Doretta Macey could not have looked more uncomfortable as Milani escorted her into the conference room aboard Deception the next afternoon. Milani had that effect on people, often.
They wore jet-black powered combat armor that covered them from head to toe, concealing any and every aspect of their identity. Weaving threateningly across that armor was an active holographic pattern of a bright red dragon—one that was very definitely watching the Samuels representative.
Macey looked even more concerned as Milani walked into the room with her and took one of the two empty chairs at the table, bringing the number of mercenaries in the room to five.
Kira, of course, sat at the far side of the oval table and gestured Macey to the seat opposite her. The table was a gift from Queen Sonia, a hand-built construction of local hardwood with a varnish that would stand up to blaster fire—and the artisan had happily demonstrated with a sample that that statement was not hyperbole.
In most lighting, the table was jet-black. The conference room’s lights, however, had been carefully tuned to bring out the deep iridescent green that offset Kira and her people’s dark-teal uniforms.
Around the table were her two capital-ship commanders—Marija Davidović for the newly commissioned Huntress and Akuchi Mwangi for Deception—and her partner, Konrad Bueller, sat to her immediate right.
Milani took up the seat just past Mwangi, and Kira smiled as the Samuels representative eyed the dragon-armored merc but finally took her seat.
“I did expect to be meeting just you, Admiral,” Macey admitted.
“While I am the CEO, CO and primary shareholder, Memorial Force is a corporate entity as well a military unit,” Kira told the woman. “These officers are the ones who will be tasked with carrying out the mission if we take your contract, so I prefer to involve them in the discussions.”
Not present in the room because he didn’t like strangers was the mercenary company’s purser Yanis Vaduva. Vaduva was listening in and had a link to Kira’s headware for when he had something to contribute, but he didn’t need to meet with Macey in person to be involved.
Kira gestured around the table, indicating Huntress’s hawk-faced Captain first.
“This is Captain Marija Davidović, Huntress’s Captain.” Her gesture passed to the gaunt Black man just past Davidović. “Captain Akuchi Mwangi commands this cruiser, Deception. Milani, you’ve already met. They are responsible for all ground-force operations of Memorial Force.”
And Kira’s own personal security, a responsibility they took seriously enough that they’d sent a subordinate to command the mercenary commando sections aboard Fortitude and the supercarrier’s escorts.
“Lastly, Commander Konrad Bueller is the executive officer and chief engineer of Deception, as well as our primary technical specialist.
“Everyone, this is Doretta Macey of the Samuels System, and she wants to hire us.”
Macey nodded calmly and laid a datastick on the table.
“I have the information you requested,” she noted. “The types and numbers of the ships Colossus purchased from Brisingr, plus best estimates of Colossus’s ability to arm them. We are quite certain that Brisingr did fully demilitarize the ships before they turned them over.”
“May I?” Bueller asked, gesturing at the datastick. “The BKN has been known to play games with the level of demilitarization they carry out. There are stages of decommissioning in their structures, after all.”
Deception had formally been decommissioned and had been supposed to be partially demilitarized before entering service as a survey ship. In practice, thanks to the Equilibrium Institute, Konrad Bueller had arrived in the Syntactic Cluster on a fully operational heavy cruiser.
Macey slid the datastick over to him, but she eyed him oddly. She’d clearly recognized the accent.
“Forgive me, Commander, but are you one of those Buellers?” she asked softly.
Kira had never heard the question phrased quite that way, and she was wondering what she was missing for several seconds. Then her boyfriend grimaced and nodded.
“Yes, but given that Reinhardt seems quite solidly placed on his throne and I’m two hundred light-years away, it’s hardly relevant, is it?” he asked.
“Konrad?” Kira asked slowly. She knew he was from a wealthy and political influential family, but Bueller wasn’t that rare a last name.
“There is a main-line Bueller family on Brisingr that stand in the Succession,” he admitted. “Technically, as an adult of that line between the age of thirty and seventy, I have the right to stand for election as Kaiser when Reinhardt dies or resigns.” He snorted. “So do about nineteen hundred other people, last time I bothered to look at it…which was before I left Brisingr.”
That was not something she’d known about her boyfriend. Given that they’d served on the opposite sides of a war both of them thought was stupid in hindsight, they generally didn’t talk about home.
