The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set

by Owen R O'Neill

  Not possible—not possible—I’m not really awake—not awake—not . . .

  She closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath through a wave of nausea. I’m gonna wake up, now—really wake up . . . Her eyes opened; she looked down. Oh fuck—oh fuck—

  They’d dressed her in an outlandish outfit of silk and leather: sleeveless, black, and very tight, decorated with iridium studs, completed by spike-heeled boots and black-satin elbow gloves. Her wrists and ankles were shackled in velvet-lined leather cuffs that were attached to the posts of a large canopied bed by gold chains—they rattled as she contracted spasmodically.

  “You are awake.” Heydrich’s well-bred voice came from off to one side. “Excellent, Lieutenant. You recover quickly.” He walked out from behind the veil of the bed hangings and moved around to the end of the bed where she could see him. He still wore the dress whites, unbuttoned down the front now; the weight of the encrusting medals caused the jacket to gap unevenly. His left hand cradled a tulip-shaped glass—probably hand-blown—filled with deep red liquid. Blood red, in fact, but much clearer.

  “I hope you appreciate the efforts we went to on your behalf. Personally, I would have chosen a more restrained décor, but I wanted you to feel at home.”

  The smile on his face—distant and amused, with smoldering edges—told her that even nightmare failed to describe this anymore. Beads of sweat began to emerge, itching along her hair line.

  Quillan’s hell was full of happy little smiles—Manes’ was simply pain. What’s yours like?

  “The details of the outfit were indistinct—I was forced to improvise,” he continued. “I trust I am not too far off.”

  She honestly could not remember, and mastering the shock, she understood.

  You dressed me in this shit and made up this room this way because you know. You had Tweedle-Dum pump me with enough chemicals to go through my brain quite thoroughly . . . and Manes—fuck’n bastard . . .

  Heydrich sat carefully in an overstuffed antique chair, his uniform looking particularly good against the cerise upholstery, and inspected her over the edge of his wine glass, eyes narrow, taking small deliberate sips. “You look ravishing, Lieutenant.” The literalness of the phrase went in like a well-placed needle. Kris shuddered. “Rarely have I entertained such a beautiful woman. Ah!” Heydrich raised his eyebrows. “But you haven’t seen yet.”

  He reached out a long arm towards a mahogany-replica desk and fiddled with a hidden control. Molecular modulators caused a luminous mirror to pop into existence in the wooden canopy frame overhead. Kris closed her eyes.

  You did, didn’t you? Motherfucker . . .

  Of course, he had. If he went that far with all the other details, he certainly wouldn’t neglect this.

  And if I refuse to open my eyes, he probably has a neural projector around here somewhere to show me what I’m missing.

  She opened them. Her stomach rolled sickeningly. The reflection in the mirror showed a tall, wide-shouldered woman with proud features, a shade too hard for pretty, but a beauty you could cut with. They’d washed and tinted her chestnut hair so it pulled highlights of ruddy brass and amber out of the soft illumination and then braided it into a fashionable coiffure. She’d been made up very skillfully, too, the subtly chosen shades tilting her hazel eyes into the green.

  Christ, does he have staff for this? Or did he do it himself?

  The thought of Heydrich so artfully painting her face made the bile rise in her throat.

  Stop . . . stop. Let him have this round. He knows—he knows. But you survived Mankho, you can survive this . . .

  “I doubt you’ve ever looked better,” Heydrich commented dryly. “Do you like it?”

  So this is how it begins . . .

  Not quite four years ago, Trench had been forced to loan her to Nestor Mankho, the man at the top of Trench’s food chain. She’d not known who he was at the time, of course—they called him merely “Squire Wexford.” The loan had been for two weeks local—eighteen days standard—and in the middle of that time Mankho, furious by his apparent failure to acquire the extremely powerful experimental explosives he needed, had tortured her. He’d driven her further down than she’d ever gone before—further than any other time except this one—and the memories of exactly what he did and how had been blurred, diminished, excised by rigorous mental discipline. But not the setting—Mankho’s bedroom—nor the way his staff had made her up and dressed her, nor the props he used.

