The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  As he reached the rostrum, the Sergeant-at-Arms called the assembled cadets to attention, which was all of them, both upper- and lowerclassmen, for the latter had been bundled down from Deimos the day before, bag and baggage, leaving the little moon well-nigh deserted for the first time in over a generation. In some circles, it might have been considered a logistical miracle to move a few thousand people from a moon to its planet in less than twenty-four hours, but such operations were second nature to the CEF and they were taken almost for granted.

  Not that Hoste took them for granted, especially this one—far from it—and today this evidence of logistical know-how struck him with a particular poignancy. The declaration of war had made its impact on the Academy, above all on the upperclassmen, who were to be commissioned directly into combat, but the Academy’s routine, it was decided, should be affected as little as possible. Now that had all changed, as though a great wave, beside which the declaration of war had been a mere ripple, had swept clean everything that came before it: expectations, routines, even history. The cause of all this was written on the sheet of real paper Hoste held in his left hand.

  “Cadets.” His amplified voice carried over the serried ranks in front of him. “Yesterday, at 0917 hours, I received the following dispatch from Fleet Admiral Westover, Chief of Naval Operations for the Colonial Expeditionary Forces.” He placed the sheet in front of him and, pinning it against the rising wind, recited—for he had no need to actually read it—the message word for word.

  “All commands. It is my duty to inform you of a very disastrous engagement that took place from 02.6336.40 to 57.6371.40 GAT between our forces (consisting of the Deneb Squadron of the New United Kingdom of Friesia and New Caledonia, the Terebellum Empire’s Tamand Naval Frontier Group, and TFs 7.1, 7.3, and 7.6 of Seventh Fleet) and the Halith Imperial Navy’s Kerberos Fleet. In a severe action lasting thirty-six hours, the Tamand Group was annihilated, the Kingdom’s Deneb Squadron suffered in excess of fifty-five percent casualties and Seventh Fleet was forced to retire to Epona with operational losses of thirty percent, approximately half of which are deemed unrecoverable. The Kepler Junction has been lost.”

  It was a testament to their discipline that the cadets made no sound or movement, although a cynic (had any been present, which they were not) might have suggested that shock also had something to do with it. At a blow, Halith had knocked both the New UK and the Terebellum Empire out of the war—they could no longer hope to contemplate offensive operations—and cut off the entire Deneb Sector. Small but rich Port Mahan had been rendered untenable, Winnecke IV was threatened, and defense of the League’s critical junctions at Regulus and Eltanin had been pushed back to Epona, an outstation intended mainly to support Miranda, a strategically vital system and nominal League ally, but one whose position was made precarious by a sizeable population of pro-Halith separatists who perennially threatened the planet’s government.

  Coming so close after the shock from the lightning offensive at Rho Ceti, this blow was staggering. After Rho Ceti, the politicians (and others of volatile temperament), had recovered their spirits quickly. At Kepler, the Imperial Navy wouldn’t be facing the Principate’s small, out-classed military, but the full strength of the CEF’s Seventh Fleet, aided by the Empire and the New UK. Viewed in this rose-tinted light, victory appeared almost inevitable. Such misplaced optimism would prove regrettably contagious.

  Not that the plan didn’t have its share of Cassandras from the start; Hoste knew many of them. Three dissimilar fleets with different doctrines, different op-tempos, incompatible sensor nets; inter-fleet comms reduced to the lowest common denominator; disunity of command . . .

  Hoste had shaken his own head at the thought. Admiral Westover himself had pressed the idea that Seventh should be reinforced with the Ardennes Strike Force (which would also have put his old friend Joss PrenTalien in command, PrenTalien being senior to Vice Admiral Ross, Seventh Fleet’s CO) and given their head, with the New UK’s Deneb Squadron (antiquated but game) held in reserve and the Tamand fleet relegated to being well-dressed spectators. It was politically impossible, of course. Kepler was their front gate—the League simply couldn’t tell them not to fight there.

  Now they had reaped what they’d sown, but as was usual in these debacles, those who’d been reaped came from a much different class than those who’d done the sowing. But these were thoughts for another day—the work at hand was to see that they reached that other day. He cleared his throat.

