Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Nick and his fellows were of this stamp. It proclaimed their nature more loudly than the battered, travel-grimed jackets, the baggy trousers bloused loosely over scarred boots, and the short one’s anachronistic habit of picking his teeth, which seemed to make everything his beady, unreflecting eye touched on a candidate meal. Such men raise visible tremors in good folk, but make men like the skipper, whose goodness was in direct proportion to the quality of his circumstances, quake internally, which is less comfortable.

  When the long-awaited clearance came, reinforced by an energetic crackle on the line and a blinking green light, the little freighter pitched like a swan (which it in no other sense resembled), and cut the air at 46-degrees south latitude. Alighting on the waiting cradle of Docking Bay 94 in the port’s Upper South Wing G, the skipper hurried aft, to favor his passengers with a toothy smile.

  “You fellas need a hand at all?” he asked, eager to do anything that might expedite the proceedings. He had fifty crates of ‘machine parts’ in his hold he was to deliver—the real reason for his trip here—and getting them off his boat and into the escrow agent’s storage unit was almost as big a concern as seeing the backs of this surly lot.

  “We got it” was all the gruff reply he received as two of them hefted the massy crate the skipper had accepted on board without comment but not without consternation. Squeezing aside so as not to be run down, he gave them sketchy nods as they filed past.

  “On second thought,” Nick added, bringing up the rear, “we’re looking for a place to stay. Any recommendations?”

  “I hear Perdido Station ain’t so bad,” the skipper offered with a glad hand and a nervous smirk.

  “Perdido Station,” echoed Nick, assessing both and then ignoring them. “Yep. That sounds ‘bout right.”

  Perdition Alley

  Asura Quarter, Cathcar Metroplex;

  Cathcar, Praesepe Cluster

  Bare metal by the acre and the mile, glazed and pitted with species of corrosion unknown to science, perverting the light that touched it and adding more confusion to the shifting murky shadows. All along the lower sub-main concourse, the establishments that blared their offerings were not so much built as heaped, distorted by centuries of anarchic labor, stained with mottled colors that seeped to the surface like an old bruise. The raucous cries and battering music imposed a frantic silence by making the ear forget how to hear, compacting each denizen within a shell of their own skin, unable to connect even with those they touched.

  And touch they did: a great brawling promiscuity as the steady stream of slaver crews, released from months on board, traded the ‘tween-decks whores for the false variety of the ‘shop girls’, some in shop stalls or kiosks, but the more economically minded, not choosing to pay rent for a dozen square feet of space (which was most of them), quite openly asprawl along the margins of concourse, while a few eccentrics occupied the shadows or side alleys.

  Nick and his seven comrades weaved through this permanent iniquitous holiday, made humid and pungent by the feverish activity on all sides, watching for an address. His cel lit, directing them to the right, down a cul-de-sac rimmed with an edifice that was constructed in such way as to suggest a house of cards in mid-collapse. A partially lit sign above the entrance proclaimed the word “STATION” while Paradiso and Perdido frolicked about it, sliding and morphing into one another. The establishment’s listing stated the proprietor’s name as Milton, and Nick, alone of the company (except for possibly Duke), wondered if this was a deliberate bit of misplaced hilarity.

  “In here,” announced Nick. His companions stopped abruptly and Wattie trod on a reveler. The man shot to his feet, yowling, and rushed. Wattie’s fist cracked against the stubbled jaw, a crushing blow delivered almost negligently, that sent the attacker spinning into a wall. By the time he slid to the ground, drooling blood and ropes of saliva, someone had taken his place.

  “Sorry, mate.” Wattie looked from the limp form to the space he’d so swiftly vacated and then back at Nick. “Whazzat you’re sayin’ there, Nick?”

  “I said it’s down here”—pointing at their accommodations.

  “Fuck me,” griped Shorty. “I seen better in a shit storm on Pluto.”

  “Wherever y’are ‘tis a shit storm, Shorty.”

  “Get fucked, Grady.”

  Dan Grady surveyed their surroundings critically. “Don’t see an open spot.”

