27

The average shipsuit was designed with forty-eight hours of oxygen. Most ships had survival kits and bunkers scattered throughout the hull, allowing for that to be extended to at least a week—and including beacons to guide search-and-rescue crews to the survivors.

The Coalition Fleet’s people did everything they could inside those forty-eight hours and swept up every beacon they detected. Fifty-five hours after the battle was over, Kira knew exactly how many people had died and been saved in the Second Battle of the Kiln.

Too many and not enough, respectively. Of her Deception pilots, she’d lost nine fighters, but five of the pilots had been retrieved.

The RRF wing had been hit even harder. Sagairt lived, but he’d lost his own fighter—along with twenty more of his planes. Half of them had been the two-person Sinister fighter-bombers, and they’d only pulled eighteen of his people from the wreckage.

For being outnumbered by superior fighters, Kira was grimly aware that the loss of thirty nova fighters and sixteen pilots and copilots was a damn miracle. The loss of Perseus—crew of thirteen hundred—and Last Denial—crew of nine hundred—counted heavily against that. Between the capital ships and lighter units lost, they’d pulled a thousand survivors from their own wreckage.

Which meant they’d only lost two thousand people to the black.

The Clans were worse off. Kira’s new fleet had done their best, but they’d only pulled about a thousand of the Clans’ survivors from the chaos. With over a hundred of the Clans’ warships reduced to wreckage in the fight, she couldn’t even guess at their losses.

“It’s over,” Westley told her in a private conference. “Some of the other clusters may stick it out, but Forty-Two had a front-row seat to you annihilating their fleet. We’ve been arguing for a day and a half, but it was clear from the beginning how it was going to end.”

“Your troops are going in?” Kira asked. She was on the flag bridge. She hadn’t left the flag bridge since heading in, though the flag officer’s chair at least reclined enough for her to sleep.

“Shuttles launching in ten minutes. We could use nova-fighter escort as we move transports to some of the other clusters,” he admitted.

“Give me a list, I’ll get you fighters,” she promised. “Might take more than ten minutes. Fitting thirty-four fighters on a deck designed for twenty lends itself to inefficiency.”

“I get that,” Westley said. “We did it, Commodore. Three of the Costar Clans Systems are now protectorates of Redward. That’s… That’s a lot. That’s more than anyone’s ever done.”

“Pat yourselves on the back in thirty years if you manage to keep all of your promises,” Kira told him grimly. “I’ve read the projections. If the FTZ doesn’t make as much extra money as your analysts think, the Clans’ systems might just bankrupt the Redward Crown.”

“That’s the risk we have to take,” Westley agreed. “I understand the urge to destroy a long-standing enemy, but, speaking as a soldier and a student of history, violence only begets more violence.

“Diplomats might write checks that only soldiers can cash, but we only truly win when we make our enemies our friends.”

“I’m a mercenary, General. These days, anyway. I have to at least pretend I’m only concerned about one kind of check,” Kira told him.

“Rumor says that peace might leave you unemployed, but unemployment wouldn’t exactly leave you bankrupt, Commodore,” he replied. “If you get me those fighters, we might actually be on the edge of finishing up your role here.”

“I’m waiting on a courier,” Kira admitted. “Too much is going on in the Cluster for me to want to commit the Coalition Fleet to a move on Klo. We’re in better shape post-self-repair than I’d dare hope, but…”

“I understand, Commodore. The work remains.”

“Good luck, General,” Kira told him. A chime in her headware informed her she had the list of missions that would require nova-fighter escort. “I’ll have those fighters for you in fifteen.”

* * *

Roughly half an hour later, the flag bridge door slid open to admit Konrad Bueller. The broad-shouldered Brisingr man crossed the space silently, laying his hand on Kira’s arm without a word.

“There should be a chair somewhere around here that moves,” Kira suggested. “Though I suppose most bridges don’t have those.”

“Not generally, no,” her boyfriend agreed. “We tend to design spaces like this with fixed seats with safety belts. Just in case.”

She snorted, studying the big display in front of her. It was an interesting mix of media, combining flat screens, a hologram, and data feeding to her headware. She gave a mental command, allowing Bueller access to the headware feed.

“That’s a lot of green,” she murmured, gesturing to the map of the Kiln System. “A few oranges still, clusters and stations that are being difficult, but the system is basically under our control.”

“So, what happens now?” Bueller asked. The question sounded familiar, and she shrugged.

“We wait for word from Redward,” she told him. “The situation with Bengalissimo is complicated enough that I don’t want to risk the Coalition Fleet without more data—especially when Cobra Squadron already jumped us.”

“My math says they’ve upgraded,” he murmured. “Estanza said they had two fifty-plane carriers. That could launch a hundred nova fighters, but I feel like they wouldn’t have risked everything here.”

“Some of the extras could have been the survivors from the Crest carrier,” Kira pointed out. “I don’t know if they had ten bombers after they ran into us in Redward, but I’m not going to assume that every fighter out there was a Manticore.”

“Or Cobra Squadron has three carriers now,” Bueller pointed out. “Or two bigger ones. Either way, you’re right to wait for word. What I have to question is whether you’re right to wait here on the flag bridge without resting.”

“I’m sleeping,” she countered. “Some.”

He chuckled.

“Kira, wearing yourself out doesn’t serve anyone. You’re right that the flag bridge is your post right now, but that doesn’t mean you’re needed here twenty-four hours a day.”

She sighed and he moved around to start massaging her shoulders, taking advantage of the privacy.

“You’re not actually going to move on to Klo, are you?” he murmured.

“No,” she admitted. “I’m expecting most of the Coalition to be recalled…and their home systems to be horrified at their losses. This hurt a lot of Redward’s partners and if they’re not careful, it’s going to look like a lot of their partners got hurt for their benefit.”

“Because Redward now theoretically owns three giant holes they’re going to pour money into for the next twenty years?” Bueller asked.

“Basically. Territorial expansion always makes people nervous,” Kira replied. “And Redward hasn’t set themselves up as an unquestioned hegemon that everyone is too scared to challenge. That would be what the Institute wants.”

“I see the point, some days,” he said. “But could I impose on you to see the point from your actual bed, Kira? It’s more comfortable than that chair, and I promise we’ll wake you when the cour—”

“Nova emergence,” Davidović’s void reported through a speaker. “IDing as Kenobi, one of the RRF’s fast couriers.”

“Never mind,” Bueller said with a long sigh. “I don’t think we’re going to need a chief engineer for a few minutes. Need company, or is this going to be too classified for the XO?”

“Stick around,” Kira ordered. “I suspect I can use the moral support.”

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