The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  “Who might that be?”

  “Trin. I don’t think you’ve met.”

  “No. But I’ve heard of her.”

  “Think there’s any chance of it?”

  “Last I checked they were all out of stock. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it.”

  “I was a afraid of that. Seems to be a very rare item.”

  “That is certainly true. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  “No worries.” He paused. “How’s Mariwen? Anything new?”

  The image in the overlay dipped its head to one side. “Doing better. She’s becoming more lucid now.”

  Huron was not quite sure how to reconcile doing better with becoming lucid. He’d seen a few cases of a neural implant crashing, similar to what happened to Mariwen, and when they became more lucid, they also started trying to commit suicide. And usually succeeded.

  “So it’s more promising?”—keeping that thought strictly to himself.

  “She’s walking again. We’ve been able to take her outside these past few weeks.”

  “Things are looking up then,” Huron remarked in more human tone.

  “She has something to live for. That helps.” Antoine pursed his lips. “If you wanted to visit, I think it would be alright.”

  “That’s a kind thought,” Huron answered after a moment. “Might not be the best time right now, though—with the general state of things.”

  “I understand.”

  “Tell her I’m thinking of her and convey my best wishes, though.”

  “That will please her, I’m sure.”

  “Good luck with rest of your night.”

  “Good bye, Rafe.”

  Chapter Seven

  CEF Academy Main Campus

  Cape York, Mars, Sol

  “Kris!”

  The sound of her name carrying faintly through the cold, still Martian air turned Kris’s head as she mounted the wide steps to the Academy’s front entrance. She caught sight of the small figure heading for her from the taxi way across the broad courtyard, and closing at a dead run. Retreating down the steps, she met Kym, panting and breathless, at their foot.

  “Caught—you!” Kym plopped down unceremoniously on the lowest step. “I was—so—afraid I’d—miss you.” She must’ve sprinted over a hundred meters. Kris settled next to her.

  “No, I’m here for the duration now. What’s up on your end?”

  “Leaving. Real—soon.”

  Kris expected that; in fact, she’d half expected Kym to already be gone. When she’d left, they’d been inundating her with placement applications. The funds Kris, Huron’s father, and Trin Wesselby had arranged for her meant that Kym had plenty of scope to be choosy, but given she didn’t like it here much, and Kris figured she’d take the first decent opportunity.

  And she had, Kym explained, as she started to get her breath back. She’d accepted a position at a plantation on Hestia, the least populous of the League’s Homeworlds, and a right-to-work state, meaning that automation was kept within strict limits in favor of human workers. Kris knew next to nothing about the planet except that it was a favored vacation spot and Mariwen had been kidnapped there, but that aside, it did seem like the only Homeworld that might be comfortable to someone with Kym’s upbringing. Of course, there were colonies that were every bit as remote, underdeveloped and backwards as Lacaille, but Kris couldn’t imagine why anybody would voluntarily choose one of them.

  Nor could she imagine a bucolic job on Hestia being the sole cause of Kym’s obviously high state of excitement. Then Kym cried, with a note of unmistakable triumph, “But then I got lost!”

  “You got lost?”

  “Uh huh!” Kym’s green eyes were actually sparkling. “I had my stuff and my temp visa an’ all my immigration docs an’ everything, and they shipped me to this place, Ceres Transfer Station”—which of course they would, that being the largest of the three stations that handled Sol’s out-system traffic—“where I was gonna board my flight the next cycle. And they sent me to this shuttle with this black wrist thing—”

  “A pathfinder, yeah.”

  “Uh huh. An’ one of those xel things. I hate those things.” Here, Kym looked exaggeratedly cross. “They beep and they nag and they say ‘How can we help?’ and ‘Where would you like to start?’ and then dump out craploads of floating windows you never asked for and they don’t do anything.”

  That engendered a covert smile. Kris, who’d made her peace with xels early on, could still appreciate the sentiment, and she noticed Kym didn’t seem to have one now.

