Conviction (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  “But those bugs suggest it. The resources being funneled into this Warlord Deceiver suggest it. It would be their usual mode, too. In their mind, augmenting the Costar Clans will create a situation where Redward must either become more aggressively expansionist or will be replaced by someone who will.”

  “Aggressive expansion doesn’t seem to be Redward’s style,” Kira acknowledged.

  “I once told you I didn’t work for King Larry because I saw him as the best hope for the Cluster,” Estanza reminded her. “I work for him because he’s about the only person in the Cluster who can afford me. That he’s also what I see as the best hope for the Cluster is a very nice bonus.”

  “But the Institute says his model will fail?” she asked.

  “Exactly. So, they’ll undermine him and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either Redward will change or Redward will fall. That is what the Equilibrium Institute demands. Today, the agent of that change is this Warlord Deceiver.”

  “If that’s the case, how heavily are they likely to have equipped him?” Kira asked. “I mean, from what you’ve said, they could have equipped him with Meridian-level tech.”

  “They’ll be working through proxies this far out,” Estanza said with a shake of his head. “I suspect we’ll see Crest Sector or Brisingr-Apollo Sector tech at worst. More likely, we’ll see the standard ‘high tech’ for the Cluster.”

  “He’s probably kept anything more advanced than the Clans would normally have at his base, too,” she noted. “Both for secrecy and for the security of the base. If we run into anything powerful, it’ll be there.”

  “I’m guessing they’ve mostly given him industrial tech,” her Captain told her. “Mining-droid and refinery schematics for the fabricators they already have. A better supply of raw materials into the systems he already has would be enough to dramatically expand his ability to replace ships.”

  “I’m worried about worst cases here,” she said. “What are we thinking? A Brisingr carrier group equivalent?”

  Estanza had been taking a sip of water and sprayed half of it across the table. Shaking his head, he grabbed a cloth and mopped it up while he thought about it.

  “I don’t think anyone who was backing him—whether it’s the Institute or an Ypres faction or Brisingr—would give Deceiver that much tech or support. My worst case would probably be a few Brisingr-Apollo-tech-level destroyers. Maybe… No.”

  “Boss?” she challenged.

  “If it was Brisingr or someone more local than the Institute, they probably have their own people and defenders on hand,” he pointed out. “If they’re smart, they’d have an evac transport for those people and a small force of nova fighters to protect that transport.

  “If those fighters existed, they wouldn’t field them against us. Not if we show up with enough force that they run.”

  “But they might exist,” Kira replied, running scenarios in her head. “So, we’re looking at a worst case of, what, three destroyers and a dozen nova fighters backed by ten corvettes and thirty or so gunships?”

  Estanza winced.

  “That would be the equal or superior of half the system fleets in the Cluster,” he pointed out. “So, yeah, I’d say that’s a solid worst-case scenario.”

  “All right,” she said cheerfully. “Once we get back aboard ship, I’ll start running the fighter group through that scenario. Without the Perseus group for backup.”

  Estanza was silent for several long seconds as he stared at her.

  “I gave you authority over the entire fighter group,” he conceded. “I won’t stop you. But I’m starting to realize why Brisingr’s crews and pilots kept coming up short against their Apollon counterparts!”

  39

  “What. The fuck. Was that.”

  Kira couldn’t keep herself from laughing aloud at Melissa Cartman’s precisely emphasized question as the other woman stepped out of the simulator. The other pilots were slower in getting out of the pods, but the shocked expression on the Asian pilot’s face was mirrored across the board.

  “That was three Brisingr Kaiserreich D9C heavy destroyers, ten Kaiserreich CV5 corvettes, sixteen Kaiserreich Weltraumpanzer-Fünf nova fighters and thirty-five Costar Clan gunships,” she reeled off. “For those of you who aren’t veterans of the Brisingr-Apollo war, that’s a Kaiserreich heavy cruiser group without the cruiser but with the cruiser’s fighters.

  “Plus a Costar Clan assault wing,” she added thoughtfully.

  “And we were expected to take that with fourteen fighters,” “Gizmo” Hersch replied flatly. “We almost lost the damn carrier.”

  “But you didn’t,” Kira told him. “I’m actually impressed,” she admitted. “I expected the first time I threw you at that list, I’d see a complete wipe. Instead, you successfully covered the bombers delivering their payloads and got Conviction out, smashing two destroyers on the way.”

  Of course, only three of the Memorials and none of the Darkwings had survived to rendezvous with Conviction after her nova.

  “To your advantage as well, though I didn’t point this out in advance, my fighter was being flown by an AS subroutine and I was running the OpFor,” she continued. Controlling the over sixty individual ships of the Opposing Force in the sim had been a pain, but the simulator software was designed to make it as easy as possible.

  She might still try to borrow Estanza or Zoric to run the opposing force next time. Sixty-four combatants was a little too much for one person.

  “Is this something we’re remotely likely to encounter, sir?” “Galavant” Banderas asked, her tone clearly that of a woman who’d hoped she’d escaped Kira’s idea of training.

  “I can’t give you details at all,” Kira replied. “But this is close to the worst-case scenario for a mission we have agreed to take on. If everything goes according to plan, we will not be facing that OpFor alone.