“Fair. I was simply curious,” Macey admitted. “I was surprised to hear a Brisingr accent aboard Admiral Demirci’s ship.”
“This ship was a BKN heavy cruiser,” Kira pointed out. “There are still a number of Brisingr expatriates aboard.”
It was an open question whether or not any of them, including Konrad Bueller, could actually go home. While Deception’s operations hadn’t been under the formal auspices of the BKN, many of the crew had still held active commissions or warrants in the BKN—and an argument could definitely be made that helping anyone steal and operate a Brisingr cruiser was treason.
“I see,” Macey allowed. “That may be helpful in analyzing the data, I suppose. We do believe that the Kaiserreich is actively supporting Colossus in their current endeavors.”
Kira wasn’t surprised. She suspected, given her own experiences, that the actual backer was the Equilibrium Institute—but Equilibrium had their hooks deeply into Brisingr at this point. They believed that the stablest form of human civilization was areas of economic dependence on central military hegemons who kept order in their territory.
Without a massive tech imbalance, a star system was immune to external conquest, but someone like Brisingr—or, if she was being honest, Apollo—could use a nova-capable fleet to control which areas were and weren’t safe for trade to move. That created zones of control—and it was the overlapping piece of those zones of control that Apollo and Brisingr had fought over.
And that her world had surrendered to Brisingr in the end, abandoning the euphemistically named “Friends of Apollo” to the tender mercies of their shared foe.
“How about you lay out what you understand Colossus to have in play and what the Samuels government is prepared to pay us to do?” Kira told her. “You and I have gone over some of this, but I think my people will benefit in hearing it from you.”
“Very well,” Macey said. She produced a small portable holoprojector and laid it on the table, bringing up a local astrographic chart of two stars.
“Samuels and Colossus are eleven and a half light-years apart,” she noted. “While it is theoretically possible to make the trip between the systems in two novas, there is no mapped nova stop halfway between.
“The standard trade routes tend to run through one system or the other,” she continued. “That results in it taking three novas to travel from one system to the other.
“Our competition has traditionally been purely economic, but Colossus has grown more aggressive even in that sphere in the last decade. Now we have acquired intelligence that they have purchased eighteen obsolete BKN nova warships.”
Macey waved toward the datastick Bueller was looking at.
“The details are in there, but my understanding is that they have two light carriers, two light cruisers, and fourteen destroyers and corvettes,” she told them. “Combined with Colossus’s existing fleet of nova fighters, our officers advise me that is more than sufficient to secure the trade lanes around both our systems and blockade Samuels indefinitely.”
“Potentially,” Kira agreed. “It depends on how they use them. Do you have any idea when and which ships will be online first?”
“I don’t,” Macey admitted. “My understanding was that we didn’t expect to see more than a handful of destroyers for at least six months from when I left. Four months from now.”
“Deception and Huntress can deal with any handful of destroyers,” Kira noted. “Given that Colossus will be attempting to maintain a blockade, these two ships alone will be able to breach it at will.
“That would result in a rapid degradation of their forces and their ability to manage a full blockade.”
Without more information—information she assumed was on the datastick—Kira wasn’t prepared to promise that her two capital ships could take on the massed flotilla that Colossus had acquired. The most likely divisions, though, would be either a cruiser or carrier with a handful of destroyers, or a cruiser-carrier pair.
Deception and Huntress were bigger and better armed than anything Brisingr would call a light cruiser or light carrier. Unless Brisingr had sent crews and pilots along with the hulls, her people were almost certainly better too.
“We were hoping to engage your full fleet, Admiral,” Macey admitted.
“That depends on how long you want to wait,” Kira said. “I don’t expect Fortitude to return to Redward for at least eight to nine months. The entire fleet is also…not cheap to hire.”
She understood Samuels to be a wealthy system, but if they were also trying to build a new nova fleet of their own for their long-term security…they potentially couldn’t afford to engage the entire Memorial Force for an extended period.
Or maybe they could. Kira certainly wouldn’t object in that case. The mercenary fleet’s finances were still showing the lack of the four-million-kroner-per-month retainer they had once received from Redward.
It wouldn’t have covered Fortitude’s operating expenses, but it had covered most of the day-to-day running expenses of the fleet before that. Now Kira had to keep the fleet in motion and active to make sure their bills were paid.
