Orion's Price

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “Thank you, Grandfather”—hastily giving him the half-bow that was his due before blurting out, “Where’s Kris—Commander Kennakris?”

  “Ah.” The admiral interlaced his fingers over his upraised knee. “As to that, she and Commander Huron left yesterday to join their people at Haslar. Matters were concluded ahead of schedule for once, and they embark for their trip home tomorrow.” He regarded her for a silent moment as the tightness in her chest unwound into disappointment. “Was there something in particular?”

  Arianna shook her head, an unconvincing motion. She’d regretted having to take this trip, one of those three-day triannual seminars girls from aristocratic families were not “required” to attend—meaning they were absolutely required to attend—to polish their social graces, instruct them on the finer points of Halith’s elite society’s convoluted etiquette, and refine their knowledge to the right management of the households they would one day lead. She loathed these seminars, especially as the most highly regarded one (to which she was, of course, always sent) was also the farthest away, but particularly in this case. She had wanted to say goodbye to Kris, and had done all she could to hurry back, skipping the last informal gathering (the only thing she could miss without rank disobedience) to return a half-day early. But it hadn’t been soon enough, and now that chance had been robbed from her. Worse, Haslar Cosmodrome, a thousand kilometers away to the north, was not far from where she’d just been. If only she’d known . . .

  “I . . .”—hunting for appropriate words. “That is excellent news. I’m happy for them.”

  “Things resuming their proper order is always an occasion for happiness”—observing her intently.

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “Quite so.” He unlinked his hands from about his knee. “And I have news that I trust will also be an occasion for happiness.” Her ears pricked up at that. “I have arranged a trip for you. Lord and Lady Geris are traveling to Mars—he is heading our delegation. Lady Gwen is going with them as a guest.” Arianna moved her head vaguely, wondering what this could possibly have to do with her. “I have arranged for you to accompany Lady Gwen.”

  Her shoulders slumped. He was sending her to Mars? Nothing she’d ever seen or read or heard about Mars recommended it as a destination. A barren cold rusty wasteland inhabited by bureaucrats, with never a concert or anything to do. And Terra just an in-system hop away. They’d never let her go there, of course. She’d be shackled to the delegation. As much as she liked Gwen, her going couldn’t be mere coincidence. She must have something to do with the talks. It was just cruel . . .

  “But my duties here . . .” she offered, hesitantly. The way her grandfather worshiped duty (he thought it the most beautiful word in any language) that appeal just might—

  “Will be faithfully discharged during your absence. Have no concern about that.”

  That stung. Was she that disposable?

  “We are most fortunate, are we not, that this armistice gives you a chance to have this foreign experience?”

  Twisting the knife now. What had she done to be pushed aside and sent away like this? “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “This time in the League will be good for you, I believe. One should always embrace an opportunity to broaden one’s horizons.”

  This time, she merely nodded.

  “And since you will be traveling to Haslar this PM, you can perform me a service.” Reaching into his coat, he removed a cloth bag. “This belongs to Commander Kennakris. She values it and Commander Huron asked if it might be recovered. I was able to do so, but that took time and it arrived early this AM. Rather than sending it by courier, I would like to entrust it to you. There are League personnel at Haslar you may deliver it to. They will see that Commander Kennakris get it.”

  “Yes . . .” She took it from him as he held it out and weighed it gingerly in her hand. “What is it? May I know?”

  “A necklace. Of most ancient and unusual manufacture.”

  Feeling the slim disks through the padded cloth, and thinking of what she knew about Kris, Arianna felt accountably shy. The memory of Kris’s request to give Commander Huron a message the day Taylor Lessing returned came back to her; Kris’s voice, her words, powerfully present:

  “Just tell ’im . . . ask him . . . to tell her goodbye for me.”

  Tell her goodbye . . . Had she given Kris this necklace? As a . . . love token?

  The constriction in her chest returned, feeling altogether different this time, and a strange, awkward thrill along with it. Was she being asked to play the role of a secret messenger, as in one of those romantic dramas she secretly read? It certainly sounded like it.

