The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  “Um—not here—”

  “I don’t mean that.” Kym cut off her faltering response with a look in her startling green eyes that was almost fierce. “You’re gonna—gonna be careful out there, right? You’re gonna come back. You’re not gonna do nothin—” White teeth worried at her trembling lower lip. “Ya gotta come back. ‘Kay?”

  “Kym,” Kris began, feeling more acutely self-conscious than she could ever remember being. “I’m just goin’ along as an observer. Nothin’s gonna happen. A’course, I’m comin’ back.”

  “Promise me,” Kym whispered intensely.

  “Yeah. Okay. Promise.”

  The arms around her waist eased their grip. Kris picked up her bag as her diaphragm was finally allowed to draw in a deeper breath. Cycling the entrance open, she stepped through and then put her hand over the jamb.

  “Look. Maybe I’ll see you again someday.” It was one of the most painfully ridiculous things she’d ever said, and Kym, who seemed to know that as well as she did, just nodded. With an uneasy, artificial smile, she dipped her chin in answer, and turned to go.

  “Kris?”

  Half against her will, she paused and looked back. Kym was wedged there in the entryway, holding the door open.

  “Remember?”

  Her throat closed up around whatever she was going to say. She nodded again. Looking down, Kym let the door go and disappeared inside. Kris stood for another moment, surveying the white blankness of the closed entrance. She shifted her bag to her shoulder, turned, and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Octagon

  League Capitol Complex, Nereus, Mars

  As Corporal Vasquez, her crew of would-be slavers, and a crew of authentic slavers on the evocatively named packet Miss Goodnight all hurried to their appointment with destiny at Outremeria, and CAT 5 journeyed to their own rendezvous, in this case with LSS Kestrel at a dismal patch of vacuum off the transit lanes between Mantua and Knydos, the Plenary Council sat in earnest deliberation on the question of invoking the ultimatum, held in abeyance these past months. Most earnest deliberations, and occasionally acrimonious too, as when the Commerce Secretary got nasty and the Secretary of the Navy got sore, and the Speaker had to call a recess for an hour to let tempers cool.

  In the end, none of that heat made it into the final outcome: a statement carefully couched in tones of sorrow more than anger, requiring the Bannerman government to surrender either the named parties or all information that might tend towards aiding the apprehension of same, and a few more minor clauses, within 2,592,000 seconds of the stated GAT date-time group. Speaker Gauthier duly informed the Bannerman ambassador the next morning of the Council’s action, and had a hardcopy of the ultimatum hand delivered under the Council’s official seal. She also sent around her private fig-leaf-bearing emissaries to assure the ambassador that a face-saving compromise was still possible, if wiser heads could but seize it.

  The mixed messages muddied the waters wonderfully, which delighted the Bannerman ambassador, who undertook to muddy them even more. In public, he was bombastically defiant; in private, he scrutinized the offered fig leaf carefully, talked soothingly, and forbore to seize it. The two and a half million seconds allowed for an answer (a Terran month) was predicated on the communications delays involved, and the Bannerman ambassador played both his public and private roles to the hilt while waiting for his government to respond.

  Nor was the Speaker idle. She sent to the Halith ambassador as well, assuring him this was purely a matter of combating terrorism, nothing more—his government need not feel the slightest concern—it was, after all, to everyone’s benefit that Nestor Mankho be apprehended—a clear case of mutual interest. The Halith ambassador replied calmly that he understood perfectly well. He would inform his government of the Speaker’s message, which he did, and promptly arranged to have his minions meet clandestinely with those of the Bannerman ambassador. What those two men then said, thought and did, together and in private, they kept to themselves.

  What Speaker Gauthier said, thought, and did was less obscure. She surveyed the effects her efforts were having, believed in what she saw, inwardly congratulated herself on her deft handling of the situation, and told her intimates they could relax. All would yet be well.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  LHC Flechette

  en route to rendezvous w/ LSS Kestrel

  Life on a corvette built for six, that might carry nine or even twelve in a pinch, left something to be desired when packed with fourteen. It should have been fifteen, but Lieutenant Elkins had not made the trip. An ‘opportunity’ for another assignment had suddenly become available and he’d hastened to take it. Few questions were asked and no tears shed.