  “Anyway, they said everything was uploaded on it—all I had to do was follow the line in the deck once the shuttle dropped me at the embarkation terminal, an’ everything would be jake. It’d take me right there!”

  “Right.”

  “And it din’t! I got off the shuttle and the wrist thing din’t do anything!”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No! Not nothin’! I thought maybe I had to be somewhere closer to get it to turn on, so I went down one of the tubes to the inside but that din’t work, so I got out and tried ‘nother one and then a couple more, and then I ended up in this huge place with all these people rushing and no signs or directions or nothing!”

  Of course, there weren’t any signs. Every passenger had a pathfinder and a xel to direct them. It sounded to Kris, who’d been through Ceres herself, like Kym had blundered onto the main concourse outside the actual terminals. It was indeed huge and utterly devoid of markings, which would have been pointless in any case.

  “So what happened?” She’d never heard of a pathfinder failing.

  “I almost cried!” Kym laughed. “Really! I din’t know what to do! I just sat down in the middle of everything with all my stuff—an’ all these zillion people.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then I met somebody!”

  “Oh.” The image crystallized.

  “Yeah! He saw me sitting there and came over and asked me what was wrong—he was really nice!—an’ I told him everything and he looked at the wrist thing and asked to see my tickets an’ I was in the complete wrong place! I got on the wrong shuttle somehow! That’s why nothin’ worked!”

  The breathless tale of the good Samaritan continued to unfold. He’d explained where she needed to go and then accompanied her there, but by that time, Kym had missed the flight. The next available one wasn’t for eighty-six hours, so the Samaritan—whose name, it appeared, was Egan—got her lodgings and made sure there’d be no mistakes about shuttles next time. But then, it developed, he’d missed his flight as well—he’d been on his way to board when he found her.

  “And he couldn’t get ‘nother one for a month!” Which implied some far-remote colonial destination, indeed, and with the war affecting transit, he was lucky to get anything at all.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I took him back to Luna,” Kym announced matter-of-factly. “Got us our own place. I paid too.” An emphatic nod. “My own money. He wanted to pay—at least some. But I said no. He helped, so I wasn’t gonna let him pay. He’s really nice.”

  “And you’re not shipping out to Hestia anymore.”

  “Nope!” Kym beamed fit to rival distant Sol. “We’re getting married!”

  Kris had seen that coming a kilometer off. She smiled. A pampered Homeworlder would have been horrified at the thought of a sixteen-year-old girl hitching her star to a stranger chance-met on the Ceres main concourse, but that Homeworlder would have failed to understand that no one survived being a slave for long without learning to quickly tell friend from foe; good intentions from bad ones. If this guy seemed really nice to Kym, he probably was really nice. And if not, that couldn’t be her worry anymore—

  “—horses!” Kym ended the sentence Kris had missed with a giggle.

  “Horses?”

  “He raises them! On this big place he has back home!”

  She hadn’t caught where that was. Maybe Kym hadn’t said. “Sound
s really nice.”

  “I’m so happy!” Indeed, there were tears of it glinting in her eyes. “An’ it’s all cuz of you!” She threw her arms around Kris’s neck and hugged so tight Kris winced. “Can’t never thank you ‘nuff, Kris! Not ever!”

  Kris moved to ease the stranglehold a bit. “S’Okay, Kym,” hugging her back. “Don’t give me too much credit. You got lost on your own.”

  Kym laughed, a peal of pure delight, right in her ear. Then a kiss, high on her cheek. “Never gonna forget you, Kris.”

  “Never gonna forget you either, Kym.”

  Unaccountably, that seemed to make her shy, and her arms loosened. “Oh, you’re gonna—I mean . . . What time is it?”

  Kris showed her.

  “Oh! I gotta go! My connection’s leaving outta Phobos tonight. I’m meeting him at Ceres and then we leave.”

  “He didn’t come along with you?”

  “Uh-uh. He needed another day to finish up some arrangements. Said he’s been to Mars already—din’t need to see it again.”

  Oh . . .

