Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Chapter Ten

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  Three nights later, Kris looked up at Basmartin across the narrow common table in their dorm. “Gawd, do we really have to do a unit on the history of slaving?”

  There was only the two of them at the moment—Tanner was off getting some simulator time and Minx hadn’t been seen since dinner—and they’d been reviewing the upcoming units for this quarter’s history class. With all the new challenges of their second quarter, Kris had missed this gem her first time through. They still had the same scholastic load but now practical training, especially in the lethal arts, was added as well. Their ship drill had been stepped up, becoming much more realistic; their unarmed combat training had intensified, with leagues set up in imitation of the All-Forces Unarmed Combat Tournament, and they had begun small-arms training.

  This last was a most unexpected pleasure. Like most cadets, Kris had never handled a firearm before in her life, and while she was mostly indifferent to rifles, she found that a well-balanced sidearm in her hand gave her considerable joy, especially when used to make holes in silhouettes on the live-fire range. Neither her enthusiasm nor her skill ascended to the heights Basmartin’s and Tanner’s did—both of them had promptly joined the Academy’s lower-division pistol team, and Tanner looked like he was bidding fair to bring back a trophy—but she was able to hold her own on a good day and at no time did she disgrace herself.

  The biggest change, however, was their introduction to track-specific simulations. The simulations cadets had access to for their first quarter were of a general character, emphasizing team exercises and stopping short of being true wargames. They were conducted on a level playing field and things went as advertised, the uncertainties being heavily constrained and managed.

  Now Kris and her classmates were introduced to full-fledged flight simulators. These simulators were their first step towards basic flight training, which they’d begin in their second term, and they were a far cry from the simulations of their first quarter. The exercises grew exponentially in complexity throughout the quarter, starting with simple solo missions and building rapidly to full squadron level exercises, which would culminate at the term’s end in War Week, their first taste of real wargaming.

  Kris was solidly in the middle of their class scholastically, but she showed a remarkable degree of skill in these new simulations, coupled with a rare degree of stamina. Basmartin came very nearly up to her level—he might at times surpass it—and they often flew their missions together, so far eclipsing the other first-term cadets’ teams that in the officially denounced but winked-at wagering on these exercises, they rapidly found they had to offer odds of four-to-one or better to get any takers.

  But this competition was not just about vanity, and the money (while nice as a concrete measure of their prowess) didn’t mean that much, Kris having her repatriation settlement and Baz’s family being quite well-to-do. What truly mattered was that the scores they earned in these exercises were one of the major factors in determining how they would be placed at the beginning of their second year, when flight-officer candidates were divided into the Tactical Fighter Program and the Advanced Fighter Program. AFP candidates were the elite’s elite: those who were trained for reconnaissance and deep-strike operations, while the cadets in the Tactical Fighter Program focused on the less glamorous interception, interdiction and area-defense missions.

  Kris, Baz and Minx all had their hearts set on making it into the AFP—Tanner professed to be happy to just escape with his wings—but the odds against all of them doing so were high. Only a third of new cadets in the fighter track were accepted into the advanced program and only about half of those could be expected to graduate from it, the rest reverting to TFP candidates. The rough six-to-one ratio of TFP graduates to those from the advanced program was itself almost twenty percent higher than the actual number of billets available in recon and deep-strike wings, so perhaps a fifth of AFP graduates could still expect to find themselves facing disappointment.

  Who was disappointed and who was not depended on a host of factors, and one of those factors was, unhappily, scholastic performance, which meant getting at least acceptable marks in her classes even when they dealt with topics as obnoxious as the history of slaving.

  Basmartin looked up from the notes he was making on his tablet. “Well, it is a big part of what we do,” he said. “Y’know, a lot of people don’t take it as—” He lurched to a halt, uncomfortably aware that, Kris being an Outworlder, his foot had just arrived within dangerous proximity to his mouth. “Well, yeah,” he finished. “It doesn’t look like a major unit, though.” He dropped his eyes back to his tablet, determinedly studious.

