“Here, try this. Don’t swallow.”
It was astringent tasting and smelled of herbs. She washed it over her tongue, behind her molars, and spat it back into the glass. A little dribbled down her chin, and the cloth obligingly wiped it away.
“Better?”
She nodded.
“Want anything?”
“A drink,” she croaked.
“Be right back.”
She heard footsteps leave and the taps running. She realized she was wearing a T-shirt and underwear beneath the robe, both still damp. The footsteps returned.
She looked up for the first time and saw Huron standing there offering a glass of water and smiling gently, but with concern crinkled around his dark eyes. She took the glass, drinking gratefully. He settled on the edge of the bed.
“What’s your name?”
“Loralynn,” she answered, still raspy-voiced. She cleared her throat. “Loralynn Kennakris.”
“Pleased to meet you, Loralynn”—his accent gave it a funny, soft lilt—“I’m Rafe Huron.”
They shook hands. She finished her water, reached out to put the glass on the bedside table, and dropped it when she saw him clearly. He snatched it out of the air as it fell.
“Oh shit, Huron. Did I do that?” The left side of his face had a mark like a bright red leaf on it, overlaid with four neat scratches, and a bruise was beginning to show purple to the right of his split lower lip. He had rips in his uniform shirt and god knows what else.
“Nah,” he said smiling, which must have hurt his mouth. “Some guys came in here and beat the shit out of me while you were taking a bath. They did clean up the living space, though.”
She dropped her eyes. “Oh, shit,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, Huron—”
“Hey, no fair,” he cut her off. “Huron’s my father. I’m not calling you—”
“No. Please don’t.”
“I won’t, Loralynn.” Funny, it sounded so pretty the way he said it. “You know,” he went on, “I think that’s the most beautiful name I ever heard.” He sounded like he meant it, and that hurt somehow. She had to make a joke about it just to put a barrier in the way.
“Is that a line?”
“I don’t know,” he answered in a similar tone. “If it was, would it work?”
That made her laugh, and laughing made her belly hurt. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then I’ll keep it in mind.”
They both laughed, and the pain made Kris turn it into a groan. “Oh gawd, I’m a mess.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and then his face lost its bantering look. “You gonna be alright, Kri—ah, Loralynn?”
The self-consciousness in his voice made her want to laugh again, but she swallowed it. Somehow, that name lost all its power when he fumbled it like that.
“Y’know,” she began, looking away from his eyes, “I suppose you’ve earned the right to call me whatever you want.”
“I like Loralynn.”
“Yeah, me too.” Especially when you say it like that.
“But it could get messy on the comms.”
Which reminded her of several unpleasant facts—like she was a jig and he was a senior combat officer. Goddammit! How was this going to be explained? If NavMed found out she’d freaked out like this, she’d lose her flight rating for sure.
And they were going to find out. Just as soon as some fuck’n brass hat saw Huron looking like he’d been through a fleet action—and lost. Shit. They’d been after her for years, saying she was unstable, and now she’d gone and handed them her wings on a bed of lettuce. She groaned, and Huron put his hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, it’s alright.”
“Like fuck it is.”
“It’s all right,” he enunciated, as if maybe she hadn’t understood. “I—”
“Christ, Hur—Rafe . . .” Dammit, now she’d done it too! “You know what they’re gonna do when they find out. I mean”—she gestured—“about this.”
“Me sitting on your bed?” he asked with exaggerated innocence. “Nothing in the regs against that. Three-grade rule.”
She counted deliberately. It took a moment. “It’s four grades.”
“Whatever.”
