Conviction (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 1) Read online

  “Already underway, Commander,” he promised. “I expect you to be paying me a lot of money over the next few years, but I hope to provide you with far more value from your investment than you expect.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” Kira said dryly. “My expectations of lawyers are low.”

  “I think we’ll change your mind on that,” Simoneit told her. “And to start on that process, I put some feelers out into the station net. A Melissa Cartman and a Sandip Nicastro arrived on a nova freighter two hours ago. They’re both on the list for Three-Oh-Three pilots and arrived together, so I’m guessing you may want to meet up with them?”

  “Mel and Sandip made it?” she asked, swallowing a loud sigh of relief. “Where are they?”

  “They just checked into a hotel two decks down from yours. Catch the address.”

  Kira caught the data snippet out of the air and nodded her thanks.

  “I think I need to be on my way, Em Simoneit,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Commander,” he replied, then smiled and offered his hand. “With the amount of money you’ve already paid me, I think you call me Pree.”

  “Then you can call me Kira, Pree,” she said.

  8

  The hotel Simoneit’s address brought her to was significantly less nice than her own. It was a serviceable-enough place for spacers between jobs, the kind of place you stayed when you were hoping to have somewhere to end up but didn’t know how long you’d be waiting.

  The lobby was floored in the kind of hard-serving laminate that looked the same in every star system. The chairs and couches tucked against one wall were new but cheap. They were probably comfortable enough, but they readily showed their lack of pedigree.

  “Hi! Are you looking to rent a room with the Blueward Green Star Hotel?” an excessively cheerful holographic receptionist asked. “If you require other services, I may be able to assist you or can connect you with a superior agent.”

  Superior agent did not, Kira reflected, necessarily mean human. In a place like this, it probably meant exactly what it said: a more capable artificial stupid that could handle more complex queries but cost the Green Star more money to turn on.

  “I need to pass a message to either Melissa Cartman or Sandip Nicastro,” Kira told the stupid. “I’d prefer immediate, but I can leave a recording.”

  “I’m sorry, Green Star Hotel policy does not allow me to identify clients of the hotel,” the hologram told her in the same cheerful tone.

  “I don’t need you to identify them, just to pass on the message if they are here,” the Commander said with a concealed sigh. Unless Redward stupids were much dumber than their Apollon counterparts, it should be able to do that.

  “Oh.” The stupid chewed on that for longer than any computer should have to. “I can do that!”

  “Tell whichever of them you can get ahold of that Kira is on the station and looking to make contact,” Kira told the hologram. A flick of her fingers gave the stupid her contact information. “That’s all they really need.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  The stupid was…exactly what the name implied. With a sigh, Kira gave the image a nod and turned to leave.

  At which point, of course, she almost collided with Sandip Nicastro. The younger of the two pilots she was looking for was only a few centimeters taller than her, a compact dark-skinned man with a ready smile.

  “Kira!” he exclaimed. He started to reach to hug her, then paused. “We still on hugging terms?” he asked.

  “You dolt.” Kira swept the man into her own arms. She’d had to smack him down once for trying to seduce her, but that had been a matter of policy rather than dislike. Nicastro and Cartman had an open relationship. Cartman had slept her way through every available man in the 303, and Nicastro had slept his way through every available woman.

  But she’d been their squadron commander, which had made his casual pass entirely out of line. That didn’t mean she didn’t like that solidly built man. Just that she couldn’t sleep with him.

  “You and Mel made it okay?” she asked as she released him.

  “Nothing like the luxurious accommodations of the ASDF, but, well…” Nicastro shrugged. “The first few systems were the worst. Given everything home did give up, I wouldn’t have expected to be dodging MPs for as long as we were.”

  Nicastro and Cartman were neither senior enough nor close enough to the end of their enlistment terms to be released early. Their presence in Redward was active desertion.

  An active desertion Kira couldn’t regret, given that the ASDF had been failing to protect their fellow pilots from assassins.

