Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “And then?” Silent seconds stretched tensely as he stowed his equipment without answering. “Synthetics?” she prompted.

  “Well I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he evaded. “There’s nothing in your rejection profile that says a different therapy—”

  Her look nailed him to the bulkhead. “No bullshit, please.”

  He spread his hands helplessly. “Look, you need to talk to Dr. Einhorn.” Her eyes continued to pin him. He squirmed. “There ain’t anything else I can tell you, Lieutenant.”

  She slid her gaze down to the useless appendage hanging from her shoulder like so much dead meat. She took her left wrist in her right hand and put it in her lap. The tech watched, his shoulders twitching uncomfortably. “Dr. Einhorn’s gonna be back in half an hour. You really should—”

  “No.” She reached for the uniform pieces piled on the end of the examination bunk. “Just help me get this shit back on, will ya?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Day 162

  Weyland Station

  Vesta, Eltanin Sector

  “Commander, you must wake up now.”

  Words, delivered in a deep liquid accent, wrenched Kris out of a tangle of chaotic dreams: dreams where Mariwen was whole and happy; where she and Huron weren’t always pushing each other’s buttons; where . . . oh fuck that. She groaned and cranked one eye open a slit. The solar glare of the cabin lights burned in and she tried to drag an arm over her face but the arm wouldn’t drag although she knew she was lifting it, could feel it moving, and someone was shaking her—goddamn them anyway—and that voice with the absurd Homeworlder accent was bellowing in her ear, “Commander, you must wake up.”

  Kris pressed her good hand to her painful forehead and blinked. Why was it so damned bright in here? Her throat was clogged and she hawked to clear it.

  “Who the hell are you?” The question came out in pieces, broken by the phlegm in her throat.

  “Tech-Corporal Maralena senn Vasquez Montero y Domanova, ma’am.” A strong and very capable hand grabbed her biceps and pulled Kris into a sitting position.

  “‘Zat so.” Vertigo clamped her temples and she dug the fingers on her good hand into the supporting forearm. The muscles in that forearm felt like cable. What the hell was a marine corporal from the Homeworlds doing here anyway? In her cabin? “What the hell are you doing here Mari—Elaine san . . .”

  “senn Vasquez Montero y Domanova. And it’s Maralena, ma’am.”

  “Right.” Kris hunched over, forcing her throbbing head down to her knees. “What’s that short for, Corporal?”

  “Vasquez, ma’am.”

  “Fine.” Kris let go of Vasquez’s arm to clamp her hand over the most painful part of her skull—the part that was about to explode. “So what are you doing here, Vasquez?”

  “I’m the Commander’s orderly, ma’am. And I’m to look after the Commander’s arm.” There was a pause in the corporal’s voice, almost hinting at sympathy. “I’m a certified NST and trauma tech. Captain Hatton assigned me.”

  It had slipped Kris’s mind that as a Lieutenant Commander—even a jumped-up one—she was entitled to an orderly. A privilege of rank that she was in no condition to appreciate.

  “May I suggest that the Commander shake a leg, ma’am?”

  Kris dragged a pillow onto her knees and buried her face into it. Into its cottony bulk, she muttered, “Why?”

  “Because the Commander has twenty-five minutes to meet the shuttle at Pier 19.”

  Sweet fucking Christ! Iona!

  “Does the Commander need assistance, ma’am?”

  “Stop calling me ‘the Commander’ dammit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with me?”

  “Just aftereffects of the axonopthic tuning procedure. It gets better after the first few times.”

  “Fucking great. Help me up, will you?”

  Vasquez lifted her easily and held her a moment as she swayed. Then she staggered to the head to find an analgesic and to try to get her writhing stomach under control. When she was finally sure she wasn’t going to puke, she groped in the single cabinet until she found a vial of standard-issue painkillers and swallowed four of them without water. Only then did she begin to think about how she’d get into a fresh uniform and have her kit packed in time.

  She needn’t have worried. Vasquez had it all laid out on the impeccably made bunk when Kris limped back into the cabin. Watching the corporal work with the swift efficiency of someone who’d packed thousands of kits under circumstances worse than having to deal with one newly promoted lieutenant commander with a paralyzed arm and splitting headache, Kris was struck by the incongruity of Vasquez’s appearance. She looked to be about twenty, give or take a year.