  “Yes, Grandfather. Thank you for trusting me with this. I will see it done”—clasping the bag gently in both hands.

  “I have no doubt of it.” The admiral picked up his copy of Caesar’s Commentaries again. “Now, I suggest you see to your packing. Time is short and you must be off.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.” She made her parting bow and left quickly. This trip was certainly beginning in an interesting fashion.

  But how would it end?

  * * *

  With Arianna gone (she’d practically scampered away), Caneris, setting Caesar aside once more, allowed himself a slender smile at his granddaughter’s confusion. Arianna was no less fond of intrigues than other girls her age—perhaps she was more fond, for all she tried to hide it—and it pleased him to place her in the role of messenger here. The necklace had been a stroke of luck. Commander Huron had brought its existence up to him and asked if there was any chance of getting it back. As he’d been obliged to ask for the commander’s help in another matter, it was only courtesy to accede. And in Commander Kennakris’s case, he did not mind doing the favor.

  Being a unique piece and easy to identify, it had been simple enough to contact his people still on Amu Daria and ask them to locate the necklace. Logs readily singled out the guards who had processed the commander into the POW camp and a few minutes’ interrogation had produced results. Caneris had no patience with his men looting prisoners, and the thief made for a convenient example, while those who were guilty of the lesser crime of failing to report the theft were given a chance to repent and atone. But as he told Arianna, it had all taken time—weeks—and they were lucky the necklace made it back when it did. Perhaps, in view of what he had had to tell Arianna, the timing could not have fallen better.

  In point of fact, his reasons for sending Arianna with Lady Gwen went far beyond the “broadening one’s horizons” justification he had advanced. The “pretty chaos” he and Danilov had labored to produce among the militarists was now in full swing, but chaos, even though pretty, was never tidy. Given some of the possible repercussions of General Heydrich’s death, it would be well to have Arianna off-planet for a while. Lady Gwen was an excellent traveling companion, and even though he had not inquired as to her reasons for traveling (he did not think they were in any way coincidental; a mere pleasure cruise), he knew he could trust her implicitly with Arianna.

  That thought in mind, he took a calling card from an inner pocket. An icon of Gwen’s beatifically smiling face adorned it. He tapped CALL.

  Gwen’s visage, very like the icon, shimmered into existence on the overlay.

  “Admiral. What a pleasure.”

  “Lady Gwen. How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you. And your day? It has been pleasing, I hope?”

  “It will serve.” Unseen, his finger tapped briefly on the arm of the settee. “I have spoken to Arianna. She is packing and will be ready at the appointed time.”

  “Excellent. Does she know anything of the other matter?”

  “She does not. As there has been no confirmation, I deemed it best not to mention it.”

  “I think that is wise. Especially in this case.”

  He acknowledged that with a nod. “And, once again, I should like to extend my thanks for escorting my granddaughter. This is a wonderful opportunity f
or her.”

  “Think nothing of it, Admiral. Arianna is a delightful companion. It is I who must thank you.”

  “You are too kind”—giving her a polite bow. “Touching now, the matter of our agreement, do you find it satisfactory? Have you further questions?”

  “Entirely satisfactory. I believe this alliance between our families will be extremely beneficial to us both. My barrister is finalizing the documents and will present them to your barrister by this evening.”

  “I am most gratified. Thank you, Lady Gwen. Allow me to wish you a safe and rewarding voyage.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. May you prosper in all your designs.”

  With an exchange of nods, the call ended. Caneris put the card away and took out another. This one showed the face of Marcus Eusebius Danilov, who was not smiling at all. He tapped. Danilov answered.

  “Hello, Marcus Eusebius. Arianna shall be in transit shortly. Now, regarding those special security arrangements we discussed for her . . .”