They were a long way from it being a problem, but it was now a concern—and a long-term security contract would help offset that.
“If we’re only engaging these two capital ships…” Macey paused thoughtfully. “I might be stretching my authority to make any offer at all, but we do need the help.”
“Pitch a plan and make an offer, Mrs. Macey,” Kira suggested. “Otherwise, we’re going around in circles.”
“The basic contract would be to break any blockade established around Samuels,” the delegate said. “Any further action would need to be a separate discussion with my government. To maintain a fleet in being and operate against the blockade for a period of, let’s say, six months… I can offer seven million Apollon new drachmae.”
Kira paused, pretending to think while she waited for Vaduva’s commentary. She didn’t really need the purser’s advice to know she was being lowballed. When she’d arrived in Redward, one drachme had been a bit less than four kroner.
She was not under the impression that her home system’s interstellar fiscal reputation had improved over the intervening years.
“Basic operating costs for Huntress and Deception are three point four million kroner per month,” Vaduva’s voice said crisply in her head. “New drachmae are currently trading at two point two kroner per drachmae as of the latest listing here in Redward. Even considering the local currency bias, we’d be losing money, taking that contract.”
Kira let her smile become predatory.
“Please, Mrs. Macey, you did not come all this way to waste everyone’s time,” she pointed out. “Unless you can think of some reason why I would spend money to work for you…your offer doesn’t even qualify as insufficient.”
“You would, Admiral, be operating almost directly against Brisingr,” Macey said softly.
“Mrs. Macey, I left Apollo a long time ago—and I left Apollo because the Council of Principals betrayed me,” Kira said bluntly. “The enmities and conflicts of the past can stay in the past.”
She suspected that her more current conflicts and enemies were involved in this mess, but that wasn’t something she was going to admit. She certainly wasn’t going to invest millions of any given currency in that chance.
“Vaduva, what is Samuels’s currency trading at versus kroner?” she asked the purser silently.
“The Samuels pound is currently trading at two point one to the Redward kroner,” Vaduva responded instantly.
“For a six-month contract, as you’ve specified, we are prepared to accept sixty million Samuels pounds,” Kira said. That was roughly thirty million kroner or thirteen million new drachmae. Almost twice what Macey had offered—and a good ten percent higher than Kira might have asked for if the Samuels woman hadn’t tried to lowball her.
She raised a hand before Macey could say a word.
“That is a base rate,” she told the woman, “to provide a defensive fleet presence and patrol the trade-route stops around Samuels. If Colossus moves against Samuels and we engage in combat operations, an additional rate of one million pounds per day of combat, rounding up, will be included. This is to cover risks and expenses associated with active combat.”
The Samuels woman was silent for a moment, making sure that Kira was done, before finally speaking.
“I don’t believe that’s in my budget,” she said calmly. “There are almost certainly cheaper mercenary forces out there.”
“You came here looking to hire a supercarrier, Mrs. Macey,” Milani growled.
“Exactly,” Kira said. “And you just tried to offer us a rate that wouldn’t suffice to cover wear, tear and hydrogen. This is take-it-or-leave-it time. We will work for Samuels at that rate. Or you can find that cheaper squadron—because I promise you, Mrs. Macey, the only reason Deception is sitting at anchor is because I wanted a ship to watch over Huntress until she commissioned.
“Once it’s known we’re available for hire again, I don’t think I’ll be waiting more than a week or two for a new contract.”
She met Macey’s gaze. She wasn’t unsympathetic to the plight of the woman’s star system—if she thought Macey was feeding them a line, she wouldn’t be considering the contract. Kira had learned that with a bit of care, she could both fight for just causes and make a great deal of money.
But she wasn’t going to be pushed around, either.
“If it is that simple, then it is that simple,” Macey said stiffly. “Have your legal team draft up the contract and send it to the office we are renting. We will engage your services at your required rate, Admiral Demirci.”
“Good,” Kira said. “And Mrs. Macey?”
“Yes?” the woman said grimly.
“That is the last time you and I will be on opposite sides,” Kira told her gently. “Once that contract is signed, the defense of your people is my duty until it expires—Memorial Force does nothing by halves.”