  The dozen members of CAT 5 who, along with Kris and Huron, made up this cozy congregation packed in three to a rack, were a miscellaneous bunch. Kris was surprised to learn how many of them were Terrans: Master Sergeant Andréa Burdette, who answered informally to Top and was CAT Second as well as the team’s EW specialist; Warrant Officer Bodo Wojakowski, their shuttle pilot/engineer; and his copilot and gunner, Staff Sergeant Abraham Donnerkill. Burdette had kept the broad accent of New South Wales, while Abe Donnerkill spoke with the brusque, clipped tones of his native Essen in the Ruhr. Only Wojakowski, from Lublin in the Polish Avar Collective, spoke with the flat Terran accent, though he tended to elaborate it with a discordant twang.

  PFC Rachel Cates, the unit medic and sniper/scout for Fireteam Charlie, had the lank build, ghostly pale coloring and silver-white hair of a Belter, but with a smoother accent than most—except when she swore, which she did with feeling but not often, unlike some of the others.

  Gunnery Sergeant Antoinette Lopez, Fireteam Charlie’s Leader, was from Antigua, as were Fireteam Alpha’s extraction duo, Corporal Sam Perez and PFC Kyle Argento. That was not a surprise to Kris: from what she’d seen at the Academy, Antiguans were statistically overrepresented in the CEF Marine Corps. (In her mental tally, she also added Corporal Vasquez to the roll of CAT 5’s Antiguans.)

  The rest of the team were colonials, three of them Outworlders, including Sergeant Major Yu, who hailed from Lodestone Station in the Inner Trifid. Lance Corporal Benn Gergen, Fireteam Charlie’s Gunner, Kris immediately recognized as being from Reveille in the Methuselah Cluster, and PFC Marko Tiernan, the team’s designated sniper, was from Whitworth in the Outer Trifid.

  The final two members were the unit’s demolition experts, both attached to Fireteam Alpha: Tech-Corporal Arno Watkins, who was from Fredonia and was also a small-craft pilot (Kris learned that each CAT had at least one person qualified to fly small craft, in addition to the shuttle crew), and Specialist Ioan Resnick from Mytilene in Crucis Sector.

  If they were a diverse bunch, they were also a raucous one, as Kris learned when they described the nature of their operations to her. At the Academy, Kris had been taught the fundamentals of the fireteam concept which, as applied to CATs, involved forming Fireteam Alpha and Fireteam Charlie, the former being the action team, who were assigned the objective (snatching Mankho, in this case), and the latter being the cover team, who provided the necessary support.

  That explained why Fireteam Alpha consisted of two experts at subduing non-cooperative targets and two demolition specialists (a loose term that covered being adept at getting in and out of fortified spaces, as well as disabling critical infrastructure and generally ‘blowing shit up’), while Fireteam Charlie was composed of a sniper, a sniper/scout medic, a gunner (who manned the unit’s SAW), and was led by a gunnery sergeant.

  This basic understanding was elaborated on by CAT 5, who explained in detail who could walk on water and who didn’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot, who crapped bigger than whom, who had their shit wired and who just wanted to engage in dick-pulling contests. There were discussions of various member’s personal relationships with ponies, sheep and goats (which seemed to need to be roped, for reasons Kris failed to grasp). Wojakowski enjoyed
asking Burdette if she’d give ‘her kingdom for a sheep’, which clearly had something to do with her being from New South Wales, but beyond that made no sense whatsoever. Nonetheless, Wojakowski found it outrageously funny and Burdette, despite reminding the warrant officer of his mortality, did not really seem to mind (though Kris got even more confused: reference was often made to ‘nine lives’, but whether Wojakowski had already expended his, or was never blessed with them in the first place, she couldn’t make out).

  It was all quite egalitarian and recognized neither rank nor origin, for CAT 5 had been together for years, and rank counted for little with CATs in any case. Sergeant Major Yu, as CAT Leader, did not engage in the verbal (and occasionally physical) roughhousing, but did little to rein it in either; the contrast with the punctilious Academy drill instructor could not have been greater.