  Chapter 42

  Haslar Cosmodrome, Lake Vann District

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  They marched in silence, two long lines of them, in battered uniforms, bleached by alien suns in many cases, stained in others by years of heavy labor and even dull, faded patches of their own blood, for these were the uniforms they were captured in; unshaved for the most part, with shaggy, knife-trimmed hair, for those that still had hair; marched with an even, exact, deliberate step, measured to the slow dirge-like cadence of some shared but unheard requiem, faces uniformly grim and all with the same unbending, indomitable, iron pride; more like the faces of women and men going to their execution, not—as they in fact were—to freedom.

  A qualified freedom, for these were the first group of paroled POWs, fourteen hundred forty-four of them, being sent home. Qualified, therefore, by the terms of their parole, but much more so by those many comrades they were leaving behind. Until all of them were home, they could never be truly free.

  Standing to one side with Huron and a New Caledonian private who held himself as erect as his stooped and withered frame would allow—the longest-held surviving POW—Kris watched them file by with an expression as grim as the rest. Grim, because on such a day when, it seemed to her, emotions should be running high, she had no idea what she felt or what she ought to feel or even why she wasn’t feeling it. All she could feel—and while those feelings were genuine, they seemed to float on the surface of the closed-off sphere of her self—was pride in the people passing before her, and a strange sense of arrested triumph in the manner in which they were doing it.

  Wearing those uniforms was in the nature of triumphant statement. Halith would have preferred they leave looking smart and tidy. Kris knew the Halith propaganda organs were busy spinning this as a major diplomatic victory and a well-dressed and kempt group would have better suited their purposes, but the POWs had made it clear they would accept nothing from their captors. They would leave in the uniforms they arrived in, or naked, or not at all.

  The resulting impasse came close to wrecking the fragile negotiations to allow this initial exchange to proceed, but Huron had interceded directly with Admiral Caneris and his appeal to the shared sense of honor and martial pride moved the admiral to throw his weight behind the POWs’ demand. That was enough to convince Jerome to overrule his propaganda people’s attempts at stage-managing the affair.

  The admiral was there now, directly across from Kris, standing next to a pleasant-looking and well-groomed, soberly dressed man, Lord Nigel Geris, head of the delegation that was traveling with them to the League capital on Mars. The third man, some high-ranking military officer in a resplendent uniform, who otherwise had all the hallmarks for a convenient nonentity, Kris did not know. From a few wayward comments, she gathered he was General Heydrich’s interim replacement as head of the Halith POW system.

  At the farther end of the Haslar Cosmodrome’s embarkation facility, from which the two lines of POWs were emerging, Kris recognized Captain Malinen at the head of a Halith security detail. Malinen and his men appeared to be making their own statement by being dressed in their workaday uniforms; no pomp and circumstance there.

  At the opposite end, receiving the POWs, stood a CEF honor guard, led by Lieutenant Colonel Minerva Lewis and Sergeant Major Yu, looking rather more impressive. Kris also saw Corporal Vasquez among the guard’s members. They stood at port arms while their brethren filed past into the shuttles that would take them to the ships of Commodore Shariati’s squadron, which had been selected to convey them to the CEF forward base at Illyria, where, in a mirror image of this ceremony, fourteen hundred forty-four Halith POWs were now boarding for their trip home.

  But for the lines of men and women connecting them, Captain Malinen’s group and Colonel Lewis’ might have been on different planets, so studiously did they ignore each other. In a sense they were, Kris thought, and not simply because Colonel Lewis’ detail made that end of the embarkation facility League sovereign territory by their presence. There was something metaphysical about it all, a translation of more than captivity to freedom, a sense of an incalculable shift; as if, in marching this hundred meters or so, these ragged-looking people were tipping the scales irrevocably.

  The scales, though, she knew had already been tipped—moved by a strong slender beautiful hand, whose owner she loved entirely, and about whom she’d heard nothing at all. If anything, this exchange merely ensured the scales could not be tipped back, but at what cost? What price had Mariwen paid to bring all this about? And how could she—could anyone—ever repay it?

  The last of their people moved past, signaling the end. The end in more senses than her consciousness, worn with waiting, could comprehend. Waiting had taken all her strength these past weeks, physically as much as mentally and emotionally, and she wondered where she’d find the strength to walk those last few meters and up the ramp of the last shuttle.

