“Uh—Rafe?”
He stopped and looked back, and the look on his face had nothing to do with her nakedness. For one thing, that was a fact of life in the Service, a necessary part of getting into, or out of, a flight suit. For another, Kris’s concept of modesty was not one a person who’d grown up with any shred of privacy would understand. No, the look—surprise and puzzlement tinged with consternation—was due to the fact she’d used his given name.
“Yeah?”—sounding as pleasant as he possibly could.
“Look . . . I, ah—” Kris, leaning on her rack, was trying to untangle the underwear from around her ankles when her knees betrayed her and brought her down on the mattress with a thump much harder than the tractor dropping them into the deck clamps, truncating the sentence. She winced, swore savagely under her breath, and kicked the offending bit of clothing across the little space.
Then, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them, hoping they would focus this time, she began again. “I, um, just wanted to say. . . I’m really sorry—about the other night.”
Huron moved away from the door a pace and swept a hand through his hair. “Look, that was my fault. You shouldn’t apologize for that.”
“No—I mean, yeah. . . I mean, I’m not—apologizing. Well, kinda but—really—” She shut her eyes for another moment, giving them another chance to behave. “Just sorry—how it went. I didn’t wanna . . . I woulda really liked it if—I wish I hadn’t . . . freaked out like that. I keep thinkin’ ’bout, maybe, if . . . Goddammit would you just come over here?”
He stepped over and slowly sat down next to her. She put her arms around him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“So, uh . . . If we—we ever get another”—chance? Yeah, sure—“I know how you gotta feel, but y’think if, maybe—” The question lost itself in a tiny catch in her breathing, and she lifted her mouth to him.
With only a slight hesitation, his arms slid around her and his head dipped so their lips touched. It was a somewhat clumsy, hesitant kiss at first, but they caught the rhythm soon enough, and when he let her go he missed her sigh because of the constriction in his chest.
“That a yes?”
He nodded.
“Thanks, Rafe.”
“Welcome, Loralynn.” He lowered her head to the pillow as gently as could be and stood, the tightness getting worse. Her eyes drooped closed and he left quickly, silently, wishing he could stop his ears against the sounds coming from behind him.
Chapter Three
LSS Trafalgar, on-orbit
Epona, Cygnus Sector
Kris awoke the next morning with a blinding headache and a tongue coated with evil-tasting fur. The console was beeping at her. When she finally managed to slap the ACCEPT button, she was treated to the Fighter Boss’s round face wearing a withering glare.
“Kennakris, what the hell’s going on?” Commander Mertone snapped the question off in pieces. “You should have been down in Ready Ops ten minutes ago!”
Kris blinked groggily and forced herself to concentrate on what Mertone was saying. Ready Ops? What the hell, indeed? Couldn’t Mertone remember his own damn orders? She worked her jaw, trying to get a noise out. “Confined to quarters, sir.” Her voice was a croak—an embarrassing croak.
Mertone’s look was not affected. “Well, you’re unconfined, Lieutenant. Didn’t you see the Boards last night?”
No, she hadn’t seen anything last night. Hell, she couldn’t see now. She couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten into bed . . . wait a minute. She’d been with Huron—Huron had put her to bed. Was that before or after she kissed him? Had she kissed him? Yeah, she was sure she’d kissed him. Then, had he left or had they—?
“Lieutenant!”
“Uh no—sir,” Kris blurted.
“Well, get your butt down here. PrenTalien put out a Victor-Zulu flash emergency. You’ve got an ops briefing in”—his eyes flicked sideways to check the time—“six minutes and forty-five seconds. Move it!” The screen blanked.
Kris stared at the console dumbly. PrenTalien? A Victor-Zulu flash emergency? That was an all-commands, invasion imminent alert. She sat bolt upright as the light went on like a noonday sun. Divine intervention! She was going to Miranda!
Then her vision exploded into radiating spirals of multicolored sparks as somebody hit the back of her skull with a huge mallet. A whole bunch of somebodies. From the inside. Groaning, she slid back down. And she was supposed to fly like this?
Aw shit, just shoot me now.
