Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  “All evidence suggests that the inspection will take place while her nova drive is cooling down somewhere in the outer system,” Kira said. “If we can take control of her before she novas to the ship with the Cabinet, we should be able to minimize the evidence of combat.”

  “Sir, we have eighty mercenary ground troopers across four ships,” Milani pointed out grimly. “I have faith in my people—Captain McCaig will back me there—but to take control of a hundred-and-fifty-kilocubic carrier? That’s a big ask.”

  “What would you need to make it less of an ask, Commander?” Kira asked them.

  The dragon snapped across Milani’s chest and hissed.

  “Full schematics of the ship would be a start, but I’m guessing we have those?” Milani asked.

  “We do,” Kira confirmed.

  “I’ll need to go over my people’s gear list,” the mercenary ground trooper admitted. “I have a few thoughts around breaching-and-intrusion gear that I don’t think we have. Our armor is as good as Redward can get us, so there’s no real upgrades there…”

  They shook their head.

  “We’ve accepted a signing payment from our employer,” Kira told them. Everyone in the room knew who that employer was—and no one else, even in Memorial Force, was going to find out from them. She trusted her people.

  “If there is anything we can acquire in Redward that will make this mission easier, get me and Dirix a list in the next twenty-four hours,” she continued. “That goes for everyone, though most of that weight is on Milani.”

  “I have some thoughts too,” McCaig rumbled. “If you want them, Milani?”

  “Against this mission? I’ll take ’em, Captain,” Milani told their old boss.

  “The other thing to remember, folks, is that the NRC is supporting a client network of twenty star systems,” Kira reminded them. “Even if everything goes to shit, we are not fighting an entire eighth-rate navy with a ninth-rate mercenary squadron.”

  “Somehow, that isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” her boyfriend, Deception’s XO and engineer, told her as he studied the map of the star system. “They only need to get one carrier-cruiser group on top of us, after all. Even one of the older ones can match Deception and Raccoon.”

  “We will plan this to the nth degree,” Kira promised. “And if I don’t think we can pull it off, we will bail. But if we can do this, we might just change the fate of twenty star systems…and give the Equilibrium Institute an even bigger fuck-you than anything we did out here in the Syntactic Cluster!”

  As the staff planning session dispersed, with most of Kira’s people heading to the shuttles that would return them to their ships, the room eventually condensed down to just her and Konrad Bueller.

  “This mission is ridiculous; you know that, right?” he asked softly. “A single mercenary squadron against the Crest. Relying on intelligence that could damn us all if it’s even slightly wrong—and heading into space where we have no locals aboard.

  “I checked,” he noted. “We have people from sixty-eight different home planets in Memorial Force, but none of them are the Crest. We’re in unknown territory there.”

  “I know,” Kira told him. “And, from what I can tell, we’re in Equilibrium territory—a system where a group of their active agents have taken near-complete control.

  “But we’re not fighting any of that, Konrad,” she said. “We’re hitting a weak spot and creating an opportunity. Leverage, my dear. If we hit the right spot with the right amount of force, everything turns the way it should.”

  “Or your source of force bounces and is ruined because you miscalculated,” he replied. “This is risky. If we get it wrong…”

  “We bail before it gets that far,” Kira promised. She wasn’t sure how easy that would be—if nothing else, paying the Panosyans back would be a pain—but she’d do it before she’d lose the squadron.

  “I want to stick a knife in the Institute’s eye as much as anything,” Konrad admitted. “So, I’m in, all the way.” He chuckled. “I’m just throwing an anchor out to windward, Kira. We are risking everything here.”

  “I know. But Jade Panosyan definitely found the carrot to bring me in,” she told him. “There’s some risk around stealing a carrier in trials. Think you’ll be able to get her fully operational?”

  He snorted.

  “Almost certainly,” he said. “Depends on what I have access to, obviously. I’m assuming not Crest yards, but if we bring her back here? Yeah. Anything they broke building her, I can fix.”

  “I’m planning on coming back here,” Kira agreed, but a thought struck her and she grimaced. “I’ll take a copy of that list of folks by homeworlds, by the by,” she told him.

  “I suspect more than a few of our Redward and Cluster natives will want the chance to step aside before they get dragged halfway across the Rim,” she said. “Replacing them will be a minor headache, but I’d rather deal with that than have people in Crest who don’t want to be there.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Bueller agreed. “Maybe ask the King and Queen if we can recruit from some of the RRF?”

  “Maybe even temporary swaps,” Kira said. “I know we have a few people with family and kids here. Long-term, I’m still planning on home-basing out of Redward, but this will be a four-month journey.”

  “Four months we’re not getting our retainer, too,” her lover pointed out.

  “Don’t remind me,” she sighed. “I have an appointment with Admiral Remington in a few hours to have that discussion. Hopefully, we can negotiate a temporary pause on the contract and resume it when we return.

  “But that might not be politic for her.”

  Admiral Vilma Remington was the commanding officer of the Redward Royal Fleet and the person officially responsible for negotiating contracts with Memorial Force. King Larry was definitely known for putting his substantial literal and metaphorical weight on the process, but the signature on the paperwork was Admiral Remington’s.

