Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  All this—as far as the bare bones went—Kris had learned during her primary school years. Her first classes at the Academy on the eras of human colonization and on xenobiological history added details and a layer of sophistication, but neither those nor this summary article altered the basic assessment. This was especially true in view of the fact that Kris, while she’d never met a Maxor (only the members of a specially trained corps of female diplomats ever did), had once known a half-Max.

  Human-Maxor interbreeding was difficult, improbable, and everywhere frowned upon (as well as being anathema to the Maxor themselves), but it could and did happen and the unhappy offspring were sometimes met with in the more desolate regions out in the border zones.

  Half-Max were sometimes possessed of strange and exotic mental gifts; they could, under the proper circumstances, be useful and loyal, and somehow Anton Trench had acquired one to be surgeon’s mate on Harlot’s Ruse. What his real name might have been was unknown: he answered to Mangle. How Trench came upon him, what the nature of their deal was, and what Mangle did for him when they went off alone together for weeks at a time, no one knew. He was on the boat for almost two years before suddenly jumping ship at Cathcar. No one knew why he did that either.

  During those two years, Kris got to know him hardly at all, but got to like him much, much less. Mangle was the stuff of bad dreams and it was in bad dreams that Kris still encountered him. He was a stooped, bitter, twisted, ill-made entity, rather like a gargoyle but with all the charm taken out. As a surgeon’s mate, he was good at what he did—very good—but he got no thanks for that and probably would have resented it if he had. He messed alone, or occasionally with Trench. The crew did their best to avoid him, except for the fact that the idea of Human-Maxor cross-breeding seemed to hold a sick fascination for some of them, especially when they were wasted. Get enough shit into them, add some boredom, and one of the boys would likely start jacking Mangle about his parentage. Most times, Mangle just ignored it, but one day, this tall, skinny kid with bad skin and cheap imitation t’shegir scars didn’t have the sense to shut up. The kid—his name she thought was maybe Taggart but they called him Tag-Rat or Jag-Rat or something like that—started poking Mangle in the middle of his low, thick, sloping forehead and going on about all kinds of crazy shit until he finally asked Mangle how much he missed real Maxor pussy. The next thing you know, Mangle flashed out a scalpel and opened the kid from balls to sternum and side to side. Right there in the mess.

  The kid didn’t even notice at first. And then he just stared for a second. And then he tried to grab his belly and started to scream . . .

  Kris exhaled long and attempted to shake the memory off. She closed the window with a grunt. That tight hot feeling was back, flaring at the top of her stomach. Putting down the tablet, she was groping under her bunk for a bottle half full of gingered pineapple juice she’d brought back from lunch when Minx traipsed in.

  “I didn’t know you drank,” Minx said, looking at the partially obliterated label and then ostentatiously at the chrono on the far wall.

  “It’s pineapple juice.”

  “Sure it is.” Minx flounced over to her bunk, holding onto a tablet, a thick roll of hardcopy and a discontented look. Tanner’s assessment notwithstanding, it appeared her evening hadn’t lived up to expectation, though whether Minx had been stuck with the short end of the stick or the stick itself had failed in its duty, Kris did not care to guess.

  Minx tossed the tablet onto her bunk and the hardcopy roll onto the small, oblong table that was the room’s one concession to a common workspace. The roll unfurled to reveal itself as an actual print magazine. Glancing over, Kris wondered who was paying for it. Minx was certainly comfortably well off, but Kris didn’t think she had the money to squander on that.

  Settling her haunches on her bunk with an unnecessary writhe—Kris, in no mood to be charitable, thought it was probably instinctive by now—Minx flipped the magazine over. There was a big glossy image of Mariwen Rathor on the front.

  “What’s that?” Kris nodding at the magazine as Minx started leafing through it.

  “Oh, it’s the annual,” Minx replied as if that explained everything. “Shi-an.” She held it up and tapped the cover. “It’s a retrospective on Mariwen Rathor—the one who was kidnapped and implanted to shoot the Archon of Nedaema during those big meetings last year, you know.”