  “Don’t look like that,” Kym scolded her with a cockeyed grin. “He’s really nice.”

  “I know.” Kris stood up. “You better get going.”

  “Yeah.” Kym stood up as well. “This is it! Wish me luck!”

  “Best of fortune, Kym.”

  “G’bye, Kris.”

  Releasing Kris’s hand with a final squeeze, she ran back across the courtyard, almost as fast as she’d come. Pausing once at the edge of the taxi way, she turned and waved. Kris waved back. The tiny figure climbed into a waiting taxi; it pulled out into the traffic pattern and was rapidly lost.

  After another heartbeat, Kris turned and made her way quickly up the Academy steps. The wind had suddenly picked up, blowing in fitful gusts, and it was cold.

  Chapter Eight

  CEF Academy Main Campus

  Cape York, Mars, Sol

  Commandant Hoste once again addressed the Academy’s assembled student body. What had begun as an expedient had become an end-of-week ritual. Part of that ritual was the sheet of paper with the handwritten notes inscribed on it that he smoothed onto the rostrum’s surface before beginning.

  “I am pleased to say that the news this week is of a better nature than last.” This was setting a pretty low bar, in all conscience: last week the loss of Crucis Sector (the word abandonment was studiously avoided) had been officially announced. “An assault on the Merope Junction was repulsed with heavy loss to the enemy. Losses among the Bannerman auxiliaries were especially severe, with one detachment being captured entire. The Winnecke IV junction remains secure. Reports that a Halith fleet managed to run the Rip and turn our position there, though widely reported, are without foundation. Elsewhere, the Larate of Alesia has signed a capitulation. That leaves the Aventine Grand Duchy as the only state in Deneb still resisting the Halith incursions. At the request of the Mirandan government, additional marine forces have been dispatched to deal with the rise in insurgency there. You are all aware, I am sure, that holding Miranda is vital to maintaining our connection with the Karelian Republic. The situation in regards to the Terebellum Empire and the New UK is unchanged.”

  Here Hoste paused and removed his hands from the rostrum. Looking across the sea of faces, which seemed to him absurdly young, his voice took on a new and deeper tone.

  “Cadets, in a few short weeks, you will be officers. You will be facing in combat the very forces that now are moving to occupy the homes of many of you. I shall therefore refrain from, as the saying goes, attempting to blow sunshine up your ass.”

  A ripple of polite laughter answered the sally.

  “Victory is never assured. It is not a gift—it does not descend from some higher power upon those who think themselves righteous. Victory is won—by your skill and yes, your pride, but most of all by your professionalism. It is your professionalism that these events will most sorely test. I do not doubt that you all can successfully meet that test. Remain vigilant. Anger, hate and despair are your deadliest opponents. Conquer them and your battles are half won.

  “One more thing. Final exams have been suspended. That is all.”

  Chapter Nine

  CEF HQ, Mare Nemeton

  Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  TOP-LINE BREAKING: HESPERIAN GRAND SENATOR MISSING—FEARED DEAD.

  {For Immediate Release. This story is developing–ed.}

  A convoy carrying Grand Senator Archibald Grimbles of Hesperia and members of his staff has disappeared en route to Miranda. The Senator was making a secret trip to visit Hesperian troops stationed there for Michaelmas {Hesperia’s main thanksgiving holiday–ed.} The Senator arrived at Epona Outstation on schedule, and left as planned twenty-six hours later. As the convoy was observing strict communications silence to maintain security, no signals were received and the convoy was not declared missing until twelve hours after it failed to reach Mirandan space. CEF units have been dispatched to search for any survivors.

  Missing along with Grand Senator Grimbles are his chief of staff, Taylor Lessing, his personal secretary Manuel Weston, his security chief, Jacob Christy, and—

  Trin Wesselby clicked off the feed.

  “Well, that’s bloody convenient,” Nick Taliaferro commented from his chair.

  “You don’t believe it either?”

  Nick snorted—the question was not a serious one. “Oh, I believe Grimbles is dead alright. As for Lessing, either Halith decided he was a liability and foreclosed on him, or he set this up as his ticket home. So the question is, did Lessing put him up to it?”

