“Then you think it could be feasible?”
“It could be.” The commander applied herself to the thinning a patch under the pine’s luxuriant crown. “Whoever General Corhaine has there, she’s achieved an impressive penetration. She got into the stores system and practically has this IRIS asset eating out of her hand.”
“Would that be the preferred approach?”
“Corhaine would have to assess that, not me. But . . .” The dangerous shear tips tapped. “We could try a remora to surveil the system and inject the exploit. Kite has a full complement.” Remoras were collection systems that attached to the hull of a target; quite effective, when they could be used.
“What’s your overall feeling about this?” Huron was actually conscious of the change that had come over Kestrel’s skipper as they talked. Yanazuka straightened and hitched a hip onto the edge of the desk, still holding the little shears.
“EJ said you were classmates at the Academy.”
“That’s right.”
“Then you have more right to hear this than most people.” Her eyes took on a faraway look as she began to tap the fingers of one hand on her thigh. “We were on our way to Winnecke IV to set up a screen for Admiral Sansar. Running full up, since it was just a routine precaution, we thought. Caneris had a lead element positioned right outside the jump zone—battlecruiser division.”
Those four fingers kept up their metronome tap-tap-tap against her leg, marking off moments long past. “We detected them when it was almost too late and a running gun battle ensued—with us running and them gunning. We took damage, Raven and Tiercel started to lag—I tried to screen them with Merlin to buy some time . . . then EJ decided enough was enough . . .”
* * *
Nine days earlier . . .
LSS Kestrel, under fire at Winnecke IV
“What the hell does Evans think he’s doing?” Constance Yanazuka snapped as LSS Merlin shot by in a headlong charge for the battlecruiser. “Who’s on the bridge over there?”
“I can’t say, ma’am.” Lieutenant Tory Alanis sounded stricken. “She’s got no bridge anymore.”
Yanazuka turned to her signals officer. “Raise someone—anyone—over there!”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” replied Ensign Saskia Lark. A moment later, the image of Commander Evans swam on to the forward screen. He stripped to the waist, his face and torso streaked with sweat, black grime and blood. From the noise, he was down in the engineering spaces but the smoke in the air made it hard to see. She could hear the wail of half a dozen alarms clearly.
“EJ! Disengage and reform!”
“Whazzat, ma’am?” Evans bellowed into the pickup. “Kinda noisy here!”
“Break off! Get the hell outta there!”
“No can do, ma’am! Steering by engine!” He turned aside. “Right thruster full!”
“EJ—”
“She took another hit, ma’am,” Lieutenant Alanis announced, unnecessarily—everyone on the bridge could see that.
At the same moment a piercing female voice came over the pickup from Merlin’s engineering. “Skipper! We just lost the rest of the starboard broadside!”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Fuentes! Like what we got left!”
“Two portside five-inchers and the aft chase mounts, sir!”
“The long nines are good?”
“That’s affirmative, skipper!”
Evans looked over his bleeding shoulder at his engineering crew. “All back full! We’re gonna flip this bitch around!” He came back to the pickup as Yanazuka and her bridge crew watched Merlin begin her ungainly pirouette. “You were saying something, ma’am?”
Yanazuka drew a sharp breath and swallowed. “Carry on, EJ.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.” Commander Evans gave her a wave. “And, by the way, I’d get while the gettin’s good—this neighborhood’s going to shit!” He stepped away from the feed, but his cheerful voice still came through. “Prepare to engage with the aft chasers. Let’s tickle up that fucker! Maybe he’ll laugh himself to death—”
Cutting the feed, she snapped to her helmsman, “Course one-niner, two-oh-seven. Flank acceleration. Lay down all the ice we can, send Raven and Tiercel ahead and order Kite and Peregrine to conform!”
“Skipper?” Ensign Lark asked quietly after they’d made their first jump. “Why’d you tell Commander Evans to carry on?”
Constance Yanazuka wiped the back of one hand across her dry lips. “I’ll tell you later.”
