Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “Do you know I had General Avery in here just this AM?” his boss continued. “About putting Lexington in provisional reserve status so she can participate. He was smiling. Have you ever seen Rick Avery smile?”

  Anson allowed he had not, although the effort of trying to imagine the expression on that famously dyspeptic gentleman’s sour face brought a smile to his own.

  “It’s not a pretty sight.” Roquelaurie sighed, and bent to putting his approving signature to those three memos, along with a stack of others. “I’m beginning to wonder who’s crazy here. The same people who just three weeks ago wanted Kennakris crucified as a war criminal now think she’s goddamned Joan of Arc. What do you think is behind it?”

  Lev stroked his upper lip to hide his emergent grin. His boss might have come closer to the truth with his Joan of Arc crack than he realized. “Well sir, I think you could classify it as a metaphysical phenomenon.” Roquelaurie, stylus busy, grunted. “Considering the records of Commanders Huron and Kennakris—and Major Lewis—people have come to believe we hold a moral, if not material, advantage over the enemy. And then there’s General Corhaine’s reputation, also. For those familiar with that realm.” Roquelaurie grumbled something Lev did not catch. “Their attitude can be a little . . . infectious, sir.”

  “I hope that’s not all that’s infectious, Lev.” Roquelaurie zipped the signed memos and dispatched them to his secretary for distribution. “For now, it seems I have no choice but to tremble and obey. If she wanted the presidential yacht stuffed with champagne and cupcakes, they’d jump to it. But then, that might be less crazy than some of the things I’ve heard this AM.”

  That was certainly true, Lev thought, and not by half. But privately, he felt that if fools rushed in where angels feared to tread, this was one time he was glad they weren’t on the side of the angels.

  ~ ~ ~

  Day 228 (PM)

  LSS Polidor, Shenandoah Dockyard

  Iona, Cygnus Mariner

  On Polidor’s upper berthing deck, forward, Gunner’s Mate Robert Tomb, off-watch with his division, was having a revelation. “Hey, Guys! Listen here! I found somethin’ about Apollyon.”

  “Yeah, it’s this black hole, here. So what?” Vin Foster, his loader for mount 13 (portside), was in a surly mood. This was not unusual.

  “No. I mean another one. Listen: there’s these seven blighters, y’see. And some say they’s demons and some say they’s angels, and they got these horns—”

  “I think you mean trumpets,” interjected his gun captain.

  “A trumpet’s a horn, Bates.”

  “Unless it surmounts the brow of a demon—”

  “Shut up an’ let ’im read.” Ezekiel Edwards, gunner’s mate for No.12 (starboard) had an interest in these things.

  “Anyway, they blow these horns, see. And all hell breaks loose—”

  “Got that part right, at least.”

  “And when the fifth horn blows, this star falls down—”

  “Didn’t that already happen? That’s how we got this here black hole—”

  “Knock it off, Foshie! What were ya sayin’, Tomb?”

  “This star falls down, and gives the key to the bottomless pit—”

  “The black hole, yeah.”

  “To this angel.”

  “Oh, you mean that smart rock! That Reaper Angel talks to. From the doctor lady. It gave her the key to our op-plan.”

  “He said a star. Not a rock.”

  “It’s an allegory, putz. He’s talkin’ about the rock and Reaper Angel. I heard it from the lobsters.”

  “Yeah, well. You’d talk to lobsters.”

  “Guys, there’s more. She—the angel—opens up the bottomless pit and lets Apollyon—he’s a king—and these fuckin’ ugly bugs out. And they sting the shit outta anyone without the proper mark on their head—”

  “We call that IFF, y’know.”

  “And that’s how we’re gonna win!”

  “Who’s the king?”

  “Fortunate Son, y’idjit. Who else? He’s our support. She’s gonna let ’im out.”

  “If only in the allegorical sense . . .” Bates had taken the trouble to learn the particulars.

  Foster, however, was incensed. “What this about bugs? Yer telling me we’re fuckin’ bugs? From a bottomless pit?”

