So three hours later found him nursing a tepid beer and ignoring a basket of chips in one of the several bars on the cosmodrome’s main concourse, and mulling over his relationship with Kris. His mind presented it in no order but as a tangled collection of threads like imperfectly recorded video tracks: some still sharp, some just mere impressions, and having not just a temporal dimension but multiple layers—a folded strata that his mind’s eye could nowhere fully grasp. Prodded, it would relinquish this memory or that one: the green in her eyes when they made love; her startling ability to give herself so completely at some times; a blank reserve that left him groping at others. How her sleeping face transformed when dreams left her alone; the bad nights when they didn’t: the cries, the names, the shattered details he wished he’d never heard. The way she roused but never woke, holding onto him with desperate strength, or curled tight and lashing out with animal rage if he came near. Waking to anger, recriminations—forcing himself to step away, to leave her be—regrets, apologies. Gingerly feeling their way back together; the joy when things would click again.
The need to navigate this shifting landscape where the gulfs between the Terran and Outworlder—the son of one of the most prominent families in existence and a former slave so obscure her birth date itself was a fiction contrived for official convenience—would suddenly yawn wide. The growing strains of peace: the huntress pacing a gilded cage while her rightful prey ran free; the claustrophobia-inducing sky cutting her off from her natural element; the vexing puzzles presented by sudden access to wealth and privilege . . .
And yet love growing in this strange unpromising ground.
He remembered most particularly the freezing winter night he showed her the constellation of Orion for the first time. At 2 AM, the Hunter was already knee-deep in a band of gossamer cloud luminous with moon glow at the western horizon. The great nebula that marked the boundary of the Halith core systems was just barely visible to the naked eye, and he thought of the change in her breathing as she perceived it, the predatory look that came across her face—so different than when she looked out at dawn one morning and recognized the Pleiades rising in the east. Nedaema was there: the Homeworld where they’d spent some months after they had first met; where she’d taken her first flying lessons—where she had first known Mariwen . . .
“Hey, boss!”
Hearing the familiar cry, Huron looked up to see the lank form of Lieutenant Commander Geoff N’Komo sauntering down the breeze way. The Belter came up, a spreading smile on his narrow features and clapped Huron on the shoulder while catching his right hand in a bone-crushing grip the long thin hands did not looking capable of delivering. But Huron had been friends with Geoff since they were at the Academy together and had long since learned not to wince at these enthusiastic greetings.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, surreptitiously flexing his hand.
“Just passin’ through.” N’Komo beamed. “Goddamn, they got the shit in stir out there! Y’know what the hell all’s up?”
“Just got in myself,” Huron answered, glancing around. N’Komo had a rather high-pitched voice and it carried. “By the way, congratulations.” He nodded at the wing commander tabs on Geoff’s collar. Geoff had spent the last few months as a flight trainer back on Mars, and he’d heard about his friend’s new post before he left.
“Oh? These?” Geoff looked down, tucking his lantern jaw in. “Yeah. How the hell did I let ’em talk me into this job? Like being a fuckin’ cat herder. You don’t need a wingman, d’ya?”
Huron flashed his staff badge.
“Oh. I guess not. Well—hey, I gotta booth waiting for me at Bronski’s. What say we improve our leisure hours with a bottle or three.” He frowned at the look that flitted across Huron’s face. “You ain’t stopped drinkin’—have ya?”
Huron snorted. “Hell ain’t that cold.” He took out his xel and rechecked his messages. “Gimme five to dust these off and I’ll be along.”
* * *
Bronski’s was a meager-looking establishment of eight tables and a long bar, situated on the ground floor of a hostelry with a different and unimportant name, since the sign for Bronski’s dominated the building; just one of a myriad such concerns that lined the access route connecting Tremontaine with its cosmodrome. Outwardly, the place was undistinguished in the extreme and few people ate there more than once. That is, ate in the publicly accessible front room. The real Bronski’s was the huge backroom, which lay behind the imposing locked door at the end of the bar and was reserved strictly for SRF flight officers and crews, as it had been for over half a century.
