The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  Since his retirement, his father had involved himself again in the family business, and if that caused some discomfort for Charles, who’d been handling the bulk of the management responsibilities for years now, it was perfectly fine with Rafe. His father needed the distraction. So far, he hadn’t thrown anything lethal at his staff, which was a blessing. But Vaishali knew how to handle him, and once he got his hands around the opportunities his new situation afforded, things would be calmer. And it wouldn’t hurt Charles to be reminded that he didn’t know everything there was to know about running an interstellar business just yet.

  But the real reason he hadn’t CC’d Charles was that embedded in the message were the keys to deciphering some additional details in the OPREP. His father would know how to extract them and get them to Trin, and by putting the two messages together she’d get a précis of what they’d learned from Kym about her loan and the woman who accompanied Sandrine Onstanyan, along with the info Kris had supplied and his own preliminary conclusions. That should have been enough to allow Trin to discreetly query SAARs and see if anything promising turned up. They certainly couldn’t go into details over a link this insecure, but he’d sent her the hyperwave set’s parameters anyway and a contact protocol, and it was very likely she’d chime in, if only to give him a brief heads-up.

  They were almost eight light-hours out, no delay for a hyperwave, but he didn’t know if Trin was still on Mars, or if she’d arrived on Luna yet. If she was on Mars, that would add another twenty to forty minutes for the alert they were in-system to arrive, since those were routed through Tycho Control. So he went to grab a sandwich—Kris turned down his offer with a vague shake of her head; she hadn’t been eating regularly and he didn’t know what to make of that, but he knew better than to press the point—and prepared to make himself comfortable.

  His patience was rewarded an hour later when the hyperwave lit up with Trin’s recognition code. He verified her parameters and her location—she was on Luna—and hit RECEIVE. The text scrolled across the screen.

  Welcome home.

  He typed his reply:

  Thanks. Good to see real sunshine.

  And hit SEND. Trin responded:

  Back early.

  Trip wasn’t quite what we planned.

  Sorry to hear. Total loss?

  Still looking for a silver lining.

  Have you seen the markets?

  Been a few days. Action?

  Lots of stirring. Big CP announcement expected soon.

  That clearly referred to some developments at Caelius Protogenos Huron been monitoring for many months now.

  Not surprised.

  Oh? Something I should know?

  If you have a substantial position, dump it.

  What’s up?

  Their new development is about to tank. They’ve also got too much exposure on the margins.

  What happened?

  Didn’t run a sufficient baseline. Bad estimate of the primary’s variability.

  Meaning?

  It’s been running unusually hot for ~150 years. Just went into its minimum. Planet has hair-trigger climatic cycle.

  Meaning?

  Holder bought himself a snowball. Announcement is because the neutrino emissions confirmed it last month. Very high pucker factor over there.

  Ouch.

  Yep. He’ll need a full constellation of SUNSATS if he wants to salvage. He’ll never make that back.

  Double ouch.

  Yep^2. Screwed the pooch on his new flagship project. Investors will not be pleased.

  And you love it.

  Absolutely.

  Glad you’re happy.

  Life has its consolations. You?

  Can’t complain. Wish I could though.

  No takers on the new property?

  Had some hopefuls. They all faded.

  Sorry to hear.

  Might need to pull back and reconsider.

  Sometimes that’s a good plan.

  Going home?

  Briefly.

  Give your dad my best. Tell him we miss him.

  Wilco.

  Is he in WASH?

  No. Visiting Marc in Melbourne. Has a new mare he’s all excited about.

  Marc or your dad?

  Both, I suspect. They think she’s a Victorian Cup prospect.

  Interesting. Hope it is not too expensive for them.

  You know them.

  I do. best of luck. Bye. STOP // END

  Thanks. Bye. ACK.// STOP // END

  Huron shut the channel down. Aside from his perfectly valid advice on Caelius Protogenos (they’d been watching that development gleefully, having run their own baseline years ago), the lack of takers on Trin’s ‘property’ meant she’d struck out on SAARs. Giving his father her best was a suggestion that they lay the problem before him. His father maintained a data store he privately referred to as the ‘skeleton files’ and, given the nature of the person they were seeking, it was perhaps more likely they’d find clues there than in SAARs. Huron was not entirely sure how he felt about the prospect, but he had no doubt his father would relish it. Might as well make the old man’s day.

