At the Academy, they taught the history as an example of the difference between legal and illegal orders, and how far an officer could go in opposing the duly elected government. Kris had never heard rumors of any retaliation over it.
“Was it?”
That shrug again. Then: “Ah, here it is!”
Min had found the last ingredient and Kris thought that shrug was the only answer she would get. But as Min squinted to pour precisely, she went on. “Anyone in the Service that popular makes a power of enemies. Anson’s Deep made things a lot worse in some quarters—can’t say there weren’t those who wanted some tarnish on that halo. Not that they got it.” She held the mixture to the light and made a satisfied sound. “Fleet Admiral Kasena resigned in protest, a couple of merchant houses went bust, and the Doms got their terms. Not sure it was exactly what you’d call justice though.”
Min hunted among the glasses as Kris recalled uncomfortably that the major, in addition to serving under Admiral Kiamura, was herself from Lodestone Station. She decided a change of subject was in order.
“So what part were you there for? At Anson’s Deep.”
“Cutting out of the Bolimov.” The taking of the Halith dreadnought Bolimov, the flagship of the Prince Vorland Fleet, was another of the major chapters in the epic cycle of Anson’s Deep—and more prosaically, a textbook illustration of the vulnerabilities of those huge powerful, and very expensive, ships to modern small-craft tactics. It did not surprise Kris one bit that Minerva Lewis had been part of it, and it seemed to Kris that she was one of those few who were destined or doomed, blessed or cursed, to always be in what was once called the thick of the fray: one of those for whom war was everything the ancient poets said it was, and the modern poets said it wasn’t. In that moment, Kris could not say which it might be—blessing or curse—but she felt a touch of envy nonetheless.
“You sure you wouldn’t like to try one of these?” Min came over with the pink concoction, now in a tall funnel-shaped glass. Up close, it smelled like cloves and the aftermath of a lightning strike, and reminded Kris all too much of something she’d ventured upon with Huron and a few of her wingmates just before the peace with spectacularly far-reaching consequences. It also made her wonder what the major had for stomach lining. She shook her head, with a polite smile.
“Ah well. No doubt that redounds to your credit.” Min settled into a chair, put her booted feet up next to Kris’s, sipped gingerly and closed her eyes.
“Do you have a name for that stuff, Major?”
“Nope,” Min answered, eyes still closed. She swirled the drink, then opened her eyes and watched the froth slide slowly down the inside of the glass. “A gunnery sergeant of the old Ninety-Eighth made this for me the AM of the battle. There I was, a new-minted second lieutenant on the brink of my first real action—a silly little convoy scrap was all I’d been in. Didn’t know my ass from a hot rock and so scared I pissed myself green.”
It was passing strange how the memory transformed Min’s features, Kris thought—something at once young and quite old; fierce and tender—and trying to imagine Minerva Lewis fearful, she could only shake her head.
“Poured this into me and assured me that I’d go and do my duty.” Min looked deep into the pink eddies. “Then about six hours later, on Bolimov, I was playing the fool and she caught a 10-mm round for me. With her sternum.” Min looked across at Kris with misty eyes. “Her name was Tallie Jones—Taliesin Lorena Jones. Damn fine woman—I miss her still. Service got the short end of the deal in that exchange, if you ask me.”
That made Kris blink and she looked down to hide it.
“So I mix this up once a year. Anson’s Day is all well and good, and I honor the Admiral’s memory for it, but it’s not the name of the day for me.”
~ ~ ~
Day 185
LSS Polidor, in free space
Iona, Cygnus Mariner
“Welcome, officers, rates, crew and honored guests.” Color Sergeant Ulloa’s unamplified voice rolled easily through Polidor’s hanger deck as he greeted the spectators for the exhibition match between Corporal Vasquez and Major Lewis. “Honored guests” was a bit of gloss, for it was actually honored guest: Lieutenant Anson, sitting next to Kris in the front row of seats surrounding the standard five-meter ring that had been erected for the match. Just how honored the lieutenant felt—or was meant to feel by his potential adversaries, should the talks fail—Kris had no idea, but he certainly looked happy: the gleeful expectancy of kid spotting a longed-for present on New Year’s Eve.
