Conviction (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 1) Read online

  “Right now, Milani…those armed guards sound fantastic.”

  10

  Mbeki was waiting when Kira returned aboard Conviction. Kira’s already-positive impression of the man was improved dramatically by his immediately wrapping Mel Cartman in a blanket and checking her for shock symptoms before saying a word to Kira.

  “Em Cartman, I would like to have you checked over by our ship’s doctor,” he finally told her. “You’re not under contract to us, so you don’t have to, but I think you’re edging into shock and need the check-over.”

  “I can come with you,” Kira offered immediately.

  Cartman inhaled sharply and pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

  “I can manage, I think,” she half-whispered. “Can the big guy come with me?”

  She was indicating Milani, who snorted.

  “I’d normally complain about guy,” they observed dryly. “But today, I’ll let it slide.”

  In answer to Cartman’s question, the merc scooped her off the ground, blanket and all. Cradling her like a baby, Milani gave Kira and Mbeki a firm nod.

  “I’ll get her to the doc and to a set of pilot’s quarters afterwards,” they promised. “She’ll be safe.”

  Kira and Mbeki watched as the mercenary carried Cartman away, and Mbeki coughed slightly.

  “I think you might be a good influence on them,” he murmured. Then, more loudly to the mercs around them: “Troopers! Fall in and secure the door. Nobody who isn’t ours or scheduled enters the dock, let alone boards the ship, without it being run past me, Commander Zoric or the Captain. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  The mercenaries might not go in for much spit and polish, but Kira had no real concerns about their competence. Anyone who tried to get aboard the carrier was going to have a very bad day.

  “Demirci, walk with me?” Mbeki asked.

  She fell in beside him as he led the way deeper into the ship.

  “Our counsel says all of the paperwork is complete,” he told her. “I’ve told my people to stand by for your fighters to come aboard tomorrow, but that’s down to you.”

  “Tomorrow is good,” Kira agreed. “I’ll be glad to see them out of the boxes. Been a while since I was in a nova fighter…and out here, they’re the closest thing I have to home.”

  “I know that feeling,” the mercenary agreed. “I’m from the Sorvedo System, and if you’ve even heard of it, I’d be shocked.”

  She considered the name for a moment before shaking her head.

  “I can’t say I have.”

  “Dependency of the Principality of Breslau,” Mbeki told her. “My mother served in the big war in the Griffon Sector.” He snorted. “The one we lost, at least partially due to Cobra Squadron.”

  He was trying to distract her. He was even mostly succeeding, but that didn’t mean Kira wasn’t aware of what he was doing.

  She’d done it herself often enough, after all. The 303 hadn’t made it through fourteen battles without losing anyone.

  “How’d you end up with Estanza, then?” she asked.

  “He was in the region with Conviction twenty years ago, doing work for one of the shipping combines Griffon set up after the war,” Mbeki told her, waving open a door as they reached what Kira realized was the flight officers’ quarters. “I’d just been medically discharged from the Sorvedo Security Patrol, but I had my wings and could fly a nova fighter.

  “One of his people decided to retire there, and I was looking for a berth that would put me in a bird.” He shrugged. “Everybody won.”

  The mercenary Commander came to a halt and gestured to a door.

  “Here, these will be your quarters. Even with you aboard, we’re running two instead of ten squadrons, so we’ve got squadron commander quarters to spare.” He grinned. “I had my people make sure everything was cleaned and working, but they’ll be pretty bare. No one’s stayed in these rooms in ten years.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said quietly. “Thank you, Commander.”

  “We’re going to be working together, Commander,” he told her. “If I’m going into battle with you on my wing, I want you and your people at your best. We’ll touch base in the morning as your ships come aboard.

  “Cartman will be okay,” he continued. “Ailin—Dr. Devin—is a damn fine doctor and he’s familiar with shock and grief.”

  “She’s not with us yet,” Kira pointed out.

  “I know. We’ll take care of her either way,” Mbeki said. “Don’t worry; we’ll bill you if Ailin does anything expensive.”

