Loralynn Kennakris 1: The Alecto Initiative (23 page)

“Oh, she was implanted, alright.” He twirled the lit
cigarette without bringing it near his lips. The ribbon of smoke tickled Kris’s
nose. “Damn clever operation. Simple implant, but very extensive memory
manipulation—worse’n I’ve seen. Hard to check for that.”

“But the implant tests . . .”

Taliaferro waved the cigarette at her. “The memory stuff
must’ve masked it. Stirred her responses enough that our baseline got scrammed
or something. Not a lot, mind you—but enough. After all, it’s pretty easy to
get somebody to leave a bomb somewhere: all they have to do is
forget
bombs are dangerous—and this wasn’t even a bomb, exactly. Just an
electrical
device. Like I said, simple. Simple and neat.”

“But can you do that in a week?” Huron broke in. “I thought
–”

“No, you can’t,” Taliaferro interrupted. “But they didn’t
have her a week. Six weeks is more like it. They must’ve taken her just after
she and Lora Comargo got to Hestia.” Taliaferro paused, flicked the ash from
his cigarette onto his desk. The air-conditioning kicked up to deal with the
smoke and he scooped up the ash with a slightly embarrassed air. It smeared.

“They killed Lora Comargo right after interrogating her, of
course. That gave them time to finish visosculpting the double and then send
her back with the real one’s ID and a cover story a day or so before the pick
became public. That way, it’s all over the media and the new Lora didn’t have
to do anything that might muss her cover. She could hole-up, be reclusive—if
she acted a bit off, people’d call it spousal distress.” Taliaferro brushed the
ash off his hand into the trash. “Like I said, clever.”

“Even so, that seems like a long time to fool people,” Huron
observed.

Taliaferro shrugged. “Not really. Vacation, y’know. No mail,
no calls. Privacy bots handling everything. Nothing suspicious about
that
.”
He made a sour face, took his cigarette in his fingers again and regarded
doubtfully.

“Damn,” he muttered and stubbed it out in the ashtray. The
ashtray gulped and swallowed the butt. “Chemical interrogation can tell you a
lot—let ‘em get all the details of the cover just right. They used memory
modules in the double—kinda risky to implement, but we know how much they care
about
that
. Work good when they work.”

“So what went wrong? Us capturing the ship before they were
ready?”

“No.” Taliaferro scratched at the halo of hair around his
mahogany scalp; fluffing it up then smoothing it down again. “They were going
to release her in few days anyway. Y’all just made it more melodramatic. Of
course, I expect they weren’t thrilled with you taking out Anton Trench and his
ship—”

Kris looked up. “Anton? His name was Anton?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

“Yeah. Big slaver muck-muck. Anyway, I think that probably
played right into their hands actually. High-profile rescue, her testimony
she’d only been held for a week, Lora Comargo back here doing the traumatized
spouse thing—we weren’t as careful as we might have been.” Taliaferro started
fishing in and patting his pockets. “No. What went wrong is you, Ms.
Kennakris.”

“Me?”

“Yes, ma’am. You see, it’s almost impossible to get someone
to drop the hammer on their, um . . . their lover.”

“Me!” Kris sputtered. “But I wasn’t—I’m mean, we never . .
.”

Taliaferro smiled crookedly. “Well fortunately, I guess,
that doesn’t matter much—the
fact
of your relationship, I mean. What
mattered is that she thought of you that way. You see, one reason they had to
kill Lora Comargo and replace her with their gal was to isolate Ms. Rathor
sexually—make sure nobody showed up and did what you did. And of course they
needed to keep tabs on her, that sort of thing. Needed to be able to set her
off at the right time, too. Implants don’t always take, you know.” Taliaferro
dug inside a coat pocket. Kris saw his fingers wriggling fruitlessly through
the thick fabric. “But then she met you. They didn’t figure on that, of course.
No way to. The two of you hit it off, so to speak, and so when you showed up
and indicated your
intentions
—shall we say—it worked. It broke the
implant. That’s why they panicked and tried to kill you when they found out
about you two. Kinda stupid of them really—especially with that damned drone.”

“What were they planning to do with it?” Huron asked.