Bronski had been a crew chief on the old Midway, and on inheriting from his father, Old Bronski, a small eatery off the lobby of what was then the Baltomere Arms, he’d retired and used his 3x20 length-of-service bonus to buy the entire ground floor, which he turned into a private club for flight officers and the men and women who kept them flying. While he was still alive, Bronski would post old-style flat-photos of himself with regulars on the walls of the cramped booths and the glass case inside the entrance was littered with various decorations and old curling flimsies, along with a few souvenirs of dubious origin.
A good number of the surviving men and women in the photos wore captain’s braid now, or had even made admiral, thereby losing their place in this cherished watering hole: captains were admitted only by special invitation and no one with a star under any circumstances. Now that a cousin ran the place not all of Bronski’s traditions had survived, but that one was still strictly enforced.
Another tradition that had not changed was the lousy food. The menu had never had more than nine items on it and Huron personally believed that—apart from the Monte Cristo sandwich—not even the kitchen staff could tell them apart. They were all uniformly greasy, contained the same unidentifiable lumps in the same unappetizing sauce, and all came buried under the same mound of deep-fried sweet potato wedges. The sweet potato wedges were at least edible and you could get as many as you wanted, as long as you kept drinking.
Huron was nibbling them now, while N’Komo filled both their glasses with one of the curious liquors that were Bronski’s raison d’être. How exactly these liquors were acquired was shrouded in mystery as were, sometimes, the liquors themselves. There was no list. The wait staff, most of them looking almost as old the establishment itself, directed carts through the maze of tables and booths and when queried, announced what was on them in anything from a low mumble to something not far from a gundeck bellow.
The cart jockey N’Komo had gotten this bottle from was a mumbler, so all Huron knew about what was being poured was what he could decipher from the remnants of the label, which amounted to the name Standerdown. Standerdown was the principle port of Lodestone Station, a notorious smuggler’s haunt, so the bottle could have come from just about anywhere.
Huron was less adventurous about his alcohol these days, and he was perfectly happy to let N’Komo go first.
N’Komo had gone first, with enthusiasm, and aside from a minor twitch after the initial glass was down, seemed to be bearing up pretty well. Now he was watching intently as he drizzled a final few milliliters into the glass from two feet above the table, saying something about oxygenation.
Huron picked up the drink, which was a strange silvery green and smelled faintly of anise and creosote, and tasted it while he tried to regain a handle on their conversation. His chance meeting with Kris had ruffled his composure more than he was willing to admit and the message that had come through from her just before he encountered Geoff had brought those feelings back with renewed vigor. All the more so because with Leander gone deep, there was no point in trying to reply. Assuming that he even should reply. That was a question he hadn’t yet resolved.
“ . . . learned the secret of why they rotate us home into those goddamn training billets.” N’Komo set the bottle down a touch harder than necessary.
Huron, who’d taught Advanced Combat Maneuvering at the CEF Academy,
sipped again. He’d had worse. “How’s that?”
“Cuz after four months of trying to get these fuckin’ idjits to straighten up and fly right, you really wanna kill something.”
Huron laughed, being careful not to spill the drink. God knows what this stuff would do if let loose from containment.
“Speaking o’ which”—Geoff made a wide gesture with his glass—“what’s this I saw about Kris on the Boards a few days ago? She lit up a stealth can?”
Huron nodded and Geoff listened with rapt attention as Rafe related the details he knew. “Got a bad case of wing burn out of it. Re-gen won’t take—she’s on the walking-wounded list,” he finished, referring to what was officially medical semi-active status. “Lost Tanner. Basmartin ended up in bad way, too.”
“They were friends of hers, weren’t they?”
“Studymates at the Academy.”
“Ah shit.” N’Komo set down the drink and gave his head a slow heavy shake. “That’s the worst. Give her my best when ya see her, okay?”
