A flock of homilies came to Commander Buthelezi’s mind, but she dismissed them with a smile, partly concealed by a fan of fingers.
“Confusion to the enemy, is it, Ambrose?”
“Amen to that, Naomi,” the Commandant said with deep feeling. “Amen to that.”
Chapter Six
CEF Academy Flight School
Solander Point, Mars, Sol
He was a good-looking kid, Kris thought. Nice eyes, well-spaced; an unnatural blue from the corneal implants but so what. Nice smile too, with slightly crooked teeth. A happy, confident the-world-is-my-oyster kind of look. The eyes, the teeth and the blond hair worn straight back dated the image to over thirty years ago, just as it announced the young man’s origin: New California and almost certainly from the capitol, Ascalon, which, with a population of about half a billion, was the second largest megalopolis on that planet, and the fifth largest in the League as a whole.
“Ryan Sroka,” announced Lieutenant Commander Huron, the new lead instructor for the Advanced Combat Maneuvering course. Kris and the twenty-three other cadets who made up the alpha track of the Advanced Fighter Program were all standing at rigid attention on this, the very beginning of their very first day. “Graduated at the top of his class.”
He tapped the image with his pointer and it faded, only to be replaced by another: a plain girl with a determined expression and an out-of-date ponytail. “Kathryn Laeser. She was second in her class.” Another image: three strapping young men, grinning as they held aloft a slight girl with pale hair so short it was almost shaved, saluting the camera with an erect middle finger. “Giles Peterson, Jon Shierling, Trevor Lambert, and Maria Heberlein. Peterson was Honor Candidate for his class. Lambert came in third in flight scores. Heberlein was twice War Week Points Leader—as you can see, she finished Number One.”
Cadet Ian Mason, back in the third row, allowed himself a snigger at this and Huron paused, fixing him with a look that first extinguished the smile and then, as the seconds stretched out, bore down on Mason himself. Finally, his gaze released the much diminished cadet, and he continued. “Michael Zelenjak, John Declan Murphy . . .”
Image followed image, name followed name: Lars Lyn, Kelly Prcin, Lauren Russell, Wolfgang Simms, Tristan Randall, Grigorios Vastatzidis, Kennedy Kin-Tak Shang—a precise litany that took a full ninety seconds to recite. Only when he was done and the forty-eight images were arranged in a mosaic on the wall behind him did Huron say, “Be seated.”
The class sat as one, with no wasted motion and very little noise. Of all the alpha-track cadets, only two were probably not in awe of Commander Huron, who was second in kills on the active list. One of those was too arrogant to know better. The other was Kris.
“Take a good look at them,” Huron was saying. “They all have two things in common.” He brushed the pointer along the array of faces, making them glow. “One, like you, they were the first class in the last war to be graduated directly into combat.” The pointer swung down so the tip touched the floor. “Two, they are all dead.”
“They all died,” he said, stepping away from the lectern, “in their first dogfight. Lambert lasted the longest—seven minutes. Heberlein, less than two. In fact”—he paused to allow them to digest this data—“the casualty rate for the flight officers of the class of ‘06 in their first year of combat was sixty-four percent. At the start of that war, the half-life of a new SRF ensign was three hundred twenty combat hours—about seventy-two sorties. The overall exchange ratio was just under three to one. For them”—he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the young, happy faces—“it was a damn sight less.
“I’m here to see that what happened to them does not happen to you. The game playing ends now. You’re not flying for points anymore. There are no second chances out there, and no one comes in second place. Every time you strap in and boost out, someone is not coming home. If it’s not them, it’s you. Any questions?”
* * *
“Bloody hell!” Basmartin jumped off his trainer’s wing spar onto the ferrocrete paving of the jet park. “One hundred twenty-seven seconds.” He looked across at Tanner, who’d just popped his canopy and was taking off his helmet. “You?”
“Not even.” Tanner pitched it onto the pavement and proceeded to climb out. “If he’s second on the kills list, who the hell is first?”