  “Get a move on,” Nick growled. “Shorty, you can sleep out here, if you’d rather.”

  Shorty looked over and spat on the head of Wattie’s victim. “Might do.”

  “Suit yourself. Wipe your feet before ya come in.”

  * * *

  The interior of Perdido Station was much like the exterior, only more so: a disorderly warren of casually assembled spaces. Holographic niches decorated the listing walls that may (or may not) have supported tilted ceilings, each displaying fluorescent figures writhing in a shimmery velvet darkness.

  The scenes were all variations on a theme—the descent into hell—graphically depicted in such ways, and in such profusion, that Nick, who’d seen more than most in his decades in the marines and then law enforcement, came to think that joining Shorty outside might not be such a bad idea after all.

  Presently, they encountered the proprietor in a lobby of sorts that had more the feel of a cavity than a proper room. This individual evinced a distorted ancestry that fit him to his surroundings better than most of human kind, with a bare skull like a chipped egg, wiry eyebrows that marched in an aggressive line below his seamed forehead and above two pale wet eyes, a flat nose in between them, and below, a mouth more amphibian than seemed quite right. The supporting neck was thin, wrinkled, and had a prominent Adam’s apple. It grew from narrow shoulders encased in a dark, unadorned, boxy jacket that hid the stooped simian frame. The skin stretched over all this was carrot-hued, but whether that was the light or its true color, Nick could hardly tell.

  The proprietor introduced himself as Milton and asked, “What kind of service can I do you boys?” One might have expected the voice that uttered this to be a reptilian croak, but one would have been disappointed. It was perfectly ordinary, marked only by a perfectly ordinary nasal twang.

  “Lookin’ for a place to stay. With elbowroom,” Nick announced for them all.

  Milton surveyed the group, and his moist gaze settled on the crate still held by Tich Lytle and Dan Grady. “What’s that there?”

  “Whazzat t’you?” Shorty retorted in his customary snarl.

  “Keep a civil tongue in that odd skull, Shorty,” Nick admonished. “We guests here. Show ‘im, boys.”

  Lytle and Grady set down the crate and cracked the seal with a pair of ID chips. Dan lifted the heavy cover free and Milton shuffled over with Nick to peer within. Within lay a naked young woman, blond, ivory-skinned and small-boned, heavily sedated, tightly curled, with a breathing mask over her lower face.

  “Hmm.” Milton passed a long knobby finger across his wide, almost lipless mouth. “What’s that?”

  “Fallen angel,” answered Nick.

  “I don’t take you.”

  “That’s a Trip.”

  The proprietor squinted, grasping the reference. Hearing a Trip sing was commonly said to be akin to seeing heaven. Personally he considered the non-metaphorical existence of heaven to be about as likely as a genuine Trip suddenly appearing in his environs.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Don’t much care either way.” Nick nodded to his companions. “Lock it up, boys.”

  Milton watched Grady replace the lid with a pecuniary gleam in his eye. “Got plans for that, do you?”

  Letting a glim of impatience show, Nick shrugged the question aside. “Ya got room or what?”

  “The Bodhi suite’s open. Top floor. Plenty of elbowroom. Lot’s of nice extras. Extra, of course.”

  “Might suit. How much?”

  “How long?”

  “Awhile.”

&nb
sp; “Awhile lets by the week. Thirty-seven hundred.”

  Nick frowned. A week in these parts was five days, GAT. “That’s a heavy bite.”

  Milton reconsidered the crate. “Terms can be . . . flexible.”

  “Ya don’t say.”

  “I’ve always been curious if what I hear is true. About how their throat can work a man over.”

  “In your dreams, punkin head,” interjected Shorty.

  “You’re forgettin’ your manners again, Shorty.” Nick returned his attention to the proprietor. “If you’re makin’ a bid, get in line. If you’re just curious, remember how that turned out for the cat.”

  The thin mouth drew down astonishingly. “Thirty-seven hundred, then. In advance.”

  “You’ll clean it, of course.”