No such luck. Mertone’s official mercy wouldn’t extend that far. She slithered out of her rack and towards the head. She made it just before her stomach caught up with her. She spent the next three of her six minutes heaving painfully, then another one defurring her mouth. Finally she groped in the first-aid chest for something to put her out of her misery—one way or another. What she came up with, some caff-tabs and a mild detoxicant, weren’t the best, but they’d have to do. She swallowed them without water while she tried to remember if there was a fresh uniform in the autovalet. There was. With a note on it.
She read the note and smiled. Huron, bless your twisted little heart, anyway.
Scrambling into the uniform, she grabbed her cap and bolted out of the room to the nearest lift-ladder, tucking up her uncombed hair on the run.
* * *
She got to the Ready Ops room three minutes late. Mertone had the operations display up and was using a long pointer to illustrate something when she slunk in and took a seat. Mertone skewered her with a look and interrupted himself just for her.
“For those of you who haven’t been keeping up on current events”—his voice was oily with disdain—“I shall repeat that a new detachment entered Asylum system within the last seventy-two hours. This new group consists of four destroyers, two cruisers, a pocket dreadnought, and four to six frigates. Now then . . .” He paused as the operations display shifted to magnify the new group’s reported position and went on.
“The energy profile of the pocket dreadnought fits the IHS Ilya Turabian. As you are no doubt aware”—his eyes stabbed Kris again—“Ilya has been linked to the Halith Supreme Staff. In the past, it has served as the personal flag of Grand Admiral Andros Osterman. The Chief of Strategic Operations, Admiral Bucharin, the Chief of Ground Operations, Marshal Halder, and the head of Halith Military Intelligence, Admiral Heydrich, have also been associated with her. I trust I do not have to elaborate on the ramifications of any of these gentlemen visiting Asylum.”
A room full of nodding heads assured him he did not. Named for the Founder, Ilya Turabian was (along with her sister ship, Ilya Muromyets) the newest, fastest, and most advanced combatant in the Imperial Navy. The size of a battlecruiser, she was armed like a battleship and so automated that she required a crew of less than five hundred, as compared to a battlecruiser’s nine hundred and a battleship’s almost two thousand. She was sleek, rakish, and elegant, and as commerce was the lifeblood of the Nereidian League, Ilya Turabian had been designed from the keel up to go for the jugular.
But so far, theory and practice had not meshed. She had been delayed almost a year by problems with her automation—Muromyets was still in her slip at Dalian Station getting the kinks worked out of her systems—and throughout the Halith Navy, it was known that crews had taken to referring to Ilya Turabian as the Grand Admiral’s Yacht, and—as Mertone had just pointed out—not without due cause. Only recently declared fully operational, Ilya had missed out on the war and had yet to prove herself. This outing to Asylum was, in fact, the farthest afield she was known to have been.
“Very well. The Halith are well aware that, without abandoning our position here, we can only reinforce Miranda with Caledonian units from the New UK—we’re currently negotiating with them about that—or from Regulus, which takes about a week. This gives them at least a four-day window of opportunity for invasion. If we can hold the Miranda jump sectors for that time, we can break up their offensive. If they take them
, we’ll be in grave danger.”
The pills were finally allowing her to open her eyes a little wider, and the briefing no longer sounded as though it was being bellowed in her ear with a bullhorn. Then someone asked, “Are we sure they’re planning an offensive, sir? Could this be, in effect, a one-man feint?” Kris straightened up some at that; she recognized Huron’s professional voice. I’m glad someone else thought of that. I don’t think Mertone wants to hear from me today. Huron was still speaking: “ . . . any other ship movements or related comms traffic indicating how serious they are?”
“We think so,” Mertone answered, apparently not minding the interruption. “There have been additional sailings from Qeshan, Janin, and Rho Ceti.” Mertone opened a window in the ops display to show the areas mentioned. “We’ve ID’d elements of at least three Halith fleets: the Ilion, BATDIV II from the Duke Albrecht Fleet, and the Prince Vorland Fleet. We don’t know their destinations yet, but this is approximately a third of their available strike power.
