The Bonds of Orion (Loralynn Kennakris Book 5)

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “I can’t do that,” Zamora said, voice half-strangled. “Not over an open line. Y’know that.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? No one’s logging this call.”

  “Look. I’m not even ten minutes away. Keep you shit together, and I’ll be there and I’ll fix it. No foul, alright?”

  Zwickau muttered a word he didn’t catch. It didn’t sound like a good one.

  “You won’t miss anything. Nothing’s happening on the nets today anyway,” he added and instantly regretted it. Something was always happening. Saying otherwise was exactly the sort of thing that could give him away.

  Less than ten minutes. Surely Zwickau would wait that long. By the time he called anyone, Zamora would be in the air. They might contact the pilot, but he’d thought of that, too sliding his hand over the hard lump of the compact palm-pistol in its case in his other coat pocket.

  “If you say so.” Zwickau didn’t sound convinced.

  “On my way. Eight minutes.” Zamora killed the call. Eight minutes till freedom. Eight minutes . . .

  The taxi dropped off Zamora at the starport’s private charter terminal, and he bolted as soon as the gull-wing doors opened. He’d booked his departure under one of his bot profiles and used some of the Halith money to buy a priority exit visa in that name. That got him through security with no more than a cursory inspection they didn’t even give the pistol case, mimicking a portable cloud drive, a second glance and he stepped on a ped-way with his heart beating high in his chest. There in the jet park beyond the vast curved crystal window at the end of a terminal, a trans-atmo flyer awaited him. He fought the urge to run; forced himself to appear relaxed with a force of will greater than he’d ever made before.

  The portal in the window dilated as it sensed his presence and validated exit visa. He stepped through. The flyer was a mere fifty meters across the black melt-rock paving. The pilot in the cockpit saw him; lifted a hand.

  Don’t run . . .

  “Roland Zamora?”

  The sound of his name, coming from directly behind him, stabbed hard and deep. He reeled, his legs momentarily betraying him, and swung unsteadily in the direction of the voice.

  “No . . .” his own voice pitched high. “You’re mistaken. I’m not ”

  “You sure look like Roland Zamora,” interrupted the speaker, consulting a device in his hand. Zamora didn’t recognize his accent. He didn’t recognize the uniform either, but the rifle poised on the man’s hip made his purpose clear enough. The device snapped shut. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

  A hot blind panic crashed through him, animating his body without thought. Lurching around, it propelled him forward, a strange horrible motion, at once frantic and achingly slow, the flyer seeming to shrink in his tunnel vision as he sprinted for it. Shrinking, he suddenly realized, because it was moving. Leaving.

  A feral scream ripped from his raw panting throat a scream that didn’t register in his own ears and he fumbled for the palm-pistol as he ran. Waving the gun in one hand and yelling as he sprinted insanely after the retreating shape, he never heard the pound of racing footsteps behind him. Only a massive impact that sent him flying, a nightmarish tumble that ended with him rolling across the pavement. He came to a stop on his back, a heavy boot crushing his chest and the muzzle of an assault rifle pinning his head to the ground. From some immeasurable height, searing narrow eyes stared down and the rifle-holder said, “Go on. Be fuckin’ stupid.”

  His arms jerked out in a spastic gesture; the palm-pistol clattered on the pavement, and he was yanked to his feet without apparent effort. A powerful fist gripped the back of his collar, and the gun barrel made painful contact with his third lumbar vertebra.

  “Move,” the harsh voice growled, prodding him with the rifle for emphasis. “And keep your shit in. Or this will go off.”

  * * *

  “Roland Zamora” he heard his full name for the third time in a short span of minutes “you’re having one hell of a day.”

  The man who addressed him this time was notably thin, with sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes and an overall look of having undergone severe privation, possibly for years, but that did nothing to diminish the strength he radiated, or the aura of one who was long accustomed to being obeyed. He had a lean hip hitched on the room’s single desk and was looking at Zamora down his blade-like nose with a distant, impersonal, almost abstracted air.

