Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Those who sought validation for their opinions of Outworlders—like Minx—could find it in Kris’s course work. Her formal education had ended at the age of ten, and what she learned on her own through eight years of captivity on the contract slaver Harlot’s Ruse, while up to university level or beyond in some areas, led to some uncomfortable lapses in others, as when she couldn’t recall all the names of the League’s thirteen Homeworlds. She was aware that the League was named for, and had its capitol at, the ancient settlement of Nereus on Mars, but the history behind that now irrelevant political compromise she’d forgotten, assuming she was ever taught it—a dubious proposition for a colonial from a planet as remote as Parson’s Acre.

  Even so basic a thing as the calendar could be a problem. The CEF, like all League organizations, used Galactic Arbitrary Time, which preserved a 365-day year of twenty-four-hour days, and reckoned dates from the armistice that marked the formal end of the Formation Wars (Kris had read about them). Each planet had its own local calendar: in the Homeworlds, it was based on the GAT epoch date, while the colonies often used their date of founding. Kris, in her years on Harlot’s Ruse, had come to think of dates in terms of what she knew merely as ship-time, but was in fact a calendar employed by large slaver syndicates to coordinate their operations. Further, half of Kris’s life had been spent traveling at small but significant percentages of light speed, so her concept of when required a relativistic correction to properly relate to planetary time. Switching to GAT caused an unsettling dislocation in her memories and the timing of events.

  Most of this could be glossed over in class and during conversation, but other traits could not, especially the way she spoke. Kris had a pleasant alto voice with a light burr and a gently sibilant intonation, but when she was tired, nervous or upset, it tended to drop a couple of registers and slip into a drawl that lengthened the short vowels and clipped the consonants in a manner that her classmates assumed was a typical Outworld’s accent. It wasn’t: Parson’s Acre had been settled only a century ago, too short a time to develop its own speech patterns, and the colonists there still retained the accent of their origin, Fredonia in most cases, that being the first-gen colony which had chartered the settlement.

  Kris’s accent wasn’t Fredonian either: it was an affectation she’d cultivated, mostly by watching vids, because Anton Trench, the captain of Harlot’s Ruse and her owner, liked her to sound what he called ‘classy.’ He didn’t approve of her speaking with the slaver accent she’d picked up, and which she’d come to instinctively consider her ‘natural’ speaking voice, and he got seriously annoyed when she sprinkled her conversation with fuck’n, just like he did, especially when they had ‘company.’

  That was one of several habits Trench had never managed to beat out of her, but in the months since her release she’d labored to eradicate it, with modest success. It still appeared at inopportune times, although these days she usually managed to keep it under her breath. She’d also tried to eliminate her drawl but that was harder. Constantly paying attention to her speech made Kris even more reserved in public, and since she wasn’t inclined to be gregarious in her new surroundings anyway, she often came across as cold, even condescending.

  So when her classmates foregathered during their few leisure hours to discuss the prevalent manias, Kris was sadly out of her depth. What took the place of her classmates’ encyclopedic knowledge of the particulars of popular culture—an intimate understanding of slaver society, from their trade practices to the way they graded what they called their ‘merchandise’ to the meanings of the clan tattoos of Tyrsenian pirates—was hardly fit for casual conversation even if she’d felt like talking about it, which she most certainly did not.

  Those of her fellow cadets who were inclined to resent her behavior could not imagine what grounds an Outworlder could possibly have to snub them, and this led inevitably to speculation about her rumored connection with the Huron family. It was known that Kris had been sponsored by Grand Senator Huron, the current Speaker of the Grand Senate and thus head of the Plenary Council. That was supposed to be private data, but such an unprecedented event, involving one of the League’s wealthiest and most powerful families, simply could not escape public notice. The only rationalization her detractors found plausible was that the grand senator had been acting on behalf of his son, Rafael Huron V, with whom they believed Kris had enjoyed a romantic entanglement.