  “In view of the altered circumstances, the Admiralty has promulgated the following changes, effective immediately. All liberties, leaves and furloughs are canceled until further notice. External communications are limited per the wartime clauses under Section III of the 17 Articles, and are to be governed by it and the relevant paragraphs. Finally,”—here he paused—“the term before graduation has been shortened from two years to one.” This did cause a stir. He forged through it. “As of now, you are all upperclassmen, set to graduate and be commissioned at the end of the current term. All course work not directly related to combat readiness is hereby suspended. Those of you who were lowerclassmen until a moment ago will complete your current studies over the next month and be assigned to your upper-division track at that time. Those of you who were senior until a moment ago, I look to you to aid your new classmates in their transition and to give them the benefit of your experience in getting them up to speed.

  “All of you, these next five months will take us into uncharted regions where we will face unprecedented challenges and perils we cannot predict. Our only certainties are those we bring with us, and of these, I have, to begin with, this one. I am certain you will all do your duty. Keep that thought always in the forefront of your mind. Keep your eye always on the task at hand. Hold to those two principles and everything else is a detail. That is all.”

  * * *

  “Goddammit! Give me Seventh, Carlos! Let me turn Lo Gai loose on the bastards.” Admiral Joss PrenTalien loomed over his desk like the wrath of God, supported on the knuckles of his huge fists, planted far apart. It was an attitude well adapted to flaying an unlucky junior officer, but not so much for addressing the most august military personage in the League. The Chief of Naval Operations had known his friend for over half a century, however, and was used to these displays. Still, there were limits, even where full admirals were concerned.

  “Now, hold on, Joss,” Fleet Admiral Westover said placidly. “We have to get a better grip on the situation before I go demoting you to a fleet CO.”

  “To hell with that!” PrenTalien clearly was not interested with the niceties of rank or getting a better grip on anything—except the enemy. “We can hit ‘em through Karelia, Carlos.” He swung one hand towards the big situation display built into the bulkhead of his stateroom. “Sure, it’s not what you’d call ideal—”

  “That’s one of several things I wouldn’t call it, old friend—”

  “—but it’d work. Almost half their strength is off carousing in Deneb. We can pin ‘em down at Kepler with what Angie left us of Seventh while Lo Gai gets us a bridgehead into Rho Ceti. That’s all we need. Devlyn sorties the Thermopylae Strike Force out of Epona and drives ‘em off the junction while I take the Principate’s nexus and cut off their escape route. Then we’ll have the buggers over a bottle.”

  Westover heaved a heartfelt sigh. Angharad Ross’s incapacity after the defeat at Kepler had left her deputy, Rear Admiral Tymon Murphy, in command and he was inexperienced for that much responsibility. Devlyn Zahir had her hands full putting the pieces back together at CYGCOM, and it had taken him over an hour to convince Lian Narses to detach a task force from SOLCOM’s Grand Fleet to help pick up some of the slack. Along with the Sol Local Group, she had Regulus to worry about, and he didn’t want to think what would happen with SOLCOM’s peppery commander in chief if he approved PrenTalien and Zahir haring off to Rho Ceti with Lo Gai and a patched-up fleet, leaving Hamish Burton holding Pleiades Sector and Cygnus
practically uncovered if things went wrong.

  And he also didn’t want to experience the scene that would likely ensue if Devlyn got wind of Joss’s suggestion and found out he’d turned it down. She and Joss were by far his most aggressive senior commanders—the less said about Lo Gai, the better—but at times, they tended to lack perspective.

  Like now. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your feelings, Joss”—he held up a hand against a fresh outburst—“but I need you here at the moment.”

  “Here?” PrenTalien looked at his friend and then at the displays, as if they’d suddenly transmuted into windows that would reveal an alternate reality. “There’s nothing here, Carlos, and what nothing there is, Hamish can look after. He’d jump at the chance. Why not let him?”

