The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  From that chair, Kris was watching Commandant Hoste with equal intensity and finding him equally opaque. She believed the Commandant to be a fair-minded man, but she also knew he had a strong aversion to controversy, that Mertone was a very senior officer of some influence, and that she could not recall exactly what he’d said or done in that final instant. That—not tactics—was the reason for her truncated deposition. While she had no doubt what had been on Mertone’s mind, the only clear evidence was against her, and how far the Commandant would be willing to go to defend a lowly colonial cadet against a Messian aristocrat made her sick to think about. Certainly it did not look especially promising, she thought, noting the lines in his face which were graven deeper still and his pale eyes hard as glass.

  As Kris fought to maintain her composure, Hoste’s frown got deeper as he scanned and rescanned her deposition, and his eyes harder and colder. At last, he tossed the papers—real papers—onto his huge, ornate, imposing desk and rocked back in the tall, imposing chair.

  “Cadet Kennakris, have you anything to add to your deposition?”

  “Nosir.” Her voice was weak, barely audible. Hoste’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “No. Sir.”

  Hoste nodded, stirring the pages with his right hand. “Commander Mertone. Do you have anything to add to your deposition?”

  Commander Mertone was standing to her left, not close, in a stance that was by no means at ease, although officially that’s what it was called. “I do not, sir,” he answered, his inflection utterly flat and his tone metallic.

  Hoste exhaled, turned his head to one side then the other, and stood. “Bad business this. Assault. Conduct Unbecoming. Actionable harassment. The facts, it appears”—he stabbed the depositions with a forefinger—“are not in dispute. The judgment upon those facts”—here he fixed both of them in turn—“waits upon a formal inquiry.” Silence for a few beats to let that sink in.

  “Bad business,” he repeated. “However . . .” He let the word hang for a moment as he walked around to the front of his desk. “However, there would seem”—hard emphasis on that word—“to be the elements of a serious, but perhaps rectifiable, misunderstanding here.” Hands behind his back, he paced three steps. “Alcohol, a relaxed atmosphere.” He paused, shot Kris a look. “And history.”

  Turning to face Mertone, he asked formally: “Commander Mertone, would you assert under oath that you had no sexual intent in regards to Cadet Kennakris and your physical contact with her was not so intended?”

  “I would—I do. Sir.”

  Liar, Kris thought, remembering his eyes.

  “However inappropriate it was?”

  The blood was up in Mertone’s face. “Yes. Sir.”

  Hoste turned to face her. “Cadet Kennakris. Would you assert under oath that you have no memory of striking the commander? That you had no intention of doing so?”

  “I would, sir.” Strong this time with the anger at Mertone’s lie.

  “However inappropriate that response was?”

  Kris bit down on the inside of her lip. “Yes. Sir.”

  Hoste chose to ignore the tone. “I inform you both that you have the right to a formal inquiry with a public reading of all charges and court martial, if the inquiry so recommends.” He turned back to them and his eyes were fierce. “Do either of you wish to exercise said right?”

  Neither spoke. Hoste came and stood before Kris. “Cadet?”

  Kris drew in a deep breath; her jaw worked for a long moment. “No. No, sir.” She let the breath go.

  Hoste looked sharply at Mertone. “Commander?”

  “No, sir.” There was less brass in his voice this time.

  “Very well.” Hoste walked deliberately back behind his desk. “I therefore admonish you both regarding your dangerously inappropriate and unacceptable behavior that brings dishonor to the Service and discredit on yourselves as naval officers—and cadets—and advise you of the serious consequences thereof.” He paused again, and adopting a pulpit voice, finished: “You are hereby so advised and admonished.” Then he reached out and stopped the recorder even as the last syllables died away.

  “Now,” he said, more fiercely than before, “that the lawyerly bullshit is dispensed with, I trust we can put this disgraceful episode behind us and get on with the war!”

  No answer seemed to be expected and they made none. Hoste sat heavily in his tall chair. “Cadet, you may go. Commander, please stay a moment.”

