Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  “What we do know is that he was palling around with Mureyev on Warshov at least a year before the hijacking, while Mureyev was trying to buy support from the Tyrsenians. We know that during that time, Mankho sold Mureyev on the idea that conventional terrorism was pointless against Halith, because if you attacked them, they wouldn’t just kill you—they’d kill you and ship your testicles to your mother. And that’s just for openers.

  “Mankho convinced Mureyev that to succeed, he had to pull off something that even Halith wouldn’t do. That would make Mureyev the biggest badass in charted space and give him the leverage necessary to negotiate—or so the argument ran. Mureyev bought off on it and when the Haarlan presented an opportunity, he approved the plan, but at the last minute he flinched. Not about killing the children but about the way they’d kill them. Mankho wanted the kids shot. Mureyev thought it would be better—more antiseptic, at least—to space them. That may seem like an odd thing to make an issue of, but Mankho understood how people would react. He argued that spacing the kids would dilute the impact, and to prove his point, he kidnapped a nine-year old girl—this was before the hijacking—and shot her in the face while she begged for her life. He made a video of the killing and posted it to the clouds on Vehren and Haslar. That video was suppressed but it had the effect he wanted, both on Halith and on Mureyev. This is the video.”

  On the screen, Mankho’s face dissolved to show the little girl huddled on a slab floor, face lifted—drained of color, eyes huge and nakedly open, soft round chin trembling—the sound of her breathing—fast, harsh, catching—her soft pleas that gave way to hiccups—the click of the gun’s action cocking—the sharp flat ringing crack of the gunshot . . . She never screamed.

  “And that, people, is how Nestor Mankho catapulted himself to the top of the terrorist food chain. His theory was perfectly sound, as far as it went. Mureyev, not being a terrorist at heart, couldn’t see when the theory was pushed too far. Remember, Mankho’s an anarchist. He didn’t give a damn about the Amur separatists or anything else. He doesn’t have a cause—he wanted to be the guy who destroyed Shamir Mureyev, ended a planetary movement, and manipulated the Halith government. Not with six hundred victims, but just one—on video. And he did. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

  * * *

  In his spacious temporary office, Huron pulled out a flask, put two plastic cups he’d retrieved from next to the coffee machine on his desk, and poured them both three-quarters full. He pushed one across to Commander Wesselby.

  “After that, I need a drink.”

  “You knew all that,” she said softly, reaching for it. “You’ve seen it before.” As she picked up the cup, he saw her fingers were trembling.

  “Yeah. But it’s not like that makes it any easier.”

  “No.” She sipped, her eyes widening as the raw alcohol bit—but that didn’t account for everything he saw there. “No, it doesn’t.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  CGHQ Main Annex

  Lunar 1, Tycho Prime

  Luna, Sol

  The department secretary rang Huron at his desk as he was putting the final touches on an update to a preliminary report he’d submitted, recommending their proposal be moved from strictly analytic footing to the exploratory phase of an actual operation. Kris had dumped core for them: everything she could recall about Mankho’s facility, the planet it was on, and the trip there and back. The loan had been not quite two years ago, so the data weren’t current, but they also weren’t necessarily outdated, and while only two firm conclusions could be drawn, they were important ones.

  First, that it was a major facility, larger and better equipped than the compound on Lacaille. Indeed, Kris’s description made it sound more like a base from which one might stage substantial operations, not a secondary residence or a temporary bolt hole. That was not to say that Mankho did not have secondary residences or temporary bolt holes, and that after Lacaille he did not retire to one of them, nor that he wasn’t currently moving between several. But the compound Kris described was a major asset. In all likelihood, he’d have held on to it, if he possibly could. Even if he wasn’t there now, locating and exploiting it would almost certainly yield valuable insights.

  Second, the description did not match any facility known to be associated with him. It seemed very likely that this was a new facility, and that meant he’d reestablished himself with some major backers: Bannerman certainly, but also with Halith to a much greater degree than they’d supposed. Taken together, those conclusions implied that Mankho was on the verge of being able to mount major operations again—that the Alecto Initiative could have been just a warm-up exercise.

