The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  Huron took out Kris’s letter and slid it across the desktop. Yu took it, read it, and looked up. “She wrote this? I knew she had guts and to spare but . . .”

  Huron nodded. “I’m half-tempted not to send it. It wasn’t her fault—not really.”

  “You want my opinion, sir?”

  “Always.”

  “That’d be your third bad call. Sure it ain’t all her fault, but she wrote it—she deserves to have it read. And Laeyna will understand, sir. It’ll make her feel better to know what sort of officer Marko served with, even if only for a few days.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant Major.”

  “Anytime, sir.”

  Huron drained his glass. “How’s Vasquez?” He knew she’d been recovered but the report—if anything so brief could be called a report—included only a few fragmentary details, and those were a little . . . outré might be a good word.

  “Bloomin’, sir, from what I heard. Don’t have anything official yet—that might have to wait till we make orbit—but a flash came through with the bare bones, so to speak.”

  Huron’s mouth twitched to one side at the double entendre. “I take it that phrase might have been more literal than usual this time?”

  “Well sir, she did show up with a boatload of beauties, most near naked or better. And—ah—she wasn’t exactly regulation herself.”

  That squared with the fragments that had been relayed to Huron: something about a short corset, gauntlets and thigh-high boots—air-dancers, in fact—and nothing else.

  “Seems that in the confusion, she disarmed some security, rounded up the gals nearby, shot her way into the garage, yanked a power main and then jacked a cargo lighter. Loaded ‘em in and boosted clear of the air-top where they met up with the corvette, leaving some merry havoc behind her.” Yu tossed off the scotch. “Says she’s keeping them boots as spoils of war.”

  Huron stifled a snorting laugh. Once Flechette had picked up Vasquez and her ‘boatload of beauties,’ the corvette had made a swift—and prudent—exit out-system, and now they wouldn’t rendezvous until Beta Crucis. With that many people crammed into Flechette, Huron didn’t think they could find room to lie down—they’d probably all have to sleep standing up. But the cruiser LSS Osiris was patrolling off Knydos with her task group, and Flechette could rendezvous with her in four days—sooner, if Osiris got the message Kestrel had sent her quickly enough.

  The detour would give Vasquez and the corvette’s skipper plenty of time to construct their official after-action reports but Huron still wondered how this was going to be set into standard AAR navaleze: dry, tedious and with much use of the passive. That, at least, would be something to look forward to.

  Yu put down the glass and rose. “Well sir, I oughta get back unless there’s something else.”

  Huron shook his head. “No, there isn’t. Carry on, Sergeant Major.”

  “Yessir. G’night, sir.”

  “And you, Fred.” The sergeant major made his exit and Huron returned to his console, reopened the document he had been working on and resumed typing.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  LSS Kestrel

  departing Rephidim, Outworld’s Border Zone

  They held the ceremony the next AM, after first assembly. Gunnery Sergeant Lopez, with a black patch over her missing eye, had called on Kris and formally requested she attend with full kit. There was a curious insistence on the word full. Besides being full of knots inside, she crammed everything she had into her kit bag and hurried down the passage to the forward assault bay, wearing her dress blues. Lopez had also emphasized this was not a full dress occasion (Kris’s full-dress uniform hadn’t made the trip anyway), but the sergeant hadn’t said what it was. All Kris had with her, besides her combat armor, were fatigues and her blues, and fatigues just didn’t seem right.

  So when she arrived to see the marines in their service grays and Huron in his undress blacks, she self-consciously assumed her place in the circle, feeling uncomfortably conspicuous. No one took any evident notice, however, and once Master Sergeant Burdette, supporting herself on an old-fashioned metal crutch, called them to attention, Sergeant Major Yu and Gunnery Sergeant Lopez brought out a camo-shelter and spread it on the deck at the center of the circle. Then Burdette, laying her crutch aside, limped up carrying Marko’s duffle bag, and began solemnly laying out his marine kit on the fabric. (His personal effects had already been sealed for shipment home, along with the requisite bronze box.)

