Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  Apparently, she’d kept up with the field well enough to realize that the wreck was, if nothing else, an interceptor instead of a heavy fighter.

  “Pilot is trying to retake control of the pinnace,” Waldroup reported. “No such luck for them. Milani—they’re down.”

  “And they’re angry,” Kira warned.

  A dozen troops were trotting across the flight deck, but they were in stolen Crester armor. The plan had been to move the PM away from the shuttle and at least part of her escort before moving. It would have been far easier to stun everyone when they were split into groups and away from cover!

  Kira wasn’t sure if it was Waldroup or the Ministerial Protection Detail that dropped the ramp—but the MPD opened fire without any hesitation at all.

  “Damn, they trust Jeong without question, don’t they?” she asked as the MPD opened fire on soldiers in their own uniforms.

  “They also can tell they’re being jammed,” Konrad pointed out. “Even those Hussars shouldn’t be able to pick that up…yet.”

  “Please tell me they’re heading back.”

  There were two Hussar-Sixes that had flown wing on the nova pinnace on approach and, thanking every deity that might be listening, Kira realized they were flying away toward their battlecruiser mothership.

  “They’re outside the range they should be able to detect contained jamming at,” Soler told her. “But…”

  For the second time in as many days, Fortitude’s flight deck was the scene of a firefight. Kira’s people were trying to take the pinnace’s passengers alive—and the MPD was under no such compunctions with regards to Milani’s people.

  There were definitely fewer MPD blasters firing than there had been at the start, but half a dozen of Kira’s commandos were down, and she had no way to tell if they were still breathing from here.

  There was nothing she could do from the bridge except watch.

  “Damn, that pilot’s good,” Waldroup snapped. “They have control.”

  “Darken the deck cameras,” Milani ordered.

  The system automatically obeyed, not pausing to question what the commando officer was planning—even though Kira’s response was confusion.

  Then she spotted the red dragon that marked her senior officer as they stepped out onto the deck, wearing the bulkier heavy boarding armor—and carrying a Crest-manufactured rocket launcher.

  The launcher flashed brilliantly even on the darkened camera feeds—and the explosion a quarter-second later activated the automatic protection software to darken the feeds even more as one of the main Harrington-coil casings blew apart into several thousand pieces.

  The pinnace hadn’t closed the ramp or done more than begin to lift off. Now, with the Harringtons on one side of the spacecraft active and the coils on the other side gone, she flipped in the air, going through a full rotation and a half before slamming back down on her roof.

  A half-dozen MPD officers were flung clear of the pinnace, hitting the deck in ways that made Kira wince—but her people stunned them anyway as Milani’s point team advanced on the shuttle.

  The stunners the team carried looked like delicate toys in the heavy boarding armor, but they were still heavy stunners, variable-aperture weapons designed to disable crowds or stun someone in full armor. The shuttle’s armor could stop the beams, but almost no personal gear could.

  With heavy stunners, heavy armor and the shuttle just having flipped five hundred and forty degrees in the air…the fight for the pinnace was very short after that.

  “Status report on our friends?” Kira asked as the flight-deck situation finally came under control. It looked like she wasn’t going to be landing fighters on Fortitude’s deck for a while now—the pinnace was less embedded in the deck than her fighter but no less wrecked from the looks of it.

  But…

  “We’ve got them all,” Milani told her. “Alive and intact. A few broken bones among the Cabinet. The Prime Minister actually had herself strapped in. Sensible woman.

  “We’re setting bones as we go and applying painkillers and tranquilizers,” they continued. “Everyone should be out for at least an hour, but we’re moving them to the brig with the nice shiny Faraday cages before they wake up.”

  Headware wouldn’t send messages without conscious instructions from its owner—but if someone was awake, they could send messages up to fifty or even a hundred thousand kilometers through a vacuum. Maybe even a full three light-seconds, depending on the gear they had installed.

  “Thank you,” Kira murmured. “How bad did we get hurt?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Three dead, eight wounded,” Milani admitted. “Wounded are going to the infirmary. Dead…Well, the ship does have a morgue.”

  “We’ll give them proper funerals when this is over,” she promised. “If we’re lucky, they’re the only funerals we’ll be holding.”

  “I can dream,” the commando said. “But for that… Well, the rest of this show is yours, Commodore. I have the prisoners.”

  Kira cut that channel and looked over at Konrad and Soler.

  “And our other friends?” she asked.

  “Cruisers and carrier are maintaining position at ten-thousand-kilometer intervals,” Soler reported. “Still have twenty-four fighters running space patrol around all five of us.”

  The main holotank had been updated. The four NRC ships were marked with the bright scarlet of hostiles, and their distance was nerve-wracking. At this range, the battlecruisers’ plasma bolts would probably go all the way through Fortitude and out the armor on the far side.

  “Nova cooldown?” she asked softly.

  “Twenty minutes,” Konrad told her.

  “Incoming hail from Terminal Loss, sir,” Soler reported.

  “Connect them,” Kira ordered. She considered. “Hold up. Do we have a simulacrum for someone other than Moon? She’s supposed to be with the PM now.”

  “Building them takes most of a day,” Konrad said grimly. “We don’t, no.”