“Oh—” She bit down hard on it. “Y’know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said heavily. “I know what you mean. Look, Kris”—he said it unconsciously and somehow it didn’t bother her at all—“you’ve been cranking on that wire since I met you. It was going to snap. They always do. We all knew it. BFD. But there’s no reason for this to leave the room.” Impulsively, he took her hand in his, covering it with his other hand. His palms were dry and warm. “The nearest heavy’s over at the HQ Annex. The CO’s at CYGCOM until next weekend. I’m on furlough, you’re on leave—”
“But I have to check in with HQ—”
“I suggest you lie low for two or three days. No one’s gonna notice a few days and everyone knows what an evening at Romney’s is like after a cruise.” He winked. “Tell ’em food poisoning or something—there’ll be a lot of that going around. It’ll be fine.”
She nodded.
He stood. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright.” He reached into his wallet, pulled out a card, and handed it to her. “Here’s where I’m staying for the next few days. It’s not far. Call if you need anything”—he smiled—“unofficial. I’m not doing any work this week.”
“Brentagne’s?” That was all it said, besides a contact sigil and standard map ref. She’d never heard of it.
“Yeah, it’s a house-of-ill-repute here in Old Town.”
She squinted at him. “Are you kidding?” There was no telling with Huron sometimes—he said the most outrageous things that later turned out to be true. Maybe staying at a pricy whorehouse wasn’t really that outrageous?
He just smiled, then touched his lip—it was bleeding again—and raised his eyebrows. “Come and see.”
She was tempted to throw the card at him. She didn’t. She held it tightly in her hand. He turned to go. “Good night, Loralynn.” Very soft, very sweet.
“Good night, Rafe.”
When the outer door hissed closed and locked, she felt tears well up again and spill over onto her cheeks. But they were brand-new tears this time.
Chapter One
Mather’s Landing
Epona, Cygnus Sector
Kris returned from an early AM run in a surly mood. The weather had been dreary, even for Epona, and she’d managed to oversleep, which meant she had to cope with more foot traffic on her preferred route than she liked (what she liked was none), and the exercise had not raised her spirits like it usually did. Running was probably her least favorite form of exercise—she much preferred sparring, but finding sparring partners off-ship at 0530 was difficult. On board, she could often get Huron interested in a bout, as long as he already had a pot of coffee in him (he usually did; off-watch, he was known for keeping eccentric hours), and they typically shared a long hot shower afterwards, no matter who won.
Thinking of Huron now wasn’t helping her mental state either. It had been a week since that night. She hadn’t seen him again as he’d been called away for a few days, but the messages they’d exchanged were cordial—or a little more than cordial—and that had ratcheted up the tension she felt in unexpected ways. Her strong urge—to clear the air between them, somehow set things straight—was not one she’d known before, and few people could have been less well equipped to deal with it. Yet she believed she needed to deal with it—not wait for him. For one thing, she wasn’t sure whose court the ball was in now, and this same belief, which had no center or origin point she could discern, seemed to be telling her that this was not something she could justly lay at his feet.
Unfortunately for her frayed nerves, he wasn’t expected back until the next day cycle at the earliest when she was scheduled to report for her new assignment on the heavy maintenance depot orbiting overhead, meaning it�
��d probably be the next duty week before she could arrange to see him. So when she entered her apartment, heard the xel she’d left behind warbling, and saw the console flashing an amber alert screen, all she could think was that this was really shaping up to be another stellar day.
Stalking across the living space with her mouth set in a grim line, she snatched up her xel. The message automatically opened: “Second Notice: Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Loralynn Kennakris, #LTK 059 413. Per NAVMED Instructions”—her eyes skipped over the list of digits only a bureaucrat could love—“you are hereby required to report to”—skimming the address and map reference—“for routine PSYCHEVAL at 1430 hours, this date: DTG—”
Yeah, I know that’s today, assholes. Furling the xel, she tossed it aside. Of all the fuck’n things to hafta deal with right now . . .
The first notice, along with an automatic deferral, had come through a month ago while they were on a “good-will” tour of Karelia. She’d been hoping that out here, where everything took longer, it might be another month before they caught up with her. A lot could happen in a month.
