14

Despite the exercises, the wait for the rest of the Coalition Fleet to assemble was the quietest time Deception’s crew had had since they’d rearranged the fighter wings. There might be a pall of concern beginning to spread over the Bengalissimo detachment’s absence, but it was still safe and quiet.

That meant that Kira wasn’t entirely surprised to exit her starfighter after a grueling round of exercises—throwing Deception’s wing, with the cruiser’s support, against their counterparts and their cruiser from the Royal Griffon Navy—to find that the deck crew had assembled a party around her while she’d been working.

She landed on the deck as the freshly printed banner proclaiming 303RD REUNION unfolded across a table that threatened to buckle under the weight of sandwiches and pastries.

“Just what is this?” she asked, loudly enough to be heard but not loudly enough to be objecting.

“A party,” Cartman told her, her old friend having left her own fighter earlier. Probably so that she could intercept Kira. “I cleared it with the Captain and everything.”

She grinned.

“So long as you insist you’re just the CAG, some things aren’t your call, Kira.”

“Fair,” Kira allowed. “Who got invited to this mess?”

“Pilots and officers and…well, everyone,” Cartman replied. “Milani, Bueller and Zoric should all be here—yeah, there’s your boyfriend!”

Bueller and Zoric were making their way through the slowly thickening crowd toward them. Kira gave her lover a small wave and turned a smile on Cartman.

“Mostly your doing, then?” she asked.

“You need the break and so does everyone else,” Cartman replied. A few abortive guitar chords echoed across the deck, and Kira looked up to see that Janda had gathered several of the deckhands around her as the pilot started testing her instrument.

“I’m not arguing,” Kira said. “Just…scoring up the points, Commander Cartman.”

The cruiser’s two senior officers joined them, with Bueller pausing about a meter away.

“No rank in the mess and no protocol at the party,” Kira told them. “You’d better be planning on kissing me, Konrad.”

The big man laughed—and then swept her off her feet, picking her up off the ground and delivering one of the more thorough kisses Kira had experienced in her life before putting her back down.

“Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “That’ll do.”

She pulled him to her side and leaned against him as she eyed the crew. The original Memorials were already converging around her, Hoffman and Patel only releasing each other’s hands long enough to give her lazy salutes.

“Just a small warning, since you’re the senior officers and all,” Michel said quietly as she and Colombera joined the group around Kira. “Watch the blue and purple punches. They may be, ah, somewhat stronger than is appropriate.”

“What did you do?” Kira asked. She wasn’t overly worried. The pair had clearly done something to the punches, but she doubted they’d done enough to completely take someone out—and in the worst-case scenario, Deception was inside the defensive perimeter of Perseus’s fighter wing.

And the medbay had a solid stockpile of dealcoholizers, for that matter.

“Blue punch just has three times as much vodka as expected,” Colombera said cheerfully. “Purple may have acquired some liquid cannabinoids.”

“Anyone starts tripping, it’s on you two,” Kira told them. “So, keep an eye on things. So long as there’s no harm, there’s no foul. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” the two junior Memorials chorused.

Another figure, this one in full body armor with a drunken red dragon frolicking around the exterior, joined the group.

“Same goes for my troopers,” Milani told the two pilots. “I can smell the cannabinoids from in here, remember.”

Milani had never left their armor in Kira’s presence. She wasn’t sure it was personal preference, habit, religious commandment or what, but she’d only ever seen the mercenary trooper in armor decorated with an animated dragon.

They were good enough at their job that she’d stolen the squad leader from Conviction and put them in charge of Deception’s ground team. They didn’t have the two hundred weltraumsoldats the cruiser had carried in Brisingr service, but the sixty mercs Milani commanded were still enough for Kira and them to cause plenty of trouble.

“We’re watching,” Colombera confirmed, tapping his head. “Live headware feed of a camera I left by the bowls. No one is overindulging yet.”

“I figured you had a handle on it,” Kira replied. “Trust but verify, as always.”

She was still leaning on Bueller as she looked over at Zoric.

“You approved the party, they tell me, Kavitha.”

“She’s my ship, last I checked,” Zoric replied.

“She is,” Kira agreed. “Not complaining. It was the right call.”

“I’m going to tell you again what everyone’s been telling you for weeks, though,” the cruiser Captain said. “You can’t be a Commander and act as the flag officer, even if we’re talking a squadron of one.”

“I’m not the flag officer. I’m the owner,” Kira said. “I also fly starfighters.”

“Even Apollo had flag-rank fighter pilots,” Hoffman reminded her. “I don’t know what the rank for a mercenary nova-fighter flag officer is, but it might avoid some confusion if you started using it.

“Right now, you’re the CNG for the fleet while having the same title as two of your squadron commanders. Everyone here knows what’s going on, but the more strangers get involved, the worse it gets…and Zoric answers to you.”

