Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (34 page)

“No!” The vehemence in her voice startled her. “I mean—I’m glad I didn’t miss it. Thanks for gettin’ after me.”

She waited for some rejoinder, some witty repartee, but he said nothing. Then, after a minute, he remarked, his eyes still on his drink, “It is getting late, though.”

Not out of nowhere, but out of a place she hadn’t charted yet, came the urge to touch him—reach across that meter between them and place her hand along the smooth plane between his cheekbone and the angle of his jaw. The urge was strong enough that she pulled her hands back into her lap and, for a long moment, forgot to breathe.

Why not?
she asked the space between them. Letting her hands up to the edge of the table, she caught his eye as he looked up—a direct gaze, both earnest and apprehensive.

“Maybe
we
should call it a night?”—her voice soft in this space they’d just made their own.

Huron read her look, weighed and measured it, and glanced down again. Raising his eyes a heartbeat later, he gave her that asymmetric smile. “Did you just make a pass at a superior officer?”

Kris shrugged, the blush flaming against her pale skin. “Umm—I—ah, I guess. Yeah.”

His eyes stayed on her. “Is that something you really want?”

Her teeth indented her lower lip. “Rafe . . . why don’t you ever tell me what
you
want?”

“Because you’re worth waiting for.”

“Waiting for
what
?”

“For you to be sure you’re ready.”

He stretched out one hand, placing it on the table between them, palm up. After few seconds, she reached across the distance—once so great—and took it.

“You can stop waiting.” Her voice wavered as she squeezed his hand. They stood up together, and she nodded toward the exit. “It’s just a short walk.”

After that, she never knew what went wrong. Maybe she was a bit too rough—or he, a little too hurried. Maybe it was just too soon. Whatever it was, suddenly something curdled inside her and all she could think of was Trench. Trench’s fingers, Trench’s eyes, there in the room with them. Together on the couch—her shirt off, his open, zippers undone—she pushed him away.

“Look, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

Huron let her go, accepting the rebuff, but a little too drunk to let it slide without a comment. Still holding her hand, he tried to guess what was bothering her and, not unexpectedly, he guessed wrong.

“Kris, this doesn’t have to mean—”

She snatched her hand out of his. “Mean
what
?”

“Well . . . anything,” Huron finished, a little lamely.

“You
sonofabitch
! You
motherfuck’n
son of a
bitch
!” She surged off the couch, away from him, all interest in rationality blown away by the clumsy answer. “What do you
mean
it doesn’t mean
anything
? Is that whatcha want? A little slave-bred whore-girl who’ll suck it ‘n chuck it and not
mean
anything? Well
fuck you
, Huron! When you’re the one crawling around on your hands and knees getting fucked in the ass, it
goddamn well
means
something
!”

Huron hadn’t been prepared for an attack; maybe his response was natural. But all she heard was the confusion that rendered his tone maddening. “Kris—that isn’t . . . When you—”

“When I
what
?” she snarled over her shoulder, her back rippling with anger. “Get mouthy? Not nice and quiet so you can handle ‘em? What’s the matter, Huron?
On your knees,
cunt
—that’s how it goes. Come on, asshole! Say it—take a shot!”

Realizing the problem at last, Huron collected his wits and got off the couch—slowly. He extended an arm to her, placating. She jerked away. Trying to be apologetic, he began, “I’m sorry, Kris—”

“Fuck You!” she screamed, spinning on him. “Don’t you
ever
call me that!”

“But it’s your—”

Her open hand cracked across his face. “It’s not!
Goddamnyou!
It’s
not!
” The room was full of other people now: Mangle, Strich, the Slime Line Crew, the ‘tween-desks whores—and Trench. Everywhere she looked, Trench. Trench who’d first called her that. Trench who’d raped away her life, her dreams, her name. Trench who couldn’t even leave her own name . . .

Instinctively she lashed out—hit something hard. Hit it again. But hands were grabbing her now: Trench’s hands, coming to rape and rob again. Trench’s hands that never let go. She twisted, screaming, fighting as she’d fought that first time, but the hands were trapping her, holding her, and she fell gagging to the floor—feeling Trench all over her—gagged again and lost herself in a paroxysm of vomiting. She heaved again and again, retching until her abdomen burned—until she brought up nothing but the ghost of Trench’s stinking blood.

