29

It was no surprise when Jade Panosyan arrived in the apartment the mercenaries were renting. What was a surprise was that they came in through the window screen, the garden suddenly fading away to reveal a utility access door.

Three blasters—illegal on Charming Station, but after the mess in Guadaloop, Kira had agreed to let Bertoli smuggle them in—focused on the door as it opened to reveal the gold-and-black uniform of a Dinastik Pahak bodyguard.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Jade Panosyan murmured as they stepped through the door behind their bodyguard with Voski in tow. “If we could manage to not shoot each other today?”

The Crown Zharang wore an insignia-less uniform in a monochrome gray that didn’t match any of the Crest’s service branches. There was presumably a binder under the shipsuit, but the combination brought Jade Panosyan to an androgynous anonymity that would pass unnoticed in most places.

“I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone,” Kira told their employer. “On the other hand, the apartment rental company didn’t tell us there was a door there.”

She glanced at Bertoli.

“It eluded our scans?” she asked.

“Scans were for bugs, not doors,” the commando said, glaring at Voski as his Pahak counterpart emerged behind Panosyan. “Though I would have expected to find them anyway.”

“It’s just a utility corridor for the staff to have easy access to all of the apartments,” Panosyan told them, settling into one of the chairs like they owned the place.

Which, Kira was reasonably sure, they did.

“Now that you’ve given us our daily shot of adrenaline, welcome to our temporary abode,” Kira said. “I’d offer a seat, but you already claimed one.”

The door closed and the garden image reappeared as Voski took their minion over to the other door and checked it.

“Em O’Mooney is recovering well, I hope?” Panosyan asked.

“She is,” Kira confirmed. “We got lucky.”

In more ways than one, but she wasn’t going to bring IIS into this conversation. She’d given Zamorano his letters. He’d make contact with the Crown Zharang on his own terms, and Kira didn’t have enough loyalty to either of them to get further involved.

“I presume you’ve had a chance to engage in some investigations since your arrival?” the royal asked. “I hope that you haven’t found anything to change your mind about the contract?”

“Not that isn’t buried under the ten million crests you already paid me,” Kira said drily. “Though I worry you understated just how deep the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party’s grip runs.”

“It is worse than I like to admit,” Panosyan conceded. “But that doesn’t change your part of this mission.”

“No. Which means I need assets, access and data from you,” Kira told the Zharang. “I hope you have a plan.”

“Access is…difficult but doable,” their employer told them. “I can get one of you into the shipyard. I can’t get them aboard Fortitude, but I can arrange for you to get into the building slip itself with a royal inspection team.”

“Konrad?” Kira asked, glancing over at her lover. She wasn’t sure if that was still necessary with the data Zamorano had given them—but, on the other hand, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to give away that they had that data. Even to Panosyan.

“If I can get that close, even if I can’t get aboard the ship, I can learn a lot,” he said. “Especially if your people can help me drop a few glorified bugs in the area.”

“Maybe,” Panosyan said. “I can’t be certain. I’m not yet sure how fully I’ll be able to bring the inspector into the loop. I know I can get him to agree to bring someone along as a civilian advisor, but I don’t think we’ll be able to bring in the rest of the team—which would make bugs hard.”

“That’s fair,” Konrad conceded. “Even just walking the slip and studying the carrier from there has value.”

“As for data, I’m working on it,” Panosyan said, turning to Kira. “There’s a lot of moving parts. It looks like the whole event has been moved up by a week, and there’s definitely a whole new level of paranoia running through the NRC and the SPP right now.”

They shook their head.

“I am the Crown Zharang,” they noted flatly. “I will be able to get the full schedule of the trials and the inspection—I’ve already confirmed both are still happening, just eight days ahead of the schedule I had while we were in Redward.”

“It’s five days from our rendezvous to Crest,” Kira pointed out. “Eight days means that when we return to the fleet, we only have a week to get into position. Instead of almost three.”

It was actually less than four days from the rendezvous point to Crest, but underselling and overdelivering was a good habit to be in as a mercenary.

“That’s not something I can change, Demirci,” Panosyan told her. “I think it’s going to take me at least a few more days to get my hands on the finalized schedule. Hell, it might be a few more days before they even have a finalized schedule.”

“Which brings me to assets,” Kira said. “We need a nova ship to investigate the route. One that won’t draw attention if people see it—and preferably one we can run back to Memorial Fleet, too.”

She was starting to think she should have just bought a ship in Redward and sailed it all the way here on their own. Except there was no way she could have done that without drawing attention. Getting the runabout in had been hard enough—but worth it to give them a fallback point with armor and guns aboard.

“I could get you that tonight,” their employer said calmly. “I’m not going to get you the ship until I have the full route and schedule, but I’ve made arrangements to put an NRC high-security courier at your disposal.

