Conviction (Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 1) Read online

  “Her spine couldn’t take the recoil levels that Redward regards as acceptable,” Mbeki admitted. “I don’t think we could handle even Apollon guns at this point. We’d need to source guns from the Fringe, maybe even the Periphery or the Meridian, to find something with the right power-to-recoil ratios.”

  The closest Fringe system was over four hundred light-years closer to Sol than Redward. The Periphery was three hundred light-years farther away—and the Meridian was three hundred light-years past that.

  Conviction had been built on the outer edge of the Meridian, just over three hundred and eighty light-years from humanity’s original home. It had been far closer to the homeworld than anyone aboard her, that was certain.

  “I doubt you’d need to go farther than the Periphery,” Kira countered. “I’m pretty sure Conviction is obsolete by even Periphery standards.”

  “Florin was a Periphery System, so you’re probably right,” Mbeki agreed. “I don’t even know how or when Estanza got her. Sorvedo is in the Fringe, after all.”

  Kira nodded. Like the carrier she was sitting in, the man she was talking to had been born hundreds of light-years deeper into human-colonized space.

  Griffon, Sorvedo…the entire region where the Cobra Squadron had made their legend was mid Fringe, eight-hundred-plus light-years from Sol and over six hundred from Redward. Mbeki was even farther from home than Kira and her people—over three times as far.

  “I forget you’re all that far from home,” she murmured.

  “Conviction is my home,” he told her, and his gaze was suddenly very intense. “Her people are my family. I wouldn’t be anywhere else, with anyone else. There was nothing for me in Sorvedo except taking advantage of my parents.”

  “There was nothing for me in Apollo but death for everyone I loved,” Kira admitted. Mbeki was much closer to her now, and he hesitantly squeezed her shoulder for support.

  “I never saw Apollo,” he told her. “But making that break from the world you were born on is hard. We’re here, though. We make the best of it.”

  “True enough, I suppose,” she allowed with a long sigh. “Did you see anything in the test flights you were worried about?”

  “Your Hoplites are more maneuverable than my One-Fifteens, faster on a straight line too,” Mbeki told her. “Hard to say how they perform in combat until I’ve seen them in a jammed battlespace.”

  “Fourteen battles, thirty-two combat sorties and twenty-eight kills as Apollo counts them,” Kira said quietly. “They do just fine.”

  “Shit,” he breathed. “I’ve been in space a lot more than that, but I think I’m only at thirty actual combat sorties.” He paused thoughtfully. “I’m not sure how the Apollo kill count works, either. We fight actual nova fighters so rarely, we generally just count everything as a kill, which only puts me at thirty.”

  “Sub-fighters count as half, gunships count as one, real capital ships count as one for every fighter in the strike,” Kira reeled off. She’d had to explain it to a lot of eager young pilots over the years. Three of those pilots were currently aboard Conviction.

  “Twenty-four,” Mbeki noted after a moment to let his headware run the numbers. “I knew you were an ace and I knew you were experienced. I didn’t realize you were in the top three on this ship.”

  “Who’s second?” Kira asked, assuming that put her at number three—and that the first was Estanza.

  “One of my pilots, name of Boyd Maina,” he told her. “Almost sixty, he was the first recruit the boss ever picked up and has stuck it out. He’s probably rich enough to retire, but all he wants is to fly. Not command. Not go run a farm somewhere. Just fly a nova fighter.”

  Kira snorted.

  “Can you argue with him?” she asked.

  “I’m in charge here, so at least a little bit,” Mbeki replied. He shook himself in the same moment as Kira got a ping in her own headware informing her that Conviction would be leaving port in fifty-two hours.

  She shook her head. It was signed JE, and that was the only thing telling her it was from Estanza.

  “Well, that makes the party schedule just about perfect,” she admitted. “My team is holding a wake for the 303 pilots who never made it out tomorrow. I need to see if I can convince my lawyer to hire someone to admin Memorial’s affairs for me while I’m gone.”

