44

It was always uncomfortable to walk into areas where headware couldn’t find a signal. The entire brig aboard Fortitude—and most other warships—was sealed inside a Faraday cage, limiting the access of the hardware in the prisoners’ heads to what their captors specifically allowed.

That also meant that their guards suffered the same restrictions, though they would cycle in and out and had communications with the rest of the ship.

It wasn’t like the prison was uncomfortable. The guard post at the entrance had the same automatically adjusting seats as everywhere else in the ship, and the cells were equipped with much the same amenities as the standard crew quarters.

Even the interrogation room Kira entered had the automatic seats and an artificial-stupid mobile coffee machine that handed her a cup of steaming black coffee. It wasn’t Redward Royal Reserve, but it smelled surprisingly decent for brig coffee.

She had the machine lay out a second cup just before Bertoli escorted their prisoner in, carefully sitting the petite Prime Minister on the chair and manacling her feet in place.

“Is this really necessary?” Maral Jeong asked, her tone calm. “I am eighty-five years old, and I have neither armor nor soldier boosts. I am no threat to your commander, soldier.”

Bertoli double-checked the manacles, sardonically saluted Kira and then stepped out, leaving the two women alone.

“I’m not going to tell you my name,” Kira said calmly. “I’m sure you’ll work it out eventually, but I see no reason to make it easy on you.

“But you asked to see the person in charge, and I’m curious enough to be here.” She smiled. “So, tell me, Em Jeong, what do you expect to get from me?”

The Prime Minister’s vividly green eyes locked on to Kira’s gaze and held it for a few seconds.

“You’re mercenaries, not pirates,” Jeong noted. “Someone is paying you to do this. I’m impressed with what you’ve managed to pull off. I wouldn’t have thought this was even possible.”

Kira leaned back in her chair and drank more of her coffee. She had no intention of giving Jeong anything in this conversation.

“Whoever is paying you, you have to realize that the Crest can outbid them,” the older woman finally said. “You’ve achieved the impossible already, but taking this carrier is a far step from keeping her. You should have come to us when someone tried to hire you. We would have offered you ten times as much to work for us.”

“Don’t worry, Em Jeong,” Kira said with a chuckle. “The Crest is paying us. I was going to ask for a ten-million-crest ransom for you. It sounds like I should be thinking more in the hundred-million range.

“Your advice is appreciated.”

The interrogation room was silent, and Jeong’s friendly demeanor faded.

“You have to know you can’t get away with this,” she said sharply. “My government may pay you off, but we will come for you. Whatever you think you’re getting out of this, it cannot be worth the consequences.

“You will be hunted to the ends of the galaxy. My reach is far longer than your worst nightmares, mercenary. I am prepared to negotiate a peaceful solution to this that serves both our needs, but if you carry this through, you will never sleep again.”

“Would that reach be through the Equilibrium Institute, Em Jeong?” Kira asked softly. “Or the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party? Or the government of the Royal Crest? I am not afraid of… Well, of any of them.”

The room was silent.

“The Equilibrium Institute,” Jeong echoed. “That’s not a name I expected to hear in the mouth of a mercenary. Who do you serve?”

“My contract,” Kira replied. “A mercenary’s contract is their bond, their word, their most important tool of the business. I will not break it. And that means that you, Em Jeong, will be offered up to the highest bidder.

“Given the resources of your government, I imagine that will be the Crest,” she noted. “Unless you think the Institute will find you even more valuable?”

“The Institute is a useful ally. A tool of the business, as you say,” Jeong told her. “You seem to lay more weight on them than I do.”

“Really.” Kira eyed the woman. “That’s fascinating to me, to be honest, but I don’t think we really do have much to discuss.”

“Dammit, woman, I’m trying to find a way out of this for both of us,” Jeong snapped. “You’re not going to kill me or my Ministers. You want money—we can give you money. You want power? The Crest could finance your conquest of a Rim world of your choice. You want purpose?”

Jeong met Kira’s gaze levelly.

“You want purpose,” she echoed, “I can connect you with the Equilibrium Institute. Their mission is great, their task nothing less than peace for all mankind.”

Kira laughed aloud.

“We’re done here, Em Jeong,” she told the other woman. “I have a plan to make money from this. I don’t want a planet—and I already have a purpose in my life.”

She smiled as she rose.

“But tell me, given the chunk of your Cabinet that were supposed to be on this ship, how close were you to removing the King of the Royal Crest?”

The room was silent again, then Jeong sighed and shrugged.

“One of us is a dead woman who doesn’t know it, I suspect,” she noted. “So, what does it matter? We’d barely started planning, but the decision had been made. Six standard months at most before the King and Crown Zharang were removed and the Crest became a republic.”

A republic, Kira suspected, that would have been a thinly veiled dictatorship by the SPP—a faux republic that would have been less fair and representative than the monarchy it overthrew.

“I appreciate your honesty,” Kira told the other woman. “In turn, I will be honest: I don’t think either of us is going to be a dead woman over this.”

She gave the Prime Minister of the Crest a calm, probably not-at-all-reassuring nod and walked out.

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