“In the back corner,” Kyle told them. “It needs to be hooked up to the water line as well; it makes coffee and tea, too.”
“Quite a piece of tech,” one of the ratings said before the Chief’s glare silenced them.
“Was my entire first paycheck back when I left the Academy,” the big Captain said with a cheerful grin. “Stores beer and liquor, makes coffee, heats water for tea. I’ve never regretted it.”
The installation was a quick job, and a fourth rating arrived as they were finishing up with the case of beer that Kyle had labeled as the first delivery.
“Thank you, spacers,” he told them, pulling five beers out of the fridge and passing them around. “Drink these when you’re off shift,” he admonished, meeting the Chief’s eyes levelly.
The man nodded firmly, both accepting that the ratings would be allowed the beer…and that they wouldn’t be drinking it until they were off duty, and chivvied his charges out of the office.
Kyle was certain the ratings weren’t as young as they felt to him—even in war, the Federation wouldn’t be putting anyone in uniform without at least two years of intensive training, which meant they were all at least twenty standard years old.
They just looked younger to his eyes now. He was getting old himself, a reflective thought that had him drawing a coffee from the machine instead of a beer.
A decision he was grateful for a few minutes later when his implant chimed.
“Captain, we have incoming q-com request for you from Admiral Kane,” the communications officer of the watch, a chipper and far-too-young-seeming Junior Lieutenant, informed him.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Please put him through,” Kyle ordered.
He transferred the channel to his office’s wallscreen and waited for a moment while the Seal of the Castle Federation, a stylized castle surrounded by fourteen stars, orbited on the screen.
Then the image of the Admiral, looking just as tired as the day before, appeared on the screen.
“Captain Roberts,” Kane greeted him. “How is Kodiak treating you so far?”
“Welcoming so far,” Kyle replied. “I’ll need to speak with Captain Sarka aboard Alexander before the day is over, but I expect to be able to ship out on schedule.”
“Good,” the Admiral said. “I’ve confirmed with our friends at Foreign Affairs about your diplomatic representative. He’ll be coming aboard shortly, with your shipment of parts for the bombers.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Kyle said. “I wasn’t looking forward to trying to deal with planetary governments entirely on my own.”
“You’ve done all right in the past, Captain; I have faith,” Kane told him. “But I’ll admit we’re hoping for better than all right this time. A proven ability in diplomacy alongside your tactical record will go a long way to forcing that promotion through.”
Kyle nodded wordlessly. He was trying not to think about the operation in those terms—if the Joint Chiefs wanted to make him an Admiral, he’d take the job and the star, but he wasn’t going to do his job any differently to get there.
“Your diplomat will be useful, but I have to warn you about him,” the Admiral continued grimly. “Voyager picked him, Roberts. I wouldn’t have.”
Vice Admiral Nicholas Voyager was a senior member of the Castle Federation’s Joint Department of Intelligence—and had been in charge of the operation that had taken Kyle to the heart of the Commonwealth.
He’d become something of a partisan of Kyle’s, but a diplomat the spy had selected…
“What am I getting into, sir?” he asked flatly.
“Karl Nebula is a Foreign Affairs diplomat, yes,” Kane replied. “Officially, that’s all he is. Unofficially, I am certain he is also a JDI operative and I have reason to believe he’s one of Voyager’s pet assassins.”
“Are we expecting me to need an assassin?” Kyle asked.
“No. Nebula is a snake, Captain. He’s our snake, but that doesn’t make him any less poisonous. Be careful.”
“So long as he doesn’t try to assassinate me.”
Kyle’s last experience with a Joint Department of Intelligence assassin, after all, had been…more personal than he’d have liked.
#
Hesitations aside, Kyle was on hand to meet Nebula when the diplomat arrived several hours later. The fast transport that had been dispatched from Castle was too large to fit into Kodiak’s flight deck herself, so a series of heavy transport shuttles were looping across the gap between the ships, each leaving a cargo container on the deck that the Space Force tractors latched on to and cleared away.
One of those shuttles stayed on the deck for a few minutes longer than the others, a ramp sliding down to disgorge two dozen people. Most were in uniform, a final group of recruits and personnel to fill out a few gaps in Kodiak’s roster.
Four, however, were dressed in neat civilian suits. Two men and two women, all of much the same perfectly turned-out early-thirties mold. The one in front had close-cropped hair and an ageless look to his face that warned of complex and expensive surgery and enhancement.
“Captain Roberts?” he asked, approaching Kyle and giving a reasonably civilian approximation of a salute that Kyle did not return. “I’m Karl Nebula, Federation Foreign Affairs.”
“Welcome aboard Kodiak, Mr. Nebula,” Kyle told him. “I look forward to working with you; we appear to have a rather large undertaking ahead of us.”
“Indeed,” Nebula confirmed. He waved airily back toward his three companions. “Miller, Tsovaritch, Saqqaf,” he introduced each of the three in turn. “My staff. All three are experts on the Antioch-Serengeti Free Trade Zone and the systems involved. We’ll keep you informed on everything going on, above and below board.”
“I appreciate the assistance,” Kyle replied. “If you have a briefing you can provide myself and my senior officer on the Trade Zone?”
