33

“This is a fucking disaster,” Larry snarled as the doors closed behind them. The Commander, Nova Group’s office was still Kira’s main retreat aboard Deception, and the ship’s systems readily produced chairs for everyone.

A gentle shove from Kira’s foot and a mental command from her headware sent her desk rolling back against the wall as she and Zoric got everyone seated with coffees in their hands.

That process left the King’s curse unanswered in silence until they were all seated.

“I sent a canned report to Admiral Remington,” Kira said. “Do you want the short version?”

“It can’t be worse than most of the reports I’ve seen the last few days,” he replied. “Lay it out.”

“The Coalition Fleet’s mission was fundamentally a success,” she told him. “Arti, Kaiser and Kiln are all under the control of your army, with two destroyers with either gunship or nova-fighter support in place in each system.

“We can’t guarantee they will hold in the face of active assault, but the Clans’ ability to engage them is nonexistent,” she concluded. “I can’t see any strategic value to Bengalissimo in moving against them, especially as we have no ability to recall those ships.

“Unfortunately, we were ambushed at the Kiln by what appears to have been Cobra Squadron. Advanced-by-Rim-standard nova fighters and bombers. Perseus and Last Denial were destroyed along with a significant portion of the Coalition Fleet.

“Admiral Kim died with her flagship, but she and I had discussed her intentions with regards to recall orders for Coalition Fleet members.” Kira sighed. “When those arrived on Kenobi, we let the ships go home. Several of those systems are still underwriting Commodore Shang’s fees, though he’s as out of touch with them as we are, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Larry said quietly, staring down at his coffee cup. “That’s better than I was afraid of, if worse than I’d hoped. That we still have the ships and people who were missing from your formation is reassuring. At least they’re not all dead.”

“To absent friends,” Estanza murmured, making a toasting gesture with his coffee cup. “Ylva was a good officer.”

“To absent friends,” Larry agreed, finally taking a sip of the coffee. “She was. She knew her duty and she did it well. More, she understood that just because she disagreed with a mission didn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“Your Majesty?” Kira asked.

“She didn’t tell you?” Larry asked. “Kim was a major advocate of repeating the last Kiln strike. Destruction of shipyards and industrial nodes with no attempt at follow-through. In theory, the Clans’ habitats can survive without trade.”

“In practice, though…” Kira trailed off.

“I think she knew that. I think she felt she had to present the most militarily sound option, even if it was of questionable morality,” the King concluded. “She’s not the only good officer we’ve lost.”

“The last updates I had were the messages on Kenobi,” Kira told him. “What’s the situation?”

“Well, Conviction is busy being sealed up with barely a tenth of the planned work done,” Estanza told her. “We got about a third of the flak turrets in, but that’s all. We’re going to need her before this mess is done.”

Perseus is lost, and Achilles is either in Ypres or lost,” Larry admitted. “If Admiral Chen Ling got our message, she was supposed to take her carrier group to Ypres to help protect the people there. She should have had the firepower to do what you did here, but she didn’t have a cruiser.”

“What’s the RRF down to, then?” Kira asked. She was running the math, but it didn’t sound good.

Theseus, Guardian and First Crown,” Larry laid out. “Four destroyers in-system, all of them Serendipity-class, thank God, and about a hundred nova fighters.”

The Serendipities were Redward’s latest construction program and their most advanced ships. They were still toys compared to Deception, but they could hold their weight better than most Cluster ships.

“The RRF has lost or is cut off from half their capital ships and four-fifths of their destroyers,” Estanza concluded. “That you brought Shinoda and Shang here might be the best news we’ve had since the Ypres blockade started.”

“Obviously, we have limited news in the last few days,” Larry said. “Sonia’s best guess is that the blockade started four days ago and was fully sealed by forty-eight hours ago.”

He shrugged.

“It will only take them a day or so to reclose the trade-route stop you cleared. We do know that there are least two Bengalissimo cruisers supporting the blockade, though our intel suggests that most of the blockade are mercenary ships.”

“That was our conclusion from what we saw as well,” Kira agreed. “They hesitated to commit suicide against two cruisers.” She considered the situation. “Deception with two of your cruisers can easily handle two of Bengal’s, I suspect.”

“Don’t be so certain of that,” Estanza said grimly. “Your Majesty?”

“You may as well brief her,” Larry said. “You know the language better than I do.”

Kira’s headware informed her that Estanza was trying to take control of the room’s holoprojectors. She gave him access and swallowed down a mouthful of coffee.

She was glad to be able to set the cup aside as the holographic image of a nova ship started taking shape in the air above them. It was a lot bigger than she’d expected.

“I’m not going to pretend I know how Sonia’s people got this,” the mercenary Captain said, “but we have near complete specifications for Bengalissimo’s new Tabby-class cruisers.”

The hologram glimmered amidst them, at least a third again bigger than Kira had expected.

