Equilibrium, page 29
part #3 of Scattered Stars: Conviction Series
“I know. Sound abandon ship and get to the bridge pod,” Estanza ordered.
“Sir?”
“There’s no time,” Estanza snapped. Alert lights started flashing around the bridge. “I can only give you twenty seconds, Akuchi. Go.”
The XO cursed—but gestured for the bridge crew to follow him as he ran for the attached escape pod.
Estanza remained in his chair, presumably taking control of the ship’s systems from there, and smiled calmly at empty air.
“You can all hear me,” he told his scattering crew. “I know some of you aren’t running. You’ve guessed what’s happening and chosen to make it happen. Thank you.
“This is my responsibility, not yours. A duty owed to a past life to finish what I left behind. But to all of you who are clearing the ship and all of you who are staying alike, thank you.”
In answer to a silent command, every display on the bridge darkened. They were replaced with a single hologram showing the two ships, with every piece of vector and engine-thrust data available overlaid in familiar patterns.
“It has been an honor,” John Estanza said into the channel. None of the crew would have heard him by then, Kira realized—every escape pod had launched and they had the same limits in the battlespace as anyone else.
The hologram showed the course of the two carriers, and Estanza rode it like the big carrier was his old starfighter—and it was very clear that Ivarsson had never seen what was coming.
The moment before impact, Kira paused the recording. She sighed, then turned it off and turned to Akuchi Mwangi. The Black officer looked back at her levelly, just as dispassionate as he had been when the battle had been going to hell around Conviction.
“How many made it out?” she asked. She had no idea how the contracts and structure of Conviction’s legal existence were going to fall out in the end, but she’d take responsibility for Estanza’s people for now.
That was the least she could do.
“Two hundred fifty-six,” Mwangi said crisply. “With the fighters already in space…just over two-thirds of the people aboard.” He paused. “The senior officers made it, except for Labelle. They stayed to rig the reactors. I’m not sure that was part of John’s plan.”
“I’m not sure it would have worked without it.”
Kira shook her head. They were back on Deception, the big cruiser anchoring the search-and-rescue efforts through the debris of the strike on the Cobra carriers.
“It might not have. That was one tough voidborn of a ship with some tough voidborn pilots. John… Well, he saved Deception, most likely.”
“And Redward.” Mwangi bowed his head. “I didn’t hear his entire speech until now.”
“He knew the bridge recorders would get it,” Kira said, looking back at where the hologram of Conviction’s bridge had hung. “He knew everyone would see it—and everyone will see it, Akuchi. We’ll share it to everyone from Conviction who made it off.”
“What do we do now, sir?” Mwangi asked.
“Deception was the focus of everyone’s fire yesterday,” Kira admitted. “She’s tough, but she’s taken a beating. Baron is hanging out with us because we’re one solid knock from falling apart.”
Deception also now had a capital-ship kill count to terrify small children. The price of it all, though…
“Once we’re finished search-and-rescue here, we’ll move to Ypres to rendezvous with Seventh Fleet,” she told Mwangi. “Deception is in no shape to continue operations.” She snorted. “Most of Seventh Fleet isn’t, in truth, but I suspect they’ll fake it at best they can.
“I’ll talk to Remington in Ypres and see what the plan is. If nothing else, she’s got over half of our fighters and pilots.”
Deception had a mismatched collection of twenty nova fighters aboard; there were twenty-five more Conviction planes tucked away on one of the RRF’s junk carriers. The chaos was such that Kira wasn’t even sure who was alive or dead yet.
She had her fears, though.
“Until we officially stand down the corporation or…whatever happens next, I’ll stick with you, sir,” Mwangi promised. “My understanding is that I answer to Zoric now, anyway. And she reports to you.”
“Focus on keeping Conviction’s crew sane,” Kira told him. “I don’t need them to help out around Deception, but I suspect helping with repairs and S&R will make them feel better.”
“Almost certainly, sir. I will make it happen.”