  Kris was not surprised since Vasquez was clearly a rejuvenant: her skin, which was the color of fine tawny caramel, made that clear, and probably one of the lucky ones whose genes allowed them to start treatments right after puberty. Mariwen was the only other rejuvenant she’d ever met—where Kris came from all they had was postpausal geriatrics—and being assigned a marine corporal who was an adolescent rejuvenant struck her as distinctly weird.

  Kris was surprised at how short Vasquez was. Perversely, she wondered if it might be a consequence of the treatments being applied so young—she’d heard they were sometimes tricky. She had no intention was asking however, because as short as Vasquez was, she was anything but delicate. Her shoulders stressed the fabric of her service khakis every time she bent, and the muscles that slid and coiled beneath the shirt suggested tremendous raw power, but power schooled by grace. The certain kind of grace that was achieved only through decades of a particular type of training. Kris bit her lip as it began to occur to her just how unusual this short marine was. And there was more than that—there was something strangely familiar about her.

  “Should I know you from somewhere, Vasquez?”

  Vasquez shook her head, stirring her mink-rich hair. She kept it short and dramatically styled, swept back from the forehead and drawn into points at the ears and the nape of the neck. It made Kris think of an arboreal predator raised for its pelt—an impression, she reflected, probably not all that inaccurate.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Antigua, ma’am.”

  That had been obvious from the accent. Antigua was an old Latinate settlement, famous for being fiercely protective of its Terran roots. The planet was even still officially monolingual. She wondered why Vasquez was being coy.

  “I meant what outfit are you from.”

  “The 101st under General Perry, ma’am.”

  The 101st was an elite special operations brigade: the Strike Rangers. Kris knew their brigade sergeant major, Fyodor Mikhailovich Tal Yu (he answered to the name of Fred). He’d been her drill instructor at the Academy. She stared hard at the corporal—as hard as her headache would allow.

  “Wait a sec. Are you that Vasquez? The three-time all-forces unarmed combat champion?”

  “Five,” Vasquez corrected with just the edge of a smile on her high cheekboned young face. “Five-time all-forces unarmed combat champion.”

  Kris swore inwardly. Fred Yu was a three-time champion and the only other person to win the title more than twice. Vasquez had beaten him in the finals for her third title. But this bit of trivia aside, Yu and Vasquez were charter members of Covert Action Team 5, the CEF’s premier spec-ops unit. CAT were platoon-sized units, each consisting of three sections, one which was always ready for deployment, while the other two were undergoing training or assigned to perform other duties within their regiment or brigade. It was not impossible that a CAT “on the bench” (as the saying went) would be assigned as orderly to an officer on a diplomatic mission, but that tended to imply things—probably more than tended—that Kris was in no shape to contemplate at the moment.

  Instead, Kris’s thoughts were more occupied with the fact while she’d never me
t the corporal, she had once come within a gnat’s ass of getting her killed. While at the Academy, Kris had accompanied CAT 5 on an op to capture Nestor Mankho and, acting with blind stupidity, had fucked the op, gotten a teammate killed, lost Mankho and put Vasquez, who had infiltrated Mankho’s base of operations, in a whatever’s worse than mortal danger.

  And Vasquez certainly knew that.

  God damn, son of a bitch . . .

  Vasquez schooled the smile off her full pretty lips and held out Kris’s silver-trimmed black dress tunic; her second-best rig and suitable to meet the Envoy in. “Your uniform, ma’am.”

  Shoving those thoughts as far back as they would go, Kris asked, “How much time do I have?”

  “Under fifteen minutes, ma’am.”

  “Alright.” Kris’s mouth twisted in a wry-sour expression. “Help me on with this, will ya?”

  With the barest acknowledging nod, Vasquez helped her strip and jammed her into the fancy uniform with quick, ruthless efficiency. Kris clamped her jaw tight at the treatment; in her position there was nothing she could do about it but bitch and at this late hour bitching was worse than futile. But she was damn well gonna dress herself in the future, no matter how long it took.

