Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks (25 page)

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.

The risk was the unescorted jump and the potential delay, up to thirty-six hours, before the escort arrived. But the tender could lie up, dark and silent, reducing any chance of detection to a level they deemed acceptable. Of course, this scheme also meant mixing the slaves they were repatriating with their slavers, a combustible situation to be sure, but they had an answer for that too.

“Lock ‘em down in their own holds. Let
them
wallow in there awhile and see how they may like it.”

This was what Kris heard Captain Lawrence say as she walked into his stateroom. And coughed.

A dozen pairs of high-ranking eyes turned to stare at her and her cheeks tingled as the blood left them, while the rims of her ears got pink.

“Yes, Midshipman?” inquired Sir Phillip.

“I—ah . . . I have Commander Huron’s report here, sir. On the prisoners.”

“Ah. Quite.” Lawrence looked benignly down the long table at Huron, who was looking at Kris.

“Your report, sir”—approaching stiffly and laying the folder before him.

“Thank you, Ms. Kennakris.” Huron continued to look piercingly at her.

Kris, heart fluttering, noted that he didn’t even glance at it. “Ah—will that be all, sir?”

“Yes, I think so.” He paused. “Unless there’s something you wish to say.”

Licking her lower lip discreetly, she nodded at a situation display, showing the squadron ringed about their prizes, the big tender in the middle. “Well, sir. I heard something about holds. Putting the slavers in their own holds?”

She looked back at Huron, beseechingly, but it was the captain who spoke.

“You do not approve, Midshipman?”

The vaguely mocking tone took some of the edge off Kris’s nerves. “No, sir. Not really”—turning to face him. “Y’see, that could be a really bad idea.”

“Explain, please?”

Kris gestured at the display. “Those ships. They riddle ‘em, sir. Hidden compartments, false decks, crawl spaces—all kinds of stuff behind the bulkheads. That tender there, she’s probably honeycombed. They do it in case they get boarded, sir. You never know where the f— I mean, where they’ll come out of.”

Sir Phillip, digesting this unlooked-for morsel, singled out Commander Walashek. “Commander, what do you think of the midshipman’s statement?”

“We have no info on that, sir, but it’s certainly plausible. Take a full survey to find out, of course.”

“Of course.” Sir Phillip leaned his elbows on the table. “Then prudence demands, I think. Do carry out a survey, Mr. Walashek. The rest of you, we will hold matters in abeyance until we know better what devilry those fellows have been up to. That is all.”

That devilry proved to be shockingly extensive, yet fruitful. By the end of the first watch, Commander Walashek’s team of surveyors had found all Kris had spoken of, plus weapons, explosives, and six pale, filthy, and shaking fugitives wedged in some very unlikely places.

And Kris added another two names to her list.

The incident also earned her new respect in some elevated quarters, a new station on the bridge watch, and a permanent seat at the table. She was in it the following AM when Commander Walashek made his report. The captain listened with a mild expression until he finished.

“Do you think you can stopper all their bolt holes, then?” was his first question.

“I wouldn’t bet the life of anyone who owed me money,” Walashek answered in his easy, country-bred manner. “The size of that thing, and the way it’s put together, have to rip it to pieces. In airdock, that’d take a couple of weeks. Out here, month at least.”

Captain Lawrence put a finger to his lips with a discontented sound. “I suppose, then, it’s back to the drawing board, as they say.”

It was, indeed, and after some thrashing, all present bowed to the inevitable. The prizes would go as planned, crammed with their nine hundred passengers, but somewhat richer in stores, for the tender had been nearly stripped of these, along with some of its fuel. This could be done because the tender, its navigation disabled and its jump convolver destroyed, was to be loaded with just the slavers and escorted back to New Madras by
Naiad
. With no prize crew or other passengers to support, it merely had to get them there alive, or as Captain Lawrence put it: “A low diet will do them no harm, and washing they appear not to esteem, though by the end they may gasp a little.”

That did mean
Naiad
had to make room for the four-hundred-twenty-odd ex-slaves she was to take on board, and she was distributing some of her people about the squadron in a near-desperate bid to do that. She succeeded (“God knoweth how” was heard throughout the squadron), and departed in company with the overstuffed prizes to much cheering and many an avid wish for a fair voyage and a happy return.

Mare Seriphos
Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

As Sir Phillip and his officers, free of their burdens but short a destroyer, considered how best to continue their endeavors, seven hundred thirty-seven light-years away in the Pleiades, a different sort of commentary was to be heard. A flaw in the wind, followed by a sudden gust, had just laid over the competitor with the bright red sail, and the woman on the starboard tack took advantage of it to cut inside, nearly clipping her opponent’s board.

“That was a goddamned foul!” cried Nick, swinging his binoculars to the judge’s skiff. No red flag appeared, however. “Gawd, they hate a Terran.” He lowered the glasses with a rueful shake of his head. “Don’t worry though. Zara has some moves left in her.”

