“Nova contact!”
“Close up the defensive formation; stand by the jammers,” Kira snapped. This was probably Diligent returning from the outer system, but the assault carrier might not have received any updates from Admiral Avagyan yet.
And while Kira was certain that her offer to return the non-politicians had sealed the deal with Avagyan, things were still…fragile.
“Confirm, Crest assault carrier and two destroyers,” Soler reported. “Profile matches Diligent. Range is eight light-seconds. She’s launching fighters!”
“Don’t wait for the order, Soler,” Kira instructed. “The moment you see a nova flash at close range, trigger the jammers. Cartman, Sagairt, Patel.” She turned to the CNGs. “I’d love to get through this cleanly, but if those fighters come in, put them down.”
She wasn’t sure Avagyan would let that pass—she wasn’t sure she would in the Crester’s place—but she also wasn’t going to stand by and let Crest fighters fire into her ship.
“Nova flare—multiple fighters emerging around Diligent,” Soler reported.
Kira sighed in relief.
“From Final Usury?” she asked.
“Looks like. Diligent flight group is holding position.”
Kira forced herself to breathe as she watched the display. Eight seconds delayed. She’d know if Diligent’s fighters attacked when they arrived in her formation. So far…nothing.
“Diligent fighters powering down and returning to the carrier,” Soler reported as the data updated again. “Diligent is bringing up her Harringtons. Course projection on the display.”
The initial vector was away from Memorial Force, but Soler’s projection had the assault carrier and her escorts making a long curve to join Final Usury’s formation.
One more crisis passed.
“Are we ready to nova yet?” Kira asked.
“Just a few more minutes,” Konrad replied. “Should we start recalling the fighters?”
“Not until we’re fully ready,” she said. “No chances.”
Seconds ticked by like years and Kira watched the displays around her. Finally, a chime and an icon advised her that Avagyan was hailing again.
She didn’t even wait for Soler to tell her. Kira had the channel open herself inside a second.
“Admiral.”
“Commodore.”
Avagyan studied Kira in silence for a moment.
“We have confirmed your proof of life,” she finally said. “I want to speak to the Prime Minister. Live.”
“That’s not happening,” Kira said bluntly. “I have no idea what kinds of code words or other bullshit you could get up to. If I give her coms, she could play all kinds of tricks with her headware.
“Those recordings are all you’re getting. You know she’s alive, and you know her orders.”
Kira wasn’t exactly a fan of the position her mission put her in. She was trying to get through this with the minimum amount of bloodshed—but that was already far too high.
“And if I say that there’s no truce if you don’t let me talk to her live?” the Crester said grimly.
Kira glanced over at Konrad, who gave her a thumbs-up. She smiled at Avagyan.
“Then you don’t get your spacers back and I nova out of here before you can do anything,” she told the Admiral. “I am prepared to trade everyone except Maral Jeong and her Cabinet for a five-day truce while we wait for a response from the Crest.
“I don’t plan on spending that five days sitting in your clear view, waiting for you to change your mind,” she added.
Avagyan chuckled.
“That’s fair, I suppose. I want the prisoners and the bodies, Commodore. Everyone, living and dead.”
“Several of the wounded aren’t safe to travel without medical supervision,” Kira admitted. “While I have no hesitation in turning them over to you, I do not want to risk anyone for that.”
“I had guessed from the recordings,” the Admiral conceded. “I have a suggestion.”
“Go on.”
“My math suggests that we will require six shuttles to transfer all of the prisoners,” Avagyan told her. “I will send six shuttles, including a fully equipped medevac unit with medtechs aboard, to the midpoint between our forces. You will send five shuttles, with the non-wounded prisoners and whatever security detail you feel is necessary, to the same point.
“We will transfer the prisoners between the shuttles, and your security people will board and search the medevac shuttle. Once they are satisfied it is not a trap, your shuttles and my medevac shuttle will return to Fortitude, and my medtechs will take over responsibility of the wounded, seeing them to the shuttle and back to Final Usury.”
Kira could see a thousand different ways that Avagyan could still be plotting a trap. The parameters she was offering were fair and about as good as Kira could hope for, but it could still oh so easily be a trap.
But…Kira had two commando battlefield medics trying to provide serious trauma care for eleven badly wounded Cresters. They were doing everything possible, but it was still all too likely that it might not be enough.
It was a risk. But she owed it to those people, enemies they might theoretically be, to try.