  Kris stood, saluted and left the room with a stiff, wooden gait.

  As the door slid shut, Hoste looked at Mertone. “Alright, Cal, go ahead and have a seat. You’re damn lucky she agreed. An inquiry right now is just what we don’t need, especially involving her. So now do you want to explain to me how you came to do such a goddamned stupid thing?”

  “It was a party. We were drinking. She graduates in two weeks. Class’s over.” He sat down in a waiting chair, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “It was assault. All she had to do was say no.”

  Hoste looked hard at the younger man. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you have any idea? ”

  Mertone blinked, puzzled and somewhat unnerved by Hoste’s tone. “About what?”

  Hoste removed a folder from a locked drawer of his desk and held it up. “This is a file on Kennakris. Submitted by Captain RyKirt. They released it to me after her stint as a midshipman. You never heard anything about this?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. Why the hell would RyKirt submit a file on Kennakris? I thought he’d only met her at the party.”

  “He submitted it because of some—contributions Kennakris made to his operation. But it also contains Dr. Quillan’s evaluation of her. You were on Fidelia with Quillan, weren’t you?”

  “Ev Quillan? Sure. For about six weeks.”

  “And in those six weeks, he never bent your ear about Kennakris?”

  “No. Well—I knew he’d flamed out over some colonial—”

  “Not some colonial.” Hoste tapped the folder with a hooked forefinger. “This colonial.”

  Mertone extended a hand. “Can I see that?”

  “Be my guest.” Hoste passed the folder across.

  As he opened the cover, a series of images opened up and spread themselves over the desktop.

  “Holy shit.”

  “That’s what you made a run at, Cal.”

  Mertone just shook his head, his lips pale.

  “I think you’re damn lucky to get off as lightly as you did.”

  Mertone, closing the file, grunted.

  “In spite of what you just saw, ” Hoste went on, “I got an email from RyKirt this AM suggesting that soon-to-be Ensign Kennakris be assigned to Commander Huron’s new recon wing on Trafalgar. They both seem to have—ah . . . taken an interest in her career.” Mertone grunted again, now holding the folder in slack hands. “RyKirt cc’d Admiral PrenTalien and PrenTalien endorsed the request.”

  Mertone looked up, opened his mouth, then closed it abruptly. Hoste held out his hand for the folder and Mertone gave it back without a word. Hoste took the folder, sealed it with his thumb, and thrust it into the waiting drawer.

  “So do you want to explain this little episode to RyKirt, Cal? Or do you want me to do it? Or do you want to find yourself a new billet?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Aeolis Station

  in Mars orbit, Sol

  Ensign Loralynn Kennakris, the gold bars on her shoulders not yet forty-eight hours old, stood in the departure terminal of Aeolis Station, waiting for the call to embark on the transport LSS Sardis and resisting the urge to kick the large massy duffle bag at her feet which, aside from her dress uniforms, contained everything she owned. She blamed Ensign Weber, leaning against a stanchion about five meters away, who had been doing exactly that for at least the last twenty minutes.

  In Kris’s opinion, rhythmically kicking one’s baggage was beneath the dignity of a newly commissioned ensign, but Weber had been disappointed in his hope for a combat posting. He’d dropped ou
t of the pilot program during basic flight, tried for EW, and was now destined for the CEF Command Logistics Directorate, posting to Weyland Station out in Eltanin Sector. He’d already been ribbed mercilessly over it—Weber, where’s my socks? Weber, you call this food? and the old favorite: Weber, don’t get your panties in a bunch, they come by the gross—so if anyone had a right to kick their baggage, she supposed he did. But she still wished he’d stop.

  It didn’t help that she’d spent the last two of those almost forty-eight hours right here, next to the terminal where, a year ago, she’d passed under the sign that read: Through this Portal shall pass the Future Guardians of Mankind’s Freedom. She stood here with another twelve hundred and forty-one of those guardians, future no longer, on their way to war—the first class commissioned directly into combat since before Kris was born.