* * *
“You know what he said, I take it?” Commander Yanazuka smoothed the fabric of her trouser leg as her attention refocused on the here-and-now.
Knowing that, and exactly what the commander had told the young Ensign Lark, Huron nodded.
At the beginning of the war, Commander Evans had been stationed at Knydos in Crucis Sector, commanding an old obsolete frigate, LSS Tartar. With the surprise loss of the CEF’s forward base at New Madras, Evan’s unit had been forced to withdraw. Months later, EJ had been given command of Merlin, a new stealth frigate, and assigned Kestrel’s squadron. At the commissioning ceremony, EJ gave a speech. It was short, to the point, and concluded with this statement: “Now that I have command of a modern warship, I will never again retreat in the face of the enemy.”
Sliding her hip off the desk, Yanazuka shook the little shears at her bonsai.
“My great-grandfather collected this tree off the slopes of Mount Suribachi when he was a young man. He told my grandfather it was over five hundred years old.”
That would make the tree around seven hundred years old. Huron wondered if Japanese white pine actually grew on the slopes of Mount Suribachi, the significance of which was not lost on him. Verifying the tree’s age and where it germinated would not be hard, if one really wanted to know.
“Anybody check?”
Yanazuka gave him a placid, Cheshire-cat smile. “Some questions are not meant to be answered.”
He had to admit that was a good point.
“My grandfather also said that when his father first put it in this pot, he calligraphed a charm on a rice paper, burned it, and buried the ashes at the bottom of the pot.”
“That’s a nice touch.”
“It made the tree immortal. As long as it stays in this pot. Or so we were told.” She shrugged at the smile Huron gave her. “All I can say is I haven’t been able to kill it.”
Huron chuckled. “So you’re in on this deal.”
“We’ve got an ancient immortal tree on our side. What could go wrong?”
“What indeed?” He’d never seen this side of Commander Yanazuka before; he doubted many had.
Picking up the tree, she retreated into her sleeping quarters and returned empty-handed, scrubbing her palms together. “Are we wrapped up here, Commander? I should check on Caprelli. He works too much.”
“I think so.” Huron prepared to go. “But do you mind if I ask a question about your great-grandfather?”
“Not at all.”
“Was he in the Navy?”
Yanazuka’s black eyes glinted. “No. He was a sushi chef in Kamakura. Died fairly young from a surfeit of fugu.”
“I didn’t think that was even possible.”
“He was a staunch traditionalist who liked to live on the edge.”
A trait he’s passed on to his great-granddaughter, Huron thought.
She favored him with that placid, death-defying smile again. “Some win you, some you lose.”
~ ~ ~
Day 219 (Late PM)
LSS Polidor, in orbit
Iona, Cygnus Mariner
Some win you, some you lose.
The thought rankled deep as Huron stepped through the hatch of a trans-atmo shuttle onto Polidor’s hanger deck. Eighteen uninterrupted hours downside, talking until his throat felt like sandpaper; three and a half hours on a shuttle, where his normal ability to catch a nap, no matter the circumstances had deserted him, and nothing to show for it.
E
yes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, he looked across the deck to see Kris waiting.
Kris looked back. “What happened?” she asked, sharp-voiced, as he walked up.
“You know what they say about best-laid plans?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re about to. C’mon”—he had to stop himself from reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder—“I need a drink.”
Drink in hand (coffee spiked with the first alcoholic substance he found on the wardroom’s consumables list), Huron lowered himself heavily into a chair with a heavier shake of his head.
“It’s no good, Kris. I wish it was. Sorry.”
“The Ionians?” Her glare pierced right through him, aimed at the planet below.
“Nope. It’s not them and it’s not the plan—the plan’s good. But all good things in their time . . . and now just isn’t the time.” That got her to stop leaning over the table like a predator about to pounce.
“So what did happen?”
Swirling his cup and wishing he’d made a better choice (coffee and Hotch whiskey really didn’t mix that well), Huron exhaled through his nostrils. “This . . .”
