Kira wasn’t really surprised that the reality turned out to be someone finding her. She had one short conversation with a woman she knew—a continental vice-president for the company that made Astonishing Orange, her second-favorite Redward coffee varietal after the royal family’s own private blend—and then spotted a pair of strangers specifically making their way toward her.
The Royal Crest’s current fashion seemed to have escaped from the instructional images of a ten-year-old’s geometry class. One of the two individuals approaching Kira wore what she thought was a dress that was formed into a perfect cylinder of the width of the wearer’s shoulders and hips and descended down to just above their feet.
Their arms were still free to move, and she presumed they had some flexibility under the dress, but it was a quite distinctive outfit.
The dress-wearer was giving off strong “aide cum bodyguard” vibes, however, and Kira’s attention slid to the person they were “definitely not” escorting. That worthy wore a similar distinctively angular-style blazer suit in dark gray, with shoulders that were clearly supported out past the wearer’s body and then cutting inward to create a sharp triangle.
It was, as Kira understood it, an extremely masculine style by the Crest’s standards—but the gray blazer was buttoned just below the sternum, revealing one of the most delicately frilly pink blouses Kira had ever seen, carefully cut to expose more cleavage than Kira had.
Somehow, she was unsurprised when her headware pinged both individuals as nonbinary, using they/them pronouns. What was interesting was that her headware didn’t give her much more information than pronouns and first names: the dress-wearing bodyguard was Voski and the gray-suited businessperson was Jade.
Kira was used to being aboard ship, where her headware could give her full lifetime files on her mercenaries or other military personnel. The blip of updating from silicon to organic memory was so familiar now that she barely registered that knowledge as not hers in any way.
The lack of that detail was interesting, and she bowed slightly as the two Cresters approached.
“Commodore Kira Demirci, yes?” Jade asked. They had darker skin, with a Korean-extraction tilt to their features, but with a sharp nose and heavy eyebrows.
“I am, yes,” Kira agreed. “And you are?”
Both of them knew at least the basics from the implants in their heads, but humanity had hundreds of years of tradition behind pretending they didn’t have computers in their heads.
“I am Jade,” the stranger introduced themselves. “I am one of the directors of the Bank of the Royal Crest assigned to this expedition. This is Voski, my aide.”
“A pleasure, Em Jade,” Kira told them. “How are you finding Redward so far?”
Jade quirked their lips.
“May I be honest, Commodore?” they asked drily. “Between one Mid Rim soul and another?”
“I like Redward well enough,” Kira replied, “but I won’t hold your opinions against you, Em Jade.”
“Please, Commodore Demirci, just Jade,” Jade told her. They gestured around the party. “This is hardly formal enough to require Em this and Em that, don’t you think?”
“As you wish, Jade,” Kira said. She did not invite the banker to use her own first name. If Jade wanted to play identity games, that was fine, but Kira had paid for her rank in blood.
From the repeated quirk of the lips—not quite a smile but definitely amused—Jade picked up at least part of Kira’s silent message.
“Redward is less backward than I expected,” they finally said. “But it still pales against home. I have seen less well-amenitied cities on our direct client worlds, but I have seen far better, too.”
Kira kept her face level. That was right. The Royal Crest maintained an explicit tributary empire—like the one Brisingr was busy setting up around her home system. Their “client worlds” were heavily restricted in their interstellar trade and provided resources and personnel to help maintain the Navy of the Royal Crest.
They were exactly the type of military-economic hegemon that the Equilibrium Institute had tried to force into existence in the Syntactic Cluster. The Institute believed that kind of hegemony was the only stable long-term interstellar political structure, after all—and the Royal Crest and their client worlds were one of the working examples of that in the Rim.
“It does grow on you if you live here,” Kira murmured. She gestured around the Solitary Lodge. “Places like this are everywhere, I suppose, but I think they did a good job here.”
“They did,” Jade conceded. “And the Cluster’s newfound stability is certainly appealing as an investment prospect.” They shook their head. “Of course, while we understand King Larry’s determination to keep control of Syntactic assets in the Cluster, it does limit the resources we’re able to deploy.
“And there are, of course, those who question how long this stability will last. It was only a few months ago, after all, that the whole region was involved in a war.”
“There aren’t many threats in the Cluster to cause that again,” Kira pointed out. “Bengalissimo and Ypres look to make more money as part of the Free Trade Zone than trying to break it. The Costar Clans are now under Redward control.” She shook her head with a smile.
“With the Bengalissimo Republic, the Ypres Federation and the Kingdom of Redward all upgrading their fleets at a breakneck pace, I don’t think anyone who tries to cause trouble here is going to enjoy it,” she noted. “They’re going to up to a Mid Rim standard soon enough.”
“And your Memorial Force will be here to protect them until they are?” Jade asked.