  The foundation of this belief was that Kris and the younger Huron had spent some months together on Nedaema; slim evidence to be sure, but in view of his reputation, inculpatory. Rafe Huron was well known for his many affairs; they provided considerable fodder for tabloid gossips who loved to portray him as a charming rake. He was even rumored to have had a brief fling with a young Mariwen Rathor, a leading interstellar celebrity until her horrific kidnapping last year. That alleged relationship was said to have taken place years ago, before her meteoric rise, and was generally dismissed as mere wishful thinking on the part of those whose job it was to manufacture scandal.

  But there was no question about his weakness for beautiful women, and Kris was beautiful. Not beautiful in an uncomplicated, everyday fashion—no small number found Minx more attractive—but in a proud, almost combative sense that, combined with her athlete’s build and an easy, economical grace bequeathed by years of ship-life, gave her an allure that most were sure a man of Huron’s character could not resist. It was equally inconceivable that a young colonial woman, especially one seeking a military career, would resist the advances of the eldest son of the Huron family, for in addition to his social standing, Rafe Huron was one of the CEF’s most decorated active fighter pilots.

  Which fact conveniently explained Kris being placed in the elite fighter program. The cadets in the fighter track tended towards cliquishness, especially the upperclassmen who’d made it into the Advanced Fighter Program, and while hazing was strictly forbidden, a few saw it as their duty to ensure that the SRF was not overburdened with those they considered to be ‘the wrong sort.’ With her outlandish accent, obscure origins, and wholly improper lack of a decent sense of subordination, Kris was indisputably wronger than most. Accordingly, a month into the term, one of these self-appointed social guardians decided to question Kris publicly on her relationship with Rafe Huron, and when she failed to rise to the bait, began to loudly speculate on the sexual gymnastics she must have employed to purchase her admittance. Kris instantly rounded on the burly young man with a look of such undiluted savagery in her hazel eyes, which had turned a shocking lambent yellow, that he fell back, dribbling apologies, while his friends urged him to the nearest exit.

  This incident raised her star in some quarters, raised hackles in others, and deepened the air of mystery surrounding her origins. Those seeking answers might have applied to Sergeant Major Yu. Yu had spent most of his career in the Strike Rangers, officially the 101st Marine Special Operations Brigade, where he was still on the strength as brigade sergeant major, and thus had access to private and confidential sources of information. But they did not know to do so, and it was well they did not, for that could have created some painfully awkward circumstances. For his part, Yu kept his own council and his eye on his gifted and anomalous cadet.

  Just how gifted and anomalous became apparent six weeks into the quarter, when new cadets were introduced to ship drill. Although the members of Class 1861 were destined to become fighter pilots, the Academy took an ecumenical approach to education and for the first three months, everyone followed the same curriculum. This included, starting that sixth week and then every third week thereafter, being bundled into a mock-up where the whole class spent five days living in a berth, sleeping in a rack instead of a bunk, eating in the mess, and fulfilling the duties of every rank from junior officer to the lowest enlisted man. Instructors—senior officers all—guided them through those duties: anything from replacing equipment modules to cleaning the recyclers to inspecting weapons to sensor drills and long hours of watch standin
g. It was an intensely odd feeling—at home and not, familiar and unreal—and Kris woke up in a cold sweat twice during her first night.

  Those first five days were expected to be something of a shambles as the class struggled with getting used to their suits, maneuvering in null-gee and learning up from down, all too often literally. Only minimal direction was initially given and it was not anticipated they would complete the tasks assigned to them with any degree of competence. The real purpose was to assess how they dealt with new and stressful surroundings and tackled problems for which they were manifestly unprepared.

  Her instructors had already noted how much at home Kris was in null-gee during the periodic safety drills, but it was they who were unprepared for how quickly she grasped the basic elements of ship-duty. When she was assigned to replace the CO2 absorbers on her third day, the officer in charge of the drill left to get a leisurely cup of coffee, expecting on his return to find her fumbling through the operation, perplexed and annoyed. And Kris, floating at her station, was perplexed and annoyed: perplexed at how anyone could spend so long getting a cup of coffee and annoyed that he was wasting her time—she’d finished the job within a few minutes and had been waiting for a quarter of an hour.

