That was no more than Kris expected, and better than she’d feared. Quillan’s allies would still try to strike a deal—and probably succeed—but at least his criminality couldn’t be denied. Maintaining a neutral look, for Kris had no idea how she really felt, the doctor considered her a moment longer before continuing.
“I asked to see you because in cases like this”—politicized cases, she meant—“the veil can get very thick and I wanted to you to hear my findings from me. Under the circumstances, I felt you were owed no less than that.”
With that last sentence, the tenuous personal connection solidified. “Thanks,” Kris said, rough-voiced. “I appreciate that.”
Dr. Smith accepted the thanks with a wordless nod.
“So what was the other thing?” The doctor had said her involvement covered more than determining who was mens rea and who wasn’t.
“I was asked to evaluate Quillan’s work with respect to you”—spoken without hesitation.
That brought the tension back, full force. “Is this where you tell me that in spite of everything, Quillan had a point?”
“Not quite.” Elena Smith retrieved a file, unsealed it and placed it between them. “This is Quillan’s file on you, with my notes. A copy was entered as evidence. Would you like to see it?”
Kris regarded the official yellow folder for a handful of heartbeats, and shook her head.
“Perhaps you’d rather if I sum it up?”
Another trio of heartbeats. “Alright.”
Elena opened the folder, selected a short page entitled “Key Findings” and rotated it so that Kris could read it if she wanted to. Kris kept her eyes on the other woman’s face.
“Quillan noted that you have a history of violence,” Elena began. “That’s hardly unusual. The persistence of our species’ capacity for violence has occupied philosophers for thousands of years. However, philosophy’s not my field. Psychologically, a history of violence—as we use the term clinically—is, by itself, beside the point when it comes to the question of mental health. There are individuals whom you might call natural soldiers. Their temperament and gifts suit them to be protectors and defenders. They are moral beings, but they are capable of killing without compunction or remorse when circumstances warrant. As long as they remain moral beings, their behavior is healthy and they can be, in the deeper sense, happy.
“But others are thrust into that role, and while they can fulfill it perfectly well—as many do; Commander Huron, for example—it can’t be the foundation of their true happiness. For people in your profession, the key to long-term health is learning which they are, and what they really want.”
All at once, that brought to Kris’s mind something Huron had told her when he was her flight instructor at the Academy: you can’t be flying for Marko or against Trench. You can’t be trying to get back whatever they took from you—you won’t find it up there.
“So . . . which d’ya think I am?”
Elena flipped Kris’s file closed and sealed it. “On that question, I think you would know best.”
* * *
Her desktop cleared and her docs sealed, Kris resisted the urge to check her email one last time. It had been thirty-six days since her first day here—over half way through the two months she’d expected to be here, and there still wasn’t any word about her transfer. SECNAV never sent out such notices during the last hour of the last day-cycle of a duty week, so there was no chance of getting the longed-awaited news to brighten her weekend. She hadn’t yet decided if she wanted to act on Rafe’s open invitation to join him either. It—the invitation part—was mostly a comfortable fiction: a buffer between them and the idea they were formally cohabitating. Fucking the guy who used to be your CO (and might well be again) needed fictions like that.
Shit—planting both elbows on her desk and massaging her temples. She had to stop thinking of it like that. A calling card chimed: Huron’s card. Probably wanted to know why she hadn’t messaged him about the weekend. Shit. Taking the card out, she tapped ACCEPT.
“Hey, Rafe.”
“Hi, Loralynn.” Loralynn again, huh? They’d kept that up for a few months, then slipped gradually back to Kris. She wondered what the deal was now. Probably not good.
“What’s up?”
“Did you hear about Quillan? His sentence was handed down this AM.”
“No.”
“They decided to make an example out of him.”
“Dismissed and disbarred?”
“Nope. Stripped of rank and imprisoned.”
“Huh?” Surprise stripped the tone from her voice. The charges preferred hadn’t approached that. “What happened?”
