Nick smiled as Trin dipped into her plastic bag and scattered more manna from heaven to the teeming supplicants circling below. A flock of teal pintail ducks from the other side of the bridge were beginning to notice, and to Nick, they looked like they were getting ready to rumble.
“I dunno,” he answered, watching with mild anticipation. The coots could probably hold their own against the pintails, but if those Beaufort’s geese just coming out from behind that island over there got into the action, it was all over. The swans, he knew, would hold aloof, the whole business being beneath them. “I sorta like coots.”
“They always look so annoyed,” Trin said. She’d noticed the pintails too, who were launching a reconnaissance in force. “There’s just no pleasing a coot.”
Nick laughed and it startled all the birds below. Both sides backed off, anxious at this new development. Trin dumped what popcorn she had left into the disputed territory.
“Sounds like half the people I’ve worked with,” he said, watching the white puffs spiral down.
“Only half?” Trin wadded the empty bag only to realize she didn’t have a pocket to stow it in. She was wearing a pencil skirt today, fashionably short with a kick pleat, a tailored jacket with wide shoulders and a stand collar with cobalt-nickel fittings, along with a pair of moderate heels. It was not her usual look and it was deficient in the article of pockets. Nick couldn’t decide if it made her look like an attorney or a hit-lady. Maybe both.
He grinned and held out a hand. “I’ve been fortunate in my acquaintance.”
Trin looked sidelong at him and noted the grin and the proffered hand. She’d been about to stuff the crumpled bag in her purse—a distasteful idea since she extremely disliked cluttering her purse. At present it held only her xel, her wallet, some keys, and a compact flechette pistol with two spare clips in the outer pocket. Besides, there were still a good many popcorn hulls in the bag. She handed it over and he put it in the thigh pocket of the baggy dun cargo pants he wore. The left thigh pocket, opposite the one that held the one-eleven STYG automatic. She wondered where he was carrying his back-up piece today; she’d detected nothing under his loose, open-necked flower-print shirt. Probably a crotch holster, she thought.
And that grin had been very like a leer. But she found she didn’t mind that so much.
“So what’s the next move?” Nick asked. Trin shook her head. Down below, the coots and pintails seemed to have agreed on some sort of détente and were cautiously hovering around the margins of the bounty. “Just hang out here,” he suggested, “watch the sunsets and bombard coots who will never be pleased with popcorn for the rest of whatever?”
“You’ve made worse suggestions.” Trin sighed and turned her back on the spectacular sunset, just starting to fade and getting that peculiar neon-green tint that was characteristic of Nedaema’s skies, resting her elbows on the ornate wrought-iron scrollwork that topped the bridge’s meter-high railing. “What about you? Any thoughts?”
Nick leaned forward, a posture that was almost the exact compliment of Trin’s. “Retirement.”
“Retirement?” Trin tried but failed to keep the surprise and dismay out of her voice.
“Sure. Lots to be said for retirement.” Nick looked out into the fading light. The pale disk of Telos was just starting to show. “No one cares if you forget to shave. You can wear loud shirts . . . belch—scratch. It’s almost expected.”
“You’re not even eighty yet. What would you do with yourself?”
“I thought maybe I’d take up fishing.”
“Fishing. . .”
“Yep.” He watched the gathering dark. At this latitude it came on surprisingly fast. “Sport fishing. Go after the big bastards—the ones that put up a real fight.”
“Nick . . . we’re dealing with a mole here.” Spoken very quietly, almost under her breath. CID had detected Lessing on Halith Evandor barely two months after his ‘death’—that was unusually fast, and Trin suspected that either Lessing, or more likely Admiral Heydrich, was thumbing his nose at them. Reading between the lines, Trin had caught some indications that made her suspect a short and unhappy life for Mr. Defector Lessing.
The news had leaked, and with the revelation that a grand senator’s most senior staff member had been a Halith mole, much of the public frustration over the course of the war was given vent. A hastily assembled special commission, chaired by the Senior Secretary of the Plenary Council, looked into the matter and proclaimed that Lessing had acted alone. That finding was supported by a slew of immature writings, recovered mainly from his college days, showing a dewy-eyed young imperialist besotted with thoughts of a ‘New Rome’ burgeoning in the bosom of Orion. CID concurred. Trin didn’t.
It was entirely too tidy for her tastes and important questions were not being addressed. There were still figures apparently involved with the Alecto Initiative whose connection with Lessing was obscure. And there was the question of insurance—Nick’s investigations had not turned up any.
What he had turned up was an impressive collection of pornography, a passion Lessing appeared to share with another, to judge from a decades’ long correspondence of embarrassingly trite and undeniably graphic love letters to “my dear companion” and “the sweet well of my affections” and “Sweet Jordie,” or sometimes just plain “Pickwick.” Pickwick’s replies were often alluded to but rarely preserved; nevertheless, there was no doubt as to the nature of the relationship or who occupied the driver’s seat. The relationship seemed to be physical, at least at one point, but more usually carried on virtually via the shared collection, which included quite the number of illegal feelies.
