The Bonds of Orion (Loralynn Kennakris Book 5)

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “Stellar. Are there a lot of these?”

  “Speeches? Not a lot. More than a few. If they’re merciful, they’ll keep them brief.”

  For the most part, they were merciful. Baz’s cousin took the floor next and lamented the loss to present society but promised he and the rest of Baz’s former comrades would always remember him. Then Baz’s parents spoke, showering Kenzie with well-deserved gratitude for their son’s restoration and their abundant joy at her inclusion in their family. More gratitude followed. Instead of gifts, Baz and Kenzie had asked their guests to direct their generosity to a few select medical organizations, including a foundation that funded research on Ballard’s Syndrome and provided support for its victims. The heads of each of these came forward, each more effusive than the last, until Kazia closed out this part of the celebration with a spare, direct and wholehearted encomium to her brother that ended with the grinning exhortation: “So it’s time to get off your ass, little brother. Let’s dance!”

  With that, the band struck up a song officially entitled “Thoughts Unfallen” but known to every CEF flight officer by part of line from the first stanza: “When my legs won’t work anymore.”

  Holding out his hand to Kenzie, Baz gave Kris a wink as she helped him to his feet. “Duty calls.”

  Frankly, after witnessing the strain he’d undergone to walk the length of the cathedral, Kris wondered if asking him to dance might be a bit much, but as he took to the floor with his wife to open the ball, she saw her concerns were misplaced. They glided through the first few measures, and then the floor began to fill with other couples. Kris, whose aversion to dancing was total, retreated to a place of relative safety on the lee side of the Matterhorn. She was sampling a goblet full of truffles (they were indeed excellent) when the first song ended and she felt Mariwen tugging at her elbow.

  “Come on. I want to say ‘hi’ to Rafe.”

  Turning, Kris spotted him chatting with the newlyweds. As she watched, he gave them both a parting nod and stepped away to consult his xel.

  “I’ll have to,” Kris teased, eyes still following him. “I’m certainly not leaving you two alone together.”

  “You’re no fun.” Mariwen winked.

  Fun or no, Huron greeted them both with a warm smile as they approached. “This is a pleasure,” he said in the pleasant tones he employed on social occasions. “You both look radiant.”

  “That’s very kind,” Mariwen beamed. “I wanted to thank you for helping out with Adam.”

  “Glad to be of service,” he answered, smoothly. “I trust a splendid time was had by all?”

  “Very much so.”

  Kris knew Huron could read Mariwen’s tone about as well as she could, and the glint in his eyes proved it. “That’s gratifying.”

  “I hope your gathering was a success?” Mariwen asked, sweetly polite. According to their sources, Baz’s cousin and his cohorts had been determined to throw Baz a rousing bachelor party.

  Rafe’s expression slid into that off-kilter smile. “It was bit more low-key than the initial op plan. But enjoyable.” Mariwen’s interested gaze invited him to continue. “There was talk of going all out” by which Kris took him to mean erotic dancers cavorting in antigrav globes with all the trimmings “but when the enthusiasm was piquing, Baz gently pointed out exactly who he was marrying.” That is, one of Terra’s most successful independent erotica authors, noted for her especially vivid imagination. “That brought things down a notch or six.”

  “So more beer and skittles?” Kris asked.

  “Pretty much just beer.”

  From there, the reception’s tempo increased significantly. Mariwen loved to dance, and Huron certainly enjoyed it, so Kris urged her to make the most of the opportunity and went to sit with Baz and Kenzie while she and Rafe joined the couples on the dance floor. The music rendered the conversation rather disjointed, but friendly and companionable for all that. When a lull after a particularly vigorous number brought some quiet, Mariwen, breathless and shining, came to rest beside them. Kris rose to meet her.

  “Was that fun?” she asked, admiring Mariwen’s glowing complexion.

  “Lovely. . .” A sigh, deep and heartfelt. “It’s been so long . . .”

  “Gotta see what we can do about that, then.”

  “You mean it?” Mariwen brushed a few damp strands of sable hair out of her face.

  “Sure. I . . . Shit.” Smile faltering, Kris reached into her tunic just as Mariwen caught the rising alert tone from a xel.