Someone lifted her, gripping her around the waist, around her painfully quaking abdominals. She batted feebly at the arms carrying her and was dumped into something hard and cold. Water hit her forcefully in the face; shocking and merciless, flooding down her front, purging away vomit and Trench. Strong and impersonal fingers went to work, removing the rest of her clothing—
No no stop it you’re dead
—but the hands would not let go, the fingers continued to work. She was too weak to resist, too blind to see, water and hair and something that must be soap in her eyes. She began to cry; massive tearing sobs that ripped fire through her strained abdominals, a hoarded decade of unshed tears—and the hands kept stripping her—and she began to kick, banging painfully against hard metal, while somewhere in a dark recess of her overwrought brain a little piece of her woke up and said:
What the fuck’s the matter with you? He’s dead goddammit! Stop it!

But she couldn’t stop it, and with her crying and kicking tried to drown out the little voice—that fucking little traitor voice—who wouldn’t let her be alone with her agony. And the hands kept doing what they were doing, and she kept doing what she was doing, and at last the paroxysm beat itself to death against the shower’s metal walls.

*     *     *

She lay on something soft: a bed—her bed—wrapped in a warm, fuzzy robe with someone wiping her face with a warm, wet cloth. She hurt all over and her mouth tasted terrible. The cloth wielder seemed to realize this and held a glass to her lips.

“Here, try this. Don’t swallow.” It was astringent tasting and smelled of herbs. She washed it over her tongue, behind her molars, and spat it back into the glass. A little dribbled down her chin, and the cloth obligingly wiped it away. “Better?”

She nodded.

“Want anything?”

“A drink,” she croaked.

“Be right back.”

She heard footsteps leave and the taps running. She realized she was wearing a T-shirt and underwear beneath the robe, both still damp. The footsteps returned.

She looked up for the first time, saw Huron standing there offering a glass of water and smiling gently, but with concern crinkled around his dark eyes. She took the glass, drank gratefully. He settled on the edge of the bed.

“What’s your name?”

“Loralynn,” she answered, still raspy-voiced. She cleared her throat. “Loralynn Kennakris.”

“Pleased to meet you, Loralynn”—his accent gave it a funny, soft lilt—“I’m Rafe Huron.” They shook hands. She finished her water, reached out to put the glass on the bedside table, and dropped it when she saw him clearly. He snatched it out of the air as it fell.

“Oh shit, Huron. Did I do that?” The left side of his face had a mark like a bright red leaf on it, overlaid with four neat scratches, and there was a bruise beginning to show purple to the right of his split lower lip. There were rips in his uniform shirt and god knows what else.

“Nah,” he said smiling, which must have hurt his mouth. “Some guys came in here and beat the shit out of me while you were taking a bath. They did clean up the living space, though.”

She dropped her eyes. “Oh,
shit
,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, Huron—”

“Hey, no fair,” he cut her off. “Huron’s my father. I’m not calling you—”

“No. Please don’t.”

“I won’t, Loralynn.” Funny, it sounded so pretty the way he said it. “You know,” he went on, “I think that’s the most beautiful name I ever heard.” He sounded like he meant it and that hurt somehow. She had to make a joke about it just to put a barrier in the way.

“Is that a line?”

“I don’t know,” he answered in a like tone. “If it was, would it work?”

That made her laugh, and laughing made her belly hurt. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then I’ll keep it in mind.”

They both laughed, and the pain made Kris turn it into a groan. “Oh gawd, I’m a mess.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, then his face lost its bantering look. “You gonna be alright, Kri—ah, Loralynn?” The self-consciousness in his voice made her want to laugh again, but she swallowed it. Somehow, that name lost all its power when he fumbled it like that.

“Y’know,” she began, looking away from his eyes, “I suppose you’ve earned the right to call me whatever you want.”

“I
like
Loralynn.”

“Yeah, me too.”
Especially when you say it like that
.

“But it could get messy on the comms.”

Which reminded her of several unpleasant facts—like she was a jig and he was a senior combat officer.
Goddammit!
How was this going to be explained? If NavMed found out she’d freaked out like this, she’d lose her flight rating for sure.

And they
were
going to find out. Just as soon as some fuck’n brass hat saw Huron looking like he’d been through a fleet action—and lost.
Shit
. They’d been after her for years, saying she was unstable, and now she’d gone and handed them her wings on a bed of lettuce. She groaned and Huron put his hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, it’s alright.”

“Like fuck it is.”

“It’s all right,” he enunciated, as if maybe she hadn’t understood. “I—”

“Christ, Hur—Rafe . . .”
Dammit
, now she’d done it too! “You know what they’re gonna do when they find out. I mean”—she gestured—“about this.”

“Me sitting on your bed?” he asked with exaggerated innocence. “Nothing in the regs against that. Three-grade rule.”

