The Redward Army was going to have a busy few years, Kira suspected. The initial landings and boardings had gone unopposed so far, but the people left in Kaiser had been abandoned by their supposed champions.
Taking the Costar Clans Systems was proving easier than she’d feared so far, but holding them was going to be another problem. Given time, she had faith in Queen Sonia’s ability to keep Redward’s promises, but…she didn’t necessarily think the Clans were going to give their occupiers that time.
That was the army’s problem, though. Her attention was locked on an RRF fast courier making a rapid approach to Perseus. She had just poured herself a cup of coffee—some of the Royal Reserve Sonia had given her—when the ship had novaed into Kaiser, and now she was waiting to hear what the news was.
She had work to do, but she suspected the courier’s cargo was more important than going through the engineers’ assessment of whether Wilhelm’s orbital forts could support a squadron of Sinister fighter-bombers.
The ping on her headware wasn’t really a surprise. A ship-to-ship coms request from Perseus.
“Commodore Demirci,” she answered it, her gaze still locked on the tactical display. The courier was now physically docked to the carrier, which meant she was well inside the defensive perimeter of the Coalition Fleet.
“Demirci, you can imagine how much crap is on one of our fast couriers right now,” Admiral Kim greeted her gruffly. “But there’s a My Eyes Only message from the Queen as head of the Office of Integration, and she’s requested that I bring you in as well.”
“Don’t you have senior subordinates of your own?” Kira said with a chuckle. “I’m not objecting to the Queen’s trust—or yours, Admiral—but I’m not RRF.”
“That’s part of why I’m leaning on you, Demirci,” Kim told her. “Plus, you have an outside perspective that’s valuable. Regardless of whether I trust you, Her Majesty clearly does. Shall we see her message?”
“I am at your and Her Majesty’s service until the transfers start bouncing,” Kira replied. “Link me in.”
She flicked the channel to her desk, replacing the tactical display with the image of the blonde admiral. A moment later, the image split, moving Kim into the background as the image of Queen Sonia appeared.
The slim Queen sat behind a massive desk, half-covered in data chips. Her hands were laid flat on the aged wooden surface and her eyes were level…and tired.
“Ylva, Kira, we received your reports from the Arti System,” she told them. “It sounds like things went as well as we could hope, though I’ve bad news for your mission: I need you to accelerate your operations.
“As of my recording this message, our allies supporting the Coalition Fleet are staying in, but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last,” the Queen said calmly. “I would not count on keeping all of your ships for the full operation. The international situation in the Syntactic Cluster has…clarified but not in a good way.”
That sounded bad to Kira. Sonia’s Office of Integration was the group responsible for bringing all of the data from the various civil and military intelligence services together under one roof and assembling the best possible view of the outside galaxy from them.
“We have received some formal communication from Bengalissimo since the coup,” Sonia told them. “And I have learned that there is apparently a school of thought on Bengalissimo that because the first two monarchs were Queens, Queen Ilaria’s eldest daughter should have inherited the throne instead of her eldest child, her son.
“Since no one challenged King Celestino’s ascension, his daughter’s ascension or her son’s ascension, that has mostly remained a purely theoretical argument for a certain type of historian or royalist.
“King Isidoro was unquestioned in his rightful claim to his mother’s throne,” she noted. “Except now he’s dead and we have no idea what’s happened to his two children. And under that esoteric and forgotten school of thought, the supposedly rightful heir would the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of Queen Ilaria.”
Kira realized where this was going and grimaced.
“Which, as it turns out, is Her Royal Majesty Queen Rossella the First, formerly Admiral Rossella Gaspari,” Sonia said levelly. “We have received formal notification of her ascension to the throne of Bengalissimo.
“We have also received formal notification that Bengalissimo has withdrawn from the Syntactic Cluster Free Trade Zone.” Sonia shook her head and sighed. “That’s all the formal communication we have received, but I do have sources in the Bengalissimo System.”
The whole mess stank of Equilibrium to Kira, but it sounded like Gaspari had kept that inheritance in the back of her mind for a while. Not many people woke up on the wrong side of fifty and suddenly decided that their vague claim to the throne was worth killing a bunch of people for.
“Those sources tell me the tone of Queen Rossella’s story so far,” Sonia said grimly. “She is claiming that the Yprian Federation is a false front for a Redward occupation of the Ypres System, pointing to the Coalition Fleet campaign against the Clans as proof of our sudden aggression and expansionism.
