27

“I’ve checked the apartment three times, and O’Mooney has gone over it as well,” Bertoli told Kira. “It’s clean. I’m…honestly surprised, though the place was on the list Panosyan gave us.”

“I’m guessing they’re not even listed on the directories, then,” Kira said. They were in one of a bloc of eight rental apartments tucked onto the end of one of Charming’s higher-end residential zones.

“I don’t think so,” O’Mooney agreed. The youngest mercenary was slumped in a chair against the wall, looking gray enough to make Kira feel guilty for dragging her all over the station.

Walking slowly was “light duty,” sure, but six hours of it had clearly been more than O’Mooney’s healing could tolerate. Thankfully, they weren’t going to be doing anything tomorrow—and Kira was going to make sure the younger woman spent the day resting in the apartment.

“So, what have we got?” she asked Bertoli.

“Four rooms, a sitting area, a kitchen, laundry…it’s basically a high-end apartment they keep ready for guests,” the trooper told her. “Well secured, too. There’s copper and lead netting in the walls to interrupt anyone trying to eavesdrop from outside.”

He shrugged.

“And if my sweep came up that empty, and this place is used by the people I think it is, the staff sweeps them regularly when they’re not in use,” he concluded.

“So, we’ve basically stumbled on to the people who rent to senior executives from Crest,” Kira observed. That fit sufficiently with their cover, so she wasn’t too worried about it—though she was also relying on the discretion of their temporary lessor.

“Only one thing stinks,” Bertoli told her, glancing around the room. The space was comfortably decorated with a collection of individual chairs. The chairs all looked one step short of providing a massage when you sat down, but there was also a distinct lack of multiple-person seating.

Very clearly a business unit.

“And what’s that?” Kira asked.

“They were expecting me,” the trooper said grimly. “I hope that’s because our employer put the word out, but it still makes me worry.”

“I suspect they wouldn’t have talked to you if they hadn’t been expecting you,” Kira admitted. “We’re relying on their discretion either way, Jerzy. Keep an eye on everything, but so long as the bug sweep is clean…”

“We’re definitely not being listened to, not unless we’re dealing with someone with much better tech than I’ve ever encountered,” the merc confirmed.

“All right. Go get Konrad,” Kira ordered. “O’Mooney and I will hold down the fort here, watching for our host’s people to show up.”

“You think they’re going to come right here?” O’Mooney asked.

“Unless I miss my guess, there’s a Dinastik Pahak security team in one of the other units that is busy setting up security perimeters and distractions as we speak,” Kira said with a smile. “They need us in an environment they control…but I believe we may have just rented an apartment in exactly that.

“So, yes, I expect them or their people to come here. And I want Konrad to tell me how deep a hole that carrier is going to be before I talk to them.”

* * *

One look at her lover told Kira there was another priority before the briefing. He clearly hadn’t quite noticed it himself yet, but the color had faded from his face. It was half-concealed under his excitement, but Konrad Bueller clearly hadn’t eaten while the rest of them had been sorting things out on the station.

“Stop,” she told him as he opened his mouth to ask a question. “You, Konrad, are going to eat a sandwich before we have this briefing. Bertoli?”

“I surveyed the kitchen, and the staff stocked it while I was sorting out payment,” the trooper said. “Sandwich duty it is.”

Konrad nodded slowly—and then collapsed into one of the chairs, equally slowly, as his incipient blood-sugar crash caught up with him.

“Okay, that’s probably a good plan,” he admitted. “But…I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“And the five minutes to eat this won’t hurt,” Bertoli replied, sliding a plate with a sandwich into Konrad’s lap—and then following suit with plates for Kira and O’Mooney. “All of us should stop and eat, yes? Please?”

“Old soldiers know their priorities,” Kira agreed with a laugh. “Thank you, Bertoli.”

Calling Bertoli 'old’ was exaggerating, but the point stood—and the quickly produced sandwiches were good, too.

“All right, Konrad. Brief us,” Kira ordered once they’d all eaten. “So far as we can tell, this place is secure.”

“She’s a hell of a ship,” the engineer said. “I knew what Panosyan said about her, but it’s different to actually go through a full high-resolution scan of the lady.”

