The Bonds of Orion

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “That was enlightening,” Huron remarked at the entry slid shut.

  “Sure was,” Min answered. “I wonder how touchy is touchy?”

  “Good question . . .” Huron’s gaze was still on the entry, as if Sutton might have left the answer behind.

  “You knew Colonel Yeager?” Min’s question pulled his attention back.

  “I know her family. We’ve met a few times. Back when was she racing.” Yacht racing, especially starclippers, was a sport only the hyper-rich could afford, and everyone in that small, select circle knew each other, at least casually. Huron had never raced in any serious sense, but he had occasionally flown with the colonel’s father, Ed Yeager, the sport’s most famous champion.

  “Any fond memories we can leverage?”

  “It’s been a lot of years,” Huron said, evading the issue.

  Min chose to let the evasion slide, but not without an inward smirk. “I guess it’s on full kits, then. And devil take the hindmost.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Fred Yu stood up with Sergeant Burdette. “We’re an officer short on this op. I hope you’ll accompany us, Commander?”

  Glancing automatically at Huron, it took Kris a few beats to realize the sergeant major had addressed his question to her. CATs always deployed with two officers, and while it was a foregone conclusion that Rafe would take the senior slot, why Yu would select her for the second when he had all of Min’s Rangers to pick from clearly bemused her?

  “If you’re sure, Sergeant Major” that bemusement making her reply more than a little flat.

  “Perfectly so, ma’am.”

  “I’ll be there” with a slight but palpable emphasis.

  Tipping his head, Yu favored her with a quiet, self-contained smile. “Thank you, ma’am.” Burdette also gave her a nod and a smile, with bit of a wink in it, or perhaps she just imagined that. The two of them left, followed by Anders after a brief exchange with Min.

  That furrow between her brows grown deeper, Kris exhaled and stood up. “I guess I’d better see to my gear. Any idea when we’ll be cut loose on this?”

  “Soon?” Huron made a vague gesture with one hand. “The admiral hates waiting.”

  “He’s in conference with his boss right now,” Min added. “I think we can expect Jovian thunderbolts from on high at any time.”

  * * *

  In Admiral Sabr’s day cabin, the small omnisynth cast its bluish light in shifting patterns across two visages that could not have been more dissimilar, but the concentration with which they studied the display was the same.

  “Constance will not be pleased,” Commodore Shariati said at length.

  “Constance will have to learn to live with disappointment,” Admiral Sabr replied. Captain Constance Yanazuka commanded one of his stealth frigate squadrons and this kind of mission an incursion deep into enemy space to perform a covert extraction op was tailor-made for stealth frigates. Moreover, Captain Yanazuka had a certain well-earned reputation in these matters, along with a well-renowned temper. She would not take kindly to being passed over.

  “Her leaving now would cause too much comment,” Lo Gai continued. “And besides, I need her.”

  “Implying what, dear?” His wife raised her head, the omnisynth’s uneven glow accentuating the roguish glint in her dark eyes.

  Realizing what he’d said, Sabr laughed; a sound like rocks crushing. “I believe we can let those implications sort themselves out in due course.” Yasmin’s roving squadron was the only force at his disposal with a hope of carrying out this operation within an acceptable timeframe. If they didn’t have the advantage of being stealthed, they did have the speed and firepower to get themselves out of trouble, and detached ops were their raison d'etre, so there was no question of accountability. He could pass the mission off as an ‘urgent reconnaissance’ of the Republic’s borders without exciting comment.

  “Now . . .” He highlighted a trace in the omnisynth’s holographic volume. “Are you entirely happy with this transit?”

  The transit in question used the thin route connecting the outskirts to the Karelian Republic to Syrdar. It was the most direct route to Amu Daria and appallingly dangerous to the faint-hearted: ships were routinely lost trying to negotiate it.

  Smiling, Yasmin Shariati shook her head, stirring the long hair that she’d left down this evening. Her husband had once lobbied the chief of naval operations to take his fleet through the Rip, which made the Syrdar route look like a paddle across a duck pond.

