Worlds habitable by humanity were common enough that marginal ones—planets that were too cold for too much of the year, whose soil lacked nutrients for Terran-derived crops, whose atmosphere required filtration masks, and similar issues—were often left alone but equally rare enough that almost all non-marginal worlds in “civilized space” were colonized.
Kira’s Encyclopedia Galactica listed three thousand two hundred and eighty-six inhabited worlds inside the fifteen hundred light-year sphere around Earth that contained the Core, the Heart, the Meridian, the Periphery, the Fringe and the Rim.
With that many inhabited systems, it was rare to find a spot on the trade routes where it was necessary to stop and discharge static in an uninhabited system. That happened in regions where there was a lack of systems of any kind in the next area around the trade routes—like the outer portion of the Samuels-Colossus Corridor.
After bouncing off the blockade of Serigala, Kira’s ships had headed in the wrong direction, to discharge static at the Deva System. That meant that they needed an extra discharge stop before they reached Samuels—and that stop was the Mowat System, “empty” as it was.
The Mowat System was positioned to cover most routes into the Corridor that weren’t served by Serigala and a handful of other systems. It lacked the inhabited worlds of the other entry points into the Corridor from the Outer Rim, but it had a super-Jovian gas giant that would make discharging static slightly faster.
Kira was in Engineering as they completed the final nova, sitting with Konrad and watching the static flash up and down the visible capacitors used to give the engineer an idea of how close the ship was to trouble.
“Short hop this time,” her lover said, shrugging as he glanced at the capacitors himself. “But we don’t have the capacity to make it to Samuels.”
“And that’s why this system exists,” Kira replied. “Run by crime lords?”
“A syndicate of local corporations,” Konrad said drily, then chuckled. “Given that Mowat has been set up and operating for about two centuries, it’s a safe assumption the crime lords have taken over.”
The isolation away from traditional sources of oversight and law enforcement made uninhabited stopover systems like Mowat incredibly attractive and valuable for organized crime. Kira hadn’t been to Mowat before—her trip out to Redward had gone through Colossus—but she’d seen similar systems.
One of her handful of combat experiences prior to the Apollo-Brisingr war, in fact, had been an Apollo-led multinational effort to take control of a discharge-station network in an uninhabited system away from an organized crime group that had grown too greedy and blatant.
That had been an unmitigated disaster, since there was nothing stopping an uninhabited system from having the same asteroid fortresses as an inhabited one. The ASDF had let their allies, the fleets of the not-entirely-voluntary Friends of Apollo, take the brunt of the losses in the abortive assault, and Kira suspected a direct line could be drawn between that battle and Brisingr’s numeric edge in the later war.
Everything had consequences.
“So long as the crime lords are accepting the usual tolls and not giving anyone headaches, it won’t impact us today,” Kira told her boyfriend. “Anything with the ships I need to worry about?”
In theory, after all, she was in Engineering to talk work, not just hang out with Konrad. She doubted she was fooling anyone, though.
“Deception is as solid as ever,” Konrad said. “Huntress is shaking out even better than I expected. I know that Larry put a great deal of pressure on the shipyards to make sure nothing went wrong with our ship, but I think they also avoided a lot of mistakes on a light-carrier design.
“The Bastion-class are probably as solid a seventy-kilocubic design as I’ve ever seen—and they only involved me to look for mistakes.” He shook his head. “They were paying attention when we put together the Barons.”
“Redward had designed ships before you came along, Konrad,” Kira replied. “You didn’t change everything for them.”
He chuckled and grinned at her.
“I like to take credit where I can. To go with the blame.”
The smile faded and she reached over to squeeze his hand. The original emergency construction program to put the Baron-class cruisers into commission had been Konrad’s work—and it had been a true emergency program.
The workers who had died had known the risks, but it had been Konrad Bueller who’d put together the program.
“I’m told Konrad is a popular boys’ name in Redward these days,” she teased him.
Before he could reply, there was a ping on the command net, and both of their focuses fully snapped to work.
“Demirci,” Kira replied crisply. “What’s going on?”
“This is Smolak; I need the full command team,” Deception’s coms officer told her. “Everyone needs to hear this.”