  “Do you always run and wave pistols when folks say your name?” He had Zamora’s palm-pistol in one bony hand and was tossing it aimlessly, like a child’s toy. Zamora shrugged, an unconscious writhe that rattled the cuffs securing his arms to the metal chair.

  “It was the gun,” he answered, struggling to lift his voice above a low mumble. “He pointed the gun. I . . . freaked out.” Dropping his head, he licked his lips like a guilty dog. “Guns gimme a problem.”

  “He pointed the gun.” The man eyed the much bulkier man who’d marched him into this room on the starport’s upper level. “You don’t say.”

  Head still down, Zamora knotted and unknotted his fists, wishing dreading he knew the exact time. It couldn’t be long now. Minutes maybe. How long after the python activated would it happen? What would it be? And could they trace it to him? If they already knew, why hadn’t they said anything? If they didn’t know, there might still be a chance . . . but what was it?

  The crawling sensation at the back of his skull the feeling of a bullet about to strike, of waiting for it, the shot never heard threatened to consume what remained of his mind.

  “Yeah. I thought I mean . . . he he had the gun ready.”

  “So you ran because you have a problem with guns?”

  “That’s right.”

  “While carrying a gun?”

  Shit fuck shit. . . “That’s different.”

  “I can see that.” His interrogator pursed his thin colorless lips. “So tell me, Roland” making him wince “why did your work call and ask us to find you? Seems you left there in a hurry, too?”

  “I, uh . . .” Goddammit! Did they know or didn’t they? “Maybe I didn’t log out right. Or something.”

  “That’s the impression, but you . . .”

  A black wave crested and broke over him. They didn’t know. All the ways he might’ve stalled, even been able to keep walking to the flyer, played brokenly through his mind. If he’d just kept his fucking head . . .

  Staring fixedly at the floor as if it might open up and consume or liberate him, he didn’t immediately notice his interrogator had stopped talking. Instead, a strange, throbbing stillness in the room’s air alerted him and with it, the cessation of a faint hum he hadn’t noticed until it stopped.

  The environmentals. They’d shut down.

  He hadn’t thought the python would do that, too. It must be shutting down all the starport systems. The man was rapping out a series of orders in a swift, precise, clipped monotone, but they meant nothing to Zamora. He tried to turn in the chair, pulling against the cuffs and craning his neck to look out the sloping windows behind him. He saw a wide purity of deep blue sky, slightly marred by trailing wisps of high-altitude cloud, and piercing those clouds, a number of perfectly straight, fine lines, as if they’d been ruled out be a fastidious god shimmering, incandescent, lovely descending with dream-like to the slow, dull, painful thump of blood in his ears.

  The glowing trails of burning air left by TRIMs reentering.

  So that was It.

  And his bad day that couldn’t possibly get any worse, had just gotten a whole lot worse.

  Chapter 23

  LSS Artemisia, in orbit

  Amu Daria, Epsilon Aquila, Aquila Sector

  Huron, on his way to LSS Artemisia’s wardroom, was contemplating a nice peaceful meal and then embarking on the journey home when blaring claxons and flashing hatch lights announced the ship going to Condition II. All such pleasant thoughts demolished, he immediately reversed course. Navigating through the streams of personnel hurrying to
their action stations a seeming chaos whose currents were instinctual to almost everyone aboard he arrived minutes later at the battlecruiser’s flag bridge, where Commodore Shariati waited with Captain Dirk Bajorat, her chief of staff, and her staff operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Irene Varis. Colonel Lewis was right behind him.

  “I think we better put jam in our pockets,” Min said sotto voce.

  “Because we’re gonna be toast?” he replied with oblique glance.

  “Know that one, huh?”

  “From way back.”

  “When you two are ready,” said the commodore from the far side of the compartment’s omnisynth. As they crowded in alongside the two staff officers, Shariati raised her head from the map display. “Though, as it happens, you might not be far wrong.”

  Min and Huron leaned in for a better look and Shariati pointed to the bull’s-eyes scattered across the map, not randomly, but with scientific precision.