“We have also collected two groups of abnormal burst communications, on both the military and diplomatic nets, bracketing the time we estimate the Ilya Turabian would have broken orbit from Halith Evandor. One was aimed at Asylum and the other in the direction of Maxor space.” Mertone’s eyes swept his audience. “I say ‘in the direction of’ because the Maxor Ambassador assures us that their neutrality remains absolute, and our Consulate on the Maxor prime world has reported no evidence to the contrary.” He slapped the pointer against his leg again as he returned his attention to the display. “We also think that some of the busy mail is being pulled off their Morganatic nets.”
A broad eruption of muttering followed this announcement. These were the Halith ultra-secured command nets. The Halith padded the message traffic on them so the sudden fluctuations didn’t telegraph their punches—intercept operators called the false messages “busy mail.” Kris hadn’t known they had a handle on the busy-mail problem. She also wondered if anybody else had noticed that Mertone hadn’t actually answered Huron’s question. A one-man feint would be most effective if you were planning a strike somewhere else. Curiouser and curiouser . . .
Mertone went on with his presentation. He brought up a schematic of Asylum, Miranda, and the neighboring systems, showing the jump sectors in red and the routes in and out of each as yellow lines. Epona was a purple volume at the lower right, with yellow lines connecting it to Asylum but not to Miranda. Looking over the geometry, Kris thought she knew what Mertone was going to say next.
He took a little time saying it. “The current situation, people. The Fleet is on 24-hour alert. Admiral PrenTalien has moved his deployment up here”—the pointer described an arc about the Miranda jump sectors—“to affect a forward defense. DREDRON Thermopylae X-ray”—that was the forward-deployed unit of CYGCOM’s strike force—“has sortied from Tenebris, but with Ramillies and Saintes still in airdock, they have only half a carrier division with them.
“Which brings me to you people.” Mertone finally had his wrapping-up voice on. “PrenTalien’s most pressing problems are a lack of fighters and heavy ordnance. We’re going to partially address both situations by sending a strike wing and our recon wing.” Her wing! Yes yes yes! “Due to the loadout requirements, the recon wing will be flying specially modified Raptors.”
Murmurs at that news. Raptors were long-range interceptors, normally used for counterstrike. They were extremely fast and capable of carrying a heavy payload, but nowhere near as agile as the Phantoms that recon wings flew. Except in simulation, Kris had never flown a Raptor, much less a modified one. Not that she cared in the least.
“Kideki, Alzofon, Tschosik, Halvorson, and Tole,” Mertone rapped out, “your squadron’s birds will be fitted with eight torpedoes apiece”—random exclamations at that; he went right over them—“so no missiles, no SuRBOC pods, no outboard guns. That means I don’t want anybody mixing it up out there. Understood?” A chorus of nods. “Okay. As senior wing commander, Huron’s flight leader. N’Komo’s his second, of course. His squadron and Huron’s will fly with a normal loadout and provide any cover you need, so you better not need much.” He turned back to the ops display.
“Now for the fun part, boys and girls—your route.” Mertone adjusted the display to highlight Asylum. Everyone hushed. “To cut the time as much as possible, you’ll jump into this field here”—he indicated a red area just beyond Asylum’s outermost band of asteroids—“and make a nine-hour real-space transit to here”—he pointed at another red area just inside the third asteroid belt—“and jump from there to Miranda. Your estimated transit time is sixteen hours. G2 doesn’t think the Halith can attack before forty-eight, so this’ll give us an edge. They won’t be expecting a flight through their space—”
Random exclamations—“We’re goin’ to Asylum!”—overrode Mertone’s voice, and he thwacked the pointer on his console to restore order. “Simmer down,” he barked. “We are not—I say not—engaged in hostilities. You will not seek the enemy. You will not engage. Now listen up.
“You make this transit quick and quiet. Stealth is the order of the day, boys and girls. No fuck-ups.” He waggled the pointer at them. “You get so much as a ghost-beep off a Halith ship and you max it the hell out of there. All heroes will report to me for ass-skinning. You got that? Fine.”