  That year had been tumultuous, but it was the hours since graduation that oppressed her now, an odd kaleidoscope of feelings, memories, impressions; so new yet so difficult to sort. The ceremony itself: marching in silently; the valedictory brief, somber, businesslike—nothing grandiose or stirring—and the archaic words of the oath: I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; followed by the stilted phrases of the dire warning: Neither you nor any of you shall fail in your duty as you will answer the contrary at your peril, which now took on a new, more terrible and urgent meaning. Her class falling out at the command of Sergeant Major Yu—his last command to them—stepping smartly back one pace, facing about and throwing their caps with a cheer; the caps sailing, sailing, in the native Martian gravity—and the cheer echoing oddly, thinly off the towering Academy façade in the cold, dry, unstirring air. No guests (that being deemed unfair to colonials whose families could not be expected to make the journey), only the instructors and the Commandant standing in silent ranks. Then mounting the Academy steps one last time to receive their first salute from Sergeant Major Yu; Yu’s unexpected and contra-protocol wink as she handed him the ritual coin while he saluted her and offered his congratulations. Then the long walk up the marble ramp, not to a month of liberty but to receive their deployment orders from a starchy senior lieutenant in full dress.

  Most of all, searching for Huron, not seeing him; learning he had been ordered away to take over LSS Trafalgar’s new recon wing; missing him, being privately surprised and embarrassed at how much. Then unfolding her orders, delivered in a square white wrapper, and feeling her heart lurch even though she knew it had been discussed—indeed almost privately promised (Admiralty promises often just so much hot air)—but there it was in beautiful, objective, undeniable print: You are hereby directed and required to report immediately to the post of flight officer, CEF 135th Reconnaissance Wing, LSS Trafalgar. LCDR Rafael L. Huron V commanding.

  Her xel beeped again, louder. It had been beeping for not quite fifty minutes: a page from the station porter’s office. A page she’d been ignoring because the porter’s office was deep in the guts of the station, six minutes one way, her xel said, and it was certainly a mistake. With her departure imminent—it had been listed as imminent for ninety minutes now—she didn’t want to negotiate the tube system just to confirm the mistake and have to hurry back, suffering the wry looks of her officers if her boarding group was called in her absence.

  She knew it was a mistake because the porter’s office primarily handled physical mail, a mode of correspondence employed by the well-to-do on special occasions and by the government for certain formal notices. Some of her fellow ensigns had been getting graduation cards from their families this way, a few on genuine paper, but she had no family and no real friends besides Baz, who was standing just a few meters away, so it was inconceivable that she should be sent a card, and the Navy did not speak to persons of so little consequence as a new ensign by such means. It was possible—barely—that Huron had sent her something, but a personal communication of that sort from her new commanding officer would be stretching the limits of propriety to near breaking, and it was unlikely even Huron would go so far. In any event, she’d be reporting to him shortly.

  She thumbed the alert off for the fifth time and looked up to see a porter hurrying through the crowd, heading straight for her. Kris, most unwilling to be made game of in front of so many former classmates, watched the porter’s undeviating course with an ever more forbidding expression until the porter, a young woman, stopped in front of her and touched her cap.

  “Ensign Kennakris?” Kris nodded. “Ensign Loralynn Kennakris?” the porter asked with particular emphasis. Kris nodded again. “Letter for you, ma’am.”

  Kris’s brows furrowed as the porter held out a pad for Kris to sign. She signed and pressed her thumb over the signature. The pad approved her biometrics and the porter unsealed her satchel, produced a white envelope and handed it over. Kris took it and felt the texture. Real paper. Her name was written across the front of the envelope in a feminine hand and it was sealed with a gold wafer.

  “Who’s this from?”

  The porter consulted a manifest. “A Ms. Rathor. Earth. Return address care of . . .” She hesitated, screwing her young face into a frown. “Care of one of the agencies. Can’t tell which. That’s a generic government drop box”—showing Kris the address.

