Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “What was that you were saying about Tech Exploit reporting in?” Sabr asked conversationally.

  “They report a clean sweep. Korolev is salvageable, but Leuthen and Kuhn aren’t even fit for scrap.”

  The news was received without evident emotion, being no more than he’d expected. It would have been nice, of course, if they’d been able to salvage IHS Leuthen, one of Halith’s newest heavy cruisers, instead of a tin can like Korolev. Kuhn, an old Kurgan-class destroyer, had been barely worth more than scrap before the battle. (Why Halith had felt she was still battle-worthy was a mystery to him.) But such things were part of the fortunes of war.

  Turning to consult the big omnisynth, he saw that the Halith force was continuing its retreat. Shadowing them was Battlecruiser Division 61, led by Captain Sir Phillip Lawrence in LSS Retribution. It took no imagination to visualize Sir Phillip looking for stragglers with his usual predatory intensity, for it was clear from his dispositions. He’d pushed his destroyer screen ahead to the outermost limit of tactical prudence, no doubt hoping to provoke the enemy into doing something rash.

  Donovan saw it too, and looked inquiringly at his boss.

  Sabr shook his head. Lawrence could be counted on to judge these things to within the finest of fine hairs, and in another half hour, physics would put it out of the hands of either fleet to do harm to the other. In the meantime, the Halith commander over there could see Sir Phillip straining at the leash as well as he could, and to the extent this demonstration helped to hurry him on his way, Lo Gai was all for it.

  A nod from his chief of staff brought Sabr’s attention to a lit icon on the main screen even as the chime sounded. It was Rear Admiral Murphy. Murphy had been Seventh Fleet’s acting CO during the months of Vice Admiral Angharad Ross’s incapacity after the defeat at Kepler last year. Considered not to have enough time in grade to be promoted, he’d been replaced by the politically powerful Vice Admiral Franklin Tannahill. It had proven to be a divisive appointment. Admiral Devlyn Zahir, Cygnus Sector’s famously fiery commander in chief—she was the first cousin of Sabr’s spouse and the resemblance was marked—had argued vigorously for Murphy’s promotion, doing (given her impolitic nature) perhaps more harm than good. But there could be no question where Seventh Fleet’s sympathies lay, and Zahir had taken the slightly unusual step of restructuring TF 72, assigning the bulk of Seventh’s strike power to it, making Tannahill’s position almost redundant as far as offensive operations went. Tannahill, a fussy commander with a reputation for being something of a martinet, fumed at being sidelined in favor of his more aggressive subordinate but could not easily object.

  During the controversy, Admiral Sabr had developed a healthy respect for Murphy’s qualities, and when TF 34 had unexpectedly happened on TF 72 already engaged with Halith’s Duke Albrecht Fleet, he’d elected to leave Murphy as officer in tactical command rather than divide the command structure in the midst of a fight. With the fight over, he still resolved to tread lightly.

  “Tim, how are you? And how is Captain Shannon?”

  “Pretty fair, Admiral, but I’m afraid they had to tank Alex.”

  “Sorry to hear.” Putting someone in cryostasis was the method of last resort, and even if they could be revived and treated, the chances of postmortal cryonic dementia were lamentably great. “I don’t doubt he’ll pull through, Tim.”

  “Me neither,” replied the younger man with a slightly strained smile. Alex Shannon was said to be so stubborn that he expressed the trait down to the cellular level. “Though if we’re wrong, the afterlife is gonna be a bitch of a place to reside in.”

  “True words. Under the circumstances, I suggest you jump ahead to Epona as soon as Ramillies makes potential. We’ll watch the gate here for you, just in case the Doms decide to get ambitious.”

  “I appreciate that, but we’d rather not leave you holding the bag.”

  “You’ve got most of the wounded, Tim. Better you go ahead. We’ll follow as soon as they’ve jumped. Should they change their minds, you know it’ll be the last thing the sonsabitches ever do.”

  “Can I at least give you some people to help with Blenheim? I hate to see the old girl like that.”

  “Thanks, but Kyle and Dalton are doing all they can. Keep your people in case something shakes loose on the way home. But as you appear to be in a giving mood, I’ll ask for a prize crew for Korolev.”