“About the only good news is that they don’t have an organic nova-fighter force,” Estanza told her. “Eighty kilocubics, twenty dual heavy plasma turrets. We’re not sure on dispersal rating for the armor, but probably inferior to Deception. The guns are slightly lower-power than Deception’s as well, but…”

“Given what we lose in cubage for the fighter wing, they’re better than the Cluster should be able to build,” Kira finished. “Cube for cube, those ships are probably Deception’s match. We’re enough bigger to make up the difference.”

“But Deception is the only ship that can fight them one-on-one,” Zoric said. “Do we have a plan?”

“Not as much of one as any of us would like,” Larry told them. “We need to borrow your executive officer again, Captain Zoric. Your Commander Bueller and Estanza’s Commander Labelle are the two most knowledgeable engineers in the star system, and we are prepared to pay significantly to hire them both.

“We need our two new cruisers, and we need them tomorrow, not in eleven months,” the King concluded. “We’re hoping that between our people, Bueller and Labelle, we can accelerate their construction and find ways to upgrade the ships we have.

“I’ve already ordered the emergency conversion of several modular container ships into escort carriers. We don’t have time for the level of conversion done on Achilles and Perseus, but we can at least have something to haul nova fighters to the field.”

Conviction will be clear for action in a week at most,” Estanza told the King. “But I don’t have full decks of fighters.”

“I’ll speak with Remington,” Larry promised. “We’ll provide you with as many drive cores as you need to fabricate new fighter craft. If we don’t have enough time, we may end up filling your decks with RRF birds, if that is acceptable?”

“We’ll charge you rent, but that could work,” Estanza agreed. “But…bluntly, Your Majesty, your pilots are undertrained and outmatched by Cobra Squadron.”

“What choice do we have?” the King said.

“None,” Kira said grimly. “We were able to identify the Manticore-Seven as the main interceptor in the formation that hit us. There were heavier fighters, but we didn’t get enough visual data to allow for warbook confirmation.”

“That’s bad enough,” Estanza replied. “Your Majesty, the Manticore-Seven is a reasonably modern interceptor by Fringe standards. We’ve brought your nova-fighter fleet up to Mid-Rim standards, but you’re still badly outclassed.

“Worse, Cobra’s pilots are going to be battle-hardened veterans. They’ve paid for the strikes they’ve launched, but…I’d want a two-to-one edge at least before going up against veterans in Manticores with newbies in Sinisters.”

“I know,” Larry said grimly. “Sonia had a solution for that. It’s not perfect, but I agree with her on its value.”

“Sir?” Kira asked.

“You need to expand your own fighter-pilot strength and we need to expand the RRF’s fighter-pilot strength,” Redward’s King told them. “I want to hire you two, plus as many of your own veterans as you think will be helpful, to launch a crash training course for all of our pilots.

“I’m hoping to get the cruisers accelerated, so I can give you eight standard weeks to give as much training as possible to a class of three hundred pilots,” he continued. “The course, the curriculum, the tools… Everything is yours to decide. If it can be provided, it will. Fifty of those pilots can be yours, recruited to fly off Conviction, but two hundred and fifty will be mine.”

Kira traded a glance with Estanza. Two months to train three hundred pilots—and those pilots would be complete newbies; the RRF had already run out of gunship and sub-fighter pilots to cross-train.

“It’s doable,” Estanza said quietly. “Demirci and I will need at least a week to put together a plan. I have some ideas, but if you want sixty-day specials, I need time to assemble the program.”

“I don’t want sixty-day specials,” King Larry told them, his voice equally quiet. “I want to put my pilots through a detailed four-year training program that gives them a breadth of education that provides value to a post-service life and produces elite pilots.

“But what I want is irrelevant. What I need is a fleet that can punch through Cobra Squadron two months from now. I can hope and pray that our reputation and efforts will buy us those months,” he said grimly. “But I can’t delay longer.”

“What about the Costar Clans Systems?” Kira asked. “We just left a quarter-million troops and half a dozen warships behind.”

“There are contingency plans in place, prearranged with several of the other members of the Coalition,” Larry told her. “Money and food and supplies will flow in our absence. Quietly, I have to hope, but we have little choice.

“Redward is besieged. I will not waste lives and ships to break out until we have the best chance we can put together.” He shook his head. “There will be prices to pay for delay. But delay we must.

“I hope that your engineers and mine can get us a fleet worth the name in two months—but I believe that you can get me a nova-fighter corps worth deploying by then.”

“We will do everything within our power, Your Majesty,” Estanza promised. “But our enemies have caught us on the wrong foot this time. I don’t think any of us expected to suddenly be facing an Equilibrium-funded enemy with a superiority in capital ships.”

“But here we are,” King Larry replied. “If we can accelerate those cruisers, we’ll have five cruisers and four carriers to make the breakout with. I’d love to have the hundred-twenty units, but those are too far out.

“We go to war with the ships we have. Or”—he grimaced—“the ships we’ll have in a few months, because we literally cannot go to war with what we have today.”

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