7

For all of the trials and travails of Kira’s job—and her current rising undercurrent of sheer boredom—there was still something incredible about watching her squadron maintain formation and knowing that it was all hers.

Well, fifty-one percent hers. The rest of the ownership was split between Kavitha Zoric and the survivors of her original Apollo fighter pilots. Still, Kira Demirci held the majority share and was Commodore and CEO of the company.

Of course, Deception dwarfed the other three ships of Memorial Force. She was almost three times as large as the Parakeets and well over twice the size of Raccoon. The junk carrier could still easily be mistaken for a freighter by someone who didn’t know what a converted freighter-carrier looked like.

Her headware pinged an incoming call and she checked. She smiled when she realized it was Mel “Nightmare” Cartman—Deception’s Commander, Nova Group.

Cartman was one of the first people who’d made it out to Redward to join Kira and also one of her oldest friends. Her role as CNG for Deception was a bit of an odd fit, since Kira also flew off the cruiser and acted as CNG for the whole of Memorial Force.

“What’s up, Nightmare?” Kira answered the com. Deception’s flag bridge was empty other than her, which gave her the privacy to be more casual than usual.

“Checking to make sure you haven’t stolen a nova fighter and gone off on a one-woman crusade against tax fraud or something,” her old friend said drily. “Still here, though?”

Kira snorted.

“I got bored and attached myself to one destroyer patrol,” she argued. “From the way you all are acting, you’d think I’d been doing this every week for years.”

“Because it was dumb and we want to make sure you don’t do it again,” Cartman told her. “Eventually, we’ll feel you’re sufficiently chastened.” She paused. “Maybe.”

“Wonderful,” Kira said. “Well, I am still here. Sitting on Deception’s flag deck, watching a hologram of our ships orbiting Redward.”

It was a notable sign of trust that her independently operated warships were permitted to orbit autonomously, without being required to dock with a station or being positioned under the guns of one of the asteroid fortresses.

Her four ships weren’t much of a threat to a planet, but any warship could fabricate a Harrington-coil missile that would ruin a large city’s century with pure kinetic energy. Only trusted warships were left to swan around in planetary orbit without escort.

Redward was basically home for Memorial Force at this point—but they were still independents.

“Well, since you’re still here, it’s Dinesha’s birthday today,” Cartman told her. “He’s…well, I’m your other ship CNG, boss. I’m guessing you’ve noticed what he’s doing, but I’m the one working with him.”

Kira sighed. She didn’t need Cartman to tell her what Dinesha Patel, the third-largest shareholder of Memorial Force and Raccoon’s Commander, Nova Group, had been doing. Patel had lost his long-standing boyfriend in the battle against Equilibrium and was…surviving.

“He’s working too much and not coming up for air,” Kira said aloud. “I’m familiar with the coping mechanism.”

If for no other reason than that she tended to do the same thing.

“I checked in with Dr. Devin and he says that throwing Dinesha a birthday party with the old salts should be good for him,” Cartman said. “I didn’t go so far as to ask if Dinesha was getting counseling through Devin or someone else—I know the lines!”

Kira chuckled softly.

“A party would be fine, I agree,” she said. “I’m guessing you’ve organized something and want me there? Does Patel know about this yet?”

“Yes and yes,” Cartman replied. “I didn’t think a surprise party was a good idea. We’re all a bit squirrelly after Hoffman’s death…and, well, it’s not what he would have wanted.”

Joseph “Longknife” Hoffman had been the most senior pilot to make it to Redward from the old Three-Oh-Three Nova Combat Group in the Apollo System Defense Force after Kira herself. He’d taken over as CNG aboard Conviction when Kira had moved to Deception, but she’d worked with him for over a decade and had known him well—if not as well as Dinesha Patel!

And Mel Cartman was right.

“My schedule is clear for the moment,” Kira told her friend. “And if it wasn’t, I’d make it so. Where do you need me and when?”

* * *

As the Commodore and CEO, Kira knew she was going to have to leave the party early—that was even more true now than it had been when she was merely her friends’ squadron commander. They were her friends, but they were also her subordinates, and her presence was always going to be at least a little suppressing.

Despite the space problems aboard both of their ships, Cartman had managed to take over a pilots’ briefing room on Raccoon and clear it out for the party. There was a rack of torpedoes—hopefully with the hydrogen tanks for their cores and warheads emptied!—against one wall, but otherwise it looked almost normal.

There were only four of them there to start. Kira herself, Mel Cartman, Dinesha Patel, and Abdullah Colombera.

Patel looked tired. His beard had grown in enough to be visible on his darker skin, but he was keeping it enough under control to keep it from looking unruly. Still, his eyes were focused more on his beer than on his friends, and he was quiet despite Cartman attempting to engage him in conversation.

Colombera had been one of the troublemakers in the Three-Oh-Three. Now he commanded one of Cartman’s squadrons on Deception and was usually completely professional.

That meant that no one was expecting the whoopie cushion when Patel took a seat next to the table of snacks. A loud, ear-shattering fart noise tore through the briefing room and shocked them all to complete silence.

Patel’s bottle of beer hit the ground in the midst of that silence with a solid thunk, followed by a small burble as the liquid started to dribble out—and then Raccoon’s CNG burst out laughing.

Kira had to join in as the tension in the room, tension none of them had really acknowledged, snapped. After a second, they were all laughing.

A fifth voice joined them from the door and everyone turned to see Evgenia Michel make her way in. The bulky specialty prosthetics that had replaced her legs and pelvis weren’t quiet, and they made their own clanking noise as Michel crossed to the snack table.

“A whoopie cushion, really, Scimitar?” she asked the squadron commander with a broad grin.

“Everybody here needs to stop feeling so damn sorry for themselves,” the younger man told them all. “We lost Joseph. That fucking sucks. We lost Estanza. That’s awful. We lost home. We lost the Three-Oh-Three.

“All we have is each other.”

Colombera gestured around them.

“Except that’s bullshit,” he snapped. “Who’s in this room, folks? A Commodore. A starship Captain. Two CNGs. And one squadron commander.

“We’re not alone. All of Memorial Force is with us. That’s our family now. A party with just the five of us isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t feel right, either, does it?”

Kira snorted.

“I bring Konrad and Kavitha to most things these days,” she conceded. “You’re all special to me, though. All of you.”

She looked around, meeting each of their eyes. Patel and Michel were the worst; she had to admit that to herself. Patel had lost the man he loved—and Michel had learned the hard way that her nervous system rejected the regeneration tech available to Redward.

Out there, at least, they couldn’t even get her to grow the nerves necessary to interact properly with prosthetics. The clunky, oversized units she wore were linked to her headware instead of properly interfacing with her regular nervous system.

Colombera picked up the dropped beer bottle and tossed it into the recycling chute.

“Whoopie cushions are old and crude, but no one looks for them,” he said with an impish grin. “And this party needed the tension kicked. So.” He looked around. “Are we going to have a party or a sob fest?”

“There’s not enough room to invite anyone else, not with these legs,” Michel said with a loud grin. “So, I suggest someone toss me a damn beer—and if no one else has the old dirty drinking songs memorized, they’re in my headware!”

Kira laughed—and threw Evgenia Michel a bottle of beer.

Her old squadron still had some kick to it, it seemed—and she realized that Dinesha Patel wasn’t the only one who’d needed the kick.

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