12

The orbital constructs above the super-Jovian gas giant Anoteelik were of a familiar style to Kira. The Mowat System wasn’t up to the level of local industry necessary to build significantly sized space stations for themselves, so the stations came in two varieties: prefabricated facilities assembled from components that would fit in standard cargo containers and midsized nova freighters; and asteroids from the local belts and trojan clusters that had been moved into orbit and hollowed out.

Wolf Station was the largest of the facilities and was a mix of both types. Massive assemblages of prefabricated structures emerged from the surface of a kilometer-long asteroid towed into low orbit of the gas giant.

It was close enough to Anoteelik that ships orbiting near Wolf could actively discharge static into the gas giant, while high enough that its orbital velocity was manageable for ships matching course with it.

And in case anybody thought that the Mowat System was going to be a pushover, Uncle Albert was in the same orbit and just fifty thousand kilometers “ahead” of the commercial station. The Uncle was slightly smaller, only nine hundred meters long, and lacked Wolf’s prefabricated surface segments.

What surface segments Uncle Albert had, though, were very clear in their purpose. Immense plasma-cannon turrets, quadruple arrays of guns that had four times the throughput of Deception’s weapons, dotted the asteroid’s surface. The weapons were old enough that they were ten times the size of Kira’s cruiser’s guns to pack in that firepower, but Deception was less than two hundred meters long.

Uncle Albert had a lot more guns than the heavy cruiser, plus hangars for both nova fighters and their slower sub-fighter kin. Small compared to the forts that guarded even Redward, it was still a near-insurmountable monster compared to any nova fleet of the Rim.

From her shuttle making its way over to Wolf Station, Kira could easily see why the Mowat System’s corporate government could afford the four battle stations that orbited the gas giant. She could count a dozen starships around Wolf Station alone, and at least three times that in even lower orbits as they discharged static.

There were as many nova ships discharging in orbit of Anoteelik as would be present in Redward on most days. The closer to Sol Kira came, the greater the breadth and depth of human civilization and the interstellar economy became.

Even this was in the Rim, and she intellectually knew that a similar system in the Core would have literally thousands of ships discharging around a gas giant. But Kira had never even entered the Fringe, the systems between seven hundred and a thousand light-years away from Sol. Apollo was twelve hundred and twenty light-years from the human home system.

Redward was fourteen hundred and eighty, nearly at the invisible line where the trade-route mapping coalition stopped being able to maintain updates.

The closest Kira had ever come to Earth was roughly eleven hundred light-years, a long-range operation during the war. The last time she’d even been this close was when she’d been fleeing her home system.

And on that depressing thought, her shuttle reached Wolf Station, and she inhaled a deep breath. It was time to see what she could find out from a source she hadn’t touched since leaving home: an office of the Apollon government.

* * *

Wolf Station was intentionally eclectic. Kira could think of no other reason why the station was full of so many different clashing esthetics. If they’d been the kind of cheap faux replicas she’d seen elsewhere, she’d have written it off as the place just being gaudy.

But they weren’t. The reconstructionist Hellenist décor of the Apollon Trade Attaché had been done extraordinarily well, with the columns carefully matched to each other and the façade behind them. The twenty-third-century Centauri-style faux-cyberpunk decoration of the high-end restaurant next door was equally well done…and clashed ridiculously with the attaché’s office.

“Never seen you hesitate at anything,” Milani muttered at her ear, and Kira realized she was woolgathering.

“Are you looking at the same décor I am?” Kira asked, pushing away the ground commander’s quite accurate assessment of her feelings on entering an Apollon office. She wasn’t entirely sure why Milani had decided they should accompany her instead of Jess Koch, but that was the commander’s prerogative.

“Yeah. I was expecting a sheet of permafrost, to be fair,” Milani told her. “I’m not sure this fits.”

“Fits what, exactly?” she asked.

Milani laughed, the dragon on their armor joining in their amusement and visibly giggling at Kira.