  “What is it?”

  “Lousy g’damned timing, that’s what is” Kris muttered, searching the crowd. Yeah, there was Huron, across the way, glancing at his xel again.

  “Orders?” Mariwen’s soft query; trying hard, and almost successfully, to hide her disappointment.

  Pulling out her xel and leaving it furled, Kris glanced at the annunciator. “Yep.”

  Looking up, she saw Huron approaching with a purposeful stride.

  “Hey, Kris,” he said as he came near. “They’re playing our song.”

  “I know.” She tucked the xel away.

  He shifted his gaze to Mariwen. “Sorry about this ”

  “It’s quite all right.” She cut off his apology with a smile. “I perfectly understand.”

  “How much time we got?” asked Kris, who hadn’t bothered to open the message.

  “Transport’s in the air. It’ll be outside any minute.”

  Swallowing a healthy dose of invective, she turned back the Baz & Kenzie. “‘Fraid we’re gonna have to bolt on you.”

  “No worries,” Baz replied. “We made it through the whole ceremony. Whoever’s dispatching orders these days must be falling down on the job.” Kris snickered. Baz, taking Kenzie’s hand, glanced up at her. “We were about to beat a retreat anyway. Maybe you can walk us out? Make it official?”

  It was agreed, and once the essential farewells had been made (Baz’s family, Kenzie’s sister and Rowan brief, but not overhasty), the five of them left the building. The nuptial chariot, having been summoned, was already waiting, complete with a brilliantly attired marine escort and driver. Kris saw their transport, much more utilitarian, not far behind.

  A final round of hugs and handshakes, more well-wishing, then the happy couple were installed in the passenger compartment of their gleaming aircar. A final wave, the doors sealed, and with barely a sound the car swooped away, leaving the three of them alone.

  Mariwen put her hands on the front to Kris’ tunic. “Now, take good care of Rafe, okay? Keep him out of trouble?”

  Kris slid her hands up Mariwen’s back. “You’re not asking much, are ya?” The tension beneath the teasing was palpable under her fingertips, and she pulled Mariwen into a tighter embrace. Their lips met, Kris softly tracing Mariwen’s with the tip of her tongue; receiving a gentle tug of her lower lip in reply. Their armored transport halted at the curb, engines thrumming.

  “Look . . .” pulling back with infinite reluctance. “I gotta go.”

  “I know” a whisper, edged with tears.

  “It’s okay. Don’t ”

  But Mariwen was free of her arms, hurrying back toward the entrance. Kris glanced sideways to see Huron watching, could tell he was about to offer comfort and quelled it with slight negative motion of her head. To the other side, the marine who’d disembarked from their transport looked fixedly in no particular direction, a slight but eloquent indentation at one side of her hard-set mouth.

  Covering a sigh, Kris turned to the vehicle, its door gaping open.

  “Wait!” Mariwen’s voice, and there she was, almost running down the steps, a small gold-embroidered bag in one hand. “I wanted to give you this” extending the bag to her. “Open it.”

  Grinning, Kris accepted the gift and untied the strings. Spilling the contents into her palm, she looked at Mariwen, her eyes softening with surprise. What the bag had held, and Kris was now holding up, wonderingly, was a flat, round netsuke made of two ivory halves, wi
th a delicate carving of a raven, wings up and outstretched, working in relief on the face.

  “Are you . . . Your dad gave you this. For your graduation.”

  “That’s right.” A black woven cord ran through the two disks, and Mariwen took this in her fingers. “Here. Let me.” Kris inclined her head to let Mariwen hang the netsuke around her neck. “There. For luck.”

  Pausing a moment to look into her smiling face, Kris folded Mariwen in her arms. “That’s really sweet” breathed into one ear. “Go on. Give Rafe a kiss. For luck.”

  Lips quirking up on one side and a hint of an oblique look as Mariwen disengaged. The marine cleared her throat. A sweet kiss, a warm embrace, smiles on both sides, and then Mariwen was back in front of Kris. She laid one warm hand along the curve of Kris’ jaw.

  “Take care of yourself, too. Please?”