  “Speak for yerself, man.”

  “I hate fuckin’ bugs.”

  “Pay attention, dipshit. He said they’s bugs—not us.” Then: “Tomb, where ya readin’ this shit?”

  “The Book.” Tomb tilted out the viewer from his rack so the others could see it. “See?”

  “ ‘Course it’s a book, asshole,” observed Foster.

  “Naw, I mean the name. See?” Tomb ran a stumpy middle finger under the header. “B-I-B-L-E. That means book, ya ignorant twat.”

  “Right on both counts,” murmured Bates.

  ~ ~ ~

  Day 228 (Late PM)

  LSS Polidor, Shenandoah Dockyard

  Iona, Cygnus Mariner

  Kris got up to answer the chime of the entry pad to her quarters and was a little surprised to see General Corhaine. “May I come in?” she asked politely.

  “Sure.” Kris invited her inside with a harassed motion and the door slid shut. “Did I forget something else?”

  “Not at all.” The general scanned the cabin. Kris had unleashed an explosion of documents onto her desktop and the space above swam with varicolored data. “I came to apologize. I didn’t do my job in there.”

  They’d held a final staff meeting midway through first watch; it had concluded about half an hour ago. Corhaine reported that Kite had attached a remora to Bolimov and been able to add Polidor and Penthesileia to the flagship’s key ring in place of two members of the escort force. Now they’d have real-time access to Caneris’ commands not send via tight-beam.

  Quinn’s latest revealed that Caneris was taking only one battleship, Condorcet, not two as originally planned, and eighteen destroyers, not twenty-four.

  Trin updated them on what they’d been able to find out about the Morus harbors.

  Huron confirmed the Ionians would supply EW drones; these can appear from any region, including denied ones, mimicking warships.

  Then they reviewed aspects of their engagement strategy, now dignified with the name Capricorn: torps hit hard but weren’t good for a fast-moving knife fight. They’d launch at max range and with low boost to give max maneuvering capability near intercept. Twenty percent of the warheads to be replaced with ECM payloads; half of those would be fitted with Iona’s new phase-conjugate canceller. Privately, Kris wondered how much that had set Huron back.

  Myriad other details, piling up and up; a great teetering stack of info that had to be assimilated, digested, comprehended and used to make intelligent decisions—intelligent life or death decisions—in a split second. All while talking to a temperamental lithomorph.

  Kris, easing into her chair and slumping back, shook her head. “You did a great job. It’s me that can’t do the fucking job. All this shit”—she waved at the myriad dots and vectors and shimmering arcs filling the holographic display—“I just can’t get a lock on it.”

  Deliberately, General Corhaine reached over and blanked the display. Before Kris could recover enough to respond, she said, “Getting a lock on all this isn’t your job. That’s your staff’s job. You’ve got good people—let them do it.”

  “Right. So what’s my job?” Besides keeping the rock happy.

  “Winning.”

  “Yeah. I think I got that far.”

  “I should have been clearer, Captain.” Corhaine lowered herself into a seat by the desk and folded her hands. “How did you beat the Ionians? You didn’t have a combatant to your name and yet you compelled the surrender of a powerful and well-armed planetary government. How?”

  “I threatened ’em. I can’t really pull that stunt here, now can I?”—working hard to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  “I
t was wasn’t the threat. Anyone can make a threat.”

  That got Kris to raise her eyes.

  “You won,” the general went on, gentle voiced, “because—as our friend the major would say—you scared the shit of ’em. That’s something you appear to have a gift for.” She activated the display again and cleared away the data until only two icons remained, representing the opposing flagships. “This isn’t about your fleet and his fleet. This is about you and him. At the Battle of Samar, the Americans won because they convinced the Japanese admiral he was losing the fight of his life. You can win this battle by doing the same thing to the Halith commander. Your job is to figure out how to do it.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Day 229 (AM)

  LSS Polidor, Shenandoah Dockyard

  Iona, Cygnus Mariner

  As Huron exited Polidor’s forward ladder well and turn the corner into the main spline passageway, he saw Kris walking towards him, wearing her “battle face”. That’s how he always thought of that look of singular concentration—the hazel eyes slightly narrowed, the firm set of the muscles at the corners of her mouth—but this time the eyes were downcast and a rare tension lined her forehead. Looking up, startlement smoothed her features for an instant and one corner of her lips rose.

