Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks (23 page)

“Then, sir, I imagine we’ll just have to stay ahead of them,” Huron remarked casually. As Admiral Sabr’s staff operations officer, he knew more than Captain Lawrence about the backstage maneuvering that had gone into forming his squadron. There was never any real possibility that they would be allowed to retain
Gryphon
, however ideal that would have been—the light cruiser was well armed for her size and wonderfully fast—but the decision to pull the two destroyers did smart.

Huron thought it probably smarted particularly for Sir Phillip, because the reduction in force deprived him of being appointed commodore. He led the detachment as Senior Captain, nothing more, and if Lawrence despised fortune-hunting, he certainly did not feel the same way about glory-seeking. He coveted a rear admiral’s stars and hoisting a commodore’s broad pennant was a necessary prerequisite. Captain Lawrence had not yet achieved this distinction, and at this point in his career, he was beginning to feel time was against him.

It was not time, as Huron was aware, but certain parties who were against the captain. His early career had created resentments that his personal qualities had done nothing to dispel, and those parties would not miss an opportunity to delay his step if they could. It didn’t help that his present CO, Rear Admiral Ilene A’Nakuma, was a Belter. Belters proudly retained their rough frontier manners and they especially detested Meridian spit and polish, while the aristocrats of the tightly linked Meridies Cluster tended to think of Belters as no better than colonists. Huron knew and respected Ilene, but he allowed that she was touchy. It was also known that back when they were both captains, she had been jumped over Lawrence into a position he thought rightly his, and that position was largely responsible for getting Captain A’Nakuma her step. Lawrence had made some impolitic criticisms, verging on personal, and Huron was mortally certain the admiral had not forgotten them.

Such political machinations were to be deplored, but they were as much a part of naval life as the drinking and off-duty pleasure-seeking Captain Lawrence denounced in his Orders of the Day. As much respect as Huron had for Lawrence as a fighting captain, and that was considerable, he did not have much sympathy for his constant kicking against the pricks. At the moment, though, this was neither here nor there.

It was possible that Sir Phillip’s thoughts were running in a similar vein as he considered his small force on the various displays. Certainly it was the best part of a minute before he responded with a wry bend of his thin, flexible mouth. “Stay ahead of them—that’s the trick, to be sure. Packed a crystal ball in your kit, did you?”

Huron kept his visage professionally blank. “Not in my kit, sir, nor crystal. But I believe Ms. Kennakris might be able to contribute something in that regard.”

“Yes.” Sir Phillip stroked his narrow jaw in a contemplative gesture. “I’ve heard something of her oracular powers. Jan RyKirt was loud in her praise on that score.” Huron was a little surprised that Lawrence knew about Kris’s role in the victory at d’Harra but he betrayed nothing. Then the captain pulled his long face into a frown. “You’ll forgive me saying, Huron—I know it don’t sound quite proper—but this whole business is rather irregular, you know. Making her a midshipman and all that. One hears things—can’t help it, really—and she’s so young. Do you really think she’s quite the thing?”

With that, a certain undercurrent in Laurence’s manner broached the surface and it dawned on Huron that the captain’s issue was not so much with Kris’s age or irregular rank, but with the fact that her hastily assembled dossier had not included an image. Eight years as a prized slave had given Kris a horror of enhancing her looks—indeed, she would have preferred to disguise them—but her fine, strong features were not of the type that could be dulled or blurred. She had not yet realized that pulling her hair back and eschewing makeup in an effort to look severe only accentuated her knife-edged beauty.

Huron was well aware of the effect this could have when met with unexpectedly, and given Kris’s peculiar status—betwixt and between as it were—and the captain’s strong feelings against shipboard romances, Huron could understand and almost forgive his anxiety. Almost but not entirely, and he knew how to express his feelings while staying just to the right side of sounding insubordinate.

“I think, sir,” he said with a particular drawl that was accompanied by a hint of brimstone in his eye, “you’ll find that Ms. Kennakris can take care of herself.”