  Getting up from the terminal, he turned to leave the little bridge.

  “Hey, Rafe?” Kris stopped him—abruptly. She almost never used his given name.

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatcha gonna do with this gig here?” He didn’t know if it was fatigue, stress, Kym’s company or just the boat’s environment that had caused her voice to slip back into the slaver drawl. It seemed to have gotten stronger as the trip progressed. That was not a happy sign.

  “I hadn’t thought much about it. Probably send her in to be condemned, with a recommendation to scrap. Why?”

  “Scrap? Really?” She swept her hand over the console, a curious closed look on her face. “She’s awful yar.”

  “Yar? Where’d you hear that?” Kris had said some surprising things in the past, but nothing as startling as a centuries’ old sailing term that originated in New England for a boat that was fast, easy to handle and quick to the helm; he thought it might even be pre-industrial. “Is that a slaver term?”

  “Nah.” Kris looked down, coloring faintly. “It’s somethin’ my dad said. He’d say to me, ‘Be yar now, would’ja?’”

  That was the first detail of Kris’s home life he’d ever heard her mention. “Were you?”

  “Sometimes.” Her fingertip orbited aimlessly on the console. “I guess.”

  “You want her?”

  Kris shrugged. “Could I have her? If I did.”

  “Sure. Put in a claim—ask them to take it out of your share. With an endorsement, you should be able to get her for scrap value.”

  “Share of what?”

  “Your share of the prize money.”

  “I get a share?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think.” A pause. “Do I gotta decide now?”

  “No. These things take a little while.”

  She gave a little, confused humph under her breath and drew her hand into her lap.

  “Have a name picked out?”

  She shrugged again. “Dunno. Thought maybe—maybe Flechette.”

  “That’s appropriate.”

  “Yeah. Just don’t tell that Lawrence guy. Okay?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Queen Charlotte’s Club, Melbourne

  Republic of Victoria, Terra, Sol

  The black mare rounded the clubhouse turn and stretched out, every muscle of her strong, compact body straining. She was a good two lengths in the lead, four ahead of the pack, and all her focus was on the finish line one hundred twenty yards ahead. The huge bay, now a length and a half back, drifted in toward the rail and seemed to find another gear deep in his massive body. His longer stride began to tell; he closed. The mare was flying though, her jockey low on her neck, and there seemed to be no way he could catch her. But with a mere twenty-five yards to go, the bay suddenly veered to the outside
and shot forward, propelled by an immensely powerful drive from behind. The mare’s jockey turned his head, a split-second too late, and both horses hit the wire together.

  “I told him,” Marcus Huron said, shaking his head in the VIP box five minutes later, after video revealed the mare had lost by a nose—less than a nose, really: a whisker. “I told him: watch out for Blue’s late charge. I told him: ride through the finish. What do I have to tell him?”

  Rafael Huron IV, the retired speaker, clapped his youngest son affectionately on the shoulder. “Well, if the worst she does is lose the Victorian Cup by a hair her first time running it, she’ll have a grand career.”

  “But she had it, Dad! You saw that she had it.”

  “Oh yes, I saw. Truly.” And truly, their accounts were now lighter by about a million. But Eclipse, the black Arabian mare who was his youngest son’s pride and joy, and the most beautiful horse he’d ever beheld, had actually run better than he expected her first time out in the southern hemisphere’s biggest race. The victor, Blue at the Mizzen, was a canny brute, and his jockey, Geri Wolfe, was one of the best in the business. Willie Brunt, who’d been up on Eclipse, was generally solid and reliable, but he’d blundered today, thinking he had it in the bag in the most important race of his career. It was clear that they’d have to find someone better for Eclipse to come fully into her own.