Add what it might to the understanding of Lessing’s personality and the motivations behind his treachery (and that was significant), it was useless as insurance. He’d either been very clever or very stupid. There was a certain naiveté about the letters, an increasingly frequent need for reassurance very much at odds with the hard-nosed political operator Lessing had been in public—almost, Trin thought, a puppet’s adoration for its master. Now Lessing’s strings were cut, but the guiding hand still hovered out there somewhere, manipulating how many other puppets?
“At least two, I’d say. And some mole-lets hanging about in odd corners here and there.” Nick reached into a shirt pocket and took out a folded piece of hardcopy. “Made some notes on the best places to go sport fishing. Just in case—y’know—you’re interested.” He handed the plaspaper over.
Trin unfolded it gingerly. The page was crammed with tiny, precise writing. “You handwrote this?”
“I think you’re rubbing off on me.”
She reached out and gave his thick shoulder a squeeze. “Thanks, Nick.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Certainly not.” She slid the sheet in with the spare ammo clips. “Say, would you like to get some dinner? I’m feeling generous tonight.”
He winked at her. “Do I have to change?”
She smiled back. “There’s no dress code at the place I have in mind.” Then took out her xel and summoned her car.
“Sounds like a plan.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and his teeth showed a gleam in his heavily creased, broad face. Trin’s groundcar glided up to the end of the bridge and waited there, purring almost silently on its skirts. She checked her authentication bots and relaxed perceptibly as they all showed green.
“No driver?” Nick asked, sliding his xel back into a pocket.
“Not these days.” She replaced her xel and popped the doors open. They walked down the gentle slope together, and as Trin strapped into the driver’s side, Nick took the shotgun seat and remarked, “Y’know what else I look forward to about being retired?”
Trin sealed the doors, checked the display and shook her head as she engaged thrusters.
“Fraternizing. Sixty years in the service leaves a fellow with a powerful deal of fraternizing to catch up on.”
Trin favored him with a sideways look and cocked an eyebrow.
“You’re not retired yet, Nick.”
“True. But a fella can hope. Can’t he?”
“Oh certainly.” She took them up to a hundred meters with a private smile.
“So where’s this place we’re going?”
She displayed the map reference on the HUD. Nick chuckled as he recognized her address.
“I wanted someplace we could talk.”
“Absolutely. Fine idea. Good plan.” He settled deeper into his seat. She saw his lips move in the canopy’s dim reflection. Did Nick know she could read lips? Hard to say.
She connected to the grid, entered an entirely bogus destination, submitted her override codes, and then banked left as the car disappeared from the traffic-control nets and its ghost continued merrily on. She stole another sideways glance at Nick. Did he know?
He caught her looking and winked. Yep, he knew.
Retirement, here I come. Those were the words his lips had formed.
The private smile deepened. Who knew? God knows, she’d gotten worse offers. Maybe someday. She returned her attention to the HUD, the smile beginning to make itself public.
Keep hoping, Nick. These days they could all use a little hope.
Authors’ Notes
The following are a few notes on some terms and references that appear in this book. Please see our glossary for additional background, and definitions of the terminology and acronyms we employ. A downloadable map of Charted Space is available at our website: www.loralynnkennakris.com
The Blue Peter is the nickname given to the maritime signal flag flown by ships in harbor to indicate they are about to sail. We have appropriated the nickname to apply it in Kris’s universe to the ensign (flag) worn by CEF combatants, on the grounds that these warships pride themselves on being ready to sail at a moment’s notice.
Sutlers were originally civilian merchants who followed armies to supply them with food and other necessities. The preferred naval term is victualer (also spelled victualler), which was also the term used for a supply ship (combat stores ship) into the 19th Century and unofficially until much later. In the Royal Navy, provisioning was administered by the Victualling Board (made up of the Victualling Commissioners, also called the Commissioners for the victualling of the Navy) until 1832, when these functions were assumed by the Admiralty Board.
In applying to the term victualer to naval stores ships and using sutler as a cant term for those who provide provisions to slavers, we intend no negative reflection on those honorable, worthy and necessary persons who have in the past engaged in sutlery (along with those who might be said to still do so today).
The fighter pilot’s anthem referred to in Part I, Chapter Thirteen, is the poem “High Flight” by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Although he served in the RCAF, Magee was an American who, like a number of Americans, joined the RCAF before the United States officially entered WWII. He was killed in a midair collision on December 11, 1941, over Lincolnshire, in the East Midlands of England, at the age of nineteen.
The ‘Gods of the Copybook Headings’ mentioned by Huron in Part I, Chapter Twenty-Three, is the title of a poem authored by Rudyard Kipling in 1919. It is likely that Kipling was inspired by the massive international trauma of what was then known as the Great War (later WWI), which had just ended. The message of the poem is that when people neglect or dismiss eternal verities in favor of wishful thinking, terrible things inevitably result.
Here, Huron, while acknowledging Kipling’s point, is using the title rather more satirically. The copybook headings referred to in the poem were homilies (generally of a moral character) printed at the tops of the pages in Victorian students’ copybooks. They were supposed to copy these headings down the page to practice penmanship (hence the name). As such, these homilies often came to be viewed as platitudinous and thus the phrase might be applied to any set of rules that, however useful, are enforced in a mindless or bureaucratic way, especially when they stifle creativity and risk-taking.