  “For five hundred extra, I’ll think about it.”

  “How about three hundred and the ability to keep chewing solid food?”

  The man toted up Nick’s smile, Shorty’s grin, Dan Grady looming just behind with the others, and divided by the valor of his in-house security. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “I’ll have somebody get right on that.”

  Nick’s smile twitched. “Fair do. Grady, pay the man.”

  The Bodhi suite was a large space decorated like something out of the Arabian Nights reinterpreted by a Dadaist with personal issues. One corner was taken over by a large low platform upholstered in long, thick, black fur that rippled in a lively fashion with you ran a hand through it; what happened to those who chose to frolic upon it was anybody’s guess. There were chairs and settees and couches of eccentric designs, fully equipped for a wide range of activities, and the whole was cluttered with what were undoubtedly thought to be inspirational artworks.

  Nick had Grady and Lytle put the crate down on a carpet out of an interior designer’s nightmare while Nixon set up his kit and made sure they couldn’t be eavesdropped on. Breaking the seals again, Nick took off the lid and reached inside to remove the mask from the young woman’s face.

  “Take a powder, Shorty,” he said over his shoulder, feeling the presence approach from behind. Grumbling, Shorty retreated. Nick injected an ampoule into the IV inserted into the woman’s left arm. Almost immediately, she began to cough and Nick lifted her with gentle hands into a sitting position. Wrapping her in a thermal blanket from a pouch in the crate’s interior, he put a solid, comforting arm around her shoulders until her eyes opened—huge eyes the color of jade-green opals.

  “How ya doin’ there, Lieutenant?”

  “Fine,” answered Lieutenant Althea Quinn of the Tanith Rangers, her teeth chattering. Nick took a foil packet out of a pocket, ripped the top off with his teeth, and held it to the full, deeply curved, pale lips. Lieutenant Quinn sucked greedily.

  Presently, the shaking stopped and the color came back to her face, rendering her more human, and less like the fallen angel Nick had claimed her to be, but there was still quite a bit that was angelic in that fine-boned face with those disconcerting green eyes and slight lissome form—all qualities Nick was planning to rely on to bring off this caper, but none so much as her voice.

  Allie Quinn (people never made the mistake of calling her Althea twice) was indeed a Trip; that is, a triplet singer, one who’d undergone a genetic modification that gave them three sets of vocal chords which could be used independently. That Trips, ninety percent of whom were women, could show a listener heaven when they sang might have been a bit of romantic hyperbole; that their voices could evoke the divine was not—especially if they were gifted, which Quinn was. For this reason, Trips who came on the market commanded astronomical prices among those able to afford them—powerful bosses at the pinnacle of the slaver food chain.

  It was just such bosses that Nick had in his sights. As he helped Quinn into the ornate robes slavers used to mark their most prized auction pieces, he found himself irresistibly reminded of the Adoration of Magi, albeit turned on its head. For he and his team, though bearing small resemblance to three kings (or wise men, fair to say), had come bearing ‘gifts’: not indeed the canonical gold, frankincense and myrrh, but (Nick fancied) plausibly related.

  Quinn, with her hair the color of a miser’s dream, would stand in for gold. Those fifty crates of ‘machine parts’ that were on their way into escrow could arguably represent myrrh, an embalming oil said by some to symbolize death. How the third gift he intended to bestow—Nixon’s particular gift—could be tied to frankincense would take some thinking on. But this detour aside, Nick did intend that the recipients should experience an epiphany, even if it turned out (in some cases) to be a brief one.

  “Can we get you anything, Lieutenant?” he asked Quinn, who was standing on her own now.

  She smiled, blinked, and passed her tongue over her lips. “All good here.” He saw her swallow. “Would’ja mind if I sat out for an hour, though? Unless you need me for something.”

  “No.” Nick gave her an avuncular smile. “Take what you like. Make a space for yourself.”

