Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I didn’t want to get that specific in what I asked the Captain for,” she said. “How badly bugged is the data? I’m assuming it’s going to call home to Zamorano.”

  “Me too,” Konrad admitted. “But I can’t find it. Which, unfortunately, does not mean it isn’t there. My best guess is that the hardware and software this ship has is at least twenty or thirty years out of date by SolFed standards, but…”

  “That still puts it way ahead of anything we have,” Kira murmured. “So, we can assume that Zamorano knows that we’re focusing in on Fortitude.” She sighed. “Oh, well. Price of the data, I suppose.”

  “With this data, I’m not sure how much scouting we really need to do,” her boyfriend told her. “I think I have everything I need on the ship.”

  “We still need final confirmation on the planned course for the trials, and then I want to check out the nova stops they’re planning,” she said. “Anything in the Crest is probably too risky, but I doubt they’re jumping to a standard trade-route stop for the tests of their new carrier.”

  “You think they’re going to hop around the system and use a dark stop for the long-range test?”

  A “dark stop” was a trade-route-stop equivalent that wasn’t added to the civilian maps. They were just as thoroughly mapped, but that mapping was done entirely by the local military, and the stop was used solely for their purposes. While a dark stop’s mapping wasn’t as regularly updated as a standard trade-route stop, it was still sufficient for a safe nova.

  And a dark stop would be a spot the Navy of the Royal Crest would assume to be completely safe.

  “You’re thinking of jumping them at the dark stop?” Konrad asked, continuing the thought without waiting for her to answer his first question.

  “It depends on their sequence,” Kira told him. “The twenty-hour cooldown of a full-length nova will definitely help us get any evidence of our takeover secured before we meet with anyone else—but if the inspection is prior to the full nova test, then that’s useless to us.”

  She shook her head, keeping an eye on the contacts around their shuttle. There was a reason this part of the flight wasn’t left to autopilot, even though the artificial stupids were doing most of the flying.

  Something could always go wrong.

  “So, thanks to Zamorano, we’re skipping our first problem of getting a good look at Fortitude,” she concluded. “We’re still going to need details on the trial plan and a nova ship to run around the local area in.

  “Both of those I’m hoping to get from Panosyan.” She grinned. “And if the Crown Zharang is feeling particularly helpful, they may even help us get out of this system to rendezvous with the fleet.”

  They had three weeks until they were scheduled to meet the fleet, at a randomly selected trade-route stop four novas from the Crest. Depending on just what was going on with their target, that should give them at least three more weeks to actually plan their strike.

  “Once we’ve docked, I’m going to leave it to Bertoli to see if he can source us a hotel that’s secure enough for our needs,” Kira continued. “If we can’t—and I only give it fifty-fifty odds at best—a lot of our planning sessions are going to be taking place in here.”

  She gestured around the runabout.

  “What about you and me?” Konrad asked.

  “You are going to stay on the runabout and go through that data,” she told him. “Unless you think there’s something else you should do?”

  He laughed.

  “No. We’ve got a lot of information and a lot of detail. More than I expected to have at this point, so that’s what I was hoping you’d let me do.”

  “'Let,’ the man says,” Kira snarked. “Like I could stop you digging into a massive pile of fascinating technical scans.”

  “There are definitely ways you could,” he murmured with an artfully arched eyebrow.

  She grinned at him and he promptly flushed.

  “You’re getting better at that,” she noted. Her adorably embarassable boyfriend would need a lot of practice before he could really handle dirty jokes at his own expense. He could handle them in general—he was a warship engineer—but his defenses cracked when his own sex life was in play.

  “It amuses you, so it’s worth learning,” he told her. “What are you going to be doing?” he asked, looking at the massive expanse of steel that was the nearest side of Crest Charming.

  “I’m taking O’Mooney and hitting three random dead drops from a list of seven possibilities on Charming,” Kira said. “We need to make contact with the Panosyans.”