Konrad laid a holoprojector puck down on the coffee table and gestured a hologram of the carrier to life. It looked almost identical to the one that Jade Panosyan had used to get Kira and Zoric on side with the mission, though…that had been a schematic.

This was a visual of the actual ship.

With a few gestures, a wireframe version of the schematic appeared over the ship, highlighting various sections.

“Her outer hull is entirely complete, including her defensive turrets,” Konrad told them. Six large protrusions blinked, along with twenty-four smaller ones. “That’s six dual heavy guns, each as powerful as the system Deception mounts, plus twenty-four lighter, single-cannon, antifighter turrets.”

That put the carrier at twelve turreted plasma cannon, only two guns short of Deception’s own arsenal. That made sense—the carrier was half again the cruiser’s size—but it was still intimidating.

“Currently, the only exterior work still in need of completion is her sensor installations,” the engineer continued. “Those are usually installed as a single bloc and should be in by this point in her construction. They’ve probably had a production delay elsewhere, but so long as the installations arrive before she’s due to deploy, it won’t hold them up.

“It’s harder to assess her internals,” Konrad continued after a moment. “Even with the scans we have, armor and dispersal networks get in the way. That said, I can confirm that her nova drive is installed, all of her fusion cores are installed, and I’d say she’s likely got her entire Harrington complement installed.”

“So, she’s basically done, is what I’m hearing?” Kira asked.

“Yes,” her engineer told her. “Fortitude could probably fly out of there today. My guess is that, outside of the sensor installations I mentioned, she’s in final finishing mode. They’re installing beds, people, not guns.”

“And fighters?” Kira said.

“None aboard, but we got a good glance into the deck at the equipment,” Konrad said. “It’s all there. She’s fully capable of acting as a carrier right now. Most of the next six weeks is going to be final touches, system tests and boarding the initial trial crew.”

“So, what’s holding them to the original schedule?” Bertoli asked. “I’m just a grunt, Commander. Sounds like if they needed that carrier, they could rush her out.”

“Easily, but it would be a risk,” Konrad answered. “That’s basically what we did with the Baron class. Those cruisers deployed with yard techs on board still running tests and never had anything except the most abbreviated trials. We, however, were running a construction operation while Redward was under siege.

“The Navy of the Royal Crest, on the other hand, is effectively at peace. They have no serious enemies that they’re worried about, and their existing fleet is more than capable of maintaining their client network.

“While Fortitude and the sister ship they have under construction will represent a major upgrade in the NRC’s strength, there’s no rush for them.”

“But they are ahead of schedule, aren’t they?” Kira asked softly.

The apartment was silent for a few seconds, then Konrad nodded.

“About two weeks,” he told her. “So, they may have shifted the schedule from the last data we had. I can’t see them having shifted it enough to threaten our original timetable, but the danger is there.”

“We’ll make that nova when we get to it, I guess,” Kira said. “There’s nothing we can do to accelerate Memorial Force. At this point, they’ve already left the Syntactic Cluster, let alone Redward.”

“What are our next steps?” Bertoli asked.

“First, we make O’Mooney sit down for a day and heal,” Kira told her people with a smile. “We’re waiting for contact at the moment. You and I, Bertoli, will go for a walk about the station in the morning to get a feel of the lay of the land, pick up some physical newsletters to go with the network downloads.

“We came to the Crest for a lot of reasons. One of them is to find out whether or not this Sanctuary and Prosperity Party is as much trouble as we were sold.”

“You think they might not be an Equilibrium front?” her boyfriend asked. “That Panosyan sold us a false bill of goods?”

“I think they believe that the SPP are an existential threat to the Crest as they want it to be,” Kira said carefully. “My own assessment is that if the SPP aren’t an Equilibrium front, they’re still doing exactly what the Institute wants.

“But I want to confirm that with my own eyes and ears listening to the people of this system. Not trust the person who hired us to carry out a coup. Make sense to everyone?”

“Oh, god, yes,” Bertoli muttered. “You’re the boss, boss. I’ll overthrow anyone you tell me to—but I am assuming you’ve done the research.”

She smiled thinly.

“And tomorrow, Bertoli, that is exactly what we’re going to do.”

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