“The books?” they asked. “Everything in this system is named for an Old Earth activist author, but the station is named for Never Cry Wolf. Which was” —they waved around—“about wolves in the Arctic, so not exactly this!”

Kira snorted.

“We prefer not to have ice on a space station,” she pointed out. Liquid water was denser and easier to store than its solid form. “And yes, I’m hesitating to walk into an Apollon government office and lean on my retirement rank for information. It’s been five years since I turned in my papers.”

And her government had let Brisingr send assassins after her on Apollo. She was wearing her blaster-proof armored leather jacket over her uniform shipsuit, and an armored vest under the jacket, but she was still nervous.

Even the Mowat System was far enough from both Apollo and Brisingr that she was well beyond any active attack at this point, but she was finally back in the diplomatic radius of her homeworld.

A strange feeling.

“The Samuels woman will probably get as much intel as we will,” Milani pointed out. “We can skip your countryfolk if you want.”

“Enabling my fears is not your job, Milani,” Kira replied. “And Macey does have a name.”

Milani sniffed.

“And when I’m talking to her, I’ll use it,” they said. “The rest of the time, I’m going to remember that the Samuels woman thinks everyone should marry off and pop out babies.”

“Culture clash happens, Milani,” Kira pointed out. “At least she wasn’t asking what was in your armor.”

Even Kira didn’t know if Milani had the equipment to actually “pop out babies,” and, given the mercenary’s complete lack of a romantic life that she knew about, Kira suspected only Deception’s doctor did.

The armored mercenary growled.

“Was tempted to tell her I’d had all of that crap burned off or out or whatever,” Milani finally said. “But…as you say, culture clash. Surprised you haven’t got an earful on that.”

“I’m surprised she spent enough time with you to give you an earful,” Kira admitted. “And I suppose I’m at least paired off, even if we aren’t married by whatever rules she’s using.”

She paused thoughtfully, studying the Apollon office and considering what she knew of the Quakers like Samuels.

“Actually, it’s possible I am married by whatever rules she’s using,” she realized aloud. “Culture clash.”

That epithet covered a lot of problems, in Kira’s opinion. It was, at least, not a problem she was going to have in an Apollon government office.

“Let’s go,” she told her bodyguard. “Suddenly, talking to a fellow shepherd’s kid is sounding much more comfortable.”

* * *

The interior of the attaché office was built in the same style as the exterior, the extravagant neo-Hellenist style favored by Apollo for public works. It was a surprise to find something in that style there, at the very edge of Apollo’s reach, but from the quality of the disparate elements of Wolf Station’s interior, Kira suspected it had been partially paid for by the station’s owners.

“Good afternoon,” the artificial stupid hologram receptionist told her. “Welcome to the Mowat System Trade Attaché for the Republic of Apollo, Em Demirci. We have confirmed your citizenship and look forward to assisting you.

“What do you need today?”

Kira had updated her personal headware beacon to run the Apollo standard information before they’d come in, allowing the artificial stupids running initial contact to know who she was.

In another country’s offices, she probably would have been greeted by her former military rank as a courtesy—or potentially even by her current mercenary rank, depending on how well informed they were—but Apollo, as always, engaged in the appearance of pacifism.

“I need to speak with the attaché or one of their senior analysts,” Kira told the hologram. “I’m leaving in under a day, so I don’t have time to make an appointment.”

“Of course,” the digital image of the decorative young man replied. “Em Argyris is a busy individual, of course. We will see if—”

“I can make time for Major Demirci,” a voice cut through the AS’s patter. Kira looked up to see a massive man with graying hair and thickly muscled upper arms standing in the door to the inner office.

The AS shut up instantly as the Apollon man bowed his head slightly to Kira.

“I am Angelos Argyris,” he introduced himself. “Trade attaché to the Mowat System. I’m also my own senior analyst—my staff is quite limited and, frankly, this posting is boring as sheep shit.

