Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Waveral was speaking. Huron Sr. rubbed his ear. “Pardon, Bertie. What were you saying?”

  “I was speaking about that business with Westover,” Waveral answered, aware his audience’s mind had wandered and indignant over it.

  “His appointment?”

  “Damn right, his appointment.” Bertie’s voice had gone up a pitch again. “That’s what I’m talking about, Leon—bag and baggage. We were against it. The Council was against it. And she gave in. She caved at the last minute. She can’t control herself, much less govern. Westover should never have been confirmed. We were well rid of him. Yes, I know all about Wogan’s Reef. A damn near-run thing, for all they say. And one which he had precious little to do with, I might add—”

  “Oh, kindly extract your head from your nethers, Bertie.” The elder Huron set his glass down with a chilling glare and a loud, punctuating click. It was true that the Battle of Wogan’s Reef had been a near-run thing—as near as you could ever hope to see—and that the lion’s share of the glory had attached to Admiral PrenTalien. Joss deserved that credit surely, but the full story went much deeper than that, involving persons of all ranks: a deep-radar operator with the improbable name of Pequot Jones and his CO, Captain Skip Coward (no man less aptly named), who found a way to destabilize Halith’s critical flank; Admiral Sabr and his flagship’s skipper, Captain Shiro Watanabe, who pulled off a stunt few would have thought of (and fewer still were crazy enough to try) that took the Halith commander out of the fight at a critical moment; Minerva Lewis. a marine captain, whose heroics in a boarding action finally turned a seesaw battle into a smashing victory, and wrote her name in a bold hand across the pages of military history.

  Those were only the most luminous examples. Reading the after-action reports, which he’d done with the closest attention, supplied countless others. In this dry, bloodless, pedantic catalog of valor lay the battle’s true story.

  That the media should play the whole thing merely for its entertainment value, spinning the narrative in favor of the colorful and the photogenic, was inevitable, just as it was natural that the former CNO should happily set away from the limelight to allow the victory glow to shine on his subordinates. Never was there an admiral less inclined to glory seeking than Carlos Westover, a man known for keeping a small sign on his desk which read: “There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

  In point of fact, Westover had done quite a remarkable job keeping the ship afloat at all during the first dark year of the war. Without his steadfast guidance and strategic acumen, Wogan’s Reef never would have happened. But there was little point in trying to get all that across to Bertie right now.

  Instead, reading Waveral’s darkening look and knowing he’d let his acerbity get the better of him, the former Speaker rifled his memory for a sop to throw the grand senator, and came up with one.

  “If the itch proves intolerable, fire Montrose”—naming the current Secretary of the Navy. He had been one of the compromises of forming Hazen’s government.

  “Fire Shepard? Whatever for?”

  “An investigation of his business dealings of the last decade or so should answer that. His clique lives by the motto: Nothing too hot or too heavy. He’s been a drag on the wheel this past year as well as lining his pockets. You’ll see several points of improvement in overall efficiency by so doing. His deputy is an able fellow—even honest.”

  Waveral did not seem to find this sop to his liking. He humphed above his glass. “This is your final answer? Do nothing?”

  “It is my answer until conditions further evolve. Buck up, Bertie. Throw Montrose to the wolves. That’ll entertain the parasites for at least a week. Later, you can trumpet the new direction, and if nothing better happens in the meantime, you’ll have some numbers to back it up.”

  Though, in truth, he had every expectation that something would happen in the meantime. The signs were there. Bertie might be seven parts ass to three parts blowhard, but he’d raised some disquieting points.

  The next few minutes were spent in palliative small talk, and then the grand senator lifted himself ponderously to his feet and took his leave, seen to his transport by the retired Speaker’s diminutive chief of staff, Vaishali Kriesel-Roth. There was something inexpressibly comic in the tableau of the small, quiet, sharp-eyed woman conducting away the bull-like man with such carefully insolent politeness—almost as if she was leading him by an invisible nose ring to the slaughter. Which, certainly, was not the case—perish the thought. Not that Bertie Waveral would likely have been able to tell if it was.