  “I don’t believe in things going to plan,” she continued grimly. “So, we’re going to plan and train for the absolute worst-case scenario. Now that I’ve massacred everybody in one mass scenario, we’re going to split into groups.

  “Most of you are getting a ten-minute break, then you’re going back in the simulator to practice anti-nova-fighter and anti-capital-ship tactics by flights.

  “Gizmo, Nightmare, you’re going to join myself and Commander Zoric in a sealed conference room and we’re going to wargame how fourteen nova fighters take down a fleet.”

  She smiled grimly.

  “I’ll admit I’m not certain it will be a particularly productive session.”

  It was a weird feeling for Kira to have her headware actually cut off. Security mode was one thing—she’d had multiple extra layers of encryption running on her signal when they’d met with King Larry, for example—but in the secure conference room, she had no signal.

  She was alone in her head without access to even Conviction’s datanet. The only other time she would be cut off from a general datanet was when she was in her fighter, and then she was linked to the fighter’s databases.

  It wasn’t a new feeling. She’d been in secure conference rooms before, after all. But it was not a comfortable feeling.

  At least, unlike Zoric and the two pilots she’d brought with her, she’d known who everyone in the meeting was supposed to be. The other three were just starting to settle down when Estanza joined them.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” he said cheerily. “I’ve activated the full seal on this room and I want you all to find and activate the classification functions on your headware.

  “Everything discussed in this room stays in this room until we’ve left the Redward System. Am I clear?”

  Kira had already activated those functions. They didn’t prevent her from talking about whatever she’d marked as classified—her headware literally could not do that—but it could make sure that she never even thought about the topics without being reminded that they were classified.

  Gizmo clearly took a moment to even find the sy
stem and looked vaguely surprised that it existed. Darkwing Squadron’s new commander was still quite young and out of practice at all of this.

  “I understand that Kira ran the flight group through a scenario from hell that resembles our worst everybody-fucked-us-and-all-our-fears-were-right case of the mission on the table,” Estanza continued. “We’re going to come back to that in a minute, but first the two of you need to know what’s going on.

  “In thirty-six hours, we and Commodore Shang Tzu’s destroyers will be jumping out to the route six nova stop,” he told them. “Once we’re there, I will open a sealed physical envelope, which will provide us with rendezvous coordinates where we will meet the Redward Royal Fleet Carrier Group Perseus.

  “Those coordinates will be within one nova of the Kiln System, where we intend to assault and capture the primary shipbuilding facilities belonging to Warlord Anthony ‘Deceiver’ Davies, the man behind the attack on Conviction.”

  Cartman whistled silently.

  “And we believe he has Brisingr backing?” she asked.

  “We know he has support from somebody who is providing him with industrial and mining technology to allow him to expand his fleet,” Estanza told her. “Most likely, they have also provided shipbuilding tech if not outright ships.

  “In some ways, we are better off if it’s an out-of-cluster source like Brisingr,” he continued. “They are more likely to have provided shipbuilding tech but less likely to have provided actual ships. If we’re looking at, say, an Ypres faction, we might see some Ypres corvettes in play, but we won’t see heavy ships or nova fighters.”

  “But we’re expecting nova fighters,” Zoric concluded aloud. “Someone coreward.”

  “We think any nova fighters will have the priority of protecting the partners’ personnel,” Kira said. “They may or may not actually engage us in the opening moves of the fight but are unlikely to press the battle once it’s clearly lost.

  “With the Redward carrier group and Commodore Shang’s destroyers, we should outnumber and outgun any force that Davies has. We have to assume that everything he’s holding at home base has been upgraded—at least to equivalency with the RRF.”

  Kira saw Estanza wince. It was the logical conclusion of his own theories. If it was the Equilibrium Institute—which she doubted he was willing to suggest to the other officers—tech to upgrade the Clans’ ships would have been their biggest offering.

  “Demirci is right,” the Captain conceded. “That is why we’re exercising the fighters against the worst-case scenario. Zoric, I want the crew to run through similar scenarios. If anyone has some suggestions on making Conviction herself a little less defenseless within thirty-six hours, I’d love to hear them.”

  He shook his head.

  “Most of the time I’ve commanded Conviction, we’ve had reasons to want the carrier herself to appear as inoffensive as possible,” he told them. “I won’t go into it, but those reasons are no longer valid.

  “I’ve spoken to Labelle about it, and to mount new plasma cannons, we’re going to need either yard time or some serious long-term internal bracing work. The plan is the latter,” he noted. It sounded like he’d hoped for a better outcome from his chat with the carrier’s chief engineer. “But that means that it’ll be weeks or months before we can put actual guns on the old girl.

  “Alternative suggestions are welcome.”

  “Torpedoes,” Gizmo told him with a shrug.

  Everyone in the room, including Kira, adjusted slightly to stare at the Darkwing pilot, and he flushed and shrank into his chair a bit.

  “A torpedo duplicates a capital ship plasma cannon with a shorter range,” he reminded them all. “We’ve got almost three hundred in inventory and can fab them to order. Boss Waldroup has at least half a dozen fighter torpedo launchers in inventory at any given moment.