Rafe paused, as if to take a breath. “After Dr. Smith finished her summation, Quillan chose to exercise his right to address the court during the closing arguments. Counsel tried to talk him out of it—they always do, it never ends well—but he went ahead. Maybe he was trying to throw himself on the mercy of the court, but halfway through he started in on colonials. The court president is good friends with Admiral PrenTalien—bad tactical error.” It would have been: Joss PrenTalien was the first colonial to make full admiral in the CEF. “Anyway, what the court heard allowed them to elevate the charges from being considered in the light of gross recklessness to malice with prejudice, which kicked the maximum penalty over to imprisonment.”
“Oh.”
“That’s right. His little speech bought him a one-way ticket to Worthless.”
Worthless was the nickname for Worthington Military Prison, located at the south pole of Mars. It was the less severe complement of Helpless—Helpernion—the CEF’s maximum security prison: a hollowed-out nickel-iron rogue body of unknown origin and highly secret location that was reserved for terrorists and those convicted of capital crimes. Still and all, Quillan was going to find himself in with some interesting bedfellows on which to practice his clinical skills. She wondered how he’d feel about “evolved humanity” when he got out.
“How long?” Probably the least they could get away with, and then hacked down for “factors in mitigation.” Like being an undiluted yeast-eating motherfucker. Might not even serve a year.
“Twenty to half-life.”
“No shit? That long?”
“He might get it commuted at some point. But he’s pretty much radioactive now, so it will be quite a while before anyone wants to turn over his rock. Do you feel like celebrating or something else?”
“Um . . . I dunno.” Holy fuck. “Not celebrating, really. Maybe later.”
“I understand. Whatever you want—just lemme know.”
Three: Harbingers
164 days earlier
Oscoda, Michigan,
Great Lakes Province, Terra, Sol
The Huron family’s Oscoda estate was not really comparable to the Versailles, despite what many said. The architectural styles were entirely different and the 64,000 square-foot mansion with its forty-two bedrooms, three dining rooms, and more heads (that is, bathrooms) than Kris had ever bothered to count, was a much more modest edifice than the colossal palace of the Ancien Régime.
Yet by any other standard, modest was not a term that well applied to a dwelling which included a two hundred-foot entry hall with intricately carved vaulted ceilings and acres of handmade stained glass (including a magnificent rose window that would have shamed a cathedral), a huge library, a prodigious wine cellar, and a sub-level auditorium in which to hold corporate meetings, stage concerts, or use as a ballroom. There was a wrap-around balcony supported by fluted marble columns which could seat several hundred people comfortably, and fully equipped and secured office spaces that took up the entire top floor.
Among the other amenities were three swimming pools (one indoor and two outdoor), two theatres (one for video and one for live performances), an art-deco night club that Kris thought of as a snake pit, just on a much larger and more elaborate scale, spa facilities (she’d learned to love those), the gym, and a pavilion to showcase the f
amily’s famous art collection. Flanking the mansion were two courtyards: the northern enclosed a sculpture garden while southern featured whispering fountains designed by Indigo Jones, a Belter as famous for his many eccentricities as his acoustic genius. There were also tennis courts (an eminently silly game, Kris thought: she’d tried it once and immediately abandoned it as being nowhere near as challenging as low-gee racquetball), an orangery, an arboretum full of orchids and other exotic tropical flowers, and an outer terrace suitable for gatherings of a thousand or more.
If there was any direct comparison with Versailles, it lay in the extensive formal gardens to be meandered through or admired from crystal walkways hovering above reflecting pools lined with olive trees, and even then it was only in scale, for the grounds of the Oscoda estate were far removed from the fussy geometric rigidity imposed by the Bourbon monarchs. Here, the architects had not allowed nature to be so counteracted by an awkward taste and the surrounding park had a lake and a glen, waterfalls and a stream stocked with live trout. Then there were the famous orchards the original immigrant had planted and, for some reason Kris found utterly unfathomable, stabling for a hundred horses, now completely unused.