Kris, who didn’t follow the unarmed combat championships (a fact that would have condemned her to near-pariah status had it been generally known), had never seen the two women compete, and couldn’t say how likely it was that Lev Anson’s stratospheric expectations would be met. She feared he might come away disappointed. This was only an exhibition, after all, with nothing but pride on the line. On the other hand, Kris recalled the look in the major’s eye when she spoke about it, so maybe pride was enough.
Ulloa was speaking again, outlining the match rules, which amounted to little more than saying they would obey the “customs usual for such bouts”—whatever that meant. He went on to explain that the match would be fought to seven falls, or two bells, whichever came first, and two rest periods would be allowed, on the referees’ sole discretion. These rest periods, he added, would be 30 seconds each. Kris was attempting a reconcile the notion of “rest” with a 30-second break and the fact that only two would be allowed in a match that might potentially last an hour, when Ulloa closed with a request for quiet as the bout was on-going: no encouragement, advice, applause or commentary.
This last applied only to the spectators at ringside, no more than a hundred, Kris guessed: about half of them marines of all ranks and the rest mid-grade officers, noncoms and senior rates. (None of Rhimer’s senior command were in attendance. Whether this was out of a desire not to overshadow the proceedings or some less charitable motive, Kris forbore to speculate.) The rest of the squadron would watch over video feed, and were thus free to express themselves as they chose. Kris imagined they would be quite unrestrained in doing so.
After this brief preamble, Min and Vasquez entered the ring, attired alike in black exercise gear and barefoot, along with the second referee, Senior Lieutenant Salsato. Salsato appeared almost as happy as Lieutenant Anson; apparently maintaining a look of clinical detachment was not required of referees in these informal affairs. Ulloa, as head referee, brought the contestants to ring-center for the ritual handshake and then directed them to opposite corners to emerge upon his signal. The signal given, the corporal and the major stepped forward.
The two women made a startling contrast, and not just in height and build. Like the arboreal predator she resembled, Vasquez circled with a tight-sprung grace, beside which the major’s movements seemed almost languid. Minerva Lewis was smiling though, apparently happy to be the prey, almost as if she was relishing a private joke.
Vasquez closed and Kris had never seen a human being move so fast. In the exchange that followed, Kris got a blurred impression of Vasquez throwing two straight lefts followed by a high kick, only to have the major slip it by leaning into the blow. Spinning, she caught the corporal with a kick to the midsection that sent her flying across the ring.
Vasquez bounded to her feet as Ulloa stepped in and called: “Point! One fall to the Major!”
Then things got serious. Watching with greater attention, Kris saw a pattern emerge: the corporal had quicker reflexes, but Min excelled at misdirection and showed an eerie ability to read her opponent’s mind. Using with her greater range, she spoiled the corporal’s attacks time after time with stinging jabs that slowed Vasquez just enough to let Min attempt a throw. The shorter woman retaliated with punishing inside moves, landing savage blows to the ribs, and then a stunning upper cut that dropped the major hard. Instantly, Vasquez put a knee on her throat and Min tapped out.
“Point! Even at one
apiece!”
Meeting again at the center of the ring, Min abandoned her range tactics and tried to trap the corporal’s leg so she could bring up a knee for a flying arm bar. With a powerful writhe, Vasquez slipped away. Min closed. Landing a right cross that snapped the corporal’s head back, she missed with a left. Vazquez wrapped up that errant left arm and dropped, sweeping Min’s knee. The major hit the deck with Vasquez behind her, twisting her neck to within an inch of snapping. She tapped out again.
“Point to the Corporal! Two falls to one!”
Min returned to her patient range games, scoring the next two points: one with a sweet hip throw that sailed the corporal across the ring a second time, and the other with a triplet of body blows that bent Vasquez double and a hammer-drop that put her on the deck. The corporal responded with a series of wicked feints that backed the taller woman up and scored with a flying round kick from a position that should have made it impossible.
