“Do tell.”
“They actually had to hold an inquiry about it.”
“Trin?”
“Yes?”
“Two things. You might want to go easy on employing the possessive case when it comes to Kris. And as much as I appreciate the interruption, my keen instincts tell me you had another reason for calling.”
“In fact I did. The Academy is willing to greenlight a meeting, if she agrees.”
“Schedule?”
“Early next week. We’re looking for a day to maximize the inconvenience for CID.”
“Excellent. With whom?”
“You, a Commander Tilletson from Operations and a CID rep to be named later. Most of the department heads will be attending a major bull session at Lunar 1 then, so I’m expecting Eliot Matheson. He’s deputy of the group that’s tasked with human trafficking. Do you know him?”
“Never heard of him.”
“You’re in for a treat, then.”
“Box checker?”
“Extraordinaire. He’s hell on wheels when it comes to report formats too.”
“Very nice.”
“Back with an update tomorrow PM.”
“Looking forward to it. Enjoy your evening, Trin.”
“You too, Rafe. Have fun, Allie.”
“I’ll do that, ma’am.”
And Huron killed the link.
“Have you known the Commander a long time, sir?” Sergeant Jordan inquired politely as they moved back onto the mats.
“Her father and mine were friends.”
“Does she always talk to you like that?”
“Once she lets her hair down, yes.”
“So it’s true you dated Commander Buthelezi?” As they took their stance and locked forearms.
“Are you trying to get on my good side, Sergeant?”
Alison Jordan replied with a grin as bright as her hair. “You’re better when you’re motivated, sir. Ready?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
CEF Academy Orbital Campus
Deimos, Mars, Sol
The day after the inquiry, a board of faculty members, chaired by Commander Buthelezi and observed by Commandant Hoste, who took no active role, met to decide the War Week scoring. It was a close, detailed and deeply technical discussion, and the upshot was that Basmartin came out on top, ahead of Kris by a mere three points, the edge being his performance during the torpedo runs. Indeed, the result was so closely argued, detailed and technical as to seem a bit defensive, which, given the extraordinary nature of the situation, it certainly was. Nonetheless, the majority accepted the decision as being on the right side of justice.
This majority did not include Basmartin, who was livid. When they chanced to have a moment alone, he’d exclaimed savagely to Kris, “You were robbed! Fucking robbed!”
Kris had never seen him angry before and certainly had never heard him say fuck, the way she and Tanner did so liberally—it was daunting.
“S’Okay,” she replied. “It’s no problem—really.” And then she tried to explain that setting up the conditions for victory was not at all the same as achieving victory.
Baz would not buy any of it. “But you assigned us the torps! You coulda made those runs better than either of us! You know it!”
She did know it, but she also knew that she was better in a dogfight than either of them, so if Red Team’s fighters had shown up, she stood a better chance of buying them the time needed to pull off the attack. That, however, was a line of argument Baz was obviously not amenable to, and she didn’t even bother to voice it. When she left, he was still fuming.
The following day, the Grand Senate passed, by an unusually slim margin, a resolution authorizing the Plenary Council to proceed with the ultimatum and any action that should result from its execution. An eleventh-hour compromise to soften some of the wording had been needed to secure sufficient votes, leading to cries of weasel wording and watering down. The senior senator from New Meridies took the floor at the last minute to harangue his colleagues: “What is the point of an ultimatum that merely suggests, not demands?” His tone was overwrought, as were his arguments, and the compromise stood. The Plenary Council accepted the resolution with due solemnity, and the Speaker promised action with “all alacrity consistent with the portentous nature of the resolution” and set no date for doing anything. The media, reacting on cue, was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
At the Academy, all the outcry signified perhaps less than nothing. The results of the vote were announced on the same Martian day as the finals of the All-Forces Unarmed Combat Championship, in which Corporal Vasquez defeated Sergeant Major Yu in a match of record length by the required minimum of two points. Regardless of the confident predictions from some parties, the sky did not fall and, as attentive observers noted the next morning, the sun rose in its accustomed quadrant.
Even for those few near-pariahs who hadn’t followed the tournament with obsessive dedication, the term was ending in the spirit of holiday, not politics, and governmental doings were a very distant concern, indeed.
Kris’s private thoughts were not on holidays, however, which meant nothing to her but more time on her hands (it was pleasant enough to have a break from people, but she got squirmy after about a week), and even less on what the government was up to.
Instead, her thoughts were wholly occupied with what the immunocyte implants were doing to her system. Walking with knees that still shook more than a little and keeping one hand on the wall, she was making her way back to her study from the head, where she’d practically taken up a lease on the stall nearest the door. In fact, the day before yesterday she’d seriously considered posting a sign to that effect when she unexpectedly found it occupied. Fortunately, there was a sink handy.
She’d gotten her first round of immunocytes four days ago—the same day the final scoring was announced—and the med-techs had told her to expect “a little discomfort” and “maybe some nausea,” especially after the first twenty-four hours. Kris had come to understand this as medical shorthand for puking your guts out for an hour and a half every morning. That was supposed to be diminishing at this point, and she certainly hoped it would, because it was beginning to feel like the cure was worse than the disease—any disease. The very thought of food made her stomach roll; she was having enough trouble keeping down the specially fortified, somewhat slimy, vaguely sweet, unpleasantly pale-orange stuff she was supposed to drink a liter of each evening.
