The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  As foretold, the chase came about as soon as the gap materialized, turning on his heel with an ease that was well-nigh breathtaking. He shot ahead, displaying his true form—no tricks now—going all-out in a headlong rush towards M5. For all of three minutes, the chase must have reveled in the excellence of his maneuver, but then the magnitude of the battlecruiser’s acceleration became apparent and signs of panic broke out.

  “He’s watering his drives, sir,” Lieutenant Wagner reported and the conning officer concurred. It was a desperate stroke in a ship that size: small craft would inject water molecules directly into the reactor chamber for an instant gain in thrust—some CEF fighters implemented a system to do this called E-boost—and while it could increase acceleration by as much as twenty percent in a fighter, it also greatly increased chamber pressure, and the presence of oxygen had a damping effect on the reaction which would cause the reactor to go subcritical if it was sustained.

  Watering your drives was therefore a running gamble between having them shut down due to chamber overpressure, the reaction damping out, or the chamber itself blowing due to a pressure spike, and on a corvette, one of these was sure to happen within a very few minutes. A terrible gamble, then, and a futile one: Retribution continued to gain. Sir Philip and his officers watched with even greater intensity, alert for the smallest signs of any reckless, frantic measure the chase might try next.

  “Hail the chase,” he said crisply after a minute had gone by. “Inform him that if he opens hatches or ejects anything whatsoever from his ship, he and his whole crew will be spaced in suits with pinholes in them.”

  Kris no longer flinched when the captain threatened that—slow decompression over a matter of hours in a suit with a pinhole leak was perhaps the most agonizing death imaginable—especially after the late Captain Castonguay had ejected some of his ‘cargo’ from his hold before they could board.

  “Make that quite clear, Mr. Immanuel,” Sir Phillip continued, “I wish it to be particularly well understood.”

  The hail was sent, and with Retribution coming up hand over fist, the chase’s heart died within him. Died utterly, but not fast enough to save his drives: they went into emergency shutdown and the chase became a mere ballistic projectile. They readied the cutter and two armed pinnaces as Retribution drew to within a hundred kilometers, still vigilant.

  “Mr. Wagner,” Captain Lawrence called as the boats were preparing.

  “Sir?” the young man snapped to something like a seated species of attention at his station.

  “I do not believe you have yet had the pleasure of taking possession of a prize.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I trust you feel that to be within your capabilities?”

  “Absolutely, sir!” A bright, shining reply, as near ecstasy as discipline allowed.

  “Then be so good as to do so. Select a squad of marines and a party of bosun’s mates—Gunnery Sergeant Thompson and Chief Zayterland might be good choices, but I leave that to you.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  The captain regarded the beaming lieutenant with a tolerant smile. “Carry on, Lieutenant.” As Wagner’s cavernous grin disappeared from the forward screen—it remained strangely present in Kris’s mental eye, rather like the Cheshire Cat’s smile—Captain Lawrence turned to her.

  “Midshipman?”

  “Sir?” Kris blinked, startled out of her reverie.

  “As you seem to know something of these flechettes, perhaps you would care to accompany Lieutenant Wagner and give him the benefit of your lights, should questions arise.”

  “Ah, yessir. Of co— Aye aye, sir.”

  Lawrence favored her with the barest nod of his elongated skull. “Do carry on, Midshipman.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Chase

  Killian's Reach, Hydra Region

  They carried on: Kris, Wagner, and a squad of marines in full combat armor led by Gunnery Sergeant Gunnar Thompson, a man so enormous Kris could not imagine where they found for him to bunk, along with a party of bosun’s mates under Senior Chief Pamela Zayterland, a diminutive woman who didn’t quite come up to the middle of Gunny Thompson’s chest, but who matched him pound-for-pound in resolute, unsmiling professional competence.

  Coming alongside the heavily modified corvette—or flechette, as the CEF now reckoned it—in Retribution’s largest cutter, they announced their intention to board under the covering guns of the two pinnaces.