  “We’d probably want to rig some kind of launcher than sends them more than a few thousand klicks into space for a longer-term system, but if you want a last-ditch surprise…the ship should be able to handle six torpedoes firing, especially if we tie them into the reinforced infrastructure around the flight bays.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone mounting torpedoes on anything bigger than a gunship,” Kira said slowly. “But that’s because putting in real guns is unquestionably superior. But we can’t mount real guns on Conviction, not right now.”

  From what she understood, they never could have mounted guns with as bad a recoil-to-power ratio as the Cluster could produce. With the carrier’s age, they might not have been able to fire her original guns.

  “Zoric, talk to Waldroup and Labelle,” Estanza ordered. “You three, keep the pilots’ noses to the grindstone. I suggest we don’t throw them against the full worst-case scenario every time. We need them to think they can win.”

  “Not my first choreography,” Kira replied. “They’ll be ready, sir.”

  “Good. Remember, the details are under lockdown until we’re out of the system,” the Captain told them all. “Redward Intelligence thinks the military is full of holes and the system is full of spies—and everything I’ve seen suggests they’re right. Carrier Group Perseus is leaving on a training cruise to the Exeteron System. Assuming everything goes right, they might even complete that cruise.”

  He shook his head.

  “Given that I don’t believe Exeteron even knows the cruise is coming, I don’t think Their Majesties are expecting that.”

  40

  “Nova complete.”

  Kira still didn’t spend much time on Conviction’s bridge, but she’d made an exception today. Still, she’d seen novas at a far more personal range than the carrier’s viewscreens which made the nova itself a non-event.

  There wasn’t even much activity on the bridge. Zoric ran a nine-person bridge watch for most non-combat situations. There were consoles on the carrier’s command deck that didn’t look like they’d been used in years, too.

  If Estanza got his guns, that would change. For now, Kira suspected that control of whatever defenses had been improvised rested in the Captain’s seat.

  A seat currently occupied by John Estanza, still an odd sight after weeks of him hiding in his office. Kira suspected it was even weirder for the bridge crew than for her. They’d had years to get used to the Captain never being on the bridge.

  That oddity wasn’t why he was the focus of everyone’s attention. The reason for that rested on the left arm of his command chair, a plain manila envelope slightly larger than a side plate.

  “Do we have Commodore Shang on the coms?” Estanza asked aloud.

  “Reestablishing link now,” one of Zoric’s people confirmed. A moment later, the bearded destroyer commander appeared on the screen.

  “So, got your envelope, Estanza?” the man asked brightly. “Are we going to make a grand show and tell of the cloak-and-dagger?”

  “I do believe so, yes,” the mercenary captain replied. “Is this new to you, old friend?”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever had someone issue a mercenary contract with sealed orders,” Shang replied. “Redward put enough money on the barrel for me to be curious and was straight-up about high risk.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m here because I trust you, Estanza. Let’s not fuck it up, hey?”

  “Agreed,” Conviction’s Captain replied, holding up the envelope. “Shall we, Commodore?”

  Both men tore the envelopes open simultaneously. The paper inside Shang’s clearly included more text than Estanza’s—Kira could see that all that was on Estanza’s was a set of coordinates, but Shang was still reading.

  “These coordinates aren’t anywhere near where Perseus is supposed to be,” Shang observed. “But the orders say to escort Conviction to those coordinates and place myself under Admiral Kim’s command. What’s going on, Estanza? I can see that all you have are coordinates.”

  “I’ve been more thoroughly briefed, yes,” Estanza confirmed coolly. “I recommended you for this
mission. I wouldn’t trust anyone else at my back, but there’s still aspects of this we want to keep quiet for a little while longer.

  “You’re correct that we’re rendezvousing with Carrier Group Perseus, escorts and all, which means Admiral Kim wasn’t going to Exeteron. As for where we are going…” He shrugged. “Admiral Kim will brief us.”

  Shang glared for a moment, then laughed.

  “High risk it is. All right, Estanza.” He waved a finger at the carrier CO. “I’m apparently still trusting you. It’s a good thing you’ve always been straight so far, I guess.”

  “So it seems,” Estanza murmured.

  Now that more of the mission had been announced, Kira updated the simulations to include Shang’s destroyers. From the exhausted expressions of her pilots as they gathered in the mess, it hadn’t been as optimal for them as she’d hoped.

  She, on the other hand, was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You all look like you’re feeling damn sorry for yourselves,” she told them. “Anyone want to make the counterargument?”

  Silence was the answer. And a few glares from people who didn’t control themselves fast enough.

  “I don’t think it’s really breaching classification at this point to tell you that we’re rendezvousing with someone else,” she said. “So, we’re not going up against the go-to-hell scenario without more backup.

  “I can’t tell you what backup yet, but I can tell you this: with two destroyers and fourteen nova fighters, you fought sixty-four enemy combatants to a standstill.”

  They hadn’t won the scenario. But they’d earned a handy draw, extracting all three of the friendly capital ships intact and leaving the theoretical Costar force badly mauled. If it had been a real-life scenario, it would have been a tactical draw—if a strategic defeat.