“The drone? Don’t think it
was
part of plan—haven’t
unraveled all that yet. No, it looks like they got panicky and someone saw an
opportunity for a twofer and went for it. Bad call.”

Kris and Huron looked at each other and Taliaferro said,
“Ah, here’s that little sucker.” He pulled a thin card from some hidden recess
of his coat and held it out to Kris. There were some numbers on it.

“What’s this?”

“Number and map reference of the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“Mariwen Rathor’s room. Since you’re a friend.” Kris held
the card like a flower petal. “They don’t give out calling cards. Her personal
number’s restricted. Best I could do.”

Kris nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Taliaferro stood, took his overcoat off the back of his desk
chair and made motions as if to leave. “Well, if that’s all . . .”

“Why’d she start shooting?” Kris asked suddenly.

Taliaferro paused in the middle of an awkward-looking
gesture, his heavy, mobile lips twisted down in distaste. “Oh that.
Salvage-fused.”

Huron went a little gray. Kris just looked confused. “
What
fused?”

“Salvage-fused,” Taliaferro repeated, shrugging his overcoat
the rest of the way on. “That’s something I guess we’re gonna have to pay more
attention to now. It’s an old term they used to apply to nukes. The idea was to
always set them off, even when they missed. Might do some collateral damage
that way. In this case, if the mission gets botched, the idea is to get them—the
subject, you understand—to pull a weapon and do as much damage as possible.
Damn difficult to find too, because it doesn’t depend on suppressing an inhibitor—which
we can test for—but on jacking up the will to survive—which we can’t. Anyway,
that wasn’t the point this time. They were sneakier than that.”

“How so?” Huron asked, almost against his will.

“They salvage-fused the EMP device, too. It was rigged to go
off the moment she died. If she couldn’t plant it, they fixed her up to force
us to kill her and set off the bomb that way. The portico was plenty close
enough—it would have done a hell of a job.”

Taliaferro absently fished out another cigarette and started
to light it. “Yep, they had it fixed all around. Undetectable explosives,
homemade EMP, a VIP plant. Probably laughed themselves sick over how brilliant
they were.”

He changed his mind again, threw the cigarette in the trash,
ran a hand over his scalp. “Trying to stop that.” It took a moment for Kris to
realize he was talking about the cigarette. “Anyway, looks like it would have
worked too, except for you, Ms. Kennakris. I hope you appreciate what you’ve
accomplished here.”

Kris had a sour taste in her mouth. If those fucking guards
had been able to shoot worth a shit, she wouldn't have had time to accomplish
anything at all.

“Suppose there's that too,” Taliaferro said and Kris jerked,
realizing she'd been muttering out loud. But Taliaferro seemed to take it
seriously, because he went on. "Somebody engaging in gunplay on the
Exhibit Hall steps was about the one threat that
wasn't
in the security
plan. Aerial attack or trying to breach the perimeter with a 50-tonne lorry—yeah,
but not a woman popping off with a sidearm. So you could say she had the
element of surprise." He shrugged. “Then again, who wants to go through
life as the guy who dropped Mariwen Rathor? Probably spoil my aim.”

Kris grimaced and wiped her lips across the back of her
hand. “Is that why they picked her?” 

Taliaferro made a wide, helpless gesture. “Yeah, that
could've been part of it. Maybe. Who knows? There's any number of reasons that
make sense: high profile, good access, lots of connections . . . fun.”

“What happened to them?”

“The fake Miss Comargo and the rest? Oh, we bagged them.
We’re pumping them dry now.” A sudden frown crossed his face. “You don’t want
to see them, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t think there’s gonna be much left to talk to
anyway.”

Kris stared at the card cupped in her palm. “So what happens
now?”

“To whom?”

“Mariwen.”

“Well, she’s in rehab. Be there for a while, I expect. She
won’t be charged with anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“Will she be alright?”

That helpless gesture again. “I don’t know how
alright
she’ll be. She’s gonna have some pretty shit to live with—if you’ll pardon my
French. But we’ve got the best doctors and techs there are working with her. I
think they’ll get her straightened around okay. A lot of it’s up to her. But I
think she’ll pull through.” He reached for his hat. “Eventually.”

