Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Huron had some sense of this, and regarded it with tolerant amusement. Kris had none, and would have been confused and annoyed if she did. Her ideas of religion—of spirituality in general—were bound up with the notion of ‘church,’ a diffuse residue of her early childhood. Church was pervasive on Parson’s Acre, to the point of essentially defining their society, but Kris and her father, as outsiders, were never fully admitted. She attended church sporadically; there were church services and daily prayer sessions at her school (a good time for a nap), but the essence of it, from the point of view of either community or spirituality, left her untouched. Whether god existed or what the nature of heaven might be were questions she never asked—what hell was like, she had no need to.

  So she accepted the smiles, becks and nods, the solicitous “by your leave, ma’am” and “if you’ll permit me, ma’am” to open a hatch or fetch her a sandwich or cup of coffee while she was standing watch (which she always drank, her ambivalent feelings toward the beverage notwithstanding), with a polite and slightly embarrassed incomprehension, which only served to confirm the crew in their judgment.

  The view of the officers was rather more complex. Some, like Liz Gill and Tomas Wagner, she’d won over quickly; others remained more guarded. A few were suspicious of her relationship with Huron, but most accepted her with good grace. Their feelings about fortune might be on a different plane than those of the lower decks; they might be more theoretical and couched in the mantras of their profession; but they still existed, and the corporate opinion of the lower decks and the wardroom rarely diverged on this point. Further, they were pleased with the high spirits of the crew and that in itself was contagious.

  Kris was pleased at being allowed to do something. True, that something was standing watch, but it was better than nothing. After two days of indulging in every possible variant of thumb-twiddling, she approached Huron privately to ask if “there was anything she could do on this goddamn tub.”

  Huron advanced the question, suitably edited, and received a positive response. The first thought, attaching her to Lieutenant Gill’s Astrogation Department (however well supported by the logic of events), did not meet with official approval. Serving in Astrogation in any capacity required at least one of several ratings, ratings no cadet could possibly have, no matter what insights she’d provided. Ignoring that would require a degree of dissimulation in the ship’s log that some captains might have winked at, but not Sir Phillip. The solution was to attach her to Lieutenant Wagner’s sensor watch instead.

  That suited Kris fine. Wagner was a decent sort; the mild awkwardness over her status was behind them, and he proved to be friendly enough without being overbearing. He also seemed to be more than a little overawed by Huron, as most of the junior officers were, and her connection there discouraged any unwelcome degree of familiarity.

  Her station was on the bridge, and that suited her fine, too—mostly. What she knew about sensors did not qualify her to man a console in CIC (although she couldn’t help but think how much Baz would have loved it there), and she found the bridge far more interesting. Her watch duties were not arduous, and they brought her much better acquainted with how things actually ran on a warship, as opposed to the idealized version presented at the Academy.

  The senior personnel of a nominal bridge watch consisted of the Officer of the Deck, the conning officer, and the helmsmen. The Chief of the Watch, the nav watch, and the quartermaster rounded out a typical watch bill. The OOD ran the ship when the captain wasn’t on the bridge (which was most of the time) in accordance with the standing orders. The conning officer seconded the OOD, gave both helmsmen their conning orders (the helmsman who directed the ship in RST, and the G-helmsman, who handled the gravitics), and maintained tactical awareness of all contacts reported by the CIC sensor section, along with any hazards reported by the quartermaster and the nav watch. The Chief of the Watch managed the entire deck watch section throughout the ship, ensuring all stations were properly manned and relieved.

  At the Academy, ship comms were typically the conning officer’s responsibility, which was usual for smaller combatants, but Retribution had a signal lieutenant to handle that duty. This officer also acted as the conning officer’s chief assistant, coordinating with the sensor section, which in this case meant coordinating with Kris, who was now the sensor section’s representative on the bridge.