  “We’ve got…like, three people who run an office on Blueward Station?” Mbeki noted. “We can have them cover things for you if you need.”

  “I need someone to watch for the rest of my people showing up and make sure they don’t get knifed in the back,” Kira pointed out. “I doubt the accounting team you keep on the station will serve.”

  He laughed.

  “Fair enough. Ask Zoric,” he suggested. “She runs that office; she might have some suggestions for people. Have you even met her yet?”

  Kira paused.

  “Other than first coming aboard, I haven’t left flight country,” she admitted. “I should do that, shouldn’t I?”

  Mbeki laughed again.

  “Yes,” he suggested. “In two days, she gets to haul us out to see what we find. Let’s make nice with the woman in charge of where we lay our heads.”

  “All right. I’ll invite her to the post-mourning part of the party,” Kira decided. “You’re welcome too.”

  She tossed him the details before she could change her mind.

  “Give us an hour to get good and morose, then see if you can cheer us up,” she told him.

  “I do believe, Commander Demirci, that cheering up morose people is one of my specialties,” he informed her with a broad grin.

  15

  The bar was exactly what Kira had been expecting. It was a spacers’ bar, within easy walking distance of both the civilian dock and the military docks taken over by Conviction and her crew. The private room was almost as large as the main space; the drinks and food were both cheap and solid.

  This wasn’t the kind of place that had champagne, retsina or fancy whisky, but they could serve beer, vodka, pizza and spaghetti until Blueward Station fell off the space elevator.

  There was a lot of all four of those in the back room as Kira’s people worked through toasts to all fifteen of their fallen comrades. For the last one, everyone looked to her as she stood up with a fresh mug of cold beer and studied the other three.

  “You all knew Jay Moranis,” she told them. “He was the beating heart of the Three-Oh-Three. Without him, we never would have made the name for ourselves we did, and without him, none of us would be alive out here.

  “I flew under him for fourteen years, longer than any of you, and I looked up to him as a second father. I wasn’t supposed to be the only squadron commander who made it out this far, but he trusted the lion’s share of getting everyone settled here to me.

  “I didn’t do as well as I hoped, and Sandip paid for it,” she admitted, nodding sadly to Cartman. “But we’re here and we’re as secure as we can hope to be. Conviction might not be a long-term home, but it’s a place to start. We’re a long damn way from the Kaiserreich and the Shadows, so fuck them.

  “And all of that is Jay Moranis’s work.” She shook her head. “If we survive and thrive out here, its because White Cobra decided to make a third legend in his life. He flew once with the Cobras, and they became legend.

  “He flew once with the Three-Oh-Three, and we became legends at his side.

  “Now he’s unleashed us to fly on our own and given us every tool, every step up, that he could give us. A legend gives us wings, people—and we’re going to take them and fly. We were Three-Oh-Three and a legend in Apollo under Jay Moranis.

  “Under me, we’re Memorial Squadron—and we will by gods be a legend out here. You with me?”

  Three mugs of beer were raised in answer.

  “Then my friends, I give you Jay Moranis: our Colonel. Our Cobra. Our space dad,” she concluded with a grin. “Moranis!”

  “Moranis!”

  The four of them slamm
ed down solid gulps of their drinks—and the bar staff sent Kira a message informing her the next set of guests were here.

  “The rest of the party is here,” she told her subordinates. “That’s just the Commanders from Conviction, so let’s play it a little nice, people.”

  There was no coherent response before Mbeki and Zoric entered the back room. Everyone in the space was wearing similar nondescript shipsuits, but Kira knew it would be perfectly clear who the officers were for at least five more beers.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she told the two mercenary officers. Mbeki was looking surprisingly grim initially, but his smile escaped a moment after he saw her. She wasn’t sure why he’d been hiding it. His smile was a dangerous animal in her opinion, one that couldn’t be safely caged.

  Zoric, on the other hand, knew the path to pilots’ hearts the way only a carrier’s executive officer could: she was carrying a tray holding six more beers and another pizza. Antigrav coils had to be involved, Kira was sure.