Kris, who’d never seen a horse, couldn’t imagine what use anybody could have for one, much less a hundred. Indeed, the whole place, despite its real elegance, was just one huge multilayered gleaming pile of absurdity. Why a family that owned entire planets and whose assets outstripped the annual economic output of some star systems needed to have a such a ridiculous bauble sitting on a patch of dirt on the shores of a big lake that just happened to share their last name made no sense at all. And the crowning idiocy sparkling at the top of all this was that none of the family actually lived there.
The only people who occupied the grounds were the staff—two or three hundred of them, depending on the season—who stayed in a slew of smaller dwellings scattered about the place. They kept the mansion and gardens in order, maintained the power plant and other infrastructure that made the estate essentially self-contained, and provided security for all the priceless junk housed within the walls that, considering the way they were built and that the estate was protected by a military-grade security enclosure, could withstand assault by a small ground army.
Why they felt they needed all that security was anyone’s guess. Wasn’t Terra the most heavily secured planet humans lived on? Conceivably it had something to do with the elder Huron’s second wife being killed in an assassination attempt. But he hardly ever visited here. Kris had met him once at his Washington estate; a frail-looking, aged man of eccentric speech and habits who, despite his quirks, could still put the fear of god into most anyone he chose. He retained much of the personal charm he’d used to such effect in his youth—it was easy to see where Rafe got it—but he made no secret of his dislike (Kris got the feeling it was more contempt) for the vast sprawling overdressed family holding.
Kris knew that Rafe wasn’t especially fond of it either, although he was attached to the area. He kept his apartments here on the simpler end of the spectrum (his off-planet dwellings tended to be more opulent), and he seemed more at home on Molokai. Marc rarely left the Republic of Victoria—he hadn’t been to Oscoda in years. Only Charles, the middle son, appeared to have any significant attachment to it, and Kris thought that was more practical than sentimental. Charles ran the family business, having done so since his father’s ascension into the higher reaches of power. As manager, he was gifted, and capable of charm when he wanted to be, but if he had any deep feelings, Kris hadn’t noticed them. He used the estate to intimidate competitors and impress visitors, but lived elsewhere most of the time—unavoidably so, as he frequently traveled to oversee their wide-flung operations—and never seemed to miss it. His visits, though frequent, were akin to those of a lord visiting a demesne that he valued as a symbol of his position, not a home. It was no surprise to Kris that Rafe and Charles, while perfectly cordial in each other’s company, didn’t get along all that well.
If there was any part of the estate Kris really enjoyed, it was the lilac meadow Rafe had first told her about, and which was every bit as lovely as described. Technically, it wasn’t part of the estate, being just over the boundary into a designated regional preserve: twenty thousand square miles of revirgined forest stretching eastwards from Oscoda, whose sanctity the Huron family personally guaranteed. But that was a distinction without a difference. Kris valued the meadow for its beauty, still rather alien to her, and because it was the one place she could retreat from the estate’s oft-times crushing opulence to think.
She was there now, thinking, but her thoughts were refusing to arrange themselves with anything like coherence. The ostensible reason she’d hiked up here—news that her transfer had been delayed yet again—was more of a catalyst than anything: a foil for other frustrations that wriggled and bit in the layers just below consciousness. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the sense that the alien skies that enclosed this globe, this vast disordered wonderland where everything could be had, and in unimaginable quantity (if you could afford it), formed an impenetrable shell, cutting her off from her natural habitat.
There was an air of unreality to it all, like a fantasy from which there was no escape, and in which pleasures were rammed down your gullet. Rafe was the overlord of this paradoxical paradise. He sailed above, effortless and composed, unaffected by the richness he could partake of and appreciate when and as he chose, while Kris—as often as not these days—felt swamped by it.
Turning at the sound of boots crunching through the undergrowth, she saw the overlord himself toiling up the slope to the meadow.
“Thought I’d find you here”—settling himself in the damp grass next to her a minute later. A minute during which she had not spoken. “You forgot this.” He held out her xel.
“Oh.” She took it. “Thanks.” Clearing his pages off the annunciator, she slid it into a pocket. “Is that all you came up here for?”