  Kris ground her teeth and jammed her clenched left hand under a pillow. “Yeah, I know.” And it was a bomb, you idiot. She was implanted to set off a fucking bomb.

  “Veronique 2M2’s gonna do one too, I hear, but they’re going to wait for the first anniversary.” Minx flipped through a few more pages. “Of course, she was on their cover a million times—she practically made the publication. And it’s really awful what happened to her, but . . .” You weren’t there when she blew the head off a man right next to you—you didn’t see her face over the gun barrel—you didn’t hear her scream when she went down . . . Minx frowned at a two-page image of a laughing Mariwen spinning in a sunset-hued gown as the waves on some black-sand beach swirled about her ankles, and then held it up. “I mean, do you really think she’s that pretty?”

  That thing in the hospital bed? Yeah, what was left was pretty . . . just not human anymore. . . Kris cleared her throat, feeling the churning acid burn beneath her heart. “Well . . . yeah. I liked her.”

  The words seemed to skim over Minx, who flipped to another page. “I always thought Moira Winters was actually a better model, but she’s not as fashionable, I guess. Or Tyra Nioro. She really should be the top model now.” Minx closed the magazine and tossed it on the table. “It always kinda bugged me how they constantly hyped her sexuality, too. Mariwen’s, y’know. I mean, it’s fine to be a lesbian but . . .”

  Kris stared at Minx, who was well known to be seeing a lot of a female upperclassman, and no one thought what went on between them was platonic. The hand under the pillow balled into a fist. “Did you ever meet her?”

  Minx looked up, surprised. “Who?”

  “Mariwen.”

  Minx’s face pinched in a smirk. “Meet Mariwen Rathor? Seriously. Did you?”

  Well, there was the afternoon we played low-G racquet ball on Arizona’s hanger deck and she won and the morning I held her cuz she’d gotten translation shock real bad and the night I dreamed of Trench and she stayed with me and that evening we went out in Nemeton and she didn’t make me dance . . . Kris nodded.

  “You actually met Mariwen Rathor?”

  “Uh huh. I knew her some.”

  “You knew her.”

  “Yeah. Some.”

  Minx stood up, shaking her head. “Jeezus, Kris. That’s like saying you fucked the pope.” Picking up her tablet off her bunk, she stalked out the door, still muttering.

  Basmartin walked in a moment later. He saw Kris and hooked a thumb towards the corridor. “What’s up with Minx?”

  Kris shook her head and shrugged.

  He crossed to his bunk and, noticing the publication on the table, picked it up. “This hers?”

  Kris nodded.

  “Figures.” He flipped through a few pages with a sour expression. “That has gotta be the most messed-up thing that ever happened to anyone. It’s been, what? Like nine months? I wish they’d just leave her alone.” He put the magazine back on the table, cover down. Sitting on his bunk, he glanced out the door again, shook his head, and started pulling off his boots.

  “Y’know, my folks—they didn’t actually know her—but they met her a couple of times.” He clicked open his locker and one boot arced across the room to land inside with a rattling crash. “My mom hosted this benefit for a new ward at my dad’s hospital, and she came to it, along with a bunch of other people. Few months later, this boatload of refugees came in. Some of them were big fans of hers, so my mom emailed her, thinking maybe she’d send ‘em a pic or note or something. Five days later she showed up—clear from Nedaema. Stayed a week. Met with all of ‘e
m.” The other boot went crashing into the locker. “My mom said she was really sweet. Really sweet.”

  Kris, rolling on her back and staring up at the overhead, nodded. The locker clicked shut. Grunting, Basmartin stretched out on his thin, hard mattress.

  “Baz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s a pope?”

  Chapter Eight

  LSS Ardennes, docked

  Cassandra Station, Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

  Commander Russell R. Raven, staff operations officer to Admiral Joss PrenTalien, CinC-PLESEC, paused outside the door of his boss’s stateroom on the LSS Ardennes to catch his breath. He’d made a hasty trip all the way from CIC, deep amidships, to here, far aft on O1-Deck—a good three-hundred meters on the big dreadnought—at as close to a jog as a senior officer’s dignity would allow, but his physical exertions weren’t entirely to blame for his state. Running a hand through his thick silver-white hair, he pressed the entry pad. The door slid aside and he stepped in, holding out a hardcopy order in his left hand.