Both women were breathing hard now—the only sound in the space that seemed to have contracted around them—and their bodies shimmered with sweat. All signs of levity were long extinguished, the audience craning forward in their seats—eyes intent, jaws hard-set—as they watched with the fiercest concentration. Even Lev Anson was not smiling now, his interlocked hands showing white knuckles and his breathing rapid.
After another exchange of falls—Vasquez managed to get her thighs locked around the major’s neck and squeeze her into submission, only to be lured into body slam that audibly knocked the breath out of her—the two women, evidently moved by the same brutal impulse, met almost toe to toe, exchanging blows in a vicious flurry beyond anything Kris had ever seen. Many were blocked, but many got through, and the crack of fists on hard flesh and resounding grunts combined with the involuntary sounds of the spectators—startled gasps and muffled groans—at the amount of punishment being dealt out and absorbed on each side. Ulloa and Salsato hovered close, and just when it seemed they must step in to stop the carnage, Min and Vasquez toppled to the deck, hitting it as one.
Min landed on her side, Vasquez on her back. The corporal was bleeding freely from a cut over her right eye; the blood ran into the short dark hair at her temple, staining it a richer black. Min rolled up on one knee and spat a gory molar onto the deck.
“Hold that for me, would’ja?” she mumbled to her color sergeant through bruised lips. Ulloa immediately scooped the tooth up and put it in a clear sterilizing bag. Looking to Salsato, he held up three fingers and the lieutenant nodded.
“There will be a rest break for thirty seconds,” the sergeant announced. Then he knelt next to Vasquez who, holding her ribs and wheezing, shook her head in answer to his murmured question. A brief caucus with Tom Salsato followed.
“On review, it is decided to award one fall a piece. All even at five falls.”
The corporal and the major staggered to their feet and squared off again. A glance at the chrono revealed the match had gone on for an incredible forty minutes, and Kris wondered how much longer it could possibly last. Evidently, they would not stop it short of actual maiming. Vasquez was favoring her ribs and her breathing was cruel to hear. Min, with her bloodied jaw and a noticeable limp, seemed to be in no better shape. But now height and reach told, especially as Vasquez had to cope with the blood that was partially blinding her right eye. On the defensive, she grappled and pulled the major down, closing her legs about Min in a triangle choke. It almost worked. Min saw the move coming and twisted, weakening the hold. Vasquez tried to roll into a sweep, but lost control of the major’s wrist. In a burst of tremendous raw power, the muscles standing out in stark relief along her back and sides, Min broke loose and pinned the corporal with her forearm across her neck.
“Point to the Major! Six falls to five!” Another brief exchange of glances between the sergeant and Lieutenant Salsato, who nodded. “The second and final rest break will be observed.”
Both women crouched on the deck, heads down, panting loud and hoarse until the 30-second timer buzzed. Down a point, the corporal attacked with concentrated fury, only to overreach with her final combination. Min slipped in behind and when Vasquez tried to flip her, lifting the tall woman bodily, Min executed a neat roll that flipped the corporal instead, landing her face down the deck. With Min’s arms locked on her throat, Vasquez tapped out.
Stillness and awed silence. Sergeant Ulloa stepped to the center of the ring.
“The match to Major Lewis. Seven falls to five.”
Min climbed slowly to her feet and helped the corporal up. They stood together a moment, swaying dangerously, until a quartet of orderlies came to the rescue. As the two woman limped away in their charge, Ulloa gave a solemn nod.
“This exhibition is concluded.”
A collective sigh as the audience also got to its feet, and the murmured beginnings of conversation. Kris turned to see Lev Anson, his smile back and wider than before.
“You enjoyed it, Lieutenant?” she asked, her tone more than civil and the question more than rhetorical.
“Enough that I’m actually happy to admit I was wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“You recall when I said the Major was worth Tyco’s port broadside ?”
“Yes. You threw in the forward chase mount too.” Kris smiled at the memory of Lieutenant Anson’s enthusiastic hyperbole.