LSS Retribution
New Madras Outstation, Hydra Border Zone

While Commander Huron and Captain Lawrence were indulging their several reflections, leading to Huron having a closeted meeting with Commander Ravenswood for a more detailed appraisal of the intended operation, Kris was unpacking her kit into her expansive, well-appointed space (as she considered it), and indulging reflections of her own. Being back aboard ship brought out weirdly conflicting feelings, as if she’d stepped into an old, familiar house only to find that while the superficial appearance was as she remembered, everything substantive had changed. It was a sensation not unlike her first days in the Academy’s mock-ups, but much more acute, and she was at a loss to explain it. The transit from Nedaema to Sol on a plush commercial liner had elicited no such reaction, nor the voyage out here on
Tyche
.

Conceivably, it had something to do with the quality of the air, which was always just a shade too fresh on naval combatants with their near-religious fixation on cleanliness, so different from the fetid miasma of a slaver ship: the curious scent of sterility, of scoured desks and spotless bulkheads and metal too often polished. Or perhaps it was the subtle vibration of a living ship, sensed below hearing and overlaid with the myriad sounds of ship life: ventilators clicking and whirring, alarms and alerts beeping and trilling, the buried hiss of hydraulics, the sound of hatches constantly opening and closing, how footsteps and murmured conversations would ripple down the passageways.

Whatever it was, it was not being helped by the fact that she still wasn’t clear on what she was supposed to do exactly, and it would have been even worse if she’d overheard the captain’s crystal ball comment and Huron’s response. Yet, it was still better than enduring two months of galloping boredom or, when it came right down to it, subjecting herself to the ‘slings and arrows’ (a phrase she’d picked up from Huron, and taken a liking to) of Sol’s outrageous societies.

Picking up her xel, she tapped out a message to Huron, asking if he had any orders, and received an immediate reply that she was at liberty for the evening. Wagner’s offer was still on the table and he wasn’t wrong about it being a perfect opportunity. Kris took out his card, noted his contact number and paged him. Less than a minute later, he popped up in overlay on the display. She hit
ACCEPT
.

“Evening, Midshipman.”

“Hi, Lieutenant. I’m free now, if you’re still game.”

“Absolutely! Meet me in five?”

The overlay showed a spot just outside her berthing space, by the main spline ladder junction.

“Sounds good. Thank you, sir.”

“You can hold the
sir
, y’know, as long as we’re both off-duty.”

Yeah, right
. “Uh, sure. I’ll try to remember that.”

“Let’s start with the main armament,” Wagner suggested, leading the way to the gundeck. As they entered through one of the three main armored hatchways, he stood aside and made a sweeping gesture down the deck. “Isn’t that a pretty sight?”

Perhaps it was to a gunner, more than to someone like Kris, but she did her best to look impressed. And it was impressive: the two rows of hulking mounts, eighteen per side, now fully retracted and housed behind the sealed gunports, leaving only a narrow zigzag path to walk through. He explained the operation of the fore, aft, and midship ammo hoists that brought rounds up from the magazines below, and the port and starboard shot trains that conveyed these to each mount’s shot locker. The mounts themselves were normally controlled from CIC, but each was also manned by a crew of three who could operate them independently on local power if the need arose.

“They’re only nine-inchers,” Wagner was saying, referring to the projectile’s diameter. “But they’re
long
nines. They hit like the mother of God. Those guys with the short twelve’s can have ‘em.” His practiced disdain was expected in a young officer proud of his first ship, and it was aimed at the twelve-inch, three-ring surge gun—unofficially the ‘short twelve’ and very unofficially the ‘short dozen’—which was the standard armament on all battlecruisers built since Kris was born; even heavy cruisers were being refit with them nowadays. The long nine was a seven-ring railgun, and it threw its projectile fifty-percent faster than the three-ring surge gun, giving it a much greater effective range against maneuvering targets and making it ideal for standoff engagements. But the surge gun fired a more massive round at a significantly higher rate of fire: up to ten per minute against a long nine’s six. In a fleet engagement, this was usually decisive, as navy doctrine called for disrupting the enemy’s defense net with torpedoes and missile barrages, and then closing rapidly at the critical moment to finish off individual ships with overwhelming short-range railgun fire.

