between them: you either had to go via Andaman & Nicobar or through Iona, both of which could be problematic.

  A third possibility was to run the Shaula Traps, which were notoriously difficult to negotiate and required a ship with very hot drives. Kris smiled because the Traps run was much used by slavers, and they typically over-engined their ships to allow them to do it. She’d made the trip numerous times in Harlot’s Ruse and had actually considered tweaking Harlot’s jump convolver just enough to make the next run fatal. She was certainly happy that the CEF had forestalled her plan for suicidal revenge on Anton Trench, but she found the irony of Minx picking that particular problem quite amusing.

  Hoste, considering Kris intently as he highlighted the choice, asked her: “Have you a question, Ms. Kennakris?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kris tried to keep the amusement out of her voice. “I was wondering if it was important in the context of this problem that the transit be unobserved?”

  Hoste seemed to have an idea of what she was getting at—his eyes narrowed and she also noticed Naomi Buthelezi and Commander Olson looking at her quite intently—but he merely said, “Please clarify, Cadet.”

  “Well sir, as I’m sure you’re aware, the only practical transits are through the Sultanate itself or Iona. Given how the Ionians feel about us these days, there could be, um, consequences, and the Andamans probably w
ouldn’t be too happy either about us sending a task force to their key junction.” This pithy assessment of the current political situation sent glances ricocheting around the dais. “But you can sneak through the Traps pretty well—assuming you can run deep enough.”

  Now the exchange of looks took on an entirely different and altogether more serious character. The CEF was quite familiar with the properties of the Shaula Traps and its usefulness for covert transits, but that was far from common knowledge. Hearing about it from a cadet was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Your point, Ms. Kennakris?” asked the Commandant, uncomfortably.

  “It’s just that running an optimum through the Traps is no good, sir. Optimum’s all I can do in my head, so if that’s the preferred route, I wanted to point out that my solution would not be practical.” She smiled, trying to make it agreeable rather than triumphant, and wasn’t altogether successful. “You can ask Commander Olson, but I think he’ll verify that you can’t really run the Traps at anything above 0.75 optimum, sir—should go hotter if you can manage it—about 0.69 if you really want to have a good chance of not being detected.”

  “Ah . . . um.” Hoste looked over at Olson, whose jaw tightened as he tried to hide his alarm. The CEF’s covert transit doctrine called for running the Shaula Traps at 0.67 optimum and that value was in fact highly classified. Having a cadet essentially blurt it out was a most disagreeable surprise and Hoste could only thank God he’d been warned to close the inquiry.

  “Your point is well taken, cadet,” Hoste said a moment later. “That caveat is accepted. Please provide an optimum solution for whichever route you choose.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll take the Traps.” And she did. It was easier this time, and when Olson verified her result the murmuring was louder and more general. A sotto voce discussion broke out on the dais and Kris finally allowed herself a look of triumph, while murmuring a few not very complimentary reflections to herself.

  The Commandant saw her lips move. He again leaned forward slightly. “Is there some further comment you wish to make, Ms. Kennakris?”

  “Not really, sir.” She might have left it there—Hoste certainly thought she would and was leaning back—but the devil already had her tongue and she added, “I was just going to say that I can keep doing this, if you want. I’ve got a free afternoon.”

  The ensuing ripple of laughter quickly threatened to get out of hand, and the Commandant called sharply for order. Eventually, he got it.

  * * *

  One of the perqs of being Commandant was a private residence with its own dining faculties, downside at the Cape York campus. Ambrose Hoste made sparing use of these, feeling it was generally better to dine with his staff, but this evening he made an exception. Stirring cream into a cup of tea while he and Naomi Buthelezi worried at a plate of petit fours, he remarked in a thoroughly discontented voice: “That was damn near a fiasco.”

  “Don’t take it so hard, Ambrose. We knew she could do it. And it certainly put to rest any question of her cheating.”

  “Yes, but we can hardly attribute her victory to luck.”

  “Not just to luck, perhaps, but I think we can allow that route in the scoring. We needn’t get specific as to how she exploited it. That attack she made was spectacular enough.”

  “I suppose.” The fact of the matter was that they had little choice, but that did not make it sit any better with him—indeed it made it worse. “But, good lord, Naomi! Did you see Stan’s face when she delivered that little homily on how to escape detection by running the Traps? How does she know these things? He was in here afterwards practically demanding I arrest her.”

  Naomi had overheard some of Stanislaus Olson’s rather overwrought reaction, and she concealed her smile with a petit fours. “He’s probably just afraid of what might happen when she shows up in his class next year.”

  “And I shouldn’t wonder,” Hoste said in a low voice, not really attending. Then louder: “Imagine having a cadet who can check your work!”—forgetting in his agitation that Naomi had no need to imagine: it was her ‘unsolvable’ problem that Kris had blown up so spectacularly, precipitating this whole mess. Personally, she’d been amused and somewhat gratified by Kris’s performance, but she could appreciate that others—notably Commander Olson, who could be a prickly sort—might see things in a different light. Still, she thought his being lectured by a cadet—an underclassmen, at that—was good for him.