“And in an actual battle, Kavitha answers to herself,” Kira argued. “I’m not giving orders to Deception from a starfighter.”

“In a battle, rank is irrelevant,” Bueller said. “Outside of a battle, your current rank is already causing you trouble; it’s just been small and controlled so far. Admiral Kira Demirci is going to have a lot fewer arguments than Commander Demirci.”

“Et tu, Konrad?” Kira asked, looking up at her lover. “I am not hanging a fucking Admiral’s stars on my uniform. Not when I still answer to Estanza and he’s only wearing a Captain’s rocket.”

“Colonel, Brigadier, Marshal, Big Kahuna.” Milani reeled off suggestions as their dragon laughed. “Or just Commodore, I suppose. That’s always a nice vague one.”

Commodore would make sense, I think,” Zoric said. “Covers the vague placement of person the warship Captain answers to while still keeping you in the cockpit.”

“Do I even get a call in this?” Kira asked.

“Well, I think we have every shareholder of Memorial Squadron LLC here, don’t we?” Patel said. “All in favor of promoting Kira Demirci to the title and rank of Commodore? It’s not like we’re giving her a raise.”

Kira did not point out that she owned sixty-five percent of the company. The other five original Memorials owned seven percent apiece—a seventh survivor had cashed out his shares to buy a freighter and avoid any chance of being called to combat again.

A chorus of ayes surrounded her anyway and she jokingly glared at her friends.

“Fine,” she conceded, still using Bueller as a prop. “I’m blaming you for this, Konrad,” she told him.

He chuckled, the same warm, velvety sound that had first attracted her to him.

“We’ll add it to the list that starts with our home systems being mortal enemies,” he replied. “Commodore.”

Kira sighed and nodded.

“You’ve all got a point. You all got your party. Now, if you’ll excuse me, some of that beer is calling my name—assuming our jokers haven’t done anything to it?”

* * *

“I don’t think we’re getting the Bengalissimos.”

Kira wasn’t sure who’d spoken. She’d been heading toward the pickup basketball game someone had started on one the side of the flight deck when she heard the comment.

Konrad Bueller was happily ensconced next to the dessert table, talking nova drives big and small with Tamboli, the deck chief arguing the virtues of the class two drive while Bueller cheerfully nodded along but pointed out their errors.

She’d heard the bounce of a basketball and been drawn like a moth to the flame, but the half-heard comment was probably worth interrupting. Bidding the game she hadn’t even managed to see yet a sad mental goodbye, she turned to survey the crowd around her.

It took her all of ten seconds to pick out Marija Davidović talking to several of the locally-recruited pilots. The Redward hands made up a good half of the crew at this point, though they were generally careful to keep from forming cliques.

“Overdue is overdue, not missing,” Iyov Waxweiler, the tactical chief, replied to his boss. “All sorts of things can hold up a nova ship. Easy enough for them to misjudge static discharge and have to make a detour. That would add two days at least.”

One of the factors of the nova drive that helped keep stopover systems like Ypres wealthy was that a full-size starship could only make six novas before they needed to attach themselves to a significant gravity well to discharge a buildup of assorted exotic energy forms.

The class two drives didn’t suffer from that to the same extent, though the longer cooldowns more than made up for it over an extended journey.

“Forgive me, Iyov,” Davidović said, “but you’re not local.” She gestured to the other locals. “Folks, what’re the odds that a Bengal fleet cruiser would muck up their discharge estimate and end up forty-eight hours overdue?”

Kira stepped into the group with a small smile.

“Outside my experience, Commander,” she told the tactical officer. “I only saw the Bengalissimos at Ypres, and that wasn’t a fight in the end. So, what do you say?”

She gestured for the Commander and others to speak.

“The Bengals are either the second or third most powerful player in the sector,” one of Bueller’s new engineering team leads said. “Third, I guess, with Ypres united now. Their fleet is smaller than Redward’s but just as professional. Just as competent.”

“And just as well-led,” Janda agreed, the pilot looking a bit more hesitant. “An RRF cruiser group wouldn’t be two days overdue without something serious happening. Neither would a Bengalissimo Fleet group.”

“So, you figure they’re not going to show up in the next twelve hours, huh?” Kira asked. “I’d really like to have that fourth cruiser.”

“If they’re this late, they’re not coming,” Davidović said quietly. “I’ve known too many Bengal officers. Did a couple of joint ops with them in the RRF. Something’s happened. I don’t know what Admiral Kim is thinking, but either we’re going without them or we’re not going.”

“I appreciate the honesty, Commander, people,” Kira told them all. “I don’t know the local fleets well enough to make that call, so I need your insight sometimes.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t like it, but I can tell you one thing for certain: if they’re not coming, the Coalition Fleet is going into Arti without them.”

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