  With a grateful nod, Quinn went to claim a corner behind some baroque hangings and Nick turned to the others. “Alright, you lot. Drag that thing over here.” He indicated a piece of furniture that was the closest approximation to a table the suite had: an X-shaped contraption that clearly was not meant to dine on. Or so he hoped. On second thought, hoped probably wasn’t the right word.

  Duke and Gale moved the thing into a position that gave them room to cluster about it, and Nick unfurled his xel. “Okay. This is where we put rounds in effect. Duke, you’re set for Target One . . .”

  # # #

  We hope you’ve enjoyed this preview of our upcoming Loralynn Kennakris adventure. The exciting conclusion contains the following chapters:

  Chapter Three: The Ninth Ring

  Unholy Trinity

  Robin Volt

  Through the Gates of Dis

  Mephistopheles’ Basement

  Chapter Four: Inferno

  Subways in Purgatory I

  The Beelzebub Waltz

  Subways in Purgatory II

  Chapter Five: Stairway to Empyrean

  All Hope Abandon

  The Paradise Lift

  Epilogue:

  Sunrise over Purgatory

  Please visit loralynnkennakris.com for more information and to see when Absalom’s Hundred: the Death of Nestor Mankho will be available.

  Authors’ Notes

  The engagement in which Huron and Kris attack a formation of sixty Halith fighters was inspired by the historic exploits of Commander David McCampbell (USN) and Ensign Roy Rushing (USN) at the Battle of Leyte Gulf where, unsupported by any other aircraft, they attacked (in McCampbell's case, against orders) a formation of sixty enemy aircraft, forty of which were fighters, and shot down fifteen to seventeen of them (McCampbell, nine to eleven; Rushing, six), causing the entire formation to retreat before any of its planes reached their targets—and lived to tell the tale. We ask the forgiveness of Ensign Rushing’s memory for our fictional Ensign Kennakris upstaging him. We think he would have understood.

  The quote: “The only thing sadder than a battle lost, is a battle won,” recalled by Admiral PrenTalien in the penultimate chapter, is attributed Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, after the Battle of Waterloo.

  The original quote paraphrased in the same chapter is: “The Neapolitan officers did not lose much honour, for God knows they had not much to lose—but they lost all they had.” It was said by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, after a French rout of the Neapolitan army in 1798.

  We also beg the reader’s indulgence for putting the words of General Lord Edmund Allenby, spoken during his advance on Damascus in the latter stages of WWI, into the mouth of one of our characters. “Pound them, Harry! Pound them!” did not, under the circumstances, seem capable of improvement.

  Cooperative engagement capability (CEC) is the ability to fuse sensor and weapons data from multiple platforms into a fully integrated t
argeting and engagement system.

  The French phrase “Sauvé qui peut” may be loosely translated as: Every man for himself.

  Iacta alea est (Latin for The die is cast) is the phrase uttered by Julius Caesar (according to Suetonius) as he crossed on the Rubicon with his army on January 10, 49 BC. It is also rendered: jacta alea est.

  For more background on the universe which Loralynn Kennakris inhabits, we have produced an extensive glossary that defines terms, describes technology and organizations, and provides additional background material for the series. Comprised of over 300 entries, the glossary is fully indexed and cross-linked to give you easy access to the information you want. An indexed biographical list of characters is incorporated as well.

  You can download our glossary at: www.loralynnkennakris.com/loralynn-kennakris-series-glossary.mobi

  For full-color, high-resolution maps showing the Battle of Wogan's Reef and the larger vicinity, see here .

  We suggest not viewing these maps until you have reached the appropriate chapter in the Part II of this book, as they might be considered spoilers.

  We hope you find these extras useful.

  About the Authors

  Jordan Leah Hunter is a writer, artist and model living in Northern California. Descended from Irish High-Kings, Vikings and Native Americans, she brings all the passion of her turbulent ancestry to her work. A true devotee of Nature, she can be found outdoors at all hours and in all weathers, and when she suffers to have a roof over her head, it is usually to sit by her fire and read or play one of several instruments. Her Celtic fantasy novel, The Erl King’s Children, is also available on Amazon, in paperback and for Kindle.