The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  And it felt like it was killing her. She needed an 85-percent score to pass and right now, she was hovering between 83 and 84. She had less than four minutes left, and if she nailed the remaining targets and beat the standard course time by at least 30 seconds, she figured she’d get to 86 percent—barely. Gritting her teeth, she forced her pace up another notch.

  Huron, dressed similarly, was on the adjacent treadmill, matching her stride for stride. Bastard that he was, his score was perfect. He wasn’t even breathing all that hard. But then, he was reaping the benefits of never missing. Son of a bitch.

  A cloud of targets appeared high and right. Her hand shot out, fingers tapping precisely, but a touchable one skittered past, forcing her to twist to swat it and she almost stumbled. At that moment, a fugitive shot right over her head. She had to pull up to make a desperate stab, but the little fucker winked out a split-second too soon.

  Goddammit! That miss was all she could afford. Her success with the others bought her a respite though, and incline lessened. Sucking in great lungfuls of air, she lengthened her stride as she came onto the “flat.” There was barely a minute left. Three more targets appeared, but they were top-dead-center, and the spacing wasn’t bad. She dealt with each methodically. The course timer chimed and treadmill slowed down, allowing her to lope to stop.

  Bending forward with her hands on her shaking knees, Kris breathed deep and slow. Her healed ribs hurt; her chest was one massive crushing ache and her trachea burned as if she’d been drinking molten metal. Her vision was shot through with sparks that danced and whirled like fireflies. None of which enlarged her appreciation any when Huron said cheerily, “Not bad.”

  She blinked until she could make out the scoring display. It read 85.4.

  “Skin of my fuckin’ teeth,” she wheezed.

  Huron adopted a conciliatory mien. “SMS is no cakewalk, Kris. You just need to give it time.”

  “I just need to beat somebody’s ass”—glowering savagely at her exercise readouts. A month ago, she wouldn’t have just hammered this course, she would have actually made it beg for mercy.

  “Think you could?” One of those smiles was flirting with the corner of his mouth.

  “You makin’ an offer there, sir?” Gimme just five minutes to get my breath back.

  Huron cracked his knuckles with a keen-edged grin. “If that’s how it is, Ensign, let’s clear the compartment and see whatcha got.”

  Ten minutes later, the compartment cleared and wrestling mats deployed, Kris and Huron locked forearms and waited for the timer. They’d agreed to full contact, of course, but only to the third degree—one shy of no holds barred—and best two out of three. The timer beeped, Huron swiveled and snapped one knee up between Kris’s arm and torso, catching her in a flying armbar. Twisting expertly, he slammed her to the mat hard. Kris grunted as he released his hold to put a knee against her exposed throat. She tapped out.

  Getting to her feet slowly, he grinned at the unyielding look in her yellow-turned hazel eyes. They locked arms again, and when the timer sounded, Kris smashed her elbows out hard, breaking contact and darting a shin into his midsection. He moved to dodge and two quick straight lefts caught him squarely on the chin, dropping him to one knee.

  Moving easily now on the balls of her feet, Kris laughed. “How’s that, sir?”

  He smirked and wiped the back of his hand across his split lip. “Better.”

  Climbing to his feet, he slipped another combination and tried to wrap up her left arm. She broke the hold and kicked high, but he closed, cutting off the angle and caught her with a blow to the abdomen. Grunting, she opened the range, throwing a series of jabs, but her left hand drifted low. He slid to her off-side and dropped her with a wicked right cross.

  “Gotta watch that hand,” he commented unhelpfully.

  “Yeah. I’ll do that”—spitting blood on the mat.

  “How much more of this do you want?” he asked as she scrambled back up.

  “Dunno yet”—shaking her head and rolling her shoulders as she bobbed and weaved in front of him. He feinted high, went low to sweep her leg. She twirled, he missed, her heel rammed into his chest, knocking him back a meter. Instantly, she closed, throwing a vicious flurry rights and lefts that he mostly blocked. Grappling high, he tried a hip throw, but she writhed around behind him and drove a knee into the small of his back. They toppled together and she got her legs in a scissors lock around his throat. He tapped out.

