Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Infinitely thankful he’d kept his rifle slung instead of setting it aside, he pulled it across his body and, fumbling because his hands were going numb, chambered a last round into the grenade launcher. The drag of gravity on his arms was shocking as he lifted it, fixed the butt in the gravel of the roof and pulled the trigger. The shrike fired, a light explosive charge taking it up to fifty meters where the tiny rockets would ignite and boost it clear of the atmosphere in just over a minute. There, it would detonate, sending out a distress signal that would bring any League ship within thirty light-minutes running.

  The rifle fell sideways unnoticed and he saw, or maybe just imagined he saw, the tiny rocket motors streaking away into the stars and goddammit his fucking leg was starting to hurt and the little rockets were going out and everything else with them . . .

  Chapter Three

  NBPS HQ, Mare Nemeton

  Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  “Anything left in that bottle?” asked the Director of Pleiades Sector Intelligence Group. The Chief Inspector of the Nedaeman Bureau of Public Safety picked up the bottle and shook it gently, listening with an attentive ear. “Two fingers,” he said and reached over his desk to pour one of these into the director’s glass. It was a Hesperian single-malt scotch he was pouring, twelve years old, and a reasonable approximation of the Terran original.

  Commander Trin Wesselby, the new director, lifted her glass and considered its amber depths while Chief Inspector Nikolai Taliaferro emptied the bottle into his own. Trin Wesselby was a short woman with an athletic build who normally looked rather bookish, but now the prim demeanor was nowhere to be seen. Her dark hair, which unlike most female CEF officers she kept long, was down, and the waves introduced by the plain twist she’d worn it up in softened her face remarkably. Combined with the flush that alcohol brought to her cheeks and her small, precisely cut lips, she was perhaps as near to prettiness as her countenance could reach—or would have been if there had been less worry, tension, and sadness in her expression.

  None of this was apparent to Commander Wesselby, however. There was nothing in her glass or elsewhere in the office to bring it home to her, to show the new lines around her pale gray eyes that turned slightly down, or the furrows lately etched into the aristocratic forehead, or the pinch between the dark, straight, thin eyebrows. This was good because it also kept her unaware of the hint of vulnerability that her exhaustion was revealing—she’d rather be hanged first.

  Nick Taliaferro noticed all that, and more, but if he looked like a gruff, old, battered colonial noncom, which is exactly what he’d been—Color Sergeant, Hesperian Royal Marine Corps, Class of ’81, retired—he was also a fairly astute judge of people and thus careful to reveal nothing. “No worries,” he remarked as the last aromatic drops fell with a metronome plit-plit-plit into his glass, now brimming full. “I have another.”

  Drinking was strictly prohibited within the confines of NBPS HQ, where Taliaferro’s office occupied a corner on the sacred Ninth Floor, but the Chief Inspector liberally interpreted this to mean during duty hours, and whatever time it was—he had ceased to take notice some hours ago—it was certainly deep into the graveyard watch and thus well past them. Further, he had not left his office for the past three days, which in his view came near to qualifying it as a temporary residence. Lastly, he no longer cared.

  “Complete write-off?” Trin asked. That’s what the preliminary reports indicated, but there was always a chance, however slim, they might be wrong.

  “Complete. Fifteen bought it during the firefight outside the compound. The other nine managed to evade for a while, but with their corvette taken down, they were eventually surrounded and they ANCAP’d.” ANCAP meant Anti-Capture Protocol, an anodyne way of referring to the charges implanted in the combat helmets of SOFOR teams that vaporized the wearer’s heads in the event of death or capture. With proper equipment, it was possible to extract a surprising amount of data from a decently preserved brain and ANCAPs saw to it there were no brains left to exploit. Such things lay at the heart of Commander Wesselby’s job, but she still could not suppress a shudder.

  “How long were they able to evade?”

  “Standard time? Three days, eleven hours and fifteen minutes. More or less.” Taliaferro had not had to look the numbers up.