“Nope.” His eyes stayed fixed in the direction of the estate far below. “I wanted to let you know I’m leaving for a few days. Kinda short-fused. Didn’t get final word until an hour ago. There’s a meeting tonight in Alexandria I need to be at, then I might be heading out-system.”
“How long?”
“Seven–ten days. I’ll have a better idea after the meeting.”
“And you can’t tell me why.” That was clear from the fact he hadn’t already mentioned the reason—Huron was never coy about these things.
“Kris, it’s family business.”
“And I ain’t your family?” Her tone bit.
“Family and family business aren’t the same thing, Kris.”
“Maybe I could help.” The ache to get away—to do something, to not feel so useless—had been getting more acute these past weeks, and his comment had hardened it into something like a need.
“I’m afraid not this time.”
Shit. She’d known he would say that.
He stood. “I’ll update you when I can, but it’s likely to be spotty.”
She stayed where she was. “Fine.”
“You have the run of the place, obviously.”
Kris shook her head. “I’ll get a flight back to Luna. A few things I oughta catch up on.”
“Need a hand with anything?”
“It’s fine.” She felt his hesitation, the urge lurking behind it. But you didn’t hug overlords.
Or kiss them.
“I’ll check in as soon as I get back. Take it easy, Kris.” The sound of his footsteps leaving.
Goddammit. Why’d she have to snap like that? This was part of his life. She turned. “Rafe?”
He looked back. “Yeah?”
“Have a good trip.”
“Thanks.” One side of his mouth lifted in a softer version of his asymmetric smile. “I’ll miss you.”
She lifted her eyes to the alien sky, longing to be on the other side of it. “See you when ya get back.”
~ ~ ~<
br />
159 Days earlier
Shiro’s, Pausanias Towers Complex
Tycho Prime, Luna, Sol
“Kris!” That voice, cutting through the crowd noise here at Shiro’s, hadn’t changed a bit since Kris first heard it two and a half years ago at the CEF Academy. Doing a quick 180, she saw the voice’s owner, Ferhat Basmartin, her best friend from those days, making his way through the maze of tables. Shiro’s was a popular spot, being one of only two sushi restaurants in the Pausanias Towers complex, and it was especially busy tonight. But Baz loved sushi, and when he’d contacted her so unexpectedly, with the news he’d be passing through on his way to Earth, she decided to brave the crowds for him.
Shiro’s got the nod over its competitor, Zinn’s, on the basis of Zinn’s dining area being lined with fish tanks holding the patrons’ candidate meals. Kris was mostly indifferent to knowing where her food came from, but sushi—usually being eaten raw—was an exception. Even though she normally availed herself of the cooked options (shrimp tempura was by far her favorite), the sudden appearance of a hand with net and the subsequent disappearance of one of the tank’s denizens unnerved her, especially if any of her dinner companions ordered sashimi, which Baz very likely would.
Coming near, Kris saw that the near-boyish enthusiasm she’d detected in his spur-of-the-moment invitation was as yet undimmed. It made her curious. Baz was frequently enthusiastic, but this time felt different. They’d seen each other only twice since he rotated back to Mars right after Wogan’s Reef. Assigned to a training billet per the SRF policy that decreed active flight officers serve as flight instructors for four months out of every sixteen, he’d been kept on there as an Academy instructor.
It was a superb fit for him, in Kris’s opinion. Baz was an excellent pilot, and unlike Kris (who’d so far managed to dodge training assignments), he understood what he was doing. Better yet, he could explain it. He was also the most gifted hand with sensors Kris had ever known. The combination made him ideal as an instructor; a conclusion shared by just about everyone but Baz himself. Like her, he’d been angling for a posting to Survey, but while NAVSTARSYSCOM had no real need for Kris’s talents, the Academy certainly could use his. All the more so, in Kris’s private opinion, because Baz had one dangerous shortcoming as a pilot: he wasn’t a natural-born killer. To him, flying was a technical exercise, and at times that lack of a killer impulse caused him to hesitate for a split second. Kris was afraid that some day, one of those split seconds was going to catch up with him.
Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit Page 9