She counted deliberately. It took a moment. “It’s four grades.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh—” She bit down hard on it. “Y’know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said heavily. “I know what you mean. Look, Kris”—he said it unconsciously and somehow it didn’t bother her at all—“you’ve been cranking on that wire since I met you. It was going to snap. They always do. We all knew it. BFD. But there’s no reason for this to leave the room.” Impulsively, he took her hand in his, covered it with his other hand. His palms were dry and warm. “The nearest heavy’s over at the HQ Annex. The CO’s at CYGCOM until next weekend. I’m on furlough, you’re on leave—”

“But I have to check in with HQ—”

“I suggest you lay low for two or three days. No one’s gonna notice a few days and everyone knows what an evening at Romney’s is like after a cruise.” He winked. “Tell ‘em food poisoning or something—there’ll be a lot of that going around. It’ll be fine.”

She nodded.

He stood. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.” He reached into his wallet, pulled out a card, handed it to her. “Here’s where I’m staying for the next few days. It’s not far. Call if you need anything”—he smiled—“unofficial. I’m not doing any work this week.”

“Brentagne’s?” That was all it said, besides a contact sigil and standard map ref. She’d never heard of it.

“Yeah, it’s a house-of-ill-repute here in Old Town.”

She squinted at him. “Are you kidding?” There was no telling with Huron sometimes—he said the most outrageous things that later turned out to be true. Maybe staying at a pricy whorehouse wasn’t really that outrageous?

He just smiled, then touched his lip—it was bleeding again—and raised his eyebrows. “Come and see.”

She was tempted to throw the card at him. She didn’t. She held it tight in her hand. He turned to go. “Good night, Loralynn.” Very soft, very sweet.

“Good night, Rafe.”

When the outer door hissed closed and locked, she felt tears well up again and spill over onto her cheeks. But they were brand-new tears this time.

Mather’s Landing
Epona, Cygnus Sector

Kris returned from an early AM run in a surly mood. The weather had been dreary, even for Epona, and she’d managed to oversleep, which meant she had to cope with more foot traffic on her preferred route than she liked (what she liked was none), and the exercise had not raised her spirits like it usually did. Running was probably her least favorite form of exercise—she much preferred sparring, but finding sparring partners off-ship at 0530 was difficult. On board, she could often get Huron interested in a bout, as long as he already had a pot of coffee in him (he usually did; off-watch, he was known for keeping eccentric hours) and they typically shared a long hot shower afterwards, no matter who won.

Thinking of Huron now wasn’t helping her mental state either. It had been a week since that night. She hadn’t seen him again as he’d been called away for a few days, but the messages they’d exchanged were cordial—or a little more than cordial—and that had ratcheted up the tension she felt in unexpected ways. Her strong urge—to clear the air between them, somehow set things straight—was not one she’d known before and few people could have been less well equipped to deal with it. Yet she believed she needed to deal with it—not wait for him. For one thing, she wasn’t sure whose court the ball was in now, and this same belief, which had no center or origin point she could discern, seemed to be telling her that this was not something she justly lay at his feet.

Unfortunately for her frayed nerves, he wasn’t expected back until the next day cycle at the earliest when she was scheduled to report for her new assignment on the heavy maintenance depot orbiting overhead, meaning it’d probably be the next duty week before she could arrange to see him. So when she entered her apartment and heard the xel she’d left behind warbling and saw the console flashing an amber alert screen, all she could think was that this was really shaping up to be another stellar day.

Stalking across the living space with her mouth set in a grim line, she snatched up her xel. The message automatically opened: “Second Notice: Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Loralynn Kennakris, #LTK 059 413. Per NAVMED Instructions”—her eyes skipped over the list of digits only a bureaucrat could love—“you are hereby required to report to”—skimming the address and map reference—“for routine PYSCHEVAL at 1430 hours, this date: DTG—”

Yeah, I know that’s today, assholes
. Furling the xel, she tossed it aside.
Of all the fuck’n things to hafta deal with right now . . .

The first notice, along with an automatic deferral, had come through a month ago while they were on a ‘good-will’ tour of Karelia. She’d been hoping that out here, where everything took longer, it might be another month before they caught up with her. A lot could happen in a month.

It was usual to give flight officers a psycheval after a long deployment and Kris had been showing signs of acute stress. Huron knew it, her squadron mates knew it, and Commander Calvin Mertone, Trafalgar’s new DSRO, undoubtedly knew it too. As DSRO, Mertone wasn’t in her administrative chain of command, but he was responsible for flight operations and that gave him a lot of say regarding her fitness. So she was pretty sure he was behind this insistence on having her psycheval now. He’d called her in the second day after that that night with Huron—some stupid bullshit about that incident with the Andaman slaver they’d had to let go back in Winnecke IV—and he would’ve had to have been blind not to notice the shape she was in.

