6

One of the disadvantages of a carrier having a massive flight deck was that the designers had seen no reason to provide the ship with an additional shuttle bay large enough for the incoming shuttle. Every spacecraft of that size arriving at or leaving Conviction came through the flight deck, which also gave strangers a potential look at the carrier’s fighter wing.

Kira watched a video feed via her headware as the “Platinum Cobra” shuttle touched down in a designated spot. A squad of mercenary troopers in intentionally mismatched armor immediately surrounded the spacecraft—but almost more importantly, several of the flight deck’s mobile carts swung large white screens closer to it.

Those screens had been between the shuttle’s scanners and the fighter wing from the beginning, Kira presumed, keeping the unknown vessel from having a perfect count of Conviction’s fighter strength.

It wouldn’t be a perfect block, but hopefully this Ivarsson was still partially in the dark. If they were lucky, he wasn’t an enemy…but something about the situation didn’t leave Kira thinking that.

The shuttle’s sole occupant took the presence of the armed guards calmly as he exited the spacecraft. He was a tall man with almost translucently pale skin and pure white hair.

“Guards will search him and bring him here,” Estanza told her.

They’d taken over a tiny office next to the carrier deck, usually used by one of Waldroup’s team leaders, and removed everything they could. All that was left was four chairs, three of them facing the fourth.

Kira watched Ivarsson the entire time as he was searched, and shivered when she saw his eyes. They were a piercing unnatural golden color, suggesting either cosmetic surgery or long-standing genetic modifications—and his movements as the guards brought him across the deck spoke to other modifications.

Soldier boosts were rare, even among mercenaries like those on Conviction. From a distance, she couldn’t tell if Ivarsson’s boosts were genetic, cybernetic or organic, but he moved like an angry cobra.

Of course, the mercenaries around him wore armor that could duplicate anything his boosts could do. That was why soldier boosts were rare—but it said something that a presumed fighter pilot had them.

Kira just wasn’t sure what that something was.

Estanza waved the door open as the mercenaries escorted their guests over, and all three of the officers watched as Ivarsson walked into the office like he owned it and took a seat in the empty chair.

“John,” he greeted Estanza with a nod. “It’s been a long time.” He looked at the others. “I know Em Bueller, by reputation at least, and this must be Kira Demirci.”

Still sitting, he bowed slightly to Kira.

“You have made quite an impression in a single year, Commander,” he told her. “Apollo is poorer for your leaving.”

“Their choice, not mine,” Kira said flatly. Too many of Apollo’s ace pilots had died mysteriously for her to believe that her government hadn’t allowed Brisingr’s assassins to operate in Apollon space.

“You’ve managed to track me down across about six hundred light-years and three decades,” Estanza said quietly. “Somehow, Lars, I don’t think this is a social call.”

“No,” Ivarsson agreed. “I owe you my life, John. We both know that. At least four or five times over, so I felt obliged to make a call once we were in the area.”

Kira swallowed her response and looked over at Bueller. Her lover looked unsurprisingly nervous and she realized there was only one way Ivarsson could know him by reputation.

We, Lars?” Estanza asked.

“Cobra Squadron, John,” the stranger said. “Not all of us failed to find the moral fiber necessary to carry through on our ideals and our missions. We lost a lot of people to your little propaganda coup, but Cobra Squadron survived.

“We’ve been working our way across the Rim, just like we always did,” Ivarsson continued. “Legends proved a pain in the ass, so we’ve tried to draw less attention to ourselves, but we’ve helped a dozen sectors find equilibrium and peace.”

“Betraying allies, breaking contracts and committing atrocities along the way?” Estanza asked, his voice icy.

“Where that was what was necessary to bring peace to a dozen star systems, yes,” the Institute operative agreed. “You and Bueller both understood that once. When the future peace and prosperity of a hundred billion people is on the line, the qualms of the moment are meaningless. The hard calls must be made.”

“Everyone here has heard the pitch, Lars,” Conviction’s Captain noted. “What’s to stop us from turning you over to Redward for interrogation? That would be one of those hard calls, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Ivarsson said. “Of course, the three-hundred-megaton fusion warhead in my shuttle will object if I’m not back aboard in an hour. I don’t think this ship is in good-enough shape to survive that, do you?”