  Kris grunted as she flipped to the abstract. She knew Baz was merely being considerate, but somehow it made her feel even more like an alien. He didn’t treat Tanner with such tender respect. On the other hand, there were plenty, like Minx, who treated her with hardly any respect at all. No one had really found a comfortable middle ground yet and, she had to admit, that included herself. Silently, she applied herself to reading:

  Throughout history, slavery, as an impulse, has never died. Even in the halcyon years of the Second Colonization Period, when new technologies had briefly allowed people to get ahead of many chronic problems, it lay coiled in Humanity's basement, waiting for the wolf at the door to overwhelm the humanitarian within. When the first colonies were settled and the harsh habitats made healthy workers a scarce commodity again, it began to stir. It woke and yawned full wide during the chaotic expansion that proceeded the Formation Wars [see Formation Wars—Causes—Aftermath], and grew sleek and well-fed in the darkness afterwards.

  Coiled in the basement? Yawned? Really? Sleek and well-fed in the darkness? Kris shook her head, suppressing an impolite sound.

  The reasons for it were not complex, though some have wished to make them so: in an expanding universe of dangerous, sparsely-populated worlds dependent on technologies they did not always own or could not easily replicate, the most desirable capital was people, those highly-productive, infinitely-adaptable, easily-reproduced machines.

  Suppressing rude noises was getting harder. So slaves were ‘highly-productive machines’ now? Maybe someone should have a short, sharp talk to the ‘machine’ that had produced this crap.

  An interstellar economy of person-trade grew in the dark, cobbled together by those planets who retained interstellar flight at the expense of those who did not. Loose federations formed and exploded and reformed [see Slave Federations], driven by the need to expedite the movement of the valuable and fragile cargo. The Slaver Wars were not that at all; they were merely the end of the Formation Wars, fought by the people who still had guns and starships . . .

  Jeezus, who wrote this? She clicked the author tag. A. O. Morgenthau, Senior Fellow, Nedaeman National University for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. That figures. A goddamned yeast-eater trying to be cute. She scanned his list of other works: ‘Alcohol and Philosophy’, ‘Food and Philosophy’, ‘Sexual Ethos in Slave-Dominated Cultures’—Oh, fuck you!

  Kris almost slammed the tablet on the table. What was it with Nedaemans and their sick fascination with slavers’ sexual tweaks? They’d badgered her with those kinds of creepy questions during her time in Rehab on Cassandra Station. Fuck’n psych-voyeurs. She jumped down a page.

  Suggested Further Reading: Immunocytes and Rise of Abolitionism.

  What the hell? She glided the cursor over the précis:

  Major reduction mortality due to immunocyte technology is shown to mitigate primary economic factors supporting slave-taking and trading, allowing abolitionist sentiments to be asserted with diminished risk of collateral effects. The role of improved health in enhancing the perception of the value of human life is explored. Compare the 3rd Nanocyte Revolution and the advent of modern terraforming.

  Typical, Kris thought, thinking of the unit they’d done on Economic Deter
minism. She was scheduled for her first immunocyte implants at the end of this term—she’d already been tested and her genome mapped to make sure it would take, since the CEF wouldn’t allow anyone to deploy out-system without it—but no one had explained what they were exactly or how they worked. As a kid, she’d been inoculated with proactive vaccines but that was it—they didn’t have anything else on Parson’s Acre. She clicked the link to immunocyte technology.

  Immunocyte Technology. Immunocytes function as a hybrid-Molossian hive-mind controlled by the liver. They produce a threat matrix for any potential antigen and modify the molecular and genetic structure of the antigen to render it harmless, according to the host’s risk profile. They perform the same functions for random mutations within the host itself; for example, suppressing cancerous growths. They also interact with and can if necessary modify natural lymphocytes and macrophages. Effectiveness is claimed to be 100% against all known antigens.

  Limitations: Algorithms employed by current-generation immunocytes have a 12 to 18-month confidence window, depending on the host’s genome. This is not considered an issue as long as the immunocyte implant is properly maintained.