  “You taking it easy on me?” Her eyes were sparkling as he staggered up, rubbing his neck.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  They took their stance, and broke at the sound of the timer. A stunning head butt snapped her upright and his flying round kick sent her spinning backwards into a bulkhead. She slumped to the deck, gasping.

  “Unless you want me to, of course,” he added.

  “No. Never.” Her voice was a weak, hacking rasp. She lifted an arm with difficulty. “Ah, shit. Help me up, would’ja?”

  He crossed the mats and lifted her gently. For a minute, she just lay limp against his chest, panting shallowly. Her firm body was unusually warm through the thin exercise rig, the heat coming off in dense waves. He smoothed some damp strands of hair back from the side her face and neck.

  “Did you get what you want?”

  She straightened, wavering slightly as he helped support her with one arm.

  “Not entirely”—pressing the back of her forearm to her bleeding lips and wincing as she smiled. “But close.”

  “You’ll get even next time”—continuing to steady her with one hand.

  She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Count on it.”

  Z-Day minus 17

  LSS Bellerophon, docked;

  Outbound Station, Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone

  “Your serve.”

  Minerva Lewis tossed the small black-and-white ball across the court—LSS Bellerophon’s aft portside fighter staging bay, behind the hanger deck, which when not engaged in flight ops could be configured as an assembly area, a theatre or, as in this instance, a low-gee racquetball court. Her opponent, a slim woman of medium height with a wiry build, short bright-red hair framing an engaging heart-shaped face, and a smile that in her youth would have called to mind something of a roguish pixie (even now, it was not entirely innocent of that character), caught the ball and, bouncing it twice in preparation, leapt.

  They were playing side by side, as was usual for singles, separated by a net down the length of the court. Lines marked out the live areas of the court, the automated gamemaster presented a target box the player serving must hit, and each player had a scoring box behind them to defend. The ball was allowed to bounce off each live surface only once to stay in play. The game could be played loose or tight, the latter being a more challenging court with smaller serving targets and a larger scoring box. In addition, the serve could be random or called. In the called game, the server would announce the location of the target box. Otherwise, the gamemaster would place it randomly in any of the designated areas.

  Today, they were playing the game random and tight, and the gamemaster flashed the black target box in a difficult position to the far left. At the top of her leap, the redhead slammed a hard shot into it, and Minerva Lewis faded back to take the ricochet with an easy forehand. She preferred to play well back, where her exceptional reach could be used to advantage, nursing the game with patient volleys. Her opponent, shorter and more aggressive, liked crowding up to exploit the riskier angles. She did so now, chopping a quick backhand off the deck that bounced smartly to just nick the upper-right corner of Lewis’s scoring box.

  “Point!” announced the score-bot in its hieratic voice. “Advantage McKenzie!”

  With a silvery laugh, Lewis’s opponent served for the match. This time, Lewis played up and sent it back wearing a nasty topspin. That took some of the juice out of McKenzie’s return, allowing Lewis to set up a series of long cannon shots that worked the court. Having pu
shed McKenzie back to her baseline, she closed suddenly to hit a forehand winner.

  McKenzie shot forward in a wildly dangerous move, meeting the volley in the one place she could, and slapped it hard. Lewis, caught leaning the wrong way, lunged, laying flat out a meter in the air, but the spinning orb rocketed past, a centimeter beyond the tip of her outstretched racquet. She tucked a shoulder and hit the deck rolling, bouncing once before she fetched up hard against the bulkhead.

  “Game! Set! Match!” boomed the score-bot. “McKenzie, thirteen. Lewis, eleven.”

  “Oomph!” Lewis pulled herself into a sitting position, flexing her shoulder. “You had no damn right to save that last shot.”