  “Three days and eleven hours? But . . .” Trin added some times up mentally—added them up again. The op had been staged out of Beta Crucis and the corvette deployed from New Madras, which lay just outside Bannerman space, a short hop from Lacaille. The CEF maintained a squadron at New Madras, most of which they’d pulled as part of the cover for the operation, leaving just three picket destroyers and the stealth frigate that had delivered the team. Even with the team’s corvette down, the frigate’s captain would have known when they were more than a few hours overdue, and the frigate should have been able to extract the survivors without much difficulty. “Even if they needed authorization, round-trip comms transit between New Madras and Beta Crucis is only about seventeen—hours. What happened?”

  Taliaferro set his glass down on his desk as if putting it out of harm’s way. “What happened was that the CO at Beta Crucis had strict orders not to escalate without NCA authorization, so he appealed to G-Staff. That’s another thirty-two hours right there. G-Staff wouldn’t move without approval from the Nedaeman Secretary of State, who had to consult with the Archon, who spent twelve hours pissing all over himself.” Taliaferro stared at his scotch with his hands folded over his middle and the veins in his size-19 neck swelling. “So by the time the relief arrived in-system, there was nothing to do but request the bodies.”

  “Oh.” Trin Wesselby, thinking of those men being hunted through an alien landscape for over three days, waiting for the relief that it was their comrades’ sacred duty to provide, not getting it, being surrounded—out of ammo, out of time, thumb on the ANCAP trigger . . . She swallowed a healthy gulp of scotch, which made her eyes water, which made for a good excuse. “How much telemetry did you recover?”

  “Not nearly as much as we’d like. They made the corvette after the firefight started—once that happened, it was just a matter of time. It seems Halith must have given them a lot more than some fancy explosives.”

  “No idea how they did it?”

  “None—the corvette never saw what hit it. Anything on your end?”

  “We have ears out of course, but it’ll be months before we can expect to get anything. Just scanning for precursors now.” A few seconds of silence trickled by. “We sent a brief to Admiral Westover this AM. He’s on his way here to meet with the Old Man.”

  Taliaferro grunted. Admiral of the Fleet John Carlos Westover had the singular distinction of wearing two exalted hats: Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was comprised of the senior military commanders of all the Homeworlds. The Old Man he was on his way to see was Admiral Joss PrenTalien, Commander in Chief, Pleiades Sector. Both had reputations for superb competence and neither was known for a forgiving nature. Taliaferro foresaw a number of possible consequences flowing from this meeting—he knew PrenTalien well—and almost all of them would be quite unpleasant for somebody. “So they’ve called in the cavalry or we’re finally getting some adult supervision.”

  “Or both.” One immaculate fingernail tapped slowly on the side of her glass. “The opposition will have a field day with this.”

  In point of fact, the opposition already was. Hints of the debacle had leaked early, the clouds were waking to it, though only as rumors so far, and righteous indignation was already mounting in the expected quarters, wanting only a shred or two of credible evidence to be unleashed. Such evidence was gathering, or even being manufactured, and as in most cases like this, credibility was largely in the eye of the beholder.

  “I hear there’s already a video of the firefight in the clouds,” Taliaferro said. “Any chance it’s real?”

  Trin Wesselby, who had seen it, shook her head. “No. It�
�s a mash-up—pretty amateurish.”

  “Who do you think? An oppo-group or just kids having fun?”

  “Hard to say. It has to be somebody local. Anyone who wanted to make some noise could have patched it together and released it. That’s plenty of people.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t ask you to suppress it.”

  “They did. We could too: the new interdiction bots are quite good, actually. But that’s not a capability we’re ready to turn loose in the wild just to deal with the Archon’s PR problems.”

  Taliaferro nodded. The Archon had maintained that terrorism was a criminal matter; that the perpetrators were to be apprehended and put on trial. It was a risky position and he had only been able to sustain it because the opposition had split between a minority of pacifists, who resisted any non-diplomatic measures, and a larger block that insisted that Lacaille be held accountable and either hand over Mankho and all his supporters for a military trial and execution, or face the consequences—which were clearly meant to include regime change.