  “Damn.” Kira swallowed. “Can we swap my uniform for a Crester Lieutenant’s? I can fake it from there.”

  “We can do that. Give me five.”

  “Let’s hope Captain Król is patient,” Kira murmured. A feed popped up next to her chair, showing the post-modification version of her. The NRC uniform looked odd on her, but she shrugged and it moved with her actual motions.

  “Good enough,” she decided. “Put him through.”

  Captain Król appeared on her screen again. He looked…concerned was too strong a word, but he was definitely bothered.

  “Is Captain Moon available, Lieutenant,” he asked her.

  “The Captain is with the Prime Minister, sir,” Kira said, as earnestly as she could. “I can connect you to her headware?”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary,” Król said. “We were just expecting a confirmation from the Prime Minister’s pilot when they touched down, but we haven’t heard anything yet. Has there been a communication problem?”

  “We haven’t had any problems here,” Kira lied smoothly. “According to the reports from flight deck, everything should be fine. The pilot might still be in shock from our flight bay. It is impressive on first sight.”

  “I’d expect better from one of our pilots,” Król said in a grimly derogatory tone—and that he let that show to a supposed junior officer told Kira everything she needed to know about why he’d been stuck at Commander for a decade.

  “But you can confirm that the Prime Minister is fine? There’s been no problems?”

  “I’m looking at a feed of the flight deck right now, sir,” Kira told him. “Everything is fine. The PM has begun her inspection with the Captain, I believe. I can connect you to the Captain, but I don’t have the codes to connect you to the Prime Minister, sir.”

  “No, that’s all right, I suppose,” Terminal Loss’s Captain said. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  The channel cut out and Kira snorted.

  “On
the one hand, I’m glad I didn’t have to come up with a name,” she said aloud. “On the other…what an asshole.”

  She turned back to Konrad.

  “Cooldown?”

  “Sixteen minutes.”

  Everything was down to time now. How long would it take the NRC ships to get twitchy about not receiving direct communication from the Prime Minister and her companions?

  An inspection should take more than sixteen minutes, after all.

  Fortitude’s bridge was dead silent as the clock ticked down.

  Kira was watching three things. First, the timer till they could nova. Second, the location trackers of all of their prisoners on the internal map. Third, the position of the warships around her.

  “Valiant is drifting closer. Eight thousand klicks,” Soler noted. “If I’m reading the beacons right, the fighters that are out belong to the battlecruisers. She’s still got a full load of eight bombers and forty fighters.”

  Kira nodded.

  “No one is in position to see into the deck?” she asked quietly. They could send anyone who asked a neatly edited feed of the flight deck with the pinnace parked normally, but if any of the fighters managed to line themselves up at the exactly right angle, they would see right into the flight deck.

  “Nobody yet,” Soler confirmed. “Turrets are clear, but we can only run so much power without drawing attention.”

  Kira had used that to her advantage on Deception once. It was ironic that it was going to cause her trouble today. From their current state, Fortitude’s guns would take a critical forty seconds to charge and fire.

  The nova fighters swanning around her would take four. If they panicked…

  “…Oh. That’s not good.”

  “Konrad?” Kira demanded.

  “We just received an encrypted Ministerial Protection Detail ping,” her boyfriend said grimly. “I’m going to guess a regular check-in with a controller on Terminal Loss.”

  “And there is no way we can send the correct response,” Kira realized aloud. “Cooldown?”

  “Four minutes.”

  She stared at the NRC ships.

  “If you were running the MPD for the Prime Minister of the Crest, how long would you accept silence from her personal detail?” she asked the bridge.

  “Ping repeated after fifteen seconds. I’m not sure this is even something they have to respond to consciously,” Konrad warned. “If it’s an automatic check-in, their headware would normally handle it.”

  “Except that they’re all in Faraday cages that block transmissions, and if we let their headware report, it would tell them enough of what happened to trigger a crisis.”

  “Third pulse,” Konrad said. “If I was running this, I’d have an automatic check-in attached to a manual one, that I’d get an answer on even if my people were dead.”

  “Yeah.” Kira looked at Terminal Loss. “Captain Król, what are you going to do?” she murmured.

  “Sir?” Soler asked.

  “Three unanswered pulses and the MPD is going to call an alert. The question is what is the Navy going to do when the Ministerial Protection Detail does that?” Kira told the other woman.

  “What do we do?” Soler asked.

  “Three minutes,” Konrad murmured.

  “Wait,” Kira ordered. “Get ready to bring coils and guns to full power on my command. First target is the assault carrier—Valiant does not get to launch fighters.”

  “Ready,” Soler replied crisply.

  There were two responses Kira could see. Captain Król could do either or both of them…

  “Terminal Loss has gone to max power on all reactors,” Soler snapped. “Incoming hail.”

  The answer, it seemed, was both.

  “Start powering up everything,” Kira barked. “Then link him in, show him Moon.”

  The channel opened a moment later and she hoped the simulacrum was in place.

  “What the hell is going on, Król?” she barked. “My bridge is telling me you’re going to battle stations!”