“Every officer and spacer has been fully cleared by the Dinastik Pahak, and the Captain was a schoolmate of mine,” Panosyan concluded. “They are, without a doubt, loyal to the Crown of the Royal Crest.”

“And that won’t draw attention on its own?” Bertoli asked. “That sounds…attention-drawing.”

“It’s not that the ship won’t draw attention; it’s that a high-security courier has an excuse to be anywhere and no one is going to question her captain,” the Zharang told them. “Everyone aboard has the highest security clearances.

“So far, the divisions in our fleet haven’t caused officers to start mistrusting couriers that they think are working for ‘the other side,’ so to speak.”

“But that division is starting to be a thing, isn’t it?” Kira asked softly.

“Yes,” Panosyan conceded. “It’s worse than it was when I left. There is a clear and active group of SPP officers in the Navy of the Royal Crest, and they are comfortable enough with their power base to make moves I didn’t expect to see for a while yet.”

The apartment was silent, then Kira sighed.

“Who is Captain Lorelei Simonsson?” she asked.

“Until two months ago, she was the commanding officer of the battlecruiser Penalty Fee,” Panosyan told her. “Currently, she is in prison, awaiting court-martial for mutiny.”

“Most systems don’t take that long to try someone for mutiny,” Konrad pointed out.

“Most systems don’t have a political party trying to make sure that the military judge is one of theirs in a system where both the military and judicial organizations are supposed to report to my-father-the-King,” the Zharang said grimly.

“Simonsson and Penalty Fee were posted to the Zabata System,” they told the mercenaries. “One of the outer client worlds. The system director of the Bank of the Royal Crest there is a long-standing donor and backer of the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party, assigned to a client world that’s never been…entirely content with their status.”

“What happened?” Kira asked.

“The director decided to remind the Zabatans of their position and make an example of a larger owner-operator that was delinquent in their payments.”

Panosyan shook their head.

“It wasn’t even good business,” they complained. “The captain could have easily been offered an extension that would have made the bank more money, with all historical evidence suggesting they’d have managed it.

“Instead, Director Traver ordered the ship interned. Except his timing was very specific, such that the ship could easily escape. Which, sensibly, they tried to do—so Director Traver ordered Captain Simonsson to seize or destroy the ship.”

“And she refused,” Kira murmured.

“Oh, she didn’t just refuse,” Panosyan said with a chuckle. “Penalty Fee is a hundred-twenty-kilocubic battlecruiser, and she was the largest nova ship in the system, bigger than the entire fleet Zabata is allowed combined.

“Simonsson broadcast on the shared military frequencies that if anyone else tried to obey Traver’s orders, she would shoot them the fuck down.”

“I like her already,” Bertoli said. “Is she single?”

Their employer chuckled, then shook their head sadly.

“Of course, there are actually structures that allowed Traver to give that order, though they’re intended for far more serious crises,” they told the mercenaries. “The SPP is now using those systems to say that Simonsson is a traitor, basically. Simonsson is saying the order was illegal and unethical.”

“Which I assume it was?” Kira asked.

“Yes.”

Jade Panosyan shook their head.

“The Crest has been a mostly benevolent hegemon for my father-the-King’s entire reign,” they noted. “Some of that is the rose-colored glasses of being the one in charge, I’m sure, but we have not been as bad as we could have been.

“And the reason I can say that is because we’re starting to get a lot fucking worse,” they concluded. “And neither I nor my-father-the-King are going to stand for it. That’s what all of this is about, Em Demirci.”

The room was quiet.

“I was already in,” Kira reminded the Zharang. “And we were always in for more than the carrier. Though the carrier helps, a lot.”

“I’d hope so,” Panosyan muttered. They shook themselves and surveyed the mercenaries with a calm expression. “I assume it will be Commander Bueller who will be accompanying the inspection team?”

“He’s the only one qualified to judge a ship like that,” Kira confirmed.

“You’ll need to be at shuttleport sixty-four at eight hundred hours station time, day after tomorrow. Formal work clothes and shipsuit,” they instructed Konrad. “I’m not certain yet if you’ll be meeting the team or picking them up on the way, but that’s where and when the shuttle will be waiting for you.”

“Understood.”

Panosyan met Kira’s gaze.

“I’ll have the trial plan and the inspection schedule for you as soon as I can,” they told her. “Once I have that, I’ll let you know how to get in contact with Commander Eireen Hamilton, your courier CO.

“I’d trust Eireen with my daughter, let alone my life,” Panosyan concluded. “She’ll keep you safe, find you what you need and get you back to your fleet. How long do you have?”

“Twenty days, but we need five for travel time,” Kira replied. “Two weeks until we need to be moving to the trade lanes.”

“Understood,” the Crester said. “We’ll make it happen, Commodore. Everything depends on it.”

They shook their head.

“I was only gone for six months and everything has visibly gone downhill,” they said quietly. “We have to succeed.”

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