Orion's Price (Loralynn Kennakris Book 6)

by Owen R. O’Neill

  Looking at the image, Kris thought he hadn’t done a bad job. The young man in it was unquestionably handsome, but much more importantly, he had what Kris gauged to be an open, friendly and genuine smile. It wasn’t an expression Kris ever expected to see on the face of a Halith warrior aristocrat—someone she’d gladly convert to superheated plasma in the line of duty—but it was there all the same, and Kris could not doubt it.

  Suddenly finding herself on what she took to be treacherous ground, Kris had mumbled something about “doesn’t look so bad” at which Arianna had stared, blown a hard breath through dilated nostrils and proclaimed, “Oh Mother! You really do not get it.”

  True enough, Kris conceded. Short of Adam, a headstrong girl like Arianna would rebel at any match she didn’t make, and on reflection, Kris wasn’t even sure about Adam. Besides, it belatedly occurred to Kris, Arianna might have met her intended only a few times at formal affairs. And if tradition were followed with the rigor Kris expected of the admiral, they wouldn’t meet again until the nuptials. Kris got an inkling of all this from Arianna’s outraged outpourings on the subject, along with some lurid, but entirely plausible, tales of such marriages gone horribly wrong.

  At the mention of the Admiral Heydrich’s name in one of these stories—it concerned the marriage he’d arranged for his daughter, Lady Gwen—a chill corkscrewed up Kris’s spine and her palms grew damp. Arianna knew a damn sight more about that family’s proclivities than Kris felt she should.

  In an attempt to extract herself from this seemingly dangerous ground, Kris had asked the young man’s name. Arianna’s sullen mumble in reply, “Marcus Aquinas”, struck Kris because Huron’s youngest brother was named Marcus Leviticus. Arianna must have noticed the striking, because she narrowed her eyes slightly and said, “What? Have you heard of him? He’s Captain Banner’s son.”

  The son, no—the father, most definitely. Captain Jantony Banner had been Halith’s leading ace over the last two wars. At Third Miranda, Kris had defeated him in a dogfight of epic proportions, leaving herself nearly crippled and Banner nearly dead; he’d managed to get back to his ship alive, but his survival thereafter was questionable. But regardless of whether he was alive or dead in the physical sense, officially he was dead. Halith, faced the fact their most revered war hero had been beaten by an unknown CEF ensign, took the extraordinary step of having their propaganda organs concoct an elaborate and fitting end for Captain Banner at the Battle of Wogan’s Reef. Had Halith won the battle, the fraud might have flown. In the event, it was totally eclipsed by the magnitude of the defeat and all that followed from it.

  So Kris had sat there blinking while Arianna sat across from her, staring with puzzled suspicious concentration, and Kris herself was puzzled how to respond. What she eventually said, “I’ve heard of his father,” seemed better than “I killed (figuratively and possibly literally) your intended’s dad”, but not by much. It certainly did not satisfy Arianna, who, well aware she wasn’t getting the whole answer or anything very close to it, uttered a disgruntled humph and looked pinched.

  Kris, for her part, learned a valuable lesson about listening without commenting, and an even more valuable one about how not to touch an already touchy conversation, knowledge that would undoubtedly serve her well in the future, if she was still around to profit from it.

  Hearing the light rasp of a shoe sole on the granite flagstones, Kris opened her eyes to see the object of her thoughts entering the courtyard wearing a troubled and singularly determined expression.

  “Come with me,” Arianna ordered in a low, brusque voice. Kris spared a glance for Huron, still soundly asleep, and rose as Arianna tapped one foot in agitation. Turning on her heel, an abrupt motion, even angry, she led Kris to the courtyard’s south entrance where there was a small alcove, and, equally abruptly, stopped.

  With a furtive glance about, she stepped close and whispered, “There’s a man here to see you and I can’t do anything about it.”

  “See me?” Kris muttered, dangerous visions suddenly crowding out her former thoughts.