  “Quite happy. Mort stakes his all on it.” Commander Mortimer Nordquist was her chief navigator and an aficionado of suborbital rollercoasters. Prudent people took his testimony with a large grain of salt. Prudence did not apply in this case, however, and Lo Gai accepted it. He had little choice, in any case. Time was of the essence, and any safer route would spend too much of it.

  “Well enough. You shall have the Rangers, as we spoke of. That should deal with any unforeseen circumstances on the ground. And CAT 5, obviously. I am given to understand Commander Huron and Colonel Yeager are acquainted, and that may prove valuable in avoiding . . . complications.” Huron and the commodore had a healthy respect and esteem for each other, but that had not prevented them from butting heads the last time they’d served together, and he felt the explanation would not go amiss. “As for the rest, I believe the adage ‘A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week’ applies here. Most particularly.”

  “Indeed so.” That adage, ascribed to General George S. Patton Jr. of the US Army in the late years of the pre-space age, was one of her husband’s favorites. “We can leave as soon as stores are completed. Any retuning of the grav plants can happen on the way out-system.”

  He checked the time. “The last of your ordnance will be available by the beginning of the morning watch.” That would give them another seven and a half hours together.

  She had also observed the time. “All night? How generous of you.”

  “A good night’s sleep is a great blessing.”

  “That’s true.” She stepped around the omnisynth to stand by his side and slipped her hand into his. “But there are other blessings.”

  He squeezed it. “That is also true.”

  * * *

  “What do they want me along for?” Kris asked Huron as they packed their kits in anticipation of Lo Gai’s orders. Those had been promised by the end of the watch, and the admiral was never tardy in this respect. “All I did last time was fuck up and get Marko killed.”

  Looking over, Huron saw how the old memories could still ridge the muscles in her neck. It was true that during their raid on Rephidim to apprehend Mankho, she’d lost her head, tried and failed to kill Mankho herself, and Marko Tiernan, one of CAT 5’s most popular members, had died as a result.

  But it was not true that was all she’d done. While the mission itself was a failure, it did result in the complete destruction of Mankho’s terrorist organization, and in due course, the death of Nestor Mankho himself. And none of that would have been possible without Kris.

  Kris, of course, did not fully appreciate that. And given what she’d suffered at his hands while a still a slave, he wondered if she ever would. The obscure and unsatisfying manner of Mankho’s death (Nick Taliaferro had sawed his head off on the former slaver base of Cathcar) had deprived Kris of putting paid on that episode of her life. Even now, she couldn’t resist picking at the scabs.

  But none of this was anything Huron could bring up. Not while they’d been together, and especially not since. Instead, he said, “They gave you Marko’s pialla.”

  Piallas were tin cups, one of the more eccentric items of CEF marine kit. During the ceremony after Marko’s funeral, in which the members of CAT 5 each selected an item of his marine kit to honor his memory, they’d left his pialla for Kris. It had a dent in it, and they considered it lucky.

  Kris still had it. Her offer to return it to his family had been graciously rejected by his widow, who understood thes
e things. Much better than Kris.

  “Right,” she muttered, sealing her duffle with a yank of the closure. “All I bring to this party is a fuck’n lucky dinged tin cup. How’s that work?”

  Everything that “fuck’n lucky dinged tin cup” represented affection born of shared adversity, of being a kindred spirit; respect for having guts to try, to risk, to fail, despite being so far out of her depth; the role of luck, of fortune, of Fate; and most of all, that she was in no way to blame (this most keenly, for Huron knew the blame was all his) could not be adequately conveyed in mere words. Suffice it to say that CAT 5 felt Kris was one of their own.

  But he couldn’t find any way to say that either. Lifting his duffel, he set by the entry to their quarters.

  “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  He’d said it under his breath, no more than a whisper, but in the heavy silence following her unanswered question, she heard it and turned her head.

  “What?”