  “If you can’t do something right, do something rash,” replied Captain Kellyn McKenzie of the Bellerophon. When they’d started playing low-gee racquetball together years ago, Lewis had won more often than not. These days, McKenzie had a slight edge, thanks in part to her quickness, but more to a studious application through which she’d developed a mean inside game.

  Lewis had known Kellyn McKenzie since their Academy days, and when she arrived at Outbound to find her unit had been assigned to the light carrier commanded by her oldest friend, she was overjoyed. Overjoyed might have been overstating the case under normal circumstances, but not the way things had been going recently.

  “Better to do somethin’ desperate than do somethin’ dumb,” Lewis agreed. “How much is that I owe you?”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Take winner’s dibs on the hot water, at least.”

  McKenzie laughed as she settled down on the deck next to Lewis. “Y’know, as captain of this here barge, I do get my own shower, Min. Privilege of rank.”

  “Ya don’t say. Knew there had to be some reason you took this job.”

  McKenzie was a year younger than Lewis, but she’d kept her commission during the peace. Advancing by merit alone, she’d made captain just before the war broke out. Bellerophon was her first major command. With a groan, she hit a button on the bulkhead and removed a couple of towels from the aperture that opened, handing one to Lewis. “Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

  Lewis accepted it with a grin and mopped her face and neck. McKenzie followed suit, then leaned back against the bulkhead and picked up one of their water bottles. She took a long, slow drink and set it between them.

  “I’m sorry about Kate.”

  “She only did what she had to do. Like any of us.” Lewis dried her wavy, leonine hair vigorously. “Mind if I kill that?”

  McKenzie offered the bottle. “But better than most of us.”

  Min shrugged a shoulder, drained half of what was left and poured the remainder down her chest.

  “You’re seeing Shiloh again?”

  A rueful laugh. “Good Christ! You got eyes everywhere?”

  “I just like to know how my old friends are doing.”

  “And who they’re doing?” Lewis peeled off the top of her drenched exercise rig.

  “Min—”

  “You grilled Anders, right? Damn his mouth anyway.”

  “He worries about you sometimes.”

  Min snorted. “Well, since you asked. Shy’s on her way back to Mars—got a training billet. We happened to cross paths on Tenebris, that’s all. She’s still a great gal.” That uncomfortable lift of the left shoulder again.

  But not Kate. Kell knew her friend’s look, however, and knew better than to voice that thought.

  “Okay, I’ll stop being nosy. Six months on blockage, Min. You gotta cut us some slack. We go a little stir crazy.”

  “How’s it going out there?”

  McKenzie sagged further back and shook her head, stirring what strands of bright red hair weren’t plastered about her high-colored face. “Well, aside from the fact we’ve got two COs who’d rather piss down each other’s back than give out the time of day, it’s sterling.”

  “That bad?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Why don’t they do anything?”

  “The Old Man’s hands are pretty well tied.” Kell shifted and picked up the towel. “Hollis and Rhimer are First Fleet. The CinC can tell them what to do, but he can’t fire them.”

  “Can’t they have one of ’em reassigned? There’s always a way to finagle a transfer.”

  “That’s just it. You see, scuttlebutt says that Rhimer privately accused Hollis of lacking conduct.”

  “He actually said his CO was shy?” To accuse your direct superior of cowardice was as far beyond the pale as you could get. In the Meridies, the socially acceptable answer was to arrange one of those traditional meetings at dawn. Of course, dueling in time of war was strictly forbidden, but it still happened.

  “I don’t know if it’s true, but it got all over the whisper net and now Rhimer’s about as popular as—well, you can guess. Nobody will touch him, so a face-saving transfer is out of the question and despite everything, they don’t have good cause to relieve him.”

  “Hollis didn’t call him out?”

  “Some people say he did and that Rhimer hid behind the regs. Personally, I don’t buy it. I think that’s just the shit-pitching monkeys. But Hollis does want Rhimer stuck on blockade duty till hell freezes over. Stretched as thin as we are, no one wants to wade in this particular cesspit. And so far they’re holding the line.” She tossed away the towel she’d been holding. “But I tell ya, if the Bannermans don’t make a move here within the month, I think they are gonna start shooting at each other.”

