Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “Partly. I was planning to reactivate my commission, too. It wouldn’t have worked out.”

  “Sorry.”

  Silence. Then: “It’s nothing for you to be sorry about, Kris.”

  A slight squirm against him, as if renewing contact. “I know. It’s just . . . Seems like she was really important to ya. I like her.” Putting a leg across his hips, she pulled herself back on top of him. “When’s the last time you saw each other?”

  “I haven’t seen her since she went back. Eleven—no, twelve years, I guess.” Longer than she’d thought, then. “How’s she doing?”

  “Seems good. They got her sister into a new treatment program—it’s working. She and Baz looked really happy together.”

  He brought palms up along her flanks. “Glad to hear it. They’ll be very good for each other.”

  She kissed him. “Thanks for tellin’ me.” Then, unexpectedly, her cheeks colored a deeper pink. “We still got a few hours, don’t we?”

  “At a minimum”—the gleam of a wink in his tone. “Something on your mind?”

  “I, ah—I was wonderin’ if, well . . .” She bit the inside of her cheek and began again. “I was wondering if maybe you’d like to try something—kinda different.”

  “Different?”

  She moved her lips next to his ear and whispered nine words.

  More silence, spanning a few heartbeats, all of which she heard as she tucked her head into the space beneath his chin. Then: “That’s one of the most impressive offers I’ve ever had.”

  But she detected the undertone and subtle change in his breathing. “Not somethin’ you wanna go for though.”

  He slid his fingers down either side of her spine. “Might be good to work up to it.”

  She suppressed a tiny sigh and held him a little tighter. He was probably right. They probably oughta wait. But—dammit.

  “Yeah. Sounds good.”

  ~ ~ ~

  144 Days earlier

  Washington Province;

  Western Federal District, Terra, Sol

  Deep in truffle pie—his doctors and their diets be damned, it was the weekend, after all—the former Speaker looked up to see his chief of staff entering the room bearing another bottle of champagne and tray of strawberry scones with clotted cream.

  “You don’t have to do that, Vai,” he announced as he lifted another forkful. “We did hire a wait staff, as I recall. You’ll give people the wrong impression.”

  “I happened to be in the kitchen when you called, sir. It seemed inefficient not to bring this, as I was already on my way up.” Setting down the champagne and the scones, she appropriated one of the latter and bit into it.

  “Faultlessly logical, as always. You were already on your way up?” He selected a scone and dressed it with a generous layer of cream.

  “I was.” She brushed a few scone crumbs from her lips as she sat. “There was something you wanted, however?”

  “Yes, but in view of your efforts”—he lifted the scone—“I think you should go first.”

  “Very well.” Vai reached into her open silk jacquard bolero for a folded document as he consumed his initial bite. “I’ve been looking into those leads Rafe came up with on his trip and I believe he uncovered a solid one at Mount Lacon. Not in the cardiac unit, however.” She put the report before him. “Elon Fox, an engineer in the IT department.”

  Mount Lacon referred to Mount Lacon & Holy Oak Medical Center, where the Speaker was typically treated, and where Hazen Gauthier had gone to have her cardiac monitor replaced. Rafe’s sudden trip had been in the nature of a fishing expedition for Vai, and it wasn’t surprising he had hooked something.

  Picking up the sheet with his free hand, his father scanned it with interest. “In IT security?”

  “Yes, sir. The day Hazen was admitted, Fox worked a double shift. He’d arranged it previously with a coworker. I was able to access the medical center’s security logs and that night, the monitoring system for the main complex was patched. It only took about ninety seconds, but during that time, just local monitors would have been up. Right before the patch was applied, there was an emergency reported in the ward adjacent to Hazen’s private suite. It cleared the attendants’ station for a few minutes.”

  “And Fox was connected with these events?”

  “He was on duty at the time and he wrote the patch, sir. And Hazen’s cardiac monitor malfunctioned as soon as the patch was applied.”