  “He works for General Heydrich. He’s with the breeding program,” Arianna said, her voice a venomous hiss. “He has an order to examine you for . . . fitness. I can’t keep him out. He’s already in a room waiting.”

  The chill Kris had felt in their previous conversation returned and assumed glacial proportions.

  “Is this normal?”

  “I don’t know!” Vehemently, then dropping her voice lower. “I think they mostly do it when there’s something . . . exceptional. He’s a district manager.” And lower still. “If he selects you, I’ll talk to Grandfather. I’m sure he’ll do something to try to block it. You’re just a number in the system. But be cautious.”

  The emphasis made no immediate sense. As a POW what could Kris possibly have to be cautious about? If this manager was here to examine her, and that entailed what Kris assumed it did, what was her role beyond being a passive specimen?

  She opened her mouth to ask, but Arianna stepped away and said in a more normal voice, “He’s waiting. Go on.”

  Kris’s teeth clicked shut over her unformed question. Two household guards had just rounded the corner from the main passage and were approaching. They looked suitably grim. Arianna turned and with a jerk of her head to emphasize her command, walked off, her body rigid with the effort not to look back.

  * * *

  The man waiting for Kris in the room they escorted her to did not meet any expectation she could have formed. Rather, he seemed a cruel caricature of what had once been a vigorous man of medium height, powerfully built but now merely corpulent, half-slouched in a float chair in a sack-like gray uniform, his wasted legs hanging straight down, his whole being expressing a kind of outraged, impotent and static anger.

  So strong was the impression, so shocking, that Kris, standing stiffly erect, had to concentrate hard on what he was saying when he began to speak in a grim, haggard voice. Even so, she missed the first part, and caught only that he was here to collect blood and tissue samples and something about a psychological evaluation.

  “Sit down,” he finished, and as Kris sat in the indicated chair, added, “You were expecting a pelvic exam, at least. Not to worry. That’s not my department.” The corners of his mouth flexed in what might have been amusement, but nothing showed in his bleached-out eyes. “Hold out your arm.”

  Kris extended her left arm, and he brought the float chair close, holding a lancet.

  “This may hurt”—pressing the device to the inside of her forearm. It did, but not enough to do more than cause brief twitch at the corner of Kris’s mouth. He held the bloody lancet close to one eye, squinting at the readout. “You don’t squeal. I like that”—sliding it back into its case and the case into the breast pocket of his tunic.

  His voice. That had jarred her almost as much as his appearance. The accent was recognizably Halith, but the speech patterns weren’t. Colonial? Arianna had described him as a manager. She hadn’t expected anyone in authority to be a Halith colonial, but if so, maybe his voice made sense?

  The wasted limbs below the distended body didn’t, though. His being paraplegic, sure. Kris knew from experience how an obstinate nervous system could outwit better medical technology than Halith had. But this level of dissipation couldn’t just happen—it had to be studiously acquired. Something here didn’t add up.

  “I’m guessing you know what this is.”

  Snapped out of her uneasy thoughts, Kris saw him holding up a neural scanner, bulkier than the ones she’d seen before but recognizably the same, down to the red light at the tip. She felt her face go hard as she tried to hide the tightening in her belly.

  “I see that you do.” That fleeting movement of his mouth again and a bob of the balding head that made his jowls wobble. His version of a smile. “Not to worry. You’ll hardly feel it.”

  And just what the fuck did he mean by that? Punching her apprehension down, Kris watched him remove the rest
of the apparatus from the bag at his feet and set it up. Then he drew near again.

  “It is likely not what you’re thinking. The ugly-question business is also not my department. We have experts for that.” He lingered on the word experts as though the thought particularly pleased him. “All this does”—coming back to the point with the air of one setting a treat aside—“is check for temperament. Temperament is key in my business. Looks aren’t everything. Lean back.” He positioned the scanner as Kris obeyed. “Answer however you like. I don’t care. It’s all data.”

  He asked a series of questions, shorter than Kris expected and having no evident purpose or thread. Some were downright strange: how often did she experience a sense of déjà vu? Had she ever met someone and been sure she’d encountered them before? How often did she dream of her mother? Her father?

