Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks

by Owen R. O'Neill

  Then came a report that the Price Vorland Fleet had sortied from Janin Station to Novaya Zemlya. Novaya Zemlya was historically Halith space, but had been declared a demilitarized zone by treaty after the first League Halith war. Hurriedly, the Council notified Halith of the treaty violation and sent orders for Task Force 34 under Rear Admiral Lo Gai Sabr to reinforce Outbound Station, the CEF forward base that covered Wogan’s Reef, the gateway to Novaya Zemlya from the League’s side. Third Fleet, at its home base in Crucis Sector, was placed on Alert One status and ordered to deploy to the Merope Junction in the Pleiades, where it would be better placed to render support.

  Before those orders could reach Admiral PrenTalien at Pleiades Sector Command, another message arrived, formally conveying Halith’s renunciation of the treaty that ended the previous conflict and declaring they would seize League shipping through any lanes they controlled. That message had been dispatched ninety-eight hours previously, the day the Halith ambassador left. Growing frantic, the Plenary Council lodged a sharp protest, saying that it would consider any such actions as an act of war.

  Not quite forty-eight hours later, the first word of the invasion arrived—the military maneuvers at Novaya Zemlya had been a diversion from the first. While the League scrambled to marshal its forces, fresh news arrived announcing Rho Ceti’s capitulation.

  Stunned by the speed of the Principate’s collapse, the Plenary Council at first responded with a terse order to CNO to consider a strike against Tau Verde. It was returned by Fleet Admiral Westover with an equally terse reply, written across the flimsy in a broad hand: “Strategically ill-advised.” A letter of resignation was attached. They were free, the admiral said, to accept one or the other.

  The Speaker was astute enough to know that Westover would take PrenTalien with him, along with Admiral Devlyn Zahir, CinC-CYGCOM—at this instant, the League’s most critical sector, as Cygnus contained the vital Kepler Junction, which Halith now directly threatened—and probably even SOLCOM’s commander in chief, Admiral Lian Narses. Admiral Norman Rhodes, CinC of Meridies Sector Command, would undoubtedly stay loyal, but that meant nothing if eighty percent of her senior command structure resigned in protest. CNO’s offered resignation was not accepted.

  Bending under the strain, the Speaker grasped for one straw after another. The League had no treaties, no agreements of any kind with the Principate, she pointed out. This invasion, while most terrible, need not involve them militarily. Halith should now be satisfied—its strategic objectives had been achieved—at a time like this, smart diplomacy was needed, not saber rattling. Cool heads would best serve their interests, she continued, feeling a chill work through her own scalp as the rest of the Council watched her performance with mounting incredulity. They would present a firm, resolute front, she finished gamely, but give peace a chance.

  A diplomatic courier arrived, bearing a final message, issued under the seal of the Halith Council of Ministers and bearing an endorsement by the provisional government of the Rho Ceti Principate. It stated that the Kepler Junction was within the Principate’s sovereign sphere; the Halith Imperial Navy would therefore move to occupy it on the Principate’s behalf, in accordance with the attached treaty, to “ensure the freedom of navigation through the nexus for peaceful purposes.”

  The claim was ridiculous; the endorsement, given the timing, materially impossible. The notice was a joke in the worst taste, plainly intended to add insult to injury. Jerome had taken the measure of his adversary. Hazen Gauthier handed the paper to the Secretary of the Navy and left the chamber.

  The second League-Halith war had begun.

  * * *

  Commander Constance Yanazuka was just closing the last of the reports that documented her ship’s transition from peacetime operating conditions to war-footing when her entry pad chimed. She checked the code and quelled a sigh—she’d been expecting this. “Come.” She did a decent job of keeping the sharpness out of her voice and settled her features as the door slid aside to reveal Huron’s tall form. She motioned him in and leaned back in her chair, one index finger against her compressed lips. The door closed behind him.

  “Commander, if you’re here for the reason I think you’re here, I can save us a lot of time. I have my orders.”