  Considering whether to further drench the half-demolished scone, he decided to forebear. “In ninety seconds—say two or three minutes before someone could intervene—she would have been dead. Severely brain damaged, at best.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “An attendant returned to retrieve something and saw the alert on the console.”

  “The intercession of Providence.” He thought of, but did not mention, the god who looks after fools and drunkards. “So . . . we speculate that this Fox fellow used the patch he wrote to disable the Speaker’s heart via her cardiac monitor?”

  “More than disable. Her monitor discharged its battery as a large voltage spike straight into the heart muscle. That’s why it took two days to repair the damage.”

  “Ah. Electrocute then. No sense in half-measures.”

  Vai stripped the foil efficiently from the champagne bottle. “The cardiac monitor and the hospital’s monitoring system communicate, obviously. And Fox, being in IT, had access to the appointment calendar. He would have known exactly when the Speaker was coming to have it replaced.”

  “And he could have arranged the emergency next door to provide a diversion”—reading farther down the closely printed page.

  “Quite so, sir. Any patient in the cardiac care wing would have been vulnerable.”

  “Motive?”

  “That’s on the back, sir.” She had released the cork from its wire cage and was manipulating it deftly.

  He flipped the page. “His wife died in the invasion of Knydos?”

  “She was staying there on business and became trapped when the war broke out.”

  Reading to the next paragraph. “And his daughter . . .”

  “Yes, sir. His daughter was a marine. Lieutenant Alicia Fox. She was killed at Anandale. It was her first action.” Popping the cork gently, she’d filled two glasses and extended one to him.

  Finishing the scone, he pushed the paper aside and accepted the glass. “I see.”

  “I checked his Zeta account as well. He’d posted some rather inflammatory remarks about Hazen’s competence and loyalties to his private hive. He even accused her of treason. Later, he deleted them. Of course”—Vai emphasized the words with a cold-edged smile—“Zeta never actually deletes anything.”

  “When did he delete them?”

  “The day the Speaker’s appointment was confirmed.”

  “I see,” he repeated, leaning back in the leather chair and sipping the champagne gingerly. “Who’s looking into this?”

  “There is an ongoing investigation. I did not access the case files. That seemed—imprudent.”

  The former Speaker nodded his agreement. “And Mr. Fox. What of him? Still ungainfully employed?”

  Vai gave her champagne a first, dainty sip. “No, sir. He killed himself.”

  “That does color the business, doesn’t it.” He nursed his champagne in silence for a minute, contemplating on that color.

  His chief of staff broke a second scone in half, and nibbled. It made her seemed younger somehow—he always found that odd.

  “What was it you wanted, sir?” she asked at length.

  Stirring in his chair, his eyes refocused on the present. “Well, I have to admit myself beat out of the ring, given your news. Anticlimactic, really.”

  She cocked her head to one side, inviting him to go on.

  “That Karelian trade delegation. There was a woman named Ulla Välkkynen with them. Are they still about?”

>   “I believe so, sir.”

  “She has a cousin, Petra—same surname—a lieutenant seconded from Karelian naval intelligence, serving on the—eh, whatsit. That joint working group. New antimissile system.”

  “The RIM Mk 31 Block 2 upgrade. Yes, I’ve heard of her. Is she the one you wish to contact?”

  “I do. I knew Ulla’s father; she’d broker an introduction. Have you a more direct suggestion?”

  “Ian Steinmetz is serving on the working group.” She lifted the champagne bottle. “Sir?”

  “Is he?” He proffered his glass. She topped it off. “Many thanks. Do they know one another?”

  “I have a report that he and Petra are seeing one another socially”—refilling her own.

  That brought a look of new animation to the aged eyes. “Splendid. Contact Ian. If he can do so without undo violence to his personal affairs, have him sound her out on this. It’s from Trin.” Taking his xel from a pocket, he unfurled it, opened a file and laid it on the table between them.

  “Commander Wesselby has been keeping busy, I see”—scanning the file with a determined squint.