  The proponents of this latter position were hamstrung by Archon holding what he thought was his diplomatic ace-in-the-hole: the threat of Bannerman intervention. Lacaille was a former Bannerman colony and this threat was further backstopped by the knowledge (the most secret and confidential knowledge) that Halith had supported Mankho’s plot. It was by making use of these threats (quite privately, for neither had been—and the Halith connection certainly could not be—publicly acknowledged) that the Archon maintained his majority.

  But it was a frail majority and would not likely stand the strain exerted by the killing of twenty-four elite Nedaeman soldiers. The outrage that was even now building would certainly sideline the pacifists and likely peel off enough of his supporters to call for a vote of confidence that the Archon, unable to fully explain his rationale for engaging in what had been shown to be foolish and risky half-measures, would be ill-placed to survive. So Trin Wesselby rather thought that he was about to find his ace-in-the-hole turned into Scylla against the Halith Charybdis, and she could not find it in herself to weep for that. Far from it.

  “Hooray for our side,” Taliaferro said and recovered his scotch.

  “Is he going ahead with his address tomorrow—I mean, later today?”

  Taliaferro nodded.

  “Any idea how he’s going to handle it?”

  Taliaferro’s dark face became a shade darker. “Anything short of ritual suicide won’t be good enough for me.”

  Chapter Four

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  Deimos was an indifferent satellite—as a moon, its qualities would have recommended it nowhere—but as an orbital campus, it served very well. Extensively hollowed out, it afforded plenty of room for every environment a naval education could make use of, from weightless spaces that could be used for EVA training and drills, in vacuum and not, to classrooms and living quarters supplied with a full gee, to replicas of the interior spaces of various ship classes where the atmosphere and gravity could be regulated at will; and almost anything the cadets might be called on to do as officers could be simulated with a high degree of precision.

  The fifty-six members of Class 1861 installed themselves in these new surroundings, and except for the lack of anything like an outside, they were comfortable enough. In spite of the promises of bad food, bad air, and cramped quarters, all of these were adequate, and to Kris, more than adequate. She’d had a taste of genuine luxury on Nedaema and while it was certainly pleasant enough, Kris liked what she was used to and this was much more like what she was used to. The same could not be said of some of her classmates, a few of whom appeared to have led quite pampered lives, but after a few weeks even their complaints took on a pro forma nature, as if in rehearsal for the inveterate bitching some of them imagined military personnel constantly indulged in.

  They were divided into fourteen studies, four cadets to a study, and expected to live, eat, train, and learn together. Cadets were required to surrender their calling cards, if they had any, and their personal xels to the Sergeant-at-Arms, and they were issued a derated military version along with a tablet they would do all their course work on. No outside contact was allowed for the first month—not even email—and thereafter communication with family and friends was strictly limited, while cloud access remained embargoed.

  This was the most painful dislocation of all for most cadets, especially the Homeworlders who were accustomed to living in a flurry of virtual activity: constantly messaging, updating their various profiles and monitoring those of their friends (some physical acquaintances but most not) and following the fads, fashions and entertainments that are the perennial concerns of young people everywhere. The abrupt amputation of their virtual existence caused more attrition among entering classes than the rigid discipline, lack of privacy and demanding course work combined, but these factors touched Kris not at all.

  Where Kris came from, people still used mempads and old thin-net cels, the clouds were rudimentary, and privacy was a luxury only the rich could afford. During her stay on Nedaema, the constant inundation of data in every form, spewing from xels and the omnipresent consoles, tended to afflict her with a kind of claustrophobia which she relieved by soaking for much of the day in a large tub of warm water. The spartan isolation of the Academy came as a profound relief to her, as much as she missed having a tub.