  When all the items were arranged, she got laboriously to her feet and limped back to her place, where Yu was waiting with her crutch. The sergeant major nodded, and in a strict order—and to Kris’s initial bewilderment—each member of the team approached the shelter and took one item of Marko’s, replacing it with a like item of their own. Rachel Cates went first, laying down her assault rifle and taking Marko’s, which Huron had preserved. Sam Perez exchanged his ammo belt, and Kyle Argento traded his canteen. The rest followed in turn. Finally, Benn Gergen came forward, his left arm heavily wrapped, to swap his service sidearm for Marko’s, the grip of which he’d carved to own taste, leaving the last item: a tin cup, slightly crushed on one side. No one had ever explained to Kris why marines were still issued a tin cup. It seemed a weird anachronism, but the enlisted ranks, who called them by the Antiguan name pialla, were quite fond of them.

  Without warning, all eyes fixed on Kris. She was obviously expected to swap for it. The mess kit she’d been issued had something similar, but it was navy issue and not really the same. But that apparently didn’t matter. Rifling her kit bag for the cup occupied an anguished thirty seconds, then she stepped forward and put it down, picking up the dented pialla with nervous fingers. When she returned to her place, Burdette called them again to attention.

  Sergeant Lopez took a pace forward, snapped a salute that was answered by all present, and began to sing Amazing Grace in a pure-toned velvet soprano that filled the compartment to admiration. The rest of the team joined in after the first verse, except for Huron and Yu—and Kris, who didn’t know the words. There followed a minute of silence, after which Burdette and Lopez carefully bundled up the camo-shelter and tied it. The bundle was placed in a waiting torpedo crate, draped with the Red Ensign of the CEF Marine Corps, and Yu called up the surviving members of Fireteam Charlie, while he and Burdette stepped alongside the crate’s head.

  There was one place to fill, and as Kris wondered who it would be, Yu nodded to her. Swallowing against the rush of nerves, Kris took the final place. On command, the six of them lifted the crate, no more than fifteen kilos, and slid it into an open ejection port. Yu armed the firing mechanism and stepped aside. As the others formed ranks and saluted, Kris was gripped by a horrible premonition.

  You’re not gonna make me—fer fuck’s sake don’t make—

  But Huron came forward and, exchanging salutes with the sergeant major, pressed the firing stud. With a rush of compressed air, the torpedo crate was consigned to the eternal night. Yu turned to face his team.

  “Dismiss.”

  And Kris, letting her breath go, realized that, aside from the song and these few orders, no one had spoken a word during the entire ceremony.

  Dismiss, in this case, did not seem to mean leave. The members of CAT 5 continued to hang about, chatting with the occasional burst of laugher, and Wojakowski brought out a bottle of something and shared it around. Kris did not partake. But she did notice when Lopez handed a small wrapped package to Burdette, who handed it to Yu. He unwrapped it and Kris caught the wink of gold—Marko’s collar tabs. Closing his thick, powerful fist about them, he crossed the floor to Cates and, putting his arm about her shoulders, placed them in her hand. She took them with a tight, trembling smile and damp eyes and Yu gave her a grandfatherly embrace, which unsettled Kris most strangely.

  She was profoundly unsettled anyway, unable to join in and unwilling to be the first to leave, and so was profoundly grateful when Huron shook hands with CAT 5 and then waved for Kris
to fall in with him as he left.

  When they were alone in the passage and Kris felt she could breathe a little easier, she murmured, “I didn’t know it had words.”

  “Hmm?” Huron looked across at her. He didn’t seem to be angry with her anymore, and that made her uncomfortable. She was still angry at her . . . “The song—I didn’t know it had words,” Kris repeated, feeling strangely embarrassed.

  “You know that song?”

  The feeling of unease and embarrassment became more acute. Could he be making fun of her? Now? “Sure. We played it on Parson’s Acre all the time. At school—church . . . holidays. But we played it on bagpipes. No one ever sang.”

  That brought a hint of a smile to Huron’s features, the first she’d seen since they’d made the drop from the corvette together. “You like bagpipes?”

