Take the weight, pay the freight—and the rest is silence.
Her xel, out of patience, warbled aggressively.
Uttering two bad words, she picked it up. There wasn’t anybody she wanted to hear from this AM except maybe Kell (unlikely, since she’d be seeing her later in the day), or Quinn—which shouldn’t have been possible, as she’d never be that reckless. And anyway, they had a date scheduled for tomorrow when her duty week ended. With any sort of luck at all (she couldn’t help feeling she was overdue in that department), Quinn would have received some sort of response by then.
Opening the display, she silenced the alert and read the message headers in frustrated puzzlement. It was from PLESIG; the subject said: Request Follow-up. The body was hardly more illuminating, repeating the subject while adding “re: previous communication” and suggesting a 0930 meeting or “at easiest convenience.” It could only be about those misdirected Anandale reports. Why they felt it necessary to waste her time with that now, in the midst of all this other shit, was one of those mysterious dysfunctions of the bureaucratic mind.
To hell with it. Might as well take the bullshit by the horns. With a mirthless upward bend of the lips, she tapped the reply icon and suggested 0800 as being her “earliest convenience.” That gave them five minutes to confirm, if she was going to make it. If they were expecting her to try to put it off, they would not be watching the clock. They’d have dropped the message in the cue, planning to check it in an hour or so. In that case, she’d be within her rights to blow them off for today, which effectively meant until the beginning of her next duty week, by which time who knew what might have come up?
Her xel beeped again: confirmation of her request for an 0800 meeting. Not even a full minute had elapsed. Oh well. That still gave her five minutes to finish her hash browns. Which was something.
* * *
Minerva Lewis presented herself at the PLESIG Annex at 0758 and was ushered in by the secretary on duty, who was (in marked contrast to the rather severe female lieutenant she’d met on her first visit) a good-looking young jig with a calm demeanor and a rare degree of poise for such a junior officer. It was pretty clear to Min he’d been handpicked for grooming, probably by Commander Wesselby herself. She had no opportunity to form any further impressions, for once they crossed the lobby into the office proper, he simply raised an arm to point down the corridor to her right.
“Conference Room Three. Fifth door on your left. He’s expecting you.”
They exchanged parting nods and he returned to his desk without further ado. Min went to find the room indicated. Neither the secretary nor the message said who he was (the message had a generic signature on it, which meant the secretary had sent it out as part of the office’s daily mail), but it could hardly be other than the deputy, or possibly a department head. So it was a surprise when she opened the door to Conference Room #3 and saw a broad-shouldered back belonging to a dark-haired man, her height or maybe an inch shorter, with a lieutenant commander’s tabs and an ineffably familiar air to him, instead of the stocky, sandy-haired and unfortunately dough-faced deputy.
Commander Huron turned around, dropped whatever he’d been reading on the table and extended his hand to her. “Hello, Captain. It’s been a while.”
“Years, Commander”—meeting the strong grip confidently and trying to remember just how many years.
With that characteristic smile that pleasantly concealed any real intentions, he invited her to a seat. As they settled in, he drew the folder he’d been reading closer and rotated it through 180 degrees.
“I appreciate you responding so promptly, Captain. I imagine you have other matters to fill up your day.” Like the smile, that meant precisely nothing and she gave it the shallow nod it deserved. “So we might as well move this right along. I didn’t ask you here to talk about those Anandale reports.”
It would have been patently absurd if he had. Huron was a line officer, and however close he was to Trin Wesselby (pretty close, by all she’d heard, and he seemed damned comfortable here), he could never act for her. But he’d obviously talked to her about them. And she didn’t much like the way he was fiddling with that report folder. What he said next she liked a good deal less.
“I hope you’ll forgive me this indiscretion”—We’ll see about that—“but given the circumstances surrounding those reports and Commander Wesselby’s incapacity”—the slight emphasis seemed to proclaim volumes—“I was obliged to do a little investigating.”
That raised Min’s hackles. As an officer, Huron was a mere lieutenant commander in the SRF, without any authority over her whatsoever. As a member of the Huron family, he could do damn near anything he pleased, and—on occasion—had. Whether she was talking to the officer or the heir was not yet clear. But this meeting was not trending in an officerly direction.
She replied with another of those carefully calibrated nods.
“The Tanith Rangers usually have a person or two stationed at all the main transit nodes that might impinge on their operations. I noticed there’s a Lieutenant Quinn working at the Lark.”
That caught her completely off-guard, and it took a great effort to keep the shock out of her face. She knew Huron had excellent sources—besides his relationship with Wesselby, she was aware of his history with CAT 5 and his long friendship with Sergeant Major Yu—but she wouldn’t have guessed his reach extended into the heart of the Tanith Rangers.
Unaware of her inner reaction, or more likely ignoring it (she was getting a whole new appreciation of how he’d come by his reputation), he finished, “I don’t suppose you happened to drop in there when you visited the City last week?”
There was little point in subterfuge now and Min’s eyes narrowed as she drew in a slow breath. She was under no compulsion to answer the question, of course. She could end this interview, interrogation—whatever it was—at any time, but sometimes it was better to take a bullet to keep moving forward. Trying to dodge it lost momentum, and often did nothing more than delay the inevitable anyway.