  The Signal Lieutenant proper—that is, the head of the battlecruiser’s Signals Department, which embraced both the comms and IT sections—was a lieutenant named Clancy Weber, who was among those not yet reconciled to Kris’s anomalous position, or (as he saw it) the degree of deference she was shown. He was an avid devotee of Sir Phillip, much impressed with the captain’s titles and consequence, rather over-proud of his admittedly detailed knowledge of the technology in his charge, and he talked too much. He had a pinched, nervous, nasal voice (most atypical for a naval officer), and Kris soon came to feel that his talking at all was too much. The other signal lieutenants—whoever had the watch also had the title, be they a lieutenant-jg, an ensign or, in a couple of cases, a grizzled chief petty officer who might have been almost as old as Retribution herself—she found much more congenial.

  Fortunately, Weber was only on the bridge when the captain was, most often the forenoon watch. They had assigned her the afternoon and first watches, which gave her the dogs off for dinner and to meet with Huron on those aspects of the mission that weren’t acknowledged in the official op plan. Not that there was much to do in that regard at this point, but she didn’t mind the company either.

  Nor did she mind that her watch schedule kept her from seeing much of Captain Lawrence. His Meridian manners were strange and opaque to her, and she couldn’t shake the feeling he was coiling plenty of rope at her feet, hoping that if she didn’t hang herself with it, she might at least trip.

  Of Commander Ravenswood, she saw hardly anything at all. The exec’s role was primarily an administrative one, so she spent nearly all her time meeting with the captain or the various department heads, seeing to the myriad details that were involved in the smooth running of the ship. She seemed to be a competent, quiet woman, if quite particular and maybe a bit tense. She hardly said three words to Kris in the first week after she arrived.

  Kris came to be much better acquainted with Hrolf Walashek, a kindly, avuncular, colonial lieutenant commander, quite long in grade, who was head of Retribution’s maintenance department and chief damage control officer. His position was somewhat satirically known as the ‘bosun-in- chief’ as the corresponding department head on cruisers and destroyers was a bosun, and thus a senior warrant officer, while frigates had to be content with a chief bosun’s mate. On a dreadnought or fleet carrier, the billet would be filed by a senior commander, and was reckoned to be the second or third most important position on the ship. As such, Walashek ran one of Retribution’s largest departments, and ran it quite well, for all his easy-going manner. He commanded immense respect, and his eccentricities excited no comment beyond the occasional wink.

  Walashek was of course no watch stander, but he liked to appear on the bridge in the middle of first watch, always with a mug of coffee strong enough to float an iron wedge, and tell the type of stories old mariners love to indulge in when nothing much is going on. He seemed to have taken a shine to Kris, and when time and circumstances allowed, enjoyed imparting to her some of his inexhaustible knowledge of the finer points, as well as the vagaries, of naval architecture.

  Kris also knew something about those vagaries—in regard to slaver ships, that is, as became apparent when they were eleven days out. They had arrived at Killian's Reach as predicted, as pretty a starfall as could be wished, skimming in cold and silent, and almost immediately encountered a great, fat Tyrsenian tender dawdling along quite unconcerned. Captain Lawrence had dispensed with any ‘prattle’—“damned rogues have nothing to say to me, nor I to them,” was the way he put it—and dispatched his boats: four cutters packed with m
arines and a covering force of armed pinnaces.

  Whatever sort of watch the Tyrsenians kept, it was clearly lacking, for the boats swam quietly out of the dark, masking their signatures by coming in behind the engine cluster, and before any alarm was given, the boarding lampreys had latched on and ripped open the hatches, while Retribution’s EW section made sure no messages could be sent. The armored marines stormed the tender, made short work of the dazed and gawping crew almost before they could rouse themselves, and found nearly six hundred recently taken slaves.

  Interrogating the survivors, they learned the tender had four consorts, sleek, well-armed raiders who’d been preying on nearby systems for over two months. They had gone much farther afield this last trip, seeking richer pickings among settlements that had been purposely left alone to replenish what they called their “stock”, and were expected to return shortly—a couple of day cycles at most.

