Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “No, ma’am. The matches are popular. I just happened to hear a group of cadets talking. Then I checked the results—they post them.” This last had a slight note of apology attached.

  Good Lord. With all the side bets that were certainly occurring, this could be taking on disturbing proportions. “Thanks, Kath. I think I’ll bring this up with Sergeant Major Yu. Take no official notice until you hear from me.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  * * *

  “You asked to see me, ma’am?” Sergeant Major Yu, standing at a comfortable parade rest, looked across the desk at Commander Buthelezi with an expression so carefully neutral it seemed to scream volumes. She didn’t know Yu especially well—it wasn’t clear that anyone did—but she certainly knew that when it came to discipline, there were rules and there were his rules. She also had to conclude that he, with his reputation for near-omniscience, must have been aware of Kennakris’s activities for some time. In fact, she had the distinct feeling that he knew why she’d asked to see him and, probably, what she was about to say next.

  So she took a breath and said, without preamble, “I did, Sergeant Major. I hear that your Cadet Kennakris is hustling low-gee racquetball.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Quite successfully.”

  “I should say so—to the tune of §11,000.”

  “A bit more, as I understand it.”

  The commander made a noncommittal noise deep in her throat. “You’ve been aware of this for a while, I take it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you have no problem with this behavior?”

  “If the underlying motive was money, I certainly would, ma’am.”

  “You conclude that is not the motive, Sergeant Major?”

  “I highly doubt it, ma’am. Ms. Kennakris is worth a little more than a million.”

  “Indeed?” That was very well off by any standard and the word came out in a higher pitch than she would have liked. “I was not aware.”

  “No, ma’am. That is not official info, ma’am.”

  “I see.” She tapped her index finger on the desktop. Icons scurried away and took refuge along the upper-left margins. “That aside, you don’t see any difficulties arising from the magnitude of the funds involved?”

  “In a year, we’ll be asking these cadets to bet their lives and the lives of their people, ma’am. Wagering a few hundred or even a thousand on their skills gives them a little perspective.”

  That was not the tack she’d expected Yu to take. “Is that the main reason, Sergeant Major?”

  “No, ma’am. Cadet Kennakris is a unique case. She has little or nothing in common with the other cadets—this was initially disruptive, especially given her capabilities. These matches have brought her better acquainted with the other cadets, and they are starting to develop more respect for her as a result. In my opinion, these matches are proving invaluable in developing the primary group bonds that, in her case, would be difficult to form otherwise.”

  That was an excellent point. Further, they pushed the kids hard and Commander Buthelezi could see that being stuck here on Deimos, with little beyond simulations to relieve the strain of constant study and endless drills, a vigorous athletic contest with something tangible on the line would have a lot of appeal. But that didn’t excuse taking advantage of the situation. A straight-up competition was one thing—hustling was something else. Of course, Kath might have been using the term loosely.

  “As you appear to be well informed, Sergeant Major, you see no issues with the way the matches themselves are conducted?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Cadet Kennakris does not refuse to play anyone, even cadets who consistently have the edge over her, and overall the cadets’ performance is improving. I believe that up-tick in readiness scores we’ve observed for the past few weeks may be partially in consequence.”

  Commander Buthelezi had noticed the mild jump in scores too. She also thought she’d detected a heightened degree of alertness, especially in Kris’s class, which she had chalked up to War Week approaching, but it was certainly true that wagering on this level would tend to focus the mind, and maybe that was spilling over into the cadets’ training.

  “Any other observations, Sergeant Major?”

  “Yes, ma’am. These matches are wholly theirs. Everything else the cadets do is an official activity or has official sanction. This allows them to conduct themselves independently and experience the real-world consequences. It’s not a bad habit for them to start developing.”

  That also was quite true. She half expected Yu to opine next that if Kennakris had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her. Nonetheless, it was a delicate business, contemplating turning a blind official eye to something of this magnitude. Elliptically, she was reminded of a situation that had arisen years ago during her last active duty posting, when she was Tactical Action Officer on the battlecruiser LSS Athena Nike, Admiral Sabr’s flagship.