“I did.” The clipped response carried its own warning. Kell had told her this was dangerous ground and that certainly seemed to be proving out, but it didn’t mean she was entirely without options. “So what’s your next bullet?”
He smiled at the intentional pun. “That—as much as I admire General Corhaine—she can’t help this time.” He looked over at her. And he’d stopped fiddling with that report. “But maybe I can.”
“You know the General?”
“Not personally. We’ve worked with her a time or two.” Meaning his family’s business then. That explained a few things, but far from all. She waited out a brief silence. He ended it by pushing the folder across to her.
“Fred Yu says you’re one of the best officers he’s ever worked with. I’ve trusted my life to Fred’s judgment on a number of occasions. And I’m about to do it again.” He gave the folder a pointed look. She flipped the cover open. The first page was an executive summary of recent results obtained by a group she’d never heard of, codenamed Eschaton.
“Judgment Day,” Min commented, referring to the moniker. “Cute. Who thought that up?”
“Hard to say.” That smile was back, camouflaging his thoughts, but not the intensity of them. She read on. Most of the first page talked about the Halith IFF systems recovered from the cruiser Captain Lawrence captured, which had allowed the Yeager Raid to be conducted.
“So that’s how they did it,” she commented, when she finished with that part. “Commander Wesselby set all this up?”
“That’s right. She selected the people and personally runs the group. As you can see, Eschaton’s charter—as far as anyone knows—is tech exploit.” Which pretty clearly indicated there were things anyone didn’t know. He supplied what she took to be a hint. “In fact, it’s our best cryptanalysis group.”
The remaining entries did give that overall flavor. But there was nothing about Anandale.
She slid the report ba
ck to him with an offhand smirk. “So this is the part of the show where I scoot to the edge of my seat?”
“I’d take that as a compliment,” Huron returned easily, closing the cover. “But don’t put yourself out.” She rewarded him with a tight smile. He continued. “What you didn’t read in here is that the surviving Halith lieutenant on Vistula also missed an old tertiary message backup.”
Interesting. “And what do we get out of that?”—feeling it wouldn’t hurt to play the game.
“The ability to crack the Supreme Staff’s Morganatic channels.”
“Oh.” For a moment Min couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“That’s how Trin—Commander Wesselby—learned that Halith has broken Admiralty B.”
This time Min didn’t bother with any vocalization at all.
Huron pressed on. “We learned this shortly after Anandale was proposed. CNO—I mean Westover, not his office—suggested a delay, so we could try to establish an alternate system, but he couldn’t support it without revealing why. So Anandale went ahead using Admiralty B.”
A pause filled with an aching, pregnant, white silence peopled by the whispering dead. Then: “Who knows about this?”
“Eschaton—obviously. PrenTalien. Westover. Me. Zahir and Narses were told three weeks ago. And now you.”
“That’s a very hard wrap.”
“I’m sure it’s evident to you that compromising Admiralty B had to be an inside job.”
Min nodded.
“And you’re aware of the history surrounding the Lacaille Raid.”
Min nodded again.
“Nothing can excuse the clusterfuck with the relief force, Captain. But it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“I see that.”
“Commander Wesselby would have informed you herself”—eventually, but their personal debate over exactly when was precisely that—“if she’d had the opportunity.”
Nodding absently, Min got to her feet. Against the scattershot radiance in her mind’s eye was superimposed the indelible memory, like an image in negative, of the instant the light went out in Kate’s eyes.
It wasn’t all for nothing.
“Now I owe the commander an apology.” Her voice huskier than she would’ve liked.
“How’s that?”
Min gave her head a shake, trying to restore a modicum of her normal vision. “Just somethin’ she said. How’s she doin’, by the way?”
“Time will tell.”
“I wish her all the best.” Looking up, she raised her right arm in a slow, exact salute. “Thanks for letting me in, Commander.”
Huron returned it. “Welcome aboard, Captain.”
* * *
“Your eyes are different. What happened?” Kell, straddling her, worked her fingers even deeper into the small of Min’s back. She exhaled slowly as Kell bore down with all her slender weight.
“Different, huh? Are they any prettier?”
That earned her a laugh and a hard, stinging slap on the ass. “Keep on trying, Captain.”
Min smiled into the warm towel beneath her cheek. Kell had been married for twenty-one years to the same man—helluva nice guy, structural engineer, kinda shy, tall but still easy to overlook, great sense of humor but no damn use at a party, hated ’em in fact. They had three kids, with a license for two more if they ever felt the need. Great kids. Karolyne, the eldest, was off studying genetics. The youngest, Cybil, was eighteen kinds of hell-on-wheels and champing at the bit for a chance to turn the universe on its ear. (Be afraid, Universe—be very afraid.) Ryan, the boy in the middle who took after his dad . . .
Her eyes closed as Kell resumed doing that magic thing her fingers did. “Well, you know me. Never say die.”