“You fucker,” Kira snapped.

“I’m here to offer you and your people a chance, John,” the man continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Cobra Squadron is here now. I’m not going to tell you who we’ve been contracted with, but you know we work for the Institute above all.

“Everything here has proceeded along the projections of the Seldonian calculations,” Ivarsson said. “The Institute’s attempts to divert the psychohistorical projections have been countered at all turns by you and your Redward friends.”

“Because you keep funding pirates and coups, perhaps,” Estanza growled. “How many people have died because of the Institute’s meddling?”

“I have no idea,” the golden-eyed man said calmly. “But I’ve seen the projections, John. If the SCFTZ takes shape as planned, without any intervention, it will slowly degrade into two factions: one centered on Redward and one centered on Ypres.

“Without a central power with both the economic and military might to keep the Syntactic Cluster from splitting in two, your much-vaunted Free Trade Zone will dissolve into warring factions in twenty to thirty years, splitting the Cluster into an interstellar war that will claim millions, maybe even billions, of lives and set the cultural and technological development of the region back decades.

“The Institute will do everything in our power to prevent that, John, and if you keep getting in our way, I will have no choice but to destroy your carrier and kill you,” Ivarsson admitted. “I don’t want to kill you. I owe you my life, so I’m here with a warning.

“Leave the Cluster, John. Take your ships and your people and get the hell out.”

“Not going to happen,” Estanza replied. “The Institute has broken more worlds than it’s ever fixed. You’ve never even tested the damn projections, just assumed they are true and killed millions to stop them.”

“The fundamental math and analysis have been tested a thousand times,” Ivarsson countered. “Given the projections, we cannot stand by and allow the societies we have seen flourish across human space fall and burn.”

“Even if it means destroying everything that makes them flourish? I can’t believe that anymore, Lars. I won’t. Redward’s leadership has a dream, a plan that worked on Old Earth, and I won’t let the Institute tear it down based on math.”

To Kira’s mind, they were more fighting against the Institute than for anyone, though she’d admit that she liked the people of Redward—and that she trusted King Larry and Queen Sonia more than she’d ever trusted the Council of Principals on Apollo.

“You used to understand,” Ivarsson said. “People like the leaders of Redward are too busy trying to do what’s ‘right’ to realize they need to do what’s necessary. Again and again we have seen it: the only answer for peace in a given region is a single unchallenged hegemonic power able to enforce that peace.

“If Redward won’t become that power here in the Syntactic Cluster, then the alliances they have built will fracture into fire and blood,” he concluded. “Which means that if Redward won’t become that power, the Institute has no choice but to make sure someone else does.

“Unfortunately, that requires breaking Redward’s power. But so long as King Larry will not do what is necessary, we have no choice.”

“You always have a choice, Lars Ivarsson,” John Estanza told him. “That was why we deserted. When I realized that the Institute would find ways to justify everything. The math might be wrong. It might not be.

“But I won’t let you shape all of humanity into a single mold because you think it’s safer.”

The room was quiet.

“The ends justify the means,” Bueller said into the silence after a moment. “It’s a seductive belief, Em Ivarsson. Especially when the end is as glorious an image as the Institute likes to project. But I wonder if you have ever spent time in the sectors you have supposedly made better.

“I was only with the Institute for a year. In that year, I saw more bloodshed than I did in three years of a goddamn war. There are means that cannot be justified by any ends. If your goal is peace, there is only so much bloodshed that can be stomached in its pursuit.”

“The goal is peace for all time,” Ivarsson reminded Bueller. “For that goal, I will sacrifice anything.”

He rose.

“It seems I have wasted my time, but old debts required the effort,” he told them. “John, I’d far rather be on the same side again, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I beg you to reconsider. A single eighth-rate heavy cruiser and a carrier that barely qualifies as ninth-rate anymore can’t turn back what’s coming.”

“That depends, in my experience, on the crews and pilots involved,” Estanza said. “Get off my ship, Lars. Platinum Cobra or no, the next time we meet, I’m going to kill you.”

The old mercenary’s voice was calm, collected…and utterly frigid.

