Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “You have this, of course,”—sliding the folder on the low table between them—“but we might as well observe tradition. I retain my faith in an analog universe, no matter what quantum physicists say.”

  The reference was more obscure than most, and Hazen Gauthier merely picked up the folder and flipped through the hardcopy inside. “I do,” she said. “Thank you, Leon. It was most illuminating.”

  Searching for a sign of what exactly might have been illuminated, he folded his hands in his lap. “Glad to hear it. When I took up this office and Old Meyer handed me his—did you ever meet him, by the way? Meinhard Meyer?”

  “I’m afraid I never had the pleasure.”

  “Fascinating fellow. Outstanding mathematician. Took up teaching afterward—University of Hesse, in the Ruhr.” Noting the rapid blinking that this digression was met with, he waved a hand as if dismissing it. “Anyway, as he handed me his, he gave me the benefit of a few private remarks, by way of some further—illumination, as it were. I thought I might extend the compliment.”

  “By all means.” Having made her show of scanning the pages, she closed the folder.

  “Do you know the story of Ptolemy Auletes, by any chance?”

  “Indeed, I don’t. He was a Nedaeman, I take it?”

  “King of Egypt, actually. Back in the Hellenistic period. The original Ptolemy was Greek—one of Alexander the Great’s generals. He seized the Egyptian throne after Alexander’s death and established a dynasty there. Ptolemy Auletes was the twelfth, I believe. Your residence—the Speaker’s residence, that is—is built over his palace in Alexandria.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yes, I always liked that. The point is that by the time Auletes, as he was known, assumed the throne, Egypt, which had been a great power, was not in great shape. She was rich—breadbasket of the Mediterranean, they called her—but militarily weak. Rome, on the other hand, was militarily strong, but unable to feed itself. Rome needed Egyptian grain. Now Auletes is a Greek word—means flute player. Historians like to think the nickname meant the king was a music lover. They can’t seem to get their heads around the idea that the ancients also had a sense of humor. It’s pretty clear, in fact, that the flute they were referring to back then was not a musical instrument. You see, Auletes just wanted to keep his throne. Those were unsettled times, and if he had to get down on his knees for Rome, he’d do it. It’s that attitude toward Romans that earned him the nickname—he thought that by a combination of Egypt’s grain and his flute-playing abilities, he could keep his throne and come out top. So to speak.”

  “Truly fascinating.” The Speaker-Elect brushed at her buoyant hair.

  “Glad you think so. Because in the end, Auletes died unhappy, having sold his economy down the river. Egypt became a Roman vassal state and eventually a Roman province. Flute-playing got him what it usually does: sore knees and a wet chin before you’re shown the door.”

  Gautier was now blinking even more consistently. He sighed inwardly, and nodded at the document she held loosely curled in her lap. “I might direct your attention to the CEF Fleet readiness numbers on page three. You’ll find the corresponding ONI appraisal of the Halith military at the bottom of page four—underneath CID’s estimates for their current gross domestic output and a five-year economic forecast, showing their accumulated deficits.”

  The Speaker-Elect stopped blinking and favored him with one of those half nods as she passed the folder to her aide. “Of course, Leon. I’ll give it every attention.”

  He answered the nod with one of his own. “As I thought.”

  * * *

  Within the hour, the office cleared out and his archives secured, Grand Senator Huron, leaning on the arm of his chief of staff, stooped to enter the armored groundcar that would take him to his private shuttle, then to the heavy cruiser LSS Hyperion which would convey him into retirement at his estate in Washington Territory, on the western coast of North America. There he would watch over his vineyards, enjoy his art collection, and—if he could manage it—finally listen to his doctor’s advice, for although he was not yet raising ninety, he was genetically resistant to regeneration treatments and standard geriatrics could only do so much in the face of an indifferent diet, irregular sleep and eighteen-hour days.