  “It is Jade we’ll be working with, right?” Konrad asked, raising a thought that hadn’t even occurred to Kira. “I mean, King Sung is behind all of this. He might want to be involved himself—or have other agents.”

  “I think part of the cover of this, if it goes wrong, is that Jade is operating on their own authority and at least half-intending to overthrow their father, the King,” Kira said slowly. “I don’t think they’ll want to shift our contact person at this stage in the game—not when the Crown Zharang is here to keep up that role.”

  “Though they are the Crown Zharang,” her lover said. “And they’ve been gone for a few months. They might be swamped.”

  “We’ll know in about twenty-four hours, I suspect,” Kira admitted. “That’s how long they said it would take to get back to us from the dead drops.”

  “You know, I hate all of this cloak-and-dagger,” he said calmly. “And I hate a lot of what I did for Equilibrium. But I’m glad to be here with you. If it wasn’t for…” He trailed off, then sighed.

  “I can’t change it, and nothing would be worth what happened.” His voice was sad now. While Deception—then K-79L—had been under Institute control, her Captain had ordered the extermination of all of the witnesses to an attack on a Redward warship.

  Of the former Equilibrium crew members with Kira now, Konrad had been the most senior then—and he hadn’t been in a position to stop the ship destroying dozens of asteroid colonies and killing tens of thousands of people.

  “I know,” she told him gently.

  “You’re as close to worth it as anything could be,” he finished, his tone awkward. “But…damn the Institute to hell.”

  “That, my love, is quite literally what we are in the Crest to arrange.”

  27

  “I’ve checked the apartment three times, and O’Mooney has gone over it as well,” Bertoli told Kira. “It’s clean. I’m…honestly surprised, though the place was on the list Panosyan gave us.”

  “I’m guessing they’re not even listed on the directories, then,” Kira said. They were in one of a bloc of eight rental apartments tucked onto the end of one of Charming’s higher-end residential zones.

  “I don’t think so,” O’Mooney agreed. The youngest mercenary was slumped in a chair against the wall, looking gray enough to make Kira feel guilty for dragging her all over the station.

  Walking slowly was “light duty,” sure, but six hours of it had clearly been more than O’Mooney’s healing could tolerate. Thankfully, they weren’t going to be doing anything tomorrow—and Kira was going to make sure the younger woman spent the day resting in the apartment.

  “So, what have we got?” she asked Bertoli.

  “Four rooms, a sitting area, a kitchen, laundry…it’s basically a high-end apartment they keep ready for guests,” the trooper told her. “Well secured, too. There’s copper and lead netting in the walls to interrupt anyone trying to eavesdrop from outside.”

  He shrugged.

  “And if my sweep came up that empty, and this place is used by the people I think it is, the staff sweeps them regularly when they’re not in use,” he concluded.

  “So, we’ve basically stumbled on to the people who rent to senior executives from Crest,” Kira observed. That fit sufficiently with their cover, so she wasn’t too worried about it—though she was also relying on the discretion of their temporary lessor.

&n
bsp; “Only one thing stinks,” Bertoli told her, glancing around the room. The space was comfortably decorated with a collection of individual chairs. The chairs all looked one step short of providing a massage when you sat down, but there was also a distinct lack of multiple-person seating.

  Very clearly a business unit.

  “And what’s that?” Kira asked.

  “They were expecting me,” the trooper said grimly. “I hope that’s because our employer put the word out, but it still makes me worry.”

  “I suspect they wouldn’t have talked to you if they hadn’t been expecting you,” Kira admitted. “We’re relying on their discretion either way, Jerzy. Keep an eye on everything, but so long as the bug sweep is clean…”

  “We’re definitely not being listened to, not unless we’re dealing with someone with much better tech than I’ve ever encountered,” the merc confirmed.

  “All right. Go get Konrad,” Kira ordered. “O’Mooney and I will hold down the fort here, watching for our host’s people to show up.”

  “You think they’re going to come right here?” O’Mooney asked.