  “That’d take care of the problem, wouldn’t it?”

  McKenzie laughed as she stood up and got out of her own sopping exercise rig. “You goddamned lobsters! That’s your solution to everything.”

  “Sure. It keeps things simple.”

  * * *

  “Thanks, Kell.” Minerva Lewis smiled as she stepped out of the shower in the captain’s stateroom. “This is a sweet setup you’ve got here.”

  “Carriers are nice,” Bellerophon’s captain remarked as she dried Min’s hard-muscled back, noting some new scars, freshly healed. “Flag rank is even better.”

  Min bent to towel off one leg, then the other. “Then I’ve got something to look forward to.”

  “You do. Come by when you get off. Have a drink with me.”

  Min straightened and reached for her uniform. “I’d love to, Kell. But we’ve got these three hundred kids who’ve never been kissed. Good kids. Gotta see to it they know enough to pour piss out of a boot.”

  McKenzie replied with a soft, knowing laugh as her friend got dressed. “Y’think I’ve gone blind since I last saw you, Min? You’re holding on too tight. You need to let it ramble for an evening. Let Anders dry the kids’ ears tonight. He owes you one anyway.”

  Lewis tucked her hair up and settled her cap over it. “We’ll see. Maybe you’re right. Say, do you know Commander Wesselby? The DSI hereabouts?”

  “By reputation.”

  “Never met her?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Her office sent me a request—might’ve been just a routine fuck-up. I dunno. Doesn’t feel right.”

  “About Anandale?”

  “Yep. I’m heading over to the PLESIG Annex to see her now.”

  A guarded look closed over McKenzie’s features. “Might want to be careful leading with your chin on that.”

  Min cast her a sideways glance. “Something I should know?”

  “No.” McKenzie shook her head. “Nothing on my radar. Just work light around Anandale—I think the weather’s still kinda treacherous there. And don’t let tonight slip your mind.”

  “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  “Hello, Captain. What can I do for you?”

  Captain Lewis, wearing her best poker face, surveyed the woman across the desk, who was doing exactly the same thing. She had to admit the commander was doing it quite well—being professionally solicitous while projecting an air of unflappable competence that gave
away next to nothing. Next to nothing because Lewis detected, in the set of her jaw and the newly deepened lines around her unnervingly pale eyes, that the commander was under an unusual amount of strain and had been for a long time. She was also curious about Lewis’s request for a meeting and not entirely happy about it.

  Forewarned, Lewis kept her manner as smooth as could be. “Well, Commander, I got a request from this office a while back, and as there seemed to be a bit of misdirection involved, it bounced around some. Being in the neighborhood, I thought I should check in and see if there was any follow-up required.”

  “I see.”

  Lewis saw that the commander was not completely buying her facile explanation.

  “What request?”

  She brought out her xel, opened the message and passed it across to Trin Wesselby. Trin read it, one side of her prim mouth pulling down as she did so. Handing the xel back, she tapped a series of commands on her desktop. Surveying the result, her frown deepened.

  “It appears I owe you an apology, Captain. That request should have been sent to your regimental headquarters. As those reports are under your sig-file, it looks as if you were mistaken for the point of contact.” The look that accompanied this explanation did not bode well for the party responsible, once the commander got them in her sights. Trin cleared the desktop with a sweep of her hand. “I regret the inconvenience.”

  “So just a routine screw-up, then.” Min set the barb casually.

  Trin’s cold grey eyes got noticeably colder. “Not routine in this office, Captain.”

  Having learned all she wanted to know, Min gave the commander a nod and stood up. “I’m sure that’s the case. I won’t take up any more of your time, Commander.”

  Trin stood with her. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Captain.”

  Line marine captains in the CEF did not salute naval staff officers below flag rank, so the two women shook hands.