  That, at least, was how Huron had couched it in his preliminary report. The conclusions were perfectly valid but there was also an undeniable whiff of salesmanship. The fact of the matter was that some influential parties in the League—and thus the CEF—remained deeply ambivalent about Nestor Mankho and the threat he might present: he was, to them, yesterday’s problem or somebody else’s business. The failure on Lacaille and the ongoing kerfuffle over the ultimatum, which had descended into the murk of backroom political hustling and all the nastiness that implied, had done nothing but harden their position.

  To confirm any of their suppositions about where Nestor Mankho was and what he might be up to required conducting reconnaissance, and while it was easy enough to get approval for a research project—the CEF would allow pretty much anything to be studied—reconnaissance meant moving to operational footing.

  Even in peacetime, that required a CNO stamp and, assuming they found something, approval for any actual attempt on Mankho or one of his compounds would elevate to SECNAV, or the Plenary Council itself. While Huron felt he could count on some support from CNO (Admiral Westover and his father had a long history together and that did not count for nothing), that did not mean his proposal would be met with open arms, because the reconnaissance assets they needed went a ways beyond what PLESEC would ordinarily dedicate to such an operation.

  There was not much help for that, as far as he could determine. Unfortunately, the one thing Kris had not been able to give them was enough detail to narrow down the location, even roughly. Descriptions of the planet itself—the terrain, the vegetation, the day sky, even moons—weren’t much use.

  What they needed was a description of the night sky to get some idea of the visible astronomical bodies, things like nearby nebula, star clusters or bright asterisms that might identify a stellar neighborhood—and they’d been careful not to let her see that.

  That meant they had a very wide field to cover. All they had to go on was the trip’s duration, and that was a weak clue at best. She’d been put on board one of Mankho’s smaller transports at Cathcar and held in lockdown until they arrived. They’d made one stopover, suggesting the route was not a direct one, and one RST transit of about a week, indicating they had gone off the main transit lanes, which was only to be expected. None of it narrowed things down to an appreciable degree.

  Mankho had worn out his welcome on quite a number of worlds during his career. But since the destruction of the Black Army over the Knydos affair, and the Tyrsenians subsequently evicting him from Rephidim, he’d had plenty of time to reestablish himself on any one of the many potentially available planets in the vast, poorly charted volume that their best estimate currently encompassed.

  It was a tall order, and Huron expected a rather tortuous approval process, which at least (and here he knew he was grasping for a silver lining) would give them more time to sort through the reams of possibilities. At present, though, the preliminary report was still wending its way through the command structure, as far as he knew, so it was without much interest that he answered the secretary’s page.

  “Call for you, sir,” the secretary announced in his startling baritone.

  None of his personal acquaintances would call him on his office line at this time of ‘night’ (as Luna regarded it in her artificial day cycle), bu
t it was late PM at CGHQ Nereus. Which probably meant some official busybody had just gotten the report and wanted to complain about his paragraph numbering or the font size he’d picked. Or maybe the addressee list hadn’t been formatted correctly. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn’t. He sighed.

  “Route it to my console, please.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s from CNO, sir.”

  Oh hell. That was unusually fast and almost certainly a bad sign. If approval was a tortuous process, denial was more often a short, sharp shock. He steeled himself for disappointment. “Thank you.”

  By CNO, he’d taken the secretary to mean some underling from the CNO’s office, and thus he was caught terribly flatfooted when the visage of the office holder himself appeared on his console.

  “Hello, sir,” he managed to say with a credible degree of aplomb.

  “No ceremony, Rafe,” Fleet Admiral John Carlos Westover answered, smiling at the reaction he’d caused. “Graveyard watch and all that. They have you burning the midnight hydrogen, I see?”

  “No. I think I’m the only one to blame for that, in this case.”

  “Well, don’t overdo it. You see what it’s done to Joss.”