  Trench and his friends, when they shared her, liked wild garish luminous colors—slashes of black and gold, bloody reds, suggestive curling arrows on her back, belly, and thighs, heavy layers of iridescent tone-shifting paint.

  But Mankho insisted on what he called class: subtle shades, elaborately coifed hair, jewelry, supple leather outfits, silk gowns. The visions Heydrich’s people had pulled out of her were muddled—weeks of jaded memories, jumbled and confused. They had gotten the room right—except Mankho’s paintings did not morph—why had Heydrich added that silly detail?—probably because the room was always the same. It was even possible Heydrich had seen images; Commander Arutyun, his chief of staff, had been Mankho’s guest while Kris was there. But the outfits, make-up, and props changed all the time.

  Heydrich had almost certainly heard about Kris’s torture from Arutyun. Mankho had bragged about it; they had even shared a session—mild in comparison, almost sickeningly playful. That would have given Heydrich’s people enough data to delve into her brain for more details, but what did they know? What else had Heydrich’s people gotten confused? What did they think they knew but were unsure of? And was Heydrich in this just for fun, or did he have another purpose?

  You beat Trench—you handled Arutyun. You can handle Heydrich. This is supposed to freak you out—okay. It did. That’s over now—think. Focus. Ya gotta focus . . .

  Mouth full of cotton, she searched for a reply and hoped it would come out without faltering. “I think you forgot the whip I’m supposed to hold in my teeth.”

  The answering smile showed the lines in Heydrich’s face. One too many trips to the visosculptor, maybe? “I think, perhaps, I would find that a touch overdone—although it can be arranged later, if you like.” He sipped his wine. “The chains, though, are quite becoming on you. Don’t you think?”

  Stayed focused. “Not really. Gold’s never been my color—”

  “Oh, I must disagree, Lieutenant,” Heydrich interrupted easily. “It complements you splendidly—quite the proper accent.” He swirled the wine, carefully studying its claret depths. “Speaking of accents, how did you come by that fascinating scar? It lends your face a rather stern asymmetry I quite admire. It isn’t a deliberate ornament, is it?”

  In the mirror, Kris looked at the ornament in question. Heydrich had had it subtly accentuated.

  “Not exactly,” she answered, fighting to sound a tad bored. “I cut myself shaving.” Shaving Trench, actually—trying to pare down his throat before she learned better . . . And why don’t you know that? Was he just testing?

  Heydrich caught the inference. “Ah, yes. Your association with Anton Trench. It seems he rather underestimated you.”

  “I was rather young.”

  “But he had the benefit of extensive observation—”

  “Years.”

  “Indeed. I should think he would have done better.” He took another sip. “Did you enjoy it?”

  Kris couldn’t imagine what he was referring to. “Enjoy what?”

  “Killing him.”

  “I don’t remember it that well.” I try not to remember it at all.

  “Perhaps we can work on that—”

  “With visual aids?” Kris broke in, acid bright. “Maybe a hands-on demonstration?”

  Heydrich chuckled into his wine glass. “I wonder if I shall miss this facet of you. It is well, I suppose, that I decided to have you chained—I don’t usually bother.” He raised his glass to her in a kind of salute. “However, I doubt it shall be necessa
ry for long. Perhaps tomorrow I shall free one hand. Some women can perform absolute artistry with just one hand.” His eyes became heavy-lidded. “What of you? Are you an artist . . . Loralynn?”

  The sound of her name on his tongue burned like a red-hot coil. Furiously, she contracted her body against the chains.

  “Oh, do cease and desist, Lieutenant.” Heydrich’s voice now expressed bland irritation. “That can accomplish nothing but fatigue. And so predictable—not to say tedious. Strength is at a premium, you will find”—he reached behind him to place his glass on a small serpentine table—“Loralynn.”

  Kris merely gritted her teeth this time.

  Heydrich folded his hands in his lap and continued, lazy-voiced. “Such a singular name, Loralynn. Your mother’s choice, yes? Surely such a naming would not occur to a man. A man would come up with something much more like”—he raised an index finger and stroked it down the length of his scar, a contemplative gesture—“Kris.”