  “I understand that.” Huron spoke with affected blandness, matching the impassive mask that shaped Yanazuka’s pure Asian features. “I wanted to report that we have a good plot on the Black Autumn and—”

  “—and a mere twenty-six hours is all we need to intercept. Or maybe twenty-eight. Thirty at the outside.” She made a show of squinting at a file on her desktop and tapped it with that index finger. “I have Caprelli’s memo right here, you see.” She looked up and met his eyes. “I do get memos, Huron.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Huron, not relaxing his rigid posture, laid down his last card. “I feel compelled to point out that the evidence suggests Nestor Mankho knew something was planned, he just didn’t know when. The implications of that, especially after the failure of the Lacaille op, are not something—”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Commander.” Yanazuka’s hand closed. “I appreciate your feelings, and before you go any further, let me assure you my comms are in perfect working order.” Huron answered with no more than a twitch at the side of his set mouth, the only sign of life in his immobile face, other than the look in his eyes. “Now, will there be anything else?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then good evening, Commander.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Huron snapped an entirely unnecessary parade-ground salute that made it painfully obvious he’d rather snap something else. The door closed behind him a second later and Kestrel’s captain let a sigh go. She poked her exec’s memo. Caprelli was always a pessimistic cuss and if he said their confidence in the plot estimate was only seventy-five percent, that was about as close to gold as he’d ever go. God damn these orders anyway. An hour more and she would have been too deep to receive them. A fucking hour. Huron wasn’t wrong about the implications—not wrong at all.

  “Fuck it,” she muttered under her breath. There was a war on. She had work to do.

  * * *

  Alone in his quarters, Huron reopened the document he’d typed the night after Marko Tiernan died and read:

  Dear Ms. Laeyna Tiernan and family: Jeska, Marlys, and Marko Jr.,

  I attach this note to the enclosed letter to express my personal condolences and deep regrets for your husband’s death. Please understand that while Ms. Midshipman Kennakris’s letter is not inaccurate, she was not in command of the operation—I was, and the responsibility for its outcome and Marko’s death rests entirely with me.

  In view of your loss, I think it proper to acquaint you with the circumstances, which Midshipman Kennakris was not at liberty to do. The operation in which Marko lost his life was an attempt to capture the terrorist leader Nestor Mankho, involving an infiltration of his heavily guarded and fortified personal compound. In the course of this operation, when Mankho received a large reinforcement that appeared to put the mission in jeopardy, Ms. Kennakris acted alone to achieve the objective by lethal force. It was in the ensuing firefight that your husband was killed, as Ms. Kennakris says, covering the extraction of his team.

  Although this action by Ms. Kennakris was counter to orders, it is my fault for placing her in a situation for which she had not been trained and was not prepared. Please understand that Ms. Kennakris personally suffered extremely at the hands of Nestor Mankho (to a degree impossible to relate) and I should have foreseen this outcome and taken adequate steps to prevent it. I offer my most sincere apologies for my failure.

  Further, I would like you to know that it was primarily through Ms. Kennakris’s special skills, knowledge, and high dedication that we were able to locate this terrorist leader, who has for many years frustrated all our efforts to apprehend him, and attempt this operation. Although we failed in this mission, Ms. Kennakris has been instrumental in allowing us to su
bstantially dismantle Mankho’s organization, greatly reducing, if not eliminating, his ability to carry out further terrorist acts and saving many future lives. So without diminishing the severity of your loss, I would ask that you consider this on her behalf. For myself, I ask nothing, as no such mitigation can apply.

  I hope this explanation has been of some help to you. We owe our lives to Marko’s heroism, professionalism and skill, and while this debt cannot be repaid, please know that he did not die in vain—justice will be done. Please allow me to add my prayers for you and your children and my wish, in echo of hers, that you may someday find a measure of peace.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Rafael Huron V, Lt. Commander, CEF

  Part III: Awake the Sleeping Sword

  King Henry V:

  Therefore take heed how you . . .

  Awake our sleeping sword of war:

  For never two such kingdoms did contend . . .

  Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops

  . . . do make such waste in brief mortality.