It was usual to give flight officers a psycheval after a long deployment, and Kris had been showing signs of acute stress. Huron knew it, her squadron mates knew it, and Commander Calvin Mertone, Trafalgar’s new DSRO, undoubtedly knew it, too. As DSRO, Mertone wasn’t in her administrative chain of command, but he was responsible for flight operations which gave him a lot of say regarding her fitness. So she was pretty sure he was behind this insistence on having her psycheval now. He’d called her in the second day after that night with Huron—some stupid bullshit about that incident with the Andaman slaver they’d had to let go back in Winnecke IV—and he would’ve had to have been blind not to notice the shape she was in.
He probably thought it was the answer to his prayers. There was a whole transfusion’s worth of bad blood between them, stemming from an incident back at the Academy, when he’d been an instructor and she his student. There’d been a graduation party, he’d been drinking, it’d been late. She still wasn’t totally clear on what happened—she had no memory of the actual incident—but it led to allegations of sexual harassment against him and assault against her, which had subsequently been hushed up as a “misunderstanding.” The war was still in its disastrous early phase then and convening an official inquiry over a confused case of “he said/she said” wasn’t on anyone’s list of priorities.
Even so, the incident cost Mertone the DSRO billet on Trafalgar, which he’d been lobbying hard for, while Kris got a coveted posting to the big new carrier’s recon wing, under Huron. Mertone had been assigned—effectively exiled—to a staff posting at CGHQ Nereus. It was a serious professional blow, and one Kris was sure he hadn’t forgotten.
After he’d spent over a year in that exile (missing the entire war), Trafalgar’s DSRO billet opened up again. Mertone had reapplied, been selected, and reported about a month ago. While he hadn’t done anything overt, Kris found him easy enough to read, and she had no doubt in her mind he was gunning for her. A negative psycheval would almost surely spell the end of her career as a flight officer. If the examiner was determined to be a real shit about it, they might even get her dismissed from the Service on a psychiatric disability. However it was diced, pushing her psycheval through now gave him a chance of paying her back with compound interest, and maybe then some.
At least, it had been a week since that night. Kris could still feel the bile burns in her throat, the soreness in her elbows and knees, but the raw feelings that might show up in a psycheval were under control. She’d have to lock things down more than usual this time—not so much that it would raise alarms, though—and hope the examiner would just want to get it over with. If this was the best that bald fucker could come up with, she’d deal with it. She’d handled worse.
* * *
At 1430 exactly (meaning she was actually five minutes late), Kris walked into Epona Outstation’s medical annex, in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Mather’s Landing, not too far from the shuttle port. All official buildings on Epona were nondescript, with the same dull exteriors and the same boxy architecture (if it even deserved that term) made lumpish by rounding off the corners.
Inside, the décor was muted pastels, unfortunate and no doubt decreed by some colonial Minister of Health and Human Services. The CEF would have unquestionably opted for their own scheme, but the planners had concluded that Epona did not warrant dedicated medical facilities, so the outstation shared this space with a civil one, and that apparently meant pastels. The only sign of anything overtly military was the two CSPs supposedly guarding the entrance she’d come through. The Colonial Shore Police were rarely held in high esteem (especially on a station like this, where they were frequently contractors), and these two appeared to be average examples of that unimpressive breed.
At the front desk, she handed her ID to a pudgy receptionist as nondescript as the building: a wispy haired local with a weak smile and a faded chroma-tan (Epona’s denizens hardly ever got the full benefit of what ruddy light their primary could provide). He scanned her in and gave the ID back with that feeble smile unmoved. “Take the lifts to the second floor, then right past the stairwell. It’s the third office on the left, number two-oh-seven.”
Kris slid her ID back into her wallet. “Thanks.”
“Commander Quillan.”
“What?” Her stomach clenched hard.
The receptionist blinked at her tone. “Commander E.E. Quillan. That’s your doctor today.”