  She sat by him now in the roomy passenger compartment, preparing two cups of tea (Snow Leopard Pai-Mu Tan for herself and Fenghuang Mountain with osmanthus flowers for him), and when they were ready, remarked: “Well, that was interesting.” She’d been the grand senator’s closest political advisor and confidant for over thirty years, she knew his moods through and through, but she was still a bit surprised he’d come that close to calling Hazen Gauthier a cocksucker.

  “A damn fiasco, Vai,” Senator Huron replied. “I couldn’t find the right note in there. Now they’ll go do some damned fool thing and we’ll blunder into war when we’re least ready for it.” He accepted the tea gratefully. “Half of ‘em are out for blood, the other half have their heads in the sand, and none of ‘em can tell their ass from a hot rock.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  The alarm went off, a mad undulating shriek that had Kris out of her straps and alongside her rack, scanning the environmental indicators, before she was fully awake. They were in null-gee—her dreaming mind had known that—the emergency lamps were lit and most of the indicators were blinking ominous shades of red and amber. Did they have ship power? No—the forward hatch light showed open. It should have automatically secured itself and dogged down at the first sign of trouble. Radiation? Not yet . . .

  She swung around to face Basmartin, who was up and struggling out of his tee shirt. Like most mariners, Kris slept naked—it saved vital seconds getting into an EVA suit in an emergency—but her study mates had not yet adopted this prudent habit. Tanner was still extricating himself and swearing in sleep-blurred tones, while Minx was just sitting up, wild-eyed and disoriented, fumbling with her straps. Baz, free of the shirt now, was reaching for his suit.

  “No!” Kris barked. “The ventilators!

  “Huh?” Baz blinked.

  “Shut down the ventilators!” The number-one rule of ship life was that compartment integrity came first. It was critical to keep radiation and toxic or explosive gasses—or even hostile boarders—from spreading to the next compartment. But the inexperienced often wasted a minute or more getting into their suits, by which time things could easily get to the point where being in a suit hardly mattered.

  “Oh!” Baz finally understood and lunged for the controls as Kris shot through the open door and somersaulted off the far bulkhead towards the open forward hatch. The alarms were still screaming, at a higher pitch now; the indicators over the hatch were angry red and her ears told her the pressure was dropping fast. She smashed the cover of the hatch controls with her elbow, and crumbs of glass, impelled by the pressure differential, spattered all over her bare skin. Grabbing the long manual locking lever in both hands, she braced one foot on the hatch combing and the other on the near bulkhead and heaved. The locking mechanism protested, gave grudgingly, then released, and the hatch leaves slammed shut. She rammed the dogging lever down and kicked back to their berth, almost colliding with Baz in the entrance.

  “It’s not responding! There’s no power—”

  “The override, dammit!” Kris pointed, flinging a spray of globules from the cuts in her elbow, glistening black in the dull red light, throughout the cabin. “Use the manual override! Tanner, will you get Minx into her fucking suit? Now!”

  Tanner, half into his own, grabbed Minx and pulled her out of her rack as Kris flipped herself into her waiting suit. She kept it open, gelled and partially inflated to allow just such a maneuver, but it took years of practice to slide into a suit that way. Kris was practiced and she mated the attachments with an instinctive writhe. Baz finally had the ventilators shut and was pulling his suit on as Kris grabbed her helmet.
Tanner had just shoved Minx’s legs into the bottom half of her suit—she yelped—as Kris grabbed one arm and Baz took hold of the other. Together, they got Minx sealed in while Tanner jammed her helmet down on the neck ring and locked the visor, hiding her white, appalled face.

  “Go!” She shoved Baz into the passageway, coming along close behind him as Tanner took Minx around the waist and followed. The pressure felt close to stable for the moment, and she locked her helmet down with the visor open. Their Evac station was just beyond the sealed after-hatch and Baz coasted up to it, grabbing for the manual release.

  “Don’t!” Kris yelled.

  “What?” He looked back. “The pressure indicators are okay!”

  “Don’t trust that!” She wedged in beside him. “Gimme that lever!”