  Marc refused to be mollified. He was fairly new to the racing business—his latest enthusiasm. Having taken up horse breeding some years ago, he’d concluded there ought to be some purpose he was breeding them for, so he launched into a line of racehorses, and he still felt these setbacks (as he persisted in seeing them) keenly. He was on the short side, with an air of permanent youth stamped on him; lightly built, almost wispy compared to his tall, commanding eldest brother—half-brother, to those inclined to be pedantic, for he, like the middle brother Charles, was the son of their father’s second wife. He also had his mother’s light blond hair, blue eyes and refined features, which conveyed a misleading impression of delicacy. Charles, on the other hand, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and corpulent. There was a heaviness about his manner that tended to make him seem sullen, even when he wasn’t, which (truth be told) was not that often. Three more disparate siblings could not well be imagined.

  They all had their particular geniuses, however. Marc, when not indulging his eccentricities (before horse breeding, he’d made a brief foray into racing camels), was a senior staff physicist, although he was not yet thirty, specializing in gravitics at Forbes-Dyson, which supplied about half of the grav-plants in League starships. Charles excelled as a manager, for all he and Rafe often didn’t see eye-to-eye; and Rafe’s exploits (military and otherwise) were top-line news—that is, whenever they were made public.

  Rafe was the son most closely identified with his exalted father, and the most like him, casting a deep shadow over his siblings. The seeming injustice nagged at him, but Rafael Huron IV had lived too long and seen too much to believe all injustices, or even most of them, could be righted. This one, to the extent it existed, did not seem to loom large on the cosmic scale, and in any event, the best one could do was try to fight the good fight, trust in Fate, and enjoy what meager triumphs she afforded.

  A club steward entered and made himself known. Both faces, old and young, turned to him as one. He bowed and announced, “There is a Bethany May Wolcott wishing to see you, sir.”

  The young face registered incomprehension, while the older barely changed, so the steward explained, “Blue at the Mizzen’s owner, sir.”

  Marc squinted sidelong at his father, who smiled and said, “We’d be delighted. Please show her in.”

  “I thought Blue was owned by Parke Godwinson,” Marc muttered as the short, trim, elegantly dressed woman was ushered through the entryway.

  “Please don’t think I’m here to gloat,” she said before any word of greeting could be made. “Eclipse is a magnificent animal—magnificent. She had the race; had it, but for—well, you know. But I just wanted to come and congratulate you. Such an outing in her virgin Cup! I hope you are both quite proud.” The door shut and the woman took off her aqua-tinted glasses.

  “Hello, Trin,” the elder Huron said.

  “Are you really Blue’s owner?” Marc asked.

  “When I need to be,” Commander Wesselby said with a smile. “Sorry you had an expensive PM.”

  The father waved that off. “It’s Brunt that had the expensive PM. He is a fine lad for down-circuit tracks, but he was in over his head today.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a comer very soon who can take Eclipse the full distance. She really is a magnificent animal.”

  “Thanks,” Marc said, a little uncertainly. Trin Wesselby appearing under an assumed name could only betoken certain things, the consequences of which were usually unpleasant for someone. He directed a searching glance between her and his father. “I think I’ll go talk to the trainers. I imagine you two have things you wish to discuss.”

  “Not at all,” Trin said with an even smile. “Is Rafe still up at the ranch?” The ‘ranch’ was four hundred thousand acres Marc owned just north of the Grampians.

  “No, he left out of Adelaide night before last.”

  “He did mention that issue you’re having, however,” his father added.

  She nodded, appearing satisfied, while the elder Huron fished silently in his wallet. After a few moments he extracted a business card and handed it to Trin. “These are the people Vai recommends. I hope it helps.”

  Trin slipped the card into a pocket inside her fawn jacket. “Thank you so much.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Absolutely not.” She took out her xel, flipped open the display, and frowned mildly. “I need to run. It’s nice seeing you again, Marc. Sorry I can’t stay longer.”

  “Yeah. Absolutely. Anytime.”

  With a wave and a breezy goodbye, she palmed open the entryway and left.