  The studies were organized with careful disregard for origin and social status, so Kris found herself with two Homeworlders and a somewhat boisterous colonial from Port Mahan, out in Cepheus. One of the Homeworlders was a long-limbed youth from Phaedra named Ferhat Basmartin, who was quite handsome, having clear bronze skin, strange pale violet eyes, and coppery-gold hair cut short.

  The other was a New Californian named Nataly Brunner—one of the pampered set—whom Kris disliked on sight and who appeared to return the favor through a tight-lipped and utterly unconvincing smile. Brunner was a girl of striking good looks—mildly exotic, with dark eyes and overfull lips in a longish face with a delicate chin—though it had be to acknowledged that a fair degree of artifice did some of the striking. That artifice had rendered her complexion a flawless ivory; her hair straight, black and glossy, and her breasts more than ample. She was of average height, though her unusually long legs made her look taller, and rather lightly built. Kris, who in the units of her home colony was five-nine and a muscular hundred and fifty-seven pounds with broad shoulders, a trim (but not especially narrow) waist and well-rounded hips surmounting strong legs, preferred to think of her as short and thin. Her nickname was Minx and there was little doubt as to how she’d gotten it.

  The colonial cadet had the resounding name of Franklin Gustavus Adolphus Tanner. He was a compact young man, older than the rest of them, with a round head, beer-colored hair and eyes, and a cheerful demeanor. It was rumored he’d served some time in a colonial militia and his habits did suggest some familiarity with military discipline, but he volunteered nothing and inquires of that nature were strictly disapproved of. Kris took a liking to Basmartin quickly, treated Tanner with guarded cordiality, and was obscurely delighted to learn that Minx snored.

  All this took place under the watchful—some swore all-seeing—eye of their drill instructor, Sergeant Major Yu, who fulfilled both the roles of guardian angel and house demon but primarily the latter, especially for those who had not developed a habit of promptness, were overfond of their beds or lax in their dress, or who after three weeks still could not properly shine a buckle or a pair of boots.

  Their time was more-or-less evenly divided between classes, various training exercises, and some basic drills, with a few hours set aside for the luxury of sleep. A good deal of physical effort was involved, and sometimes a degree of discomfort, as in their first evacuation drills. EVAC drills were not an academic exercise on a satellite like Deimos: at any time, the claxons might sound, and they would have less than three minutes to don their EVA suits and rep
ort to the designated portal.

  Their first exposure to EVA suits had resulted in a crop of bright red faces, for getting into one involved stripping down in front of your classmates and attaching the suit plumbing before pulling on the rest of the bulky apparatus, which was lined with a conductive gel that definitely took some getting used to. With all the giggling and leering and the occasional yelp, the whole class except for Kris would have died had there been a real emergency. Kris, for whom such drills were second nature, had her suit on, sealed and checked in less than a minute, and had breezed into their EVAC station to wait by Sergeant Major Yu until her classmates began to arrive in disordered heaps and lumps well past the deadline, and blunder into place.

  The sergeant major’s assessment was deservedly scathing. Kris took advantage of the darkened visor to privately express her own opinion, and the drill was repeated, only Kris being excused, and repeated again for those who still failed to meet the relaxed time standard—four minutes today—until only a handful of now meek and seemingly hopeless cases remained.

  Kris’s performance excited more curiosity among her instructors that it did in her classmates. She was known to be an Outworlder—one of the few things that was known about her—and while most of her fellow cadets had probably heard of the Methuselah Cluster, all but a few would have been hard pressed to do more than quote from a hastily skimmed encyclopedia entry about it. To them, especially the Homeworlders, the Outworlds were a distant, dangerous and primitive place—an alien, semi-barbaric region where they lacked xels and clouds and proper medical care and the other appurtenances of civilization. A lawless place too, infested with slavers and pirates and god-knows-what-else, where colonists scratched in the dirt to raise food, burned hydrocarbon fuels and made things by hand. A place whose virtues, if it had any, were limited to being the setting for some popular video entertainments (which were never actually recorded there) and that some people considered its backwardness rather quaint. Of course, its denizens would be proficient at EVAC drills.