Natyasha felt a shiver as she watched the mechanical arms. “Send an invite to the Captain of the UC ship. A cruiser?”
“I’m not sure, it’s not a design I’ve ever seen.”
A new design? A ship no one had ever seen? Now that was an interesting bit of leverage. Natyasha turned to the dark hallway and saw the Ambassador gesticulating something to Garth. Leverage indeed. “Could we take it?”
Bark smiled. “Yeah, I think we could.”
Natyasha pictured a starship. Winterthur’s starship. Her starship. “Organize a welcoming party. Keep it discrete, your people. None of the riot squad. Save Malic’s boys for something else.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bark said.
The pair separated and Natyasha walked back to the Ambassador. Garth slouched across from the Ambassador with his head on his chest. Both men were silent.
“Tell her,” Garth said.
Ambassador Myint turned and smiled crookedly at Natyasha. “Can you secure control?”
Natyasha crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Yes.” Enough bantering with the Ambassador.
The Ambassador’s face turned from the polite tilt of a politician to that of a bargaining opponent. “Riots?”
“We have a riot squad.”
Garth snorted.
“Mr. Garth doesn’t sound convinced,” Ambassador Myint said.
“They’re a bit raw, but effective,” Natyasha said.
“Brutal,” Garth murmured.
Ambassador Myint shrugged. “I have no problem with brutal. But it must be effective!” He snapped his finger at Natyasha. “Once this begins, if you cannot secure control, we will. Then I can do nothing, it will be a military matter.”
Natyasha smiled back politely and nodded. Good cop, bad cop. She’d seen it before. He was jockeying.
But what if there was no agreement? What if this was a ruse, and the Ambassador was here to seed dissent? Contingencies flowed. She’d need to attach one of Bark’s crew to the Ambassador. “And your side of the bargain? I’m not going to trade one overlord for another. We need independence.”
Myint smiled and the warm edge of the politician returned. “The Harmony Worlds has no interest in Winterthur as a conquest but only as a trading partner. You are a long way from our space.”
Garth looked to Natyasha. His face wore lines of worry and unhappiness. He opened his mouth as if to speak but instead said nothing.
Natyasha saw her opportunity. Secure the UC starship, secure the colony, and use that leverage against the Harmony Worlds. It might only be one starship, but this far out, one starship was worth a dozen treaties. “Excellent, Ambassador. We can all agree to that, yes?”
Garth looked up through bloodshot eyes and nodded weakly.
Ambassador Myint settled back into his chair and clasped his hands over his breast. A smile of satisfaction rested on his face like it was slathered on. “Of course.”
To add a bit of shock, she thought. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Ambassador, we have a convoy coming in that I must prepare for.”
The look on the Ambassador’s face was exactly what she was waiting for. His eyes betrayed him: he was surprised, very surprised. She liked that. Information always made the best leverage.
Garth saw it too and smiled back at Natyasha.
“Well, you are my ride back,” Garth added as he stood and walked towards Natyasha. “Good evening, Ambassador.”
“Good evening indeed,” Ambassador Myint mumbled as he sat alone in rocky silence.
Natyasha walked out feeling satisfied that the Ambassador would have plenty to keep him up at night. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that on one side was an enemy she knew and the other an unknown enemy. It was an option, a start, a place to leap off from. A leap, she thought, that might have a hard landing.
CHAPTER NINE
Emilie took a deep breath and tasted the tangy recycled air in the back of her mouth. She was ready to be out of this bucket. As ready as she ever was. She stood and listened to her knees crack.
“Ms. Rose,” Salamasina’s voice purred over the intercom.
Emilie felt her hair rise just listening to the voice. She tapped her fingers against the intercom but didn’t push the button yet. Did she want to talk? “What is it?”
“We’re in system, scans coming in, as you requested.”
The excitement started to rise. The first time she’d been back since leaving all those years ago. Would she know anyone? “Great, send it to my console,” she said in as level a tone as she could manage.