  “Yeah.” She ran a hand over her warm forehead. “What’s wrong with bagpipes?”

  “Not a thing. So they tell me.”

  Yeah, that was definitely a smile she was seeing. Goddamn him anyway.

  A party of rates coming the other way saluted and squeezed aside to let them pass. Kris watched them as they continued down the passage towards the forward bays.

  “Was I supposed to do somethin’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Say somethin’—back there.”

  “No, Kris. They understand.”

  “They do? How d’ya know?”

  “They left you his pialla.”

  “The dinged cup?”

  “That’s right. It’s lucky.”

  “It is?”

  “Yep. Marko was a lucky guy.”

  “Uh—okay.”

  “Life goes on, Kris.”

  “Does it?”

  “For the time being.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  LSS Kestrel

  approaching the Cilician Gates, Outworld’s Border Zone

  At the chime sounding the beginning of the first dog watch, Kris entered Kestrel’s gunroom, prompt to the minute and still attired in her dress blues. Kestrel was a bit lax about mess dress, as were many frigates, and fatigues were not an uncommon sight there, something that would rarely be countenanced on a destroyer, and never on a cruiser or any other major capital ship. But today was special; the mess steward had pulled out all the stops in honor of Marko, and she knew her presence was particularly expected.

  Had it not been, she would have been tempted to dine in her berth, but CAT 5 had made it clear she was not excluded from their company, and repaying them by sulking alone when the invitation had been extended was inconceivable. She hadn’t needed Huron’s subtle hint to understand that, though under the circumstances, she didn’t blame him for making it either. So she took her place at the table and did her best to be convivial, succeeding to a competent degree.

  All the same, the excellent dinner did not sit well on her stomach, and she didn’t object when, having made it through dessert and endured the three obligatory toasts, Huron stood, offered his sincere thanks, and asked if she’d join him in CIC.

  On the way there he said next to nothing, but she detected something quietly churning below the placid surface, and as they approached the hatch to CIC, she concluded it was an uncommon degree of excitement, perhaps mixed with a touch of unease. Just what there was to be excited about she could not imagine, and as it happened, did not learn for some time. Instead, Huron made small talk with the watch officer, Lieutenant Ramses, and brought her acquainted with the events of the last twenty-four hours.

  First, he told her that Mankho’s compound, for all intents and purposes, was no more. Commander Yanazuka had interpreted her broadly worded orders to mean that if Mankho could not be captured, at least his facility should not be left behind as a viable base. She therefore destroyed the outer works, the IADS, and all of the main compound itself but the residence building, with surgically delivered strikes. To make doubly sure, she had preceded this with a bombardment of EMP charges sufficient to reduce to smoking slag anything electronic within a fifty-kilometer radius.

  By an unhappy chance—unhappy for those roaming about outside the compound after their firefight with CAT 5—the first EMP salvo was not in fact all EMP charges. As the log subsequently reported, a number of 8-inch close-ground-support antipersonnel rounds had been “accidentally expended,” and several hundred of Mankho’s supporters reported to their Maker. This was blamed on a miscommunication. Warrant Officer Wojakowski said he was sorry. He would “read more careful” in the future. Kestrel’s captain sternly admonished him that he should indeed do so.

  Next, a review of the data Kestrel had been able to glean regarding these supporters who had so unexpected arrived shed some light on their purpose there. Kestrel’s signals section had been able to decrypt their comms, both with Mankho and with as yet unidentified parties in Tirana, and these revealed that they’d been there for both a planning meeting and to start on a major upgrade of the compound’s defenses, including an improved IADS with better sensors. Other details were vague, but it was clear Mankho had been expecting something to happen and, based on a vicious argument over impending schedule delays, expecting it in about three to four weeks.

  To Huron, who alone knew the proposed versus actual schedule for the operation, this sounded like too much of a coincidence. He was now dead certain that Admiral Westover had called it, and that Trin, as usual, was right on the money.