  “It’s just an exercise.” Kris planted a kiss on the slightly damp palm. “Practically a vacation. What could go wrong?”

  Part 2: No Separate Peace

  “They might’a killed us, but they ain’t whupped us.”

  – CEF Marine Corps (of archaic origin)

  Chapter 11

  Halevirdon, Dominion Capital

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  Steel clashed, a bright sound that rang through the morning air heavy with dew; clashed again, and a human head fell one way and a tall body another. Blood flowed across the carefully-groomed grass, bred for this very purpose, eddying and pooling, a shocking carmine in the orange light. Seconds ran to the fallen man, pulling silver cryopacks out of their kits while the doctor and his assistant attached cryogenic pumps to the severed arteries and prepared their antinecrotics. They moved quickly and efficiently but were scrupulously careful all except the medical men to avoid getting blood on their fine clothes. When everything was in place, they all turned and looked at the victor expectantly.

  The victor, a short, well-made man in the uniform of a full admiral, looked back at them, wiping blood off his saber with a white silk handkerchief. His aide young, tall and recruiting-vid handsome leaned forward and spoke cautiously in the admiral’s ear, “Sir, they wish to know if you will allow them to attempt resurrection.”

  “No.” Admiral Joaquin Caneris, Lord OverHallin and commander of Halith’s elite Prince Vorland Fleet, spoke loudly so there could be no mistake. “I do not wish them to attempt resurrection.” The men on the green looked at one another, then slowly laid their instruments on the grass. One, a star captain with a wealth of gold hash marks, one for each deep-space combat command, stood and walked swiftly to the admiral’s side. Positioning himself so he blocked the group’s view, he asked quietly, “Is this wise, Admiral? His uncle will not be pleased.”

  Admiral Caneris glanced at the dead man, who was very young and, like his aide, had been very handsome, the nephew of General Tristan Heydrich. “Then he should have taught the young man better manners.” Caneris handed the saber to his aide, who slid it into its ornamented scabbard with a decided click.

  The captain nodded, turned and walked slowly back to the group around the corpse. The doctor and his assistant read his manner and began to repack their equipment, without a word but not without a slight disapproving shake of their heads. One of the dead man’s seconds called for a private car to come take the body away; another motioned to the party of groundskeepers, waiting well back in the shade of some tall lilac trees, to clean up the blood and replace the divots in the precious grass. The rest of the party rose and paid their respects to Admiral Caneris, their faces uniformly stiff and their courtesies calibrated to be just short of insulting. The Dueling Master, since the Edicts an entirely unofficial but still respected position, came forward and looked about impatiently. “Come, gentlemen, smartly now, smartly. Let’s not stand around gawping until the security men show up.”

  Caneris alone knew that it was very unlikely that the security men would show up anytime soon. Yesterday, he had sent his chief of staff around to the Ministry of Public Security with a discrete message, and he expected no inconvenience from that quarter. But while a close word would put off the security organs, the same could not be said about the state news agency. On issues of national interest they could easily be made to toe the line, but personal scandal was quite another matter. His aide held out the admiral’s splendid dress coat, and he shrugged it on while the young man straightened the collar and adjusted the wealth of gold braid.

  “Beg pardon, Lord.” It was one of the groundsmen who spoke. He took off his slouch hat and bowed to the admiral. “Beg pardon, but there’s blood on Your Lordship’s boots.”

  Caneris made a distracted motion with his hand, and the man knelt to clean the gleaming leather, extracting the blood with a solvent and buffing the boots by hand. “Good as new, Your Lordship. Not a spot left. Fit to shave in.” But the menial had been too free with his speech; Caneris scowled and the man scuttled back a few steps, not rising from his crouch. His aide, checking the time, cleared his throat and ventured, “Staff meeting in fifteen, sir. And then the Princeps’ briefing.”

  Caneris nodded, bent to consider the toe of his boot, nodded again. “Quite so. Call my car.” He flicked a glance at the groundsman, still cowering a couple of meters away. “And Johan, give that fellow something.”

  Chapter 12

  East Lagoda Territory, Northwest Frontier

  Amu Daria, Epsilon Aquila, Aquila Sector

  “Major?”