  The red light clicked off. “That’s it.” He’d been right. She had hardly felt it: little of the temporal or spatial disorientation that was normal for this operation, and none of the slight headache she remembered. Blinking as he took down and stowed the equipment, sliding his float back chair and forth across the room, Kris wondered what he meant by That’s it. Were they really done? The very lack of discomfort—the sense of routine—was in itself disconcerting.

  His equipment packed up, the man guided his chair to the entry where, opening it, his escort waited. Kris did not expect him to speak again, but as he went through the doorway, he spun the chair and gave her an appraising look that tightened the skin between her shoulder blades. Given his disability, his involvement with the breeding program had to be strictly managerial. Didn’t it?

  “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  Then he was gone, and another household guard signaled her to come with him. Tension cramping her muscles, Kris stood and followed the guard, feet moving automatically and mind working furiously.

  Was this merely the apathetic box-checking exercise it seemed? Was that parting shot just meant to fuck with her? For all her good will, how much pull did Arianna really have with the admiral? If it came to it, how much effort might Caneris expend just to spite General Heydrich? Over Rafe, yes: he’d pull out the long knives for that. Rafe had incalculable value.

  But her? She had no conceivable place in the admiral’s political agenda. If Heydrich came after her, Caneris wasn’t gonna expend valuable capital to protect her.

  Honor? Caneris was nothing if not honorable. How many millions had put themselves neck-deep in shit by trusting the honor of their enemies . . . or their allies?

  Rafe? Rafe would never abandon her. Rafe was not in a position to do a damn thing.

  But it hasn’t happened yet.

  Following the guard back into the brilliant light of Halith Evandor’s primary, she kept a tight grip on that thought.

  Nothing has happened . . .

  Chapter 16

  Denver Heights, Colorado

  Western Federal District, Terra, Sol

  “And there’s no way to do this any sooner?” Mariwen’s conscious effort to mask her frustration, something she was ordinarily very good at, wasn’t being entirely successful. But there was nothing ordinary about any of this. Every minute—every moment—Kris remained a POW increased the risk, and it seemed they had encountered nothing but delay. At best, comms took ninety-eight hours to travel from Halith Evandor to Earth, hampering coordination and the ability to track events. And then there was the time to simply get there, although with the League now in possession of Illyria that was considerably reduced. But fact they held Illyria cut a few days off the transit time afforded little comfort in a situation that could change in a day, or even an hour. Every instant was precious and she was being forced to watch them flow down the time-stream in what seemed like a torrent, forever lost. Now this new data from Paavo’s people had made them stop again.

  “Are you familiar with a progress?” Trin asked.

  Mariwen tightened the rein on her tongue. She’d developed genuine affection for Trin, above and beyond the great respect she’d formed since they met, and that, perhaps predictably, made her more likely to get testy with Trin—and less likely to curb any expression of it—when she was being exasperating. Trin’s habit of answering elliptically was just the thing to set her off when she was on edge.

  Still feeling the aftereffects of having the tripwired administered wasn’t helping either. Trin had been touchingly apologetic about the necessity, and while Mariwen couldn’t deny the icy shiver she’d had at the thought of her brain once again being invaded, she also couldn’t deny that it was, in fact, necessary. And given what she’d already been through, it truly didn’t amount to much. She simply needed to get a better handle on herself. Taking a slow breath, she waited out a few critical beats before she answered.

  “Do you mean like a royal progress? A formal tour of cities in a kingdom by the sovereign?”

  “Exactly,” Trin said smiling, and Mariwen resisted the impulse to feel like she was being awarded a gold star. Trin was just being Trin. She needed to keep that firmly in mind. “A massive waste, dislocation and inconvenience in most cases. But in some societies, nobles—even lesser gentry and landlords—also went on a progress of their holdings. They’d meet their tenants, hold feasts, exchange gifts, pass judgments and perform any number of other social functions. They might tour their borders to keep them known to their neighbors and demonstrate vigilance—I think they called that ‘riding the bounds’ in some places.”