“Can I get you a retsina?”

Kira blinked. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that she was close enough to Apollo to get her homeworld’s traditional resin-infused wine.

“I would be delighted, Em Argyris,” she told him. “May my bodyguard accompany us?”

Argyris eyed Milani up and down and shrugged his massive shoulders.

“I’m guessing you don’t want retsina, Em…”

“Milani,” the merc introduced themselves. “And no. I don’t drink on duty.”

“Of course. Come in, both of you.”

Argyris led the way through the door into a gorgeously decorated but tiny rear office. They walked through a small kitchen and dining area into a conference room, but Kira only counted five office doors.

The attaché wasn’t lying about having limited staff. She wasn’t sure if he was going to have what she needed—but, on the other hand, she hadn’t had retsina since she’d put her last bottle up as a prize in a training exercise for her pilots several years earlier.

And the big man might surprise her.

* * *

Kira didn’t recognize the brand of the bottle Argyris produced to fill two wine glasses with, but the smell was unquestionable. She’d found one tiny winery on Redward that made a kind of retsina, but something in even Terran pines adapted to the Syntactic Cluster world made the resin taste wrong.

She suspected that part of what made Apollon retsina work so well was that exact effect, in truth. Something in how the imported pines had adapted to her homeworld had changed their resin in a way that impacted how it interacted with alcohol.

The first sip confirmed that it was definitely the right stuff, and she just took a second to delight in the taste of home.

“What is it, Demirci?” Argyris asked as she closed her eyes in warmth. “Four years since you left home? Five?”

“Almost five,” she told him. “I’m surprised even that much information is on your mind.”

He laughed.

“The most famous mercenary Admiral of the Outer Rim is an Apollon native,” he pointed out. “Believe me, Admiral Demirci, most of the outward diplomats and attachés know who you are. Plus, I had a cousin who survived one of the last battles of the war because the Three Oh Three showed up at the right moment.”

“Credit for that probably belongs as much to Victorious and Commodore Heller as anything else,” Kira said. “The Hellions pulled a lot of people’s irons out of the fire at the end.”

And Heller had died for it—or so Kira suspected, anyway, given the fate of so much of the 303 Nova Combat Group. Officially, it had been an aircar accident.

“Perhaps, but it was Three Oh Three interceptors that took out the bomber strike heading at Sun Arrow,” Argyris reminded her.

“Ah. That battle,” Kira murmured. Sun Arrow had been the ASDF’s most modern and powerful battlecruiser. Ambushed by two Brisingr fleet carrier groups in the final days of the war—after the Agreement on Nova Lane Security that had ended the war had been signed, in fact—she’d lost the carrier she’d been escorting and most of her escorts before Task Group Victorious had arrived.

They’d crushed two BKN fleet carrier groups but lost the entirety of Task Group Salutations except for Sun Arrow. A tactical victory but a strategic draw at best—and Apollo had already basically surrendered.

“I figured you’d remember it,” Argyris told her. “Now, I’m not one to claim debts that don’t really exist, but I’ll confess to warm, fuzzy feelings over the fact that I still have a cousin.

“I’m guessing that you’re looking for information on the Samuels-Colossus mess?”

“Got it in one,” Kira conceded. “Samuels hired Memorial Force to provide security after Brisingr provided a fleet to Colossus. From the messages Anoteelik Control is passing out, Colossus already made their move?”

“Yeah,” Argyris confirmed. “I got the update from Intelligence about Brisingr selling them the demilitarized ships around the same time we got the notice of the blockade. Somebody dropped the ball on putting that information in my hands.

“A lot of Apollon merchants got squeezed by that,” he continued. “I’m supposed to be able to warn our people in advance of crap like this, but without knowing that Colossus suddenly had an actual nova fleet…”

He growled, a low rumble deep in his chest.