  “TRIMs. Launched from stealth satellites in high-elliptical orbit. All the city’s defenses are down, but they only destroyed these armories, munitions and supply depots, and the installations along the coast. Except the port facility they must want it for their own use. They evidently mean to attack from the sea and want the landward defenses intact when the systems come back up. Telecoms and power are down throughout the city. The starport is also down. They seem to want it intact, too, but don’t want anyone leaving in the meantime.”

  Huron and Min nodded in unison. With the starport’s systems down, the grav boosters heavy trans-atmospheric craft needed to launch would be inoperable. The hell of it was that the trans-atmo craft in question were theirs: six heavy-lift cargo lighters they were using to ferry the nine thousand liberated POWs to the waiting transports unhappily waiting, but waiting nonetheless. The two transports that had bolted had found their way out-system barred one of the commodore’s light cruisers, LSS Gryphon, whose captain, Tanya Lazaroff, explained to them (in no uncertain terms) the need to fulfill their contractual obligations. Brought back, grumbling but chastened, they were doing so now, along with the three other transports Colonel Yeager had hired, which had just arrived and been similarly convinced to cooperate.

  But now operations were at a halt, and they had less than a thousand of their people aboard. Moving the other eight thousand with shuttles, their only current option, would take most of a day, and they all knew another attack was impending. What they didn’t know was when.

  “We’ve been scanning for an invasion force,” explained Lieutenant Commander Varis, “but so far we can’t see one. They are massing a large amphibious force here” she circled the Dom’s main base in the planet’s southern hemisphere “mostly Orkhon-class hovercraft. Those can carry eight to ten armored vehicles or up five hundred troops. They can also be configured for fire support I can’t be positive, but I think some of them are using 210-mm rockets from retractable launchers; two hundred sixty-four rockets per platform.” Irene Varis was a former intelligence officer, and she hadn’t quite outgrown the habit of larding on the details. “The point is” aware she’d overdone it a trifle “they can land up to twelve thousand troops, including an amphibious armored brigade and several kilotons worth of ordnance at the capital in nine or ten hours, if those hovercraft can maintain their top cruising speed.”

  In short, a force the separatists holding the capital had not a prayer of resisting.

  “What doesn’t make sense,” Varis concluded, her gaze making a circuit of the room, “is why they’re waiting. It would have made more sense to launch this force at the same time as the TRIMs. That way, they’d be only a few hours out right now and perfectly positioned to exploit the chaos of the attack. Not that it will make much difference in the long run, but since they had ability to easily coordinate all this, why didn’t they?”

  “And your conclusion?” asked the commodore.

  “That they did, ma’am.” The answer came back quick. “That there’s an advance force which did leave when the TRIMs launched, and we haven’t found it yet.”

  “So this large force is to gull us into thinking we have time we don’t have, then?” asked Min.

  “Yes. And possibly give the separatists something to keep track of with their overhead surveillance assets. Maybe keep their attention away from a smaller force. That’s the only way I can explain this.”

  Shariati looked to her chief of staff. “Do you agree, Dirk?”

  “I do. It makes sense that when the Doms lost control of their surveillance satellites to the separatists, they’d try to use those assets against them. That might explain why their denial procedures appear weak. The problem is that if they are running a force under EMCOM, especially if the force is small enough to be shielded, we stand very little chance detecting it. Next to none with all the storm activity down there.”

  “Are they capable of shielding a force?”

  “They have the assets, ma’am,” Varis answered. “If it was no more than, say . . . a quarter the size of the one we’re seeing still in port.”

  “And what would be the purpose of sending a force that size six or seven hours ahead?” Shariati asked the room in general.

  “Bombardment,” Min replied after a pause of a few seconds. “With a few of those hovercraft, they could lay off the city and pound it to their heart’s delight. By the time the main force shows up, it’s a cakewalk. And the way things stand, there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.”

