Conviction (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Share it with the troops who saved them, please,” Kira replied. “But I want the word out there—someone might be paying for my people’s deaths, but I will pay better for helping them.

  “And you helped without being certain of a reward. That’s worth a lot all on its own.”

  Plus, the entire reward was less than Memorial Squadron’s payment for the last operation. A two-week patrol with an admittedly nasty firefight near the end had paid out over two million crests for the six nova fighters she’d deployed.

  She had to pay salaries and bonuses out of that—and that had been with bonuses for the bounties—but two million crests were a million new drachmae, and that was four times her old annual salary.

  For two weeks’ work for six people.

  “All right, Commander,” Shang finally told her, taking the bearer stick. “If that’s your attitude, you’re going to make a lot of friends among mercenaries. Not all of them will be true and many will try and use you, but at least you’ll have those friends.”

  “I might pay well, Commodore Shang, but I’m an untrusting bitch,” she replied with a smile. “But it’s hard to argue you didn’t rescue my people when they’re right behind you.”

  Shang bowed, folding himself so completely, his beard nearly brushed the floor.

  “Then I will leave you to catch up with your friends. I am pleased to have helped put Ypres Hearth in their place and gladdened to reunite companions sundered by the vagaries of war and politics.” He smiled brightly. “I am ecstatic to have done so and been paid well for the privilege. I look forward to working with you in the future, Commander.”

  If Kira understood Estanza’s plan, that would be closer than the mercenary thought. She smiled and inclined her head.

  “Thank you again, Commodore.”

  Shang saw himself out and Kira crossed to face her two latest lost sheep.

  “Socrates, Scimitar,” she greeted them. “How are you two doing?”

  “She got us this far by sleeping with a man I’d be charitable to compare to a hairy dog,” Colombera said bluntly, the dark-skinned man still standing so as to shield Michel from threats. “I’m all right, but it’s not been a good trip for either of us.”

  “I made that choice, Abdullah,” Evgenia Michel said softly. “I won’t pretend it was as fun as it might have been, but Roger was a far more delicate partner than his appearance might suggest. He just didn’t shower as much as I would have liked.”

  The young woman’s smile was forced, but her determination not to be made a victim shone through regardless.

  “I’m glad Shang’s people found you, even if I’m told the muggers were already having a rough day,” Kira said.

  “You and Evgenia here have left me forever terrified of tiny women,” Colombera noted.

  Michel was about three centimeters shorter than Kira and even more lightly built. There was a reason she’d trained in an armed martial art.

  “Large men will always assume they can take small women, even after you produce a knife,” Michel said grimly. “Those three weren’t the first people I’d killed since leaving Apollo. Dear gods, Demirci, what did we do?”

  “Nothing,” Kira told her. “Brisingr was hunting us, people. For being effective against them, nothing else. So…here we are.” She shrugged.

  “Not your carrier, I’m guessing,” Colombera said gruffly. “Whose?”

  “A friend of Colonel Moranis’s named John Estanza,” Kira replied. “I wear enough hats here to call it home. We’re running a mercenary nova fighter squadron with money and fighters Moranis arranged for.

  “If you want to fly, I’ve got berths for you. If you don’t, I can still arrange safe harbor here.”

  “I will move worlds and stars and Olympus itself to be in a nova fighter again,” Michel said grimly. “I am so sick of not being in control of the world around me.”

  “Inshallah,” Colombera added. “I’m with her. And you, Major.”

  “It’s Commander now,” she told them. “No real ranks among mercenaries. If you’re in, you’re in. That makes you pilots and co-owners in Memorial Squadron, our own personal mercenary company.”

  “If you’ve got a nova fighter, I’m in,” Michel repeated.

  “My dear Evgenia, I have Hoplites,” Kira told them with a broad grin. “It’ll feel just like home.”

  Michel closed her eyes and half-slumped against Colombera.