“Work with Kavitha and Konrad,” she said. “I trust the three of you. Let me know what you need.”
“And you, sir?”
“I’m responsible for search-and-rescue at two battlespaces,” Kira pointed out. “I’ll be busy.”
The search-and-rescue shuttle came into the flight deck very, very slowly. It had a pair of large retractable manipulator arms that were currently extended beneath it, holding the wreckage of a familiar-looking fighter.
More accurately, half a fighter. Kira stood and watched as an emergency crew rushed to the Hoplite-IV, but she knew the truth, looking at the mangled wreckage. The emergency pod had been trapped by the way the hull had warped, preventing the nova fighter from ejecting the pilot and the class two drive.
Dinesha Patel stood at her right side and she was torn between pretending to have hope and facing reality. Finally, a choked sob from the younger pilot made up her mind.
She turned and pulled him into a hard hug, holding him as he dissolved into tears—which thankfully kept his head against her shoulders and his eyes covered as the emergency team emerged from the wreck with a body bag.
Kira could guess what Joseph Hoffman looked like now. She’d seen enough burnt and mangled bodies pulled from starfighters over the years. She hadn’t even seen Longknife die.
Patel had flown on his lover’s wing, though, and had to have seen the hit. He’d still managed to handle himself through the battle, leading a rapidly changing wing of fighters into the heart of the enemy formation again and again.
“I’m sorry, Dinesha,” Kira told him. “He didn’t make it.”
“I knew,” Patel whispered. “I just… I just didn’t want to admit it.”
Kira looked up as Mel Cartman stepped over, wrapping her own arms around the young man.
“I’m not sure it helps, but we just got an update from one of Baron’s shuttles,” Cartman told Kira as she gently transferred Patel to cry into her shoulder instead. “They found Michel. She’s…not in great shape, but she’s alive.
“They’re rushing her to Baron because she’s closer.”
Kira grimaced.
“That bad?” she murmured.
“Worse,” Cartman admitted. “From what they said…they had to leave about half of her behind in the wreckage to extract her.”
“Starfires,” Kira swore. “And then there were five.”
They’d made it this far without losing any of the original six, but the nature of their job meant that could never have lasted.
“What do we now, boss?” Cartman asked.
“We go on,” Kira said grimly. “We hold a giant fucking wake when we get back to Redward and mourn our dead. I think—I hope—that Bengalissimo is the Institute’s last play here in the Cluster, and we’ve destroyed them.
“They’ve got one cruiser left. I doubt Redward is going to try the impossible and invade a system, but they can certainly return the blockade favor on Bengalissimo.”
“Good,” Patel ground out. “I want these voidborn assholes dead.”
“Cobra Squadron is dead, Dinesha,” Kira told him. “They had three carriers and a hundred and thirty fighters and bombers. They’ve got maybe twenty-five fighters left. No carrier. No bombers. And we are going to tell the galaxy how Cobra Squadron ended, my friend.
“Hoffman may have died at the hands of a legend, but that legend is over. I don’t believe in revenge…but he is well avenged.”
“I do believe in revenge,” Patel snarled, then exhaled a long breath. “But…you’re right.”
“You haven’t slept since the battle. Go rest, Dinesha,” Kira told him. “I will make it an order and have a doctor knock you out if I have to.”
“I think… I think…”
“I’ll take care of him,” Cartman promised. “You’ve got a lot going on.”
The shuttle that arrived twelve hours later was smaller than the search-and-rescue ships, painted white with red crosses in the ancient symbol of its purpose.
Kira hadn’t ordered an honor guard for their wounded, but she found herself surrounded by one anyway as she met the medical transfer ship. A file of surprisingly gleaming armored mercenaries flanked the ramp as medical pods were rolled down.
“Our people deserve respect,” Milani murmured as they joined her. “We won, right?”