  She chuckled and thought-clicked the door open. What she could see of the room on the other side was as plain as she’d been warned, but it looked functional enough.

  “Thank you, Commander,” she said softly. She wasn’t talking about the room or Cartman now, and from the way he was looking at her, he got that.

  “Please, call me Daniel,” he told her. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “But you should rest.”

  “You’re right,” she conceded. “But you should call me Kira.”

  He smiled, white teeth flashing brilliantly against his dark skin.

  “I can do that, Kira,” he promised. “If you rest!”

  The quarters were lacking in just about anything in terms of amenities, but the mattress had been replaced, and modern self-cleaning, self-adjusting mattresses were hard to make uncomfortable. Dreams still bothered Kira, but she woke well rested and studied the space she was resting in.

  There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that wasn’t built into the walls, but a squadron commander’s quarters were still a forty-square-meter two-room apartment. Most of that space was the combined workspace and day room with the built-in kitchenette and desk workstation.

  The chime from her headware connecting to the coffeemaker was the most glorious sound she’d heard in some time. That had probably been the main thing Mbeki’s people had made sure was working, spacers being spacers.

  Coffee carried through her issuing the transfer orders to get her nova fighters loaded aboard Conviction, but as the cup ran out, she interrogated Conviction’s systems to find out where Cartman was.

  Even compared to Apollon hardware, Conviction’s gear was slow. On the other hand, the ship happily confirmed its own history to her: the carrier was a hundred and sixty-seven years old.

  She’d been built for the Starmichael System, a Meridian power seven hundred light-years from Apollo, as a third-tier carrier. She’d served for thirty years and been sold to the Republic of Florin, a star system three hundred light-years inward from Apollo but about thirty degrees around the “rim” of human space.

  After serving Florin for over a hundred years, she’d been sold to Estanza thirty years ago. Kira—and Daniel Mbeki, for that matter—had been a teenager when John Estanza had founded his mercenary company.

  With the codes Mbeki had given her, she convinced the old ship to disgorge the code-conversion protocols her headware needed to interface with its systems. That was enough for her to sort out that Dr. Devin had sent Mel Cartman to the mess nearest to the infirmary.

  A moment’s more checking confirmed that there was only one mess running on the carrier. She’d been designed with two enlisted messes, a noncom mess and an officers’ mess…but only the larger enlisted mess was being run.

  With her weapons stripped when Florin had sold her and only eight fighters aboard instead of sixty, Conviction was running at barely forty percent of her list crew. The computers happily flagged that almost a third of the ship was currently locked down—and if Kira read the data correctly, some of those sections had been emptied of air and left in vacuum.

  She’d definitely seen better days, but those eight nova fighters alone made Conviction one of the most powerful warships in the Syntactic Cluster.

  For now, Kira didn’t need to make any guesses about where Cartman was. If the other Apollon woman was eating, there was only one place she could be!

  “Kira!”

&nbs
p; Cartman sounded better, at least. Kira suspected the other woman was putting on a brave face as much as anything, but that brave face could be helped with proper headware programming.

  Any competent doctor knew to be careful with that kind of headware code, and any sane person knew not to mess with it themselves, but it could certainly help. Right now, it seemed to be keeping Cartman on a level keel as she rose from her breakfast to give Kira a quick hug.

  “I’m sorry about Sandip,” Kira said quietly as she took a seat at the table.

  The redheaded young man at the table took a look at them both and smiled brightly.

  “I’m Dr. Devin,” he introduced himself to Kira. “I’ll leave you two to your chat. If you need me, Em Cartman, the ship can contact me from anywhere until you leave us. If you leave us, that is.”

  “Thank you.”

  The ship’s doctor vanished with surprising speed, leaving Kira chuckling and shaking her head.

  “There goes a medic who understands when friends can do better than doctors,” she said aloud. “I know you’re not okay, Mel. What do you need?”

  Cartman exhaled slowly.