She turned the card over. “When can I see her?”

“That’s up to her and the docs—not me. I’m just a cop.” He
picked up the hat and pulled it on, then turned to Huron. “Oh. Trin Wesselby
gave me a message for you, Lieutenant. Said to be sure I told you Mankho had a
code name for this caper. Called it the
Alecto Initiative
. Seems he’s a
classically educated cove too. She said you’d find that . . . interesting.”

“Thanks,” Huron replied with no tone in his voice at all.

Taliaferro tipped the brim to them. “Well . . . Good day,
Ms. Kennakris. Lieutenant.”

Kris and Huron stood outside the NBPS headquarters
building, waiting for the cab Kris had paged to take her to the hospital. The
weather service had allowed a lovely day, warm with just the right amount of
breeze and it fanned her hair as they waited, neither talking. Kris was
thinking of the offer Huron had made to her. Huron was thinking about Kris.
Both were thinking about Mariwen.

After a few minutes, Huron saw the cab approaching and
gestured toward it. “Give her my best . . . If you can.” Kris nodded. The cab
brought itself to a smooth stop and sidled over. As it verified her card as its
fare, its gull-wing doors popped and she stooped to get in.

“Kris?”

She looked back, a hand on the open door. “Yeah?”

“Why did you go to meet Mariwen that day?”

Kris wet her lips. “I . . . I heard they were leaving
afterwards.” She drew a shivering breath. “I thought—I was afraid . . . afraid
she wasn’t gonna say goodbye.”

“You didn’t know that she was implanted?”

Kris looked down at pavement. “No. I didn’t.”

She heard Huron draw in a sharp breath and then let it go,
slowly. Then she lifted her head, not knowing what to expect but wanting to face
it all the same. Their eyes met and there was an understanding there—not
complete, but accepting of its incompleteness. He gave her the barest nod.

She climbed into the cab. The doors shut, the little engines
revved, and it was gone.

*     *     *

Kris stepped out into the hallway and carefully closed
the door to Mariwen’s room. She wanted to vomit. The doctors had told her what
to expect and she had listened, she had believed them, but she had not
understood
.

There was, it turned out, something worse in the universe
than rape, and now Kris had seen it. The husk in the bed, host to a complex web
of monitor leads, was perfectly pleasant and physically pretty, answering
questions with the carefully nuanced inflections of the better sort of
software.

She took her hand off the doorknob, fighting down the bile
jumping in her throat. After a few deep breaths, the sick hot tingling in her
cheeks started to fade and she reached into her pocket for Huron’s card.

Think about it
,
Kris
, he’d said to her as they
had left Taliaferro’s office.
It’s hard—we test cadets to destruction at
the Academy, and I don’t look down on anyone with the sense to say no. But I
think you have something that will really make a difference one day. You don’t
owe anyone a damn thing, but if you want it, I’ll see that you get in
.

She hit
CALL
.

A moment later Huron’s image shimmered into existence on the
overlay. “Hey, Kris.”

“Hi, Huron. I’m in.”

# # #

As anyone who has dealt with the military knows, it is an institution that is very fond of acronyms. This fondness is, of course, shared by the government and many industries, but I think it is in the military that this fondness finds its fullest expression. The universe which Loralynn Kennakris inhabits is no different in this regard, and acronyms abound.

Acronyms do serve a useful purpose in making communication more economical but I believe they also serve a social purpose by identifying those who are ‘in the club’ as it were. The merits of this custom are perhaps debatable, but it poses a special problem to authors, who must invite their readers into the club, yet cannot always give them a proper initiation without introducing discordant elements and generally bogging things down, since people who speak ‘acronym’ rarely stop to define their terms.

The time-honored solution is, of course, a glossary but since ours is something of a living document and (like the series) a work in progress, we decided it would be better to offer it on-line, rather than include it at the end of each book. So if you wish be ‘in the club’, you can find our glossary at:

http://www.loralynnkennakris.com/Kennakris_glossary.pdf

Please enjoy.

Please enjoy this free excerpt from
The Morning Which Breaks
,
the next
Loralynn Kennakris
novel, coming soon to Amazon Kindle!