  Vasquez sealed the front of the coat with a practiced motion and clipped Kris’s useless left wrist to the tractor on her ceremonial white baldric. “I have your kit all ready, ma’am.” She nodded at the bulging duffel now by the entry hatch, leaning against another that must be Vasquez’s own.

  “Thanks.” The pharmaceuticals were beginning to take effect and Kris could almost stand up straight now. She stepped to the hatch and reached for her bag strap but Vasquez neatly took it out from under her. She swung the bag easily over one shoulder and picked up the other before Kris could react. With her free hand, Vasquez palmed open the door and stood aside, waiting on Kris. “After you, ma’am,” she prompted.

  Empty handed and cheeks burning, Kris stepped into the passageway.

  Vasquez had no trouble keeping up with Kris down the passageway. Although she wasn’t exactly moving at full speed yet, Kris suspected that Vasquez would have kept up at a dead run, even with those two forty-kilo duffel bags slung from her shoulders.

  She quirked a glance down at the sleek little corporal. It was ironic to think that this short woman carrying her baggage was everywhere in the League her social superior, enjoying a wealth of privileges and prerogatives that Kris couldn’t even apply for until she retired. The thought made her grimace—irony didn’t mix well with her headache.

  “Problem, ma’am?”

  Kris hadn’t noticed the deep chocolate eyes looking up at her. “No.”

  “The dock, ma’am” Vasquez said, nodding towards the tube junction Kris had walked past. Shaking her head, Kris followed Vasquez into the ladder well, catching a moving rung down to the hanger deck.

  The transfer shuttle was absorbing its first passengers when they emerged from the ladder hatch onto the vast expanse of the dock. Fortunately, Pier 19 was one of the closest of the piers that handled small craft, and today the port admiral had left the blast walls retracted so they could cut straight across. The polished crysteel deck plate shimmered silvery mauve, purpling their reflections as they hurried toward the end of the line.

  A docking siren sounded, and Kris looked up to see the blunt nose of another shuttle poke through the aperture of the pier’s No.4 bay. The shuttle glided through the big pressure lock, cradled by a tractor beam that lowered it deftly into the deck clamps. Crews scrambled to secure it while lift-loaders maneuvered several large cargo pallets into position to be taken aboard. Swarms of techs were plugged into two other boats, and at the far end of the dock’s ordinance teams were processing a newly arrived batch of munitions into a ramped cargo lighter.

  Kris scowled at all activity. Far too much was going on for it to be considered a routine day at the office. Something hot was on-line and Kris hungered to know what it was.

  A group of officers who’d been waiting apart turned from watching the new shuttle settle into its clamps and Kris recognized the tall lean form at the center of the group. She checked the time and turned to Vasquez. “Wait five, okay?”

  Vasquez controlled a frown and dipped her head. “Yes, ma’am. Five minutes.” The words were addressed mostly to her back because she was already jogging across the deck.

  “Commander!” she called out and Huron stepped out as he noticed her.

  “Lieutenant,” he said, acknowledging her perfunctory salute before he noticed her new lieutenant commander’s bars. “Commander, that is. Congratulations.” His smile of greeting was perfectly pleasant, but nothing more. Kris brought herself to halt a few feet in front of him.

  “You too.” She’d seen Huron’s promotion to commander on the Boards last month. He’d been serving as group leader on the light carrier Bellerophon, a sure sign of bigger things soon to come, and the latest rumors were that those things had just arrived. “I—ah—didn’t expect to see you here. I thought you got group leader on Thermopylae.”

  “Me too.” Huron looked uncharacteristically harassed. “But I got a priority call this AM. Yanked my ass right outta the sack and dragged me here for a brief. Told me I’m assigned to ELSEC HQ. Now I’m on my way back to log my separation and—if I’m lucky—get breakfast.”

  “Thermopylae’s here?” The last fleet update she’d seen had the big carrier still in Regulus.

  “Yep. Still in a parking orbit while they get a bed ready. Trafalgar’s due in late this PM.”

  Both carriers had been pulled back to ELSEC? And nothing on the Boards yet? What the hell was going on?

  Huron indicated her uniform. “You look like you’re on your way somewhere.”

  Kris rolled her eyes at him. “Iona. Eight weeks dogging diplomats. I’ve been attached to the Mission.”

