Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  She’d never seen this much active flag-waving before.

  “How many of them do you think mean it versus have the posters up to protect themselves?” Kira asked.

  “Most, from the conversations we’ve had,” the trooper told her. “Hmm. I see an opportunity, boss.”

  “What kind?” Kira asked. She followed Bertoli’s gaze and spotted the group. “Oh.”

  A pair of Navy of the Royal Crest Commanders, clearly a couple—but with shoulder flashes showing the two men were from different ships—were finishing up their own shopping trip and walking in the direction of one of the promenade restaurants.

  The opportunity, however, was the trio of petty officers attached to the pair of lovebirds. They were in clear beleaguered-minder mode, clearly having been coopted as much to carry baggage as provide security.

  “Think the officers are smart enough to buy their escorts lunch?” Kira murmured as she studied them.

  “They borrowed three petties to carry their bags,” Bertoli said. “So, either they’re popular enough that the crew will do that for them, in which case they’re the type to buy lunch…or they don’t care, in which case it’s seventy-thirty they won’t.”

  “Either way, we can eavesdrop on a pair of O-Fives and see what they think,” she said. “Best case, I’ll listen in on them…and you go commiserate with the petties. If the officers don’t buy them dinner…” She left the sentence unfinished.

  “Can I expense lunch for four?” Bertoli asked drily.

  “Of course!”

  The two officers lived up to Kira’s middling expectations, talking to the hosts to arrange to check the bags and then putting the petty officers up at a different table—and making it clear that they were paying for the petties’ meal.

  Of course, that meant that they casually ignored the growing line of other customers behind them. Civilians, even merchants and tourists, clearly didn’t register on the same priority as their crew.

  Once the NRC group had headed in to their tables, Kira stepped up the hosts and palmed a fifty-crest physical credit chip onto their podium. That was as much as the meal was likely to cost, which made it more than the hosts were going to see in tips.

  “Can you sit me within hearing range of that pair of fancy uniforms?” she asked.

  “Of course, Em!” one of the hosts replied cheerfully as the chip disappeared. “Right this way.”

  If the other host didn’t trust her compatriot to give her part of the bribe, they didn’t have time to argue before Bertoli stepped up to the podium behind Kira—and repeated the same trick.

  It wasn’t as subtle as Kira would like, but there weren’t many options for making sure they were within eavesdropping distance of their marks. The only people they were really drawing attention from was from the restaurant staff they were bribing—who almost certainly did not care.

  As the second host moved away with Bertoli in tow, a holographic artificial stupid appeared behind the podium and greeted the next guests. This was a higher-end restaurant—hence having human staff at all—but they could only afford so many human hosts.

  Kira’s guide led her to a table just on the other side of a three-quarter wall from the two officers. As she took her seat, she realized there was a privacy field along the wall. She’d have difficulty hearing through it, but this was as good as she was going to get.

  Then the privacy field dropped—just between her table and the one with the two NRC officers. Her host gave her a wink.

  “I hope the table is to your satisfaction,” he said. “The table interface will have the menu and can take your order. There’s a call command if you have any questions; it will bring a stupid who can summon one of us if it can’t answer.”

  “Thank you,” Kira told him.

  He vanished and Kira brought up the menu—but her focus was on the other side of the wall.

  “It’s a mess,” one of the two men was saying. “Jorge is saying that his promotion board was grilling him on his volunteering for the Liberals. He thinks he’s stuck at Commander forever.”

  “He’s actively spending his free time working for the opposition, Egemen,” his companion pointed out. “With all the rumors flying these days, they have to make sure no one is thinking about backing a coup.”

  “Still, aren’t we supposed to keep our politics to ourselves?” Egemen asked. “I mean, I voted SPP, not saying otherwise—Jeong’s fantastic—but it doesn’t feel like I should have to tell the promotion board that, you know?”

  That was…bad. Even Kira knew that was bad. She took a moment to glance through the menu, ordering a vat-protein burger and fries. Her focus today was not on what she was eating.

  “The whole thing with Captain Simonsson is still rippling through the Navy,” the unnamed officer said. “Mutiny doesn’t sit well with the higher-ups, no matter what claims she makes of illegal orders. Step carefully, Egemen. Your board is what, in a week?”

  “Yeah. Six days,” the man replied. “I even know which cruiser I’m probably getting, if I pass the board.”

  “You’re Crest to the bone, Egemen. You believe in the same things as the folks they want in charge. The Sanctuary and Prosperity Party is moving in the right direction; we both know that. Tell the board that when they ask, and you’ll be fine.”

  “I know, I know,” Egemen. “But, Zahid, doesn’t it feel wrong that our politics matter at all?”

  “Lorelei Simonsson was as apolitical as you can be and be a battlecruiser Captain,” Zahid replied. “And she defied orders and tried to arrest a BRC system director! Command is worried about the rot that’s setting in.

  “It’s not that they’re looking for folks to blindly follow SPP into hell or some bullshit like that, love. They’re just using it as one more metric to make sure you’re aligned with the Navy and the Crest.

  “Now, come on. We’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that you’re up for Captain, Egemen, not trying to navel-gaze the whole damn fleet. Pick a wine, damn it!”

