“Especially politicians who are fudging elections and working with the Institute.” She smiled. “I’m more willing to assume malice on their part than incompetence, but I will be happy to find failures of theirs along the way.”
“We can hope,” Zoric said grimly. “Even if this all goes according to plan, we’re up against a lot of firepower.”
“I know,” Kira allowed. “Hence wanting to get an exact figure on what we’re dealing with. I’ll see if I can borrow a courier from the Bank of the Royal Crest.
“Worst-case scenario, I start booking passenger tickets while you all prepare for war!”
15
“Wine, Kira?”
“Please.”
Kira accepted the glass Voski offered her, smiling to herself as the bodyguard retreated to the door of the borrowed office. Today, Voski wore a similar dress to the one they’d worn at the barbecue—and from her headware’s complaints, she figured it was stuffed full of electronic-warfare gear.
“The office is swept for bugs four times a day,” Jade Panosyan told her. The Crest Royal was leaning back in their chair with a wine glass of their own, wearing an old-fashioned pantsuit. “Voski re-swept just before you arrived and is running a few…toys, let’s say.
“This space is secure.”
“You’d know better than I if the Institute has agents out here,” Kira pointed out. “We broke their network less than a year ago, but I assume they’re rebuilding it.”
“Potentially not. They do seem to have written the Cluster off as a bad investment for now,” Panosyan observed. “Of course, they believe the Free Trade Zone will inevitably fail in a decade or two, so they will prepare for that and wait.”
“Bastards,” Kira murmured. Her anger with the Institute’s very existence had lost much of its heat with time and exposure, but that made it no less intense. That was why she was even doing this contract.
“I can’t argue that point,” Panosyan agreed. “I saw that this was officially a social call. I’m assuming you don’t want to talk to the BRC about a loan at the moment, so what do you need?”
“I might talk to you about a loan when your planet isn’t run by my mortal enemies,” Kira said drily. “Until then, we’re working toward a better future.”
“Always,” the Zharang agreed.
“I need transport to Crest that won’t draw attention,” Kira told them. “I want to take a scouting party in ahead, to see what intelligence we can pick up on our own. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but…”
“I’m a banker, Commodore,” Jade Panosyan reminded her with a chuckle. “Trust but verify is a golden standard for us. I’d expect no less from you.”
They took a sip of their wine as they considered thoughtfully.
“There are several options,” they finally said. “First, as I’ve assumed you’ve already investigated, there is standard commercial travel. You’d need to stage through a few different locations, and it would take some time.”
“My research suggested eight weeks,” Kira replied. “I was hoping you’d have a better option.”
“We could charter a ship specifically to carry you to, hrm, Guadaloop, I think,” the banker told her. “From there you could take commercial transport for the last hop, which would only be a couple of days.
“The charter shouldn’t draw too much attention, because you aren’t heading directly to the Crest, though Guadaloop is one of the more important client worlds with a semi-permanent NRC station,” Panosyan continued.
“It might end up drawing more attention, then,” Kira pointed out. “Since you and your delegation are here, a charter from here to a system near the Crest might catch NRC attention more than one directly home.”
Panosyan nodded slowly and took another sip.
“This is true,” they agreed. “A charter directly to the Crest, however, would also draw attention. Especially if no members of the delegation were aboard and there were no critical messages carried. Anyone debarking from that vessel would likely draw Institute attention.”
The office was silent, but Kira saw the grin creep onto Jade Panosyan’s face.
“Which means, of course, that someone from the delegation must return to the Crest to cover your arrival. I’ve done more than enough work here to earn my commission. Normally, I would prefer to see the negotiations through to the conclusion, but it is entirely believable for me to return to the Crest to start the back-end process of preparing the syndication of the loan.
“It’s both justifiable and makes me look like I’m avoiding real work to those who don’t understand banking, which fits with some of our enemies’ prejudices toward me,” they noted. “I can offer you transport on my yacht, and that will allow us to avoid some of the suspicion.”