At least that was what Kris’s academy instructors said, but she had no intention of raising the point with Lieutenant Wagner. The days of chivalric ship duels between agreeable adversaries belonged to the mists of the romantic past—modern missile technology had put them there—and long guns were on their way to joining them. It was maybe a little sad, Kris thought; the romance did have a certain captivating quality to it, and she was trying to think of something appropriate to say in that vein when Wagner pointed at the overhead, to the wide structure that ran like a spine down the length of the gundeck.

“That’s the missile fin,” he explained. “Two hundred sixty-four missiles, all one-meter tubes. Eighty-nine meters long by five wide. We can dump all of ‘em in three minutes if we really want to. And they better hope to God they never make us want to. C’mon”—he jerked his head with a grin—“lemme show you the aft chase mounts.”

Wending their way between the guns, Wagner led her to a lift ladder that took them down two levels and into a dimly lit, cavernous space far aft. In the gloom, Kris could make out three enormous shapes, reposing like sphinxes and much the same shape; two here and one on a half-deck above them.

The lieutenant had not lost his grin during the journey, and now he gestured like a fairground showman. “You might never see these again,” he said portentously, and when Kris questioned him with an askance look that puckered her brow, he announced, “Long fourteens. Got another two as bow chasers. We’re probably the only ship that still has ‘em.”

He was probably right. The long fourteen-inch railgun was almost an anachronism and hadn’t been popular at any time. Too big to be mounted as broadside armament on any ship smaller than a dreadnought, they had been relegated to chase guns, mostly on battleships. By now, all those had been replaced with the new torpedo clusters. Kris thought they could fit half-a-dozen tubes in the space these three guns took, and frankly she wondered why they didn’t.

“With the new magnetic traverse, we can get a full sixty-degree fire cone out of these beauties,” Wagner was explaining, his voice warm with enthusiasm. “
And
they fire quark-diamond warheads.”

That was a surprise. Quark diamonds were metalized diamonds spiked with inclusions of
strange matter
, the densest form of matter possible. That gave the warhead extraordinary penetrating power and when it shattered on relativistic impact, it released more energy than a large nuke. In her history classes, Kris had heard about massive 36-inch railguns that had been mounted on monitors during the Formation Wars and used for ground bombardment. Their quark-diamond rounds penetrated hundreds of meters into the planet’s crust before they detonated, and a concerted bombardment could turn a continent into a smoldering slagheap in an afternoon.

Kris knew they were still used in some missiles and with the long 18- and 24-inch railguns that armed the current generation of monitors, but she’d never heard of them being fitted to anything as small as a 14-inch gun. It must have been another innovation that failed to catch on.

Wagner was clearly of a different mind. As he dwelt lovingly on the specifics, Kris wondered at the young sensor officer’s passion for gunnery. Gunnery had lost the luster it once had, the technology being eclipsed by missiles and, especially, the latest generation of torpedoes.

Maybe her expression communicated her thoughts, for Wagner drew his hand down the flank of the nearest mount and declared in a low conspiratorial voice, “I know what the missile mavens and the torpeckers say, but you gotta remember none of that fancy crap’s been battletested. When we put metal on metal out here, I’m betting they’ll wish they’d stuck to their guns.”

With the principle wonders of railguns suitably exhausted, Wagner conducted her around the rest of the ship, showing her the rec spaces and other less martial accommodations with a more subdued air. When he badged them into CIC (his home turf, as it were), he became crisply professional and introduced the watch, supervised by a senior lieutenant named Rachelle Martin,
Retribution’s
chief fire-control officer. As
Retribution
was running under Condition III-Easy, the tactical stations were only partly manned, with the EW section consisting of two petty officers and a dour lieutenant who identified himself as Mike Warland and thereafter had nothing whatever to say, while the three rates of the sensor section—Wagner’s department—were being overseen by a lieutenant-jg with the resounding name of Maria Luisa Suarez Martinez, a bubbly Antiguan to whom Kris warmed instantly. For reasons that were not apparent, she went by Sara.