  “We made it in the end,” he concluded. “But we’re not bearers of good news. Hughes and Espinoza are both dead. Nova freighter they were on was jumped by ‘pirates’ in the Sicario System. No survivors.”

  Kira closed her eyes in a hard wince. That was two more of the 303 dead—and Yngve Hughes had been another of the squadron commanders.

  And the loss of a nova freighter meant that the Shadows had killed at least ten other people to kill them.

  “What a damn mess,” she said aloud. “Did you touch base with anyone else?”

  “We were all keeping our routes pretty quiet, even from each other,” Nicastro admitted. “I saw the news report with the name list when we passed through Sicario; otherwise, I wouldn’t even have known about them.”

  “Commander,” her escort’s voice rumbled. “I’m guessing this one’s okay?”

  There was some amusement in the armored mercenary’s voice as Kira released her old subordinate and turned an eye on her bodyguard.

  “Sandip Nicastro, this is my current minder, Jerzy Bertoli,” she introduced the two men. “He’s a ground-pounder off the carrier Conviction. I’m under contract with Em Bertoli’s captain.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Nicastro said. “Got space for two more?”

  Kira grinned.

  “My contract says I’m to provide six nova fighters with pilots and I’m short five pilots. You’re damn right I’ve got space for you and Mel.”

  She could see the tension release from Nicastro’s shoulders. Kira had been Moranis’s main protégé, which meant she’d been the one with most of the information. Her understanding was that the other Majors had enough to at least track down Simoneit, but there’d been a lot of pieces to the old man’s plan.

  The pilots had only known to get out there and look for the squadron commanders.

  “That’s what I needed to hear, I think,” Nicastro murmured. “I kept telling Mel everything was going to be fine…but this place is as cheap as I could find in space, and I know how long we can afford it for.”

  “I can front you money if you—”

  “DOWN! Both of you get do—”

  Bertoli’s shouted warning wasn’t fast enough. Blaster fire crackled in the plain hotel lobby and a large horse kicked Kira in the back of her long leather jacket. She crumpled to her knees with the impact and stared in horror as Nicastro collapsed against her.

  The other pilot hadn’t been wearing armor of any kind.

  Kira let herself fall to the ground with the impact of the blaster bolt. Her jacket could take one hit, but she wasn’t confident about more than one.

  It also took her a critical few seconds to take her attention from Sandip Nicastro. His eyes were glazing over even as they hit the ground together, and a strong smell of burning pork began to fill the air. The other pilot had probably been dead before he’d fallen into her, let alone before they’d hit the floor.

  More blaster-fire flashed over her as Bertoli scrambled away from them, cursing loudly as he cleared his own weapon. The mercs were obedient enough to local law that they didn’t carry blasters on the station—but Kira would almost rather be shot with a blaster than the bead carbine Bertoli produced.

  A blaster bolt splattered across the mercenary’s armor and then Bertoli opened fire. The carbine was a far faster-firing
weapon than the blasters their assailants had opened up with, and Bertoli walked his fire across the lobby as Kira finally began to take in the area again.

  Four hooded figures had stepped into the lobby while she’d been talking to Nicastro. Each of them had produced a concealed blaster, a stubby energy weapon slightly larger than the sleek carbine the merc was carrying.

  Blaster bolts had made a mess of the lobby, with several portions of the wall clearly punctured and others on fire. There was a reason blasters were restricted on space stations.

  One of the killers took a burst from the bead carbine to the chest, their wavering stance suggesting that they were wearing body armor of their own. The beads, designed not to risk the station, would suffer against any kind of defenses—and while Bertoli’s armor had already shrugged off several blaster bolts, it couldn’t do that much longer.

  Using Nicastro’s body as cover, Kira dug for her own weapon. It wouldn’t be much better against armor than Bertoli’s, but she should have the advantage of surprise.

