26

Kira was on Deception’s bridge, unable to sleep or even walk away from the sensor displays, when the Royal Army transports arrived. Major General Westley had clearly picked up the right tone from her message, as the transports’ defensive sub-fighters started spilling out the moment they were in the Kiln.

“Okay,” she said in a long, exhaling sigh. “Kavitha, can we set up some kind of virtual conference with everybody? Who the hell is in charge now?”

Her cruiser Captain chuckled sadly.

“You’re the only one giving orders, Kira,” Zoric pointed out. “You’re in charge.”

“Well, fuck.”

Kira stared blankly at the sensor displays for a moment while that sank in. Her half-serious Commodore title put her on par with the remaining surviving officers, and given that Deception outclassed the rest of the fleet combined…

“All right,” she said, repeating the long sigh. “Then we definitely need to pull together that virtual conference. Westley, Shang, senior officer from every national contingent, whoever the fuck that is at this point.”

“I’ll get Harrel on it,” Zoric promised. Stef Harrel was the cruiser’s communications officer, though Kira’s own interactions tended to go through the tactical team. “Any idea what we’re planning?”

“Securing Forty-Two-K-Seven to start,” Kira replied. “After that…” She shook her head. “We secure the Kiln and then I guess we talk about what happens next. This was Kim’s job.”

But Ylva Kim was almost certainly dead along with Perseus’s crew.

Kira swayed from exhaustion and then carefully took a seat in the observer’s chair next to Zoric.

“What a mess,” she murmured.

“We survive, we pull through, we get the job done,” Zoric told her. “May I make a suggestion, Kira?”

“Sure.”

“Activate the flag bridge,” the cruiser Captain said. “We haven’t really made any use of it since we took the ship, but Bueller and the RRF made sure everything worked. It’s got the tools for the kind of conference you want and is the best place to command a task force from.”

Kira grimaced. Task force was definitely a solid description of what was left of the Coalition Fleet.

“Good call,” she admitted. “I’ll head there…in a minute.”

“I’d say take a nap, but Stef’s already on that conference,” Zoric told her. “Twenty minutes. Shower?”

“Also a good call,” Kira conceded. “I need everything we have on what’s left of Forty-Two-K-Seven’s defenses forwarded to my headware, Kavitha. I know roughly what we’ve got for resources, so…someone’s got to make a plan.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Kira was refreshed and sitting in the flag officer’s chair on Deception’s flag bridge. The K70-class ships had been built as task-group flagships originally, so the working space was more extensive than she’d expected.

Like most spaces on a cubage-limited nova ship, it could always have used extra space, but it was still large enough to feel very empty with only Kira in the room.

Holograms fixed that a moment later as she activated the conference, linking in the assorted officers left of the Coalition Fleet. She surveyed the images silently for a moment, waiting for the last handful to pop in, then smiled as calmly as she could at them all.

“Greetings, everyone,” she said. “This is a bit of a mess, and I know damn well that the Coalition Fleet’s chain of command didn’t go past Rear Admiral Armbruster on Last Denial.” She gestured around.

“If we want to get technical, we have four Commodores left,” she reminded them. “Myself and Commodore Shang are mercenaries. Commodore Shinoda is from the Yprian Federation, but—apologies, Commodore—you have two destroyers left. Commodore Lyon speaks for New Ontario, but…”

“I showed up with a corvette and I’m lucky to still have her,” Jackie Lyon said, the dark-haired officer shaking her head. “Commodore Shang’s ships were the real contribution from Otovo, New Ontario and Exeteron.”

“Technically, Major Generals Westley and Simmons outrank the naval officers here,” Kira conceded, gesturing to the two Redward Army officers.

“Neither of us is going to attempt to take command of the naval portion of this operation,” Westley said grimly. The dark-haired and lightly bearded man looked like he’d just eaten a lemon, but that appeared to be his constant expression. “Based off what you’ve just said, I suspect there’s only one real choice to command the Coalition Fleet, but that’s not my call.”