“So I did!” He laughed. “Wrong on all counts. She’s worth the whole damn ship. Straight up.”
Having learned enough diplomacy not to shake her head, Kris just widened her smile a touch. Now that she’d Major Lewis fight, she wondered about the fairness of the exchange he proposed. Would Tyco have turned the tide at Wogan’s Reef? It seemed doubtful.
“Well, you work for SECDEF. Get him to put it on the table with a sweetener. Who knows what might happen?”
Lieutenant Anson gave her something disturbingly like a wink. “Upping the price? I don’t blame you a damn bit.”
She consigned him to his escort, an young somber-looking marine, and he departed with a jaunty salute as Tom Salsato wandered up. Kris hadn’t had occasion to talk to the pleasant young TAO beyond yesterday’s dinner, but he gave every appearance of being open, friendly and competent—rather like the Ionian lieutenant who’d just left, but without so much cheek. They even looked a bit like each other, allowing for Salsato having darker hair and lighter eyes.
“He seems not a bad sort,” the senior lieutenant remarked in a conversational tone. “You’ve met him before?”
“On Tyco.” Then feeling she wasn’t saying enough, Kris added: “He was the tour guide.”
“He serves on her?”
“Nope. He’s staff.”
Salsato replied with a neutral humming noise. “I read your report. Nice job.” As TAO, he would have been one of the report’s main customers.
“Thanks.” The praise sounded unforced, and Kris took it in that spirit.
“She looks like a very nasty customer to get on the wrong side of.”
Kris couldn’t help but agree, but it was a slightly dubious confidence to share. Rhimer certainly would not approve. Kris wondered if there was something else behind it—Salsato was the flagship’s critical combat officer, and it suggested he was not on-board with all (or most) of his CO’s views—but not wanting to pursue that angle, she changed the subject to a couple of women who were also “very nasty customers” to get on the wrong side of.
“What did you think of the match?”
Salsato whistled. “Haven’t seen anything like it.”
“Not in the championships?” Those had to be even harder fought, right? Although Kris was having trouble imagining how that was possible.
The lieutenant shook his head. “Oh, hell no. Championship matches have actual rules.”
* * *
Lying face down on medical pallets, side by side in Polidor’s sickbay, Major Lewis and Corporal Vasquez luxuriated under the ministrations of a quartette of medtechs, two each. They had injected a matri
x to set the corporal’s cracked ribs and reinstalled the major’s tooth, and now they were having the nanocytes that would deal with their other welts, bruises, strains, sprains and contusions worked deeply into their battered muscles by four pair of skilled hands. It was probably coincidence that the hands massaging Major Lewis were all female.
Through it all, the major and the corporal had been reviewing the bout in close, vivid and highly technical detail, Vasquez never having lost a match of any type before. Therefore, it might have seemed a bit odd that she was smiling so contentedly. And to what extent Min’s own smile was due to the thrill of victory or the warmth of the corporal’s was anybody’s guess.
When Vasquez smiled, it was almost always in the line of duty, but despite bruises and the synthaskin over that cut, this one was rare and beautiful and perhaps a bit dangerous—not in the combative sense, but that way beautiful things can be when encountered unexpectedly in their raw, unguarded state. The marks they leave then are not of the flesh.
At the moment, however, the corporal wore a thoughtful expression, in response to Min’s admission that she’d never had a molar dislodged in a match before.
“I have too much respect for you, ma’am,” Vasquez said in a tone that matched her look, “to give it less than my maximum effort.”
Min, who’d only been indulging her sense of humor, winked. “And here I was thinkin’ you were just flirtin’ with me.”
That revived the corporal’s smile. “Anything’s possible, ma’am.”
The major’s smile expanded to a grin. “Then can I ask you a personal question, Vasquez?”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
“Do you still kiss girls?”
Vasquez closed her eyes. “For therapeutic purposes only, ma’am.”
Min studied the corporal’s face with interest. “So . . . how’s that work? Getting therapy, I mean.”
Eyes still closed, the corporal’s mouth tugged up on one side. “There’s a waiting list.”
Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit Page 31