“That’s the theory,” Kira agreed. There were seventeen medical pods coming aboard Deception and thirty-two going the other way. Most of the ones going to Baron were prisoners. Kira’s people weren’t equipped to handle interrogation and long-term detention of conscious people, let alone prisoners.
All seventeen of the pods coming her way were pilots, but it was the sixteenth pod that she crossed to meet.
“She’s in an induced coma,” the tech accompanying the pod told her the moment she arrived. “We’ve stabilized her, but without artificial life support, she…”
“We have the best systems here,” Kira promised. “Everyone will get the best treatment. Evgenia won’t get better care than anyone else, but she’ll get the best care. She’s just special.”
“She needs major regeneration. Planetside,” the med tech warned Kira, but stepped back to let Kira look inside at the young woman. Michel was even shorter than Kira, with an extremely petite build. She looked fragile normally—and Kira had to swallow down a moment of nausea when she realized that Evgenia Michel currently ended about three centimeters below her belly button.
“She’ll get it,” Kira said firmly. “Whatever it takes.”
“Always hard dealing with a case like this,” the tech admitted. “We can save them, but rebuilding them is hard and not all of them come back…mentally intact, sir.”
“She has four of the best friends in the galaxy to watch over her,” Kira told the young man. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. Without you and your colleagues, we’d have lost more than we did.”
“We’re picking up a bunch of people who should be in RRF uniforms,” the tech replied with a sad smile. “I think the honors are about even.”
56
Ypres hadn’t changed much on the surface. Political unification hadn’t yet made any major changes to the positions of stations and shipping. It would, Kira was sure, but it had only been a few months and most of those under blockade.
Baron and Deception were arriving at Dikkebus, the most heavily populated and industrialized planet in the system. Not much had changed there, though Kira could pick out the signs of new shipyards as her ship slid into position flanking Duke.
The Federation had been busier than she’d thought. From what Commodore Shinoda had said, the two nova destroyers they’d given him for the Coalition Fleet had been half of the nova warships his people possessed.
Now eight Yprian destroyers orbited with the Redward cruisers. There were even a few lighter warships from other systems—the week since the battle had been enough for the balance to fully shift.
“Admiral Remington sends her regards, Commodore,” Zoric told Kira as the pilot surveyed the cruiser’s bridge. “You’re invited to join her aboard Duke at your convenience.”
“You think she really means my convenience?” Kira asked dryly. “She is an Admiral.”
There were few ways an Admiral could request someone to visit them that didn’t translate as “right now.”
“And we’re the people who saved the damn Cluster,” her Captain replied. “I think she might just. But I guess we don’t have much else to do.”
“We’ve still got some of their people on board, and they’ve still got some of our people on Seventh Fleet’s carriers,” Kira noted. “Can you coordinate that swap, Kavitha?”
“Easily,” Zoric promised. “When do I start getting replacement armor and dispersal networks? Or turrets, for that matter?”
Sixty-two of Deception’s crew were dead, killed when four of her heavy turrets had been blasted clean off her hull by particularly ballsy Cobra pilots. Fixing that damage was going to take a while.
“When we’re back in Redward, I think,” Kira said. “We’re not doing that work here. And that assumes you even still work for me.”
“That’s up to me, I’m pretty sure, which means I still work for you,” Zoric told her. “It’s… It’s what John would have wanted.”
“Thank you,” Kira replied, closing her eyes for a moment. “I guess I need to go catch a shuttle.”
Admiral Vilma Remington’s office aboard her cruiser was sparser than Kira might have expected. At the very least, she’d figured the old Admiral would have an “I love me” wall of certifications and decorations.
Instead, it was completely standard-issue. One desk. One ceiling-mounted hologram projector. Bare walls except for where the flag of Redward—a stylized red mountain behind a castle—was enameled onto the wall behind her.
That was it. The holoprojector was doing yeoman’s work, however, with a full display of the Syntactic Cluster hanging in the air above Remington’s desk as the woman studied it.
“Admiral Remington,” Kira greeted her. “You requested me.”