  “Did you authorize this, sir?”

  Admiral PrenTalien, finishing up a late, unhurried breakfast at the long table—real wood—which would seat twelve or even fifteen fellow officers or other guests when he chose to entertain, and which dominated the large, luxuriously-appointed day cabin (lush carpet underfoot, elegant chairs in the sitting area just forward and real paintings along the bulkheads, the situation displays cunningly tucked away now that they were in port), was unfazed by the abrupt question. He set down a bone-china coffee cup that looked absurdly small in his huge hand and reached out to take the flimsy and glanced at the heading, which read General Order No. 1, issued by Third Fleet’s CO, Vice Admiral Hamish Burton.

  “I did.” He handed his fleet commander’s order back to Commander Raven, who received it with the look of a man being offered a poisonous snake.

  “Admiral, this order is damn near a declaration of war!” he snapped, holding the document away from his corpulent body.

  “Oh, calm down, Russ. That’s just a training order,” PrenTalien replied testily, nudging away the plate decorated with the last of his meal: soused trotters with mustard, bacon and hash browns.

  “Training order, sir?” Raven stared at the words on the flimsy incredulously. “Admiral Burton says here, ‘All mounts are to be authorized a full loadout of live ammunition. Fighters are to be kept fueled and armed. Each carrier is to maintain at least one squadron on Alert-Ten status. Comms are to be maintained in Condition Charlie. Task Group 34 is to keep its drives in hot-standby until further orders, and the rest of the fleet is to keep fuel status Tango.’”

  “That’s right,” PrenTalien agreed, less sharply than his prior comment. “Like I said, training.”

  “But sir,”—Raven’s voice rose half an octave—“what about these patrol orders? Pushing this far down the transit lanes? Intercept authorized for any ship that fails the initial challenge-response order or whose vector is more than fifteen percent off nominal? The merchant houses are going to scream bloody murder the first time we drop down on one of their skippers who’s trying to make a deadline!”

  PrenTalien frowned at his gifted but excitable Ops officer. “Was there a memo I didn’t get, Russ? Did we get subordinated to the merchant houses without anyone telling me?”

  “No, sir.” Commander Raven flapped the flimsy. “Of course not. But how the hell can we justify this as training?”

  PrenTalien leaned his heavy six-four frame back in his chair so that it creaked, and interlaced his fingers behind his head with an edged smile that was all too familiar. “Simple. I like my training to be realistic.”

  Chapter Nine

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  “But I have to see her.”

  The woman at the admissions desk raised her eyes without lifting her head. “You said you’re not immediate family?” She dropped her eyes back to a screen Kris could not see.

  “No, I’m not. But I have to see her! She called me.”

  “And not a relative?”

  “I told you—you gotta let me go to her. They called me!”

  “They?” The woman appeared to be keying in data. Kris tried to lean over the counter to see what the woman was doing but she couldn’t, and she couldn’t remember who’d called her either. Was it Mariwen? Or was it Huron? Someone had called her, told her to come now, immediately. Mariwen was in the hospital—she was . . .

  “ . . . dying! Look—please! They told me she’s dying! I gotta see her. Please! Don’cha understand?”

  The woman refused to look up. “I’ve told them you’re here. You can wait over there, if you want. If her condition changes, someone will be out to inform you.”

  Condition? What the fuck do you mean, ‘condition’? She’s dying! I know she’s dying . . . I gotta go to her—I have to . . .

  She started to reach across the counter toward the woman, but there was no counter and she was getting up out of a plastic chair in a waiting room with cream walls and a beige stripe and these stupid fucking fake windows that showed hummingbirds and shit, big gaudy flowers and scenes like that weird toy one of her schoolmates had when she was six—you shook it and these white flecks swirled around some little thing that looked like a dwelling—“It’s snow,” the girl had said—“That’s snow?” Kris had asked and the girl who was eight laughed at her and she got really angry—and a door with a frosted-glass pane filling the upper half opened and this young guy with an old-style pad was there—there was something weirdly familiar about him—looking at her and then at the pad.