“Captain Vire,” Kris said, walking up behind them. “But only because he fought most of the war. Huron just got in at the end—he graduated in ‘19.”
Baz snorted. “I guess we can be thankful he’s on our side.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Tanner muttered.
“Gentlemen!” Huron’s voice slashed across their conversation. He walked up and looked down at the discarded helmet. “What is that?”
“Ah . . .” Tanner blanched. “That’s my helmet, sir.”
“Is your head in it?”
“Um . . . no, sir.”
“Then pull your head out of your ass and put it on. If I see that again, your head will be on the ground with it. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir!” Tanner snatched the helmet up and jammed it on, wincing as the electrodes pinched.
“Kennakris.” Huron looked over at her. “You broke one-fifty—so this one’s your show. Basmartin, you’re her wing. Tanner, you get Tail-Gunner Charley.”
“Yessir!” they chorused together.
“Basmartin.” Huron singled him out with a gloved finger. “I want one-eighty out of you. Stop thinking about the book. You’re telegraphing every move you make. You waste twenty percent of every approach you set up, worrying if you’re doing it right. This is combat, not a goddamned lab.”
“Yessir!”
“Tanner.”
“Sir!”
“Try to convince me you’re not hopeless. If you can’t stay alive for two minutes up there, I’m having you assigned to the bootlace-and-jockstrap department. Is that clear?”
“Yessir!”
“Kennakris.” Huron turned back towards her. “I want two-forty out of you this time.”
She swallowed hard—that would beat her best by over a minute.
“You’re worrying too much about what I’m going to do to you and not enough about what you’re gonna do to me. Quit flying to their level. If these guys are holding you back, shoot Tanner. Got it?”
“Yessir!”
“Okay, people. No one goes home until you hit your marks. We’ve got all night and all day tomorrow. Now strap in and get hot.”
* * *
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this shit,” Tanner groaned as the hot, pulsing water of the shower pummeled his bowed back. “How many times did we go up today?”
“Today—tonight. I lost count,” Baz answered, half shrouded in the spray. “But, hey—you got to one-thirty-five.”
“Yeah, that’ll be my fuckin’ epitaph. Mr. One-Thirty-Five. You’ll be Mr. One-Ninety-Three. Hey, Kris!” He lifted his head and squinted through the steam at her. “Congrats on being Ms. Three Hundred!”
“I didn’t win,” Kris snapped, scrubbing furiously at her matted hair.
“Well, who the hell ever has?”
Kris sniped a glare at him and kept scrubbing.
“You know he took out a destroyer once,” Basmartin added.
“You’re shittin’ me!” Tanner straightened and reached for the shower controls as the timer chimed.
“He did. That action at Mananzas Cay. He got a half-dozen other kills there too, but the destroyer’s what made all the noise. That’s really why they gave him the Senatorial Cross. The OPREP doesn’t mention it in the UNCLE version—just the other stuff. But it was him. Dux told me about it.”
“Why’d they put a lid on it?”
“Damfino. Don’t want people to know how he did it, I guess.”
“I’d like to know how he did it. Hey, Kris?” Tanner called out as the spray of water died. “Did’ja know about that?”
“What makes you thin
k I would?” She wrung a stream of water out of her hair. In fact, Mariwen had told her about Huron being a big hero at Mananzas Cay, the day after they met. She hadn’t said why, though, and Kris had never heard anything about a destroyer.
“Well, you knew him. Before here, I mean.”
Kris shook her head and flipped her wet hair back over her shoulders. “Listen, don’t believe all that shit people talk, okay?”
* * *
Fresh from his own hot shower, which he’d prolonged as a privilege of rank, Huron settled onto the short couch in his sparsely appointed quarters, institutional beige, like everything else in it, and rifled his wallet.
He was looking for a calling card—a very particular calling card—and after an initial pass, located it in a deep inner pocket. Calling cards came in several different types (or perhaps species was more appropriate), and this one had unusual range. Mars was near conjunction with Earth, and Luna was in a favorable position, so he thought trying to get a connection was worth a shot. He didn’t feel like trusting the conversation he wanted to have to a hyperwave.