  “As always. Too much rustling in the undergrowth, I’d say. Petra’s group’ll have the nitty-gritty, not just the pabulum everyone can agree on that gets put in the executive summary for the benefit of management. It’s the view at the working level we want—the messy impolitic unmentionables.”

  “Yes, sir”—regarding him with the tolerant amusement that only a lifelong partner and confidant has the right to wear. The old man actually looked as though he was on the verge of rubbing his hands.

  “I’ve a strong notion Trin’s onto something and the apple cart may be closer to being upset than we seem to realize. We need to get an idea of what they’re about over there.”

  ~ ~ ~

  117 days earlier

  LSS Rubicon, docked;

  Cassandra Station, Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  Commander Trin Wesselby, Director, Pleiades Sector Intelligence Group, sat in the fore-cabin of the admiral’s palatial stateroom on the dreadnought LSS Rubicon, waiting for the commander in chief of PLESEC to see her—waiting with every appearance of outward calm. Her thin, rather sharp-featured face betrayed no particular emotion; her hands, clasped in her lap over the sealed folio she’d brought along, were not tense; her eyes—sometimes light blue but now a wintry gray—revealed a keen, indomitable intelligence and nothing else beyond a cold and wholly professional determination.

  She had been waiting much longer than she expected, given the CinC’s summons—over twenty minutes—but Admiral Hamish Burton was closeted with his chief of staff and Vice Admiral Tymon Murphy, CO of Third Fleet, along with the latter’s flag lieutenant. Whatever they were discussing, it was taking quite a bit more time than anticipated, and that gave Trin a fair indication of what it must be. So she continued to maintain her relaxed attitude, even though she was expending every erg of her formidable self-control to do it.

  The turmoil writhing internally had three main components or strands that twisted about each other but remained largely independent. The first was the probable cause of this summons, which was not routine. The word had been out on the whisper-nets for some time that Admiral Burton intended to retire this quarter, and would soon be transferring to an advisory post on Mars in anticipation of that event. His likely successor as CinC, or so the nets opined, was Admiral Benedict Martin, currently CO of Grand Fleet.

  Trin did not know Admiral Martin; they’d never met. He had a good reputation, but Grand Fleet was primarily a prestige posting. The fleet itself was somewhat anomalous: although attached to SOLCOM, its task groups were sent on rotation to the other fleets to serve as replacement forces, or given duties in uninhabited systems about the League’s periphery. This had resulted in a number of nicknames, such as the “Wandering Fleet,” and the “Albatrosses” (because they were always hanging about somebody’s neck), and the observation that Sol now had one home fleet, and one homeless fleet. In consequence (these witticisms aside), the talents required of Grand Fleet’s CO were much more in the administrative than operational line, and Martin had not seen action since he’d been a battleship captain in the first League-Halith war over twenty-five years ago.

  This concerned Trin deeply because of the revelations contained in the folio she was doing her best not to clench her hands over. This was the second strand: things were stirring in Halith. Jerome, the former proconsul, was certain to be “reelected” in a matter of weeks; the onerous restrictions on Halith rearming were being covertly ignored; disquieting communications had been noted between various Halith agents and other suspicious actors, including the Emir of Ivoria and possibly even the Bannermans. And worst of all for her peace of mind, no one outside Trin’s private circle knew any of this.

  No one knew it because, in the months before the Battle of Wogan’s Reef, Trin, leading a special and unacknowledged group of analysts, had scored a spectacular coup. Using information fortuitously recovered from a captured Halith warship, Trin’s people had managed to crack one of the most secure Halith command nets. This accomplishment contributed greatly to the victory at Wogan’s Reef, but it also uncovered something of equal magnitude but opposite sign: the Halith had compromised the CEF encryption system known as Admiralty B. Admiralty B was used to coordinate operations between sector headquarters and subordinate commands, and the ability to read it was certainly a major factor in Halith’s stunning success during the first year of the war.

  The discovery confirmed what Trin and a handful of others had already suspected: there was a Halith mole operating high up in the League’s government. For this reason, the information about both Admiralty B and Trin’s code-breaking feat was withheld from all but an extremely select group. That group did not include, as far as Trin knew, Hamish Burton.