  “Are you Loralynn Kennakris?” She nodded. “Come with me, please.”

  She stood up . . . into Mariwen’s room. The room was full of people—so full they crushed against her on all sides—doctors, techs, nurses, all moving, talking, jostling—and in the middle of it all, Mariwen in a huge bed with a sheet pulled up to the neck and her hair loose all around—long dark waves of it fanned out across the pillows—and the bed was surrounded by racks and racks of machines, all blinking and beeping, and everyone was talking loud to be heard over the noise. She turned sideways to squeeze through the press, a sharp elbow poking her in the ribs. The bed had side rails and Mariwen was still—so still—and the skin of her perfect face wasn’t its normal rich, warm, dark caramel at all but looked like white glass. What the fuck? What’s happened to her? The bed was white too—an impossible white—and she reached out a hand—the bed was so large she had to really stretch—and she could not feel any breath at all and Mariwen’s lips were turning blue . . .

  “She’s dying,” Kris said, looking to the nearest doctor. He was facing away, intent on some traces on his obsolete pad. She reached for his arm—“She’s dying!”—but he slid away into the crowd. She turned to a nurse who was talking to a tech—Don’t you fucking understand? Her lips are blue! She’s not breathing!—but she couldn’t reach the woman as a knot of people, talking nonsensically, pushed between them, cramming her back against the side rails.

  Kris shoved her way into the mass of bodies. Why couldn’t they hear her? Why weren’t they paying attention? Mariwen wasn’t breathing! Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? She kept turning but all she saw was the backs of coats and hospital uniforms and where was the door? Where was the fucking door? She had to get out—she had to get someone—someone who’d listen—who’d do something . . . and the strange young man grabbed her elbow.

  “You don’t understand.” She wanted to reply, to say—anything—but the words would not come. “Don’t you know why you’re here?”

  Why I’m here? I’m here to—

  “End it.” He gave her arm a squeeze. “She wants you to end it. That’s why you’re here.”

  She yanked away and, turning again, was back at Mariwen’s bedside. All those people were crowding around and jostling her but they were sort of gray and she couldn’t focus on them clearly and it was quiet—everyone was still talking but it was q
uiet. She leaned over and Mariwen was very near, her face was still—so still—and fragile and more beautiful than anything should ever be and now her parted lips were even paler: frosted as though her breath had frozen on them and it was cold—why was it so fucking cold?—and she could see the slender ice-blue vein in Mariwen’s throat, feebly pulsing, and—

  Was that a gasp?

  She’s trying to breathe!

  No. There was a gentle pressure on her elbow, forcing her arm forward . . .

  Look! She’s trying to breathe!

  No. She wants you to end it. Let her go. She wants to go . . .

  Kris’s arm moved forward. She didn’t want it to but she couldn’t help it. The tiny flutter of that pale blue vein grew unnaturally large in her vision as her hand reached out for that pure white throat—just squeeze, just a little squeeze—and her thumb touched, felt the frail beat under the chilled skin as her fingers started to close . . .

  Kris bolted upright in her bunk, her whole body shaking, her hands clenched into fists and her heart hammering so loud that Tanner, Baz and Minx, who were all staring at her with shocked expressions, must have heard it clearly. Baz keyed on the lights.

  “Wha’appened?” He rubbed a hand across his face. “You okay? You screamed.”

  Unable to speak, Kris nodded. Minx said something low and unintelligible and rolled over. Baz started to get up and Tanner shook his head. Baz looked over at him. Tanner repeated the gesture. Baz lay back down.

  The shaking began to subside. Kris let herself collapse slowly back onto her bunk and someone killed the lights. She rolled onto her side, toward the wall, and jammed her face hard into the pillow. No matter what, she was not ever going to let them hear her cry.