  “I’ll settle for safe, sir,” she admitted.

  “You’re on Conviction now,” Kira insisted. “You’re safe. I promise.”

  For the first time since Kira had come aboard Conviction, Memorial Squadron’s briefing room was full of familiar faces. She knew every one of the pilots sitting in the chairs like the back of her own hand.

  Only three of them—Cartman, Michel and Colombera—had flown in her squadron. There had been four squadrons in the 303, after all.

  It didn’t matter. They were all Apollon, all survivors of a mad purge that still made no sense to Kira. Thanks to Jay Moranis and a dozen helpful people along the way, some fragment of the Apollo System Defense Force 303 Nova Combat Group survived.

  And as their new name suggested, they would remember the ones who hadn’t made it.

  “All right, people,” she said loudly. “So, today, we have a full Memorial Squadron of ex-Three-Oh-Three pilots, as we always planned.” She shook her head. “I wish—more than words can really express, I think—that I had the backup pilots I’d hoped to. I wish that the fact we only got six nova fighters out here was actually going to be a problem for us.

  “But we’re here. Six of twenty-four—and Bardacki’s alive, too. He’s chosen a different path, but we’ll all meet up with him before he leaves on it.” She smiled. “We picked up a few strays along the way in our temps, and I wanted to make sure that everyone knows they’re not suffering for us finding our own, either.

  “Banderas and Asjes are back with the Darkwings and are being bumped to full pilots,” she told them. “Banderas made ace in that scrum around Conviction, too—and Waldroup tells me she’s planning on using Apollo-style kill markers on her fighters as a sign of thanks to us.

  “I don’t know what Conviction’s next mission is going to be yet,” she continued. “There’s a good chance it will look a lot like the last one—sweeping the nova lanes and playing convoy escort is most of what Redward’s Fleet does, and we’re backup for the RRF until the retainer ends.”

  Estanza might want to do something more spectacular about the Costar Clans, but that hadn’t been decided yet. She doubted he was planning on taking Conviction into a war all on her own. Not without some answer for the carrier’s lack of guns and understrength fighter group, anyway.

  “Regardless, the last word is that we’re going to stay at Blueward Station for at least four days,” she told them. “Waldroup will have the last two PNC One-Fifteens online before that, hopefully, so we’ll have time and space for some real-space exercises to knock everyone’s rust off before we jet out.

  “Your next two days are yours. After that, we’re back to ASDF-standard dockside activities.”

  She grinned wickedly.

  “And yes, that means you’re going to be spending a lot of time in simulators. We did okay last time out, but our training up to date has focused on anti–nova fighter tactics. I’m not going to discount those or remove them from the cycle, but we need to refocus.

  “Over a third of the known nova fighters in the Syntactic Cluster are aboard this ship, which means we’re not going to be fighting many dogfights. I didn’t account for that as I ran the training schedule prior to the last op, but I’m planning on it now.”

  The room chuckled in anticipation and she joined in.

  “So, enjoy your two days, people—and make sure you bring your capital-ship-killing pants with you when you’re back on duty. Because you all know how I train.”

  And that meant that if she threw her people against the defenses of a spaceborne rogue colo
ny and its pirate shipyards, they’d hold together. Nobody out there had nova fighters.

  Everybody out there had gunships and corvettes. Which meant her people needed to be completely comfortable with fighting ships twenty times bigger than theirs.

  Unfortunately for her enemies, with the right pilots, nova fighters were more than capable of doing just that—and Kira Demirci knew damn well her people were the right pilots.

  35

  It was in the quiet moments when there was nothing demanding her attention that it hurt the most.

  Kira didn’t get many of those moments, of course. That was a conscious choice right now, but it was also true of her life in general. Those few weeks aboard Hopeful Future had probably been the quietest part of her life for at least twenty years.