  “Good luck,” Konrad said with a chuckle. “We seem to have quite a bit of work to do.”

  “And I’ve got another wrench for you, Konrad,” she told him.

  “Oh?”

  “We haven’t operated outside the reach of the RRF’s logistics network since we acquired the destroyers,” she pointed out. “We need a support ship. I need you to find me a freighter that can haul torpedoes, parts, food, fuel…Memorial Force needs a logistics ship.”

  Her boyfriend grimaced but nodded.

  “Am I trying to rent one with a crew or buy one?” he asked.

  “Buy one,” she told him. “We’re not going to need less logistics in the future.”

  “All right. But I’m telling you right now: I am not commanding her!”

  Kira laughed.

  “What, the power core isn’t complicated enough for you?” she asked.

  “Unlike you, my love the nova-fighter pilot,” he said drily, “I like being on the right side of a whole lot of armor.”

  12

  Kira noticed the increased security in the flag officers’ section of First Ward, the central command station of Redward’s fixed defenses, before she reached Remington’s office. It wasn’t an entirely obvious thing—three troopers where there was normally one. Commandos scattered through security posts that were normally RRF military police.

  The four clearly soldier-boosted men in suits outside Remington’s office answered the question before she could ask it, though. Soldier boosts—a generic term for any of several mixes of biological, genetic and cybernetic modifications to make someone faster and stronger—didn’t do anything that couldn’t be matched by armor, though they were lower-profile.

  While someone like Kira could pick out the noticeably faster reflexes and slight twitchiness of soldier-boosted guards, they still served a purpose in covert missions and as low-profile bodyguards.

  In this case, she recognized them as Redward Secret Service, which meant that King Larry had once again inserted h
imself into the negotiations around his key mercenary force. With a concealed sigh, Kira gave the guards a familiar nod and stepped into Remington’s office.

  “Admiral Remington,” she greeted the older woman sitting perfectly upright behind the desk. The silver-haired woman was eyeing her already-present companion with an exasperated air.

  “Your Majesty,” Kira continued, bowing slightly to the notably overweight King of Redward. Lawrence Bartholomew Stewart, First Magistrate and Honored King of the Kingdom of Redward, waved a coffee cup at her as he delicately kicked a chair over to her.

  “Take a seat, Commodore,” King Larry ordered. “Vilma, grab Demirci a coffee, please.”

  Only the King would ask his top Admiral to grab someone a coffee, but Remington didn’t even seem bothered. Of course, as she rose to grab the coffee, Kira felt the distinctive sensation of a communication containment field sealing around the office.

  Her headware no longer had access to the station network. Given that they were inside an asteroid fortress ten kilometers across with fifty thousand Redward fleet personnel and soldiers aboard, that meant they probably couldn’t be more secure.

  She recognized the smell of the coffee as Remington handed it to her.

  “I see His Majesty brought his own coffee,” she observed.

  “It usually gets sent ahead of him,” the Admiral said with a chuckle. “Though I am sufficiently in favor to have a stock of Royal Reserve of my own.”

  “So does Demirci,” Larry noted. “My wife spoils you both—she has excellent taste in friends and allies, in my opinion.”

  “I feel like I may have been anticipated,” Kira murmured as she looked at the two people in the office. “I was not expecting His Majesty to be here.”

  “Did you miss that my wife set up the entire situation with you and the Crown Zharang?” Larry asked drily. He airily waved a hand. “We know…just about everything,” he concluded. “More, I suspect, than Em Panosyan thinks we do. But that’s our stock-in-trade.

  “Despite everything we have accomplished together over the last few years, Redward is still a very small fish in the real pond,” he noted. “The Free Trade Zone combined is still a small fish in the real pond.

  “So, we must be well informed if we are to avoid catastrophe. Well informed—and well equipped with powerful friends.”

  “Jade Panosyan qualifies, I assume,” Kira said.

  “Exactly.” Larry took a swallow of his coffee. “Of course, learning about the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party’s links to the Equilibrium Institute does impact my willingness to do business with the Bank of the Royal Crest.”

  “But you need their money.”

  “Or the entire Free Trade Zone project may fail,” he admitted flatly. “More specifically, without an external source of financing to acquire resources from outside the Cluster, the reconstruction project for the Costar Clans Systems is a fragile edifice at best. We have a fifty-fifty chance of the whole thing collapsing.”

  “And if the reconstruction project collapses, not only will it bring back the Cluster’s largest homegrown threat, but it will almost certainly bankrupt Redward along the way,” Remington finished.

  “We have the structures and resources to paper over the cracks for a while,” Larry said. “Possibly long enough for the Clans to start contributing back to the Kingdom’s coffers—but right now, I am King of five star systems and four of them are giant black holes I need to fill with money.

  “The Bank of the Royal Crest is the largest player for that kind of financing in this sector of the Rim, but currently it sounds like that deal will be pouring money into the hands of people who have tried to screw over the entire Cluster.”

  He sighed.