  Of more concern is the potential for rapidly mutating antigens to overwhelm the host before the immunocytes can reach a stable solution. This is primarily due to the nature of the current algorithms which require a large number of trials to meet acceptable confidence thresholds. Developers stress that such concerns are purely theoretical and no such antigens exist, but critics claim that these assessments are too optimistic, and that the potential exists for engineered viruses to exceed the known limits of the adaptive mutation rates of wild-caught viruses.

  Development: Modern immunocyte technology is based on the pioneering work of Dr. Victor Osorio, who developed the first safe and effective proactive vaccines. This work was later expanded upon by his son, Dr. Ivan Osorio. Dr. Osorio’s work was heavily supported by Ilmatar Neoforming, now part of the KKHR Control Group, which still holds several important patents relating to immunocyte technology.

  Huh? Wasn’t that Huron’s family’s company? Hadn’t Mariwen told her that back on the Arizona, just after they met? Kris knew that proactive vaccines, along with what they called the Third Nanocyte Revolution, were the keys that allowed the widespread colonization that had occurred over the past hundred and seventy years or so—places like Parson’s Acre and most of the Methuselah Cluster—but she had no idea Huron’s family had played such a critical role in it. No wonder they were so rich. She popped up an info bubble.

  KKHR Control Group. One of the largest business enterprises in existence. Formed by the amalgamation of Ilmatar Neoforming, Prometheus Development Corp, Q3MM and Millennium Industries, the enterprise subsequently acquired . . .

  Kris skipped over the list of names, which meant nothing to her, and of business areas, which included just about everything, but primarily terraforming, settlement, finance, and teralogistics. Skimming through the text, she stopped at:

  While KKHR Control Group is relatively small compared to the state-owned SyrDaria Settlement Corporation (a Halith government enterprise), Gaia Group (owned by the Nedaeman government), and the Bahadur Holding Company (majority owned by the Belt government),* and is slightly smaller than Caelius-Protogenos, what is remarkable about the corporation is that a full 55% of the voting stock is under the personal control of the Huron family. In addition, the Huron family maintains sole ownership of TeraCon Heavy Industries, the largest privately-owned company, with unsheltered assets in excess of §500 billion.

  * The total assets of these enterprises are disputed, especially Bahadur Holding Company, whose asset position is complicated by its partially state-owned status.

  Kris closed the bubble. Damn! She knew Huron was rich, but this was—was . . . they weren’t kidding back on Nedaema when they’d told her about some of his holdings. And that was the little stuff. She shook her head and winced. They’d had their bi-weekly bout of unarmed combat training that afternoon and she was getting stiff from the exercise; her legs were starting to cramp and her back ached from landing hard on the mat. She stretched and her neck popped alarmingly.

  Baz looked up. “You know, you creep me the hell out when you do that.”

  “Sorry.” She stood up, tugged and wriggled her fatigues straight. “I gotta go get some sim time—this shit is giving me serious buffer overflow.” She rotated her torso with a suppressed groan, relaxed for a moment, and then did it again, pushing until her spine popped too. Baz rolled his eyes theatrically.

  “Baz, will you do some battlespace prep for me?”

  “If you knock it off with the gruesome noises, I might.”

  “Find out how much of this they’re gonna test us on. We’ll all sleep better.” She almost added a winning smile but caught herself at the last moment. She knew very well how Baz felt about her, and she didn’t want to lead him on. She liked Baz a lot and he was cute enough, and if she was ever really in the mood for some horizontal recreation, she just might—

  The unexpected physical reaction at that thought startled her. She held herself perfectly still, hoping she wouldn’t fall until the bout of dizziness passed, and as her vision cleared, she saw Baz looking up at her quizzically.

  “Okay. See what I can do.” He looked down.

  “Thanks, Baz.” Her voice quavered slightly. Had he noticed?