  The backhanded allusion to Westover’s oldest friend and one of the CEF’s most respected admirals—in the view of many occupying that rarefied stratum which included Fleet Admiral Kasena, the near-legendary former CNO, and Admiral Kiamura, the victor of Anson’s Deep—got Huron to crack a smile.

  “I’ll certainly be careful then.”

  “See that you are. Have to leave some oxygen for the rest of us, you understand.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I have your report here”—getting to the meat of the call. “Very interesting. Do you really think we might finally be able to get an inside track on the bastard?”

  “It will take some more time to evaluate the data we have, but if we can get the assets, I believe it’s looking better than anything we’ve had before.”

  “I agree.” Glancing down, he tapped what must have been his copy of the report. “I don’t need to tell you that if we make this actionable, keep it simple. Elaboration is not your friend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The Nedaemans must’ve been thinking they were writing a plot for a blockbuster, not an op that had to work in the wild. Anyway—”

  Huron’s ears pricked to attention at the slight hesitation and change in tone.

  “There have been some developments—perhaps you’re aware—that argue strongly for shortening the approval cycle on this business.” Thus did the Chief of Naval Operations inform him that the odor of the rat they’d been smelling must be getting strong indeed, for a man like Westover to connive so blithely against what ordinarily was considered properly constituted political authority. “So I’ve talked to Zeke Perry. If you can get a firm fix on Mankho, he’ll loan you CAT 5.”

  That brought Huron’s smile out into something close to a grin. Covert Action Team 5 was Sergeant Major Yu’s team, and one couldn’t ask for better. Their nickname was, unsurprisingly, the Hurricanes. Huron recalled that when a lieutenant named Richter took over CAT 3; he’d lobbied—successfully—to have the unit designation changed to CAT 10. No one could accuse the special forces of lacking a sense of humor, such as it was.

  “I understand you’ve already shanghaied old Fred.”

  “Well, it saved a trip, sir.”

  “Considerate of you.” Westover’s smile spread a little wider behind the immaculate gray moustache. “Now officially, this is still in my in-box. I expect it will be there a good while. Then I’ll subject it to the most careful scrutiny—can’t be too careful these days. Apt to be a lot of debate. Probably have to kick it upstairs—you understand how things are.”

  “I do, indeed.”

  “So don’t expect to hear anything for at least six weeks. Longer, if the PC gets a hold of it.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “In the meantime, Joss knows what’s afoot. He’ll make sure Lo Gai doesn’t have any questions. That’s why I called. I’ve given Trin a privileged channel so she can keep me in the loop. She’ll give you the yea or nay when we get to that point. When do you think that’ll be, by the way?”

  “It all depends on how long it takes to isolate a reasonable target set. I’m afraid there is a lot of uncharted ether to cover.”

  “That’s generally the case,” Westover agreed, nodding. “Has anyone talked to Old Moe yet?”

  Until that moment, Huron had been unaware there was an ‘Old Moe’ to talk to. “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

  “Moses Sanderson—lieutenant,” the admiral elucidated. “Might want to look him up. By the way, don’t ever call him Old Moe, or he’ll likely stop speaking to you.”

  “Yes, sir. But I haven’t noticed him on any rosters.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t work for us. He’s Terran Navy.”

  “I see.”

  “Very senior. Spends about half his time on long leave. Always haring off after one thing or another. Last time, it was bustards, if I recall correctly.”

  “The fowl, sir?”—wondering if he’d heard correctly.

  “As I understand it. A time before that—years ago, now—it was bumblebees. He pursued them all over Yorkshire with pitch pipe.”

  “Indeed.” That seemed a singularly whimsical pastime for anyone, not to say a naval lieutenant.

  “Yes. He had this idea that the tone their wings made as they flew was related to impending climatic changes. Went on about it all through lunch. I dare say it would have been mighty edifying, if any of us could have understood it.”

  “Quite so.” Huron drowned a chuckle by clearing his throat. “And was it? Related, I mean.”

  “I gather not. He said the bees had proved froward.” A slight pause. “That’s the way he likes to talk.”