  Fleet Admiral Lian Narses, currently CNO, was a member of this group, as was her predecessor, John Carlos Westover, and Trin’s former boss, Admiral PrenTalien. When Westover resigned over the Bannermans (that notorious slave state) being welcomed into the League’s fold with only weak assurances they’d mend their ways and PrenTalien had followed suit, it set off a major reshuffling of the CEF’s high command that elevated both Burton and Narses to their current positions.

  By rights, Narses should have told Burton on his promotion, but Narses was probably the most closed-mouth and grim-lipped flag officer in the Navy. The CEF’s oldest serving admiral, Trin felt she trusted no one and was an avid follower of Wellington’s dictum that if he thought his hair knew what his brain was thinking, he’d shave it off. Trin and Narses were not on friendly terms, but they shared a healthy respect for one another; respect which, in Narses’ case, did not extend to Admiral Burton—or (Trin strongly suspected) to his putative succor.

  All this put Trin on the horns of an impossible dilemma. When Trin had worked for PrenTalien and Westover was CNO, they’d been accustomed to giving her free reign. The two men were old, old friends and Trin had been with PrenTalien for years—close enough, in some ways, to almost be family. She did not share that degree of trust with Burton, still less with Narses, and while she was sure of her conclusions, defending them meant revealing her methods much more widely than was in any degree comfortable. Further, her data were not ironclad. In the year since Trin’s group had broken the Halith codes, changes had eroded their ability to decrypt messages. At this point, a high degree of intuition was involved and Narses, even though she knew the source, would never stand for that.

  Burton, who had long served under PrenTalien as Third Fleet CO, might take it on faith, but Burton was leaving. Vice Admiral Murphy, though likely sympathetic, was too junior and given his aggressive reputation, too politically unpopular to be of use. (He’d attempted to resign when PrenTalien stepped down, but the “Old Man” had talked him out of it.) Martin was a complete cypher.

  Added to all this was the third strand, which Trin dreaded most: that she might be out of a job. Only a commander (albei
t a senior one), she’d been filling a captain’s billet for over a two and a half years, and practically speaking for three. Westover’s resignation had delayed her impending promotion, and now the rumor was that Martin intended to install his own intelligence chief, Captain Frank Latham. Trin did know Latham. Technically, he was an excellent analyst but a diffident and cautious man: the very model of peacetime, go-along-to-get-along intelligence officer.

  The deep irony of playing a Cassandra on a station named Cassandra was not lost on Trin, nor was the fact she likely faced the mythical Cassandra’s fate, if only professionally, as soon as the door to Burton’s day-cabin finally opened and she was invited in.

  That door finally did open, to emit Admiral Murphy’s flag lieutenant followed by the admiral himself, looking tolerably grim. The admiral gave Trin a nod as he passed, which she returned. The gesture might have signified most anything and before Trin had a moment to contemplate it, there was Captain Satterly, Burton’s chief of staff, beckoning to her.

  Satterly allowed the entry to close behind Trin, leaving her alone with Admiral Burton. The protocol of such private meetings forbade saluting, and Burton stood up to invite her to a seat. As she took it, he sagged back into his chair, the semblance of a smile on his rather soft, washed-out features. Hamish Burton was a good, steady fleet commander, excellent on defense and skilled at administration, but he was less suited to the role of commander in chief, and she noted with regret, as she always did, how much the position had aged him. The amiable spark in his pleasant blue eyes that had given his face a look of animation in former years was now quite extinguished, but the smile remained and Trin waited, sitting upright, well forward in the chair, to see what lay behind it.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Commander,” he began, opening a drawer of the massive, ornately figured oaken desk that seemed, in Trin’s private view, to have almost entombed him. “And I shall not lay an insult on that injury by taking up any more of your time than necessary. As you are aware, I’m leaving this station—the formal announcement will be made this PM—and Admiral Martin arrives in the next duty cycle to assume command. With that in view, I hope you do not mind a certain lack of ceremony.”