  This one had sneaked up on her, a few moments when the paperwork seemed under control and no one was messaging her or knocking on the door of her office. A video feed from the launch deck caught her by surprise, and she caught herself half-expecting Daniel Mbeki to step out from behind the PNC-115, settling in to his old spot.

  When Annmarie Banderas did so instead, it was like she’d been punched in the gut with his death all over again. The fighter the younger woman was inspecting wasn’t the ship that Mbeki had ridden to his death…but it shared the same heart. The class two nova drive that propelled the newly rebuilt spacecraft had once rested in Mbeki’s fighter-bomber.

  It was a necessary thing. Without a fabrication plant for class two nova drives in the Cluster, they needed to retrieve and reuse the systems if they possibly could. Waldroup had amply demonstrated her ability to build the rest of a PNC-115 from parts, but she couldn’t replace the nova drive itself.

  And, Kira had to admit, it wasn’t like she was silently crying because she knew that particular One-Fifteen had the parts from Mbeki’s fighter in it. Any of the One-Fifteens could have set her off.

  She’d never even had the chance to see if they could disprove her assumption that fraternization rules existed for a reason—or to even see if he was interested in more than a one-night stand, for that matter.

  “It’s never easy,” a voice said behind her. Kira spun around, glaring at the intruder as her hand fell to the blaster she carried aboard Conviction.

  Estanza’s words were soft and gentle, his tone muffling her anger. The Captain probably had pinged for admittance, too. She’d just been too distracted to register it.

  “I’ve lost three pilots I’d call my children,” Estanza told her, stepping up to look at the video feed with her. “Four lovers, too. I can take solace, I suppose, in that I parted ways with the woman I meant to marry to protect us both from Equilibrium.

  “Friends…god, I’ve lost count,” he admitted. “People I’d shared meals and laughs with, whose weddings I would have stood witness at. I can remember all of their names and faces, but I’d need to consciously use my headware to count to tell you how many.

  “Subordinates?” He shook his head. “Even more than friends, even if I’d call most of the pilots who died under my command friends.”

  “And Daniel?” Kira asked softly.

  “Was a son to me, and I wish I’d told him that more often,” Estanza admitted. “We always do when it’s too late. We always feel guilty for what we didn’t say—or wish we’d said it more, even if we did say it.”

  “At least he didn’t die with us mad at each other,” Kira said. She wasn’t sure she could put into words how grateful she was that she’d managed to rebuild that bridge. Daniel might not have died her lover, but he had died her friend.

  “It’s not enough, I know,” her Captain told her. “But it also has to be enough. You’ve danced this dance before; I can see it, Kira. And in the quiet moments, it burns us all the harder for setting it aside the rest of the time.”

  She’d dried her eyes while they were talking, and she shook her head now to clear the last stubborn tears.

  “And we go on,” she said firmly. “We miss him. We mourn him—and the others, too. I didn’t know them as well as Daniel, but you knew them better than I did.”

  “I did,” he confirmed. “Not as well as I should have. My plan to make myself look nonthreatening had unintended consequences for the quality of my command.”

  There was a thin smile on Estanza’s face as she turned to look at him.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “Now I am very, very angry,” he admitted. “If the Institute is behind the Costar’s new aggression, we have a big new problem. If we don’t, I have enough information now to know who was behind that particular attack, and I have every intention of blasting the bastard and his little pocket dominion into ashes.”

  “We have a plan?” Kira asked.

  “Not yet. What I have, Commander, is a target.”

  He tossed her a file and she threw it up on the screen that had been showing the launch deck. The image was a man in a gray shipsuit marked only by a single crimson stripe across the right shoulder. He was probably in his forties or fifties. Younger if he was from the Costar Clans, she reminded herself—but potentially older, too, if he came from deeper toward the Core.

  “Anthony Michael Davies,” Estanza introduced the figure. “Currently rejoicing in the fascinating title slash nickname of ‘Warlord Deceiver.’”