“It’s ours,” Commodore Shang agreed, the heavily bearded Asian mercenary looking around at the other holograms measuringly. “My friends, Deception is operating under the auspices of the RRF, who we all acknowledged as being the premier force of this fleet.

“I propose that we all accept Commodore Demirci as the acting commanding officer of the Coalition Fleet. She was the only one organized enough to bring in the Redward Army ships and assemble this meeting.

“In the face of an enemy with a major nova-fighter force, I think our best choice is the only veteran of a true nova-fighter war we have. I will follow Commodore Demirci’s orders until this contract is up.”

Kira felt the way the attention of the dozen or so people on the call immediately shifted to one man. Captain Mahmoud Hodzic was a soft-spoken, dark-skinned man who hadn’t said much in any of the Coalition Fleet briefings, but he was still the commanding officer of Guardian, the last remaining RRF cruiser in the fleet and the only capital ship Kira didn’t directly control.

“I hesitate to trust a mercenary, no offense,” he said. “But I know Admiral Kim did, so I am content to yield operational command to Commodore Demirci.”

Kira hadn’t actually expected everyone to go along that easily, but the nods through the holographic crowd suggested that no one was actually opposed. She concealed a dry swallow.

“Thank you for your trust,” she told them. “General Westley, General Simmons, the next stage of this operation is still primarily yours. Securing the Kiln is probably within the capabilities of our remaining force, so long as those nova fighters do not return.”

“Do we even know who those people were?” Shang asked.

“Yes,” Kira said flatly. “Collating the data from everyone’s optics, we have a solid identification on the nova interceptors used. They are Griffon-built Manticore-Sevens. I have simulator files on them but not true detailed specifications…but they were just beginning to be phased out of the Star Kingdom of Griffon’s active service ten years ago.”

“What the hell are Fringe fighters doing out here?” the other mercenary Commodore demanded.

“Our best guess is that they’re in the hands of Cobra Squadron, which appears to be operating under contract to the same people who hired a mercenary fleet to support the coup in Ypres,” Kira told them. “We know, for reasons I won’t go into, that Cobra Squadron is currently operating in the Syntactic Cluster.

“They appear to currently be equipped with last-generation Griffon-built fighters, but those ships are significantly more advanced than our own nova fighters. We didn’t drive them off, people. They were only here to launch one strike.”

“And that strike killed two RRF capital ships,” Westley said sourly. “What happens if they come back, Demirci?”

“We fight,” Kira replied. “But the way we currently have the remaining nova fighters loaded aboard Deception limits our abilities. It will take us at least ten minutes to get the nova fighters into space now, a vulnerability we can’t avoid without giving up on bringing the RRF’s fighters home.”

“Your rescue and retrieval of our fighters and people is appreciated,” Hodzic said quietly.

“Search-and-rescue continues through the wreckage of our ships and fighters,” Kira pointed out. “We have retrieved, at last count, ten class two nova drives and twenty-two pilots and copilots.

“But right now, we have thirty-four nova fighters, two cruisers, five destroyers and three corvettes,” she listed. “We have about thirty-six more hours in which we expect to be able to find survivors, and my intent is to continue the sweep until that time is up.

“We are also retrieving the Clans’ survivors, which may offer General Westley some options.”

“It should,” he agreed. “I intend to demand Forty-Two-K-Seven’s surrender before I request the Fleet engage in combat operations. It may be possible for us to secure the Kiln without further combat.

“What I have seen suggests that the spaceborne firepower of the Costar Clans has been shattered. We can hope that defeat will be enough to prevent stubbornness on their part.”

“Once we have secured as many survivors as possible and are in control of the Kiln, we will need to consider what happens next,” Kira told everyone. “Technically, my contract and our mission call for us to proceed to the Klo System and secure the last of the Clans’ holdouts for General Simmons.

“Despite the losses inflicted on the Clans, I’m not sure we have the strength for that,” she admitted. “We will have to reassess the state of our repairs and our estimates of the Clans’ strength over the next two days.

“I suggest we focus on S&R first, then repairs, then securing the Kiln System,” she told them. “Then… Then we’ll see what happens.”

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