He probably thought it was the answer to his prayers. There was a whole transfusion’s worth of bad blood between them, stemming from an incident back at the Academy, when he’d been an instructor and she was his student. There’d been a graduation party, he’d been drinking, it’d been late. She still wasn’t totally clear on what happened—she had no memory of the actual incident—but it led to allegations of sexual harassment against him and assault against her, which had subsequently been hushed up as a ‘misunderstanding’. The war was still in its disastrous early phase then and convening an official inquiry over a confused case of “he said/she said” wasn’t on anyone’s list of priorities.

Even so, the incident cost Mertone the DSRO billet on
Trafalgar
, which he’d been lobbying hard for, while Kris got a coveted posting to the big new carrier’s recon wing, under Huron. Mertone had been assigned—effectively exiled—to a staff posting at CGHQ Nereus. It was a serious professional blow, and one Kris was sure he hadn’t forgotten.

After he’d spent over a year in that exile (missing the entire war),
Trafalgar’s
DSRO billet opened up again. Mertone had reapplied, been selected, and reported about a month ago. While he hadn’t done anything overt, Kris found him easy enough to read, and there was no doubt in her mind he was gunning for her. A negative psycheval would almost surely spell the end of her career as a flight officer. If the examiner was determined to be a real shit about it, they might even get her dismissed from the Service on a psychiatric disability. However it was diced, pushing her psycheval through now gave him a chance of paying her back with compound interest, and maybe then some.

At least, it had been a week since
that
night. Kris could still feel the bile burns in her throat, the soreness in her elbows and knees, but the raw feelings that might show up in a psycheval were under control. She’d have to lock things down more than usual this time—not so much that it would raise alarms, though—and hope the examiner would just want to get it over with. If this was the best that bald fucker could come up with, she’d deal with it. She’d handled worse.

*     *     *

At 1430 exactly (meaning she was actually five minutes late), Kris walked into Epona Outstation’s medical annex, in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Mather’s Landing, not to far from the shuttle port. All official buildings on Epona were nondescript, with the same dull exteriors and the same boxy architecture (if it even deserved that term) made lumpish by rounding off the corners.

Inside, the décor was muted pastels, unfortunate and no doubt decreed by some colonial Minister of Health and Human Services. The CEF would have unquestionably opted for their own scheme, but the planners had concluded that Epona did not warrant dedicated medical facilities, so the outstation shared this space with a civil one, and that apparently meant pastels. The only sign of anything overtly military were the two CSPs supposedly guarding the entrance she’d come through. The Colonial Shore Police were rarely held in high esteem (especially on a station like this, where they were frequently contractors) and these two appeared to be average examples of that unimpressive breed.

At the front desk, she handed her ID to a pudgy receptionist as nondescript as the building: a wispy haired local with a weak smile and a faded chroma-tan (Epona’s denizens hardly ever got the full benefit of what ruddy light their primary could provide). He scanned her in and gave the ID back with that feeble smile unmoved. “Take the lifts to the second floor, then right past the stairwell. It’s the third office on the left, number two-oh-seven.”

Kris slid her ID back in her wallet. “Thanks.”

“Commander Quillan.”

“What?”—as her stomach clenched hard.

The receptionist blinked at her tone. “Commander E.E. Quillan. That’s your doctor today.”

Fuck!
Had Mertone known
that
? She’d had no idea Quillan was on this station. He must’ve just come in—maybe on
Fidelia
? Mertone probably knew her history with Quillan. Yeah, he’d have made a point to know it.
God fuckin’ dammit
—she’d already checked in . . .

Seething with acid feelings, she walked off without a word, boot heels punishing the tile floor.

The man Kris saw when the door to office # 207 slid aside had not changed in any appreciable way from the thin cold gray humorless medical director she’d met on LSS
Arizona
, the day they took off
Harlot’s Ruse
. He still radiated that same obdurate professional rigidity, and Kris thought he wasn’t any happier to see her than she was to see him. He’d been expecting her, certainly, and there was something pointed in his gaze.

Ya think maybe I’ll make your day, is that it?

Looking ostentatiously at the time, he waved her in with an impatient sweep of his hand. “Let us get started, Lieutenant. I imagine you are as anxious to have done with this as I am.”

That was strangely flip from a man like Quillan and it set her teeth on edge. He directed her to the examination couch with the familiar racks of equipment beside it. “Do make yourself comfortable,” he told her as he activated the system. “As you familiar with this procedure, I take it we can dispense with the standard preamble, Lieutenant?”

Kris doffed her cap and set it aside. “Sure”—denying him rank. Let him write her up for that.