“Wouldn’t we still draw attention as strangers on your ship?” Kira asked.
“If you came all the way to the Crest with me, yes,” Panosyan said. “But…” They tapped the wine bottle with their glass before finishing their drink. “This wine is one of my favorites—I’m somewhat known for it, in fact—and it comes from Guadaloop.
“Several of my and my father’s favorite wines are from that world, so it would be entirely expected—if I’m already evading the full weight of my duty—for my ship to stop at Guadaloop and pick up a supply for home.
“I have friends and contacts in the system, and we should be able to smuggle you off the ship there without drawing attention,” they continued. “It will likely be easier, in fact, to do so in the Guadaloop System than in the Crest.
“From there, you can hire commercial passage and arrive in the Crest almost completely unnoticed. We will arrange drop-box communication and coordination, and I will make certain that a sublight ship is placed at your disposal.
“Getting you back to your squadron will take a bit more effort but should be doable.”
They raised a hand in caution.
“I cannot guarantee your safe arrival in the Crest,” they warned. “The Sanctuary and Prosperity Party has loyalists everywhere, who may find you suspicious. While I believe that only a core group in the Party is sufficiently aware of the Equilibrium connections to see you as a threat…”
“Just the fact that there are mercenaries in the Crest may draw unwelcome attention,” Kira said grimly. “The thought has crossed my mind, but we can’t get away from it.”
“I presumed you understood, but I wanted to be certain,” Panosyan told her. “I will make the arrangements for our sojourn. It will have some positive aspects as well.”
The Crown Zharang of the Royal Crest grinned like an impish child.
“My ship is comfortable but not large, my dear Commodore. In five weeks, we will have plenty of time to get to know each other!”
16
The nova yacht Yerazner fit Jade Panosyan’s description to a tee. Kira couldn’t help herself from mentally measuring and guesstimating dimensions and statistics as their shuttle approached the ship.
Yerazner—Armenian for Dreams—was an egg shape sixty meters long and twenty meters wide at her widest. A significant portion of her upper half was given over to a transparent dome twenty meters across that contained a garden and a pool.
Given her length and lines, Kira estimated the yacht at about sixteen thousand cubic meters—probably based around a fifteen-hundred-cubic Eleven-X nova drive. Despite the garden dome on her upper half, the yacht looked to have powerful engines and, Kira suspected, at least some concealed guns.
Still, at sixteen thousand cubic meters, she wasn’t a big ship. The dome took up two thousand cubic meters of her volume—not a small sacrifice. The presence of the transparent open garden was the single clearest sign of the ship owner’s wealth.
Kira suspected they could have gold-plated the ship for less than it had cost to add the two thousand cubic meters used for the dome. Still, for a long trip, she could see the value.
“Approaching shuttle, this is Yerazner Flight Control,” a professionally calm voice s
aid in her headware. “I have you on my files, but please submit your manifest and passenger list to confirm.”
“Transmitting, Yerazner Flight,” Kira replied. The runabout she was flying was barely big enough for four passengers and their luggage—well, at least when the luggage included two full sets of combat armor.
Her two escorts—Jerzy Bertoli and Aleifr O’Mooney, two of Milani’s most experienced troopers—weren’t taking any chances with the Commodore’s safety. They might be planning on spending the entire mission in plain clothes with concealed blasters, but they’d brought everything they might need.
“We have the manifest and passenger list,” the Crester on the channel told Kira. “Just to confirm, the, ah, special equipment is staying on the shuttle, yes?”
“That’s the plan, Yerazner,” Kira confirmed. “It’s there for if we need it, not for us to create a need for it.”
The Crester laughed.
“Fair enough. You’re clear all the way, Basketball,” they told Kira, using her fighter callsign. “The skipper will be waiting in the bay; boss is in the gardens.
“Welcome aboard.”