  Shakespeare, Henry V: Act 1, Scene 2

  Chapter One

  CEF Academy Main Campus

  Cape York, Mars, Sol

  Commandant Hoste walked slowly up the long marble ramp to the rostrum that had been set up on the southern edge of the large, leveled but unpaved open area, a mile on each side, which lay immediately northwest of the Academy’s main entrance. Set off from the broad cobbled courtyard to the south by an impressive colonnade, it was backed on its east side by the Academy’s towering façade. To the north and west stretched the unimproved Martian landscape for as far as the eye could see, and in fact a great deal farther, all the way the slopes of Olympus Mons.

  Centuries ago, when the complex was first built, a notion had been floated to call this open plain the “Campus Martius” (“Field of Mars” in the Latin), the area in ancient Rome of roughly similar size where the Roman army assembled in time of war and where the citizens—the res publica—gathered to vote. The idea suited the Classical fads of the day, but when someone pointed out that the Latin name for the structures in which the actual voting took place translated as sheep pens, the concept lost some of its luster. These days, the area was simply known as The Field, and it was used mostly for the occasional open-air concert and for graduation ceremonies. It had never, in Hoste’s long lifetime, been put to the purpose for which he was about to use it.

  As he reached the rostrum, the Sergeant-at-Arms called the assembled cadets to attention, which was all of them, both upper- and lowerclassmen, for the latter had been bundled down from Deimos the day before, bag and baggage, leaving the little moon well-nigh deserted for the first time in over a generation. In some circles, it might have been considered a logistical miracle to move a few thousand people from a moon to its planet in less than twenty-four hours, but such operations were second nature to the CEF and they were taken almost for granted.

  Not that Hoste took them for granted, especially this one—far from it—and today this evidence of logistical know-how struck him with a particular poignancy. The declaration of war had made its impact on the Academy, above all on the upperclassmen, who were to be commissioned directly into combat, but the Academy’s routine, it was decided, should be affected as little as possible. Now that had all changed, as though a great wave, beside which the declaration of war had been a mere ripple, had swept clean everything that came before it: expectations, routines, even history. The cause of all this was written on the sheet of real paper Hoste held in his left hand.

  “Cadets.” His amplified voice carried over the serried ranks in front of him. “Yesterday, at 0917 hours, I received the following dispatch from Fleet Admiral Westover, Chief of Naval Operations for the Colonial Expeditionary Forces.” He placed the sheet in front of him and, pinning it against the rising wind, recited—for he had no need to actually read it—the message word for word.

  “All commands. It is my duty to inform you of a very disastrous engagement that took place from 02.6336.40 to 57.6371.40 GAT between our forces (consisting of the Deneb Squadron of the New United Kingdom of Friesia and New Caledonia, the Terebellum Empire’s Tamand Naval Frontier Group, and TFs 7.1, 7.3, and 7.6 of Seventh Fleet) and the Halith Imperial Navy’s Kerberos Fleet. In a severe action lasting thirty-six hours, the Tamand Group was annihilated, the Kingdom’s Deneb Squadron suffered in excess of fifty-five percent casualties and Seventh Fleet was forced to retire to Epona with operational losses of thirty percent, approximately half of which are deemed unrecoverable. The Kepler Junction has been lost.”

  It was a testament to their discipline that the cadets made no sound or movement, although a cynic (had any been present, which they were not) might have suggested that shock also had something to do with it. At a blow, Halith had knocked both the New UK and the Terebellum Empire out of the war—they could no longer hope to contemplate offensive operations—and cut off the entire Deneb Sector. Small but rich Port Mahan had been rendered untenable, Winnecke IV was threatened, and defense of the League’s critical junctions at Regulus and Eltanin had been pushed back to Epona, an outstation intended mainly to support Miranda, a strategically vital system and nominal League ally, but one whose position was made precarious by a sizeable population of pro-Halith separatists who perennially threatened the planet’s government.

  Coming so close after the shock from the lightning offensive at Rho Ceti, this blow was staggering. After Rho Ceti, the politicians (and others of volatile temperament), had recovered their spirits quickly. At Kepler, the Imperial Navy wouldn’t be facing the Principate’s small, out-classed military, but the full strength of the CEF’s Seventh Fleet, aided by the Empire and the New UK. Viewed in this rose-tinted light, victory appeared almost inevitable. Such misplaced optimism would prove regrettably contagious.