  “This?” He held up the steel bar he was about to undog the hatch with. She snatched it from his gloved hand, closed her visor and braced herself, pressing her helmet against the hatch. Then she slammed the bar into it. Hearing the dim reverberation from the other side, she handed the bar back with a thumbs-up. Baz popped the hatch dogs, and together they levered it open to reveal two instructors and Sergeant Major Yu, wearing a grin and consulting a stopwatch.

  “Twenty-three seconds to spare. I guess you’ll live to have breakfast after all.”

  * * *

  “What’s up with hitting the hatch with that bar?” Baz asked as Tanner wrapped a pressure bandage around Kris’s lacerated elbow. “You should take this to sickbay,” Tanner interjected. “I don’t think we got all the glass out.”

  Kris ignored Tanner’s input. “It’s the echo, dummy. It means there’s still air on the other side—the compartment’s not open to space.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “There’s a hammer, y’know,” Tanner remarked as he finished tucking in the ends of the bandage. “Under the access panel for the hatch controls. It’s for breaking the glass.”

  “Oh.” So that’s why it’s there. Kris looked around. “Where’s Minx?”

  “Off sulking, I think,” Baz offered.

  “She did get gawd-a’mighty pinched by the suit plumbing,” Tanner temporized. “That smarts.”

  “Too fucking bad,” Kris snapped.

  “It was just a drill, y’know.” Tanner couched the observation in his most reasonable tone.

  “This time.” She flexed her elbow and winced. It did feel like things were grinding together in there . . .

  “You really should get that looked at,” Baz said.

  “Yeah. Okay.” She stood up and wavered briefly from the head rush. “I’ll . . . I’ll see you guys after breakfast.”

  * * *

  “Where’d Kris get her ship-time?” Tanner asked as they walked to the mess hall. Kris’s reactions obviously couldn’t be explained by their few weeks of ship drill. Basmartin shrugged, but Minx, now following them several steps back and looking thoroughly sour and sullen, answered, “Didn’t you know? She was a slave.”

  “What?” Basmartin and Tanner said it in unison, facing about as they walked.

  “That’s right,” Minx affirmed with an unbecoming smirk. “She was on this slave ship for like eight years.”

  “Eight years?” Tanner shook his head. Minx wasn’t given to lying, exactly—but he would not put it past her to stretch the facts a little around the edges. “No one’s ever been repatriated after eight years before.”

  “Well, that’s what they say,” Minx emphasized. “Nobody’s seen any proof, you know.”

  “Proof,” Basmartin muttered, as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “She would have been just a kid,” Tanner said. “Is that the reason they admitted her? Some kind of program?”

  “Of course not.” Minx twisted her full, mobile mouth to one side.

  “What do you mean by of course not?” Baz asked caustically.

  “They don’t admit slaves. So they had her records sealed.”

  “Who had?” Tanner swiveled his head between them. “Who’s this they?”

  “The Huron family, of course!” Rolling her eyes at Tanner’s imbecility.

  “The Huron family? Are we talking sealing records or getting her in here?”

  “Both!” Minx smiled with something close to malignant triumph. “Don’t you get it? They had her records sealed so no one could check, and then she was sponsored by Grand Senator Huron.”

  “Look,” Baz snapped. “We’ve all heard plenty of crap about Kris and Lieutenant Huron on Nedaema.”

  “It’s not crap. They did meet after she was repatriated, and they were together”—she gave it a slow, sweetly acid inflection—“while she was on Nedaema, after she cleared Rehab. And he did get his dad to sponsor her and take care of her records and everything else.”

  Baz regarded Minx narrowly. “Who told you all this?”

  “Jaz Quillan.”

  Tanner and Basmartin exchanged a look.

  “Jaz Quillan and I were roommates at the University of New California. She’s Commander Quillan’s daughter. He’s the doctor who did the original psycheval on Kris. He was there when she was in Rehab on—”

  “And he just happened to tell his daughter all the details of a confidential evaluation of one of his patients?”