  His chief of staff returned to the library some minutes later, having accomplished her errand, to find the elder Huron scowling contemplatively, water glass again perched precariously on his knee.

  “Vai,” he announced after a brief span of seconds, “I’m afraid it’s possible Bertie may not be merely hyperventilating this time. Get me the list of colonies up for promotion to voting status this session, with updated delegation and committee rosters. They’re the ones who’ll be at the sharp end, if anything breaks. We should see to it their voices cannot be ignored.”

  “Yes, sir. What else?”

  “I was thinking it might be time to arrange a meeting with Gareth—private, of course. His turf. What do you say to that?”

  Vai answered with a clipped smile, suggesting her amusement. “I think that’s a fine idea. He doesn’t like you much.”

  It was certainly true that Gareth Fitzwilliam, the grand senator from Phaedra, was a political adversary of longstanding, but he was also a legal scholar of notable intellect and unbending rectitude. There’d be no question of his being swayed by blandishments or overfriendly collusion. However private the meeting between them was, word of it would leak, and that itself would send a useful signal.

  “Send him a message then and see if he’ll agree. Nothing fancy—but you know best there.”

  “Certainly, sir. Is that all?”

  “Has Rafe left yet with his Outworlder Penthesileia?”

  That elicited a rare, quiet laugh. “Yes. Day before yesterday.”

  “Ah. I was forgetting.” He scratched his chin ruefully. “Anno domini, Vai.”

  “Is there a message you wish to send? They can probably still get it.”

  Rafe and Kris had departed on a quasi-diplomatic mission to Alesia in Deneb. The Larate, as it was formally called, was the most powerful and least trusted of the small independent star nations in that outlying region. Lack of central authority made Deneb chaotic, with constant squabbling between Alesia and two other prominent systems: the Aventine Grand Duchy and Outré Bangkok. This had proved a sad embarrassment at the beginning of the war, and an important loss because Deneb contained significant antimatter fields; nothing like the Sultanate, but enough to have given an important boost to Halith’s offensive capabilities for the first year of the war.

  It was a key objective to see this did not happen again, and now that Alesia’s desire for increased economic assistance had put them in a receptive frame of mind, Rafe—with Kris in tow—was on his way there to see if he could shake up some of their hidebound thinking and archaic prejudices. Although they were secretly counting on Kris to do much of the shaking, she being gifted in that regard.

  “No, Vai.” The old man shook his head. “It’s just as well I forgot. Wouldn’t do to meddle. The folly of old age, y’know.”

  His chief of staff uttered a discreet cough. “Yes sir. Quite so.”

  ~ ~ ~

  187 Days earlier

  The Larate of Alesia,

  Epsilon Aquila, Deneb Sector

  “The Right-honorable Horace, First Minister Plenipotentiary of his Royal Majesty Titus the Sixth,” the Annunciator proclaimed in his highly trained and unamplified voice, filling the large crowded ballroom admirably. The First Minister, a tall rail-thin man, entered with his several lictors and began to make his dignified way down the receiving line.

  Loitering be
hind the shoals of party goers, by the entrance to one of the several softly lit side chambers that overflowed with exotic refreshments, Kris whispered to Huron, “Why are these guys always right honorable? How come there’s never any left honorables?”

  “Kris—” Huron began, but broke off as the minister, who had been surreptitiously scanning the crowd while greeting the glittering guests, caught his eye and made a beeline for them.

  “Rafe”—pumping Huron’s hand—“splendid to see you! I was afraid you might not be able to make it. May I know your companion?” This with a nod to Kris, who was standing next to him in her full-dress uniform, the only thing she had that was remotely appropriate. Huron was well aware of how Kris felt about nice clothes—she’d only recently been reconciled to the idea that a little make-up was not inherently evil—and he knew better than to raise the subject of expanding her wardrobe. He also knew the effect Kris had on people, above all when looking splendid in her No.1 rig, with her many decorations ablaze, and he was wasn’t above using it.