  She had a thirty-second edge on the cruiser from the prep they’d done. The other ships were starting to spike to battle stations as well—but Valiant wouldn’t be able to launch fighters before Fortitude fired.

  “Where is the Prime Minister, Moon?” Król snapped in turn. “She’s not responding to messages from her detail, and we can’t even raise her guards. Stand your ship the hell down and prepare to be boarded!”

  “My duty is to protect the Prime Minister, Captain Król,” Kira replied. “I will not surrender this ship to anyone.”

  “Are you mad?”

  Kira gave him her widest, most winning smile—and then heard the chime as Fortitude’s systems came online. She cut the channel.

  “Konrad, get us out of here,” she ordered. “Soler…fire!”

  Valiant’s drift had spoken more to a less-than-competent crew than any intended threat. The battlecruisers had maintained their ten-thousand-kilometer intervals, putting both of them twenty thousand kilometers from the stolen carrier. Valiant and Terminal Loss were the close-in ships—and Valiant had drifted almost three thousand kilometers closer than she should have.

  Six heavy plasma turrets swiveled and fired in a single motion. Valiant was an armored assault carrier, with fewer fighters on her cubage than a more traditional light carrier—but at seven thousand kilometers, it didn’t matter.

  Twelve bolts of superheated gas slammed into her at nearly the speed of light and tore clean through the warship. One moment, she was bringing her systems to battle stations.

  The next, Valiant was in pieces and seven hundred people were probably dead.

  Kira pushed down the reminder her brain always brought up as Fortitude plunged away from her supposed escorts. The light plasma turrets were in full automatic mode, firing on the nova fighters as the stunned Crester pilots scattered from her.

  The two biggest threats right now were those fighters’ torpedoes and Terminal Loss. The fighters’ confusion meant the torpedoes weren’t going to be in play fast enough.

  But Terminal Loss’s Harrington coils were online and her turrets were showing active energy signatures, and…

  “Jammers online,” Konrad reported. The entire sensor display that Kira was watching dissolved into static across every radiation band and sensor—a static lit by blasts of heat as Terminal Loss’s first salvo went wide.

  “We are evading,” Soler said. “We are clear of the first salvo, but the timing was perfect there. They’ll get some hits on the next, and we are too damned close.”

  Fortitude’s own turrets fired again, hurling plasma at their sudden pursuers. Even at this range, multiphasic jamming made targeting solutions difficult, and only half of the plasma bolts hit. Terminal Loss shuddered in space, twisting as she tried to both adapt to the momentum transfer from the hits and start evading.

  “Battlecruisers will have guns in ten seconds,” Soler reported.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Konrad snapped. “Cooldown complete! Novaing now!”

  43

  Silence reigned on Fortitude’s bridge as the world shifted around them. New datacodes appeared in the holotank as the carrier’s sensors updated, and Kira breathed a sigh of relief as green icons flashed into existence.

  Security point six might have a trio of destroyers renewing the mapping, but the other five security points six light-years away from the Crest did not. They would see occasional patrols, but they were empty.

  Point three was on the route to Guadaloop and was currently entirely under the control of Memorial Force. Kira’s destroyers were already swimming over to Fortitude to confirm her status.

  “Report,” she said aloud. “Did we take any hits?”

  “Negative,” Konrad told her. “Soler ripped Valiant apart and managed to spook the fighters and trigger the jamming at just the right moment.”

  Kira’s partner gave the tactical officer a confident nod.

  “You made the right choice, bringing her al
ong.”

  “I knew that,” Kira replied. “Soler, you okay?”

  The young woman exhaled sharply and nodded.

  “I…” She exhaled again. “I just killed a crapton of people, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Kira agreed bluntly. “And that you register that says good things about you, and it should be hard.” She shook her head gently. “Dr. Devin is good at the counseling for that; we’ll get you in his office once this is over.

  “Are you good for now?”

  She’d let Isidora Soler stand aside if the young woman needed it, but it would make Kira’s life a lot easier if Soler stayed at her post.

  A third ragged exhalation, and Soler nodded again.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” she said. “I’ll make that appointment with Dr. Devin, though.”

  Ailin Devin was Deception’s doctor and had been Conviction’s doctor before that. He was Memorial Force’s senior physician—but his focus was actually on psychiatry and counseling. He had subordinates for surgery.

  Kira was starting to realize Memorial Force had grown large enough, she really needed to have Devin put together a full counseling team, the same way they had put together a surgery team for him.

  “Rest of the fleet is assuming formation around us,” Konrad told Kira, clearly keeping an eye on the tactical system while Soler recovered her composure. “Nobody else in the security point. I… I think we may have pulled it off, Kira.”

  “Don’t say that until we’ve been paid,” she told him. “Which means I need an all-senior-officers conference in five minutes.

  “We have twenty hours where we’re probably safe. Then we’re hitting regular trade routes the rest of the way to Guadaloop. Let’s make the best use of the time we’ve got to be ready for what’s coming.”

  When the dust settled, Kira was going to have to rearrange officers and rationalize her org chart. For the moment, though, she had six ships in play. That meant six Captains, though since she was acting as Fortitude’s Captain, that didn’t add anyone to the meeting.