  The flechette’s master sent his acknowledgement and broke the seal on his main hatch. Chief Zayterland ran a scan to detect any untoward power sources, such as rigged fuel cells or charged weapons, and grunted her acceptance of the negative results. They extended a boarding lamprey and it latched on. Wagner demanded the master open his airlock and prepare to receive them with his mates and all his logs and papers. The master acknowledged that too.

  The hatch retracted and the lock opened, revealing the master and two other men, doing their best to look compliant. Zayterland repeated her scan with the same result; the cutter’s hatch opened and Thompson advanced at the head of his marines, their weapons brought to bear. Entering the other ship’s hatch, they fanned out and scanned the passageways of the craft while the master and his mates were careful not to make any abrupt gestures. After a tense minute in which Kris forgot to breathe, Thompson gave the all clear.

  Wagner advanced now, followed by Kris, Zayterland and the bosun’s mates. Everyone was in combat armor except Wagner, and he was also the only unarmed person in the party; even Kris had been issued a sidearm. It was a calculated bit of theatre that Kris found pointless, and she would have been quite pleased to go unarmored as well. This was her first experience in a combat suit and she was finding the thing cumbersome, oppressive and vastly annoying: it pinched in some very uncomfortable places. Either marines were more stoic than she knew, or they’d gotten the measurements of the damn thing wrong in their hurry to fabricate it. But the pistol on her hip did make her happy.

  Stopping in front of the master, Wagner demanded to see his documents and that he provide an explanation of his actions. The master, a thin, youngish-looking man with ruddy skin and long black hair that fell over his shoulders in elegant ringlets, supplied both, the former on a tablet and the latter in a long series of run-on sentences: here was his registry—Ivorian, sir! See the Emir’s own signature?—his cargo manifest and bills of lading, his customs certificates from his last port ‘o call—Qazvan, sir—and his clearance for his destination: Outremeria, a good five days from here.

  Why had he run? Wagner wanted to know. Pirates, of course, came the agitated answer. Pirates! The lieutenant expressed disbelief: Did not the master know a CEF warship when he encountered one? A League warship—a battlecruiser? Here? Absurdity! The CEF never patrolled out this far—everyone knew that. What was he to think, being pursued in such a threatening way? His cargo of Maxor herbs—rare herbs used in the making of a unique perfume—was extremely valuable, highly perishable, could not be frozen. Of course he was in a hurry; his ship was one of the few that could make the delivery without spoilage.

  Accompanied by these explanations, often repeated, they retired to the bridge to review the logs. Kris followed along while Chief Zayterland and her team went about their survey of the ship. Half the marines went with them—just in case. Gunnery Sergeant Thompson stayed with the lieutenant to encourage the master should his spirit of cooperation begin to flag. Kris squashed herself into a corner as well as she could in the bulky armor and tried to pay attention while Wagner and the master scrolled through the ship’s logs on the main console, and the questions began again.

  Why were there only five crew? The master had presented his mate and engineer; the marines had rounded up the navigator and helmsman. There should have been six—as Kris and Zayterland already knew—and the logs clearly indicated six from the state of the consumables and environmental records, as Wagner recognized. Bolted, sir! His second helmsman had bolted on Qazvan—no time to engage
another one. Did the lieutenant know what it was like standing watch-on-watch so many days running? Certainly, he did. Certainly he understood being shorthanded on such a tight schedule with a fragile, valuable cargo—and on and on . . .

  Kris listened with half an ear and fidgeted. It was of course all a complete crock of shit. The Emirate of Ivoria looked after the traffic the Andaman slaver guilds ran through Winnecke 4 all the time. Qazvan was a Bannerman colony—clearing customs there meant nothing—less than nothing, given how much the Bannermans dealt. And no one in their right mind would be trying to peddle expensive Maxor ingredients for perfumes on a dismal hole like Outremeria. The whole ship reeked of slaver, probably literally if she were to open her visor, which she was under orders not to do. Even the vessel’s purported name, the Intrepid Fawkes, had an odor to it.