  “Froward?” Huron enunciated. “As in difficult, contrary or obstinate?”

  “I suppose. I never did bother to look it up. It sounds like you two will get along famously, though.”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “In any case, see if you can get them to winkle him out of wherever he is. He’s excellent for this sort of issue—by far the best they have, I’d say. Could save you a great deal of time.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir.”

  “There has to be an MOU we can exhume to cover his participation in the effort. I’ll light up Candace for you, if you like.”

  “That would be very helpful, sir.” How Admiral of the Fleet Candace Smith, Commander in Chief of the Terran Navy, would feel about being lit up Huron could not say, but happily that was far beyond his remit.

  “Glad to contribute something useful.” Huron was fairly sure the Admiral had almost winked. “So once you have your target set, what do things look like?”

  “Recon could take as long as three weeks before we move to Phase 3. If we get a short list, it might be as little as two, but Phase 3 can go almost immediately after that, if we can stack the resources we need during the recon.”

  Westover nodded, pleased. “Take some art, but that can be managed. We’ll let the dog and pony show run its course and hope for not too much more than the usual foolishness. With this nonsense about the ultimatum going on, I expect a distracted audience, which is all to the good.”

  Huron nodded in response.

  “So this will be our last intimate little chat on the matter.”

  “Of course.”

  “How’s your father keeping? Well, I trust?”

  “He’s still adjusting. Doing okay at it though.”

  “I still remember that hunting expedition we took to Pohjola in ‘85. Don’t ever let him talk you into a shortcut. You know all about that, though.”

  “Quite so, sir.”

  “Give him my best. Nil desperandum.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And enjoy the rest of your AM.”

  “You too, sir.”

  Chapter
Twenty-Two

  CGHQ Main Annex

  Lunar 1, Tycho Prime

  Luna, Sol

  Admiral Westover had exaggerated neither Lieutenant Sanderson’s eccentricities nor his analytic gifts. In response to Huron’s carefully worded request, Terran Navy Supreme HQ’s G2 Section, knowing their man and being adept at winkling, swiftly located ‘Old Moe’ in the Outer Hebrides, where he was busy lowering himself down cliff faces, by a system of blocks and tackles of his own devising, to study the domestic economy of otherwise inaccessible hirundines. Establishing a code channel, they forwarded Kris’s data dump to him—data upon which some hundreds of man-hours had already been spent trying to find a match in the catalog of known planets within the target regions—and asked for comment. By lunch, Lieutenant Sanderson produced the following response:

  “Most interesting. Sounds rather like Rephidim, especially from the odor. Be so good as to ask the midshipman if she happened to notice any of the shrubbery [see attached]. Very singular shrubbery there, especially the carnivorous Odis Tardactilynia, as we seem to be dealing with the northern hemisphere. A rare specimen, it produces a peculiar keening or whistling after sunset, and if she heard such or saw one, we could confidently narrow the location to a tolerably few places, all within 1300 km or so. Do note they have a seasonal migration, so we must account for the fact she was there near the vernal equinox.”

  Attached were images of the plants in question, with a full botanical description.

  Kris’s astounded response—she’d said, “Those were plants? Carnivorous plants? Whistling carnivorous plants that walk?” followed by a string of muttered imprecations—had borne fruit: approval had been granted to dispatch a stealth probe, which readily identified a compound matching Kris’s description on Rephidim’s northern continent, near the tundra line, and COMINT confirmed Mankho’s presence there.

  Rephidim was a cold, mountainous, inhospitable world, quite active geologically, steeped in petrochemicals, with a long and tortured settlement history. Like many planets, it was initially a mining settlement, but the veins weren’t as rich as the original assays suggested, and it was subsequently abandoned. The first serious colonists were therefore religiously heterodox Amalekites trying to escape oppression by the Sultanate of Andaman and Nicobar. At first, the Sultanate tried to exercise suzerainty over the colony, but after their disastrous war with the New United Kingdom, they relinquished it.