  He looked back at her, lips quirked with the consciousness of having been caught, and gave his head a rueful shake. “It’s nothing, Kris. A quote from Shakespeare. Hamlet.”

  “Oh.” She recalled Mariwen quoting Hamlet. And orisons. Swinging her bag up, she dropped it with a thump next to his. “You and Mariwen really need to hang out together, y’know?”

  He palmed the entry open. “Why’s that?”

  They stepped into the passageway as their xels alerted simultaneously with the receipt of Lo Gai’s order. She thumbed hers off with less than a glance and looked up to see their batmen hurrying to collect their baggage.

  “Cuz you both say the weirdest g’damned shit.”

  Chapter 21

  Amu Daria, in orbit

  Epsilon Aquila, Aquila Sector

  The bright blue orb of Amu Daria, wreathed in bright white cloud like dancer’s veils, dominated the view screens in LSS Artemisia’s flag bridge. Through gaps in the veils, they could see the great northern land mass, which covered the pole like an irregular cap down to the mid-temperate latitudes. In contrast, the southern hemisphere wore its small continents as an ungainly necklace surrounding a permanently frozen polar sea. In-between, the equatorial zone was innocent of land apart from spatter of small islands. The region, where the clouds were thinnest, spawned tremendous storms that might batter either coast; half a dozen cavorted between the tropic lines even now.

  Artemisia was currently on the sunward side of the planet in an unhurried 9-hour orbit, inclined to a comfortable 55 degrees. Stealth probes she’d deployed monitored the far side of the planet, giving her global coverage, while her destroyers remained at their picket stations six to eight hours away, observing traffic and covering the approaches for three jump zones.

  Yet, there was little enough to observe. Their arrival after an at-times nerve-wracking voyage, where they’d run the drives hot enough that even the most seasoned mariners showed a touch of green and could not look at food with any pleasure, had been greeted with a sense of anticlimax. The system sported a rather rudimentary detection fence 2 AU from the primary, and their careful surveillance detected neither patrols nor any Halith combatants. They did detect a fairly typical constellation of Halith reconnaissance satellites in orbit. The usual motley gaggle of ships one would expect at frontier planet were also in orbit, and more made their leisurely either in- or out-system, nothing urgent. Two of the ships in orbit were transports of the larger variety, capable of carrying a thousand or more passengers, which might have been a trifle unusual, but only a trifle. Although Amu Daria was neither a noted supplier nor consumer of slaves, they were employed on-planet and that those transports were delivering a new shipment was far from out of the question. Comms suggested they were not Halith government craft, which would be expected, but using contract slavers to service an out-of-the-way colony like Amu Daria was not out of the question either. Nonetheless, Shariati ordered them to be closely watched.

  Her sensor section was doing that, at much shorter range than those two ships might have been happy with, had they known. After due consideration, the commodore decided to bring Artemisia in alone, leaving the rest of her squadron lying up in the moons of the innermost gas giant, where they were in a good position to watch the jump zone linking Amu Daria to the Halith core system of Haslar. If trouble were to arrive, it would almost certainly come from that direction, and if necessary, they could withdraw from there via the jump zone linked with Qokand, a transit that would take them (eventually) to the new CEF forward bases at Tau Verde, the gift of Operation Overlight.

  Going back the way they came also remained an option, though none relished it, especially her engineering section, who (in spite of the earlier sanguine appraisal) had grown half-mutinous by the end of their journey.

  Doing her best to appear innocuous, Artemisia had accepted her assigned parking orbit from OTC at the capital’s starport, having avowed to that she was a heavy freighter of Qokand registry. The false flag had been accepted without evident question, without any questions at all, in fact; not even the customary request that she state her business. If that suggested someone in OTC harbored suspicions, they were keeping those suspicions to themselves: not a murmur had been sent anywhere.

