54

“Well. That’s done.”

From the chorus of chuckles on the conference call, Kira’s phrasing was a little on the excessively mundane side.

“We got paid, contract complete, ownership documents for Fortitude are now on digital and physical file,” Kira told them all. “Guadaloop is behind us, and now we just have the long and boring trip home.”

Home.

When had Redward become home? It had been a while ago, she realized.

“And the equally boring but much more intense task of finding enough crew to get Fortitude up to snuff,” Zoric said. “Who do I need to punch out to get the captain’s seat on the carrier?”

“There’s going to be a hell of a reorg when we get back to Redward,” Kira conceded. “And we all know that Redward is the home base until we can buy that carrier we’ve been promised.”

“Are we going to have any money left after all the planned ships?” Vaduva asked, the purser still smiling as usual.

“If we sit on our butts and do nothing for three years while Redward builds us a carrier, no,” Kira agreed. “But you knew that, being the one who handles my bookkeeping!”

That got her more chuckles.

“So, yes, we’re going to be working. And most of our contracts are going to look like this one in at least one respect: our ops zones are going to be weeks away from Redward. And, frankly, since I’m kind of attached to Redward at this point, I’m okay with that.”

“Speaking as the man seconded from the RRF, I’m glad,” Sagairt noted. “I’m not staying, but I suspect some of our traded personnel may want to make the switch permanent. On both sides.”

“We’ll have to sort that out with the RRF when we get back,” Kira agreed. “Hopefully, the commander of the RRF’s new fighter corps will be on our side.”

Sagairt chuckled.

“That seems like a safe assumption,” he told her.

“Four weeks home, people,” Kira told them all. “Probably about the same just to get new crew and officers recruited—plus no matter what we do, we’ll need to fabricate ourselves some new fighters.”

Conveniently, Fortitude’s computers had the specifications for several of the Crest’s newest nova fighters. Kira would be spending some time deciding whether the new designs were worth swapping over the entire fighter force—she liked the Hoplite-IV, but the Crest’s new Wolverine interceptors were an entirely new design. They might well be superior overall.

It was the same with the Hussar-Sevens versus her Weltraumpanzer-Fünfs and PNC-115s. Most of her nova fighters were, by one source or another, contemporary to the Hoplite-IV. Given access to the latest and greatest of the Navy of the Royal Crest’s nova fighters…they had some work to do.

“I guess there’s one question still in play,” Akuchi Mwangi admitted. Raccoon’s Captain looked thoughtful. “Are we going to keep Raccoon when we get back? The plan was to replace her with Fortitude entirely, after all.”

“I don’t know if that’s a decision we even need to make yet,” Kira said. “We were planning on selling her back, yes, but there’s a lot to be said for an extra forty nova fighters when we get stuck in. If we rework things a bit and stop trying to cram extra fighters on her deck…Waldroup?”

She looked at their senior deck boss, who shrugged.

“She’s not called a junk carrier for nothing, sir,” Waldroup noted. “We can make her work better than she does, but I don’t think we can make her work well. And we do have another carrier to crew up now.”

“Well, folks, we’ll think about it,” Kira said. Selling Raccoon back to Redward—or to another Syntactic Cluster power, potentially—would free up resources for a while.

Even without it, Memorial Force was now one of the most powerful mercenary organizations in the Rim. Somehow, Kira wasn’t worried about them finding work.

“Regardless, officers, friends.” She raised her coffee. “A toast. To Fortitude and Memorial Force. Long may we fly!”

* * *

Thank you so much for reading Fortitude. Read on for a preview of Starship’s Mage, book 1 in the Starship’s Mage series.

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