“I’ll do that.” Huron paused as N’Komo was monitoring the progress of the nearest cart. “I don’t see her all that often anymore, though.”
N’Komo looked back into his friend’s face, read and reread the signs of tension he’d first noticed when they ran into each other that PM. “Oh hell. I’m sorry, boss. How long?”
“Gone past five months now.”
“Goddammit.” Geoff looked down and pushed his glass around on the table. “Y’know, me and the boys weren’t quite ready to break out the saber arch for you two yet but we were thinkin’ . . .” He stopped, lifted his glass and tossed the shot back. “Goddammit.”
Huron smiled inwardly at N’Komo’s frank open honest distress—it was pure Belter. Pinned their hearts on their sleeves, the whole damn lot of them.
“Well, y’know how it can be. Such a thing as being too careful—you get tight when you need to let it run and she flames out on you. Nothing to do then but try drop it on the softest patch you can find and hope you live through the burn.”
“Yeah.” Geoff waved down a cart jockey. “She’s a jewel, that girl. Bit rough ’round the edges maybe, but pure through.” As the cart sidled up, he pointed at a squat dark brown bottle on the bottom tier. The jockey assumed a superior expression and held up five fingers. Geoff displayed three. The jockey shook his head, all five fingers unmoved. Geoff emphasized his offer with a single finger from his other hand. The jockey scowled, surrendered the bottle, put two new glass on the table with as little grace as he could manage and limped away.
“You oughta like this. Tethys bourbon. They make in the caves—nanofiber distillation. Fifteen years old.”
“Tethys—that’s an ECA. One of the Aten group, right?”
“Yep. Three orbits. The temperature change from aphelion to perihelion is supposed to do somethin’ special. Try it.”
He did. It was unusually thick and started out unusually smooth, a deep smoky flavor with a hint of sweetness that concealed a kick that actually fogged his vision. “Son of a bitch.”
“Told’ja you’d like it. Mix it with coffee sometime.”
“I’ll add it to my list.”
“Just don’t go ruining the market, okay? They only make a coupla hunnerd cases of this stuff. Tethys is a dinky asteroid.” Geoff raised his glass. “Still . . . All is not lost, right?”
Huron saluted him with the bourbon. “Not while there’s still air to breath.”
“Fuel in the red,” Geoff began.
“Guns in the green,” Huron added.
“Enemy by the balls”—as one.
“All good.” The glasses clinked.
Two: Honor and Policy II
Day 162
Supreme Staff HQ, Halevirdon
Halith Evandor, Orion Spur
Halith Supreme Staff Headquarters was one of the three large building complexes, collectively known as the Citadel, that dominated the Old City, as the center of Halevirdon, the Dominion’s capital, was known. It occupied the east leg of the trapezoid that was Turabian Square, seven hectares in which the original architects had gone to painstaking lengths to reconstruct a deciduous Terran woodland. It was doubtful that any native of Earth would have recognized it as such then or especially now, as for more than a century native species had been allowed to intrude and resume their rightful place. The outcome was not, however, without its charms and the woods of Turabian Square were among the Old City’s primary attractions, along with the Legistry Buildings housing the huge complex of ministry offices along west leg of the trapezoid, and St. Gregor’s Palace, a huge imposing edifice that commanded the southern face.
Not so Supreme Staff Headquarters. The elegant original buildings reflected the neo-gothic tastes of Halith’s early imperial period but during the last civil war great slab-sided fortifications had been thrown up, obscuring much of the old structure. Subsequent attempts to redeem this strictly martial ugliness, coming as they did in the midst of some of the more unfortunate fads in Halith architecture, had resulted in an incongruous mixture of onion domes and minarets cluttering the embankments; both ill-conceived and not very well executed.