If Kira had somehow missed who, exactly, Crown Zharang Jade Panosyan was prior to that point, the people waiting for her on the shuttle bay deck would have been the most blatant clue yet. There weren’t many organizations in the galaxy whose reputations spread beyond their own star systems—and the vast majority of them were space fleets and fighter squadrons.
The Dinastik Pahak had nova fighters. There were, in fact, two of them parked in the shuttle bay Kira had landed her shuttle in. Hussar-Six heavy fighters, they had a small but potentially significant technology edge over anything else in the Redward System—though the yacht only had space for two of them.
But the Dinastik Pahak were not just nova fighters. Their reputation hadn’t spread as far as, say, Cobra Squadron, but Kira recognized the gold-on-black uniforms of the half-dozen armed guards waiting for her.
The uniforms still retained much of the angularity of Crest fashion, but except for the gold shoulders and the star on each Pahak’s left breast, they were midnight black. The base was a shipsuit, like most uniforms Kira was familiar with, though the cut and armor were different.
The Dinastik Pahak were bodyguards and guardians, the most junior of them twenty-year veterans of the Navy and Army of the Royal Crest. Chosen for skill and loyalty, they guarded the royal family of the Crest.
Somehow, Kira was expecting Voski to be one of the people meeting her in that uniform. A second, older Pahak officer stood next to them, wearing the standard golden rocket of a starship Captain on her breast as she gave Kira a crisp salute.
“Welcome aboard Yerazner,” Voski told Kira. “Captain Sung-Min Jung, please be known to Commodore Kira Demirci and Commander Konrad Bueller of the Memorial Force Mercenary Company.”
“Captain,” Kira returned the dark-eyed Pahak officer’s salute. “I appreciate the Zharang’s invitation to travel with them. I’ll admit, I wasn’t necessarily expecting the Dinastik Pahak. I thought you only escorted their father, the King.”
“King Sung is our primary charge, yes, but a secondary detachment of the Dinastik Pahak exists to guard the Crown Zharang,” Captain Jung told her. “Their Excellency prefers we not be obvious when they are working, but all of their security is from the Dinastik Pahak.
“Of course, their wife also has a Pahak detail, but Em Loretta almost never leaves the Crest.”
Kira smothered her curiosity. She was a contractor working for Jade Panosyan. There was no reason for the Crown Zharang to have mentioned their wife to her, even if the lack seemed unusual.
“I don’t believe either of you have met Konrad Bueller before,” she said after a moment, gesturing her boyfriend forward. They’d known who was coming, but while Voski had introduced Konrad, they hadn’t met him.
“He’s Memorial Force’s senior engineer,” she noted. She swallowed any particular embarrassment in favor of necessity and smiled in amusement at herself. “He and I will be sharing quarters, which I hope makes your life easier.”
“Zharang Panosyan had informed us as such,” Jung told her. “We have rooms set aside for all four of you, as instructed. The Zharang has requested that Em Voski escort you and Commander Bueller to the garden once you’ve been shown to your rooms.”
She made a small, amused sound.
“While I suspect you could find the garden on your own, we’ll show you around first.”
The suite of rooms that Yerazner’s crew gave Kira and her people was clearly designed for exactly the purpose it was being used for. The whole suite, combined, was maybe two hundred and fifty cubic meters, but it was set up to put Kira and Konrad’s room at one end and the guards’ rooms next to the access from the rest of the ship.
It was surprisingly securable, and Kira left Bertoli and O’Mooney to that task while she and Konrad went up to the dome.
There was a tinge to the air in the entire ship that she wasn’t used to, but it wasn’t until the doors slid open into the garden dome that she finally realized what it was. The scent of flowers and fresh leaves, diffused by the purification and recycling systems, was rippling out from the massive garden dome and filling the entire vessel.
In the dome itself, the scent of unknown flowers was clear, and Kira found herself walking a stone-lined path through purple-flowered bushes in Voski’s wake. Only a few meters from the entrance, the path gave way to a hedge-enclosed pool that rippled in an artificial breeze.