“Negative. Too much data, come to the bridge,” Salamasina said with a hint of arrogance.
Emilie wanted to slap the intercom just for good measure, but instead kept silent and tugged on a jacket.
She’d been waiting for this, to see what she actually purchased. Not just sketchy line items that were four months old, but real live assets. Robotic miners, automated refineries, orbital silos. All Core, no, she thought, all hers.
The hallways, normally empty and quiet, were filled with crew of the Gallipoli. Men and women hauled and shifted as the accumulated layer of filth from the voyage was scrubbed away. Only the smell of harsh chemical cleaners did anything to change the taste of the ship.
Emilie passed through with a professional indifference. She knew how these things went. It was the same whether it was a superlev, an elevator, or even a short trip arcjet: people had to organize. She stepped and dodged and found her way to the bridge.
The bridge was a sharp change from the chaos happening down the hall. A set of sleek granite topped consoles huddled beneath overhead displays. Mustafa sat on the top of one. Samalasina relaxed in a reclining chair with silvery leads trailing out of her head.
The professionalism and design of the bridge always impressed Emilie. Every time she walked on she felt like she was on a different ship, a ship where some two-bit merc wasn’t running the show. She nodded to Salamasina and stood next to Mustafa. “Which console can I take?”
Mustafa glanced at Salamasina and smiled back at Emilie. His mustache was growing back in, but was not the thick mass of luxurious broomstick bristles like most Turkish men could wear. “Any,” he said in an indifferent tone.
Emilie felt something was off, like a joke she had just walked in on. She glanced around and took a seat next to Mustafa.
The display scrolled rapidly and abruptly stopped. Assets were listed, ranked, categorized. Each was followed by a list of astrological details. Velocity, acceleration, vector.
Emilie squinted and leaned in closer. She tapped her fingers onto the cool slab of granite and scrolled down the list. Something was wrong. It came back to her, all assets in system. Samson! Dirty son-of-a-bitch, she thought, he moved the assets out.
“Very good, thank you Mustafa,” she said.
Mustafa looked over to Salamasina and shrugged slightly in disappointment. He slid off the console and returned to the Captain’s chair. The one thing on the bridge that was original was the alloy and strap covered chair. It would almost look proper with an old style maritime wheel before it.
The betrayal she felt was only surpassed by the anger. Anger at no one but herself. She should have known better. She purchased all assets in system. All Samson would have to do is send a courier and have the automated systems pack up and leave. A part of her respected the wit, the ability to bend the rules to his advantage. But as her eyes scanned the meager list what she expected was significantly reduced.
A small fleet of robotic asteroid miners, the kind that were new technology thirty years before. The refinery ships were a sort specialized for technetium, a mineral quite in demand twenty years ago but in the gutter now. The system additive cells were a style that could produce assemblies, just not very fast, or efficiently. On top of it all was a renewed lease for a prison contract and a service agreement with a monastery.
Her eyes drifted down the list and stopped on the last two. A prison and a monastery. A part of her found some comedy there, but
she knew little of either.
Both were but a minor line item in an otherwise profitable operation. A profitable operation that was headed somewhere else.
She wanted to cry. But no, to hell with that. She still had billions in assets, just not what she thought. New numbers flew through her head and she projected mineral prices into potential profit.
The numbers were large. Huge. Greater than the industrial output of most colonies. But not huge enough. Could she secure a contract? A big juicy one? What did the colony need? Her eyes ran along the room and saw that she had the one thing the colony didn’t.
A proper ship with guns.
“Think we could take ‘em?” Salamasina asked Emilie. The pilot’s eyes were glassy.
“Who? Hun?”
“That frigate.”
The display wobbled and zoomed in on the rough exterior of the potato-shaped frigate. With the exception of a few metallic ports it looked exactly like an asteroid. Only a slight ripple on the trailing edge showed where the grav drive exited.
Emilie squinted at the screen and was sure the pilot must be joking. That bravado between professionals to always know who is the best. “Right,” she said, as she returned her gaze to the screen.