  “Hey, Huron. What’re you doing here?”

  “Came up to see you . . . Commodore.”

  Rolling her eyes, she glanced behind to see if they were alone. “Don’t remind me, okay? Why’d I take this job, anyway?”

  “Because you’re the best person for it.”

  “We’ll see ’bout that.”

  He chose not to comment, but asked, “You have a minute?”

  Kris nodded, that preoccupied look furrowing her brow again. “Yeah. I was actually on my way to see you.”

  “Convenient. Is there someplace handy we can talk? Privately?”

  “Umm . . .” Scanning the passageway again, her teeth scraped her lower lip. “There’s a Ready-Ops room through there.” She nodded left. “Don’t think anyone’s using it.”

  “That’ll do.” He motioned for her to lead the way.

  Inside, Kris turned and secured the hatch, setting a lock-down on it. That seemed a bit of overkill to him, but he had said privately. Before he could open the conversation as he’d planned, she spoke.

  “So, how’re things downside? Smooth?”

  “We’ll be ready. Is that what you were coming to see me about?”—knowing full well it wasn’t. Her distracted tone made that plain; she knew from the dailies how things were, in any case.

  Her eyes met his and she looked down again. “No.”

  “You wanna go first then, or shall I?”

  “You go.”

  He knew that look of confounded innocence, the vestiges of a girl they pulled off Harlot’s Ruse years ago—a private vulnerability that stripped those years from her face and made him ache inside.

  Working his jaw to settle his voice, he said, “Alright. I wanted to say I didn’t leave things in a good state between us, and I’m sorry for that.”

  “I didn’t give ya a lot of options.”

  “I should’ve handled it better, anyway.”

  Kris shook her head. “I think I’d’ve been happier if you’d handled it worse.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t know that.”

  “I know.” Her voice tightened for a moment and she swallowed. “I know you wanted everything to be . . . perfect. But sometimes perfect feels like . . . not caring, or. . . not—not caring but caring more that they’re perfect. Cuz being perfect’s what matters most.”

  “I understand.” He paused. “I hope you believe that was never true.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t your fault. I’m just not cut out for . . .” Her teeth came out to scrape her lip again. “I just don’t know how to be. Does that make any sense?”

  Between one slow controlled breath and the next he saw it did make sense. More than the imprisoning alien sky, more than the inexplicable modes and its inscrutable unspoken rules, the trappings of Terran society lay like fetters on Kris’s shoulders; a young Artemis trying on alluring garments only to find she could not move in them, and the palace—or temple—built to honor her blocking the far ranges her eyes were used to. He’d seen it then—forced himself to step away, to let go—but not so clearly as now. Those fetters were mostly gone now, but not quite; a few threads remained, visible in the confusion he sensed, the guarded look darkening her eyes—still holding her back. He could reach out and brush them away, like cobwebs, even if that meant . . .

  “It does. But . . . Kris, why didn’t you take Mariwen’s contact info?”

  She shrugged, a skittish motion, as if sensing those few tenuous strands. “Cuz I didn’t want . . . You guys oughta have . . . y’know—a chance.”

  The certainty settled in him like a sigh. “Kris, it’s not like that.”

  “You say that but—”

  “There’s nothing for you to be in the way of.”

  “But what if there oughta be? And there was you and Kenzie, too.”

  “You were never second-best—to anyone. Did I make you feel like you were?”

  That skittish twitch again. “No.”

  “I didn’t argue because you were right. Sometimes . . . you just have to let things be what they are. Fighting won’t help. It just makes it harder to move on.”

  “So that’s what this is about? Movin’ on?”