Baz looked up as she eased unsteadily through the door, noting her pale, drawn face and the beads of clammy perspiration across her forehead and under her eyes, which were ringed with dark circles.
“Bad, huh?” He’d gotten his implants the same day, and whatever they fixed up kids with in the Homeworlds, it must be a lot different than the proactive vaccines Kris had been inoculated with, because he’d sailed through with barely a burp. Kris was not close to forgiving him for that.
“What’re ya still doin’ here?” she said in a hoarse, strained voice. He was supposed to have left to meet his family early that AM.
“Flight’s delayed.”
“Again?” This was the second time. Minx and Tanner had left two days ago, Minx with her upperclassman girlfriend and Tanner to parts unknown. Baz had been stuck here, exactly at the time when she really didn’t want the company.
“It happens,” he said philosophically. It was easy for him to be philosophical. Kris had a vague idea that he also felt some obligation to hang around and ‘be there for her’ or some such bullshit. His parents were doctors—his father was in fact the medical director of a hospital on Phaedra—and Kris knew they both did a lot of pro bono medical outreach in the poorer colonies. Baz evidently felt he had to keep up the family tradition. She really couldn’t blame him for that, but she did anyway. Sometimes Baz could be really dense.
As she made her way carefully to her bunk—Tanner’s bunk, actually, since hers was an upper rack—Baz looked down at the tablet he
was browsing. “By the way, your xel’s been beeping like crazy.”
“Fuck it,” Kris muttered as she sat carefully on the bunk and dragged a pillow across her knees.
“I think it’s important.”
“Fuck it anyway,” as she lowered her face into the welcoming softness.
“It’s from Commander Huron.”
Kris raised her head faster than was prudent. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah, he got promoted. Months ago, I guess. Anyway, it’s his sig. Thought you’d wanna know.”
“Yeah.” She’d left her xel a good two meters way. That meant moving. Shit.
Baz got up and reached over for it. “Here.”
“Thanks.” She hadn’t meant it to sound so gruff. Baz smiled anyway. He opened his mouth but then his xel warbled, an insistent priority tone. He thumbed it off and checked the alert.
“Now they’re here. Just cleared into orbit.” He looked over at Kris, who was staring at her xel in bewilderment. “You doing okay? I can stay a little longer, if you’d like. It won’t kill them to wait some.”
“No—no,” Kris said distractedly. “Go on. Have a good break. Tell your sister I say Hi.”
“Sure you don’t need anything?”
Yeah, being alone. “Naw, I don’t. All good.”
“Okay.” He made no move to stir. “We’ll be downside a few days—maybe the rest of the week. Then we’ll be at my sister’s place in Kyoto. You got my card?”
“Yeah.”
“Well . . . y’know—you can call if there’s anything. Door’s always open—all that.”
“I know.”
Finally, he shouldered his tightly packed duffle bag and picked up a smaller travel case. “Well, see ya next term, Kris.”
“Take it easy, Baz.”
The door slid open and then shut behind him before she looked up.
The message was from Lieutenant Commander Huron and what was more, it came with an endorsement from Commandant Hoste, or at least his office. The endorsement informed her that while the attached request concerned an official matter, her compliance was wholly voluntary and refusal would in no way impact her Academy career—would not in fact be noted in her record—but if she chose to comply, she was to understand there would be certain obligations thereby assumed, both under civil law and the 17 Articles of the Code of Military Justice, and she was to understand what rights she had in such a case and which others might be limited or curtailed by her acceptance of the request and so on for almost three pages.
The message itself was not even three lines. It simply said he and some other unnamed ‘gentlemen’ had some questions they would like to ask her, and would she agree to meet with them downside at the main campus today at 1500, or some other time tomorrow if that was more convenient? The second line informed her that transport was already standing by.
Of the topic there was no clue, but there were few things Commander Huron and some ‘gentlemen’ could possible wish to ask her about—in fact, she could think of only one: Nestor Mankho.
She sighed and rubbed her aching ribs, trying to ease the pain in the wrenched muscles along her sides and around her abdomen. She had no doubt she could refuse, and besides, she felt like shit. That was not an excuse exactly—no excuses were called for here—but on the other hand, it would get her off this fucking rock for a day. And she’d get to see Huron again. That thought gave her queer contradictory feelings which did not sit well with her stomach.
Goddammit. She rapped her knuckles absently on her thigh. It was still early. What did she have to look forward to here? Choking down another liter of that fucking jellied lizard piss this evening?
Oh, to hell with it. She opened the message again, typed her two-word acceptance. Hit SEND.