  Captain Lawrence pulled his squadron back to a safe distance, all but the stealth frigate Kestrel and the pinnaces, and left his marines to prepare a welcoming party. It was a bit of a risk, should the slavers show up all at once, but not much of one, for that was unlikely, and Kestrel should, in any case, be able to give them enough warning to intervene, if necessary.

  As it turned out, nothing of the kind was necessary. The Tyrsenians, smug with the belief that they were far out of harm's way in this isolated patch where no League ship had ever been seen, had not even bothered with recognition codes. One after the other, the four ships glided in, docked with no more than “by your leave—welcome back” and waltzed smiling into the arms of the waiting marines.

  A few lost their heads, at first figuratively and then literally, but most went along meekly enough. None, on Kris’s review, were really worth keeping, but they had other uses.

  A rendezvous had been arranged to “cull the herd” and dicker with some freelancers out of Cathcar who hoped to profit from the Tyrsenians’ having overstock. Captain Lawrence’s squadron kept the rendezvous and snapped them up, too. The next cycle saw more captures: another Tyrsenian from Abydos, outbound in ballast, who gave them their first fight; and a slaver from Solon on his way to Mantua with a large cargo, who gave them a chilling example of ruthless self-interest as he tried to flee. Sir Phillip’s response had been equaling chilling; the log laconically recorded the incident thus:

  11:4716:40 GAT. LOC: VE-44:1/7. Detected phase wake of a considerable vessel, bearing: 032:17. Set General Quarters, Weapons Tight. Signaled general chase.

  44:4730:40 GAT. LOC: VE-44:5/3. Fell in with chase after 14:33-hr pursuit and forced it to lie to. Proved to be Forlorn Hope, slaver out of Solon, bound for Mantua with a cargo of 269 individuals. Captain and crew were obliged to be put out of doors, due to enormities committed immediately prior to capture.

  07:4735:40 GAT. do LOC. Embarked prize crew, Lt. Laurel Barrett cmdg [see list]. Xfer'd 86 individuals in need of medical attention to Retribution. Secured from General Quarters. Set Condition II-Easy, Weapons Hold throughout squadron.

  Notwithstanding a slaver captain (Michel Castonguay, late of Port Royale), his seven mates and thirty-nine crew being ‘put out of doors’, it had been a heady few days and raised Kris to unparalleled heights among the crew, who nonetheless observed sagely to one another that they’d “known it all along.” Such were their high spirits that even when they had to let go a small flotilla of Bannerman corsairs—fast nine-kiloton ships with plenty of teeth, but outbound from Anju-Ri and thus diplomatically inviolate—it did not do much to shade their happiness.

  There were problems, though, in so much good fortune. The squadron was now host to well over a thousand liberated slaves, who had to be fed, who needed air and water and a place to sleep. Observing the state of his stores, Captain Lawrence resolved to return those who had been taken in the Hydra directly to their settlements. He did not have the capacity to ship them all back to New Madras unless he did it in relays, and he was loath to divide his small force. Besides, they were not League citizens; the CEF had no responsibility to them as the Repatriation Acts did not apply.

  Then there were the prisoners to be considered: almost four hundred of them (three hundred seventy-eight, to be precise). Their needs were more debatable, but while the CEF would not blink if a dozen slavers ‘went missing’ after an action, some hundreds was not at all the same thing. In taking a short way with Michel Castonguay and his men, Sir Phillip had likely given his political enemies some ammunition, and while he had no doubt his actions were entirely defensible under the circumstances—would certainly do the same again, if his hand was forced—there was no sense pressing the issue.

  His orders directed that captured slavers were to be evaluated. Said evaluation was Commander Huron’s province, meaning Kris spent many uncomfortable hours reviewing the names, faces, statements, and (in some cases) preliminary interrogation video of three hundred seventy-eight men who were still breathing air that, in her opinion (expressed only in the set of her jaw), could be put to much better use.