They’d performed a quick assessment and the plan appeared feasible. They’d need some whirlwind repairs to the ships the Ionians were holding, and a second force to destroy the slaver fleet, which the Ionians would have to furnish. They also needed shipbreakers in small craft to destroy the harbor sections as they come in.
Those were tall orders, but the Ionians, the person of Bill Roquelaurie, had been more forthcoming than he had dared hope. While the Ionians would not engage Halith forces directly, and the president and cabinet balked at officially supplying a force to destroy the slaver fleet, they were not opposed to allowing volunteers to serve in this capacity. Ionian naval officers had a long tradition of volunteering for similar activities (not always entirely reputable and in truth, partly responsible for the current mess) and given the target, Roquelaurie felt they’d have no difficulty recruiting a sufficient number of qualified persons.
Ships for the raiding force proved more difficult, as he’d known it would. While Iona boasted no shortage of privateers, most were unsuitable for an operation of this kind. After hours of intense haggling, Huron and Roquelaurie managed to arrive at an agreement in principle where some ships considered to be in reserve would be “leased” to Huron personally—that is, KKHR; essentially the same thing in this case—in a fashion that would just barely pass muster with the lawyers.
Getting the CEF ships on-line presented a different but in some ways thornier issue. This required a diplomatic solution, not merely a financial one; although the financial aspect was hardly minor. (As Huron looked over the hastily prepared estimates, for which he was also pledging his family’s purse, Crassus’ quip that no man could call himself rich if he couldn’t afford to raise an army out of his own pocket presented itself forcefully to his mind—as did Crassus’ fate.) Here, Huron leaned heavily on his semi-illusory diplomatic credentials to offer Iona control of the Winnecke IV junction in return for their cooperation.
Sounding absurd on its face (the Ionian delegation looked blank for half a minute when he proposed it), the concession actually made good sense, from both points of view. A friendly (or at least not actively hostile) Iona would a better guarantor of the junction’s security than the effete Andamans. If they succeeded, he could count on Westover’s backing and that those factions who approved of Eltanin’s elevation. The League would be able to install both a new sultan and a new emir, and no one would have any qualms about holding a gun to these worthy’s heads to ensure they did exactly as they were told. If they failed, Halith’s victory would render the whole question moot.
It took some hours of exercising his charm to the utmost and acquiescing with a smile to some pretty flagrant price gouging, but in the end, he carried his point. With these two triumphs in hand, he’d been about to declare a qualified victory when the first rude shock arrived.
The CEF combatants needed their crews, most especially their officers, and the operation needed an experienced fleet commander. Several captains and members of Rhimer’s staff had survived, including his deputy, Gerald Swanepoel, a senior captain. Swanepoel may not have been anyone’s first choice for the job—certainly not Huron’s, who knew him by reputation—but at a minimum, he needed to give his approval.
With Roquelaurie’s permission, Huron contacted Swanepoel and requested a personal meeting. Obviously, his request could not go into details, but there could be no doubt regarding its purpose or meaning. If Huron expected Swanepoel to not be overjoyed, he definitely did not expect the flat refusal, barely cordial, that the captain replied with. He (Swanepoel ) could not view “participating or endorsing any belligerent action” as being in any consistent with his duty “under present circumstances”.
The last three words mattered because they were the fig leaf that saved Swanepoel from the prospect—indeed, the near certainty—of being shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy or hanged for rank treason, whichever a court martial might decide. As a POW, he could refuse such a request, in law if not in honor, and while it would blast his career in the CEF, Huron could tell he didn’t care.
A staunch supporter of Rhimer, the captain clearly shared his late admiral’s attitudes: this included bleeding for “colonials”. But Huron suspected it went deeper than that. Many in the Meridies would welcome Eltanin being forced to beg for succor, to the point of withdrawing its petition, and he guessed Swanepoel was one of their number. He (Swanepoel) hadn’t contented himself with a private comment but made his declaration formal, thus giving it the force of law to all those POWs now paroled.