Reclining, she unsealed her tunic to allow him to attached the monitor leads to her chest, neck and forehead. As he finished with that and attached the final lead to her right wrist along with a blood-pressure cuff, a side door opened behind her. Twisting her neck, she saw an orderly had entered the room.

What the fuck?!

The acid in her gut spiked. It wasn’t usual to have an orderly present—not that she knew anyway—and not one like
this
. This guy was
big
—a beefy, slab-sided specimen with a broad, coarse-featured face set in a scowl of sterling insensitivity. He moved into a corner and stood there, burly arms crossed.

“Who’s he?” She made no attempt to keep the bite out of her voice.

“My assistant,” Quillan replied. “Do not concern yourself. Let us begin.”

Seeing no other choice, Kris subsided and Quillan started the procedure. The psycheval followed its accustomed course, each set of questions being asked twice, with the second set under examination. As expected, the neural induction probes caused mild feelings of spatial disorientation and drowsiness, but nothing unusual happened until midway through the second set, when Quillan asked, “Your victims?”

Kris blinked rapidly. “Huh?”

“The people you kill. You
have
killed rather a large number. Did they all deserve it?”

Her chest became constricted. “Pretty much.”

“Would you kill them by any means?
Any
means in your power?”

She flexed her pectorals against the bands of tension clamping down. “That—depends.”

“On what? On
what
does it depend?”

The tightness increased, forcing her to gasp for breath. “Dunno. Look—”

“Describe your relationship with Captain Trench in one word.”

A sudden feeling like broken glass in her lungs. “Fuck you!”

“What are your feelings for Rafe Huron? Your most
recent
feelings?”

“
Fuck
You!”
Get up—get up dammit—get the fuck out
—

Something pricked her on inside of the right elbow. Her eyes snapped open. Quillan had inserted an IV.

She started to sit up.

“Do not move, Lieutenant,” Quillan commanded, harsh-voiced, as he injected a small ampoule into the IV. “This is per protocol. Your responses are spiking unusually. This will help the procedure.”

If he’d refrained from that last sentence, Kris might have bought it, but the edge in his voice betrayed that he was lying. She ripped the IV free just as the drugs hit her bloodstream, making the walls flashed brilliant colors and begin to flex. Lunging to her feet, she snapped off the monitor leads, and the crushing sensation in her chest vanished.

“Lieutenant!” Quillan shrilled and the orderly’s massive arms seized her from behind. For all his concerns about Kris’s capacity for violence, Quillan was used to dealing with people acting under naval discipline. He also had faith in the size of his orderly, not understanding what a woman who’d learned unarmed combat from Sergeant Major Yu was capable of.

So he stepped away from his chair and tried to grab Kris by the shoulders. His awkward stance gave her the perfect target and she kicked hard. Her boot made solid contact with his crotch. His eyes bulged as his face went chalk-white and his thin mouth stretched wide in an airless, silent scream. Curling spasmodically around the shattering pain, his descending chin met her rising knee with a resounding crack. He collapsed in a boneless heap.

The orderly, holding Kris in a bear hug, lifted her bodily—another mistake. She snapped her head back, catching his jaw. It wasn’t a telling blow, but it surprised him enough to loosen his grip slightly. She tore an arm free and rammed her sharp elbow into his ribs with adrenaline-fueled viciousness. Beneath the layers of fat and muscle, she felt bone break.

He staggered, uttered an ox-like grunt and dropped her. Instantly, she pivoted, catching him in an arm bar and twisted hard. With the wet, sodden pop of cartilage parting, his left shoulder went. The man was tough—with a low bestial growl, he swung at her with a mammoth fist, a powerful, ungainly punch that she dodged easily. Her foot lashed out and smashed his braced knee—
never lock your knees, ya stupid fuck
. It buckled, he began to topple, and her fist struck right in front of his ear with all her weight and explosive rage behind it. His head slammed into the wall, rebounded, and he pitched onto his face, landing across Quillan’s unmoving form.

Panting savagely, Kris straightened, rubbing her bruised knuckles.
Don’t hit a man with a closed fist
—that advice from Sergeant Major Yu surfaced weirdly in her disordered mind.
Yeah, well
. . . She shook that hand. It stung like son of a bitch, but nothing felt broken.

Oh fuck’n Christ
. That thought came as the redness began clear from her vision and she took in the wreckage heaped before her.
You really slam-fucked it this time
. Her breath was slowing to series of irregular gulps, almost like broken sobs and her shoulders had started to shake. She picked up a towel off a metal tray and swabbed her face and throat with it, trying to breathe through the tremors. The urge to run was so strong it made the muscles her legs jump and there was a cold prickling in her hands and up the back of her forearms.