  “They dumped this on us on the way through,” the XO told them. “Somebody grab it!”

  Patel obeyed, leaping over to retrieve the tray. He and Zoric, despite having been born hundreds of light-years apart, could easily have passed for cousins. Both were dark-haired and dark-eyed. Zoric was taller and distinctly not male, but they looked like relatives.

  The tray salvaged, Zoric grabbed a beer of her own and joined the circle.

  “Did the guy I sent you to work out?” she asked Kira after her first swallow.

  As Mbeki had suggested, Kira had asked Conviction’s XO for a suggestion for admin people. She’d suggested a recently retired Redward Army officer living on the station who hadn’t been quite sure what to do with himself.

  If nothing else, Stipan Dirix was a tad over two meters of walking muscle that fit the “meatslab” descriptor that Bertoli had used for the last round of bodyguards. He could do security on his own.

  “Pree Simoneit knew him too, so he came doubly recommended and, unless I miss my guess, doubly leaned on,” Kira replied with a smile. “He’s aboard. I ran through what we need right now today, but he and Pree are going to be working together pretty closely on this first sortie.”

  She wasn’t sure what that was going to cost her and she probably didn’t want to know. She’d checked the old lawyer’s hourly rate and nearly swallowed her tongue. The man was worth it, but it was a lot of money.

  Thankfully, Memorial Squadron had that money.

  “Hopefully, you won’t need to have guards on retainer for much longer, either,” Mbeki noted.

  “Until everyone is here,” Kira replied. “Waiting on five more. Assuming I don’t end up holding more of these bloody wakes.”

  That morose thought led to her staring down into her mug, so she missed Mbeki adjusting the room’s music program. An upbeat dance mix broke her focus and she looked up at the black man with a questioning gaze.

  His grin grew even wider.

  “This is a wake, yes,” he accepted aloud. “This is a drinking party, yes. But I was told to come along and get everyone cheered up and rescued from this being a morose party, which means that we need to celebrate the dead and drink to the dead…and I don’t think any of that is best done sitting.”

  He offered Kira his hand.

  “So, Commander Demirci, will you dance with me?”

  She snorted.

  “I’m a nova fighter pilot, Mbeki,” she replied. “I can barely dance by Apollo standards and I don’t know this music at all.”

  “That, Commander, is why it’s a good thing you booked a private room,” he told her. “Because honestly? I can’t dance by anyone’s standards!”

  Daniel Mbeki understated his dancing skills, even if he wasn’t wrong on his assessment of their applicability to any given set of dancing standards. Enough beer got Kira and the rest of Memorial Squadron up with him, dancing.

  And if Kira Demirci was dancing far closer to the other squadron commander, there was enough beer and cheap vodka in play for no one to think anything of it.

  The clock ticked toward station midnight and Zoric made her excuses shortly before she’d have turned into a cabbage. The others followed, and by the end of the night, Kira and Mbeki were alone in the back room of the club when one of the staff stuck her head in.

  “We need to shut everything down in ten,” she told them. “Station regs. This isn’t even last call—that was in your headware ten minutes ago!”

  “Come on,” Mbeki said. “Let’s leave them to their work.”

  Kira had drunk enough that her augments were noticeably working to keep her walking in a straight line as they exited the bar. A virtual exchange took place on the way out and confirmed Kira’s authorization to charge everything to Memorial Squadron’s accounts.

  “Less than one hour of the bloody lawyer,” she muttered to her companion as they made their way into the station corridor. The last of the mercenary grunts from Conviction fell in behind them, trailing a discreet three meters behind the two officers as they made their way back to the carrier.

  “Cheap bar or expensive lawyer?” Mbeki asked.

  “Both,” Kira replied with a chuckle. A chime informed her that her headware was being interrogated by the RRFP troopers guarding the docking bay. She hadn’t thought they were that close, but her augments were focusing on keeping her moving, not keeping her sense of time intact.