“I’d have Estanza too, if I could,” Remington said. “That man and I spent half a decade arguing everything from contract pricing to intergalactic politics to quantum physics. If I was remotely inclined toward men, I’d have dragged him to bed years ago.
“The absolute ass.”
The room was silent.
“But here we are,” Kira finally said, internalizing her own grief.
“So we are.” A bottle of something appeared on the desk and Remington poured two generous glasses. “Bengalissimo sherry,” she said, sliding the glass across the table. “The system produces a few nice things along with assholes and warships.”
“To John Estanza,” Kira toasted before sipping the smoothly sweet fortified wine. “And the mess he left me.”
“Do you know what happens to the mercenary company’s assets and people?” Remington asked.
“Deception is mine but a bunch of her crew were John’s,” Kira admitted. “I’ll offer them contracts to transfer over once things quiet down. Right now, we’re limping along emotionally as well as physically.”
“The contract does include provisions for compensation in case of loss of hardware,” Remington told her. “I don’t think either of us expected it to be quite this messy, but it’s still covered.”
“Good to know, Admiral.”
“Em Demirci, unless you plan on taking Deception and leaving the Cluster right this moment, you and I are going to be working together for a while yet,” Remington told her. “Call me Vilma.”
“If you insist, Vilma,” Kira said.
Remington nodded firmly and gestured to the map.
“The good news is that I don’t need Deception right now,” she said. “While the best tactical and operational plan would be to move on Bengalissimo right now, before their allies send them more ships and tech, that would be contrary to our strategic objectives.”
“You want the rest of the Cluster involved,” Kira guessed.
“Exactly. Even if it’s only a token commitment from our allies, we need this to be a shared Free Trade Zone operation,” Remington confirmed. “I’m going to hold here in Ypres with Seventh Fleet until I am reinforced by those allies.
“While I would prefer to hang on to Deception, your ship is also the worst damaged after that affair. I presume you would like to repair her?”
“I would, yes,” Kira agreed.
“I’ll acknowledge your contract to support Seventh Fleet on our breakout and breakin as complete,” Remington told her. “I’ll leave valuing Conviction to the analysts on Redward, but I will sign off on a full compensation for her loss in principle and provide partial immediate compensation.”
“Immediate compensation, Vilma?” Kira asked with a raised eyebrow.
“We started this mess with five carriers and two hundred and ninety fighters,” the Admiral reminded her. “I still have four carriers…but there are only eighty RRF fighters aboard them. On the other hand, Deception can’t haul forty-five planes.”
A new hologram appeared, a familiar one.
“I know our freighter conversions aren’t worth a tenth of what Conviction was in a fight, but one would let you take your fighters back to Redward with you. Raccoon is currently carrying all of your fighters as it is, so transferring her crew and the couple of RRF fighters she still has aboard to another ship will be easy enough.
“She’s yours. Well, Conviction LLC’s, I guess,” Remington noted, “but it gives you a starting point. I hope you retrieved some useful gear from Conviction’s wreckage.”
“Angel Waldroup insisted,” Kira said with a sad chuckle. “We got three-quarters of her fabricators eating up Deception’s limited cargo space.”
“You can move them onto Raccoon or, well, do whatever you want,” the Admiral told her. “The ships are yours. The fighters are yours. The money is yours too, if that’s any consolation.”
“I lost dear friends in this mess,” Kira replied. “It’s not much of one, no.”
“I didn’t think it would be.” The ship vanished from the hologram. “I was never under the impression that you or John—or Shang Tzu, for that matter—were just mercenaries.”
Remington studied the map of the Cluster with the single baleful red icon of Bengalissimo glowing on it.
“There’ll be work for your people, however it all shakes out,” she promised. “But Deception needs repairs.”
“And escorts, I think, if I’m going to play this game,” Kira replied. “I don’t suppose I can get a sign-off from you allowing us to buy Serendipity-class destroyers?”