  “Yes.” Mariwen nodded to show she had grasped the lesson.

  “The point is,” Trin continued, sensing her audience was done with history, “that Halith revived this custom. They call it adventus after an ancient Roman ceremony—you know how they love that sort of thing—and strictly and formally it consists of three phases. Leaving is the profectio; the ‘setting forth’. Adventus is the formal welcoming to their holdings, and the reditus is when they return home. They’re all celebrated with events—parties and gatherings—and they’re a critical part of the Halith social round. They also have legal standing. That’s the issue here.”

  “I see.” Like all of Trin’s elliptical explanations, things were finally coming into focus.

  “Yes. A landholder who does not perform his adventus duties properly is open to legal challenges and can forfeit his holdings if he is found to be in criminal neglect. One of the few things that exempts a landholder from going on adventus is being active-duty military—those persons are allowed to appoint a representative to go for them. Or if they can’t travel due to infirmity, their principle heir must go. It’s a major commitment and quite time-consuming, especially if the holdings are out-system. Lord Geris is his father’s principal heir. His father cannot travel hyperlight and the family estates are on Vehren.”

  Mariwen felt a twinge of renewed exasperation. “Excuse my interrupting, but you’re trying to tell me that Kat’s husband is leaving on his adventus tour.”

  “Not leaving. He’s left. Kat went with him, of course. They return the middle of next month.”

  “And in the meantime?” Mariwen’s oblique question needed no clarification.

  Tucking a fallen lock of dark hair behind one ear—the first break in her studied manner—Trin offered what was obviously intended to be a reassuring smile. It almost worked.

  “Paavo’s people are confident that Kris and Rafe are still with Admiral Caneris. Attaching a select number of POWs to his household is his personal prerogative as a full admiral and Lord OverHallin. That’s not easily contested. As long as no one knows he’s holding them—and he’s not advertising their presence—it can’t be contested. Kris and Rafe are as safe with him as they can possibly be. Under the circumstances.”

  As long as . . . Under the circumstances . . . Mariwen wiped a fingertip under one eye.

  “What do we do now, then?” Besides hope and pray . . .

  “As to that, Paavo’s people are working up a plan to put you in contact with Kat as soon as possible after your arrival. She wil
l be busy with the reditus celebration then, and that means she will be out and about quite a bit. That ought to provide opportunities for you to meet.”

  And how will she react? Mariwen wondered, suddenly encountering a shadow from her past. How much has she changed since the last time we met? In some ways, Kat had always been predictable. In others, not. A look, a word would be enough to know if—

  “We won’t know, obviously,” Trin cut through her thought. Mariwen blinked. “What they plan. To put you in contact with Kat.”

  Acknowledging her lapse with a brief headshake, Mariwen offered Trin a slim smile. “Oh . . . yes.”

  “I’ll be handling the logistics of getting you there and back, and liaising with Paavo as necessary,” Trin carried on, “and you . . .”

  “And me?”

  A smile answered her. “You have some work to do.”

  “I’m going back to school?” Somehow, that curious smile reassured her more than anything else that had been said or done. “I always liked school.”

  “I think you’ll find Nick an excellent teacher. If . . .” Mariwen swore she detected a twinkle in Trin’s eye. “Slightly unorthodox.”

  “I don’t mind slightly unorthodox.”

  “I might be wrong about slightly.”

  Chapter 17

  Docklands Quarter, Halevirdon

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  Back in his wheelchair, back in front of his console, Taylor Lessing felt a degree of animation greater than he had known in years, perhaps ever. Compared to the results of his visit to POW 6274936, his expectations had been as a candle to the sun. First, the prisoner in question was almost certainly the recipient of a core-jack, just as he had surmised. Next, and just as incredibly, she was in the company of Rafael Huron, whom he’d first glimpsed dozing in the courtyard of Caneris’ estate as they escorted him in and confirmed with a more deliberate glance on his way out. Finally, and most importantly, he knew who she was.