The Bellerophon’s skipper chuckled. Being teased about her sexuality had been a fixture of their friendship ever since that weekend of liberty back at the Academy when they discovered she was laser-straight and Min wasn’t. But it was also a good barometer of how her friend was feeling. Not as good as the muscles she was kneading—Min was an open book there—and the two together were an infallible sign that something important had changed.
You know me.
She did—about as well as anyone could. Minerva Lewis was every centimeter the bluff, profane, hard-drinking, cheerful Lodestone native she appeared to be. As for her qualities as a marine, well . . . No one had any right to be so much like a realized Valkyrie. She even looked the part. It was a lot harder, Kell thought as she devoted herself to relaxing Min’s cramped adductors, to see that she could be stubborn about the heart—both ways. Kate Walker alone got had gotten a life-lock there.
Never say die.
Kell suppressed an urge to shake her head and kept on with her work.
Min’s thoughts, as she drifted on the warm, aching, punctuated languor produced by Kell’s ministrations, ran in like currents, although a good deal more lazily and rarely following the shortest distance between two points. For some time she’d been reflecting, in light of Huron’s revelations, on the light itself—the concept of it, now given by his words a more-than-metaphorical existence. She was not unacquainted with these sudden shocking illuminations, but they were among those experiences which are ever-new—like love, orgasms, or barking your shin. You never really got used to them.
This one wasn’t the light that cleaves the darkness, the one bright shining truth that slashes through the murk and banishes all doubt, the divine radiance that heals all wounds before plodding Father Time gets his boots on. She had no faith in those counterfeit notions, though it wasn’t the thing itself that was false. It was the yearning for it—the yearning that must cleave to something (anything) because it was bright, not because it was true; that confused letting go with running away; that believed healing was the mere dead absence of pain. So Huron’s explanation made the loss less bitter but not less deep. If it didn’t heal (which was the case), it did throw things into sharper relief, exposing what there was to be healed.
Sifting those thoughts like a child stirring a pile of dry leaves so that they flew up and spun on a chill cleansing breath of Autumn air, the fragments of an old ballad from her childhood, which she hadn’t thought of in years, rose up as well.
Make my heart a bed, on which your soul might rest,
Make my love a guide star for the Isle of the Blest.
How I longed to hold you here—it was your time to go,
And though I long to follow now—
Here the verse broke both meter and rhyme in an odd, poignant fashion that always threw her out and made her forget what came next—something about times unripe, tasks undone, journeys still to be undertaken. But the final lines were:
When you arrive at harbor safe, hoist the lantern high,
That I might see your light reflect—
In Eternity’s blind eye.
Her eyes fluttered open and shut as Kell’s capable hands mauled her right calf deliciously, and her thoughts began to recondense, return to the here and now: her date with Quinn tomorrow; nudging Kerr to jettison some of his more burdensome notions on how to do his job; keeping her eyes on some of the new people who were getting a bit too starry-eyed over their prospects.
Stars . . .
Sweet voyages, Caitlyn.
Then she grunted softly as Kell, finished with her calves, shifted off her. “That’s two massages you owe me, sister.” Kell sounded quite pleased with herself, as well she might.
Min, having passed the limp-noodle stage half an hour ago, grunted louder. At length, she said, “Take it up with my adjutant. He’ll get you on my schedule.”
Kell laughed, soft and musical, and gave her behind a playful pat. “So what did happen? You make a new friend?”
Kell was no doubt thinking about her date with Quinn. She’d didn’t know quite everything.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
Z-Day minus 3
LSS Trafalgar, docked;
Outbound Station, Gamma Hydras, Hydra B
order Zone
Kris opened her locker and, reaching far back on the top shelf, took out the metal case there. It was half again as big as the bronze boxes the CEF shipped off to the families of those killed in action, weighed about the same, and served a related purpose: safeguarding critical items, such as service records and anything else the owner could fit into it. It was equipped with a recovery beacon and built to survive the most catastrophic events. Officers and enlisted alike called them DMBs: Dead Man’s Bank.
She set it on the berth’s small desk and sitting, opened it with her ID tag. Most people’s DMB held a few mementos, maybe some credit chips, and for the pessimistic (or well-prepared, depending on one’s point of view) a last letter to be sent to family or friends. Other than her service records and a sheaf of official documents, Kris’s DMB held just two envelopes and a dented tin cup.
The tin cup, which CEF marines referred to as a pialla, had belonged to PFC Marko Tiernan, a member of Covert Action Team 5. He’d died last year on Rephidim, a thoroughly undistinguished planet far off in the Outworlds Border Zone, during an attempt to capture Nestor Mankho—died saving her life. He’d also saved the lives of Huron and the rest of CAT 5. But that was different. They weren’t the reason Marko Tiernan was dead. She was.
One of the two envelopes was curled into the cup. It was a letter from Marko Tiernan’s widow, who lived on Whitworth in the Outer Trifid. She took it out now and unfolded the plaspaper sheet inside. For the first few months after she’d received the letter, her fingers trembled every time she touched it. These days, there was usually just a flutter in her stomach, but today she had to concentrate to keep her hand still. Smoothing the neatly printed page next to her console, she read it again:
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 89