  Westover could think of a few reasons, for although Burton was a fine fleet commander, steady and meticulous, he also tended to be slow and was used to PrenTalien’s firm guiding hand. Moreover, he could get stubborn if pushed, and Admiral Narses didn’t fully trust him. But those were minor considerations compared to the main issue.

  “Because Merope’s here,” he explained quietly. “Merope covers Wogan’s Reef, and if they take it, they can threaten both the Pleiades and Canopus. Now that they own the fuel fields in Deneb, we can’t count on holding them at Epona, especially with Miranda being as shaky as it is, and that exposes both Eltanin and Regulus from—”

  “So shut down the Huygens’ Gap with mines and a couple of monitors and let Lian reinforce Merope from Regulus—or even with the Grand Fleet, they’re not good for much else—while Devlyn and I push ‘em off—”

  “That won’t do, Josh. Even if we shut down Huygens—and we’re about to—we have to worry about the Maxor.”

  “Maxor?”—in tones of ringing disbelief.

  “There’s been . . . well, not what you’d call indications yet, but let’s just say some disquieting data points regarding possible Maxor interaction with Halith.”

  “You can’t be serious, Carlos. That was on Delphi, for God’s sake.” Delphi Group professed to be a government watchdog organization, but what they actually did was peddle conspiracy theories through a network of cloud sites with affiliates on all the Homeworlds and most of the major colonies. Peddled them most successfully, as Delphi was consistently near the top of the official Nexel list of most trafficked cloud sites.

  “I know it was. And I wish to hell we knew how they got a hold of it. Timing’s too neat for me to dismiss it as mere coincidence.”

  That got PrenTalien to sit down. “So you do think it’s serious?”

  “Frankly, Joss, I’m not sure what to think at this point. We were so far out on our assessment of the Principate and Halith’s intentions that CID is going through everything again with a molecular sieve. Things that would’ve gotten you assigned straight to the Tin-Foil Hat Section two months ago have to be taken seriously now.”

  The frustration in Westover’s voice was almost as disturbing as the answer itself. He saw the point: Halith’s offensive against Rho Ceti had more hallmarks of a coup than an invasion. PrenTalien shifted in his seat, his massive shoulders flexing unconsciously. “What exactly are they finding?”

  “Their algorithms reported a pattern shift, starting eight months ago and lasting for five weeks before things settled into a new pattern. No one thought anything of it at the time—the confidence threshold was less than one-sigma.”

  “Less than sixty-eight percent. Christ—that’s not much better than random chance.”

  “That’s right. Even if it’s significant, Halith must’ve been well into the planning stages by then, so it’s not unreasonable they would have some sort of dialog with Maxor, to reassure them if nothing else. But until we’re certain it isn’t more than that, we can’t weaken Regulus. And that’s not all.”

  “Oh, so now for the good news?”

  Scrubbing his hands together in a distracted gesture, Westover leaned back in his seat. “Kepler upset things more than you may realize—no, let me explain. What matters now are the Antares fields and the Traps. Especially the Traps. Those fuel fields are crucial. With Port Mahan untenable, we have to secure the Rip from the Andaman side, which bleeds Crucis. Yes, I know it is a long shot, but we can’t ignore it. Right now, the Porte is about as happy as a cat on hot tiles. If we don’t support them fully, they might flip. You know the problems they’ve been having with the Ionians.”

  “I’d take the Ionians over the Sultan’s Navy any day.”

  “So would I, but that’s not the issue. If we shift focus now, the Porte won’t stand for it—the only alternative would be to annex the Sultanate. One war at a time, Joss.”

  PrenTalien shrugged.

  “The kicker is that even if the Porte doesn’t flip, the Emir of Ivoria might.”

  “You’re saying he might invite Halith in through the Winnecke IV junction?”

  “It can’t be ruled out. It seems he’s been scheming to set up as an independent ruler for some time. There are conflicting reports that he was feeling out the Ionians at one time regarding a possible alliance, but the Ionians would rather do things their own way—”

  “Of course.”

  “—and apparently nothing came of it. Their relations cooled markedly after that. Anyway, it’s dubious Iona could have given him the backing he needs, while Halith certainly could.”

  “Who told us all this?”