  That she’d board last with Rafe was an additional weight she could’ve done without. The honor of being the last to board belonged by rights to the New Caledonian private. He’d steadfastly refused it though, insisting that as the prime movers of this exchange (as he saw it), the honor must go to them. She insisted the honor go to Rafe—her contribution amounted to nothing more than making some stupid choices that came within an ace of killing both of them, and then landed them in a Halith POW camp. Rafe’s limp was both proof and a brutal reminder of that. He insisted he would not accept the honor alone, and after some haggling, she gave in and they compromised on boarding together.

  Her eyes followed the final group, and as they passed through the big exit doors, the honor guard faced front and went to order arms. Kris drew a breath deep into her lungs.

  It’s go-time.

  Turning her attention to Admiral Caneris, she and Rafe both exchanged precise salutes with him, precisely timed. The courtesy wasn’t required, or perhaps expected, but as he’d told her when they first met, their profession did not often afford the opportunity to meet an honorable adversary.

  Facing right together, they followed the New Caledonian private who walked ahead with a determined hobble, Kris matching her stride to Huron’s limp. The honor guard closed in around them as they left the building and entered the free air. It was dusk; the strangely rich, almost tangible, deep yellow-gold of a Halith dusk with the added reddish tint from the primary moon, Arran, close overhead. On the apron, the last shuttle waited, engines thrumming. In the distance, Kris could see the boost trails of the those that had just left arcing away into the upper atmosphere.

  They reached the shuttle, the private boarded, Min’s detail did a last check and trotted up the ramp. Kris and Rafe followed them, while Min and Vasquez waited just inside the main hatch. Extreme gravity had now given way to grins.

  Pausing at the threshold, Kris looked down at the grooves in the shuttle’s hatchway. From her left, Rafe murmured, “You ready, Kris?”

  She lifted her eyes, seeing past the shuttl
e’s interior into a future that held . . .

  I don’t wanna think about it . . .

  “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

  They did.

  * * *

  This is wrong.

  That thought was the one clear thing in her mind as Kris sat on her bunk in the luxury of a stateroom aboard LSS Artemisia, watching a young marine corporal stow brand new uniforms in the compartment’s autovalet. Having a batman assigned to her was a privilege of rank she could have done without, but no one would think of flouting the traditions of the Service on Commodore Shariati’s own flagship, and the young man had been kindly but relentlessly imposed on her, just as this stateroom had been imposed on her as an “honored guest” on a ship she knew to be overcrowded. They could easily have fit four people in here, and they should have, but no one was about to listen to her on that score either.

  So she was left to sit, not even allowed to stow her own kit, as useless as she was honored, and feel . . . nothing.

  This is so fucked up.

  She ought to feel something. If not for herself, then for everyone else. Rafe was going home. They were all going home. If she couldn’t feel excitement or exhilaration, there should be joy at what had been accomplished, or at least relief that the long nightmare was over. The weeks she’d spent with Rafe at Admiral Caneris’ estate, as guests this time, had been some of the toughest she’d endured, with the prospect of freedom so tantalizingly close, but untouchable—perhaps chimerical—and in any case, fragile; capable to being demolished by a petty objection at any time. Waiting helplessly, consumed with a burning impatience while unseen parties haggled over the details of this exchange and everyone was excruciatingly pleasant, but no one said anything of value, had come near to killing her.

  And now it had happened, and none of the things she’d felt before, or imagined she might feel now, applied. Instead, she felt stuck in this vacuum of emotion where a riot of feelings screamed but made no noise.

  Going home. Home to what?

  In the whole time since Captain Malinen had visited her in her cell, no one had breathed another word about Mariwen. While they’d all waited for this day to arrive, she’d clung to the supposition that the success of their scheme meant Mariwen was still alive. But that wasn’t true: the scheme that led to their being exchanged in no way depended on Mariwen surviving—it depended on General Heydrich dying. And he was dead. But what might have happened to Mariwen before he got that way . . .