“Of course,” Nebula replied. “We’ll put something together while we’re on our way. Do your people have quarters prepared for us?”
“Chief Ryder”—Kyle gestured the NCO standing with him forward—“can you get Mr. Nebula and his people settled?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to meet with you in private at your earliest convenience, Captain,” the diplomat continued. “I have verbal and written instructions to pass on to you from the Joint Chiefs.”
That was…unusual, to put it mildly, but Kyle nodded.
“Of course, Mr. Nebula. Please have Chief Ryder put you in touch with my Operations Officer,” he replied. “Lieutenant Commander Tsien will find you a slot in my schedule.”
Nebula smiled and inclined his head, clearly recognizing when he was being put in his place.
“Hopefully soon, Captain,” he murmured. “Your navigator will need new instructions before we leave, if nothing else.”
Kyle concealed a sigh. He’d been hoping that leaving his Q-ship command behind would get him away from the cloak-and-dagger, but it seemed JD-Intel wasn’t done with him yet.
#
The biggest claim on Kyle’s time that made him unwilling to meet with Nebula immediately, regardless of his willingness to be at the diplomat’s beck and call, was his need to actually make contact with his junior Captain.
There was enough for a new Captain to do that he’d let Sarka schedule the meeting and spent most of the day running around taking care of Kodiak’s minutiae, like meeting Nebula on his arrival aboard the ship.
Tsien had kept him informed of the junior Captain’s availability, however, so he managed to return to his office with roughly thirty seconds to spare before initiating the conference, just enough time to grab another coffee.
Captain Kristyna Sarka was a hook-nosed, swarthy woman. An ugly scar ran from just above her mouth, up through her left eye and around to where her left ear should have been. The eye was a cybernetic replacement, though a high-quality one that would have passed for normal without the rest of the scar.
She hadn’t been an attractive woman to start with, and the impact of the scar gave her an intimidating shock factor. It was also missing from her file photo, and Kyle had to swallow his surprise at the sight of it.
“Captain Sarka,” he greeted her. “I appreciate you making the time to talk to me.”
“I know who’s in command, Roberts,” she said bluntly. “Not exactly doing you a favor to obey orders, am I?”
He smiled.
“I would have given you at least until tomorrow to make contact before I started giving you orders to talk to me, Captain,” he told her. “There is a certain respect due the Captain of a starship, regardless of the chain of command and seniority.”
Sarka seemed to pause, as if processing that, then swallowed and nodded a wordless apology. Kyle suspected at least one other Captain had taken her lack of seniority as an excuse to try and walk over her.
“This is your meeting,” she said, her voice calmer, at least. “I’m at your disposal, Captain Roberts.”
“This is mostly a meet-and-greet, Captain,” Kyle told her. “We’re going to be working together over the next few weeks and likely months as we head out Rimward and bring things out there under control. I need to know which way you’re going to jump and you need to know which way I’m going to.”
“Toward the sound of the guns, from your reputation, sir,” she replied.
“Fair,” he admitted with a chuckle. “That said, Captain, I know where you’re coming from with being a junior Captain promoted to command of a powerful unit due to the death of your predecessor,” he continued seriously. “While I doubt you need my backup with your own crew”—if she did, she wasn’t going to get to keep her golden planet insignia—“if you start getting any flak from our fellow Captains, let me know. So long as you’re part of our little task group, shit they give you is shit they’re giving me, and I will back you. Understood?”
She looked taken aback but nodded her acceptance.
“Yes, sir.”
“I have to ask,” he said after a moment. “Your scar and cybernetics aren’t in the file. What happened?”
Her face twisted uncomfortably, exacerbating the scar dramatically.
“What the reports of Alexander’s damage and Captain Tongue’s death miss is that the positron lance struck deep in our hull,” Sarka said quietly. “It took out the bridge…and it barely missed Aux Con. Debris took out a third of our backup bridge crew and, well…” She touched the scar. “…a third or so of my face.”
“You took command,” Kyle observed.
“Had the medic slap a bandage on my face and give me a local,” she confirmed. “We were in the front line and going toe to toe with a Commonwealth battleship assault. Alexander had to stay in the fight.”
And the fact that the wounds hadn’t been treated quickly explained the severity of the scars, too. The bandage, the local anesthetic, and her internal nanite suite would have kept her alive and functioning, but there would have been a lot of damage. Damage that even modern medicine couldn’t fully repair.
“I understand,” he said quietly, then smiled. “I’m even impressed, Captain. You’ll do just fine.”
“I don’t need your approval or your babysitting, sir,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “But there are two people in this task group you can talk to about the nightmares, Captain—your ship’s doctor and me. My door is open.”
She jerked as if struck, then noticed his smile and seemed to relax.
“We all have them, Captain Sarka,” he continued. “Rank hath its privileges…and its prices.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Thank you, sir.”
#
Chapter 7
Castle System
22:00 September 12, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Gawain Orbit, DSC-052 Kodiak
It was late—by the clock of a faraway line on a far-away world that was used as a standard for all humanity—by the time Kyle actually managed to free up time to meet with Karl Nebula, though the diplomat seemed unbothered when he ushered himself into the Captain’s office with a brown paper bag in one hand.