  She’d felt no pleasure in checking off “No Interest” next to the name Michel Castonguay on her list—had never met him but knew his name: a minor player in a freelance ring that operated out of Ksaar on Tsinglyn—and consigning him to his fate. No qualm either; they’d all witnessed what he’d done firsthand and it was no more than justice, although when the captain had first employed the threat, it made her blink.

  Pricking the names of his officers with the same grim coldness, she shot the list back to Huron, who dutifully added his endorsement and forwarded it to Commander Ravenswood, who placed it in the hands of Captain Lawrence, who then gave the order to proceed in a harsh metallic voice.

  That was days ago now, and while the death of those forty-seven men was far from forgotten, it was, in a sense, submerged. Of the remaining prisoners—mostly crew, mostly illiterate, some just desperate to make a living and not overnice about the details, almost as enslaved as the men, women and children they herded into their holds—she thought two might be worth something: the captain of Rag Faire, a Nicobarese who’d known Trench, and a brutally ugly man named Reid, Soul Catcher’s captain, out of Mohales-Hoc on Warshov. Reid’s second officer she added to the list based on some answers he let slip under interrogation, and a couple of others out of a spirit of completeness. Another dozen she set aside to look at again later.

  Tapping up Huron, she apprised him of her progress and he responded by asking her to bring her report to the captain’s stateroom. Traversing the length of the ship, she withstood the gauntlet of smiles, grins and salutes, along with a chief who just wanted to shake her hand (he’d reckoned up the estimated value of the prizes, divided by the number of shares in the squadron, multiplied by his portion, and was now deep in contemplation of the name for a bar he planned to open when he got home), and upon arriving at Sir Phillip’s quarters, was promptly admitted.

  As she stepped in, she coughed. Which is to say, they heard her cough, because blurting out “What the fuck?” in front of Retribution’s assembled senior officers would have been impolitic.

  They had been discussing how best to rid themselves of both their prisoners and the former slaves; the latest capture, a big corvette that had shot right into the middle of the squadron during the graveyard watch and hadn’t even been unloaded yet, had swelled their number past thirteen hundred. The problem was that the former slaves had to go home (those of them who had homes that could be reached), while the rest, along with their prisoners, had to be transported to New Madras, which lay in the opposite direction.

  The ships available to do this were the captured prizes, and while they were armed and fast, and with competent prize crews would make a flotilla formidable enough to not require escort, the same could not be said of the tender. It was large, slow, thin-skinned and unarmed, but also the only vessel they had with enough space for all the people they needed to convey to New Madras, and sufficient fuel to get them there. Traveling in company, it was in no danger, but alone
it was hideously vulnerable.

  The solution, as Captain Lawrence and his staff saw it, had a risk, but they judged it a small one. They would send the tender as far as they could with the other ships, and call up an escort from New Madras to accompany it the rest of the way. The risk arose from the state of those ships that were to deliver the former slaves home. Half were light on fuel, all were light on stores, and they would be badly overcrowded. The technology slavers used was primitive compared to the CEF, and the journey would squeeze the margins when it came to arriving at their destination with enough air to breath.

  Once they delivered their charges, they could replenish their stores, and by redistributing the remaining fuel, all but two ships could safely return to New Madras for condemnation and sale. (The Admiralty would still pay head money and perhaps an ex gratia bonus for the abandoned prizes; a point of no small consequence for some of them.) But to make them rendezvous with an escort on the outward leg would squeeze the already narrow margins even tighter, and that would never do.

  Given how long it would take to get a message to New Madras, receive a reply confirming the rendezvous, and then make the trip, there would be no time for the devious route the squadron had followed on the way in, and to choose the most direct one had all the problems that the devious route avoided. Lieutenant Gill’s Astrogation Section had supplied a solution whereby the tender would make one solo jump to meet its escort at a likely spot on the transit lane connecting New Madras and Lacaille.