There was still going to be at least one beach. Redward wasn’t a planet known for its tourist destinations, but very few human-habitable planets couldn’t find at least one spot with decent sand and warm water.
Kira had rented the entire resort and brought everyone down. She had a good idea of what the bill at the end of the weekend was going to be, and she did not care.
Especially not as she stood on the beach and watched twenty-one of Milani’s troopers, in armor for the only time all weekend, assemble into a line and raise their rifles to the sky.
Plasma bolts lit into the sky. Again and again and again, once for each member of the mercenary company that hadn’t made it back from the battle.
“The yards say the repairs are going to ta—”
“No, Konrad,” Cartman cut Kira’s lover off. “No work, not tonight.”
Kira chuckled. She’d been about to elbow Konrad. Since she was leaning against his legs as he sprawled in a beach chair, it wouldn’t have taken much to move.
Evgenia Michel was still in hospital, and she was the only one of the key members of the new mercenary company—simply Memorial Force LLC—missing from the group gathered at the center of the beach.
“Hard to avoid it,” Colombera said. The youngest pilot was clearly suffering for the lack of his usual partner in pranks, but they were all tired. “Too many of the folks in charge gathered around here right now.”
“True,” Cartman said with a laugh. The last echoing salvo of blaster fire ended, and she rose to her feet. “I think, then, that we need to split ourselves up for our own good.
“Akuchi, may I have this dance?”
She offered her hand to the dark-haired officer, now Raccoon’s Captain, and pulled him to his feet as he laughed and took it.
Patel and Colombera shared a look. Both looked far too tired and sad to Kira to do anything, but Colombera dragged the other man to his feet, and they followed Cartman and Akuchi off toward the music.
“Well, that went quickly,” Zoric observed, swallowing back her own drink as, suddenly, they were only three. “Think everyone has caught up to being millionaires yet?”
“My pilots have been millionaires since they got to Redward,” Kira admitted. “I’m not sure they’ve realized it yet.”
The cruiser Captain chuckled, rising to her feet with a vague, unsteady sway. “I’m going to get another drink. Want anything?”
“Sure, refills?” Konrad asked from behind Kira.
“I know what you ordered,” Zoric confirmed. “Keep your clothes on, you two. Or if you can’t, go back to your room. The crew doesn’t mind if you lovey-dovey, but fucking on the beach might be going too far.”
“Might,” Kira echoed with a chuckle as she patted Konrad’s thigh. “Go on, Kavitha; we’ll be here when you get back.”
Redward’s sun Wardstone was setting, sending rays of light across the water. Some of her people were actually swimming, and a few more were wading through the shallows. If she’d wanted, her headware would have let her identify them—but she had over five hundred people at the resort that night.
She’d allow them their anonymity.
“No work, Konrad,” she warned her lover. In response, he bent forward and kissed the top of her head, sending a shiver down her spine.
“I try to only make the same mistake once, my love,” he told her. The label sent another shiver through her back, and she looked up at him with a grin.
“Be careful with that word, my love,” she replied. “It has great power. First time you used it, we broke the Institute in the Cluster.”
“Perhaps I should be more of sparing of it, then,” he agreed. “But it would be hard. I love you, Kira Demirci. Wherever we go, whatever we do, I want to do it with you.”
His grin widened and should have made his head fall off.
“And I’ve been thinking about that whole ‘favor’ business,” he continued. “What I’m planning is half a favor, half a good luck charm, but I’d like you to put it in your fighter. Superstitious, definitely, but I want to do what I can to bring you back to me.”
“Tearing apart those Manticores is probably more useful,” Kira noted, but she waved away her own cynicism. “No. Whatever you give me, love, I’ll take it. And, well.”
She leaned her head against his leg and looked at the last dregs of the sunset.
“Wherever we go, whatever we do,” she confirmed. “I’m going to bring some friends for most of it, but we’ll go together. Take on the whole damn galaxy.”
Konrad leaned forward to kiss her head again.
“They’re never going to know what hit them,” he promised.
* * *
Thank you so much for reading Equilibrium. Read on for a preview of Space Carrier Avalon, book 1 in the Castle Federation series.
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