  The conversation turned to calmer topics and Kira swallowed a curse. That had been a fascinating piece of trivia to catch. The SPP had clearly managed to take control of the promotion boards, enough that they were using loyalty to the Party as a metric for advancement.

  Jade Panosyan had not suggested that things were that bad. They’d implied that there was a definite cadre of SPP-loyal officers in the NRC, but this was far beyond that. Control of the promotion boards would rapidly become control of the fleet, one way or another.

  Right now, Kira could assume that a good chunk of the Captains and flag officers were still more loyal to the Crest than to the SPP…but it was starting to sound like she needed to assume anyone she was dealing with in the Navy of the Royal Crest was loyal to the people she was trying to remove.

  If the ground forces and orbital defenses were equally contaminated, the Panosyans had a problem.

  Kira and Bertoli had returned to the apartment before either of them could really brief the other. Outside of the suite of rooms they were regularly sweeping, they had to assume they were being recorded and listened to at all times.

  Careful sleight of hand could let them bribe people, but conversation in quiet corners was going to get run against an AS algorithm.

  “O’Mooney’s asleep,” Konrad told them when they came in. “So, let’s keep it down a bit? The kid is more beat than she’s letting on.”

  “‘The kid,’ Konrad, is a thirty-two-year-old mercenary ground trooper veteran who boarded Deception with us,” Kira pointed out. “Just because you have a decade of life experience on her…”

  “Fair, fair,” he allowed. “She also just got gut-shot and is trying to pretend she’s fully functional. So, if we can manage not to wake her?”

  “I wasn’t objecting to that part,” Kira admitted. She stepped over to the apartment living room “window,” a screen showing an image of a garden that might have even been on the station somewhere. It had a collection of small trees and shrubs
gathered around a sand garden that someone had raked an infinity pattern of red stones into.

  “Bertoli?” she asked.

  “SPP has this place locked down tight,” the commando told her. “It’s not an overt thing—there aren’t people marching down the thoroughfares with purple armbands or anything like that—but enough people are fully on board with everything they’re doing, at least on the orbitals, that people aren’t really going to talk about supporting anyone else.”

  “That was my read as well,” Kira said. “To give the Cresters some credit, these orbitals live and die by the intersystem traffic. They have to be afraid that would go away without the client network. These are some of the people who are most aligned with the Sanctuary and Prosperity line.”

  “Almost as much as the Navy,” Bertoli said grimly. “I listened in on that trio of noncoms you sent me to, boss. Their ship’s XO, Egemen Baris, is up for promotion to Captain. His crew adores him, from what they said, and will probably follow him into hell.”

  “But?” Konrad prompted.

  “They think he’s an SPP bootlicker, too,” the bodyguard told him. “They don’t care, from what they were saying, but they definitely knew he’s following the party line there.”

  “I was eavesdropping on Commander Baris and his partner,” Kira said to Konrad. “According to them, NRC promotion boards are asking questions about political loyalties and volunteering. Baris isn’t comfortable with that…but he’s definitely SPP. His partner was telling him that was to his advantage.”

  “Those three petty officers figure he’s a shoo-in because of it,” Bertoli noted. “They might have volunteered as his ‘security detail’ normally—he’s known for tipping the crew who help him out off-ship, even though that’s technically against regs—but right now, they are sucking up hard.

  “They think he’s getting a brand-new cruiser and they want to be keel-plate owners on it.”

  “He apparently thinks the same, so long as he clears the promotion board,” Kira said. “Which means he expects he’s going to clear the board; he’s just having normal nervousness.”

  The apartment was silent for a few moments as Kira traced the red stones in the Zen garden with her gaze.

  “If the SPP owns the promotion boards, they own the NRC,” Konrad said into the silence. “If they own the NRC, they own Crest Orbital Command and they own the Army of the Royal Crest. If they have that much dominance in the military…”

  “Then the fact that King Sung Panosyan is the official commander of the military forces is irrelevant,” Kira replied. “I don’t know what the Panosyans’ plan for that is, but the judicial coup that I was told about? They’re going to run into a very real, very armed counter-coup.”

  “So, what do we do?” Bertoli asked quietly.

  “What we’re paid for,” Kira said with a long sigh. “And we trust that the Panosyans know what the hell they’re doing with their own planet.”

  29

  It was no surprise when Jade Panosyan arrived in the apartment the mercenaries were renting. What was a surprise was that they came in through the window screen, the garden suddenly fading away to reveal a utility access door.

  Three blasters—illegal on Charming Station, but after the mess in Guadaloop, Kira had agreed to let Bertoli smuggle them in—focused on the door as it opened to reveal the gold-and-black uniform of a Dinastik Pahak bodyguard.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” Jade Panosyan murmured as they stepped through the door behind their bodyguard with Voski in tow. “If we could manage to not shoot each other today?”

  The Crown Zharang wore an insignia-less uniform in a monochrome gray that didn’t match any of the Crest’s service branches. There was presumably a binder under the shipsuit, but the combination brought Jade Panosyan to an androgynous anonymity that would pass unnoticed in most places.