  Not that the plan didn’t have its share of Cassandras from the start; Hoste knew many of them. Three dissimilar fleets with different doctrines, different op-tempos, incompatible sensor nets; inter-fleet comms reduced to the lowest common denominator; disunity of command . . .

  Hoste had shaken his own head at the thought. Admiral Westover himself had pressed the idea that Seventh should be reinforced with the Ardennes Strike Force (which would also have put his old friend Joss PrenTalien in command, PrenTalien being senior to Vice Admiral Ross, Seventh Fleet’s CO) and given their head, with the New UK’s Deneb Squadron (antiquated but game) held in reserve and the Tamand fleet relegated to being well-dressed spectators. It was politically impossible, of course. Kepler was their front gate—the League simply couldn’t tell them not to fight there.

  Now they had reaped what they’d sown, but as was usual in these debacles, those who’d been reaped came from a much different class than those who’d done the sowing. But these were thoughts for another day—the work at hand was to see that they reached that other day. He cleared his throat.

  “In view of the altered circumstances, the Admiralty has promulgated the following changes, effective immediately. All liberties, leaves and furloughs are canceled until further notice. External communications are limited per the wartime clauses under Section III of the 17 Articles, and are to be governed by it and the relevant paragraphs. Finally,”—here he paused—“the term before graduation has been shortened from two years to one.” This did cause a stir. He forged through it. “As of now, you are all upperclassmen, set to graduate and be commissioned at the end of the current term. All course work not directly related to combat readiness is hereby suspended. Those of you who were lowerclassmen until a moment ago will complete your current studies over the next month and be assigned to your upper-division track at that time. Those of you who were senior until a moment ago, I look to you to aid your new classmates in their transition and to give them the benefit of your experience in getting them up to speed.

  “All of you, these next five months will take us into uncharted regions where we will face unprecedented challenges and perils we cannot
predict. Our only certainties are those we bring with us, and of these, I have, to begin with, this one. I am certain you will all do your duty. Keep that thought always in the forefront of your mind. Keep your eye always on the task at hand. Hold to those two principles and everything else is a detail. That is all.”

  * * *

  “Goddammit! Give me Seventh, Carlos! Let me turn Lo Gai loose on the bastards.” Admiral Joss PrenTalien loomed over his desk like the wrath of God, supported on the knuckles of his huge fists, planted far apart. It was an attitude well adapted to flaying an unlucky junior officer, but not so much for addressing the most august military personage in the League. The Chief of Naval Operations had known his friend for over half a century, however, and was used to these displays. Still, there were limits, even where full admirals were concerned.

  “Now, hold on, Joss,” Fleet Admiral Westover said placidly. “We have to get a better grip on the situation before I go demoting you to a fleet CO.”

  “To hell with that!” PrenTalien clearly was not interested with the niceties of rank or getting a better grip on anything—except the enemy. “We can hit ‘em through Karelia, Carlos.” He swung one hand towards the big situation display built into the bulkhead of his stateroom. “Sure, it’s not what you’d call ideal—”

  “That’s one of several things I wouldn’t call it, old friend—”

  “—but it’d work. Almost half their strength is off carousing in Deneb. We can pin ‘em down at Kepler with what Angie left us of Seventh while Lo Gai gets us a bridgehead into Rho Ceti. That’s all we need. Devlyn sorties the Thermopylae Strike Force out of Epona and drives ‘em off the junction while I take the Principate’s nexus and cut off their escape route. Then we’ll have the buggers over a bottle.”

  Westover heaved a heartfelt sigh. Angharad Ross’s incapacity after the defeat at Kepler had left her deputy, Rear Admiral Tymon Murphy, in command and he was inexperienced for that much responsibility. Devlyn Zahir had her hands full putting the pieces back together at CYGCOM, and it had taken him over an hour to convince Lian Narses to detach a task force from SOLCOM’s Grand Fleet to help pick up some of the slack. Along with the Sol Local Group, she had Regulus to worry about, and he didn’t want to think what would happen with SOLCOM’s peppery commander in chief if he approved PrenTalien and Zahir haring off to Rho Ceti with Lo Gai and a patched-up fleet, leaving Hamish Burton holding Pleiades Sector and Cygnus practically uncovered if things went wrong.