  One of their carrier group’s recon wings has been posted downside on a largely uninhabited planet far out in the Hydra, near Tyrsenian space—the kind of assignment flyers hated most—and both the duty and the environment had been unusually harsh. Discipline suffered, largely because the maintenance crews improved their leisure hours by sneaking into the wilds outside their compound and constructing stills in which they brewed dubious liquors, resulting in a greater-than-usual incidence of drunkenness, fighting, and injuries that weakened morale and produced a sick-list that would have been excessive in a dreadnought.

  The wing’s CO, a good officer but something of a martinet, took all the usual steps: he cracked down on drinking, he posted extra guards over his stores, he sent out patrols regularly to find and destroy the stills. Of course, the situation continued to deteriorate.

  Then the CO invalided home unexpectedly and the executive officer took over. This officer immediately did three things: he zealously enforced the regs against rendering oneself unfit for duty but otherwise turned a mostly blind eye to off-duty drinking, he removed the extra guards from the storage depot, and he stopped the still-busting patrols while making sure he knew exactly where they were. When he needed the stores that the stills were using, mostly fuel cells and meters of valuable tubing, he simply led a detail into the wild and broke some up until they had what was needed.

  He explained all this at the informal inquiry, on which Naomi sat, by saying that a still was a trivial drain on a fuel cell, and the tubing might just as well be stored in one—he’d referred to it as dynamic storage—as in the depot. And the discipline issues stopped.

  The executive officer had been none other than Senior Lieutenant Rafael Huron and the planet had been Mananzas Cay. The action that transpired there against a Tyrsenian fleet—the inquiry had been held at Huron’s hospital bedside—was starred in the annals of CEF history.

  “I see.” Commander Buthelezi nodded. “I will leave this situation in your hands and officially know nothing about it.”

  Yu inclined his head but his expression did not change.

  “That is all, Sergeant Major. Of course, my door is always open, should there ever be anything you wish to convey to me.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.” Yu saluted with his trademark precision and exited smartly, but he didn’t take Naomi’s vague feelings of unease with him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Grand Senate Chamber

  League Capitol Complex, Nereus, Mars

  The old man’s voice was still strong, still resonant. “Senators, it has been my privilege for the past five decades to address this chamber. It has been your burden to suffer through those addresses, and a sad burden I fear it has sometimes been, too. One would think that half a century of doing anything might give a man some proficiency in it—alas, I stand before you now as proof that is not always so.

  “So today, as I lay down that privilege and you, that burden, I will have done with attempts at eloquence, and speak plainly. We are—again—at the brink of war. A more mom
entous question has never tested—nor will ever test—the mind of Man. And never more do passions reign than when cold calculation is needed.

  “Senators, I beg for that calculation now. An ultimatum is urged that the government of the Bannerman Confederacy shall give over to our justice the terrorist Nestor Mankho and certain of his supporters—or face, as we choose to call it, maximum measures. Maximum measures.” Here he paused to read the faces of his colleagues and saw, with a sinking heart, precisely what he had expected. He forged on. “Now, you know and I know damn well that if we were to locate Mankho, Ardennes and Rubicon together could boil his host planet down to the bedrock—half a morning’s work. To what end? To what final end? A wiser man than me once said: The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

  “And so it shall. We all know what is at stake here and we also know—and should not be afraid to say—that we, as a body, are not much accustomed to being at the sharp end of events. Yes, it is true that Mankho came this close”—he raised a hand with thumb and index finger less than a finger’s width apart—“of ending the lives of some dozens of us. But let us weigh that carefully in the balance of the actions we take into contemplation.