  “Unless I miss my guess, there’s a Dinastik Pahak security team in one of the other units that is busy setting up security perimeters and distractions as we speak,” Kira said with a smile. “They need us in an environment they control…but I believe we may have just rented an apartment in exactly that.

  “So, yes, I expect them or their people to come here. And I want Konrad to tell me how deep a hole that carrier is going to be before I talk to them.”

  One look at her lover told Kira there was another priority before the briefing. He clearly hadn’t quite noticed it himself yet, but the color had faded from his face. It was half-concealed under his excitement, but Konrad Bueller clearly hadn’t eaten while the rest of them had been sorting things out on the station.

  “Stop,” she told him as he opened his mouth to ask a question. “You, Konrad, are going to eat a sandwich before we have this briefing. Bertoli?”

  “I surveyed the kitchen, and the staff stocked it while I was sorting out payment,” the trooper said. “Sandwich duty it is.”

  Konrad nodded slowly—and then collapsed into one of the chairs, equally slowly, as his incipient blood-sugar crash caught up with him.

  “Okay, that’s probably a good plan,” he admitted. “But…I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  “And the five minutes to eat this won’t hurt,” Bertoli replied, sliding a plate with a sandwich into Konrad’s lap—and then following suit with plates for Kira and O’Mooney. “All of us should stop and eat, yes? Please?”

  “Old soldiers know their priorities,” Kira agreed with a laugh. “Thank you, Bertoli.”

  Calling Bertoli 'old’ was exaggerating, but the point stood—and the quickly produced sandwiches were good, too.

  “All right, Konrad. Brief us,” Kira ordered once they’d all eaten. “So far as we can tell, this place is secure.”

  “She’s a hell of a ship,” the engineer said. “I knew what Panosyan said about her, but it’s different to actually go through a full high-resolution scan of the lady.”

  Konrad laid a holoprojector puck down on the coffee table and gestured a hologram of the carrier to life. It looked almost identical to the one that Jade Panosyan had used to get Kira and Zoric on side with the mission, though…that had been a schematic.

  This was a visual of the actual ship.

  With a few gestures, a wireframe version of the schematic appeared over the ship, highlighting various sections.

  “Her outer hull is entirely complete, including her defensive turrets,” Konrad told them. Six large protrusions blinked, along with twenty-four smaller ones. “That’s six dual heavy guns, each as powerful as the system Deception mounts, plus twenty-four lighter, single-cannon, antifighter turrets.”

  That put the carrier at twelve turreted plasma cannon, only two guns short of Deception’s own arsenal. That made sense—the carrier was half again the cruiser’s size—but it was still intimidating.

  “Currently, the only exterior work still in need of completion is her sensor installations,” the engineer continued. “Those are usually installed as a single bloc and should be in by this point in her construction. They’ve probably had a production delay elsewhere, but so long as the installations arrive before she’s due to deploy, it won’t hold them up.

  “It’s harder to assess her internals,” Konrad continued after a moment. “Even with the scans we have, armor and dispersal networks get in the way. That said, I can confirm that her nova drive is installed, all of her fusion cores are installed, and I’d say she’s likely got her entire Harrington complement installed.”

  “So, she’s basically done, is what I’m hearing?” Kira asked.

  “Yes,” her engineer told her. “Fortitude could probably fly out of there today. My guess is that, outside of the sensor installations I mentioned, she’s in final finishing mode. They’re installing beds, people, not guns.”

  “And fighters?” Kira said.

  “None aboard, but we got a good glance into the deck at the equipment,” Konrad said. “It’s all there. She’s fully capable of acting as a carrier right now. Most of the next six weeks is going to be final touches, system tests and boarding the initial trial crew.”

  “So, what’s holding them to the original schedule?” Bertoli asked. “I’m just a grunt, Commander. Sounds like if they needed that carrier, they could rush her out.”

  “Easily, but it would be a risk,” Konrad answered. “That’s basically what we did with the Baron class. Those cruisers deployed with yard techs on board still running tests and never had anything except the most abbreviated trials. We, however, were running a construction operation while Redward was under siege.