  Huron, as Officer in Tactical Command, was obviously also exempt, and so was Kris, beyond receiving the benefit of a somewhat dubious education. In other ways, they observed an odd delicacy around her: one evening, Sergeant Lopez checked Corporal Watkins when he began to speculate on the personal habits of colonists from the Methuselah Cluster at Corporal Gergen’s expense—the only time Kris saw that happen—and afterwards the corporal apologized to her and hoped she hadn’t taken offense.

  She assured him she had not, and was none the wiser. The same could be said of exactly how the fireteams would be employed to capture Mankho. Operational details did not really concern her, but there was no such thing as a private conversation on a boat as small as Flechette. She’d heard Huron say “take it on the volley” once before, and now she heard it several more times, along with “play her as she lays”, “go with the flow”, “shoot the curl” and “ride the smooth air.” At one point it was suggested that they “dance with the girl what brung ‘em”, and Burdette even observed that Commander Wesselby “sure kept her cards tight to her tits.”

  The overall feeling was the Nedaemans had gold-plated their plan to a fatal degree, relying on an elegant but complex script that the enemy was not obliged to follow. CAT 5 would have no such script, but they did have an ace in the hole, or actually a pair of them. Vasquez herself counted as the first, and the second had been supplied by Quennell. In an inspired bit of improvisation, he’d added 3D-modeling software to the chip Vasquez was fitted with, which was simple enough, but his techs had been able to link it to her visual cortex, so whatever she saw was immediately used to refine the basic layout of the compound, which Kris had supplied them with.

  The symbol-based comms system they’d given her could not transmit the full model, but it could transmit vertices that would update a copy of the model on Burdette’s xel. Along with vertices, waypoints could be shared, and the chip included a pathfinder as well. This allowed for a high degree of flexibility, which was the cornerstone of their plan, if anything so ephemeral deserved that name.

  CAT 5 displayed a faith in Vasquez that was second only to their trust in Yu. The Sergeant Major and the corporal had worked together for decades, and the others liked to enliven mealtimes with half-completed, wink-and-nod anecdotes about past adventures. Kris took it in with a large grain of salt. Practicing on green officers was a well-established marine tradition—at the same time, the stories could not be entirely dismissed.

  However, she did dismiss the one about Vasquez making the sun stand still at Gideon so CAT 5 could finish an op in daylight. Gideon, along with Jordan, Goshen and Gilead, was a major settlement on Jericho, another colony in the Methuselah Cluster, and like them, it was on the lit side. Jericho was tidally locked with its red dwarf primary, so the sun hadn’t set there in over a billion years. As with half the things she’d heard on this trip, the story made no goddamn sense. (She also had a feeling Vasquez couldn’t really play the trumpet.)

  Vasquez’s putative astronomical influences aside, on this op, everything hinged on getting her in a closed room with Mankho, once Kris picked him out, at least partly unrestrained and preferably not alone. They expected Mankho to have his muscle with him, and ideally they’d be able to wait until the noisier part of one of his ‘entertainments’. A roomful of frantic people would give Vasquez some cover, getting in the way of Mankho’s bodyguards more than they’d impede her. Kris had not been able to tell them how likely it was that the guards would be armed with more than spikers, but the consensus was that if they were, it’d only seal their fate faster. Vasquez was thought to be good against any six under such conditions, even eight. Yu was going in with Fireteam Alpha, which led to a spirited debate over who’d sell the tickets and who got the hotdog concession (coincidently introducing Kris to a couple of different meanings of the term ‘weenie roast’). And if things went south in a hurry, their snatch job would turn into a rescue mission.

  If things tanked even more badly than that, Kestrel was the ace they could draw to. The stealth frigate had been detached from Captain Lawrence’s squadron as the most likely ship to support the mission, and unlike the Nedaeman op, there was no bullshit about calling in. Commander Constance Yanazuka, Kestrel’s captain, had been given private orders under CNO seal, authorizing her to “take any and all measures deemed necessary to extract our team,” and in the event that proved impossible, to “take any such measures as you deem necessary and proper under such circumstances as shall prevail at the time”—meaning that if they all bought it on “that fuckin’ rock,” Kestrel was authorized to give them one hell of a send-off. (That Rephidim, unlike Lacaille, was not affiliated with a major power may have played some role in granting this license.)