“You can try,” Ivarsson told him. “But you’re not facing random mercenaries gathered from three hundred light-years of the Rim anymore, old friend. You’re facing Cobra Squadron…and you, of all people, should remember what that means.”

* * *

“Track that ship,” Kira suggested quietly as the Cobra Squadron shuttle drifted out of Conviction’s hangar. “That might give us some clue as to where he’s going.”

“Mwangi’s already on it,” Estanza said calmly. “I don’t expect it to do us much… Yeah, there he goes.”

Kira linked her headware into the sensors and blinked. The shuttle was gone.

“It had a class two nova drive,” Estanza told her. “I didn’t recognize it until I realized he was still with Cobra. Fuck.”

“How bad is it going to be?” Bueller asked. “Last I heard of Cobra Squadron, they weren’t even in the Rim.”

“That pretty much tells you the problem, doesn’t it?” Conviction’s Captain said grimly. “When I last flew for Cobra, we were uniformly equipped with Banshee-Nine-class heavy fighters. They were older planes, but they were from the Periphery, not even the Fringe.”

He shook his head. The Fringe was roughly the worlds from seven hundred to a thousand light-years away from Sol. The Periphery was the worlds from four hundred to seven hundred light-years away. The nearest Periphery System was eight hundred light-years from Redward.

“Thirty years ago, we were flying fifty-year-old fighters from a fifth-rate power in the Periphery while dealing with Fringe states,” he told them. “That meant those nova fighters were still better than most of the ones we fought.

“Even if Cobra hasn’t upgraded their gear since, well…” Estanza shook his head. “Those fighters were from a world six hundred light-years from Sol. We’re fifteen hundred light-years from Sol. Even an eighty-year-old Periphery nova fighter is probably equal to or better than the Viers aboard Deception.”

Kira sighed. It was generally considered a safe rule that for every ten light-years farther you were from Sol, technology was, on average, about a year and a half further behind. Especially military and other restricted techs.

It was almost two hundred light-years from Apollo and Brisingr to the Syntactic Cluster, and the Cluster’s wealthiest systems were easily thirty years behind her home world in military tech.

From six hundred light-years closer to humanity’s homeworld? The Banshees might be eighty years old, but they were still probably decades more advanced than anything her people had.

Multiphasic jamming was a great equalizer in the battlespace, but those fighters were still going to be an ugly handful. If they’d upgraded to newer fighters, even birds from the Fringe, Kira’s people could be in serious trouble.

“How many?” she asked.

“We had two covert carriers thirty years ago,” Estanza said grimly. “Each carried fifty fighters. So…at least a hundred, plus they definitely seem to have that Crest carrier running around for another forty.”

“At least that one seems to be flying Crest fighters,” Bueller said. “Not stuff that’s going to make us look like cavemen in rowboats.”

“The differences aren’t going to be that severe,” Kira countered. “But if we throw my Hoplites and PNCs up against Banshee-Nines, the odds aren’t in our favor…and that’s not considering that most of our pilots are still green.”

“And Redward’s pilots are worse,” Estanza agreed. “Their production of the Sinisters and Dexters will help make up the numbers, but…we’re facing a disadvantage in both experience and quality of hardware.”

The Dexter interceptors and Sinister fighter-bombers were clones of Conviction’s Hoplite-IVs and PNC-115s, respectively. The Escutcheon-type heavy fighters were still in prototyping, but they would be clones of the Weltraumpanzer-Viers taken from Deception once they hit commission.

“We’ll have to brief the RRF,” Kira said grimly. “I’m not sure we know enough about what Cobra Squadron has today to provide solid data, but just their presence in the Cluster is a major change.”

“The Institute is pulling out everything if they’ve moved Cobra here,” Estanza told her. “Cobra Squadron has always been their most capable active arm. We’ve drawn their attention and they’ve sent their best.”

“Thank god we have Deception, then,” Bueller concluded. “But it sounds like we need to train up the crew even faster.”

“We’re already out of time,” Kira replied. “We’re just waiting for the call that Redward has signed off on whatever Larry and Sonia’s plan for the Clans is. I don’t expect us to spend more than a week here.”

“I’d say the same,” Estanza agreed. “I hope the two of you enjoyed what time you’ve had to relax. Things aren’t going to slow down from here, I don’t think.”

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