  Replacing CO2 absorbers was not a demanding task: a precocious cadet with a manual could be expected to figure it out. What happened during the second week of ship drill was in a different category altogether. Kris was standing the bridge watch when there was a simulated failure in the environmentals—exactly the sort of surprise instructors liked to spring on cadets just as they were beginning to get their feet under them. At once, she alerted the officer of the deck, who notified the Exec, both of whom arrived minutes later to find everything properly secured and Kris running through the diagnostics, looking faintly disgusted that the simulation did not extend to actually diagnosing and correcting the problem.

  The story quickly made the rounds—Basmartin, who hadn’t bothered to hide his admiration for Kris, was the likely vector—irritating Minx and bringing Kris onto better terms with Tanner, the only other cadet whose experience of ships seemed to extend beyond the occasional pleasure cruise. It also caused no small amount of comment among her instructors, but it didn’t appear to faze Sergeant Major Yu, who merely made a laconic note in her file and awarded Kris an extra eight hours of sim time.

  Offering simulation time as a reward for superior performance was an Academy tradition of long standing. Class 1861 contained a healthy crop of gamers, as usual for incoming cadets, but the games they’d grown up with were nowhere near as challenging as the Academy simulations, nor did they take place in a genuine virtual-reality environment as the Academy simulations did. These used only a mild form of neural induction to produce their VR effects, and while those effects were not as vivid or realistic as the sensations produced by memory modules and direct-wired connections, they also did not produce the dementia that had resulted in VR technology being heavily restricted where it was not completely outlawed. Like AI technology, banned by interstellar treaty after the disastrous hacking events during the Formation Wars, virtual reality was something of a taboo topic in the Homeworlds, and even this benign introduction to it captivated the cadets with a taste of forbidden fruit. As intended, sim-runs rapidly became the favored form of recreation, spawning teams and competitions and even a degree of wagering which, as long as it was kept within sane limits, was duly noted and duly winked at.

  As this eventful first three months wound to a close, exams became the other great concern. They were approaching the Semi’s: the battery of tests that took place at the end of their first quarter. Basmartin had acquired a cramming guide, a common expedient, which Kris was at the moment borrowing. Just as she closed the unit on the history of early terraforming, Basmartin looked up and cried, “Unbelievable!” This was the third time he’d done that since Kris started her review.

  “Baz, are you reading about Apollo again?”

  “Kris, you really oughta look at this.” He gestured animatedly with his xel. “It’s chemical! They did this all with chemicals—liquid oxygen! Kerosene! Would you believe it? I mean . . . kerosene!”

  Baz was near-obsessed with ancient space flight and he had recently found scans, almost primordial, of some analog data records in the Academy archives that showed plans and specifications for chemical rockets from the very dawn of space flight. Baz was not shy about sharing his enthusiasms, and over the past few days Kris had promised herself that if he said, “Amazing! Unbelievable! Greatest instance of human ingenuity!” one more time, or cried out in rapture about the dazzling genius of these ancient giants of inspiration and intellect, she was going to stab him in the neck with a fork. So far, she’d managed to refrain, but as she put her tablet down and Baz beamed at her from across the room, his long legs dangling over the back of a chair as he lounged in his bunk, she felt herself slipping.

  “You know,” he said, for he was not terribly perspicacious when this mood was upon him, “I don’t think there’s anyone alive today who could do this. Just think of all the knowledge—the art!—we’ve lost. It’s criminal!”

  If so, it was a crime even older than civilization, and Kris thought it was like lamenting that people no longer knew how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together: another one of Basmartin’s favorite examples. She could imagine instances where starting a fire would be useful and two sticks might be the only resources at hand, but why anyone would ever have occasion to build a chemical heavy-lift rocket with tools that were barely more advanced than stone axes and braided plant fibers was beyond her.