  That struck a jarringly responsive chord: Trench had first called her Kris. “A remarkable—if chemically assisted—insight.” She made the reply as snide as she could manage.

  “Oh no,” he denied happily, not nettled at all. “Commander Grinnell’s inquiries are strictly of a professional nature. You must not imagine you are unknown to us, Lieutenant. But to ask after personal matters during an interrogation would be . . . cheating.”

  Liar. “So this is a game?”

  “Of course,” Heydrich answered conversationally, as if inviting her to assist with some parlor trick. Nothing up my sleeve . . .

  “Do I get to know the rules? Or do you make them up as you go along?”

  The quip made Heydrich laugh softly. “How fortunate that I am recording this. Perhaps I’ll allow you to watch it later.” He crossed his legs at the knee, clasping his hands over them. “The rules, Loralynn, are quite simple. I shall give you things—clothes, something to drink, a moment alone, freedom from pain”—he paused and looked intently at her—“you are not now, I trust, in pain?”

  She wasn’t, she realized. He must have had his med-techs give her something to deaden the echoes of Manes’ depredations. “Not the way you mean.”

  “Excellent.” Heydrich relaxed into the chair. “As I was saying, I shall give you things, then I shall take them away. Your goal is to keep what I have given you or to convince me to return it.”

  Sounds marvelous. Kris rubbed her sweating palms on the bedspread.

  “As an example,” he continued, “a trivial example, I expect that in a short time you shall become rather desperately thirsty. Then, I will perhaps take, say . . . an article of apparel in return for a drink.” His eyes gestured to a glass of water Kris had not noticed, sitting on a low table underneath one of the mutating paintings. “Then again, perhaps I won’t.”

  He smiled, and Kris saw the smolder shine through the urbane mask. “Later, you will be seized with some equally urgent desire, and I may again give something and take something and so on, over the course of days, until I win.”

  “Wonderful,” Kris muttered, tension balling her guts as the full import of his words sank in. “So what happens when you win? We trade places and go for best two out of three?”

  His interlaced fingers tapped rhythmically on his knee. “That’s just it, Loralynn: the way the game is played, you won’t want to trade places after I win. You’ll be perfectly happy exactly as you are. That’s what winning means . . .”

  A long moan twisted out of her heart, rippling and shuddering her vitals. She’d underestimated him: she’d expected something of Mankho’s taste in whips, wires, clamps, electrical devices—but it was to be the happy little smiles after all—without drugs, without induction therapy, without any of the calm and painless procedures Dr. Quillan would have used to gain the same insipid, mindless, infinitely compliant end.

  And you’ll tart me up as your little sex kitten—all purr and no claws—and you’ll play this vid and I’ll smile—always smiling—and giggle and say: Bad girl, bad girl. What a bad girl she was . . .

  Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes, leaving tracks of burning silver across the exquisite make-up, running down towards her temples to dampen the elaborately coifed hair. He must have lied about Grinnell; how else could he have reached out and so perfectly put a finger on such a personal vision of hell?

  His eyes blazed as he watched her now, the composed mask beginning to melt off. She bit her lips savagely to keep down the jagged sobs. It didn’t work; they escaped anyway, sounding strangled and bestial.

  “Ah good,” he murmured. “Very good.” He rose and walked over to the entry panel, pressing a code series on the keypad. The keypad beeped in acceptance, and he returned to his seat. Kris was just beginning to get her spasms under control, lying rigid on the bed, as brittle as glass.

  Heydrich breathed deeply as he watched her—in and out, in and out—measuring every response and twitch of her muscles. He reclaimed his wine and relaxed joint by joint into the chair.

  “You see,” he commented airily, “it begins. I’ve just ordered dinner—I hope you’ll join me. My chef is a wizard with mushrooms.”

  Kris opened her mouth, but nothing deadly enough would come out. She shut it again.

  “Oh do try, Loralynn,” he urged. “You were doing so nicely before.”

  Kris bristled, inhaling so her chest swelled. Good, good. Piss me off—rage burns fear . . .