  “That is the question.”

  “Your folks got anything?”

  “Just wreckage. No survivors.”

  “So this story is just the Speaker’s idea of buttering up the masses for the bad news?”

  “That’s about the size of it. But if he arranged this as his ticket in from the cold, why bother? He can’t hope to go so deep underground that we won’t find him eventually. Besides, Halith might want the credit—they’re vain that way. And there’s nothing like a little mole paranoia to fubar the source code.”

  “Nice way to silence all the people who might have had something on him. We know Lessing didn’t get along with Christy. Weston was also in a position to learn things that might have been damaging. Like what really happened to his wife.” They’d recently learned that the ex-wife was dead: euthanized by court order after spending five years in a persistent vegetative state as a result of a drug overdose, which had been ruled an attempted suicide. As yet, they’d uncovered no contrary evidence, but Trin had heard that one before. “And maybe he’s protecting someone else.”

  “Another mole.” Trin sighed. “Any chance you can get at the rest of his personal files? Profiles? Xel logs? Backups? He can’t have erased everything. He wouldn’t have erased everything. He’d keep some sort of insurance. Otherwise he becomes a nonentity. Admiral Heydrich isn’t going to welcome a nonentity just for a job well done.”

  “Awfully sure of ourselves here, aren’t we?”

  “If I’m wrong, I’ll cheerfully admit I owe him an apology.”

  That’d be worth the price of admission, thought Nick with an inward smile. But his face gave nothing away as he answered. “Anything he left behind will be sealed pending an inquest.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  That allowed the smile out. “You promise to visit me on Helpless?”

  “If they give us adjoining cells.” Which might be a best-case scenario, Trin thought.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter Ten

  Olympus Mons Airspace

  CEF Academy Flight Training Zone, Mars, Sol

  Her target jumped on her screen like a hooked trout, zigging and jagging, jinking and spinning, waiting until she guessed wrong to break away and get around behind her. She couldn’t guess wrong—she’d been riding his ass for what seemed like forever and if he got behind her in his more maneuverab
le ship, it was game-over.

  She squeezed a couple of bursts from her plasma cannon; too far out for a good hit and she knew it, but mostly she was just trying to piss him off. She was glad to see one flare on his belly, even if the shields took it. Her target broke high and right, trying a snapback on her to make her overshoot.

  No you don’t, asshole. That’s in the book.

  She braked hard into a lazy-S and dropped below him. As her nose came up, she fired a hard burst of plasma at him. Two went left, two right, two caught his left weapons spar. The shields stopped one, the other took the spar end off.

  Yes! That was more like it! Her prey went to full military power, burning into a pure vertical, going for an up-n-over. The book said go with him: her superior acceleration would put her on top first, placed for a good shot if he muffed the rollover, or a good escape if he didn’t.

  She didn’t want to escape and he wasn’t going to muff the rollover. Not this guy. No, she wanted him—bad. She’d lost a lot of velocity braking into the lazy-S, and now she jammed the decel as hard as it would go. The fighter shuddered, but she’d done it. She’d stood her bird on its tail. She saw him above her, just about topping his arc as her nose came up, and popped off two seekers.

  They weren’t locked: no time and he was out of the envelope anyway. But he couldn’t be sure of that. His best bet was turning into them in his dancy little ship—that meant breaking his rollover into an Immelman.

  He did. She whooped and hit emergency boost. The water molecules fed directly into the reaction chamber instantly increased thrust twenty percent, and again acceleration slammed her—this time back into the seat, and the screen got dim and fuzzy. Blinking as the inertial compensators eased off, she prayed that he’d watched those missiles for just a second instead of her. She saw them flash by him, one close enough to make him juke. Then he flattened out, right in front of her.

  It’d worked! He had expected her to still be down there, playing dink-n-dodge until her missiles locked—not climbing his ass on E-boost in a charge that she’d no way be able to save if she missed.