  “Don’t mention it,” Baz answered, his voice giving nothing away. He waved his hand through a cloud of tablet windows, closing them. “Go kill lotsa bad guys.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  The dying quail fluttered up over the net, and Kris faded back two steps with a predatory grin on her face. Timing her jump to perfection, she met the ball just past the top of its rise and slammed a winner so hard the tall, rangy cadet on the other side of the court actually ducked.

  “Point!” bellowed the automatic scorekeeper. “Game, set, match. Kennakris, ten. Nevers, two.”

  “Good try, Nevers. Pay the man.” She hooked a thumb at Basmartin, sitting courtside at a small table. Shaking his head ruefully, Nevers bounced across the court, stumbling a little at the edge where the gravity ramped up to a full gee, and handed his chit across to Baz, who stroked off Kris’s winnings and gave it back with a smile.

  “Two minutes!” Kris called to the crowd packed into the back of the court, holding two fingers aloft. She bounded to the edge of the court, took the gravity gradient with a smooth glide and landed next to Baz. He handed her a towel.

  “How we doing?” she asked, mopping her face, neck and chest with it.

  “Good! Up §1800. A lot of that’s from Nevers. That’s twice you’ve almost skunked him.”

  “Yeah, well—he’s rich and he likes to watch my tits jiggle.” She pulled out the front of the tight black exercise rig and fanned them.

  “Then I guess he’s getting what he paid for.”

  Kris tossed the towel aside. “How much longer we got?”

  “Call it half an hour.”

  “Sounds good.” Kris turned and took a leap back onto the court. “Okay, who’s next? Come on—ten points a match! Hundred a point! Who wants it? You! Lono. Atta’ boy! You can serve first and I’ll give you an extra fault . . .”

  * * *

  Commander Naomi Buthelezi, the senior Strategy and Tactics instructor and also Superintendent of Student Affairs, had just bitten into a beignet when her xel lit up with the face of her assistant, Lieutenant Kath Innis.

  “What is it, Kath?” she answered on the voice-only circuit as she wiped powdered sugar off her chin. Naomi was an impressive-looking woman, with peerless jet-black skin and a clean-lined, high-cheekboned face with regal features: literally regal in her case, because the commander was a member of the KwaZulu Natal royal family. It was a face of no particular age: in Terran standard years she could have passed for forty or thirty-five or even younger, the impression of youth reinforced by
an engaging smile. It didn’t need to be seen enhanced with powdered sugar, especially during duty hours.

  “It’s Cadet Kennakris. Ma’am.”

  “What’s she up to now?” Commander Buthelezi was, quite incidentally, the faculty rep for Class 1861 and had come to expect the unexpected from them, especially Cadet Kennakris.

  “I’m not sure how to view this, ma’am—it seems to be a gray area in the Ethics Code—but she’s playing low-gee racquetball for money.”

  “What exactly is she doing?” Betting was officially frowned on, but unofficially there were always pools and wagers on any number of things. Athletic contests generated the most activity—the All-Forces Unarmed Combat Championships created such a furor that anyone who didn’t have a stake in the outcome became practically a pariah—and small friendly bets, often quite amusing, were winked at. There was even a long-established floating poker game that had become a hallowed Academy tradition.

  “Well, ma’am, she’s playing games against all comers: so many points to win and the loser pays the winner the point differential.”

  “Doesn’t sound terribly criminal.”

  “No, ma’am, but . . . she’s playing for a hundred a point!”

  Naomi’s eyebrows went up at that. A hundred a point was serious money. “How much has she made on this little enterprise of hers? Any idea?”

  “I don’t know anything officially, of course, ma’am, but based on the matches we know she’s played, almost eleven thousand!”

  The gracefully curved eyebrows rose to unrecorded heights. Eleven thousand was close to twice the median monthly wage on any Homeworld except Earth—in the Outworlds it represented a fortune.

  “How long has she been doing this?”

  “A month, ma’am. We knew about the games—she holds them twice a week and they draw a crowd now—it was the extent of the betting I just learned.”

  “Did someone complain?”