This is the sense in which Huron uses the phrase here: to refer to military bureaucrats who have developed their own ‘copybook headings’ that must be acknowledged for their worth but not slavishly adhered to. It is Huron’s rather ‘nuanced’ relationship with these principles that accounts for much of his reputation as a brilliant but difficult officer.
The quote attributed to Fleet Admiral Kasena, CEF, CNO, in Part II, Chapter Fourteen, is a paraphrase of a comment made by Admiral Ernest J. King, CNO, USN, during WWII. When asked how to handle the press, Admiral King replied, “Tell 'em nothing, and when it's over, tell 'em who won.”
The ceremony in Part II, Chapter Thirty-Six was inspired by the reminiscences of the late George MacDonald Frasier, and largely modeled on a similar ceremony he described in his excellent WWII memoir, Quartered Safe Out Here. We freely acknowledge our debt to Mr. Frasier, and pay our deepest respects to him for leaving us this invaluable work.
The four lines of poetry sent to Kris in the Epilogue are a fragment of a poem by Sappho (the Greek lyric poet, circa 600 BC). Various translations of this work exist. We have relied on no particular translation, but considered several in composing the version that appears in this book.
Wogan’s Reef
For Thy Sake—
For the sake of thee
I stood my ground
For the sake of thee
I bore the sound
Of bullets as they whistled past
And each one sang: All flesh is grass.
Ere long came one that laid me low
And falling as I felt the blow
For thy sake, watched my red blood flow
And lying still—that’s all I know.
I had not lived ten thousand days
I might have died a hundred ways
But for thee I chose this price to pay—Go
And bring to me that sacred fire
Set thy torch to my funeral pyre
And even as I burn for thee—Know
Thou hast not seen the last of me.
From “The Half-Ballade of Anandale”
— of unknown authorship (originated in the CEF Marine Corps)
Prologue: Zero Day
Janin Station;
Tau Verde, Vulpecula Region
It was make-and-mend day for the Halith Imperial Navy’s Kerberos Fleet, riding peacefully at grav anchor within the vast embrace of Janin Station. Officially, it was a day of rest when the usual chores like ship drills, weapons exercises, sensor sweeps, and watchstanding were suspended, but in reality it was the busiest and least welcome of the eight days of the naval week that ruled the lives of Halith mariners—especially when the fleet was lying up at a comfortable port like Janin.
Watchstanding and sensor sweeps were little more than formalities for a fleet at Janin: not only was it the second-largest free structure ever built by man—only the astounding bulk of Kazanian Station, orbiting the prime world of Halith Evandor itself, surpassed it—but it was also the most heavily fortified place in existence. The station itself was unarmed (its real estate being too precious to waste on weapons), but the star system in which it resided was, in fact, one vast fortress. Hundreds of picket vessels ceaselessly patrolled the outer approaches to the system, while a combination of light-speed and gravitic sensors that could detect incoming starships over a full day out provided warning. The inner system was protected by a multilayered network of hunter-killer satellites, and finally the station itself and its supporting moon base were guarded by a ring of monitors.
These enormous ships, looking like nothing so much as the giant testudines who still roamed the sanctuaries of Earth, were so large that no hypercapable classes had been produced since the Formation Wars and so expensive that Halith had only ever built sixteen of them. Five of these were deployed to Janin Station. Within their high-domed hulls were thousands of missiles and the best EW and C4ISR suites Halith could produce, but it was the five massive turrets that contained their main a
rmament: triplets of long 24-inch railguns that fired two-ton projectiles at near-relativistic speeds, more than twice the mass and many times the energy of the rounds fired by the 16-inch railguns that dreadnoughts and the largest battleships carried.
So, at ease behind all these defenses, the mariners of the Kerberos fleet could be forgiven if they wanted to slack off a little, above all when the enticements of Qeshan Moon Base were a mere hour away and, for those who could get leave and afford it, the much greater charms of Tau Verde only an evening’s shuttle ride below. With such temptations ever-present, it was entirely expected that they had come to detest make-and-mend day as never before—the day they had to muster by divisions for inspection, with all the cleaning and scouring, primping and polishing that entailed.
This particular day the crews looked upon with special trepidation because it happened to fall right after the celebration of Nefastio, the year-end holiday on which official work was banned and a great deal of license was tolerated, and as a result, most of them were badly hungover. But what really mattered was the state of their officers, many of whom might be in even worse shape than they were.
By an unexplained coincidence, the pocket dreadnought Ilya Turabian—the Grand Admiral’s Yacht, as she was satirically known—had come in five days ago and been given pride of place at the anchorage, forcing Kerberos Fleet’s flagship to an outlying berth (a slight the mariners of the fleet did not take calmly, and it was well that the crew of the pocket dreadnought were not allowed shore leave). The purpose of her visit had been kept confidential, but an important banquet was held on the day before Nefastio itself, attended by all the captains of the fleet, their senior officers and staffs, and two days of almost unrelenting debauchery would sorely test those who did not have iron constitutions or a rare degree of self-control.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 74