  “She wasn’t a patient,” Minx shot back, nettled by Basmartin’s tone. “She was a slave. All repatriated slaves get a psycheval done and are scanned for implants—it goes in their file.”

  “It’s still private—”

  “She only knew because Huron threatened the director of Rehab on Cassandra Station. Her dad was in the process of filing a formal complaint. She heard him talking about it.”

  “He threatened the guy who runs Rehab on Cassandra?”

  “Yes! And that’s what she told me. The director had serious problems with some of the results they were seeing and her dad agreed, and the next thing you know, Lieutenant Huron shows up and gets her out of Rehab, and then her files are sealed, and then they get her into the Academy.”

  Baz and Tanner exchanged another look—this was all too implausible to make up.

  “So what happened to his complaint?” Tanner wanted to know. “A formal complaint like that’s a big deal—even for somebody like Huron.”

  “He never filed it. The director asked him not to.”

  Baz shook his head, chin wrinkling. “Are you trying to say the Huron family threatened this director to get him to shut down your roommate’s father?”

  “No—I’m not saying that.” Minx put her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side, still wearing that smirk. “I’m just saying that’s why they treat her like they do. She’s special.”

  “I guess so,” drawled Tanner. “The number of times she’s saved your lily-white ass.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  CEF Academy Orbital Campus

  Deimos, Mars, Sol

  “You think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Who? Minx?” Tanner looked back at Baz from where he was perched on the door lip of the big refer unit.

  “Yeah. About Kris.”

  “I dunno. Probably.” Tanner resumed poking the code panel under the reefer’s display. “What do you want? The Boston cream pie or the Black Forest torte?”

  “Is that all they got?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Does it have bananas?”

  Tanner jumped off onto the floor. “Does what have bananas?”

  “The Boston cream pie. Sometimes they make it with bananas.”

  “How the hell should I know? Hand over the pry bar, will ya?”

  Baz picked up the heavy bar and passed it to him. “I guess the torte then.”

  “Okay. You ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Tanner wedged the bar into the slight gap between the door and the lip. “Here goes.” Grunting, he gave the bar a heave and the door hissed slightly. “Pop her now!” Baz swung his hammer to expertly rap the side of the door just below the locking cylinder. The refer unit
gave a louder hiss, then a sharp click, and the door swung open. Chuckling, Tanner hopped back up on the lip and took a long lean inside. “Why?” he asked as he passed a wrapped package out to Baz.

  Baz shrugged, putting the package down on the nearest work table. “Well . . . eight years. That’s just—”

  “Hey, I think they got ice cream back here.” Tanner leaned farther in. “It’s hard to say, y’know. She is . . . well, different.”

  “Yeah.” Baz accepted another package, frost already forming on the wrapping. “But eight years. I mean . . . what must that have been like?”

  Tanner extracted himself from the unit and jumped to the floor again. “I don’t think you wanna know.” He tossed Baz the five-kilo ice cream container. “Let’s lock this thing up.” They slammed the door and listened while it locked and sealed.

  “Don’t forget to reset the inventory,” Baz said.

  “Shaddup,” Tanner retorted, doing it.

  They sat down on the floor and Baz handed Tanner a spoon as they broke open their loot. “What’dya mean?” He asked after his first bite of frozen torte. “Did you know any slaves?”

  “Uh-uh,” Tanner mumbled through a mouthful of cream pie. “I never did. But I had this cousin. He shipped out to the Inner Trifid with a private security firm. No bananas, by the way.”

  Baz shrugged resignedly. “Private slaving patrols?” He’d never heard of such a thing. Chasing slavers was always government business.

  “Nah.” Tanner shoveled in another spoonful of pie.

  “He wasn’t . . . I mean—” Baz stopped, flustered, and hurriedly took another bite.

  Tanner seemed unoffended. “No, nothing like that. He worked for some port authority. Solon, I think. Or some place. Anyway, they’d have these ships come in regular—you’d spot ‘em as soon as they made orbit. Always cleared customs, no grief—no hassle. Y’know?” He paused. “Want something to drink with that?”