  “Certainly.” Huron himself was in civilian attire: an elegant black suit that made a shocking contrast to the myriad dazzling gowns the women wore and the variegated pastels of the court formals of their companions. Kris couldn’t recall the occasion—the Larina-in-Waiting’s birthday or the first day of spring or the precession of the equinoxes or some damn thing—but she turned with her best effort at a smile when Huron touched her elbow. “Lieutenant Loralynn Kennakris, SRF.”

  “Quite so. A pleasure, ma’am.” the minister said with a bow, and as they shook hands—for a moment, Kris was transfixed by the horrifying thought he might kiss it—she avowed that she was charmed to make the acquaintance. Duty accomplished, he returned his attention to Huron. Leaning in, he spoke sotto voce. “Say, you wouldn’t have an hour free tomorrow PM, would you, for HRM? The Narbonensian Development? Just a few things.”

  Rafe might be just “Mr. Huron” on this trip, but the annual operating budget of HRM’s government would probably not have moved his family’s fortune much more than a percentage point. Business was business, however, and Huron said he’d be happy to give Titus an hour. Would 3 O’clock suit?

  “Splendid,” the minister beamed. “I’ll send a car. Ma’am”—with a nod to Kris, and he ambled off as the Annunciator announced the first of the evening’s dances.

  “I don’t gotta, do I?” Kris muttered in Huron’s ear.

  “No. You’re combatant officer.”

  “It said they don’t let girls fight here.” She’d paid that much attention to the briefing packet.

  “They don’t—and they got their asses handed to them on a silver platter with croutons. Think of yourself as an ambassador for right-thinking.”

  She’d rather have thought of herself back home, having a nice long soak, not here in the bowels of Deneb, hanging out with weird people who thought men wearing pastels was actually a good idea.

  Huron knew the look. “I know it’s tough duty, but another hour and honor will be satisfied.”

  “Nah.” Kris shook her head, now vaguely embarrassed by her provincial attitudes. The symphony had struck up, and the first couples were opening the waltz. “Don’t lemme—I mean, if you want to, it’s okay.” Huron actually liked to dance; it was one of several things she could not fathom about him.

  He gave her sideways look.

  “Not with me,” Kris added hurriedly. “But there’s Whatshername over there—that princess.” She nodded at a spectacle in teal and silver across the room they’d been introduced to on arriving, and who was gathering suitors to her like proverbial moths to a flame.

  “Zenobia,” interjected Huron, who’d learned the art of remembering names growing up in one of the League’s most politically active households.

  “Yeah. She’s had her eye on you since we got here.”

  Huron lifted an offhand shoulder. “Nice girl. Kind of—”

  “Spoiled?”

  “Shy.” With another sideways look. “She copes with these events—it’s her job. Has a fun sense of humor in private, too.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Not everyone with six names is an asshole, Kris.”

  Kris bit the inside of her lip. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “Then go on. If you wanna. She’s really pretty. I’m okay.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. The hors d’oeuvres here are killer. Go make her night—those pack animals probably got her stressed past the nines.”

  He gave her black-gloved hand a squeeze. “You’re quite the girl, Lieutenant.”

  “Just doin’ my duty, sir.”

  While Huron danced with Princess Zenobia—and yes, he seemed to be making her night; her smile must have been the envy of her peers—Kris, the black gloves off now and stuffed rather inelegantly in a hip pocket, ranged at large among the delicacies. They were many and various, some arrayed on tiered stands of platinum or gilt; some piled in artful mounds, or spread abroad on little porcelain plates, thin enough to read through, so that the long tables resembled a hilly landscape, dotted with outsized pagodas and complete with forests of little crystal flutes offering curious liquors.

  The liquors, she soon gathered, were meant to accompany the hors d’oeuvres they were adjacent to, and this they did nobly, though after six, she decided to abstain from further explorations. Lunch, at this point, was a distant memory; Alesian notions of the proper dinner hour were, among the aristocracy, ‘fashionably late’ and Kris’s stomach had a morbidly acute sense of naval time, which by custom, fed its junior officers at the beginning of the first dog watch (senior officers and captains, an hour later, and flag officers not until the beginning of first watch). How this ball might affect the usual late hour, she did not know, but there had been some mention of a ‘light repast’ at midnight, so she dedicated herself to grazing.