“I’m a damn good analyst, Admiral Demirci, but I need the data to do the analysis,” he told her. “We have assets in both Colossus and Samuels, but I get their reports the long way around: via Apollo.

“So, if someone drops a ball back home, I don’t get the info to help our merchants. The only reason I’m even out here is to help our merchants.”

“Is the detour from Samuels to Colossus that big a deal?” Kira asked. “My understanding, even from my employers in Samuels, is that Colossus is the faster trip through the Corridor.”

“So Samuels is cheaper,” Argyris told her. “And Colossus has been ratcheting their toll up of late as well. Now we know why.

“Samuels is, in general, simply the better stopover,” he continued. “Their toll was down to half of Colossus’s as of the last numbers I saw. The fuel they provide is cleaner and cheaper as well—their gas giants are better proportioned, so the hydrogen and helium they extract requires less refining.

“They have better amenities, down to the level of having better food, cleaner hotels and, I’m told, prettier boys and girls.” He finished with a chuckle at the last. “So, unless the cargo was time-critical, over the last ten years, the balance of shipping has been swinging further and further toward Samuels.”

“And Colossus just kept raising rates and preparing for war,” Kira concluded.

“Exactly.” Argyris shook his head. “I’ll be honest. This blockade is an inconvenience to our people, not a deal-breaker, but a few smaller shippers got hurt pretty badly who could have dodged it if I’d been able to give them a few weeks’ heads-up.”

“But Apollo isn’t going to complain if I kick Colossus’s Brisingr-provided fleet back to the dust heap of history,” she said.

Both Argyris and Milani chuckled at the description, and the attaché saluted her with his retsina glass.

“I can’t put up any money to help cover your costs,” he warned her. “But yes, we would be quite pleased to see Colossus brought back down to the level. The competition between the two systems keeps the Corridor open, and the Corridor is damn handy for Apollo.”

“What can you give me?” she asked.

“Data,” Argyris said instantly. “Officially, my Intelligence reports are classified top secret—but I checked. You haven’t done anything sufficiently egregious since retiring to have your clearances revoked.

“Technically, I shouldn’t hand over reports to you without you, say, having a contract with Apollo…but you’re still cleared.”

Kira’s headware chimed with an incoming report.

“I imagine Samuels got you as much information on the makeup of their flotilla as I have,” he admitted.

“They gave me a pretty detailed list,” she agreed. “Though I wasn’t expecting any of it to be in action just yet.”

“Ah. That is a question I can answer—and it’s in the report, as well,” Argyris told her. “N45-K was listed as part of the Secondary Service Reserve until six months ago. She was leased as private security to the Syndulla System.”

Kira nodded grimly. That confirmed at least one of her suspicions—Deception, as K79-L, had been “leased” to an exploratory corporation out of the Syndulla System that had actually been an Equilibrium Institute front.

If N45-K had been in the Syndulla System, she was almost certainly also an Equilibrium asset.

“I’m guessing she was never fully demilitarized?” Kira asked.

“The timeline that I have between the arrival of the flotilla of ‘decommissioned’ ships and the deployment of enough vessels to begin the blockade aligns with a basic refit and test flight,” Argyris noted. “That would suggest that N45-K arrived in Colossus fully functional, if outdated by Brisingr standards.

“They gave her a quick dusting and ran her through some trials before loading their fighters aboard and sending her out to blockade Samuels,” he concluded. “N45-H, however, was definitely fully demilitarized and basically sold as a scrap hull. Assuming they began a refit the moment she entered their hands, I’d guess she’s at least two months from deployable.”

“That does help,” Kira agreed. “We’ll review the intelligence you provide, Em Argyris. It’s appreciated.”

“Like I said, it’s in Apollo’s interest to keep Samuels and Colossus in competition with each other,” the diplomat told her. “But that means not having one of them blockaded!

“So, while I cannot afford any official approval or support, I can certainly provide some information under the table.”

He raised his glass in salute.

“Good luck, Admiral.”

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