Trin Wesselby was far from worried. She’d spent most of the day listening to esoteric discussions of jibing versus gybing, tacking and planing, luffing matches and downhill cut-backs and the virtues of various types of fins or skegs or boom vangs or dagger boards. Now she was looking at the woman with the red sail, Zara Daniels, the Terran windsurfing formula champion, and wondering about the power of a well-rounded yet taut female physique to inspire such an elevated degree of technical enthusiasm. But within minutes, Nick was shown to be a true prophet, as Daniels executed a bold and faultless carve gybe on the downwind leg that ate the wind out of her opponent and left her deep in spray at the finish line.

“Knew she’d pull it out,” Nick observed with great satisfaction, no doubt enhanced by the winnings now registering on his xel. “There’s only one way to keep a good woman down, and that ain’t it.”

Trin had to smile at that. In truth, she was finding it less dreary than she’d feared. She’d never before paid any attention to the League’s annual windsurfing championships, which rotated between here and Terra, and which, despite the name, drew competitors from only a small handful of planets. In general, it was a Terran-Nedaeman contest, although a contestant from Phaedra had been a surprise winner two years ago. The finer points might be lost on her—and she intended to keep it that way—but the light on the water and freshening breeze were most agreeable, and the undeniably graceful, even acrobatic, maneuvers of the competitors were a joy to behold. If she had to endure a surfeit of technical discourse, well . . . there were worse fates.

The wind diminished to a series of flawed gusts, prompting the judges to delay the next heat, and Trin took advantage of the respite to settle back against the bole of the silver oak they were sitting under. It crowned one of the taller hills overlooking the water and offered a fine, if remote, prospect of the course along with a comfortable degree of solitude, the rest of the spectators being arranged on a series of knolls nearer the shore or crammed against the water’s edge. The distance was no great handicap to those possessing mil-grade binoculars and Trin appreciated being far from the maddening crowd.

Reaching into the pack between them, she took out the container of truffle pate and a couple of brioche, on which she smeared a generous layer and held one out to Nick. That was part of their deal: if he picked the event, she chose the food. Drinks were left to the individual, which in Nick’s case meant beer in all its interesting variety, and for Trin, wine—reds, as rule. Today, Nick had opted for stout and she was drinking a Nedaeman Tempranillo. Nedaeman viticulture differed from Terran in a number of respects but particularly in the structure of the tannins, which gave Nedaeman wines a character most often described as ‘leathery.’ It was an acquired taste, but Trin had come to enjoy it, though not in the whites, where it lent a glyceriny character (much praised by the locals) she could not find favor with.

Pouring her glass full, she nibbled the brioche, enjoying the dappled sunlight scattering through the silver oak leaves and their soft musical rustling in the mild, inconstant airs. Silver oaks were not a native species, nor were they silver, nor oaks. In fact, even their status as plants was debatable: they did not photosynthesize but derived their energy from the photovoltaic properties of a monomolecular layer of silicon in their leaves. This, and the silicon veins running through their variegated bark, gave them their name and striking appearance. Recently, a subspecies had been developed in which the tiny blossoms acted as light-emitting diodes; Trin thought that was taking things a bit far. But she had no objection to the original variety, which had been discovered a century ago on some undeveloped planet deep in the Hydra. The light playing across her closed eyelids was having an almost hypnotic effect, and Nick reached over to right her dangerously tilting wine glass.

“So what did you want to ask?” he said as she opened her eyes and blinked. A moment’s mental rummaging brought back the question she’d elliptically alluded to in her message of the previous PM.

“When things don’t make sense, do you find it helpful to go back to the beginning?”

“Eukaryotes,” he said with a deep nod.

“What?”

“Going back to the beginning”—and winked.

Trin sighed. Trust Nick to flash out an outlandish paleontological reference when you least expected it. “Perhaps I should be more specific.”

“Can’t hurt.”

“What I’m curious about is: who invited Mariwen Rathor to the human-trafficking hearings?”

“That
is
a good question.”

“Any idea?”

“No one from our side. At least, I don’t recall anyone on the organizing committee bringing it up.”

“It would have to be someone influential.”

“Any of the attendees could have floated the idea.”

“One of the senators?”

“Likely.”

“Any chance you can find out? I can’t get near politicals.”

“My office didn’t get anything but the list after it was vetted. Oughta be a signature somewhere, though—maybe in the minutes of some meeting. I’ll take a look.”

“Thanks.”

“Fun, huh?” He made a wide gesture that took in the whole horizon.

“The windsurfing? I’ve spent less pleasant afternoons.”

“Great. Because there’s all day tomorrow too.”

“Nick, you ever think it’s possible for there to be too much of a good thing?”

He topped off his beer and took a pull through the rich foam. “Nope, can’t say I ever have.”