“If needed,” Kira agreed. “Deception will remain the most powerful warship in the Cluster for a while yet, though she’s no longer as necessary as she once was. Conviction, in many ways, was more dramatic an influence on the Cluster than Deception.”
“So I heard,” Jade said softly. “Were you close to Captain Estanza?”
“He was a mentor and a friend,” Kira murmured, swallowing the usual spike of grief. She had a lot of practice at hiding grief these days. She’d lost a lot of friends before she’d ever come to the Syntactic Cluster—and the fighting there had been no gentler.
“But he died doing what he swore to do,” she continued. “He stopped the Equilibrium Institute and their patsies from wrecking the Syntactic Cluster.”
Kira watched Jade and Voski exchange a glance. There were a lot of people who regarded the story about a third party interfering in the Cluster as a lie designed to permit the new Bengal and Ypres governments to wash their hands of the actions of their system’s factions.
“I have heard the…theory about the Equilibrium Institute,” Jade allowed. “I would be interested to hear your take on it, Commodore.”
“For that, Jade, I will need to refresh my drink,” Kira said carefully. She suddenly suspected that this was what the Crest bureaucrat was after—and that meant she wanted a few moments to think.
“Voski, can you grab the Commodore and myself new drinks?” Jade said instantly. “I see some free chairs over in that gazebo. Voski can grab us some food as well, if you wish. Shall we, Commodore?”
Kira smiled. She wasn’t sure why the Bank of the Royal Crest delegation wanted her take on the Equilibrium Institute, but she now understood why Sonia had been so desperate to get her to this party.
* * *
Kira waited for Voski to return with grill-roasted potato wedges and a full pitcher of iced tea before she said anything. The gazebo was surprisingly comfortable, a tucked-away seating area on the edge of the forest around the Solitary Lodge.
There was an energy screen between the gazebo and the woods, of course—but it was intriguing to Kira that both Jade and Voski both clearly made note of that shield as they took their seats. She expected the bodyguard to pick out the defenses, but the banker themselves? That was interesting.
“You seem quite determined to get my opinion on the Equilibrium Institute, Jade,” Kira noted after trying the first wedge. Like everything else she’d ever been fed at the Lodge, it was amazing.
“I can think of a dozen reasons why the governments of the SCFTZ would make up a story to cover up the various conflicts of the last few years,” Jade said bluntly. “While you are contracted with them, you have less reason to toe the party line than most.
“We are talking trillions of crests’ worth of investment, Commodore Demirci. Trillions. While these are both sums that the Bank of the Royal Crest can lend and that we can reasonably expect the Free Trade Zone to be able to repay, it is my obligation to the people whose accounts and investments will be supporting and supported by those loans to make sure I fully understand the situation.
“There are already concerns in the halls of the BRC about the long-term stability of a free trade zone,” they noted. “Any uncertainty around the likelihood of resumed conflict in the area changes our risk assessment—which will, at a minimum, drive up the rates we can offer the Free Trade Zone’s members or even render those loans non-underwritable.
“Do you understand?” Jade asked.
“Mostly,” Kira said. She wasn’t an expert on loans or financing—Memorial Force was fortunate, in a lot of ways, that between their sources of hardware and the cash reserves assembled by both John Estanza and Kira’s old CO who’d sent her out to Redward, they had no debt—but she understood the basics.
“What do you need to know, Jade?” she asked.
“You’ve only been here for two years, yes?” the banker asked. “And yet you now command a mercenary fleet that is arguably the third or fourth most powerful fleet in the sector? That seems to have been a…rapid rise, Commodore.”
Kira snorted.
“I arrived in this system with a recommendation for a lawyer, instructions to talk to John Estanza, and six not-quite-stolen nova fighters,” she told Jade. “I started flying for John Estanza off of Conviction and saw the first fight against the Costar Clans’ ‘Warlord Deceiver’ first-hand.
“Until then, I didn’t buy the whole Equilibrium Institute spiel that John had,” Kira admitted. “But Davies—Warlord Deceiver—had multiple Mid Rim ships, nova fighters, even a class two nova-drive production line. Someone outside the Cluster had provided all of that.
“And we captured a man who confessed to being an Equilibrium Institute agent,” she told Jade. “He tried to recruit me—and re-recruit Captain Estanza, who used to work for them.”
There was a pregnant pause as Kira took a large swallow of her tea, then refilled it from the pitcher. She noted that Voski had retreated to lean against the entrance to the gazebo—still close enough to hear but far enough to secure their privacy.
If Kira had been worried at all, though, she also noted that one of the servers had positioned themselves to watch the gazebo and Voski. As she picked up the glass of tea again, she half-saluted the commando over it—and got a thumbs-up back.
She smiled. She thought she’d recognized the woman as one of the commandos who’d gone into Ypres with her.
“I’m surprised you’d admit that Estanza worked for the Institute, if they’re all the Cluster says they are,” Jade finally said into the silence.