  Huron gave her an odd calculating look. “Loews’ Mission?”

  “Yeah. I’m catching a packet to Leander in about four minutes. Huron, what’s really going on with Iona?” She glanced around at the carefully ordered chaos of the dock. “Does it have anything to do with all this? We must have a hot date somewhere.”

  Huron’s eyes quirked down and right, the corner of his mouth going with them. He answered with well-schooled blandness, “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Rafe. Hatton’s making this diplomatic shit sound like a dockyard holiday—lay back, watch your mouth, pick up a cheap jump in rank. Doesn’t make sense. We broke off negotiations with Iona months ago. Loews’ a senatorial heavy, isn’t he? Order of whatshername—”

  “Katherine.”

  “Yeah. Why does Hatton want me to get on Leander all smiley-eyed when he got me a babysitter who could make any four of us into pretzels for breakfast.”

  “Who’s that?

  Kris jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Look.”

  Huron did, and spotted the short dark-haired corporal tossing their baggage onto a loading pallet. “Vasquez?”

  “The one and only. Doesn’t that say anything to you?”

  “Have I ever mentioned you have a suspicious nature?”

  “Of course, you haven’t—it’s not polite. Come on, Huron, don’t play hard to get. That’s not polite either. What’s really going on out there?” She tossed her head toward the vastness outside the pressure locks.

  A cross edge crept into Huron’s voice. “Look Kris, I really don’t know anything and if I did I couldn’t talk about it. You know that.”

  “Yeah . . . Okay.” She looked down at her boot tips and bit her lip. “It’s this fuckin’ arm. Re-gen won’t take. The docs wanna fit me with synthetics, so now they’re out to RIF me on a medical. Over a goddamn tinfoil nervous system.”

  “I’m sorry about the arm, Kris.” He softened for the first time. “Sorry about Tanner and Baz too. I know how close you were.” His hand reached out but stopped an inch from hers. “How’s Baz doing?”

  Kris glanced around the busy deck once more. “He’s .
. . alive.”

  “He’s in good hands, Kris. He’ll pull through. Kenzie won’t have it any other way.”

  “Uh huh.” Then, a heartbeat later. “She came in yesterday. We—um . . . His folks’ll be here this day-cycle and . . .”

  “I think that’s your call,” he said in the silence. “You need a hand with anything?”

  Looking back, she saw her number flashing on the boarding display. “No. All good.”

  “Alright. I’m glad you’re in such capable hands, too.”

  “Thanks . . .” Her voice trailed off. It was difficult to tell if he was being his usual snide self or if he really meant it. She took in a hard breath and let it go. “Well . . . best of fortune, Commander.”

  “You too, Kris.” He held out a hand; she took it briefly—a quick shake before he turned and walked away. Kris watched his back until Vasquez came up behind her to announce their final boarding call.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” she asked, “is that Commander Huron?”

  “Yeah,” Kris muttered distractedly.

  “You know him?”

  Kris was oddly gratified to hear Vasquez sound impressed. “Yeah. You could say we’ve met.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Day 162

  Tremontaine

  Vesta, Eltanin Sector

  Six hours later, after Thermopylae had nuzzled its way into its five-hundred meter berth at Weyland Station and been properly bedded down, Huron was in the first group off the ship. It being just before the end of the Afternoon watch (1600 local), he had time to report to the duty officer and receive an updated copy of his orders. The message he’d received was a little vague, and he’d held out some hope he’d be assigned to Lo Gai. Before the war, he’d been Lo Gai’s operations officer, and a similar post would keep him somewhat close to the action. But the order confirmed his worst fears: he had been assigned PrenTalien, under G3.2, the planning section. As much as he admired the “Old Man”, he was being sidelined again, which meant something hot was definitely on-line, and this did nothing to soothe his already unsettled temper.

  As they’d allowed him a Vestan day to get settled before reporting (that was 28 hours), he caught the next shuttle down to Tremontaine. His accommodations were all set: KKHR had offices here, as it did on most of the major colonies, and his family maintained a suite of apartments nearby. The staff had been alerted to his arrival when he left Epona—there was really nothing for him to do.