  “Davies,” Kira echoed. “The captain in charge of the convoy that baited us out of position was called Davies.”

  “From what I’ve come up with from Redward Intelligence and my own contacts, that would almost certainly have been him,” her boss confirmed. “All of his operations that we can identify are in a similar vein: some kind of distraction, combined with a sucker blow that probably would have been enough without the distraction.

  “We smashed his deployable forces. The losses we inflicted on the Clans would have crippled most system fleets out here. Redward Intelligence figures that he’s currently running around stabilizing his position and bartering alliances to rebuild his strength.”

  “And you figure?” she asked.

  “I figure the trap was made for us or one of Redward’s three junk carriers,” Estanza said quietly. “Even sub-fighters could have ruined his people’s day. He risked what he could afford to lose—which means that two corvettes and twenty gunships was an expendable force.

  “So, he’s got a shipyard and a nova-drive fabricator and a reliable source of money, materiel and crew.” The carrier Captain shook his head. “It’s not that the Costar Clans really lack in raw materials to work with. What they lack is food and tech, not metal.

  “If someone is supplying Warlord Deceiver with money and tech, he might well be able to replace his losses in weeks at most. It might not be the Institute, either,” he noted. “Even one of the Ypres factions could see the value in undermining Redward and the new trade association they’re trying to build.”

  “Okay. So, what do we do?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Estanza told her. “You inherited an apartment down on the surface, right?”

  Kira had to pause and call up her headware memory to confirm that. It had been just one part of a very busy series of days.

  “Yeah, Jay Moranis’s bolthole,” she admitted. “I’d forgot. Wasn’t really important to me.”

  “Well, since you gave your people a couple of days off, I think it would be a great time for you to go check out your new digs,” he suggested. “And I’d be delighted to accompany you to make sure you get there safely.”

  She gave him A Look.

  “And what is actually going on?” she asked.

  “We need an excuse for the two of us to go down to Red Mountain,” he told her. “Having an address where people can meet us that isn’t an official RRF office would be handy, too.

  “Since you have that apartment, it should make solid cover for us to meet up with a few senior officers in person and have conversations that we can’t have recorded. I knew Jay. I think I can assume the place would hold up to a decent meeting?”

 
; Kira dug into her headware.

  “I got a keycode and an address,” she told him. “It’s a mid-floor apartment, only the fifty-eighth level.”

  Estanza chuckled at that and she glared at him again.

  “What?” she asked.

  “This isn’t Apollo,” he reminded her. “Sixty stories is a good sized building in Red Mountain. What’s the address?”

  She tossed him the data and his chuckle became an outright laugh.

  “That’s the fifty-eighth floor of the Reginald Forsythe Tower,” he told her. “The Tower is exactly fifty-eight floors high and is one of the four Founders’ Towers, named after the original primary funders for the colony.”

  “Your point?”

  “Your apartment is a penthouse in what I believe is the third most luxurious apartment developments in the capital city,” the Captain explained. “Certainly among the top ten developments on the planet.”

  “Oh.” Kira mentally checked the math on an offhand comment Simoneit had made. “That would explain why it’s eating all the interest on ten million kroner in upkeep, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes it would,” Estanza chuckled. “Now, I don’t know Priapus Simoneit well, but I did know Jay Moranis. Unless I’m severely mistaken, you won’t quite believe what he’s set up here until you see it.”

  “I saw his manor on Apollo,” she pointed out. “That was a mansion with fifteen acres of manicured grounds. And concealed anti-air missiles.”

  “That sounds like Jay,” the Captain agreed. “Now realize that you own something that he regarded as acceptable. I want to see this apartment myself now.”

  “And if we manage to sneak in a meeting with your Admirals, everyone wins?” Kira asked.

  “Exactly. And, helpfully, I think at least one of said Admirals lives in Reginald Forsythe Tower.”

  Estanza grinned again.

  “Though I don’t believe that she lives in a penthouse.”