“I’m not sure of exact numbers, but roughly half of the Parlamento members have been executed for treason for cooperating with the FTZ,” the Queen said. “Politicians who strived to make the entire Cluster a better place are now dead, murdered for having not somehow put Bengalissimo above all others.”
Sonia looked at the recorder.
“I am finding it difficult not to be spectacularly angry at Queen Rossella,” she admitted. “But we cannot make decisions that turn the fates of stars and millions of souls based on our personal feelings.
“We will attempt to negotiate with Rossella, but I expect that her anti-FTZ position will make many of the smaller members of both the FTZ and the Coalition Fleet nervous. We will see them withdraw their ships to secure their own systems and nearby trade-route stops.
“While it feels hypocritical, I urge you to move against the next system as quickly as possible. We must secure as many of the Clan Systems as we can while we have the resources. We will not hold those systems and ships to their promises when they are afraid.”
A simplified three-dimensional map of the Cluster appeared in front of Sonia, showing the positions of Redward, Ypres and Bengalissimo. The three stars formed an even-sided triangle, with Redward at the center of the Cluster, Ypres at the inner coreward side, and Bengalissimo sitting north of them at the “top” of the Cluster relative to old Earth.
“Given our general lack of communication from the new Bengalissimo government, we’re mostly guessing on what they’re going to do next,” the Queen reminded them. “That said, most of my analysts are agreed that they’re going to have to move against Ypres, given their propaganda. We expect to see some attempt at blockading the Ypres System in the near future…and with it, the entire Syntactic Cluster.
“Until Bengalissimo moves, the Costar Clans remain the largest known threat in the Cluster. If at all possible, we want them neutralized before we need to move against Rossella. In all honesty…”
Sonia sighed.
“In all honesty, I can’t imagine that will be possible. Even if the Equilibrium Institute wasn’t involved in Rossella’s coup, their usual policies would almost certainly lead to them putting their resources in our region at her disposal. Given what we know about Cobra Squadron, she will shortly have the resources to court a full war with Redward and Ypres.
“A war we may well not be able to win. A war we definitely will not win if we are fighting the Clans on the other front. Finish your mission, Kim, Demirci. The entire Cluster’s fate may depend on it.”
Sonia’s image froze and Kira exhaled a long sigh.
“No pressure, I see, Admiral,” she told Kim.
“Or something like that,” Kim agreed. “Your thoughts, Commodore?”
“Gaspari is an Equilibrium asset and probably has been in their pocket for at least as long as I’ve been in the Cluster,” Kira replied. “Another backup plan—or potentially the original main plan. If they’ve been quietly helping her get ready for this all along, it’s entirely possible the Clans were always intended to fail—but against her.”
“Thankfully, she’s limited to the resources of the Bengalissimo Fleet and whatever the Institute can put at her disposal,” the Admiral said. “That gives us some advantages.”
“Her brother runs the company that built Bengalissimo’s cruisers,” Kira pointed out.
The channel was silent for several seconds.
“Fuck.” Kim met Kira’s gaze. “You’re sure.”
“We don’t know the Cluster, so we did the research,” the merc said. “Victory Star Manufacturing is publicly traded, but a majority of its voting rights are held by members of the Gaspari family—with Luigi Gaspari, Rossella’s younger brother, holding thirty-five percent and acting as chairman and CEO.”
“You think they’ve built more ships.”
“I think the Gasparis could have funded entire cruiser groups out of their own pockets,” Kira admitted. “And I think that the Institute has likely been funneling them money for years.
“I don’t know how she’s going to explain it when she produces her new ships, but I’d guess that the BF is going to double in strength in the next couple of weeks. And she has that entire mercenary fleet from Ypres and Cobra Squadron.”
Kira shook her head.
“If it’s war, Admiral Kim, we might just be outgunned. Even with Deception and Conviction and the new nova fighters—because if Rossella has been an Institute agent, they may well have nova fighters too.”
“How can the Institute bring so many resources to bear out here?” Kim asked. “We’re nothing, the edge of fucking nowhere. All we want is to make the Cluster a better place.”
“And they think your plan will destroy the Cluster,” Kira said. “I don’t know where their resources come from, Admiral, beyond that they come from much closer to Sol. The amount of money they’re throwing around out here is nothing to a Meridian interstellar corporation.
“They’re ruining the FTZ with their pocket change.”
Kim echoed Kira’s earlier sigh but nodded firmly.
“Well, there’s only one thing I can really do with all of this,” she admitted. “Tell Captain Zoric to get Deception ready to nova, Commodore. My gut feeling is that the Clans will fight us at the Kiln—and that was next on my schedule anyway.
“Let’s get this fleet moving.”