  Bertoli, on the other hand, clearly had the advantage of augmented hand-eye coordination. The masks the killers were wearing were designed to thwart facial recognition software.

  They were not designed to thwart six-round bursts of glass beads. The merc’s target’s head exploded into a spray of blood, brains and fabric.

  He had to keep moving as the killers focused on him. He’d made himself a target by engaging, which Kira had to appreciate. He had to think she was dead, after all.

  With all three shooters focused on her bodyguard, she had a moment to program their locations into her headware. She didn’t quite have the level of augmentation Bertoli had for this, but she made up for it with Apollon military-grade combat software.

  She rose from under Nicastro’s body and fired three times. Her bead pistol—acquired after Simoneit told her not to carry a blaster—was smaller than Bertoli’s carbine but made up for it by firing much larger glass beads.

  Two of her targets went down as her shots shattered their faces and sent glass shards into their brains. The third had turned at the wrong time, and her bead shattered on the combination of lightly armored hood and tough skull.

  Then Bertoli emptied the rest of his magazine into the killer’s head. It would have taken much heavier armor to survive that.

  As the gunfire slowed, Kira finally noticed the chattering of the holographic receptionist, demanding—in the same bright, cheerful voice—that everyone stop fighting and telling them that the police had been called.

  “I need to take care of my friend,” Kira said quietly. “Do we need to avoid the cops?”

  “Self-defense,” Bertoli told her, grimacing at an unseen injury. “Plus, no offense, Commander, but I got shot a lot more than you did, and armor or no armor, I’m not going anywhere quickly.”

  9

  The station police were at least fast. Kira didn’t know when exactly the artificial stupid had actually called them, but they were in the hotel lobby within minutes. And since the stupid had even managed to get across that there was blaster fire involved, they were there in force.

  She had to salute the first wave of responders. There were half a dozen of them, probably the six closest cops, and they were wearing nothing but regular patrol gear and wielding the bead pistols they carried as backups to their stunners.

  The next wave had blasters and real armor, but the first wave had none of that. Their patrol gear would have held up better than her leather jacket, and that was about all she could say for it.

  “You knew the victim?” one of the cops finally asked Kira, gesturing to Nicastro.

  “He and I served together in Apollo,” she replied. She sighed. “They were targeting me, too. There’s supposedly a bounty on our heads.”

  “And you shot them,” the cop asked after she made some gestures in the air, clearly making notes on an invisible screen.

  “Em Bertoli is my bodyguard, via a contracted arrangement with Conviction Mercenary Ops LLC,” Kira told the cop. “He shot two of them, I shot the other two.”

  She gestured at where a white sheet was being pulled over her friend.

  “I think it’s evident we didn’t shoot first, but I’ll do whatever is needed,” she said quietly. “Em Bertoli’s actions were my responsibility.”

  “Sandip!”

  Mel’s cry cut through the entire lobby like a knife as she finally arrived. Two of the cops moved to block the dark-haired woman, and Kira held up a hand.

  “That’s her boyfriend,” she said sadly, blinking back tears as she gestured at Nicastro’s body. “The killers were probably looking for her, too.”

  They might not even have known Kira was there. They’d been coming for Nicastro and Cartman, not her. They’d probably thought that they’d lucked out when they recognized her.

  “Paid killers,” the detective interviewing her snarled, shaking his head. “Mercs are one thing, Em Demirci, but this…this isn’t supposed to happen in civilized places!”

  Kira kept her opinion of Redward’s level of civilization to herself as she dropped to her knees next to Cartman.

  “Hey, Mel,” she whispered. “It’s Kira. I’m here.”

  “What happen… How? Why?” The blonde pilot was a head taller than Kira, but she folded over into Kira’s shoulder like her strings had been cut.

  “Brisingr,” Kira said flatly. “The Shadows put a death mark on us all. Even this far out.”