  The word, delivered in a low, flat hiss, did not so much wake Major Sutton as lift him through those final strata that separated dozing from full consciousness. His sleeping mind if any of them could be said to truly sleep after years of standing watch where no one got more than four hours sleep and often not that much had detected and cataloged the cautious, slightly dragging step approaching his hammock, so that when his eyes opened, he knew what he would see: Warrant Officer Ebenezer Hitch, bending over him.

  “Is it Beth?”

  Hitch straightened, the dim glow of the shrouded hand lantern rendering his rawboned features even more gargoyle-ish than usual.

  “No, sir. She’ll pull through, good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.” Gunnery Sergeant Lyrabeth Wilkins was one of their remaining bad cases. For the past two days, she’d been shaking in the hard grip of burning fever, a sure sign of an immunocyte implant at war with itself. The other sure sign, a sudden cytokine storm, was invariably fatal; these fevers were not, or not quite: one had claimed PFC Hoskins that AM, for all their meds could do. Women seemed to resist them better than men, for reasons that were much debated.

  Levering himself out the hammock, Sutton didn’t much like the expression on the WO’s face. Hitch had never been anything but plug-ugly, though he’d once been cheerful, but the rigors of the past two and a half years had carved all sign of that from his face, and his own bout of fever had cost him his hair, leaving him a withered caricature of his former self. Still, the others looked on him as “Old Reliable”, their medic, navigator, and the linchpin on which the unit’s morale hung.

  But the look in his eyes now was harried, almost furtive, as he hunkered down on the undulating floor of the limestone cavern they had sheltered in. Sutton pulled out his water bottle and rinsed his mouth to cover a scowl.

  “What is it, Hitch?”

  Hitch gnawed his lip, an embarrassed and even guilty gesture. “Well, sir . . . the people have been talkin’ and, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re just about played out. It’s the Colonel, sir. She’s . . . well, she’s not what she was, you might say. There’s a feelin’ that she . . . she’s not quite got her mind on . . . well, quite where it oughta be.”

  “The Colonel would knee-walk her way through Hell for anyone of us,” Sutton said, wishing he believed it with all the emphasis he gave the words. “You know that.”

  “That’s true, sir.” Hitch paused, gaunt hands closing and unclosing between his knees. “But why’s she hafta chuck us in there so she can do it?” Sutton�
�s teeth clamped down over an angry retort. The warrant officer hunched shoulders that had once filled out the jacket of his uniform.

  “Look, sir. We all knew when we got onboard that a snowflake in Hell had a better chance of a happy homecoming than we did. And me, when I cash out, one patch of terra firma is pretty much like any other.” He wet his lips again. “Take this place” indicating it with a circular motion of his bald head “Ain’t so bad. Good water, temp’s okay, outta the weather. Keep our heads down, we could lay up here for a good long time. But she’s out stalkin’ again. What trouble’s she gonna bring back this time?”

  It was true. Colonel Yeager had left with six men and the mule shortly after dusk, going to scout a settlement to the north. Maybe hopefully only to see if they could replenish some of their once again dwindling supplies. Wouldn’t be back till dawn, or this conversation could not be happening. But how close to the line Hitch was flirting with was the unit? Obviously, they’d picked Hitch as the best person to sound him out. Would they cross the line if he didn’t go along? The memory of his own conversation with the colonel, flying through that blizzard, stung him.

  “So what’re you saying, Hitch? You wanna give up?” If they had any other alternative in mind, they wouldn’t have bothered to approach him. “You know how Halith treats POWs. If we’re lucky they might just shoot us, but what about Beth? Or Syl? You wanna see what the Doms’d do to them?”

  “No, that weren’t quite it.” Reaching into a pocket, Hitch pulled out a xel. Sutton felt his gut tense as he activated it, but this deep under the mountain the emissions would be undetectable. “Russ picked this up.” He beamed a topo map on the cave floor, careful not to add when Sergeant Russ picked it up. The sergeant operated what remained of their passive ESM gear, and what he’d detected was shown a cluster of triangles, about twenty klicks due south.

  “What does he make of it?” Halith patrols didn’t camp out here in the wilds for the night. Not normally anyway.