  But such thoughts were not much on anyone’s mind as Artemisia traced her circuit about Amu Daria. Instead, they were focused on Major Sutton who, sitting in the flag bridge absolutely still and with a look of complete vacancy on his ravaged face, was searching for the other survivors. If he didn’t look much better, the medical staff's efforts had nonetheless had effect, and at least it was no longer painful to see him walk. That walking would be required was confidently expected; assault shuttles appearing suddenly overhead was not the way to make an entrance in a case like this. Instead, the plan was to have a single shuttle touch down a safe distance away, then allow the major to make himself known to his people and see how things stood (the circumstances did not warrant using the parafoil system they’d employed the last time Kris had operated with CAT 5. Huron thought she was a bit disappointed by this). Two more shuttles would be on hover several minutes out, ready to come in and collect the people when summoned.

  If all went well, the evacuation could be accomplished in a matter of hours, and Artemisia would be on her way before anyone guessed her true nature, but Sutton had warned them that it might take up to a day, if there were complications. A few of the people were often out on patrol, and as a rule, they observed strict EM silence, keeping all their electronic gear off except in the event of a serious emergency, so reaching them from the base camp wasn’t possible. Other potential complications, he left unspoken.

  He’d been at it for thirteen hours straight when he heaved a sigh like a man emerging from hibernation and blinked. His eyes gradually took on life again as they refocused on the here and now, and he said in voice rasped of all inflection, “Think I got ‘em. Way up north. I’ll show ya.” Grunting, he moved from his seat to the plot and drew locus on it, a rough oval right below the arctic circle and due north of the capital. “In there.”

  Huron zoomed the region and brought up a topographic overlay. He and Yu contemplated it. “Rough country,” he said at length. And then, looking over at the major, “Do you know it at all?”

  “Like the back my hand,” Sutton said, working the stiffness out his back and neck. “That’s where we first landed.”

  * * *

  The assault shuttle skimmed along at tree-top level, flown by the skilled hands of Warrant Officer Bodo Wojakowski, CAT 5’s shuttle pilot and engineer, while his co-pilot and gunner, Staff Sergeant Abe Donnerkill kept an eye on the shuttle’s passive sensors, alert for any activity. Behind them, in the jump seats, Huron, Kris, Yu, and Major Sutton waited in a somber and increasingly tense silence. Sutton had cautioned them against attempting a direct approach, such as a slow flyby to let them see the shuttle’s hull markings. “Y’see,” he’d said, “they might be a little slow to beli
eve in their good fortune.”

  By “a little slow”, he meant “shoot first and haul ass fuck the questions”. Anything airborne was the worst kind of news and would not put Yeager’s people in a receptive frame of mind. Their best bet, he thought, was to go in quiet and let him try to make contact with someone. That would be a shock, he allowed, but it could also work in their favor: “Less likely to loose off without thinking if they’re stunned a bit.”

  The logic made sense. In such close proximity, Sutton told them detecting his people would not require nearly the same degree of concentration. But unlike calling cards, core-jacks weren’t by nature reciprocal, which deprived them of any safe way of making contact, and the very last thing anyone wanted was to get embroiled in a firefight with people they’d come nine hundred light-years to rescue. So the four of them were alone in the shuttle now, unarmed and without combat armor. There was the possibility maybe the likelihood that a patrol would spot the shuttle and take a looksee. In that case, an armed squad piling out of the shuttle was apt to give the wrong impression, hull markings or no (the Doms staging such an elaborate deception would be damn near incredible, but no more so than a CEF covert action team appearing out of nowhere after almost three years probably less).

  They’d already deployed CAT 5’s two fireteams, using a technique known as “low and go”, which involved jumping out of a low-flying shuttle with a drogue chute. It was the CAT’s preferred insertion method and took better than split-second timing and large dose of crazy, especially in wooded terrain. The major had observed it with keen professional appreciation. Otherwise, he seemed almost glum.

  Huron felt that his manner hinted at something more than simply apprehension over an uncertain meeting with his mates and the necessity of treating them as potentially hostile. He’d wondered why Yeager’s people had returned to this area, and he suspected Sutton knew. But the major was not in a communicative mood, and it would not do to press the issue. Time would answer that well enough.