  But Heydrich sat still for a moment, observing the large centerpiece painting as Ingres’ Grande Odalisque gradually transmuted into Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus. Kris did not recognize either of the paintings, but the subject matter seemed all too appropriate. Heydrich spoke while the painting completed its transformation.

  “Now that you are somewhat acquainted with our little game, allow me to say that you bring rather more for exchange than most. Should you choose to be cooperative, I can offer you no better—and no worse—than a normal prisoner-of-war status until this present . . . situation is resolved.”

  What the fuck? Kris sank back into the bed. “I don’t know anything you wanna know.”

  Heydrich stretched out his legs and leaned back in the chair, the wine glass held in both hands before him, his expression almost pensive. “Yes. Sergeant Manes is quite convinced by your little performance of yesterday. I, however, am not.” He sipped at the wine, savoring it. “Therefore,” he continued, “you may choose either his methods or my own. The result is much the same in either case.”

  What the hell is he talking about? Some bizarre version of good cop/bad cop? Or bad cop/worse cop? And which is Heydrich?

  She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to think clearly. And then it clicked: Manes is quite convinced . . .

  And Manes is right—but Heydrich doesn’t believe it. He thinks there’s something more. Something Manes missed. What? What does he thinks Manes missed? Heydrich knows all about Mankho—but lotsa details got fucked up. Never mind—he’s afraid. What is he afraid of? How the fuck do you play this game? Would he really make Manes leave me alone?

  She threw out a line, testing the waters. “I don’t believe you. You can’t exchange me. I’d make you out a war criminal.”

  Heydrich looked pleased with the remark, taking it, she thought, for a sign of weakness. “Believe me, Lieutenant. When this is over, accusations of war crimes will concern me very little. Either way.”

  Now there’s some data. She relaxed against the bed and then froze. If you’re gonna sell out, act like it, dammit!

  She let her breathing go ragged, allowing some of the frightened tremor to creep into her limbs. That was all too easy, and relaxing her concentration, even so slightly, felt like she was about to let slip the panic seething deep inside her.

  Okay, okay. Focus. Focus on the problem . . .

  Heydrich and Manes had been arguing yesterday. What exactly had they said? She recalled the words but more the tones that conveyed them.

  They’ve got big plans. Big a
nd risky plans. And he thinks we also have plans or that we know something about his plans—or both. He found something that worries him—some memory he thinks is real. What do we always talk about? Their operation is risky. So if we knew about it, we’d go long with the biggest thing we could think of . . .

  Hissarlik. The Halith prime nexus just outside Haslar. But the only direct route to Hissarlik went through Maxor space . . .

  The Hissarlik nexus controlled all traffic in and out of the Halith core systems. The Maxor owned a set of connecting transit nodes, and they also owned another set that connected with Regulus at the border of the League Homeworlds. This astronomical coincidence gave Maxor enormous strategic value, which lent considerable diplomatic leverage. So far, their rampant xenophobia had led them to practice a kind of militant neutrality, but if they ever saw a chance to remove either, or both, of their pesky neighbors so they could reflect on their manufactured genome in peace . . .

  The memory hit with almost physical force. The last flight briefing: they were discussing the Ilya Turabian appearing in Asylum space, the possibility of a senior staff officer on-board, how PrenTalien had to be reinforced—and Huron had asked a question. A question which Mertone never really answered—you dipshit, Mertone—about a Halith one-man feint at Miranda, about Halith burst transmissions in the direction of Maxor . . .

  Sonofabitch, that’s it! That’s what he found—Huron’s question—all her speculations about Huron’s question . . .

  Huron, why the fuck did’ja come along? Why didn’t you fuck’n know better? You had a choice . . . Mariwen never had a choice. Stop that shit—they’re gone . . .

  Yeah, it all fit. Better yet, it could be made to fit.

  Chill down—be careful. Manes thinks—knows?—this is bullshit. Don’t give it easy. Make him fill in the gaps . . .

  The entry pad buzzed. Kris started and Heydrich rebounded from his slouched position. “Dinner,” he smiled, “is served.”