  The final item had to wait until Kestrel’s TAO could join them. The wardroom dined later than the gunroom, and a dinner to honor a fallen comrade could not be rushed. They’d been reduced to small talk by the time Lieutenant Commander Caprelli appeared and greeted them, cordially but without undue warmth.

  “Can you bring up the plot from yesterday?” Huron inquired politely. “I’d like the midshipman to take a look at it.”

  “Of course,” Caprelli answered, sounding a touch chippy. “Over here, please”—directing them to the omnisynth. He tapped the controls and the holographic display volume flooded with data.

  Kris peered at the chaotic jumble. “Ah . . . what am I looking at, sir?”

  “A mess,” Huron answered succinctly. “This is what happened yesterday in response to our little visit. As you can see, Tirana went ape shit”—Kris caught Caprelli’s sour look at the profanity—“and Kiruna and Svaardo lit up too.” Those were Rephidim’s three starports. Kiruna, the smallest, was on the northern continent with Tirana. Svaardo, which was big enough to handle light trans-atmospheric freighters, was in the southern hemisphere. “Let me filter it for you.” He approached the omnisynth’s console. “May I, Commander?”

  “Of course.” Caprelli gave his head a jerky nod.

  Huron typed and the mess reduced to a spray of tendrils radiating from Mankho’s compound and spanning the globe. “There are vehicle tracks out of the compound. You can see from the ticks he didn’t waste any time getting the hell out of there.”

  “Mankho?” There were almost ten times as many tracks as Mankho had vehicles, Kris noted. What help was that? “Are you sure one of those is him?”

  “Well, there’s two schools of thought there.” Huron flashed out that half-smile of his. Caprelli was not amused. Huron tapped a key. “Here.” All but four of the traces vanished. “See? They launched a whole flock of decoys.”

  “Those were all decoys?” It seemed like an awful lot of drones to put in the air at once.

  “Yep. Made by AVI Conlandia. They’re more Bannerman junk—about the size of your fist. Nice and cheap, too. They make some rather extravagant claims for them. Anyway, you said you saw three doubles, right?”

  “Yeah—yes. Sir.”

  “And from what you told us, Mankho puts a pretty high price on his own skin?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But he didn’t get time to plan his trip. If you look at all those decoy tracks, you’ll see that they went off later than these four. My guess is that he hit the door as fast as he could, sending his doubles off
at the same time. Then one of his flunkies thought to cover the boss’s ass while he was already in the air—leaving his people behind to deal with the mess, by the way. Not very leader-like of him.”

  Kris didn’t comment on Mankho’s tendency to leave messes behind. Caprelli cleared his throat. Huron continued.

  “You see where the first four went: Tirana, Kiruna and two down to Svaardo. Now here”—he tapped another key—“are the launches from those ports, within the window he could’ve made.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said he’s claustrophobic. How does he deal with flying?”

  “I—dunno.”

  “I’m guessing not very well, especially when he’s not prepared for it.”

  That sounded reasonable. Kris shrugged.

  “So let’s X out Svaardo. That’s a long flight and, if we wanted, we could have smoked both those vehicles in the air. Too big a risk.”

  “Um, yessir.”

  “And let’s knock off Kiruna too. They’ve only got one pad that can handle trans-atmo hypercapable craft. He might have to wait a day or two to get a ride. After all, the guy’s a bit freaked—not thinking about anything but getting the hell outta town. So he goes to Tirana, which has decent lift capacity, and we know he has friends there—using that term loosely. He takes time to enhance his calm—gulp some meds or whatever he does to cope with traveling—and grabs the first ride out he can get. Am I boring you yet?”

  Kris blinked. “Ah—no. Sir.” Caprelli, though, was drumming his fingers on his trouser seam.

  “Okay, let’s cut to the chase.” Huron swirled the display wildly. There was just one track now, arcing out of the system at max boost. “That’s a corvette that launched from Tirana very late last night. Add up the time to fly there, arrange things and get on board, give yourself some wiggle room, and this is one of two launches within the likely window.”

  “Two?” she asked. So where’s the other one?