He rubbed his thumb across the card to activate it and the icons lit green. So far, so good. He tapped CALL. The icons pulsed for an unusually long time and then the card locked, the secure mode indicator illuminating. After a moment, Antoine Rathor appeared in the overlay.
“Hello, Rafe.”
“Evening, Antoine. Not keeping you up, am I?”
“Oh no. Certainly not. No rest for the wicked here.”
“Quite so. Still at the office?”
“Indeed. Though I’m learning to call it home these days.”
Indeed. That would change the tack of this conversation. “It must be midnight there?” Referring to Luna’s utterly artificial 24-hour day cycle.
“2300. Time shift last weekend.”
“Oh. Moved it again, did they? I always forget. Why do they even bother with that, do you think?”
“Immemorial tradition of the ancestors. What can I do for you?”
“You recall that special little item I got from you last time I was out that way?” Referring to the chip full of information on Mankho which Antoine had handed him at the meeting back on Luna.
“I believe so.”
“Well, I’m wondering if there might be another available. A friend has a birthday coming up and I’d like to make her a present of it. Doesn’t seem to be available here.”
“Who might that be?”
“Trin. I don’t think you’ve met.”
“No. But I’ve heard of her.”
“Think there’s any chance of it?”
“Last I checked they were all out of stock. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it.”
“I was a afraid of that. Seems to be a very rare item.”
“That is certainly true. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“No worries.” He paused. “How’s Mariwen? Anything new?”
The image in the overlay dipped its head to one side. “Doing better. She’s becoming more lucid now.”
Huron was not quite sure how to reconcile doing better with becoming lucid. He’d seen a few cases of a neural implant crashing, similar to what happened to Mariwen, and when they became more lucid, they also started trying to commit suicide. And usually succeeded.
“So it’s more promising?”—keeping that thought strictly to himself.
“She’s walking again. We’ve been able to take her outside these past few weeks.”
“Things are looking up then,” Huron remarked in more human tone.
“She has something to live for. That helps.” Antoine pursed his lips. “If you wanted to visit, I think it would be alright.”
“That’s a kind thought,” Huron answered after a moment. “Might not be the best time right now, though—with the general state of things.”
“I understand.”
“Tell her I’m thinking of her and convey my best wishes, though.”
“That will please her, I’m sure.”
“Good luck with rest of your night.”
“Good bye, Rafe.”
Chapter Seven
CEF Academy Main Campus
Cape York, Mars, Sol
“Kris!”
The sound of her name carrying faintly through the cold, still Martian air turned Kris’s head as she mounted the wide steps to the Academy’s front entrance. She caught sight of the small figure heading for her from the taxi way across the broad courtyard, and closing at a dead run. Retreating down the steps, she met Kym, panting and breathless, at their foot.
“Caught—you!” Kym plopped down unceremoniously on the lowest step. “I was—so—afraid I’d—miss you.” She must’ve sprinted over a hundred meters. Kris settled next to her.
“No, I’m here for the duration now. What’s up on your end?”
“Leaving. Real—soon.”
Kris expected that; in fact, she’d half expected Kym to already be gone. When she’d left, they’d been inundating her with placement applications. The funds Kris, Huron’s father, and Trin Wesselby had arranged for her meant that Kym had plenty of scope to be choosy, but given she didn’t like it here much, and Kris figured she’d take the first decent opportunity.
And she had, Kym explained, as she started to get her breath back. She’d accepted a position at a plantation on Hestia, the least populous of the League’s Homeworlds, and a right-to-work state, meaning that automation was kept within strict limits in favor of human workers. Kris knew next to nothing about the planet except that it was a favored vacation spot and Mariwen had been kidnapped there, but that aside, it did seem like the only Homeworld that might be comfortable to someone with Kym’s upbringing. Of course, there were colonies that were every bit as remote, underdeveloped and backwards as Lacaille, but Kris couldn’t imagine why anybody would voluntarily choose one of them.