  “Justice must be done—that is not the question. The question is the means—and, yes, other means were tried, and the failure”—he would not say blunder, though blunder it had certainly appeared to be—“was grievous, but let us not give in and allow that to compel us to blindly grab for the biggest, bluntest tool that comes to hand. An ultimatum is such a tool—it compels us to either surrender our judgment to events, or to appear impotent if we back down.” Pausing again, he noted the discreet squirming, the small rustles, about the chamber. “Colleagues, I will close. If war is upon us—if our adversaries are so determined—this measure will not prevent it. If they are not yet so determined, this measure can only make them so. I urge you, Senators: prepare for war with all speed but calculate with deliberation.” This last seemed to deflate him and he looked even older: old with years, deeds and cares.

  “My friends, I entered this chamber as a young man and I leave it now as an old one, with a task yet before us as great as we have ever faced. I am at a loss to express the depth of my feelings at such an occasion. Without the guidance of the Divine, which ever assisted our forbearers, we cannot succeed—with it, we cannot fail. Trusting in that Guidance, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. With these poor words I must leave you, and I bid you all an affectionate farewell.”

  * * *

  “Magnificent speech, Leon,” Speaker-Elect Hazen Gauthier, the senior Grand Senator from Hestia, said with her best smile, as Speaker Rafael L. Huron IV conducted her to the Speaker’s private chambers, there to formally surrender, in her presence, the Keys to the Grand Senate’s Sergeant at Arms. The new Speaker would receive them tomorrow, at the culmination of her inauguration with all due pomp and circumstance. He was glad he would miss it. “You know my aide, I believe? Ms. Pollit?” she added with an airy wave of one soft white hand.

  The Speaker nodded to the rather thick-bodied woman at the Speaker-Elect’s shoulder. He was indeed acquainted with Noelle Pollit, but that was years ago when she was Nowell Pollit: a beefy, hard-charging man who’d been a rising star in the Hestian Finance Ministry. Indeed, he’d first met Pollit when he was on the short list to become the next Hestian Finance Minister.

  Unfortunately, Pollit then became embroiled in a scandal over an election tampering scheme engineered by his good friend, Samantha Grace, deputy director of the census bureau. Not incidentally, Grace and her compatriots were also embezzling huge sums by directing government subsidies to parties who did not exist. On being indicted, Grace pled guilty, whereupon the court allowed her to select euthanasia instead of undergoing chemical interrogation. Denied this chance to prove his innocence, Pollit, while escaping indictment, was forced to resign, and thereafter disappeared from public life. It was only recently that Noelle Pollit had reemerged, as Grand Senator Gautier’s personal aide.

  “We have met once,” he said ambiguously. As they approached the Speaker’s chambers, he indicated the diminutive woman with fine straight black hair, tilted eyes, and pure ivory skin standing by the entrance. She was holding what appeared to be a small attaché case.

  “My chief of staff, Vaishali Kriesel-Roth,” he announced by way of introduction. “You know her, of course, Hazen. Vai, this is Noelle.”

  “Pleasure,” his chief of staff murmured with such a polite lack of inflection that the greeting could have meant most anything.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” replied Pollit, play acting not quite as well.

  “Where’s George?” the Speaker asked, referring to the Sergeant at Arms, who was to relieve him of his primary burden. For the object his chief of staff held with both hands was in fact, the Keys, and they unlocked much more than the odd door.

  “Right behind you, sir,” Kriesel-Roth said with a lift her chin and a smile on her delicate but expressive features.

  The Speaker looked around. “Ah, there you are, George”—addressing the tall imposing official making his way down the corridor. “I can’t tell you how I long to be shot of the beastly thing.”

  This last was spoken in the direction of Hazen Gauthier, who received it with a slight inclination of her head and pleasant half-smile. Receiving things pleasantly, be they bad news or satiric comments, was one of her main talents, along with looking dignified and even stately. Almost as tall as the Speaker, who had once been a rangy six-feet (though age had now claimed an inch or so), she had fine patrician features and white hair she wore in an elaborate coiffure that resembled a well-behaved corona. Speaker Huron, for his part, always thought it looked like it had been dipped in lacquer.