Wagner described for Kris the particulars of the ship’s sensor suite. Although she was already quite familiar with the lightspeed sensors, and knew something about deep radar and the passive gravitic sensors that detected the phase wakes of hypercapable ships, she listened attentively, quite willing to make the best first impression she could. His explanations were brisk and proficient (possibly because Martin was there, or maybe he was just trying to impress Martinez), but Kris felt his heart wasn’t really in it., The only time she caught an echo of his earlier intensity was when he had Martinez put the gravitic sensors through some simulated paces to demonstrate the effects of the improved Swirling filters they’d been working on.

“With these algorithms, we can track a bowling ball out to the Cassini Limit.” Smiling with evident pride as he said it. Kris, who’d never heard of a bowling ball before (clearly a challenging target), smiled back, matching his expression as best she could. That concluded the visit, and with a cheery farewell from Martinez, a civil nod from Martin, and a total lack of anything from Warland (who was staring fixedly at the main ESM console and fiddling industriously), they made their exit.

“Don’t be too hard on Mike,” Wagner said in confidential murmur when they were alone in the passageway. “Good guy, just quiet. And”—he dropped his voice even further—“he broke up with Sara right before this cruise. Hates standing watch with her.”

“Oh.”

Apparently thinking something else was called for—Kris got the feeling Wagner had his own interests in the attractive young jig and wasn’t sorry to have the field clear—he went on to explain that they had “I dunno, three or four other Luisa’s and gawd knows how many Maria’s” in the crew, so Martinez had adopted Sara as preferable to being assigned a number.

“You don’t really assign people
numbers
, do ya?” Kris exclaimed in a low, shocked voice.

“No, of course not”—taken aback by her vehemence. “It’s sort of a joke. Like we have a bunch of Henry’s too. Most go by Hank or something, but there was this new guy last cruise, he liked to call himself Henry the Eighth—thought it was really funny for some reason. That’s how it got started. But Sara, she prefers it. Maria Luisa’s her mother’s name, I guess.”

“Oh.” Kris was a bit sorry for her reaction—she should have realized he wasn’t serious—so when he said, “Hey, I’m gonna grab some coffee before I turn in. You wouldn’t want some, would’ja?” she impulsively agreed, then wondered if she’d made a regrettable choice.

They spent the stroll to the junior officer’s mess in small talk, or rather he did, seeming quite happy with Kris’s noncommittal and, at times, monosyllabic answers. It wasn’t until they were sipping their coffee together, companionably enough, that he asked anything approaching a personal question, and that was only to inquire what track she was in.

“Pilot candidate.”

“Really?” A wistful look came over his face, and he shook his head. “Washed outta that myself. Right at the beginning of basic flight. No slots in gunnery these days. Got put into sensors instead.”

Which explained a lot, Kris thought silently.

“Got into the advanced program, I take it?” By Wagner’s reckoning, a cadet exceptional enough to be rated midshipman would obviously be an AFP candidate.

Kris felt her ears get warm. “Uh . . . well, I really hope I do.”

He looked blank. “You mean, you’re not an upper—” and bit the question off.

She answered with a self-conscious shrug and shook her head.

“Oh. That’s a . . .” He paused to consider what it might be. “That’s impressive.” But she wasn’t sure he sounded impressed.

“Thanks. And, um—” She gestured a little haphazardly with the half-full plastic coffee cup. “Thanks for showing me around.”

He crumpled his own cup with a tight-edged smile. “Pleasure. See you in the AM.”

“Yes—Lieutenant.”

They parted ways and Kris hurried back to her berth. So much for avoiding social hitches by accepting a shipboard assignment. Slings and arrows—always the fucking slings and arrows.