  “Not to mention that the degree to which the BRC’s contracts are trying to eat into the sovereignty of everyone in the Free Trade Zone makes my skin itch,” he noted. “I think I’m going to win that fight, but that doesn’t change the part about us funding the Equilibrium Institute.”

  “So, you really want me to complete this contract,” Kira said drily. “That does make the discussion I’m here for easier on me, doesn’t it?”

  “Remember that there are also some real questions being raised in the Hóngsè Chéngbao about us keeping Memorial Force, given how calm things have become,” Remington replied, her tone equally dry. “No one is saying we shouldn’t hire you if a crisis arises, but the retainer itself is being challenged on several points.”

  Kira shrugged.

  “To be fair, that’s a you problem,” she said with a chuckle. “I want a temporary pause on the retainer: minimum four months, extendable to six.”

  “Bluntly, Demirci, we can’t give it to you,” Larry told her. “If you’re here, working, doing patrols and catching pirates, I can lean on people and point to your actions. But once you’re gone and we’re getting by without you?

  “It’ll be a lot harder to sell people on paying you.”

  “That’s not a selling point on me taking this contract,” Kira pointed out. “Though, I suppose, I could take the contract and not come back.”

  She watched them both wince.

  “We would strongly prefer if Memorial Force were to return to Redward after you complete this new contract,” Larry told her. “While I can’t maintain the retainer, I can help in other ways.”

  “I’m listening,” Kira said. “I mean, accelerating when we get our carrier from you will help.”

  “I did not know that Admiral Idowu was telling Commander Bueller that his help would lead to you getting a carrier from the new yards,” the King said grimly. “That promise should never have been made—which means we probably should have paid Commander Bueller significantly more for that contract.”

  Kira shrugged. She couldn’t get too worked up about that—they were talking maybe a fifty-thousand-kroner difference in a meeting where she was negotiating over losing a retainer of four million kroner. A month.

  “I can’t accelerate your access to our yards, and we’re already offering cost-only construction contracts to you,” Larry noted. “What I can do is put a ten-million-kroner bonus in escrow, to be paid out to Memorial Force upon your return to Redward, and cover the costs of your shore office for the time period you’re gone.”

  Ten million kroner—a bit over six and a quarter million crests—would mostly cover their expenses for the months Kira expected to be gone. It wasn’t like Memorial Force’s operating expenses were actually four million kroner a month. They hovered around three, depending on what Kira’s people did in a given thirty days.

  The shoreside office on Blueward Station, on the other hand, only consumed about a hundred thousand kroner a month. Larry could cover those expenses out of his pocket change, and everyone in the room knew it.

  “You really do want us to take this contract, don’t you?” Kira murmured in amusement.

  “Knowing what I know now about the Royal Crest, I’m uncomfortable getting as far into bed with them as it looks like I’m going to have to,” Larry admitted. “It’s looking more and more like Redward, Bengalissimo and Ypres are going to have to countersign for all of the Cluster’s loans.

  “That helps protect the sovereignty of our smaller partners, but it also puts a heavy economic risk on our largest three powers,” he continued. “While everything I have suggests that none of the loans and projects we are taking on represent a major risk, so long as we’re careful, it will give the Crest a lot of leverage in the Cluster.

  “I am…uncomfortable with that leverage resting in an entity under the control of the Equilibrium Institute.” He spread his hands. “The process has moved far enough along that backing out now would be a political nightmare.

  “So, I need the Crest…fixed.”

  “In several senses,” Kira murmured. “Regime change is not going to leave them in a position to lean on that leverage for a while, is it?”

  “The thought had crossed our minds,” Remington said—and butter wouldn’t have mel
ted in the Admiral’s mouth from her expression.

  “All right. Here’s what I need,” Kira told them, raising a hand. “That ten-million bonus is enough for us to come back—assuming we survive this—but I have a few immediate problems you can help with.”

  “I’m listening,” Larry said.

  “I’m going to have somewhere between twenty and a hundred people who aren’t going to want to leave the Cluster,” she said. Her minimum count was based on people with young children in Redward, so she was extremely confident in it.

  Kira Demirci had the motherly instinct of the average fish, she knew, and even she wouldn’t want to leave a toddler behind for six months.

  “I need to replace them, ASAP, with people I can trust. That means RRF secondments,” she told them. “We’ll bring them over at equivalent ranks, but I’m going to need techs, petties and probably at least half a dozen pilots.”

  She wasn’t overly worried about officers or senior noncoms, but her techs and junior petty officer equivalents were going to take the lion’s share of the sabbaticals—and she needed every one of them she had.

  “Done,” Larry agreed, without even a glance at Remington. “And we’ll take any of your hands that want it into the RRF, at least temporarily. If we’re keeping you around, it’ll be good practice for everyone.”

  “Thank you,” Kira said quietly. “I can’t really justify paying them to sit around here.”

  “But we can pay them to do basically the same jobs they did for you,” the King said. “What else?”

  “I need people who’ve pulled this damn stupid stunt with me before,” Kira said. “I don’t know if you can spare Brigadier Temitope, but I need commandos—at least a platoon, and preferably as many of the people who went aboard Deception with me as you can find.”