  “She has had a rather singular education, it would seem,” she said diplomatically. “But I don’t think we need to be concerned—she’s quite closed mouthed—only talks to Basmartin. She felt provoked today. Maybe we should have apprised her of that memo beforehand.”

  Hoste made a noncommittal noise and attacked his tea. “Perhaps Fred Yu was right after all.”

  “In what respect?”

  “About her not really belonging here. Turn her loose on them, by God”—he motioned generally at the cosmos—“and let them see how they like it. If she discomfits our adversaries half as much as she did me today, it would be well worth it.”

  “Ambrose, you can’t be serious,” Naomi chided gently.

  “I suppose not.” He settled his cup back on its navy-blue saucer with its elegant hawser-laid border picked out in gold. “But I tell you—in earnest—I worry about what else they saw fit not to tell us.”

  That was a fair question. Naomi had no answer for it, and before she could offer more than a slight shrug, the Commandant’s personal line beeped. He thumbed ACCEPT.

  “Yes?”

  “Apologies for the interruption, sir”—it was his secretary on the line—“but you just received a call from ONI.”

  He exchanged a glance with Naomi. It was not unlikely he would hear from the Office of Naval Intelligence regarding the inquiry, but not anything like this soon. “Did they say on what subject?”

  “No, sir,” his secretary replied. “The call was from a Commander Wesselby.”

  “Thank you, Stacy. Please tell her I shall be happy to speak to her in fifteen minutes, if that is convenient. I’ll take the call in my office.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Commander Wesselby?” he asked Naomi.

  She returned a thoughtful look. “Trin Wesselby, I believe. She was deputy director, PLESIG, but I heard she’s been given the director’s billet. Very close to Admiral PrenTalien.”

  “Odd,” Hoste muttered. Quite odd, in fact. What conceivable reason could the director of PLESIG have to visit ONI here at Nereus HQ, and then call on him?

  “If I remember right, she was our lead in investigating the Alecto Initiative also.”

  Hoste looked up sharply. “Was Kennakris involved in that, by any chance?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. It’s possible. Lieutenant Commander Huron was.”

  “I take it Lieutenant Commander Huron and Kennakris are . . . associated?”

  “I believe there are some rumors to that effect, sir.”

  Hoste made a disgruntled noise. This was beginning to look even more complicated, and he’d had quite enough of complications. “Well, do excuse me, Naomi. This shouldn’t take long. I would enjoy finishing our game, if that’s not inconvenient.”

  Their eyes wandered to the waiting chess board, set to one side for dinner. Ambrose Hoste, distracted, had not played at his usual level this PM and she had a clear mate in five, but with this new development she was considering a blunder, if she could make one that wasn’t too obvious.

  “Not at all, Ambrose.” She selected another petit fours and bit it in half. “Please don’t rush.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  CEF CGHQ, Capitol Complex

  Nereus, Mars, Sol

  The distinctive warbling tone echoed thinly throughout the almost empty gym, and Rafe Huron tapped his sparring partner’s forearm. Gunnery Sergeant Alison Jordan released what was about to become a devastating hammer lock, swiped some bright gold locks, now darkened with sweat, away from her forehead and st
epped back with a heartfelt sigh.

  Wearing an easy grin, Huron loped across the exercise mats to where the calling card lay caroling among his gear. Tapping ACCEPT, he was treated to Commander Wesselby’s smiling face.

  “Not an inopportune time, is it?” she asked, taking her dark hair out of the tight braid and noting the way Huron was dressed.

  “Not at all. Quite propitious, in fact.”

  “Why? Allie about to get the drop on you again?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I can see her grinning over your shoulder. Hello, Sergeant.”

  “Good evening, Commander.” Sergeant Jordan’s sweetly accented voice spoke right next to his ear. He hadn’t heard her approach at all.

  “Apologies if I delayed Rafe getting what I’m sure he richly deserves.”

  “No worries, ma’am.” The sergeant, a dyed-in-the-wool Canberra native, rolled her shoulders suggestively. “Not much of a delay, I expect.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Trin returned her gaze to Huron. “I just spoke with the Commandant and also Commander Buthelezi—who sends her regards, incidentally. Is she one of your old flames, by any chance? Her greeting seemed to convey a certain . . . warmth.”

  “Who’s prying now?” Huron was acutely conscious of their audience.

  “It’s my turn.”

  “She’s a royal, y’know.”

  “So are you—to most people.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “She’d be quite a catch.” Trin was warming to the exercise.

  “Now don’t you start.”

  “ ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ John Paul Jones.”

  “I know. He also said something about going into harm’s way.”

  “Touché.”

  Huron made a little bow of acknowledgement to the image in the card.

  “And she also wanted you to know your girl made quite a name for herself tearing up War Week.”