“Davidović here,” Huntress’s Captain linked in. “Linking in my senior officers. What’s going on?”
“Mwangi here,” Deception’s Captain said a moment later, but he’d clearly caught enough to wait.
“Okay, got everyone,” Smolak noted. “I need to play a recording for you all.”
There was a pause, then Smolak’s voice resumed—but a notation in Kira’s headware told her that it was now from a recording.
“Anoteelik Central Control, this is Commander Smolak aboard Memorial Force cruiser Deception,” the recording said. “Requesting orbital slots for discharge for three ships, en route into the Corridor.”
“Understood, Memorial Force,” an unknown man replied. “Do you need access to resupply or other amenities?”
“Negative, MCC,” Smolak said. “We are discharging from a short hop due to the blockade at Serigala before heading into the Corridor.”
“Understood,” the stranger said. “Transmitting coordinates now.”
The connection didn’t drop the way Kira would have expected, and the MCC official’s tone changed.
“Be advised, Commander Smolak, that Anoteelik has received notification from the Colossus Nova Wing that they have imposed a formal blockade of the Samuels System. We have been asked to inform all ships entering the Corridor that access to the Samuels System is currently not available.
“The CNW is instructing all ships to proceed to Colossus for discharge and warns that attempts to reach Samuels will be blocked on the trade route. Vessels attempting to breach the blockade will be detained or destroyed.
“Anoteelik Central Control cannot recommend travel to Samuels at this time, and we advise that CNW’s warning meets all standard regional insurance criteria.”
That meant that most ship crews would find their insurers saying “You knew the risks” if the blockade seized or destroyed their vessel. Colossus, unlike Denzel, apparently knew the steps required to make their blockade look good on paper. The Colossus Nova Wing—the nova-capable branch of the Colossus System’s military—had been around long enough to have learned the dance, even if this was their first time actually performing it.
“It seems our new friends moved faster than anyone expected,” Mwangi said quietly. “Admiral?”
“It doesn’t change anything for us,” Kira noted. “Our contract says we break the blockade if it’s in place, and that we’re paid combat and risk bonuses for doing so.
“We need intel, though,” she continued. “Sounds like we might need some of those amenities we just told MCC we don’t want, but I’ll touch base with Mrs. Macey. I can hope that Samuels has some intelligence assets in place here, right?”
“That begs an interesting question, doesn’t it?” Mwangi muttered. “Does the planet run by pacifists have great spies…or no spies?”
* * *
“There is a trade attaché station on the main orbital platform,” Macey told Kira when they spoke a few minutes later. “Em Sandal is supposed to keep his ear to the ground and send reports home.”
“I hope that entails a bit more than just listening in bars,” Kira replied. “Because I’m planning on having a few of my people do that, but it can only give us so much.”
“If anything else, any communication from Samuels will be sitting with Em Sandal,” Macey replied, the delegate looking nervous. “We weren’t expecting them to move this quickly. I don’t know how much information will have made it out.”
“You left almost three months ago, Mrs. Macey,” Kira pointed out. “Em Sandal’s reports will be only a week out of date. You’ve been receiving mail all along, haven’t you?”
“Not the last two stops, but…I put that up to missed connections,” Macey admitted. “How bad is this, Admiral?”
“Most likely, Colossus focused their efforts on getting one of the light carriers online,” Kira told her employer. “But there are diminishing returns with that kind of effort. They may have a handful of ships right now, but it likely means it will be longer until they have the full flotilla in play.
“Given that I’m confident in our ability to handle the full flotilla split up to maintain a blockade, I’m quite certain we can handle whatever portion of it they’ve brought online. This may well work in our favor, Mrs. Macey.
“They’ve initiated the blockade, which is bad, but it makes the positions and situation clear, and it could easily have cost them a level of immediate superiority that was their only real chance.” Kira shrugged.
“I need more data,” she admitted. “But this looks like they’ve played into our hands. We’ll discharge static and we’ll move on to Samuels. When we find this blockade, we’ll neutralize it.
“That was the contract, Mrs. Macey. I said we’d protect Samuels, and nothing in the current situation suggests to me that we won’t be able to.”