That fell more heavily on the officers than the enlisted personnel, and officers were their greatest need. Swanepoel could not fail to know that. For once, Huron regretted his lack of faith in the efficacy of prayer to seal the fate of Captain Gerald Swanepoel.
Yet in the end, the captain’s malignancy turned out to be for naught. As he considered options for frustrating Swanepoel’s intentions, Lev Anson handed him the assessment he’d requested from the astrogation department with a resigned look.
“So we are totally fucked.” Kris slumped back in her seat as Rafe finished, her knuckles white and her face nearly gray. “I don’t—don’t—fuck’n believe this.”
“Physics beats all, Kris. No matter what we believe.”
The blaze in her eyes informed him that thought was not happily expressed; he knew her feelings as well as his own; if he hadn’t been so exhausted, he could have come out with something better.
He shrugged. The assessment Anson handed him stated the Apollyon Gates were up to their old tricks: in the time window the operation required, they couldn’t get all the forces they needed through the transit at once. If they sent the raiding force through first, as their plan required, they couldn’t send the second force for, at best, 64 hours. Caneris, coming in from Ivoria, labored under no such handicap, and could easily cut the raiders off at the Acheron, even if the decoy plan worked. That Caneris could intervene and halt the attack on the slaver fleet was not out of the question.
Looking down, he saw the congeners in the whiskey doing something strange and rather dubious with the lipids in the coffee. He set the cup aside.
“Might be best we bolt back to ELSEC and tackle the problem from that side.”
“What’re we gonna do there?” Kris’s eyes were nearly burnt orange—shocking to see. “Same ass-fucking, different gravity well? How’s that better?”
“Kris . . .” His mouth pulled in an exhausted frown . “I’m not seeing a way through this. But my powers of observation aren’t all that keen at the moment. If you wanna go toe to toe with this, I’m not gonna get in your way. But it’s gotta be quick. We can’t hang fire any longer on this.”
“Yeah . . .” Kris bit the inside of her cheek, accepting the olive branch in spite of her seething anger. “How much time do I have?”
“I can give
you until the forenoon watch. That’s firm.”
The boil turned down another notch. “Okay. I’ll take ya up on that.”
“If you can break this open, I’ll back you on it. Otherwise, we have to pull stumps and bolt. And I can’t speak for Commander Yanazuka. Or the General.”
“Uh huh.” That was only fair.
“I might suggest hunting up Major Lewis. I sent a her flash on this and you two are . . . pretty much on the same page.”
“Okay.” She rose and walked to the wardroom’s hatch, then turned back. “Um . . . Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
The hatch cycled and Kris stepped into the passageway. As it irised shut, she glanced back.
My pleasure. Did he really mean that?
* * *
Kris found Min in the stateroom that had formerly belonged to the late unlamented Commander Sales and now served as a flag bridge in place of the previously demolished compartment which they’d not wasted time or effort to rebuild, scowling through thick cloud of windows.
“What’s all this?” Kris asked as the windows slowly turned in their orbits.
“Salamis,” Min said, poking a window with her forefinger. “Lepanto. Glorious First of June. Midway. Samar. Kalinin Bay. Malabar Straits. Rhiannon’s Waltz. Kalervo Station. Mananzas Cay.” She paused and hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Trafalgar’s back there somewhere.”
“Looking for answers?” Her gaze compassed the entire cloud.
“Yep. What’s up?”
“Commander Huron said he flashed you on the . . . developments.”
“That’s a nice word for it.”
“What’re you finding?”
“The wisdom of the ancients. Some not so ancient, though. And plenty not too wise. You wanna sit down?”
“Thanks.” Kris settled gingerly in a seat just outside the cloud. “Any favorites?”—leaning back slightly as The Battle of the Saintes passed within a centimeter of her nose.
“Sure. There’s Salamis.” Min plucked it from the swarm and pinned it to the desktop. “Great example of coaxing the enemy into a confined space where he can’t effectively maneuver. Artemisia pulled off a neat trick there—if a bit underhanded. Xerses shoulda listened to her. Always pay attention to the chick with the contrary views.”
Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit Page 50