  “Happy to.” Murphy couldn’t entirely disguise the twinge of relief he felt. “I’ll send one right over. Have you thought of a provisional name for her?”

  “I believe that should be your privilege.”

  “Your people captured her.”

  “Your people destroyed Revanche.”

  “Okay. Since you insist, what do you think of Carlow?”

  “Appropriate.”

  “Thank you, Lo Gai. See you back on the beach.”

  “Happy return, Tim.”

  The line dropped and Rear Admiral Murphy’s image faded. With a glance to confirm that Sir Phillip was still keeping within the bounds of propriety—he was, if those bounds were considered a trifle elastic—Sabr spoke to Captain Donovan. “Raise Blenheim, please.”

  A moment later the harassed and sweating face of Lieutenant Jeremy Dalton, Blenheim’s senior surviving engineering officer, appeared.

  “What’s her status, Lieutenant?”

  Dalton blotted his forehead with a sleeve. “I’m afraid it’s no-go, sir. We could get the plant back to maybe forty percent in two, three hours, but she’ll never take the strain. The keel’s near sheared at the root and there’s nothing but good will keeping things together aft of frame one-oh-four ‘til you hit E-Ring. All the stringers god made, if we had ‘em, wouldn’t help.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant.” Sabr had been prepared for that. Throughout the AM, he’d cherished a private hope that Blenheim might have enough left in her to get home, even if they had to bundle her with Trafalgar. But hope was like water in the desert, and it disappeared into the sand just as quickly. “Secure things there and prepare to disembark your people.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Should I page Commander Kyle? He’s down the hole.”

  “That’s not necessary, Lieutenant. You’ve done all you can. Report when all’s secure.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  As the line dropped, Sabr returned his attention to the omnisynth. “When Lieutenant Dalton gives the all clear, tow Jellicoe and remaining captures alongside Blenheim, secure with ley lines, and set the fusion bottles to blow together.”

  “That’ll take some time, Admiral,” his chief of staff remarked cautiously.

  “Then make the time”—fixing the captain with his dark-shadowed gimlet eye. “She’s a proud old ship and she handed out better than she received. She doesn’t deserve to go alone.” His turbulent black gaze returned to the main screen. “No one should go alone.”

  Z-Day minus 41

  LSS Trafalgar

  en route to Epona, Cygnus Sector

  Kris came to in sickbay, her body suffused with a deep burning ache, and tried to lift her head. Nothing happened. The false sensation of muscles contracting utterly betrayed her. A spasm of panic coursed through her, to which her body was unable to respond with so much as a twitch. A medical corpsman, hovering over her and intent on a scanner, did not notice she was conscious until she made an effort to clear her clogged throat.

  “Hey,” he said with what he obviously thought was a reassuring smile.

  “Wha . . . why . . .” She tried to force the words out but they would not come.

  “Oh, nothing to worry about,” the corpsman said, as he put a mask over her nose and mouth. Something sharp and bitterly cold shocked her throat and lungs. “We gave you a paralytic. Can’t have you moving until the assessment’s done. That’ll be a little bit.”

  The vapor left a sour, caustic aftertaste on her tongue but the congestion in her throat was gone. The shock of being unable to move subsided, and she tried again. “Why . . . why
’d—I pass out?”

  “Oh, that.” He put down his scanner and peeled back one eyelid to shine a flashing blue light in her pupil. “That was a bit of an infarction you had a there. No big deal—suit defibrillator took care of it. Kinda expected, y’know.”

  Kris did not know.

  “Well, other than that shoulder and five busted ribs,” he explained, “you got a righteous case of R&R. Nothing we can’t handle, but yeah—there’s some smooth muscle damage. Not too much, but we’re gonna keep you wired here for a bit.”

  So that’s what it feels like.

  R&R in this instance stood for “rattle & roll,” which was the short form of “shake, rattle & roll,” the informal name for the muscular damage pilots suffered from sustained ultra-high gee maneuvering. Doctors called it Submesodermal Microrupture Syndrome, and Kris would have given a lot to have lived her whole life in ignorance of how it felt.