  Marc stood still for a moment, looking at the space she’d formerly occupied. “Has she ever been married?”

  “Trin?” his father answered with a peculiar smile. “Perish the thought.”

  Five decades ago, Rafael Leonidas Huron IV had been at the pinnacle of his career as the League’s leading business magnate, managing the huge commercial empire built up by his grandfather, Rafael Leonidas Huron II. The original Rafael Leonidas Huron had emigrated to Terra from Karelia, changing his surname and bringing with him the two companies that had been in the family for generations: Ilmatar Neoforming, which specialized in fabricating habitats on moons and other small forms, and its sister concern, Tuonela Shipbuilders. It was his association with the Dr. Ivan Osorio, who developed the first immunocyte implants, that allowed Ilmatar Neoforming to leverage the new terraforming technology that used nanocyte ‘seeds’ on a biologically active planet to transform the atmosphere and neutralize toxins in a fraction of the time required by previous methods. Immunocytes allowed settlers to occupy these newly terraformed planets years before they otherwise could, and they were almost equally beneficial on established planets, even some of the Homeworlds.

  By licensing the basis for immunocyte technology, Ilmatar Neoforming became the tenth largest terraforming corporation within a generation, and Tuonela Shipbuilders, renamed TeraCon Heavy Industries, the largest private company. It was Rafael Huron II—the unusually active and (oft said) rapacious grandfather—who had then assembled the KKHR Control Group over the notional bodies of his corporate foes.

  Then it seemed the cutthroat strain skipped a generation (the third Rafael Huron was an amiable, well-liked man and an able consolidator), and had perhaps died out altogether in that man’s son, the dashing, charismatic Rafael Huron IV. Others were not so sure, imagining they detected a glim of the old man’s ferocity behind the effortless charm. Still others had him down as a playboy, a lightweight, a ‘flash cove with no bottom.’ The courses of his youth had suggested as much, for he led an unusually active social life
, often appearing at the banquets, toney riots, and charitable events he frequented with a new and radiant companion on his arm—sometimes two.

  By his forty-fifth year, any doubts about his managerial skills had been dispersed, and in that year, the social world was stunned by his sudden marriage to Alana Marcella Zavala-Marquez, the daughter of a prominent Ionian family, who possessed all the beauty and fire of her Antiguan heritage (Rafe got his looks from her), along with a full measure of the savagely independent Ionian spirit. The gossips salivated.

  Events, or Fate (who always does her work uncompromisingly), intervened. In the year ‘89, Halith invaded Karelia, staging the operation out of Miranda, which they’d annexed twenty-one years before. The old and respected Terran Grand Senator Sophonisba Emrys announced her retirement and, incensed by what he viewed as a dilatory response to the invasion, the newly married Rafael Huron IV stood for the seat. In the campaign that followed, those who suspected the latent ferocious strain, and those who doubted it, had their opinions respectively confirmed and obliterated. The opposition was quietly slaughtered, with such efficiency that rumors of a hidden hand behind Grand Senator Emrys’ retirement began to spread.

  The new Terran grand senator lost no time starting an internal campaign for greater support for beleaguered Karelia, and when the republic fell after a bloody, protracted and unusually vicious conflict, marked by brutal atrocities on both sides, he shifted to exploring other avenues to liberate his ancestral home, which took him deep into the labyrinth of intelligence, and also into military reform.

  The League had not fought a major war since its inception; the CEF was a small force, well suited to hunting pirates and fighting minor actions (minor to Homeworlders, that is, not to the participants) on the colonial frontiers. It was hidebound and hampered by the circumstances of its creation, which focused not on military efficiency, but instead on ensuring it did not become a vehicle for any one partner to achieve supremacy over the others. In contrast, the Halith military was large, experienced, and thoroughly professional. Yet in spite of the threat Halith posed, reforming the CEF was still anathema to the more conservative blocks who dominated League politics. Grand Senator Huron nonetheless managed to find allies for his reform proposals, especially after the defeat of his colleague in the semi-decadal elections boosted him to the top slot.