Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks (49 page)

Indeed, the night had barely begun, and despite the gallery crew taking the captain at her word and ranging large through her private stores to offer an array of delicacies, the tension barely slackened. In CIC, it didn’t slack off at all, not even when Lieutenant Ramses came back from a foraging expedition with five kinds of cheesecake to share out among them. Kris’s nerves still hadn’t quite made peace with her stomach, but cheesecake was a vast improvement over lukewarm coffee and cold sandwiches. She hadn’t slept much either: an attempt to catch a nap during the forenoon watch had proved abortive when her dreaming mind took her back to Rephidim and Marko’s laughter got mixed up with a window shattering and the two-toned whistle of a falling mortar shell that shocked her awake.

But no one had put her on the spot during the staff meeting, the cheesecake was excellent, and Caprelli had ceased his scenario mongering, so maybe things were looking up. They had another two and a half hours, give or take twenty minutes, before they would find out what Mankho had on his mind. He still hadn’t sent any messages and the skipper over there continued to act as if he was being careful of his resources. Had he counted on having another few weeks to resupply, Rephidim being a long way from sources of pretty much everything a ship that size needed, especially fuel? It was certainly possible, and if
Black Autumn
was light on fuel, her skipper would have to take it easy. Their drives, and especially their jump drives, were relatively inefficient compared to League ships. A deep jump might be beyond him. That, at least, was the thought they used to fan their hope he’d take the easy way out—that they’d be able to get the drop on him at last.

If the tension brought on by that nascent hope made Kris even quieter, it had the opposite effect on Lieutenant Ramses who, growing uncomfortable with the concentrated silence as they all watched the plot and listened to the periodic status reports, started advancing this trivial topic or that one (he was a big sports fan, Kris learned), which met with polite but meaningless expressions. After about ninety minutes he gave up. A few minutes later, when one of the operators called out that he was seeing an aspect change, he bolted from his seat for the console.

“Sir!”—his voice nearly cracking with the strain—“Yes, he’s changed course and he’s warming up his grav-plant!”

“Where away?” Caprelli barked.

“He’s coming to course 090:17. It’s Cathcar, sir.”

“Is he committed?”

“He’s initiated his translation sequence, sir.”

Caprelli hailed the bridge and relayed the information.

Commander Yanazuka read off the numbers. “Can you estimate his translation potential yet?”

“It’s looking short and shallow, ma’am.”

“Inform me the instant he reaches red-line,” came the captain’s crisp reply.

The minutes ticked by in a silence so absolute that everyone jumped when Lieutenant Ramses announced, “Red-line, ma’am!”

“Thank you, Mr. Ramses.” Constance Yanazuka’s voice lifted. “All hands, secure from silent running. Assume drop stations. Prepare to translate.”

They strapped into their stations and three minutes later, as the gravity fell to null-gee, the translation alert sounded. A minute after that, when they were starting to feel that peculiar, hair-raising sensation of a ship about to drop, the hyperwave in CIC lit up with a piercing priority shriek.

“Can you read it?” Caprelli’s voice was almost as urgent. “Is it Lawrence?”

Ramses was straining forward against his straps, trying to make out the origin code. “No, sir. Not Captain Lawrence. I think—” He squinted. His face contorted in disbelief, then blanked in astonishment. “I think it’s from CGHQ.”

The Octagon
League Capitol Complex, Nereus, Mars

Nineteen hours before Rafe Huron won his bet with Commander Caprelli, Speaker Gautier learned she’d lost hers in the most spectacular fashion possible. A flurry of messages, increasing rapidly to an avalanche, informed her that far off in the Perseid, on the opposite side of charted space from where all her government’s attention was focused, the Halith Imperial Navy’s Kerberos Fleet had erupted from a thin transit route linking their core system of Zhian with Omicron Ceti, the prime world of the Rho Ceti Principate. The Principate’s military, unprepared and outgunned, fought a desperate action for nearly three days before the sovereign, with three Halith battleships and the dreadnought
Marshall Nedelin
taking up bombardment positions, halted the carnage by agreeing to an unconditional surrender.

By the time news of the invasion reached Mars, it was already over. Belatedly, the Plenary Council realized that for weeks—indeed, probably since before they decided to act on the ultimatum—they had been trying to manage events after the fact. Only a week ago, prompted by the Halith ambassador leaving for ‘consultations’, the Speaker had sent a personal message to Jerome Paul Augustus, one of the two serving Halith Proconsuls, expressing her grave concerns. At that moment, the Kerberos Fleet had been en route to Rho Ceti for nine standard days.

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 substantially 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

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