“I agree, under one additional condition,” she told Avagyan. “A nova fighter will accompany my shuttles, in case your people decided to do something stupid. And if any of your medtechs attempt to access anything they shouldn’t, my people will shoot them dead on the spot.
“Understood?”
The Crester Admiral winced.
“I understand,” she allowed. “You’ll forgive me if I’d prefer your unconditional surrender.”
“And you’ll forgive me if that isn’t happening,” Kira told her. “We both have a goal here, Admiral, but the fewest people die if I achieve mine.”
* * *
Kira sighed as she watched the Hoplite-IV attach itself to the shuttle.
“Dawnlord,” she hailed Patel. “Isn’t that something you should be sending a junior to do?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. His tone was calm, vaguely dark. It had rarely been light since Joseph Hoffman’s death. “But this sounds like it might require some split-second judgment calls. Who else would I trust to do that?”
Kira chuckled.
“Nightmare drew the short straw?” she asked.
“We had Helmet flip a coin,” Patel replied. “That way, neither of us could influence it. And he’s disturbingly sensible.”
“I won’t stop you,” Kira admitted. “Like you say, who else would I trust?”
Herself…but she really couldn’t go.
She mentally flicked to another channel.
“Any problems, Milani?” she asked them.
“A few of the Ministerial Protection Detail really didn’t want to abandon the Prime Minister,” the commando told her. “Fortitude’s crew were pretty cooperative, though we had to stun one officer who tried to make it to an override panel.”
Kira chuckled. None of the Fortitude’s former crew had the codes to override anything anymore—but normal pirates wouldn’t have been able to pull that off.
“So, no real trouble,” she observed.
“Not really. I have the team that’ll search the medevac shuttle,” they told her. “And we’re back in full boarding armor. Unless they have something unexpected, we’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Kira shook her head. Why did none of her subordinates delegate? They all seemed to be right in the middle of everything, leading from the front.
She knew perfectly well where they’d learned it from, but that didn’t make it any less annoying sometimes.
“Good luck,” she told Milani. “Get those people home safely—but get our people home safely, too.”
* * *
Kira watched the medical team from the moment the five women came aboard. Five women, all in their early thirties, dressed in standard white shipsuits. Except…four of them looked nervous. Even more so than she’d expect from the mercenaries escorting them.
The fifth, though… The fifth didn’t look nervous enough and Kira focused in on them.
“Milani,” she pinged the commando leader. “Redhead is not a fucking nurse.”
“No,” the commando replied. “Soldier boosts. Covert commando. I’m standing by with a squad just around the corner. We’re watching.”
If the woman was smart, she’d realize that. There were ten mercenaries in standard armor escorting the five medtechs. That should have been enough to keep most people in order, but the redhead at the back of the med team was continually looking around, watching for an opportunity.
Kira’s fingers twitched toward a stunner she wasn’t even wearing, watching the woman make her way through Fortitude’s corridors. It was always possible that the woman was a commando medic who’d happened to be available…but Kira didn’t buy that.
Unfortunately, the infiltrator knew her job and chose her time perfectly. The medtechs set to work as soon as they entered the sickbay, accessing the equipment they needed to do their jobs and corralling their escorts into acting as mules.
The desire to help fellow humans was strong, and Kira didn’t begrudge the guards willingly helping—except that everyone, including Kira, missed the fifth tech slipping out a side door that shouldn’t have opened for her.
“Milani, she’s loose,” Kira snapped. “Surveillance systems are blank… What the hell?”
“That’s…not good,” Milani replied. “We’re sweeping. She’s either got a worm in the system or some kind of portable jamming field.”
“Konrad,” Kira turned to her engineer. “Someone’s playing games with our internal scanners. Find them for me?”
“On it,” he told her, switching from systems management to the internal surveillance in a blink. “Oh, that is…nasty.”
“Konrad?” Kira was more worried than patient.
“There’s a worm in our system and it’s not new,” he told her. “Inactive until triggered by someone flashing a visible data code to the cameras. As soon as it got the right input, it started wiping that person from the internal surveillance.
“What kind of military builds that kind of hole into their security?”
“One in a country on the edge of a civil war,” Kira said grimly. “Can you track her?”
“Not yet,” Konrad admitted. “Soler, I need you. We need to burn out the virus, and Fortitude’s software defenses think it’s part of their code.”
“Damn. Milani, she’s using a backdoor built into the ship to hide,” Kira told her ground-force commander. “She’s almost certainly headed for the brig.” She paused. “Shoot to kill.”