Mertone adjusted the ops display again, bringing up the Halith patrol patterns and their deep-radar coverage in Asylum. “Now pay attention. Deep-probing indicates the Halith have pushed their surveillance fences out to about here—as you can see, more coverage, but it’s not leakproof. They’ve extended their forward patrols into these areas, here and here—but probably only for jump zone clearing. This should give you an opportunity to . . .”
Kris slid down in her seat, listening to the rest of the briefing filled with the happily familiar butterflies of anticipation.
Mertone finished pretty quickly. The mission seemed straight-forward enough. Avoiding the Halith patrols shouldn’t be that difficult in all the rubble and clutter in Asylum system. The trickiest part was probably flying the overloaded fighter. Eight torps would make it logy as hell.
As they were dismissed and everyone got up to leave, Mertone barked, “Lieutenant Kennakris!”
Kris snapped to. What now? “Yes, sir?”
“I have some additional orders for you.”
She approached him, sidling through the pilots filing out of the room. Mertone was shutting down the ops display and running his hand over the short, blond stubble of his overly military burr haircut. He produced a satchel from behind the briefing console, pulled out an envelope and handed it to her.
“I expect these to be followed to the letter, Lieutenant,” he said, favoring her with a scowl not unlike the one he’d used this morning. “You are now, I trust, on duty?”
She bristled a little at the caustic tone, but then, she hadn’t expected Mertone to overlook last night’s stunt. “Yessir!”
Proper formalities required that she open the orders now, in front of him, so there could be no misunderstanding about their contents. But watching Mertone—his fingers clenching and unclenching on the edge of the satchel and that little tick going under his left eye—Kris got the feeling his motives were somehow different. In fact, she could swear he was repressing a very unpleasant smile.
Well, get it over with.
Popping the envelope with a fingernail, she pulled out the orders and read them. Even though she’d guessed the contents, the words still slammed her down to her toes. Divine intervention had just been converted into another cruel joke. The thin sheet of plastic crumpled in one fist. And, yeah, there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
Okay, gloat you bald little toady. It’ll be your last chance.
“I trust the orders are clear, Lieutenant?” Mertone’s voice was entirely too full of suppressed glee.
“Yessir.” A weak and slurred reply. Kris’s hangover had just returned full force. Mertone wasn’t
content to leave it at that—he had to rub it in.
“You will deliver your cargo to the Ardennes Strike Force at Miranda. If your transport is not already on-station, you will again consider yourself confined to quarters—whatever quarters Admiral PrenTalien or his fighter boss shall designate—until it arrives. Is that understood?”
“What transport, sir?”
Now the smile broke out at the corners of Mertone’s mouth. “On Dr. Quillan’s recommendation, it has been decided—in view of yesterday’s incident—that you be transported back to Cassandra Station where they have necessary facilities to complete your evaluation. A full evaluation.”
“Cassandra Station, sir?” That was almost two weeks away—and it was Quillan’s home turf.
“Yes, it’s—” He paused and pretended to notice another sheet on his desk. “Oh. Here it is.” He handed it across. She took it with fingers she willed not to shake with the awful betrayal of it.
“But—but my inquiry, sir?”
“The inquiry will be conducted pursuant to those orders, Lieutenant. When—and if—it is deemed necessary, once your evaluation is complete.”
No inquiry. “Yessir.”
“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
Roast in hell, you dog-sucking bastard.
Saluting snappily, Kris turned and left.
In Echo Squadron’s ready room, Kris was putting on her armored flight suit for the last time. She wanted to savor the moment, but was too pissed off to do so. As she ran the final diagnostics check, Huron wandered up and pretended to look for something in the locker next to hers.
She glanced over at him with tightening lips. Had he talked to Mertone yet? “You hear?”
“They just flashed it to me.”
“Then you know what’s gonna happen.”
He certainly knew that Mertone had managed to short-circuit things, and he’d been wrong about Quillan too. He still might recover some evidence—possibly enough to have Quillan cashiered—but not before they had Kris thoroughly in their grip at Cassandra. Even so—
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 113