Fuck! Had Mertone known that? She’d had no idea Quillan was on this station. He must’ve just come in—maybe on Fidelia? Mertone probably knew her history with Quillan. Yeah, he’d have made a point to know it. God fuckin’ dammit—she’d already checked in . . .
Seething with acid feelings, she walked off without a word, boot heels punishing the tile floor.
The man Kris saw when the door to office 207 slid aside had not changed in any appreciable way from the thin cold gray humorless medical director she’d met on LSS Arizona, the day they took her off Harlot’s Ruse. He still radiated that same obdurate professional rigidity, and Kris thought he wasn’t any happier to see her than she was to see him. He’d been expecting her, certainly, and there was something pointed in his gaze.
Ya think maybe I’ll make your day, is that it?
Looking ostentatiously at the time, he waved her in with an impatient sweep of his hand. “Let us get started, Lieutenant. I imagine you are as anxious to have done with this as I am.”
That was strangely flip from a man like Quillan, and it set her teeth on edge. He directed her to the examination couch with the familiar racks of equipment beside it. “Do make yourself comfortable,” he told her as he activated the system. “As you are familiar with this procedure, I take it we can dispense with the standard preamble, Lieutenant?”
Kris doffed her cap and set it aside. “Sure”—denying him rank. Let him write her up for that.
Reclining, she unsealed her tunic to allow him to attached the monitor leads to her chest, neck, and forehead. As he finished with that and attached the final lead to her right wrist along with a blood-pressure cuff, a side door opened behind her. Twisting her neck, she saw an orderly had entered the room.
What the fuck?!
The acid in her gut spiked. It wasn’t usual to have an orderly present—not that she knew anyway—and not one like this. This guy was big—a beefy, slab-sided specimen with a broad, coarse-featured face set in a scowl of sterling insensitivity. He moved into a corner and stood there, burly arms crossed.
“Who’s he?” She made no attempt to keep the bite out of her voice.
“My assistant,” Quillan replied. “Do not concern yourself. Let us begin.”
Seeing no other choice, Kris subsided, and Quillan started the procedure. The psycheval followed its accustomed course, each set of questions being asked twice, with the second set under examination. As expected, the neural induction probes cau
sed mild feelings of spatial disorientation and drowsiness, but nothing unusual happened until midway through the second set, when Quillan asked, “Your victims?”
Kris blinked rapidly. “Huh?”
“The people you kill. You have killed rather a large number. Did they all deserve it?”
Her chest became constricted. “Pretty much.”
“Would you kill them by any means? Any means in your power?”
She flexed her pectorals against the bands of tension clamping down. “That—depends.”
“On what? On what does it depend?”
The tightness increased, forcing her to gasp for breath. “Dunno. Look—”
“Describe your relationship with Captain Trench in one word.”
A sudden feeling like broken glass in her lungs. “Fuck you!”
“What are your feelings for Rafe Huron? Your most recent feelings?”
“Fuck you!” Get up—get up dammit—get the fuck out—
Something pricked her on the inside of the right elbow. Her eyes snapped open. Quillan had inserted an IV.
She started to sit up.
“Do not move, Lieutenant,” Quillan commanded, harsh-voiced, as he injected a small ampoule into the IV. “This is per protocol. Your responses are spiking unusually. This will help the procedure.”
If he’d refrained from that last sentence, Kris might have bought it, but the edge in his voice betrayed that he was lying. She ripped the IV free just as the drugs hit her bloodstream, making the walls flash brilliant colors and begin to flex. Lunging to her feet, she snapped off the monitor leads, and the crushing sensation in her chest vanished.
“Lieutenant!” Quillan shrilled, and the orderly’s massive arms seized her from behind. For all his concerns about Kris’s capacity for violence, Quillan was used to dealing with people acting under naval discipline. He also had faith in the size of his orderly, not understanding what a woman who’d learned unarmed combat from Sergeant Major Yu was capable of.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 110