  “CID got it from the Porte.”

  “And we believe it?”

  “To a degree. ONI corroborated some key points through their Ionian sources. Enough to make SECNAV very nervous.”

  With a grunt, PrenTalien settled back in his chair and rubbed one thick hand across his face. “So, they got us pinned, is that it, Carlos? Some crap about the Maxor from Delphi and a story about a treacherous emir from an oily Andaman diplomat. They’re not even committing any forces—just bullshit served up on a shingle. We already lost Kepler—now we’re losing the info-space too.”

  “We need to find a line we can hold, Joss. Regulus, Eltanin, and here. That’s the bottom line.”

  Admiral PrenTalien lifted his gaze to the situation display on the far wall, to Crucis Sector. “And devil take the hindmost.”

  Chapter Two

  CEF Academy Main Campus

  Cape York, Mars, Sol

  “I heard they gave up Knydos.”

  “No one gave up Knydos. You oughta stay off Delphi.”

  “Wasn’t Delphi—it was my cousin.”

  “Tell your cousin to stay off Delphi then.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Hold it down, you two.”

  “No way we hold Knydos after losing New Madras. Chiron’s gonna go too.”

  The loss of the CEF’s forward base at New Madras to a surprise Bannerman attack had been the top story of the day’s news. The announcement of a new declaration of war between the League and the Bannerman Confederacy had been read out to them before breakfast.

  “We gotta hold Chiron! Without it we lose Mytilene. They can’t write off the whole Crucis Sector!”

  “They sure as hell can. They’re worried about Merope and Regulus. If the Andamans flip—”

  The clatter of a tray as Cadet Sylvester Harkins got up abruptly and left.

  “His family’s on Mytilene,” the girl who’d been sitting on his right said quietly.

  “Aw shit. That’s the cube root of fuck-all. Hey Kris!” Tanner lifted his voice as Kris walked into the mess. “Over here!”

  Midshipman no longer, but merely Cadet Kennakris again, she snagged a loaded tray from the chow line and made her serpentine way through the tables to where Tanner sat with three other cadets she did not recognize. As she put down her dinner, he indicated the three with a wave.

  “This is Roland DuChein, Deniz Singh-Whalen, and Sahyli Casanova.”

  “Make it Shyli,” said the last woman, smiling.

  “This is Kris”—with a genteel jerk of his thumb in her direction.

  �
�Hi.” Kris squeezed sideways into a chair at the crowded table with her best attempt at a smile.

  “We’re hot-bunking with them,” Tanner explained. “You know about that?”

  “Uh huh,” she answered with a mouth full of something the cooks dignified with the title casserole. It probably wouldn’t do to inquire much further.

  “Heard you were on your way back. You just get in?”

  “This AM.” Meaning she’d gotten back to the Academy that AM. She had been in-system for almost four days, including two at Lunar 1, where she’d dealt with closing out her apartment, received a note Kym had left for her—heartfelt, but not very well spelled—and spent two miserable hours waiting to be debriefed. In the end, it was so anticlimactic as to be surreal. Conducted into the room at last, wondering if they meant to eviscerate her quickly or slowly, a rail-thin, hard-faced lieutenant colonel of Marines from PLE-SOCOM asked her to be seated in the only chair in the nearly barren room.

  After five minutes of boilerplate that seemed to serve no purpose but setting her up for the knife, he unfurled his xel and read a statement that she recognized as a condensed version of Huron’s after-action report. With no change in tone or expression, he asked if she disputed any of the statements he had read. When she answered she did not, he asked if she had anything to add. When she said “No”, he closed the proceedings with no more than a sharp “That will be all, Midshipman.”

  Standing up and saluting, she was wondering if he meant she’d been dismissed when he capped the surrealistic episode by inquiring, in the same official tone, if she was “at leisure to consider other business?” Thoroughly taken aback, she mumbled “Yes,” upon which another officer entered and escorted her to a different room. There the officer and two other men, dressed as civilians, politely presented her with the hire agreement she’d signed for Flechette, which had another few days to run. Would she be interested in extending the agreement for another six Terran months? Perhaps a year?