  “Here we go”—accepting the Keys from his chief of staff as George arrived. “Hazen, if you would please,” nodding to a spot beside him. “Noelle, you might as well crowd in too. All correct? Splendid.”

  Taking a small unmarked ingot of silver metal on a chain from around his neck, he applied it to the Key’s lock. His chief of staff then repeated the procedure with her identical ingot, and when the lock glowed amber, he pressed his thumb over it and held. The case opened a lit panel, on which the Speaker typed a passcode. It was accepted and the Sergeant at Arms leaned over to insert his dual keys into the panel’s matching receptacles, and turned them. The lights died, and on the two keys being removed, the panel closed with a loud click.

  “There we are,” the now-former Speaker said with a satisfied sigh, handing the case to George along with his and Vaishali’s ingots. “Try not to lose it.”

  The Sergeant at Arms, who did not have the Speaker-Elect’s talent for receiving satiric comments pleasantly, frowned. Yet, perhaps the comment was not so satiric either: he’d held this post for only the last twelve of the former Speaker’s twenty-three-year tenure, and so had not yet performed this particular duty. He would be custodian of the Keys until tomorrow PM, when the inauguration ceremony ended, and should anything happen in the meantime, he would be on the hook to deal with it, insofar as notifying and cooperating with the proper authorities, and given the current atmosphere, he was discovering he did not relish the thought.

  But he gave Grand Senator Huron (as he now was—his retirement becoming official tomorrow) a proper bow, and stepping away, called for his marine escort. The Grand Senator brought out his card-key the Speaker’s chambers and offered it to Gauthier.

  “Perhaps you’d like to jump the gun a little.”

  With a vague nod, she took that card-key and opened the chambers, while Grand Senator Huron ushered them all inside. It was not a palatial space—nothing like the large octagonal office in the Speaker’s residence at Alexandria—and in fact a little drab. He preferred it that way, as had his predecessor, a man of simple tastes, and so had eschewed any elaboration.

  “Take the Big Chair”—gesturing to the Speaker’s seat while he himself took ano
ther one in the main sitting area.

  “Thank you, Leon. But tomorrow comes soon enough, doesn’t it?” Gauthier smiled—she was perpetually smiling, it seemed to him—and took a chair across from him.

  “Indeed. At times it comes sooner that you think,” he replied as his chief of staff and her aide found their seats.

  No sooner were they all settled, than he looked at the—not his—desk. That elicited a minor twinge, for in spite of his outward demeanor, he was not going with perfect willingness. Indeed, he’d fought to postpone his retirement until this present crisis was either resolved or past the point of no return, but his doctors had insisted, and for the first time since he assumed the Speakership of the Grand Senate, he had to admit he didn’t have the votes. This time no amount of backroom back-scratching, bargaining or arm-twisting was likely to change that. Finally, Vaishali had convinced him that a retired Speaker, unfettered by the need to maintain his majority and other parliamentary niceties, could have more influence over events than an embattled one.

  Hazen Gauthier had been the consensus choice to succeed him only because none of the other candidates could form a majority after days of often acrimonious wrangling and debate. She was a close ally of Lysander Gayle, and well enough liked (not to be confused with well respected), and the outgoing Speaker knew that her ascension was predicated on a degree of the malleability that each of the competing factions was convinced they could exploit. Privately, he wished them joy of that hope.

  Now he fixed an apologetic look on his chief of staff. “Vai, I’m afraid I was premature. Would you fetch it, please?”

  “Of course, sir.” She rose and retrieved a folder with a yellow cover from the desk. It was the missive the out-going Speaker traditionally prepared for the incoming one, listing the most critical issues and giving brief thoughts on each, along with any inside information on current activities relating to them. Privately, he called it his Letter to the Ephesians, and while he hoped that the new Speaker would pay more attention to it than history proved humanity-at-large had paid to Paul’s original, he did not think it terribly likely.