  “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “Fuck, I don’t even know what Sandip’s will says or what was even left. We…” She trailed off.

  “You left Apollo in decent shape,” Cartman finally resumed. “Officially resigned, cashed out your pension, the works. We ditched an ASDF shuttle during a refueling stop on the edge of the system. We’re deserters. Might not be time of war, but that still doesn’t feel right and ASDF Command still doesn’t like it.”

  “Sandip said it was hard,” Kira agreed. “Fuck, I didn’t know any of us were being followed, Mel. I knew there was a death mark on us all, but I didn’t expect someone to open fire in a hotel lobby!”

  “Who would?” the other woman asked. “I’m glad you found a place out here, but I’m still swinging at loose ends. Sandip was trying to keep me from realizing how short we were running on money, but he was never that good a liar.”

  “You came out here,” Kira pointed out. “What did the old man give you as directions?”

  “Get to Redward and look for you or one of the squadron commanders,” Cartman told her. “And Hughes is dead.”

  “So Sandip told me.” The newly fledged mercenary shook her head. “My job out here, Mel, was to set up a place for everyone to run to. I’m under contract with Conviction, but not as a pilot.”

  The younger woman made a “go ahead” gesture. She looked tired, her brave front cracking.

  “I’m contracted with them as commander in my own right of a mercenary nova fighter squadron,” Kira told her old subordinate. “I have six Hoplite-IVs coming aboard today, but the only pilot I’ve got is me.

  “I need five more. The rest of the Three-Oh-Three is coming out here, but you’re the one I’ve got today. You don’t have to decide right now—and there’s wheels to make sure you’re taken care of if you aren’t willing to fly for—”

  “I’m in,” Cartman cut her off. “Are we going after Sandip’s killers?”

  Kira sighed.

  “They’re dead,” she pointed out. “And we can’t go after Brisingr. We’re a long damn way from home, Mel. We have to take the fact that the fuckers who shot him got shot themselves as enough.

  “You still in?”

  “I’ve got no money and my only skill is flying a nova fighter,” Cartman replied. “I suppose I could go fly a shuttle or sign on with the locals to fly a sub-fighter, but I need something to keep a roof over my head.

  “I know you, Demirci. I’ve flown for you before. I’ve got to fly for somebody, so I’ll fly for you.”

  Kira chuckled.

  “All right,” she told her subordinate. “Looks like the only title you get around here is pilot, but catch.”

  She tossed Cartman the contract.

  “Read that, sign it, and you work for me again,” she told the other woman.

  “Three and a half percent of the company?” Cartman replied. Headware made processing a twenty-six-page contract fast. “That’s a bit of a signing bonus.”

  “The money that’s underwriting the squadron was the old man’s,” Kira explained. “He sent it out here to take care of all of us, not just me.”

  “All right.” Cartman tossed the contract back to Kira. “Looks like I work for you again, boss. What do we do first?”

  “Welcome aboard, Memorial-Two,” Kira said with a chuckle. “First things first, our fighters should be arriving later this morning. So we eat, we talk to Commander Zoric to sort out quarters for you, and then we go say hi to our nova fighters.”

  Kira also needed to check if any more of her people had arrived. Right now, though, she needed eggs, toast…and to touch the starfighters she was going to risk life and limb inside.

  If she was unreasonably lucky, Conviction’s mess might actually produce an edible breakfast.

  11

  Localized gravity control allowed for a fifteen-hundred-cubic-meter box massing the better part of a thousand tons to be simply floated down the middle of Conviction’s main fighter landing deck. A harness of small rockets had been rigged onto the crate before it had been brought aboard, but most of the control was being exerted by reducing the gravity under it to zero.

  “And…down.”

  Kira stepped up behind the woman giving the orders and studied them for a moment. Her headware said the broad-shouldered chief of the deck was named Angel Waldroup and went by “she.”

  Given that Kira’s first assumption, at least from behind, would have been to assume Waldroup was a man, she was rather grateful for the fact that her headware was talking to Conviction’s net enough to avoid that kind of misstep.