“Understood. We’re sweeping,” Milani replied.
Kira knew how limited their ground troops were. That was part of why she’d agreed to send the vast majority of their prisoners over to Final Usury. Just watching them, even with full brig tech, was wearing her people out.
“This is Bertoli,” a familiar voice said. “I’m at the brig; everything is intact. I am physically sealing the doors.”
“How…physically?” Milani asked.
“You’re going to need to send someone with a cutting torch as soon as this is over,” Bertoli said with a chuckle. “Two more entrances; I’m moving on them.”
Kira’s cameras now showed the exterior of the brig door—which, as Bertoli had promised, had just been flash-welded shut. She couldn’t see anyone at the door, but the camera did pick up the attempt to open the door. And then the attempt to force it open.
“She’s at the brig.”
“And so am I,” Milani snapped. A blaster crackled on the camera Kira was watching. She couldn’t see the shooter, but she did see the blaster bolts flashing back up the corridor—and the responding fire.
A suit of heavy boarding armor with a holographic red dragon around its shoulders stepped into the camera view, nudging at a body Kira still couldn’t see.
“That is really fucking weird to watch,” she noted. “Is it done?”
“Handled. She’s dead, though…and I shot her in the leg.”
“What?” Kira snapped.
“I took off her leg just below the hip. She should be in shock but not dead,” Milani said grimly, kneeling by the invisible body and running a suit scanner. “Fuck. Headware suicide charge. She self-activated when she got hit.”
“I really don’t like these people,” Kira said flatly. “Get the wounded and the medtechs off my damn ship, Milani. I need to call Avagyan out on her bullshit.”
* * *
“You have to believe me, Commodore, I did not send an agent onto your ship,” Avagyan told Kira grimly, her face haunted. “Please…let the wounded go. I don’t know what happened, but I will find out…and they had nothing to do with it.”
“While I may not believe that you had nothing to do with it, I do believe the eleven people who were unconscious in my sickbay had nothing to do with it,” Kira conceded. “Their shuttle is leaving now. I kept my end of the deal, Admiral Avagyan.
“It seems you weren’t so capable of keeping yours.”
There was a long silence.
“You are correct,” Avagyan said. “I have no excuse, only my apology. I cannot undo what was done.”
“Fortunately, they did not manage to harm anything,” Kira noted. “They are dead, however.”
The Crester Admiral closed her eyes.
“I assumed such. I presume there is nothing I can do to regain what limited trust we had?”
“Not really,” Kira told her. “Your medevac shuttle is on its way. We’re going to nova shortly and keep ourselves out of your way until we hear from the Crest.”
“I understand,” Avagyan said. “May I suggest that you send a nova fighter to a nearby position every few hours for us to keep you updated? I will honor the truce, Commodore Demirci, and protect your ship, whatever it takes.”
That, Kira realized, was only one step short of an explicit promise to engage her fellow NRC officers and ships to protect Kira’s people. That…didn’t add up with the woman only knowing what was in front of her.
It seemed the Crown Zharang had briefed Admiral Avagyan. Unfortunately, it also seemed that the SPP loyalists in her fleet weren’t entirely under her control.
“I will forward you a list of times we will check in,” Kira told the Crester Admiral carefully. “I will not tell you where my ships and fighters will do so, but you will know when to look for us.”
She attached a file to that message as she formatted it on her screen. Once Bueller had installed a mix of brand-new Redward antivirus software and older Brisingr and Apollon software, he’d been able to identify and eliminate the worm relatively quickly.
Her extra file, labeled Tinkerbell Protocols, was a software counteragent that would clear the inactive worm from Avagyan’s systems.
If the Crester Admiral trusted her that much.
“I hope, Admiral Avagyan, that we can get through the rest of our agreement more…amicably.”
“You kidnapped the Cabinet of my government, Demirci,” Avagyan pointed out. “Amicably isn’t an option. I suggest you settle for calm.”
“I can live with that.”
Kira cut the channel and fired off the data package.
“That’s the last talking we’re doing for a few days,” she told Soler and Konrad. “Is the medevac shuttle clear?”
“She’s clear,” Soler confirmed. “We’re down to six actually important prisoners?”
“Exactly. So, let’s get the fighters back aboard and get the hell out of here.”
Kira grimaced.
“Avagyan agreed to a truce, but we don’t actually know what the result in the Crest is going to be—or if Admiral Matevosyan will honor it. So, let’s make some distance for this dance.”