  “How . . . long?”

  “Can’t rightly say. Doc’s gonna be back soon. He’ll fill you in.” He picked up his scanner again, scribbled more notes. “Sorry we can’t do more for the pain just yet. It’s a . . . well, I guess you’d say it’s diagnostic.” More scribbling. “I know it sucks.”

  You think it sucks, Kris thought acidly.

  “And you got a visitor. Wanna see him?”

  “Commander Huron?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gestured with the scanner. “Gotta send this to the Doc. You want I should get him?”

  “Sure.”

  Moments later Rafe Huron stepped into her field of vision, wearing a carefully unconcerned and false smile on his disconcertingly handsome features. “Hi, Kris.”

  Kris tried a fake smile of her own. “We gotta stop meeting like this.”

  “Yeah.” Huron rubbed the bridge of his nose, slightly crooked from an old break he refused to have corrected. “I’m not going to ask how you feel.”

  “That bad?”

  His mouth twitched sideways. “Well, I know it’s not good. Been there myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Twice.” He dropped his hand, looked off toward a bulkhead. “Let’s see, the first time was . . . ah . . . damn! I forget his name.” He shook his head. “He was a stubborn bastard—wouldn’t take no for an answer. That was in the last war. The second was Mananzas Cay. I got ship duty after that.”

  “That was about a year before we met, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess so.” He grinned and it was genuine this time. “Lucky, huh?”

  Kris gave him an answering smile. “Lucky.” Then the smile faded. “Did Tole make it back?” In the murderous melee that had taken place over Prince Valens, Kris and her element leader had gotten tangled up with six Halith fighters in a swirling dogfight that pulled them far from the main action. Tole’s fighter had taken heavy damage early on and the last she’d seen of him, he was arcing away, out of control, trailing molten slag and gas.

  “Most of him.”

  “Most?”

  “His bird was pretty much toast and he had to swim home. Rough ejection. We got him back all right, but if he wants to have kids, he’s gonna have to clone ‘em.” Huron did not look like he was kidding. She decided not to ask. His gaze wandered the room for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “You know, there’s no shame in taking a pass under circumstances like that.”

  “I hate to come home empty handed.”

  He smoothed the hair over his left temple. “You could leave some for the rest of us.”

  “I think I did.” A pause. “Who the hell was that guy?” She had dealt with the remaining bandits after Tole was knocked out of the fight—that went okay and she was no more than singed. It was the other fighter who’d shown up a couple of minutes later—out of nowhere, flying solo. No sane pilot ever flew solo. It was almost like he’d been waiting . . .

  “Won’t know for sure until all your data gets collated, but I have a hunch.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think of the best Halith pilot we know.”

  “No way! He’s a captain now—teaches goslings back at Haslar. No way they let him go up.”

  “Maybe. There was a rumor on the Boards he wangled a staff posting—director of flight ops planning for the Haslar Fleet.”

  “That wasn’t the Haslar Fleet out there.”

  “No, but it’s possible he talked his way into a transfer. After all, what’s the point of being flight ops planner for a fleet that never leaves port except to parade around the core systems to impress the plebs?”

  “You really think it was Banner?”

  “That’s my guess, but we’ll see.”

  Kris closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Captain Jantony Banner had scored over two hundred victories in the last war. Between the wars, he’d formed up a training squadron with three friends, all top pilots: Lord Garvin, Pavel Heinck and the Vicomte Sallinger, and gone touring with their protégés. They called it Banner’s Flying Circus. Garvin had been killed in an accident on Vehren years ago. Huron had shot down Pavel Heinck during a skirmish here in Cygnus. Sallinger was reportedly attached to the Prince Vorland fleet and still flying.

  Jantony Banner . . . Her lips moved without her knowing it and Huron broke in on her thoughts.

  “I did confirm one thing, though.”

  She didn’t bother to open her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “You just made ace-in-a-day. Got five and a half out there.”

  That got her eyes open. “I did?”

  “Yep. Congratulations. Tole’s gonna owe you a triple fuck-ton of beer.”