  What that last sentence lacked in diplomacy, it made up for in truthfulness. The separatist forces had nothing to speak of in the way of artillery, and Colonel Yeager’s few aircraft carried nothing that would make any impression on a shielded fleet. They had captured a couple of Halith ground-effect vehicles (GEVs), huge craft used for troop transport and sea patrol, and while those could pack real firepower, even their missiles would not do much unless the fleet’s shield was a low-grade one and operating alone, they were horribly vulnerable to anti-air missiles.

  The lack of diplomacy, however, applied more to the commodore’s squadron, which was equally impotent to intervene. None of her ships were equipped with close-ground-support weapons. The weapons they did have railguns, antiship missiles and torpedoes were designed for encounters where ranges equal to the diameter of the planet below counted as ‘close engagement’. They were useless against planets protected by thick atmospheres, unless boiling some of that atmosphere could be considered ‘useful’.

  “As we seem to be facing a limited set of options,” the commodore remarked, slow-voiced, “it would seem our best course is to expand them. Dirk, I want all our ships here in the best possible time. Don’t spare the drives.”

  “All our ships, ma’am? That will significantly degrade our chances of detecting an inbound Dom fleet.” That Captain Bajorat would state the obvious this way was the true measure of his unease. For they all knew a Halith fleet must be coming. Their forces on-planet would not have launched this offensive if they weren’t expecting a fleet soon, to secure their victory. “If we left Gryphon and perhaps ”

  “No. We don’t have the luxury of hedging our bets today. Maybe the gods of hyperspace will smile. Yes? What is it, Ensign?”

  This last directed their combined attention to the gangling young man standing at the entrance with a flimsy in his hand and a disconcerted look of his pinkish face. “It’s for Commander Huron, ma’am.” And holding out the rectangle of plaspaper to Huron, he said, “Message for you, sir. From Colonel Yeager. She wants to know if you have expertise in Halith information technology or can assist her in that regard. They are holding a ‘person of interest’ in regards to the starport’s systems failure and require assistance in, um, debriefing him.”

  “Yes, Ensign” reading the message as the young man recited it; a tolerably accurate paraphrase. Except perhaps for the debriefing part. “Tell the colonel I shall be down with some help directly.” He handed the flimsy back. “Where’s Commander Kennakris?”

  “She’s conduct
ing an inspection of one of the transports, Shorn Song,” answered Captain Bajorat. “We noted some possible irregularities, and she’s said have some . . . experience with that sort things.”

  Indeed she did, Huron thought inwardly, and a ship called Shorn Song could almost be convicted of slaver associations based on its name alone. “Can she be spared?”

  They hadn’t learned exactly what had caused the systems at the starport and throughout the capital to fail, but it had all the hallmarks of a highly sophisticated malware attack. The commodore and her staff were no doubt aware that Kris had used her knowledge of Halith IT systems knowledge she’d come by while a slave on Harlot’s Ruse to help win the Battle of Apollyon Gates. They probably weren’t aware of some of her other exploits, such as hacking into the environmental systems when she was at the CEF Academy on Deimos to try to solve an exercise problem. Only she, he and (probably) Ferhat Basmartin knew about that. Under the circumstances, there was no one better equipped to handle whatever problem Colonel Yeager was asking about. He would’ve liked to know more about that to give Kris a head’s-up, but the xels the colonel’s people had were years out date and wouldn’t sync up with his. Asking via ship comms would waste time, so getting the details would have to wait until they were face-to-face.

  Captain Bajorat nodded. “Certainty.”

  Huron returned the nod and looked across the commodore. “Then with your permission, ma’am?”

  “By all means, Commander. We’ll arrange to have her meet you downside.”

  “Thank you.” Shorn Song was on the other side of the planet, and with every second being invaluable, there was no question of waiting for her so they could go down together.

  “Will do, Commander. A shuttle will be ready for you in two minutes. Good luck, and good hunting.”

  With an exchange of salutes, Huron turned and left the compartment, making for the boat bay at a pace not far below a dead run. The hunting would definitely need to be good if they were to have a hope of getting their people off-planet in time. As for luck . . . no offense to the Goddess Fortuna, but he’d rather put his money on Kris.