  So Kris fumed and waited, waited and fumed some more. The only good thing about keeping her visor closed was that she didn’t have to worry about controlling her expression or quelling the stream of obscenities she was muttering under her breath. But Wagner, listening to the master’s prattle, nodding and trying not to repeat his questions too often, was having a rough time of it. Clearly he’d expected to catch a slaver red-handed with a boatload of sobbing slaves, ever so grateful to be rescued. Not this nervous, talkative, dandyish supposed master of a merchant vessel who seemed to have everything genuinely in order. He didn’t want to believe the stories he was hearing, but the wealth of data being dumped on him was wearing him down, especially because it all checked out.

  Kris let loose another jet of invective. Sure everything’s gonna look jake, you idiot. Did they think slavers were that stupid?

  At length, Chief Zayterland reported in. They had surveyed the mess just aft of the bridge—Kris had walked through it on the way here—the crew spaces along the waist and the crew’s head forward, the master’s berth right aft, and the hold. There was cargo in the hold that matched the manifests; the stamps and seals all checked out. They were still going over the engineering spaces. So far, everything was copasetic—a word Kris had never heard before. But she gathered it was not good, at least from her perspective. They couldn’t seriously be thinking of taking the oily little shit at his word?

  Could they? The tenor of the room had changed since the chief arrived: the master had been looking increasingly sullen these past three-quarters of an hour; now he seemed to have relaxed slightly. That would be the case even if he was innocent as the driven snow—no, not snow dammit. What was it that Huron liked to say? Anyway, innocent. But innocent wasn’t all she thought she was seeing: there might be a gleam of triumph too. The captain had told Kris to give Lieutenant Wagner the benefit of her lights, though he hadn’t said Wagner had to ask for them, or act on them if he did. And it didn’t look like he was going to. Well, fuck it—enough was enough.

  Wagner wasn’t wearing armor but he did have an ear bug, and Kris used her suit comms to ping it. “Can I talk to you, sir?” He shot her a harassed look. “Privately?” The lieutenant moved his lips in irritation but did not open them. “Maybe have the Chief take the crew back to engineering or the hold or someplace—make ‘em show her the compartments or anything.” Kris tried to make the suggestion sound helpful, not exasperated, and couldn’t tell how well she might have succeeded.

  Without giving her another look, Wagner handed the tablet back to the master. “Chief Zayterland, would you kindly conduct the master and his crew to the engineering spaces and see that they give you access to all the core files and mod-recs? The records here appear to me not to match what I saw in our sensor data. Gunnery Sergeant, accompany the Chief with your section, please.”

  Zayterland gave the lieutenant a sharp look and Thompson rumbled, “Against orders to leave you and the Midshipman unescorted, sir.”

  “Quite so, Gunny,” Wagner replied testily. “Leave two men and carry on.”

  “Aye aye sir.” He told off two men, then he and Chief Zayterland ushered the master and his crew off in the company of the other marines without another word.

  Kris popped her visor with a relieved sigh as Wagner stepped over. “What is it?” His agitation made him snappishly familiar but Kris refused to take umbrage.

  “They finding anything?”

  “The cargo, yeah. It’s in the hold—marked and stamped and sealed. His docs are all in order. They scan as authentic too.”

  “They check for hidden compartments?”

  “Of course they checked, Kris!” Wagner’s eyes flicked sideways to see if either of the marines had registered the gaffe. It didn’t seem like it. He lowered his voice anyway. “Look, the chief’s an expert, okay? She knows what to look for!”

  She’s not an expert on ‘flechettes’—you guys never caught one before. “I know,” Kris returned in the same low whisper. “But they’re real slick about hiding compartments on these boats.”

  “How d’ya know?”

  I know cuz I’ve been stashed in ‘em. Not often, just a couple of times when Trench had moved her through a port where customs wasn’t rigged. But how could she explain that to Wagner? “Umm . . . ya gotta trust me?”

  “Trust you?” Wagner’s eyes darted aside again. “For gawd’s sake, you have any idea what they’ll do to me if I screw this up? If we go breaking bulkheads here and this guy really is what he says, I’ll be lucky if all they do is make me a permanent scavenger for cleaning the heads!”

  “But you gotta know this is all ratshit!”

  “I don’t know that at all! We’ve got nothing on him.”