  Glancing up from her considerations of a savory morsel on a skewer, wrapped in what she took to be a form of bacon, and a delicate pastry that concealed a creamy center, she saw a stately man in a muted rose-colored coat advancing upon her. He was about her height and quite lean, with iron gray hair in a neat queue and short beard marked liberally with white.

  Kris had for some time been aware of covert looks from the couples gyring across the dance floor, and a few whispered observations, delivered from the cover of a discreetly interposed glove, and she wondered at the man’s purpose. He had a rather humorless face, but this seemed to be its natural state and, making allowances for that, he did not appear unamiable.

  Still, Kris was on her guard as he approached. Her association with Rafe should shield her from any direct affront, but she knew there were a thousand inobvious ways to put down a “commoner”—which she unmistakably was—and she was conscious of not giving the briefing packet Huron had supplied her with all the attention it probably deserved.

  The man stopped in front of her and made a polite bow—more a modest inclination of the head—which she returned, and said, “Lieutenant Kennakris, I believe,” with a smile much like his bow. Kris allowed that she was. Without introducing himself (the neglected packet might have explained why, she lamented), he went on to say he wished to mark his sense of her accomplishments, especially her shared exploit with Lieutenant Commander Huron at Wogan’s Reef, here nodding to the splendid-looking medal Kris wore, hanging on its own ribbon, while her other decorations made an impressive block to the left, glittering there against the deep black of her tunic.

  “Odds of thirty to one, if I may say”—saying it—“and routed the lot. Nineteen kills, if I recall. Or was it twenty?”

  “Twenty,” Kris said with a nod. “But my share was only nine.” His remarks seemed open and sincere, and she was willing to be pleased, overlooking any Alesian foibles. That is, until—after allowing himself a muted chuckle over her “only nine” comment and repeating that it was a legendary feat; he doubted history afforded another such example—he smiled knowingl
y and said, “But I imagine you are grateful to be out of all that hurly-burly.”

  Her smile got a little fixed at that, and when he forged ahead, speaking on “the blessings of peace—hearth and home, the marriage state,” it became positively frozen, and when he added “children” to cap his thought, it vanished altogether, leaving nothing behind but a shallow bend of the lips and the barely visible edges of some sharp white teeth.

  With as much polish as she could muster, Kris accepted his praise on behalf of the CEF as a whole, protested that her own contribution to the hurly-burly that had saved Alesia’s corporate ass was entirely minimal, and that the credit belonged elsewhere. If this was also delivered with a touch of frosty dismissal, the target seemed not to notice, but with a couple more obliging (and less cringe-inducing) asides, he took his leave and Kris resumed her browsing.

  She thus had her back to the room a few minutes later when, just as the dancers were opening the third set, Kris felt a presence behind her, and turned.

  There was a blond girl in her late teens, wearing a flowing gown of soft peach and old gold, more elegant than most, and smiling. She reminded Kris of Kym, a slave she’d rescued while still at the Academy but briefly serving as a midshipman, if Kym had been taller, rounder, and cute instead of drop-dead gorgeous.

  The girl offered her hand, raising it before her breast in ceremonial greeting. “Lieutenant Kennakris? I’m Rebeka Linnae Janeana Halloreth Sainte-Marie Valor’sen.”

  Kris, her left hand occupied with a slice of quiche and her right with a delightful spheroid called a Shibari truffle (cream-colored, crunchy and imbued with unnamable flavors), popped the truffle into her mouth and, per Alesian gentry manners, gently squeezed the girl’s silk-gloved fingers.

  “Kris.”

  “Kris.” The girl beamed, increasing her resemblance to Kym, and it suddenly clicked that she’d said Valor’sen, that the suffix ‘sen was an Alesian honorific, and that Valor was the royal family’s sept name.