“The water is part of the ship’s systems as well,” Jade Panosyan’s voice said from Kira’s left, and she turned to find the Crown Zharang watching her. “Everything in here is linked into the ship’s environmental systems. We’re using the plants to purify both the air and the water, though the pool is entirely as extravagant as it looks.”
They were sprawled in a sun lounger, grinning up at Kira, and gestured toward an empty pair of folding “beach chairs.”
“While I appreciate the garden and abuse the hell out of it,” they continued, “this was my grandmother-the-King’s thirtieth wedding anniversary present to herself and her husband. She was far more inclined to spoil herself than I or my father, but… Well, we already owned Yerazner, and it seemed wasteful not to keep her at that point.”
Kira chuckled and took a seat on the chair. A quick glance at the arm of the chair revealed it had roughly twenty-six different possible shapes, including the extended lounger form Panosyan was using.
For the moment, Kira remained seated upright—though Konrad sank about fifty degrees after he sat down and then made a contented sound as he discovered the massage features.
A drinks robot rolled out a few seconds later in answer to a silent command from Panosyan, and the Crown Zharang chuckled.
“Like I said, Kira, my ship is comfortable,” they observed. “Crew of twenty, plus, what, another twenty bodyguards, Voski?”
The bodyguard was still standing, though they were now leaning on a decorative stone wall. There were more than enough chairs for them to sit, and Kira didn’t have the impression that Panosyan would mind.
She did have the impression that Voski sitting at the pool was a long-standing discussion between the two of them.
“Forty-two all told,” Voski agreed. “All of us have individual rooms with more-than-sufficient amenities. Your grandmother was always determined to reward service, and your father agreed with that sentiment.”
“Well, where my father and grandmother agree, who am I to argue?” Panosyan asked. They shook their head and accepted a drink from the robot themselves after it had provided Kira a virgin margarita.
The Crester’s drink was definitely not virgin, Kira saw.
“My grandmother always knew where her loyalties lay,” the Crown Zharang continued calmly. “In another era, they might have hung ‘the Great’ on her—and that is never a title that isn’t drenched in fucking blood.”
Voski didn’t even conceal their wince.
>
“Perhaps you should lay off the tequila slightly, Jade?” they asked.
“Please, Voski, if anyone in this damn galaxy needs to know just what the Royal Crest has been up to for the last eighty years or so, it’s Demirci,” the Zharang said. “My grandmother built our network of client worlds. Her only loyalty was to the Crest, her only goal, our prosperity.
“Other worlds would benefit only where it served the Crest.”
Panosyan shook their head.
“I won’t say our client worlds aren’t better off than they were before they were pulled into our network,” they conceded. “But I suspect most of them would have been better off still if left alone.
“We can’t change the past,” they said sharply, taking a swallow of the margarita. “But we can change the future, and that’s what I hired you for.”
“We’re leaving shortly?” Kira asked.
“We already did,” Konrad pointed out.
Kira glanced “up,” to the transparent ceiling of the dome, and saw that he was correct. The stations and world they’d been orbiting were now rapidly falling behind them.
“Yerazner has the smoothest Harrington coils we could source,” their host told her. “Two hours to the first nova. Twenty-six days to Guadaloop. Barring trouble, the biggest concern between now and then is going to be when we run out of Redward Royal Reserve coffee.”
“I’m more worried about our stock of tequila from home at the moment,” Voski said drily. “We might be down to a mere fifty or so bottles.”
“Damn. If we run out, we might have to break open that pallet of rum from Ypres,” Panosyan replied. “I sincerely doubt we’re going to have any real shortages, Voski. You wouldn’t let me drink that much.”
“I am always concerned about the potential threats on our route,” the bodyguard reminded them all. “This ship draws attention to itself. That helps with your plan, in many ways, but it also draws dangerous eyes.”
Fortitude (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 4) Page 10