A crewman in an EVA suit poked his head onto the bridge. “Torpedo launcher is online, Captain.”
“Keep going, Gavin, unbox ‘em all,” Mustafa said. He looked up at the display and shifted views.
Above him a list of weapons systems blinked on. Most were offline. A few showed maintenance alerts, but more were showing green.
Emilie blinked at the list. It dawned on her that they weren’t cleaning and making ready—they were unboxing hidden weapons and bringing them online. “Is this standard procedure?” she asked Mustafa.
The weapon list now included railguns, target painters, missile batteries, and the old style torpedo launcher. It was as if Mustafa had latched on to every weapon system he could buy.
Mustafa looked over at Emilie and his eyes twinkled. “You didn’t hire me just to look pretty.”
“I think we can take ‘em,” Salamasina mumbled.
“What do you think, Ms. Rose? Sala has an axe to grind, but we could make off with a pretty penny,” Mustafa said as he chomped on his mustache.
Above him another missile battery came online.
Emilie wasn’t sure what to think of the comment. They had to be kidding. It was outright piracy. The thought ran through her head for a second. She’d have the only ship, a seized convoy, and the combined Core workforce. It’d be a dictatorship. But where would it lead to? She didn’t want any of that. But were they serious? She looked to Mustafa and back to Salamasina. “What’s she got against the Navy?”
“That Captain Grace took her ship.”
“And killed my husband,” Salamasina added.
The bridge felt cold. The granite slab seemed dead beneath Emilie’s hands. She had every expectation that this was a joke, but it wasn’t. There was still UC assets in space, which meant Core assets with them. Time to deflect this, she thought. “Cut the shit. We’ve got a job to do, that Captain will be off to the front and out of our hair soon enough. And c’mon? We just got here.”
Mustafa looked to Salamasina and smiled at her. “See? I told you. You get a job and stick with it. No need to make this personal.”
Salamasina closed her eyes and shifted her body deeper into the chair. She looked serene, almost angelic.
Emilie didn’t feel as relieved as she thought. She had no interest in getting into some half-baked vendetta. There were enough issues throughout the system. Least of all was the fact that she’d paid for a whole bunch of equipment that wasn’t in the system anymore. “How long?”
“Few more hours, depending on that slow ass freighter,” Mustafa said, jabbing a finger at the icon of the Grouper. “Then we can dock, but customs will have the convoy lead dock first.”
“Comms request,” Salamasina said. “It’s them.”
Them? Emilie assumed that was the UC.
“Gallipoli. Continue in and dock at the needle,” a woman’s voice said in a bored tone.
Mustafa held his hands open before him and shrugged. “Or not in this case, eh?”
“What are they doing?” Emilie asked. “Why change?”
Mustafa leaned forward and hit the comms key. “Convoy lead. Ms. Rose wants to know why you’re not escorting her in.”
Emilie felt her face flush red and started to get angry. Her eyes snapped over to Mustafa.
Mustafa wore a slight smile and seemed to enjoy the question.
There was a pause, a moment of silence, followed by a crackling on the other end.
“Gallipoli, we have some assets to secure,” Captain Grace’s voice said over the comms. “We’ll be returning when the convoy is ready to depart.”
“How long? Ask him how long ‘til they leave to secure the assets?” Emilie asked excitedly. She felt impatient to get moving. Impatient to secure what was hers and start laying the groundwork for a corporation. Then it hit her. She could walk, right now, leave it all and tell Samson to shove it. Or at least get her job back. Could she? The waves of emotion rolled over her and she decided no, she couldn’t leave. This was her decision and she’d stick with it.
“One hour,” Captain Grace called back.
“Can you set me up here? I need to talk to him,” Emilie said.
Mustafa tapped on the granite and nodded.
“Captain, this is Emilie Rose. There are Core assets, my assets, at those locations. I’m coming to catalog that.” She released the key and waited.
Mustafa laughed and nodded to Salamasina. “See? Balls, eh?”
