33

Kira finished laying out everything they knew about the situation on the Crest and the planned timelines of the trial and paused, studying her audience.

Even for a mercenary fleet of five ships, counting Lady Tramp, it was a lot of people. Two fighter-group commanders—Cartman and Patel—four ship Captains, four XOs and the ground-force commander. And her.

She didn’t know the executive officers well, other than Konrad obviously, but the warship Captains were all old friends and colleagues. There was no one in the mixed virtual/physical conference that she didn’t trust.

“Any questions?” she asked.

Milani leaned forward, the dragon on their armor flickering around their helmet as they did.

“I’ve been reviewing the schematics of the carrier,” they noted. “Are there any significant changes that will impact the boarding plan?”

“Konrad? You got a better look at Fortitude than anyone else,” Kira asked.

“So far as we can tell, the schematics our employer provided are still fundamentally accurate,” he told Milani. “I have a comparison drawn up between the final builder schematics and the mid-cycle drawings. I’ll pass it on after the meeting, but there’s nothing that should impact the boarding. Flight deck, Engineering and the bridge are all in the same places.”

“Good.” The armored mercenary leaned back again and shook their head. “Right now, the plan is to load a platoon onto each destroyer and make a close-nova approach. Shuttles should be in space for under thirty seconds and land simultaneously.

“So long as the flight deck is clear, we should be able to get four shuttles down in one go and deploy all sixty ground troops in one wave.

“Do we know what kind of security is anticipated?”

“There are not supposed to be any internal defenses other than standard security surveillance,” Kira replied. “We’ve confirmed that she will not have her standard Army of the Royal Crest security detachment aboard, but I would assume we’re looking at at least a security platoon for the ship herself, likely backed by a platoon of executive security personnel for the Prime Minister.

They, after all, know she’s doing the inspection.”

“So, equal numbers, but we have surprise and heavy weapons,” Milani concluded. “All right. We hit them fast and hard, take Engineering and then sweep the rest of the ship to clear up survivors as the prize crew comes aboard.”

“'Fast and hard’ is good,” Kira told the ground commander. “Because our timing is going to be ugly.”

She tapped a command, zooming in on the part of Fortitude’s schedule that was relevant.

“They’ve set up the trials to use their existing patrol pattern to remove the need for escorts,” she noted. “Since the ship needs to swan around most of a star system and its environs anyway, it makes sense and is surprisingly efficient.

“But if the nova drive performs as expected, Fortitude will arrive at her final in-system nova point fifteen minutes early,” she continued. “Her expected company there won’t arrive for seventeen minutes.

“That is the only break in the schedule,” she told them. “All other options require us to engage other defenders. If we deploy in this window, we have to deal with her combat space patrol and make sure no future fighters launch.”

“And remove any debris from the initial dogfight,” Michel pointed out, the former pilot looking grim. “Collect or vaporize; we can’t have evidence if there’s a ship coming—unless we’re planning on taking down that ship as well, anyway. This is pretty far out.”

“It is, and that’s what makes this possible,” Kira agreed. “But the ship that’s showing up is one of their more-modern battlecruisers. We cannot fight her, which means that by T plus seventeen, every sign that we were there needs to be either aboard Fortitude or gone.”

Everyone was silent again, looking at the timing.

“We can deploy localized jammers once we’re aboard,” Milani said after almost a minute of silence. “That will enable us to complete the boarding op if we haven’t fully secured the ship by that time.

“But you’ll need to have the prize crew aboard at T plus ten, maybe T plus twelve at most. We will not have fully secured the ship by then.”

“It’s a risk,” Kira agreed. “The bad news is that Fortitude will be expected to communicate with Penalty Fee as well, so that won’t buy as much time as we’d like. The good news is that Penalty Fee’s crew is currently in the doghouse, so they won’t be surprised if Fortitude’s prize crew ignores them for a bit.”

“So, we’ll have twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes to storm and sweep an entire hundred-and-fifty-kilocubic carrier,” Milani said quietly. “Because if we miss anyone, their headware will be enough for them to com a battlecruiser a few light-seconds away when we drop the jamming.”

“And we’ll need just seventy-five minutes to cool down the carrier’s drive,” Konrad observed. “After that, we control how far she novas, which gives us some interesting options for dealing with the Prime Minister, but…we’re stuck on that hour in Penalty Fee’s company.”

“We can make that work,” Kira replied. “But we need to take the carrier first. We have the…strategy and operations, I suppose,” she said with a smile. “We know what we’re doing, why, where and when.

“So, now, people, we need to work out how. One carrier. Eighteen advanced heavy fighters with elite pilots. Seventeen minutes.”

All of the data on the display slid aside into a three-dimensional “scratch pad” everyone could access. Kira dropped Fortitude into the workspace and added six fighters.

“We can assume two squadrons are aboard the carrier,” she noted. “That’s our starting point…and then we’ll make contingency plans for if they’re all deployed.”

* * *

Putting together the first cut of the plan took three exhausting hours. When it was finally over, Kira wasn’t even sure it was good.

She was sure that there was no point in grinding the twelve most expensive minds in her fleet against it. The holograms winked out and she was left alone with Deception’s senior officers—and realized Zoric, Cartman and Milani were all regarding her and Konrad like hungry owls staring at a field mouse.

“When did either of you last sleep?” Milani asked, the ground-force commander, as usual, faster off the draw than everyone else.

“On the runabout,” Konrad replied. “I think Kira was sleeping in the pilot seat when you all arrived.”

“On a shuttle,” the mercenary commando echoed. “In the pilot seat…and then you decided to run an hour-long briefing and three-hour planning session.”

They turned to Kavitha Zoric.

“Captain, permission to call the company CEO an idiot and have commandos drag her to her quarters to make sure she sleeps?”

Zoric chuckled, but her gaze was very focused on Kira.

“Both the CEO and my XO need to go fall over,” she noted. “We nova in ten hours. If I see either of you before then, I will give Milani that permission.

“Am I clear?”

“Who pays who here, again?” Kira asked with false plaintiveness.

“I own twenty percent of the company and I’m pretty sure I can get forty-nine percent of the shares to vote that you need to go lie down,” Zoric told her. “So. Boss. You’re no longer on covert ops duty, which means you need to be awake enough to think.”

“She’s not wrong, Kira,” Konrad told her.

“My plan was to go to bed next,” Kira replied, her plaintiveness slightly less false now as her senior subordinates—her friends—ganged up to mother her.

“Then shoo,” Zoric said. “Go.”

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