  Dammit! “Okay, I read that. Sorry—sir. But look—” Wagner narrowed his eyes and Kris went on before he could speak: “Call Commander Huron.”

  “Commander Huron?”

  “Yeah, he’s intel, not just ops. Get him to talk to these guys—review the data. Betcha he finds something.”

  The lieutenant’s lips clamped down: that would be admitting defeat—that he couldn’t hack it after all. “I’ll think about it. I gotta go talk to the Chief.” He started to leave, then stopped and looked back at Kris. “Don’t do anything, alright?”

  Kris bit her lip. “Nosir.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what the Chief thinks.” He turned, and with one of the marines following, walked down the passageway toward the main junction that led to the hold and engineering.

  Kris watched him go with her stomach working itself into a hot, tight, angry knot. This was fucked. They had to be transporting someone and she had to be prime, the way they were flying. They’d had hours to stash her and fuck the logs around, though from the way the master was acting, she was pretty sure they hadn’t expected to be run down—they’d thought they had the legs of the battlecruiser.

  Which told her what? Nothing useful. Every ship had different hidey-holes. On Harlot’s Ruse they were in Trench’s quarters; it saved time and people always suspected the holds.

  What was the master’s berth like on this boat? Small for sure, but . . . She tapped her helmet and nodded to the remaining marine. “The lieutenant’s pinging me. I gotta go see. Stand by here.” Then she hurried aft without giving him a chance to react. He didn’t question or follow her, but outside the hatch to the master’s berth there was another marine standing guard. They weren’t risking anything being disturbed. Made sense—but did it apply to her? She walked purposely towards the hatch.

  He stopped her. “Sorry, ma’am. No one’s allowed back there.”

  Shit. Her suit pinched her again and she winced. “I know. I’m not gonna touch anything. I just need to get back there for a minute.”

  The marine tugged one side of his mouth into a half-grin. “Suit not workin’ right? There’s another head up forward.” So the master’s berth did have its own head. Interesting. And since he apparently thought . . .

  Kris made a face. “First time I’ve had the goddamned thing on. It’s um—not fitting.”

  “Can’t help you with that. Go up forward.” The grin flirted with the other side of his mouth.


  She could tell he’d recognized her accent and she knew his: Maxwell, in the Inner Trifid. One Outworlder smirking at another. “I’ve been forward. No joy. Look, I’ll just be a minute, I swear. C’mon, before my teeth start floating.” Kris caught his eye and held it. “Or you want me to just drop down here and piss on your feet? Cuz if I have to—” The marine moved his jaw restlessly. Kris reached for her suit seals. “Fine, have it your way. I hope you like gettin’—”

  He jerked his head toward the hatch. “A’right! Go on. Just get it done before that prick lieutenant comes back again.”

  “Thanks,” Kris smiled. “You’re a winner.” She ducked past him before he could say anything else.

  The master’s birth itself was almost exactly what she expected: a narrow galley-shaped space with a sleeping niche on one side—the bunk was still extended—and a table on the other, retracted, with a row of consoles linked to the bridge displays in the bulkhead and a dumbwaiter, not an actual mess port. There were a couple tall cabinets at each end and a few shallow ones up against the overhead.

  What she did not expect was the head: it had a shower, and not just any shower. Most ultrasonic weightless showers had barely enough room for a single person to turn around in. This one, by that standard, was positively sybaritic: you could easily get two people into it—if they were fond of each other. You might find a shower like this on a big boat that had room and resources to burn, but it seemed distinctly out-of-place on a corvette. She knelt to examine the stall more closely.

  The combat armor had a basic sensor suite: standard ESM and optical gear. The optics covered from near-ultraviolet to short-wave IR, were filterable and had up to 25X magnification. She closed her visor, activated the suite and inspected the shower walls, the hardware, the seams, the surrounding bulkheads, the deck. Nothing.

  Well, that was no big fucking surprise. Chief Zayterland’s people had done the same thing and with much more sophisticated hardware. They had sounders and scanners and gawd-knows-what else. If they couldn’t detect anything, her suite sure as hell wasn’t gonna find it.