  Had things been working better, Kris might have gone to the effort to make a face. She’d learned to like coffee, but she couldn’t grasp the Service’s deep attachment to beer.

  “I thought it was only four—that the rest got away.”

  “Well, no doubt you were distracted at the time.”

  Fuckin’ no kidding.

  “Get some rest, Kris. I know it feels bad now, but it won’t last. They do a bang-up job on SMS these days.” She detected a ghost of a smirk and a slight twinkle in his eye. “No pun intended.”

  Kris rolled her eyes as he turned away.

  None taken.

  Z-Day minus 39

  LSS Trafalgar, on-orbit;

  Epona, Cygnus Sector

  Forty-eight hours later, supported by a cocktail of carefully blended painkillers and duly admonished by the ship’s doctor about her immoderate behavior, Kris walked into the wardroom with one arm in a sling but under her own power. The nanocytes had done their ticklish work—a not exactly painful process but one that produced a singularly annoying crawling sensation—and were now breaking down and being flushed out of her system as fast as her overworked kidneys could manage. They had given her some pills to help with that, along with strict instructions to scrupulously avoid rich food and strong drink—clearly someone’s idea of a bad joke.

  In truth, it wasn’t as much of a joke as Kris had first thought. The atmosphere of rejoicing that flooded the carrier after the battle had been tempered by the loss of many friends, but it was rejoicing nonetheless. There was no shame in feeling elation at still being alive, and if there were friends to be mourned, that mourning could go forward just as well, or even better, in good fellowship and strong drink as in sorrow and tears.

  This certainly was the opinion of Trafalgar’s medical director, Dr. Stanton, who entered the wardroom the evening after the battle, triumphantly bearing aloft four gallons of genuine Kentucky bourbon. Having seen that the wounded were as comfortable as his keen ingenuity could make them under the present crowded conditions, he did not scruple to prescribe for his other shipmates. Bolstered by this Hippocratic sanction, affairs proceeded at full tilt, to the point where a young lieutenant-JG treated them to a rousing rendition of—of all things—John Peel. This was followed by the unofficial version of Farewell Hyperion, the Navy anthem, with earthier lyrics that seemed more to the point, and somehow culminated in Lights Out, Miranda.

&
nbsp; Now, as she entered the wardroom, Kris saw her flight mates gathered at their usual places, joined, as they often were, by Senior Lieutenant Geoff N’Komo, the recon wing’s Foxtrot squadron leader and Huron’s best friend. A full day of celebration and its aftereffects had rendered them a relaxed group, except for Tole, who’d made it out of sickbay a day-cycle ahead of Kris and was looking glum. From this, Kris deduced someone must have brought up his relatively minor but embarrassing wound.

  She was right. N’Komo was laughing as Lieutenant-JG Krieger expounded on the details of the incident while consuming enormous forkfuls of food. He was just completing his recitation of Tole’s ejection and recovery when Kris limped up to the table. They all greeted her with genuine warmth, and as she sat, slowly and with extra care, a mess steward slid a bowl of translucent, tepid, colorless glop in front of her and handed her a spoon.

  Kris regarded it skeptically. “What’s this crap supposed to be?”

  “Doctor’s orders,” N’Komo said with a leer.

  “My ass,” Kris muttered.

  The leer deepened. “Nah, it’s actually just amino acids spiked with a few complex carbs.”

  And everyone laughed. Even Kris.

  Then Huron, wearing his usual look of smiling, affable reserve, leaned back, enfolding a steaming cup of coffee in his two hands. “Have you seen the report yet?”

  Kris, consuming a spoonful of glop, shook her head. Tole, welcoming the interruption, skated a xel across to her. “Ya made the highlight reel, that’s fer damn sure. Check it out.”

  Kris did. She swallowed hastily. “It was Banner.”

  “You want to know what else?” Huron asked, sipping slowly. Kris, scanning through the report as she obediently took another spoonful (the stuff wasn’t as bad as it looked), shrugged.

  “You don’t see it?”

  A slow deliberate headshake.

  “Here, let me enhance it for you.” Huron took the xel and fiddled with the display for a moment. “There. Look at that.”