“Voyager figured my odds of not pissing you off were somewhere between ‘none’ and ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’,” Nebula said cheerfully as he dropped the bag on Kyle’s desk. “So, consider this a preemptive peace offering—we’re on the same side, but I can guarantee we won’t always see the same solution to a problem.”
The bag revealed itself to contain a six-pack of a microbrewery ale that Kyle had failed to find any of on this shore leave. As if he needed more evidence of how closely JD-Intel was watching him these days, though right now, it was for his protection.
“I was expecting you to actually pretend you were a diplomat,” Kyle pointed out, pulling two of the beers out and sliding one across the desk to Nebula. Even Castle’s tiny breweries went in for packaging that kept the drinks at the perfect temperature, and he took an appreciative sip.
“I am a diplomat,” Nebula told him. “I also work quite closely with Voyager and the rest of his department. My staff are purely diplomats; they don’t have my experience in extracurricular activities.”
“Which are?”
“Varied,” the diplomat replied. “I have been a spy and a liar and a thief and a cheat, Captain Roberts, but I serve the Castle Federation above all else—and I owe Nicholas Voyager my life four times over.
“So, understand this.” The cheer suddenly faded and Nebula focused a cold black gaze on Kyle. “Kane will have warned you about me. I don’t know the words; he might have been poetic, he might have called me a psychopath.
“He is entirely correct. I am a high-functioning sociopath with a fundamentally broken sense of morality. Men like me are useful to any government, especially when we imprint on that government as a replacement morality.
“Do you understand, Captain?”
Kyle blinked, and the sudden frozen darkness of Nebula’s face was gone.
“No,” he admitted. “But as you said, we’re on the same side.”
“I will do whatever is necessary to preserve the Federation’s interests,” Nebula told him, his voice less frozen. “Normally, that would potentially include actions that would sacrifice you or your crew, though they would be my last choice, as you have value to the Federation.
“However, my…skills and mindset aren’t truly needed on this mission. I am on this mission, Captain Roberts, to protect you.”
“Me?”
“Voyager likes and trusts you,” the diplomat told him. “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people Nicholas Voyager trusts, Captain Roberts, and even I am not on that list.
“He has charged me to keep you alive, in the face of both your personal enemies and whatever threats face the Federation out in the Rimward stars. I won’t tell you that you can trust me, Captain.” He smiled. It was an extraordinarily predatory expression.
“I will tell you that my primary mission is to keep you alive and see your mission succeed.”
“I see,” Kyle said slowly. Voyager’s idea of a favor was apparently to send him a pet assassin.
“You said you have messages for me from the Joint Chiefs?” he finally asked.
“Written and verbal,” Nebula confirmed, pulling a chip from inside his pristine black suit jacket. “The written orders are basically ‘the Department of Foreign Affairs needs a favor; give it to them,’” he added. “You can check if you like.”
“Why don’t you summarize the headache you’re about to drop on my lap?” Kyle asked, shaking his head with a weary smile and taking another mouthful of beer.
It was good beer, but Voyager might have underestimated how much Nebula was going to get on his nerves.
“The Coraline Imperator has formally requested the presence of Captain Kyle Adrian Roberts, the victor of Huī Xing and the rescuer of over twenty thousand Imperial POWs from the Commonwealth in said system, on Coral for a formal presentation.”
“To be honest, his Imperial High-Handedness didn’t bother to tell us,” the diplomat replied. “It was polite, for all that, though that might have been in comparison to some of the other crap I’ve read recently. I don’t suppose you saw Dictator Periklos’s official response to our offer of membership in the Alliance?”
Periklos ran the Stellar League, a nation whom Kyle’s own efforts had recently embroiled in war with the Commonwealth. That war was opening a second front that the Alliance of Free Stars desperately needed, and coordinating with the Dictator would have made it even more effective.
Since that war had started because the Alliance had managed to get Periklos blamed for their own covert operation…
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t think it was made publicly available.”
“Probably not,” Nebula agreed. “I think it was the first time I’ve ever actually seen the words ‘Go fuck yourselves’ included in a formal diplomatic communique.”
“I’m…not surprised,” Kyle admitted.
“You did set up the Commonwealth to bend him over for a reaming,” the diplomat agreed cheerfully. “Not that their punitive expedition is enjoying their visit to the New Edmonton system. Someone may have leaked their plans to the League before they got there.”
Kyle shook his head. He felt a bit guilty over that, and yet…the Federation and her allies had needed to drag the League into the war. And the Commonwealth would have tried to bring the League into their embrace sooner or later.
The Terrans were convinced that all of humanity would be unified under their banner in the end, after all.
“But we have no idea what the Imperator wants?” he asks.
“He’s going to stick a shiny piece of metal on your chest as a PR move to impress both our citizenries with your bravery and with how well our two nations are working together,” Nebula told him. “And you, my dear Captain, are going to smile and take it, because anything else would risk the alliance that’s the only thing keeping the Federation, the Imperium, and three dozen other star systems free.”
Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5) Page 5