  The bitter hints laced through that question made him wince. “We all have to move on, Kris. Life doesn’t let us stand still.” He didn’t follow up on the slight unconscious emphasis on life, or how the Prince Vorland would likely weigh in on that question. He didn’t need to.

  Watching her, eyes lowered again, breath coming softly between barely parted lips, he waited. Then she looked up.

  “So if that’s whatcha came to say, would’ja tell me something? Straight up?”

  “Of course, Kris.”

  “That tattoo—Kenzie’s tattoo—d’ya really believe what she said it means?”

  “That true love never dies, it just sleeps?”

  “Uh huh. Do ya?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “So if . . . say she still loved you and she came back into your life, what would you do?”

  “Aren’t we overlooking the fact she’s getting married to Baz?”

  “I know that, but . . . this isn’t about her. I mean, if . . . hypothetically—”

  “Hypothetically—”

  “C’mon, Rafe. Y’know what I mean. If it was . . . okay. What would’ja do? Would you give it a chance?”

  The gleam of wetness in her eyes told him what she was thinking: hypothetical wasn’t really the word for it. There were no hypotheticals here. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  “Okay.”

  He felt her hesitate, saw the brief war in the emotions that succeeded one another across her face. Then, deciding, she pressed her good hand to his chest. Leaning in—no embrace, but her hand still against him, the palm warm through the fabric of his uniform—but waiting a moment longer. Finally, closing her eyes as she pressed her lips ever so softly to his—her lips just a whisper; a touch like the beginning and the end—life and remembrance looping back on itself. A tear slipping down her cheek; he tasted it on her lips.

  She moved back, blinking twice. He wiped the tear away with his thumb.

  “Thanks for tellin’ me. G’bye, Rafe.”

  “Goodbye, Kris.”

  Dropping her hand, she turned and, stepping to the entrance, glanced back. “What wakes it up?”

  That her lips wouldn’t form the word love didn’t surprise him. “It wakes up when it’s healed, Kris.”

  Fingers tapping on the entry pad, she released the lock-down. The glimmer of a smile appeared. “Just one more thing, then . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  The hatch cycled and popped open.

  “Try not to be late, okay?”

  Three: Seven Trumpets Sound

 
; For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles. . . to gather them to battle . . .

  —Revelation 16:14

  Day 232 (0320)

  IHS Bolimov, exiting AG-IX

  Apollyon Gates, Antares Region

  “We have run diagnostics, sir.” The pallid and shaken head of the IT department held himself at rigid attention perhaps, Caneris thought, to avoid wringing his hands. “I have verified all the inputs and system reports out as functioning normally. I am very concerned to say I have no explanation.”

  “Explanations are of little interest at this time, commander.” Especially as Caneris was mortally certain he knew the explanation: they’d taken in a variety of spares, and one of those had to be the culprit. Yet, no ordinary sabotage could have misdirected his fleet. “Correcting the problem is.”

  “That would require rebuilding the nav core, sir. A matter of a full day, at least.”

  “Then I suggest you get on with it.” Caneris made no attempt to keep the ice out of his tone. Captain Hoffman, standing next to him, had already reamed the unfortunate lieutenant commander. For the next 32 hours (the length of a Halith standard day) the man’s life would be a misery to him, but much worse awaited them all if this problem was not swiftly isolated and rectified.

  If misery loved company, however, the IT department head would have plenty of it: all three watches were on-deck, wringing out their systems, looking for any sign of tampering. His main concern was the integrity of their secure comms. So far, no evidence they’d been compromised had been found. But it had only been a few hours since they’d jumped in and discovered they were at AG-XI, not AG-V.

  “It’s no wonder the little shit went by the other road,” Captain Hoffman grated out as he brought up the latest status reports. The Emir had indeed gone by the “other road”; scuttling off to Andaman via the Acheron Junction as soon as he could after Caneris learned of their new orders. Caneris had been in position to object and the Emir had taken his flotilla with him, which at the time, seemed all to the good.