  Mariwen?

  Kris mumbled something, took out her xel and mechanically stroked off a tip for the porter, who smiled, made a reply Kris couldn’t hear over the blood rushing in her ears, touched her cap again and left. Kris stared off at nothing and willed her knees not to shake.

  The boarding claxon made her jump as her group number scrolled across the display, called out at the same time by a hieratic voice over the PA system. She bent, unzipped a pocket on the duffle, slid the envelope inside, sealed it, shouldered the heavy bag and took her place in line.

  * * *

  Lights out; the dim red glow of the dark-lamp in the berth showing three sleeping forms. The portly senior warrant officer in the lower bunk across from her, his slow, brutish snoring mixing oddly with the soft, almost feline purr of the young lieutenant-jg in the upper bunk, another flight officer and an absurdly pretty girl, slight with shoulder-length black hair, delicate features and improbably long lashes that quivered as she dreamed. Basmartin in the bunk above hers, sleeping with the log-like imperturbably she remembered; he was the only other member of their graduating class accepted into Trafalgar’s new recon wing.

  Two days out now, en route to Epona in Cygnus Sector. Seven days, sixteen hours more if they made good time, but probably longer—Sardis was no flyer. Kris rolled slowly onto her side and sat up. The warrant officer snored on; the pretty lieutenant stirred. Kris froze, unconsciously holding her breath at the sound of a murmured name. The lieutenant rolled over, fractious for a moment, plucking at the coverlet with a slim hand with painted nails—not strictly regulation that—before settling more deeply into her bunk with a dainty sigh.

  Kris exhaled and twitched her duffle bag out from under the bunk, feeling for the zippered pocket. Unlocking the zipper with her thumb, she opened it and drew out the envelope inside. It crackled. The pulse fluttered in her neck as she stroked the expensive paper, ever so slightly rough with a tooth to the edge. Turning it over, she touched the gold wafer. It released, raising a curled lip. She peeled it open. The sheet inside slid into her palm with a soft rustle. It was folded in quarters with that slight imprecision that showed the work of a human hand. There were no marks on the outer sides at all. Conscious of the slow heavy beat of her heart, she opened the leaves and saw written there, slanting across the paper in a woman’s fine elliptical hand:

  The moon has set, and the Pleiades;

  Midnight is gone,

  the hours wear by,

  and here I lie alone; alone . . .

  # # #

  Epilogue

  The Riverlands, Mare Nemeton

  Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  “Why coots?” asked Trin Wesselby as she distributed another handful of popcorn across the crowd of squabbling waterf
owl that had collected under the limestone bridge to dispute over the bounty raining down from six meters up. She looked out over the Riverlands, the artful maze of serpentine waterways that divided Nedaema’s capital, its parks crowded with silver oak and red gum trees, willows lining the banks and a sprinkling of small islands decorated with Japanese maples, their leaves all flame-colored at this time of year. Beyond, Nedaema’s primary was just setting and, due to its spectrum and the unique chemistry of Nedaema’s upper atmosphere, pouring streams of pure molten gold over the clouds mounded low on the horizon. The light also rendered the limestone of the bridge on which they were standing a rich lemon yellow, and the whole scene looked decidedly unreal. Which was no doubt what the designers intended. Except for the coots.

  “Coots?” asked Nick Taliaferro, loafing beside her and studying the round little birds, all a sort of muddled grayish-black with a white eye stripe. He’d always rather liked their drab, commonplace appearance—a note of charming mundanity in this beautifully contrived watercolor landscape. It was revealing, he thought, of a note of sly humor that Nedaemans all too often lacked. Trin, though, didn’t seem to agree.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can understand those trumpeter swans”—pointing to a troupe gliding majestically across the gilded water, their plumage every shade of blue from the richest peacock or deepest indigo to a shade of Prussian that was almost black—“even though I think they’re a little gaudy. But I just don’t get the coots. Why go to all the trouble to import coots?”