  “Chief Waldroup?” she asked.

  “Boss Waldroup,” the woman grunted back in correction. “No chiefs aboard Conviction, Commander Demirci. I’m a department head, and that’s a bloody useless title, isn’t it?”

  “Boss Waldroup, then,” Kira conceded. “Any questions on getting the fighters out?”

  “Standard storage and transport units,” Waldroup replied. “Designed by SolFed three bloody centuries ago. Nobody in the Periphery or the Rim uses anything else.” She shrugged massive shoulders.

  “I know the damn box, Commander. Your babies will be fine.” The “boss” left Kira behind to cross over to the now-settled ten-meter-tall crate.

  Kira followed along, unable to keep herself from hovering as Waldroup flicked the codes for the crate to its systems.

  The front of the crate slid up and over the top under its own power, revealing exactly what she’d been expecting. Nova fighters traveled in one piece, but they didn’t travel fully loaded or on their own.

  “Parts fabricator, there,” Waldroup said calmly, clearly checking through a mental list. “Detached plasma cannons, there. Refueling and recharging interfaces, there. Fighter itself, there.”

  The ten-meter-square and fifteen-meter-deep crate had plenty of space for extra storage. Most of the gear that Waldroup was checking off was embedded in a storage matrix underneath the nova fighter that filled half the container.

  A storage matrix that Kira was halfway up before she even realized what she was doing. The storage matrix continued into the top half of the storage container, but it went from being a solid block with cutouts for the gear to arching straps and struts that held the Hoplite-IV in place.

  The landing deck was brightly lit—there were two more storage crates floating along the deck while Kira was poking at the nova fighter— and even the storage matrix wasn’t enough to conceal the gleaming white hull of a factory-new spaceship.

  The Hoplite-IV was a deadly-looking wedge of metal with edges that were only smooth at close range. It averaged three meters thick across its length, tapering from an only barely flattened tip to a ten-meter-wide base fifteen meters back.

  The access hatch to the fighter itself was covered by the storage matrix, but Kira still laid her hands on the familiar whi
te metal.

  “We do need to start pulling the birds out of the boxes, Commander,” Waldroup shouted up from the ground five meters below her. “And it’s easier for you to poke around inside her once I’ve got her on the ground.”

  “Fair enough,” Kira conceded with a chuckle. “I had to touch her myself. Even seeing the boxes, I wasn’t quite sure I believed we’d managed to get them out here.”

  Climbing down took longer than climbing up had, but her heart felt lighter than it had in months. The fighters were there.

  “We’ll pull them out, install the guns, make sure the fabricators are in our workshops and hooked up to Conviction. None of it will be a problem,” Waldroup assured her. “Are we keeping them white? Any insignia?”

  Kira glanced at where Cartman was approaching the crates in a more sedate fashion and grinned at the deck boss as she dropped to the ground.

  “We’ll keep them white for now,” she told Waldroup. “I’m guessing your people paint them?”

  “Whatever the pilot asks for,” the deck boss replied. “If you want ’em military-standard, I can do that. Squadron, call sign, kill markers?”

  “Let’s stick with that for now,” Kira ordered. “Here.”

  She tossed the deck boss an image from her old Hoplite-IV back in ASDF service.

  “Squadron number gets swapped out for the Memorial Squadron name, but the rest can stay,” she told the deck boss.

  Waldroup was studying the image she’d sent over.

  “Wait, you only have three kills?” she asked. “I thought you’d been a fighting pilot for years.”

  Kira saw Cartman laugh and gestured to the other woman.

  “To avoid bragging, how about you explain it, Mel?” she asked.

  Waldroup turned and saw the other pilot.

  “All right,” she allowed. “It’ll stop me having to talk both of you down off of boxed fighters!”

  “Apollo is a pacifistic culture, by aspiration if not necessarily reality,” Cartman told the deck boss. “But fighter pilot tradition says we’re aces after three kills and paint the fighter hulls with kill markers.