“Negative. We’re not going to be docking before departure.”
Shit, she thought. Her eyes danced along the list of assets in system. The monastery had an old Kubota blink launch. “Not an issue, Captain, just drop me off at the monastery.”
“Helluva vacation location,” Salamasina mumbled.
She knew she had to push, too much time to think on it and he’d cut her off. “Captain?”
“Gallipoli. Approach to fifty meters. Ms. Rose, suit up and prepare for transfer. No baggage please, ma’am,” a female voice called back.
The moment came and went and luck was on her side. It might be routine, it might be boring, but at the very least she might secure a few extra items. Who knows what sort of goodies she might discover on the fringe. The robotic systems couldn’t loot everything. Time to recover some payback. “Mustafa?”
Mustafa nodded. “You heard ‘em, Sala, bring us in.” He turned to Emilie. “And us?”
“Bring it in, dock up, and provision. Try to avoid any conversations. You’re just my escort, got it?”
“Of course, just a taxi,” Mustafa replied with a snort.
Emilie stood quickly and nodded to Mustafa. “Try not to get into any trouble, all right?”
“Not unless it pays.”
She walked out the door. Now was her chance to reclaim a bit of lost pride. If she could lay claim to those assets they’d be on the books when it all came back together.
*
The delicate dance between the two ships passed along the edge of the outer planets. About the place where the debris changed from ice to bits of stone and iron. The convoy traveled towards the only planet with a space elevator.
They passed away from the core of the system and visited a trio of orbital facilities. Each was uncrewed and filled with enough additive cells to fix a fleet. Except the fleet wasn’t there.
At every stop Emilie stood in silence and looked around with sad eyes. There was some materials, and some equipment, but most everything was gone.
The unnamed UC ship changed course and burned at a side vector. The path curved and slung them towards the outside. A single short blink brought them to the edge of the system. A prison facility and a monastery, both within a short blink of each other. So short a distance that they could do it with a grav drive if they weren’t
in a hurry.
William double checked the access codes and felt a bit nervous dropping in. He’d never visited a prison, let alone a maximum security corporate prison. It wasn’t a trip he wanted to make, but it was part of the inspection. Make sure everything was proper and sign it off. He glanced at Emilie Rose and watched her studying the station. “Not what you thought it was, is it?”
“No,” she mumbled. “Not exactly.”
Core had the contract to maintain and service the station. What once brought colonists to Wintethur now held the combined criminal elements of a handful of neighboring star systems. The station was a relic of an earlier age of exploration. A series of spent fuel tanks connected in parallel. The only power signature rose from an archaic reactor at the tail end where they were headed.
“Corporal Vale, ten minutes,” Lieutenant Shay called out over the comms.
“Keep everything live. We’re going in with Vale while the brothers cover the door. No one comes on board,” William said to both Lieutenant Shay and Midshipman Bryce. “Clear?”
Bryce nodded quickly, nervously. Shay made a clicking sound with her tongue and settled back into the chair. Her console was overlaid with station attack simulations running.
“I have every expectation for everything to be normal,” Emilie said to William.
William nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you do. But expectations aren’t necessarily reality.”
Corporal Vale sailed through the hallway and found her footing in the artificial gravity of the bridge. Her armor looked formed and graceful, a new design for a new war. “Armor, Captain?”
William felt a touch of—what was it, fear? Excitement? He wasn’t sure, but adrenaline for sure. Those long watches and waits in between stars made for days devoid of any adrenaline. To have it back now was a subtle relief. “Negative. You’re going to keep me safe right?”
Corporal Vale grinned and showed a set of mismatched off color teeth. She patted the blocky Browning heavy assault rifle that was slung across her chest. “Me and Mr. Browning, sir.”
William left the gravity of the bridge and propelled himself through the main passage. His arms tapped the sides of the hall and made a quick correction. Orange lights blinked to show where the gravity began again. He spun and tucked himself into a walking position.
Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) Page 7