  “I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone,” Kira told their employer. “On the other hand, the apartment rental company didn’t tell us there was a door there.”

  She glanced at Bertoli.

  “It eluded our scans?” she asked.

  “Scans were for bugs, not doors,” the commando said, glaring at Voski as his Pahak counterpart emerged behind Panosyan. “Though I would have expected to find them anyway.”

  “It’s just a utility corridor for the staff to have easy access to all of the apartments,” Panosyan told them, settling into one of the chairs like they owned the place.

  Which, Kira was reasonably sure, they did.

  “Now that you’ve given us our daily shot of adrenaline, welcome to our temporary abode,” Kira said. “I’d offer a seat, but you already claimed one.”

  The door closed and the garden image reappeared as Voski took their minion over to the other door and checked it.

  “Em O’Mooney is recovering well, I hope?” Panosyan asked.

  “She is,” Kira confirmed. “We got lucky.”

  In more ways than one, but she wasn’t going to bring IIS into this conversation. She’d given Zamorano his letters. He’d make contact with the Crown Zharang on his own terms, and Kira didn’t have enough loyalty to either of them to get further involved.

  “I presume you’ve had a chance to engage in some investigations since your arrival?” the royal asked. “I hope that you haven’t found anything to change your mind about the contract?”

  “Not that isn’t buried under the ten million crests you already paid me,” Kira said drily. “Though I worry you understated just how deep the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party’s grip runs.”

  “It is worse than I like to admit,” Panosyan conceded. “But that doesn’t change your part of this mission.”

  “No. Which means I need assets, access and data from you,” Kira told the Zharang. “I hope you have a plan.”

  “Access is…difficult but doable,” their employer told them. “I can get one of you into the shipyard. I can’t get them aboard Fortitude, but I can arrange for you to get into the building slip itself with a royal inspection team.”

  “Konrad?” Kira asked, glancing over at her lover. She wasn’t sure if that was still necessary with the data Zamorano had given them—but, on the other hand, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to give away that they had that data. Even to Panosyan.

  “If I can get that close, even if I can’t get aboard the ship, I can learn a lot,” he said. “Especially if your people can help me drop a few glorified bugs in the area.”

  “Maybe,” Panosyan said. “I can’t be certain. I’m not yet sure how fully I’ll be able to bring the inspector into the loop. I know I can get him to agree to bring someone along as a civilian advisor, but I don’t think we’ll be able to bring in the rest of the team—which would make bugs hard.”

  “That’s fair,” Konrad conceded. “Even just walking the slip and studying the carrier from there has value.”

  “As for data, I’m working on it,” Panosyan said, turning to Kira. “There’s a lot of moving parts. It looks like the whole event has been moved up by a week, and there’s definitely a whole new level of paranoia running through the NRC and the SPP right now.”

  They shook their head.

  “I am the Crown Zharang,” they noted flatly. “I will be able to get the full schedule of the trials and the inspection—I’ve already confirmed both are still happening, just eight days ahead of the schedule I had while we were in Redward.”

  “It’s five days from our rendezvous to Crest,” Kira pointed out. “Eight days means that when we return to the fleet, we only have a week to get into position. Instead of almost three.”

  It was actually less than four days from the rendezvous point to Crest, but underselling and overdelivering was a good habit to be in as a mercenary.

  “That’s not something I can change, Demirci,” Panosyan told her. “I think it’s going to take me at least a few more days to get my hands on the finalized schedule. Hell, it might be a few more days before they even have a finalized schedule.” />
  “Which brings me to assets,” Kira said. “We need a nova ship to investigate the route. One that won’t draw attention if people see it—and preferably one we can run back to Memorial Fleet, too.”

  She was starting to think she should have just bought a ship in Redward and sailed it all the way here on their own. Except there was no way she could have done that without drawing attention. Getting the runabout in had been hard enough—but worth it to give them a fallback point with armor and guns aboard.

  “I could get you that tonight,” their employer said calmly. “I’m not going to get you the ship until I have the full route and schedule, but I’ve made arrangements to put an NRC high-security courier at your disposal.

  “Every officer and spacer has been fully cleared by the Dinastik Pahak, and the Captain was a schoolmate of mine,” Panosyan concluded. “They are, without a doubt, loyal to the Crown of the Royal Crest.”

  “And that won’t draw attention on its own?” Bertoli asked. “That sounds…attention-drawing.”

  “It’s not that the ship won’t draw attention; it’s that a high-security courier has an excuse to be anywhere and no one is going to question her captain,” the Zharang told them. “Everyone aboard has the highest security clearances.

  “So far, the divisions in our fleet haven’t caused officers to start mistrusting couriers that they think are working for ‘the other side,’ so to speak.”

  “But that division is starting to be a thing, isn’t it?” Kira asked softly.

  “Yes,” Panosyan conceded. “It’s worse than it was when I left. There is a clear and active group of SPP officers in the Navy of the Royal Crest, and they are comfortable enough with their power base to make moves I didn’t expect to see for a while yet.”

  The apartment was silent, then Kira sighed.

  “Who is Captain Lorelei Simonsson?” she asked.