  “Thanks, Rona,” Mbeki told the guard. “I think I can get Demirci back to the ship from here without getting jumped by assassins.”

  Kira rested against the wall for a moment, letting the knowledge that they were inside Conviction’s security perimeter relax the knot of tension that was always in her shoulder blades on Blueward Station.

  “No rest anywhere,” she muttered. “It’s a bloody mess.”

  “I don’t envy you it,” Mbeki told her. “Lean on me.”

  She did. He was a solid and warm support, even if she didn’t really need it. Neither of them did and both of them knew it, but they leaned against each other as they headed toward the boarding tubes.

  The movement toward a secluded corner away from those docking tubes wasn’t a planned thing. Kira hadn’t been aiming for a private spot. She was quite sure Daniel wasn’t guiding her to a private spot. It just…happened, as both of them unconsciously sought one out.

  The kiss that followed was equally unplanned, and for one luxurious, amazing moment, Kira greedily leaned into it. In the back of her mind, she already knew how that had to end, so she took every scrap of enjoyment from those few seconds of kissing Daniel Mbeki that she could.

  Then she stepped away from him, sighed, and triggered the decontamination dose she’d loaded before the party and should have hit on leaving the bar. Nanites swept alcohol from her blood as she looked at Daniel and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  “I… Wait, what?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to push, I’m…”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Daniel,” Kira told him, firmly. Very firmly. “That was both of us. It was nice. I wish it could be more than that, but it can’t, Daniel. We’re squadron commanders. We’re going into the line of fire, and if one of us is distracted, people die.

  “I shouldn’t have let this happen, but I did. We did. It can’t happen again.”

  “This isn’t the military, Kira,” he pointed out. “There are no rules against fraternization.”

  “The rules for my people and for me are what I say they are,” she snapped. “And there’s a gods-cursed reason for that rule, you understand me?

  “So, I’m sorry. I wanted this, but it can’t happen. I’m sorry.”

  And with the final repetition of her apology, Kira fled into the carrier.

  She’d already screwed things up. She couldn’t make it worse.

  16

  “All six fighters are fully equipped and online,” Waldroup told Kira brightly. “Guns are installed, the works.”


  “How do the power couplings for the guns look?” Kira asked as she paced a slow circle around her own Hoplite-IV. “That was the most common problem with them right out of the box. Seemed like every fourth bird blew the couplings the first time they fired.”

  “That’s because Apollo couplings have a quality control problem,” the deck boss said bluntly. “Take a look at this.”

  Kira bit down an instinctive defense of her home system and stepped over to the work cart the tech was rifling through. The other woman was holding up a solid chunk of ceramic and metal a bit over forty centimeters long.

  “I see a power coupling,” she conceded. “It doesn’t look blown out to me.”

  “It would if you tried to fire a gun hooked up through it,” Waldroup told her. “Hold it.”

  Kira obeyed, curious now. The mercenary tech had a scanner in her hand and ran it over the device, throwing the data into the air between them as the scanner ran.

  “First-check scan, nothing’s wrong,” the tech noted. “All of our interface patterns and conductivity lines look right, right?”

  The pilot studied the diagram for a few seconds, then nodded.

  “I’m not familiar with this particular iconography, but it looks right, yes,” she confirmed.

  “And that’s the extent of the check your manufacturer did,” the tech told her. “Apollo fabricators are good, most advanced in their sector…but you’re still talking a Rim sector, Demirci. Go another hundred light-years closer to Earth and their fabricators are years ahead of yours.

  “More importantly, though, they’ve worked out that even those fabricators don’t always get it right,” Waldroup continued. “The tolerances for a conduit rated for a gigawatt-plus peak throughput are tighter than any fabricator outside the Core can manage.

  “Even Griffon, one of the most advanced Fringe powers—and the people who built Conviction’s fabricators—still loses one point six percent of their couplings in QC. I downchecked eleven percent of the couplings your birds came with,” the tech concluded as she activated a second layer to the scan, zooming the model in to a ten-to-one scale of the coupling.