  “Baz, don’t we have tests to study for?”

  He looked up. “What? There’s nothing till next week.”

  Kris looked hard at him, willing him to get the hint. She knew where there was a fork . . . “What about a pop quiz, maybe? I think we’re overdue. Shouldn’t you be brushing up on the muzzle energy of the three-ring surge gun or something?”

  “Oh.” Enlightenment dawned; Baz deflated. “Yeah, probably. Good idea.”

  Kris sunk back into her bunk, picked up her tablet again, and trying to quell her irritation at not even being half done with what they were expected cover, thumbed to the next section.

  Section 3.4. . . . Ancient History Module: Initial Colonization Failures

  {a} . . . The G-Barrier: Low-Gee Pregnancy—Sperm Motility—Effects on Fetal Development—Artificial gestation related to infanticide. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Not Read This Article

  {b} . . . Century of Failure: First Mars Failure—Confinement Issues—Religious tensions of colonization. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Not Read This Article

  {c} . . . First Hopes: Early Terraforming—Mars & Venus—The Mars Air Line. Belt Civilization: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Titan, Triton. 1st Nanocyte Revolution. [ Open Abstract ]

  You Have Read This Article

  Chapter Five

  NBPS HQ, Mare Nemeton

  Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  The story of the botched attempt to capture Nestor Mankho was now three months old, but damning details continued to dribble out, feeding the conflagration it had lit. The media had kept the story alive, the Archon’s supporters trading shot-for-shot with the pro-opposition outlets. The Scholai Michael addressed the Synalogue on the controversy, carefully couching his remarks in a tone more of sorrow than of anger. As head of state, these ‘private observations’ to an advisory and largely ceremonial body with no political remit carried no more than moral weight, but that weight was not inconsiderable.

  The Archon’s allies in the Proxenoi Council tried to spread some oil on the troubled waters by entering a resolution that a committee headed by a special investigator be stood up to look into the government’s handling of the raid. This jaded tactic came too late and served to highlight the Archon’s perceived failures rather than calm the furor, especially after some influential parties in the Nedaeman Senate savaged the proposal on the floor of the chamber
, with one former supporter, hand raised imperiously, proclaiming that just such “half-witted half-measures” were responsible for the fiasco in the first place. The quote and the image made for top-line news for over a week and the Archon’s response, which was meant to sound measured and statesmanlike, instead came off as stuffy and ineffectual when presented through the media filter.

  As the increasingly rancorous debate built towards a fever pitch, Lysander Gayle, Nedaema’s junior Grand Senator and a man of immense ambition and considerable oratorical powers, delivered a carefully timed bombshell on the floor of the Grand Senate in the form of a proposal that the League issue an ultimatum to the Bannermans over their support for the Mankho plot. This stroke, coming just as a vote of no-confidence on the Archon’s government appeared to be inevitable and the various claimants were jockeying for position, stole the limelight from his several competitors and sent half of them into eclipse. The very brass of the measure heightened its impact, coming as it did from a Grand Senator who was heretofore best known for his ability to straddle any issue and for his appeal to the often-contrarian backbenchers.

  It was also the first public revelation of Bannerman involvement, and it instantly elevated the issue from a Nedaeman political crisis to an interstellar one. The Bannerman ambassador returned to his capitol on Sephar the next day for consultations with the Confederacy’s President-for-Life, who ordered his navy to conduct a series of fleet exercises in the Hydra. Invited by the Bannermans, Halith sent observers.

  While the Bannermans explained the pacific nature of their exercises—training, nothing more—older heads grappled with the proposal, which they found absurd, especially as Gayle had said next to nothing about the specifics of his ultimatum. This very lack, which might have seemed irresponsible or obtuse at another time, buoyed Gayle up now. With nothing concrete to attack, those who criticized him were tarred with the brush that had been so liberally applied to the Archon, as being against doing something. The Speaker, wise enough not to play Canute with the rising tide, bided his time.