Chapter Twenty-Three
CEF Academy Main Campus
Cape York, Mars, Sol
Fresh from a two-hour nap that had her feeling almost human again, Kris jogged up the broad white dolomite steps of the portico that framed the towering main entrance of the Academy’s Cape York campus. At the security desk, she presented her ID and surrendered her private xel and her calling cards—she’d decided to stay downside at least a few days and so had recovered them and packed her meager belongings—and received her badge and a pathfinder from the young, round-headed guard whose chipper demeanor clashed oddly with the two grim, unsmiling, censorious marine sentries who flanked the inner entrance.
Passing through into the massively vaulted atrium, she followed the pathfinder’s line to a bank of lifts at the far end and was surprised to see Minx coming from the other direction, accompanied by a young woman with buzz-cut silver-white hair, a Venusian tan and a wrestler’s build. She was quite a bit shorter than Minx and wore a Marine cadet’s uniform, and Kris thought her attractive in a robust, square-jawed sort of way. She and Minx made a rather odd couple, and as they exchanged nods in passing, Kris noted that the name on the marine cadet’s badge was Alane Hotchkiss.
The next available lift queried Kris’s pathfinder, and on verifying her biometrics, displayed her destination—the ninth floor—and produced a riser for her. She stepped on it and as it ascended, she just missed Hotchkiss looking back over her shoulder.
“Who was that?”
Minx twitched one eyebrow. “Oh, that was Kris.”
“That’s Kris?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t know she was, ah—”
Minx frowned.
“—so tall.”
“Uh huh.”
“Y’know,” Hotchkiss went on, noting the tightness of her girlfriend’s lips, “I saw Commander Huron up on the Ninth about an hour ago.”
“Really?” That brought some color back to Minx’s smile. “No wonder she’s in a hurry. I bet they don’t even wait ‘til they’re out of the building.”
Hotchkiss laughed. “What? You think they’re just gonna find an empty desk and go for it?”
“She hasn’t seen him in like eight months.”
“You’re not serious.”
“How much you wanna bet?”
The ninth floor was reserved for senior staff offices and conference rooms, so Kris was not surprised at being directed there, but she hadn’t expected the pathfinder to guide her to the Commandant’s suite. The door opened to her hesitant knock, and after crossing the well-appointed foyer, Kris was met by his secretary, who conducted her to the inner office.
Commandant Hoste was waiting there, along with Commander Buthelezi, two men she had never seen before and Rafe Huron. The two unknown men were such a contrast as to appear almost comical, irresistibly reminding Kris of stock actors in the vids she watched as a child. One was tall, thick-bodied and stolid, his heavy-jowled face not giving anything away but a sense of bureaucratic officiousness. The other was a narrow-chested, thin-faced man with a longish nose and a fringe of pale hair, who sat very erect and projected an air Kris could only think of as rabbity. The impression was not helped at all by his rather long and wispy sideburns. He was probably a native of Mars, she guessed, and the sideburns had undoubtedly been in fashion at some point, but why he clung to them was anybody’s guess.
Huron was sitting just to one side, looking almost totally impassive in his crisp lieutenant commander’s uniform. Huron had more ways of being impassive than anyone decently should, and Kris was not sure what this one might mean. She guessed he was just waiting; there certainly did not seem to be any real connection between him and the other two men. Commander Buthelezi projected her usual air of competent unflappability, and Commandant Hoste looked like he’d had a rough few days of it, which was certainly the case.
Hoste cleared his throat. “Ms. Kennakris. Good of you to come. I trust the conditions stipulated in the attachment to Commander Huron’s message were clear to you?”
Oh, fuck no. “Ah—yes, sir.”
“Very good.” Hoste extracted a printout of those conditions from a folder and pushed the flimsies across his desk to h
er. “If you will sign and authenticate these, please, we can begin.” Kris dutifully signed where the Commandant indicated and pressed her thumb over the signature. Hoste secured the pages and replaced them in his desk. “This meeting is informal in nature and we have no intention of making you stand all the while. Do be seated.”
Kris looked behind her to see that the Commandant’s secretary had managed to surreptitiously provide her with a chair. “Thank you, sir,” she said with an acknowledging smile, and sat.
Then he indicated his visitors. “These gentlemen are Commander Tilletson and Mr. Matheson. You will have deduced from the endorsement that Mr. Matheson represents CID, hence the caveats.”
Kris had deduced no such thing, though if she’d taken the time to read it fully, she might have. Keeping as straight a face as possible, she said nothing but bowed her head politely to each of them, hoping that would suffice; it didn’t seem appropriate to salute under the circumstances.
Both men replied in kind and Hoste gestured to Huron. “Commander Huron, you already know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“These gentlemen will explain the reasons behind this meeting more fully,” the Commandant continued, “but I shall acquaint you with the broad outlines. If you should feel that you wish to decline further participation thereafter, you are at liberty to do so, but the conditions stipulated will remain in effect. Have you any questions before I begin?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. It has been proposed”—Kris noted the slight emphasis on the word—“that we conduct an operation against the slaver networks in the Hydra. The scope of this operation would be somewhat different than those we’ve done in the past, focusing not merely on suppression but also on identifying potential assets that might support future operations. It was Commander Huron’s suggestion that, in view of your—background, you might be able to provide some useful insights that would help determine how fruitful such an undertaking is likely to be.”
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