  It was a source of great comfort to the team, for none doubted that Commander Yanazuka, who was known to be diligent in the extreme, if personally a bit of uncompromising, would carry out those orders to the fullest possible extent. All in all, with a pair of aces in their hand, and another in their stacked deck, CAT 5 figured they had good odds on coming back with a full house.

  Kris listened to it all and wondered what the hell they were talking about. No doubt, Huron would clue her in, if she asked him, but she had no intention of doing that until they could be alone. In the meantime, at least she was confused on a much higher plane.

  Chapter Thirty

  LSS Kestrel, in company w/ LHC Flechette

  en route to the Tarsus Gates, Outworld’s Border Zone

  After a week crammed into Flechette, the accommodations on LSS Kestrel seemed positively roomy, though they might have come across as a trifle narrow, not to say cramped, under normal circumstances. Owing to her being a stealth frigate, Kestrel was on the small side; in fact, the smallest class of ship that could be rated a light capital ship—the lightest of the light, as it were. Elbow room therefore had to be sacrificed to pack into her the normal compliment of weapons and an extra helping of sensors. As the primary raison d'être for stealth frigates was to support intelligence collection and special ops, Kestrel’s sensor suite would have done credit to a battleship, and her data processing capabilities were even better, most especially her decryption suite.

  And she was fast for a frigate and could deliver an outsized punch for her mass, which, coupled with her stalking abilities, made her a dangerous opponent. To her crew, all this made up for a lack of certain creature comforts. Frigates were not generally held in high regard in the Service, but stealth frigates were an exception: an elite service in their own right, along with the special forces they customarily supported. So the crew was older and more experienced than would otherwise be expected on a light capital ship.

  They were also notably more relaxed, particularly in address and the matter of uniform. Kris, whose previous experience of CEF combatants was limited LSS Retribution, where full dress in the wardroom was the order of the day at least once a week (Captain Lawrence felt it contributed to an overall habit of smartness), was a bit surprised to see the crew working in tee-shirts and tank tops, and calling each other by their given names. In that sense, CAT 5 fit right in, although they did take the rambunctiousness down a n
otch or two.

  Relaxed in appearance, however, did not mean relaxed in their duties, and Kris found the officers to be a quietly intense bunch, starting with Kestrel’s captain. Constance Yanazuka was on the older side, even for a stealth frigate skipper. She had reportedly refused promotion at least once to retain the command: captains could only command major combatants, which meant jumping her to a light cruiser and fleet duty, a prospect she did not relish.

  Kris had seen her once or twice before, at Captain Lawrence’s staff meetings; a medium-height woman with a stocky build that made her seem shorter than she was, and a deceptively mild oval face. Her officers probably absorbed a good detail of their intensity from her, and she had an excellent reputation in everything but her ability to play well with others.

  Of all of them, her Tactical Action Officer, Lieutenant Commander Vincent Caprelli was the most like her. Also of medium height, but wiry and bald, with blue-black skin and strange green eyes that were slightly mismatched, he was quick, in both mentality and movements, and this made him seem sharp tempered at times. Young for his post, the CEF had him pegged as a rising star. If he had a fault—outside of questionable people skills—it was a reluctance to be pinned down, coupled with a tendency to insist on the worst possible interpretation of the data. If there was anyone on the ship who viewed the universe through the opposite of rose-colored glasses, it was Vince Caprelli.

  Lieutenant Commander Gregor York, the executive officer, was more low key. A precise and dutiful officer, one of his main talents seemed to be buffering interactions between fleet commands and his occasionally undiplomatic CO. Otherwise, he managed the ship’s departments easily and well.

  If joviality was to be found among Kestrel’s officers, it was in the person of Lieutenant Josephus Ramses, the sensor lead, who reminded Kris of Basmartin. He was an ace operator and noted cryptanalyst, but Kris thought he’d be happier in a shore posting. He had a talkative streak that was somewhat out of place, and it seemed that Caprelli and his tendency to not be pleased oppressed him. His friendliness towards her had a guarded edge to it, and he showed a marked degree of deference to Huron.