“John Estanza, important as he was to me, is dead,” Kira said quietly. “He died saving this Cluster from the Equilibrium Institute. I would fail at the task he set me if I protected his memory over telling the truth.”
She did not note that there were still other former Equilibrium agents in Memorial Force. Konrad Bueller had been recruited by the Institute and sent out to the Syntactic Cluster with K79-L, the cruiser that had become Deception, and she had several no-longer-blackmailed agents among her pilots and crew.
“I see,” Jade allowed.
“As for the rest of the last two years…” Kira shook her head. “K79-L was brought out here by an Equilibrium cover company. They used her to support the coup against the Ypres Hearth faction—and Institute agents murdered the president of Sanctuary to enable Hearth’s conquest of the system.”
She smiled thinly.
“Thanks to my mercenaries, and some Redward commandos, K79-L fell into friendly hands. My hands. Others dealt with the attempt to unify Ypres by force—and then Their Majesties helped birth the Ypres Federation as an alternative to conquest.”
“Which almost brings us here, to a solidified Free Trade Zone and peace,” Jade noted. “You believe the Institute story, then?”
“More than believe, Jade,” Kira said. “I have been the one providing proof and weaving the pieces together for Redward. Three times we have encountered Institute agents in the Cluster—the first time, supporting Davies; the second time, aboard K79-L, trying to unify Ypres by force.
“The third time was when Queen Rossella Gaspari took control of Bengalissimo and waged war against the rest of the Cluster,” she concluded. “Gaspari was an Equilibrium agent herself, but the key player in that mess was Cobra Squadron—and Cobra Squadron, Em Jade, was always an Equilibrium asset.”
“You sound very sure of that,” Jade noted drily.
“John Estanza was a friend and mentor…and a former member of Cobra Squadron,” Kira pointed out. “Jay Moranis, on Apollo, was a friend and mentor and my commanding officer—and a former member of Cobra Squadron.
“And Lars Ivarsson, who died aboard the assault carrier Equilibrium when John Estanza rammed Conviction into her, was Platinum Cobra, the commanding officer of the rebuilt Cobra Squadron—and the last person to attempt to recruit myself, John Estanza and some others I won’t name to the Institute.”
The gazebo was quiet again. The sound of conversation from the rest of the party was more muffled than it should have been, suggesting that there was a lot more gear built into the unassuming structure than Kira had realized.
“You are very passionate about this, Commodore Demirci,” Jade finally told her. “It is reassuring. It is easier to disbelieve the dry and measured words of politicians than the fury of a warrior who has lost friends.”
“I’m glad,” Kira said grimly. “I’ve paid enough for that certainty.”
“You have, and I apologize for doubting you,” the banker said. “I needed to be certain that the Institute was involved here. I thank you for your time, Commodore, though I have one more question, if you will indulge me with speculation.”
Kira exhaled a long breath, intentionally forcing her shoulders to relax as she met the banker’s gray eyes. Jade’s expression was more sympathetic than she expected. The Crest enby was telling the truth, she realized, when she apologized.
“Very well,” she told the banker.
“Do you think the Institute is going to come back?” Jade asked. “My napkin-math estimate says they spent somewhere in the region of eighty trillion crests on their various projects here, and I’m likely underestimating that.”
“Sunk cost,” Kira said bluntly. “I suspect the Institute has its fingers in a lot of different sectors across our region of the Rim. I hope that their influence isn’t spread across the entire Rim, but I don’t know.”
Given that “the Rim” was every star system more than a thousand light-years and less than fifteen hundred light-years from Sol, Kira really did hope the Institute’s influence was limited to only a portion of it.
“That said, my understanding is that the Institute is an entity of either the Heart or the Inner Meridian,” Kira continued. “The funds they’ve spent to almost destroy this Cluster are a rounding error for a decently sized operating entity of those regions.
“But money they spend here isn’t money they spend influencing other regions—and if their Seldonian calculations say that a free trade zone like ours is doomed, then why not simply wait for us to fail? Then they can give the strongest of whoever is left a hand up to become what they think the region needs.”
Something in Jade’s expression twisted at Kira’s words.
“I see,” they said, in a tone that sounded vaguely ill. “And what do you believe they think the region needs?”
“What they told me,” Kira said pointedly, “was that their Seldonian psychohistorical calculations showed that free trade zones and similar egalitarian structures are doomed to failure within two to three decades.
“They believe that only strong central military-economic hegemons can maintain stability in a region. Anything else can only result in chaos and death on a massive scale, which clearly enables them to engage in the most immoral and vicious actions to avoid that.”
Kira knew how much vitriol was dripping from her voice at the end—and Jade clearly picked up on all of it.
“There are some believers in similar projections in the Bank of the Royal Crest,” they warned. “That is one of the impediments the SCFTZ is facing in their quest for financing arrangements.”
“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point, doesn’t it?” Kira asked.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Jade replied—and their tone told Kira there was more going on than the banker was telling her just yet.