  “The Navy of the Royal Crest, on the other hand, is effectively at peace. They have no serious enemies that they’re worried about, and their existing fleet is more than capable of maintaining their client network.

  “While Fortitude and the sister ship they have under construction will represent a major upgrade in the NRC’s strength, there’s no rush for them.”

  “But they are ahead of schedule, aren’t they?” Kira asked softly.

  The apartment was silent for a few seconds, then Konrad nodded.

  “About two weeks,” he told her. “So, they may have shifted the schedule from the last data we had. I can’t see them having shifted it enough to threaten our original timetable, but the danger is there.”

  “We’ll make that nova when we get to it, I guess,” Kira said. “There’s nothing we can do to accelerate Memorial Force. At this point, they’ve already left the Syntactic Cluster, let alone Redward.”

  “What are our next steps?” Bertoli asked.

  “First, we make O’Mooney sit down for a day and heal,” Kira told her people with a smile. “We’re waiting for contact at the moment. You and I, Bertoli, will go for a walk about the station in the morning to get a feel of the lay of the land, pick up some physical newsletters to go with the network downloads.

  “We came to the Crest for a lot of reasons. One of them is to find out whether or not this Sanctuary and Prosperity Party is as much trouble as we were sold.”

  “You think they might not be an Equilibrium front?” her boyfriend asked. “That Panosyan sold us a false bill of goods?”

  “I think they believe that the SPP are an existential threat to the Crest as they want it to be,” Kira said carefully. “My own assessment is that if the SPP aren’t an Equilibrium front, they’re still doing exactly what the Institute wants.

  “But I want to confirm that with my own eyes and ears listening to the people of this system. Not trust the person who hired us to carry out a coup. Make sense to everyone?”

  “Oh, god, yes,” Bertoli muttered. “You’re the boss, boss. I’ll overthrow anyone you tell me to—but I am assuming you’ve done the research.”

  She smiled thinly.

  “And tomor
row, Bertoli, that is exactly what we’re going to do.”

  28

  “Maral Jeong is the best thing to happen to Crest,” the shopkeeper cheerfully exclaimed at Kira’s gentle prompting. “I mean, things were starting to go downhill fast when she took over as PM. People were talking about dissolving the client network, like we were some kind of conquerors!”

  Kira took the neatly tissue-wrapped jacket thoughtfully.

  “Really? I didn’t know that had ever been a conversation around here,” she said.

  “The client network is a mutual-aid setup, but there’s a lot of bleeding hearts on the Crest that think we’re taking too much for what we give,” the woman told Kira. “But I serve the merchants who haul around this sector and go elsewhere, too.

  “It’s safer where the NRC guards than it is anywhere else around here. Everyone tells me it’s more than worth helping support the fleet!”

  Kira smiled and nodded cheerfully—while wondering if the giant Sanctuary and Prosperity Party poster behind the shopkeeper’s head was part of why everyone was careful to talk up the Crest’s empire to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, transferring the price of the jacket and picking it up. “My husband will love this!”

  Today, she was playing tourist, with Bertoli trailing around in the mode of a bored personal assistant. Most people who knew soldiers would register him as one of some kind—but a lot of executive personal assistants were ex-noncommissioned-officers, all over the galaxy.

  A lot of the same skills, plus a PA who could act as a bodyguard usually only cost a bit more than a bodyguard—and less than having both a personal assistant and a bodyguard.

  “Well, she was obvious before she opened her mouth,” Bertoli muttered, falling in beside her and sliding the jacket into his collection of bags. “But she’s not the only one.”

  It wasn’t an obvious thing. No one had plastered propaganda posters all over the main thoroughfares, but Kira and her bodyguard were in Crest Charming’s largest shopping promenade. The posters weren’t in the shared public spaces—but they were in a lot of the private places, people proclaiming a clear allegiance to the Crest’s ruling party.