Admiral Caneris, stepping out on to the wide portico of the main building’s west entrance at dusk, disliked the complex intensely. Not only did he find consider it bloated and ridiculous, but Jerome Paul Augustus, now Proconsul again and ruling alone in defiance of custom , was carrying out yet another renovation, better thought out than the last—Caneris has seen the models—but damned inconvenient all the same. Hoards of workmen and their mechanical assistants swarmed over the place, making a horrid din, filling the air with dust and the stench of solvents, disrupting the lifts, disrupting the power, stripping the walls of whatever comfort they had afforded, leaving the interior a cheerless ferrocrete hulk.
Even so exalted a person as Caneris was not immune from dislocation. He’d found his office temporarily removed to a utilitarian suite on the north side of the compound while his original rooms were stripped, walls ripped out, lighting changed, and new electronics rigged. It was not that Caneris objected to utilitarian surroundings—on the whole he preferred them and had circumstances allowed would have spent his time at Naval Headquarters proper, a thousand kilometers away at the Haslar Cosmodrome and utilitarian to a fault—but that he liked them tidy.
As his security detail moved quickly to take up positions around the portico’s periphery Caneris paused. His driver waited below in the armored groundcar, four more guards ready by the doors, one of the younger ones absently stroking his holstered weapon. Caneris took note of that; he did not like it. He had no use for a green sort in his bodyguards—overzealous or high-strung or both. He would speak to his security chief and have the man replaced.
These distractions kept him from immediately noticing the balding man of middle height coming up the steps at a brisk trot. His men had already seen him—had located, identified, and tracked his car halfway across the park—and they touched their caps as he approached. Caneris saw him at last and stepped forward, offering his hand.
“Marcus Eusebius, I am glad to see you.”
“Joaquin,” the other man said, taking Caneris’ hand in both of his and shaking it vigorously. Marcus Eusebius Danilov had the rather imprecise title of Assistant Undersecretary to the Director of Research in the Office of Interstellar Security, itself under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In reality, he ran the ministry’s counterintelligence directorate, an organization separate from the counterintelligence offices in the Imperial Research & Intelligence Service (IRIS) and the Ministry of Public Security, and rather more secretive than either. Danilov owed his position to his ability to make himself indispensable to his superiors while maintaining the demeanor of a faceless bureaucrat, something he did very well. He and Caneris were old friends.
“I had hoped to catch you,” Danilov said. “I was concerned you might have left already.”
“Not for some time, I’m afraid,” Caneris said. �
��Things drag on, as they always do.” Caneris did not add that he thought it great nonsense recalling all senior commanders to the Capital for the nine-day Celebration of the Founder’s Birthday and keeping them here for weeks in a kind of Babylonian captivity—endless meetings by day and a wide (and expensive) variety of entertainments by night—especially in the middle of a war. But these rituals of loyalty had to be observed, particularly now, however disruptive they might be to field operations.
“Perhaps I can offer some cheer,” Danilov said. “Have you plans for dinner?”
“No,” replied Caneris. “I thought to dine in town. There is a reception at Madame DeLeon’s later this evening—she has some new additions to her sculpture garden, perhaps you have seen them already—and I intend to be fashionably late.” This reception, among the first round of loyalty rituals (the lady in question was the Defense Minister’s First Mistress), was also expected to be one of the most pleasant. Madame DeLeon had excellent taste and was not at all stingy about sharing it with her guests.
“Will the Proconsul being attending?”
“He did not mention it, and I rather doubt it.” It wasn’t the Proconsul’s habit to appear at these feats until later in the week, probably not until the Information Minister’s ball, as Danilov knew very well.
“In that case, I thought I might ask you to dine with me at Lepenski’s. My treat. It should not be too far out of your way—you said you wanted to be fashionably late.” Lepenski Vir was an old and exclusive establishment located on the shores of Lake Vann, overlooking the Haslar Cosmodrome. Caneris was a member, by virtue of his old and distinguished bloodline, and Danilov by virtue of his unique position.
Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit Page 18