  “Em Demirci?” the detective said quietly. “I need you and Em Bertoli to come back to the precinct with me. We’ll be moving the bodies as well, so if Em…?”

  “Cartman,” the sobbing pilot got out. “He was my…”

  “We know, Em Cartman,” the cop told her. “Em Demirci told us. You can stay with him if you’d like? We’ll take good care of him either way, I promise.”

  “I…I…I don’t know,” Cartman whispered, and a chilly stone sank into Kira’s stomach.

  They’d come this far and they still hadn’t outrun their enemies. Conviction needed to be the safe haven Moranis had promised, or this wasn’t the last of her friends she was going to have to grieve.

  “Stay with me, Mel,” she told Cartman. “I’ve got a place for all of us when we’re done with the fine police officers, but I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  And unless Estanza actively kicked them out, neither of the women was sleeping on Blueward Station that night.

  Several people intercepted them at the police sector precinct. Kira hadn’t been expecting any of them, so her arrival met with a series of surprises.

  First, Milani caught up with them at the entrance with four more mercenaries. As a courtesy to the station rules and the fact they were in a police station, their weapons were obviously slung and were bead carbines, not blasters.

  They were still slung on the front of the mercenaries’ armor, easily to hand.

  The detective didn’t even blink as she walked up to them.

  “You don’t get to take them back until I’ve released them,” she told Milani calmly. “You may accompany them into the station. Is there going to be a problem?”

  The mercenary in the red dragon armor snorted aloud.

  “Not yet,” they replied. “Not yet. Fall in, people.”

  Bertoli was on a hover-stretcher by this point. He’d stopped complaining about a second after the paramedic had started the painkillers.

  “We need to take this man to a clinic,” the paramedic pointed out. “The precinct isn’t the right place to examine him.”

  The merc half-groaned.

  “Five blaster bolts,” he told the medic. “Four bruised, one cracked rib.” He paused as the medic stared at him questioningly. “What? I have internal medware. Not going to turn down some bone-knit and I could use laying down for a day, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Take him to the clinic,” the detective ordered. “He’s not a prisoner. You.” She turned to Milani. “Send one trooper with him. All right?”

&n
bsp; “Wong.”

  It wasn’t really an order, but one of the troopers stepped to join the paramedic anyway. The white-uniformed man looked up at the merc silently, then shrugged.

  “Follow me.”

  The second surprise took that moment to emerge from the precinct station. A gauntly tall young woman in a matching white suit to Simoneit’s stepped out of the doors and offered the detective her hand.

  “Detective Mayes? I am Leticia Davids from Simoneit and Partners Law,” she introduced herself. “I’m here on behalf of Commander Demirci and Em Melissa Cartman.”

  She paused, glancing over at Kira, who was still supporting Cartman. The pilot was slightly more coherent now, but she was still quietly weeping.

  “That is assuming that Commander Demirci wants me to represent Em Cartman?” she asked.

  “Please,” Kira instructed. “I don’t believe she’s in any trouble.”

  “From my read of His Majesty’s self-defense laws, I don’t believe you are in any trouble, Commander,” Davids replied. “Is she, Detective Mayes?”

  The cop grunted.

  “It’s pretty open-and-shut, yes, but I do need to book Em Demirci and get contact information, biometrics and a statement,” Mayes replied. “As you well know.”

  “Of course,” Davids confirmed. “I’ll be with her the entire way, just in case.”

  The detective grunted again.

  “The only people in trouble here are so thoroughly dead, we’re doing fingerprint and DNA analysis to ID them,” she pointed out. “Em Demirci just needs to give a statement.”

  “That is, of course, Commander Demirci’s civic duty,” Davids replied.

  Kira concealed a snort of her own. She could get used to Simoneit and his partners being at her back. They were handy.

  “As soon as you give that statement, Commander, I think we need to get you and Cartman back to Conviction,” Milani interjected. “You appear to attract too much attention for me to be comfortable without surrounding you with armed guards.”