46

Kira was pretty sure Captain Abraham was furious by the time they dropped the jammers to nova to the next trade-route stop. The battlecruiser group was still pursuing them and clearly had been for the entire nineteen-hour layover.

The Navy of the Royal Crest commander hadn’t been foolish enough to send her destroyers or nova fighters ahead on their own, though.

Kira gave the other woman a mental salute as Fortitude’s nova drive engaged. She could respect that kind of determination and loyalty. She wasn’t going to let the NRC task group engage her fleet, and by running away, she’d made sure nobody died.

Kira had even managed to sneak in a nap while they ran.

A perfect victory for any mercenary.

“Novaing now,” Soler reported. “Stand by for new contacts.”

It wasn’t a question of if there would be contacts. They were now at the closest trade-route stop to Guadaloop and still only three novas from the Crest. There were going to be ships around.

“Sixty-five contacts,” the tactical officer reported after a few seconds. “More are freighters; I am still resolving… We’ve got a GODCom destroyer and I’m definitely looking at five NRC ships.”

“I was hoping for a nice quiet stopover,” Kira noted. “What are we looking at?”

“Looks like…logistics-support ships, eighty-kilocubic colliers,” Soler replied. “No, hold on…that’s two eighty-kilocubic supply ships and three eighty-kilocubic cruisers.”

“That’s not good,” Kira muttered. “Identities?”

“Give me…got them. Reliable, Dependable, and Sensible. They are Reliable-class cruisers, almost obsolete and the last of their class in commission.”

Kira was running the names against the lists in her head.

“Captains Ruud, Yong, and MacDermott by my list,” she noted. “They’re all Royalists, at least in theory.”

“That could be good, right?” Konrad asked. “Should be good?”

“Yeah,” Kira agreed. “Assuming the Crown Zharang got their message out. Assuming that they’re Royalist enough to turn a blind eye to a stolen carrier.”

“What do we do?” Soler asked.

“Transmit to all three of them,” Kira ordered. “Audio only. Advise them that we are operating under Protocol Tinkerbell Rising and they are to stand by for further information from Hook, Line and Sinker before acting.”

“Does that mean anything?” Konrad asked.

“It means we’re operating under direct authorization from the royal family and they are to stand by for further orders from NRC Central Command before taking any combative action,” she told her lover.

“Transmitted,” Soler reported. “What now?”

“We keep our distance and we hope that the Crown Zharang’s message reached them,” Kira said. “We don’t let them get close. If they’re older ships, we should be able to hold the range open.”

“Warbook says they have updated Harringtons,” Konrad warned. “They’re faster than Raccoon.”

“Then let’s get that range opening now while we wait for their response,” Kira ordered. “The good news is that I’m reasonably sure the Reliable class doesn’t have nova fighters.”

Which meant that unless the cruisers had cooled down their own nova cores, she didn’t have to worry about the almost thirty light-seconds of range disappearing on her.

Memorial Force began to move away from the three cruisers. Nine million kilometers gave Kira a lot of room to play with, but it could go away in a lot less than the twenty hours it would take to cool Fortitude’s nova drive.

“No response,” Soler reported quietly. “Cruisers are moving…toward us, but relatively slowly. They’re maintaining range, not closing it.”

“I can live with that,” Kira said. “Confusion is enough for here and now. All I need is for them not to attack us.”

“How long do you think they’ll hesitate?” Konrad asked.

“Less than an hour,” she admitted. “Three ways this breaks down, people. The three Captains are arguing it out right now, considering their loyalty to the Crown of the Royal Crest versus the fact that we’ve pretty clearly stolen a carrier.

“First way it breaks down is that they decide that our sins exceed what those code words buy us,” she said. “They come after us. It’s unlikely to take them an hour to get to that point, so we’ll have a fight on our hands.

“Both the second and third way it breaks down, they decide our code words cover us or can’t come to a shared conclusion. Second way it breaks down, they either let us go or hesitate—and they don’t move against us before we can nova.”

“And the third option?” her boyfriend asked.

“Someone jumps in from the Crest with an update and a shoot-to-kill order,” Kira admitted. “Faced with direct orders, they have no choice but to attack—backed by whoever carried the message.

“Which could be anything from a single gunship to an entire carrier group. Depending on timing and where the messenger arrives, that might still be a bust for them.”

The wild card in the deck for the Navy of the Royal Crest, Kira knew, was whether or not Fortitude had a full deck of nova fighters. If Kira had brought enough birds and pilots to arm the carrier, she’d have a two-hundred-plus-fighter alpha strike.

She hadn’t, which meant that the odds were even at best if the three cruisers came after her. But the NRC didn’t know that, which hopefully added to their hesitation.

“We’ll keep the distance between us and the Reliables as open as we can,” she told Soler and Konrad. “That keeps options open for us.”

“And if they do try to close?” Konrad asked.

“Then we send in the fighters and try to take out their engines without wrecking the ships,” she said.

They could only try that once. If they didn’t disable the cruisers on the first pass, a second attempt to cripple them would be too dangerous. They’d have to destroy the cruisers or risk Memorial Force’s safety.

The Captains and crew over there weren’t Kira’s enemy and she really didn’t want to do that.

But her people came first.

* * *

Reliables are breaking off.”

Kira released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been half-holding. Seventy-six minutes had passed since they’d transmitted their code words.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“Resuming their original patrol pattern, it looks like,” Soler reported. “They…appear to be ignoring us now.”

“That’s the best we can hope for,” Kira replied. “Let’s get the range further open. If they want to ignore us for now, let’s make sure they can’t change their minds later.”

“Will it last?” Soler asked.

“Now we’re waiting to see if they get orders from the Crest,” she told the tactical officer. “If they do, then it’s a lot harder for them to pretend they didn’t know something was going on.”

Kira eyed the cruisers as they slowly jetted away from her command and shook her head.

“Go catch a breather, Soler,” she ordered. “I’ll keep the lights on here for the moment. Listen for the battle-stations alert.”

The look she got from her subordinate in response to the last suggestion made her chuckle.

“I think we’re fine, Soler,” she said. “So, go rest. We’ve still got nineteen hours before the final nova, and things are going to get fun in Guadaloop.”

“Yes, sir.”

The younger woman transferred tactical control to Kira’s console and left, leaving Memorial Force’s Commodore alone on the carrier’s massive bridge.

Someday, it would be filled with mercenary crew at all hours. Right now, they had a battle stations crew of five, and Kira had sent all of them, including her boyfriend, to rest.

She could fly the carrier from there. She could even fight the carrier from there, though not overly well without support crew.

What she couldn’t do from there was see how the Navy of the Royal Crest was reacting to the theft of their newest supercarrier. She couldn’t know how the judicial counter-coup was going on the Crest, or if the military forces loyal to the Sanctuary and Prosperity Party were short-stopping the Royalist scheme to retake control of their government.

She had no answers and no vision of anywhere but one trade-route stop in the middle of nowhere.

At least the code words had worked. Kira really hadn’t wanted to fight the cruisers—but she also hadn’t really believed that anyone would buy the “Protocol Tinkerbell Rising” thing.

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