Nor could she imagine a bucolic job on Hestia being the sole cause of Kym’s obviously high state of excitement. Then Kym cried, with a note of unmistakable triumph, “But then I got lost!”
“You got lost?”
“Uh huh!” Kym’s green eyes were actually sparkling. “I had my stuff and my temp visa an’ all my immigration docs an’ everything, and they shipped me to this place, Ceres Transfer Station”—which of course they would, that being the largest of the three stations that handled Sol’s out-system traffic—“where I was gonna board my flight the next cycle. And they sent me to this shuttle with this black wrist thing—”
“A pathfinder, yeah.”
“Uh huh. An’ one of those xel things. I hate those things.” Here, Kym looked exaggeratedly cross. “They beep and they nag and they say ‘How can we help?’ and ‘Where would you like to start?’ and then dump out craploads of floating windows you never asked for and they don’t do anything.”
That engendered a covert smile. Kris, who’d made her peace with xels early on, could still appreciate the sentiment, and she noticed Kym didn’t seem to have one now.
“Anyway, they said everything was uploaded on it—all I had to do was follow the line in the deck once the shuttle dropped me at the embarkation terminal, an’ everything would be jake. It’d take me right there!”
“Right.”
“And it din’t! I got off the shuttle and the wrist thing din’t do anything!”
“It didn’t?”
“No! Not nothin’! I thought maybe I had to be somewhere closer to get it to turn on, so I went down one of the tubes to the inside but that din’t work, so I got out and tried ‘nother one and then a couple more, and then I ended up in this huge place with all these people rushing and no signs or directions or nothing!”
Of course, there weren’t any signs. Every passenger had a pathfinder and a xel to direct them. It sounded to Kris, who’d been through Ceres herself, like Kym had blundered onto the main concourse outside the actual terminals. It was indeed huge and utterly devoid of markings, which would have been pointless in any case.
“So what hap
pened?” She’d never heard of a pathfinder failing.
“I almost cried!” Kym laughed. “Really! I din’t know what to do! I just sat down in the middle of everything with all my stuff—an’ all these zillion people.”
“Oh.”
“And then I met somebody!”
“Oh.” The image crystallized.
“Yeah! He saw me sitting there and came over and asked me what was wrong—he was really nice!—an’ I told him everything and he looked at the wrist thing and asked to see my tickets an’ I was in the complete wrong place! I got on the wrong shuttle somehow! That’s why nothin’ worked!”
The breathless tale of the good Samaritan continued to unfold. He’d explained where she needed to go and then accompanied her there, but by that time, Kym had missed the flight. The next available one wasn’t for eighty-six hours, so the Samaritan—whose name, it appeared, was Egan—got her lodgings and made sure there’d be no mistakes about shuttles next time. But then, it developed, he’d missed his flight as well—he’d been on his way to board when he found her.
“And he couldn’t get ‘nother one for a month!” Which implied some far-remote colonial destination, indeed, and with the war affecting transit, he was lucky to get anything at all.
“So what did you do?”
“I took him back to Luna,” Kym announced matter-of-factly. “Got us our own place. I paid too.” An emphatic nod. “My own money. He wanted to pay—at least some. But I said no. He helped, so I wasn’t gonna let him pay. He’s really nice.”
“And you’re not shipping out to Hestia anymore.”
“Nope!” Kym beamed fit to rival distant Sol. “We’re getting married!”
Kris had seen that coming a kilometer off. She smiled. A pampered Homeworlder would have been horrified at the thought of a sixteen-year-old girl hitching her star to a stranger chance-met on the Ceres main concourse, but that Homeworlder would have failed to understand that no one survived being a slave for long without learning to quickly tell friend from foe; good intentions from bad ones. If this guy seemed really nice to Kym, he probably was really nice. And if not, that couldn’t be her worry anymore—
Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks Page 53