34

“Have you seen the news from home?”

Kira looked up from her desk at Abdullah Colombera’s question.

“I feel this is a silly question,” she admitted, “but let’s specify which home. The only thing I saw out of the Syntactic Cluster was a big announcement about a new university on Wilhelm.”

Wilhelm was a barely inhabitable hellhole, but it was also the only inhabitable piece of real estate in the four systems known as the Costar Systems—once home to the group of raiders called the Costar Clans and now rapidly growing dependencies of the Kingdom of Redward.

Like the industrial nodes, agriculture stations and new habitation platforms in all four systems, the University of Wilhelm was being underwritten almost entirely by the Kingdom’s government, an investment that King Larry and Queen Sonia expected to pay immense financial dividends in the future…but were making because it was changing the lives of a hundred million people and removing the need for them to be pirates at all.

“Well, I saw that,” Colombera conceded, “and having fought the Costar Clans, I’m a fan of everything that convinces the next generation to be engineers instead of pirates!”

He chuckled and took a cross-legged seat across from Kira.

“I meant home home. The Apollo-Brisingr Sector, if not necessarily Apollo itself.”

“I glanced at the news,” she admitted. “But I kind of…intentionally tune out most stuff about the area.”

“I don’t,” Colombera said flatly. “Especially as the Kaiser starts pushing the limits of the peace treaty. He’s testing to see what the Council will give up now.”

“I hadn’t picked that up,” Kira said slowly. Which made sense to her, at least. She wasn’t paying enough attention to notice that kind of slow provocation. “But…not really our problem, Scimitar, not unless someone back home wants to hire us.”

“You care more than that,” he countered. “We all still have family there, even if we’re distant from them.”

“I think my brother has sent me one message since I left,” Kira noted. “I told him where I was and how to get in touch with me, and I got a thank-you and a picture of the latest round of lambs in return.”

She chuckled.

“That wasn’t really unwelcome,” she said. “I love space, but I’ll always have a soft spot for sheep. But I sent him a response to that and never heard from him again.”

“I keep up an exchange with my mother,” Colombera told her. “Things are…complex on Apollo. Politics are worse than usual, and no one is quite sure where things are going. But a lot of people think Brisingr is going to keep pushing.”

“And enough are willing to let them that we gave up the damn war,” Kira replied bitterly. If she was being honest, Apollo and her allies had probably been reaching the end of their ability to fight the war, but they hadn’t lost yet when the treaty was signed.

“Yeah. And that makes me twitchy when odd things come up in the news from home,” Huntress’s CNG said quietly.

Kira sighed and checked her reports. Deception was due in about an hour, at which point she’d swap back to her usual quarters and office—and wouldn’t be nearly as accessible to Colombera, even with the extra access that being one of her old Apollo hands gave the man.

“Lay it out, Scimitar,” she instructed. “You’ve clearly seen the pieces yourself, so fill me in on the puzzle I’m missing.”

“Are you familiar with the Corosec System?” Colombera asked.

Kira had to pull up a datafile on the system—but once she did, she recognized it. She’d even been there once during the war, a short stopover while her carrier had been discharging static mid-op.

“Corosec is a backwater without a habitable planet,” she noted. “Like the Costar Systems, rich enough in assorted resources to be worth exploiting, but it sucks to live there.”

“About the only extraterritorial possession Apollo had left after the war,” Colombera said. “Three million or so souls, working away for the greater glory of assorted corporate masters.”

The Costar Clans had been born out of assorted workers left behind in those star systems after failed attempts to exploit the resources there. Given how Redward was handling them now… Well, Corosec was a reminder that things could have ended worse for them.

“Wait,” Kira raised a hand, catching part of what he’d said. “The only possession Apollo had?”

“Past tense, yes,” he said quietly. “Somebody hit the colony a month ago. It’s gone.”

“That’s not possible,” she argued. “I mean, it wasn’t anybody’s core system, but the ASDF had a proper asteroid fort there to watch over the corp stations.”

“And it’s gone too,” Colombera replied. “I don’t know details. Apollo isn’t releasing much, but it sounds like somebody sabotaged the asteroid fort and then overran the defensive squadron.”

Somebody?” Kira countered. “Entire star systems don’t get taken over by anonymous movers.”

“No one is sure who,” he told her. “Packed up everything of value and abandoned the system, leaving behind a couple of hundred nukes to cover their trails. If any of the workers survived, the raiders took them, too.”

“Fuck.” Kira stared into space for a moment. Three million people didn’t move easily—but they could be moved quickly with the right kind of resources. “There shouldn’t be any pirate forces with that kind of strength in the Sector,” she murmured. “It has to be Brisingr.”

“What little evidence I can find from here is pretty definitive that it wasn’t; that’s the weird part,” Colombera replied. “But I can’t see anyone else with the motive and the firepower to take down even one asteroid fort.

“I just wish I could guess what was in Corosec that was worth it. Only good news is that a joint expedition from a bunch of the old Friends of Apollo is helping the ASDF sift through the wreckage for survivors.”

“There just aren’t any,” Kira guessed grimly. “No one who went that far was going to leave anything behind. They would have made damn sure.”

“That’s my guess.” Colombera shook his head. “Whoever did this, everyone is looking to Brisingr to solve the problem. That’s what the kind of treaty they signed with Apollo means…which seems to have thrown a wrench in their other plans.”

“If they can’t secure the trade routes and protect the systems in the sector, then their claim of supremacy starts looking real thin, doesn’t it,” Kira agreed. “But they’re also the most likely culprit, too, whatever the sensor data says.”

“I don’t know if it’s going to impact us, boss, but I wanted to make sure you took a look at the mess before Huntress and I head out on patrol,” Colombera told her. “Maybe you’ll see something I missed.”

“I’ll take a look, Scimitar,” she promised. “But I suspect you’ve already found the bits that matter.”

She sighed and shook her head.

“It’s still not our problem,” she reminded him. “But you’re right. It’s something we should be paying attention to.”

* * *

“Admiral, are you with us?”

Kira blinked away the report she’d been looking at and glanced over at Bueller.

“Sorry, what?”

Her boyfriend was rarely that formal in private, and the only other person in the passenger compartment of the shuttle carrying them back to Deception was Milani—and while the armored merc was a subordinate, they were also a trusted friend.

“I don’t mean to interrupt work, but you were even more absorbed than usual and missed my asking what you wanted for dinner,” Konrad teased. “Once I take a run through Engineering, I figured I could cook something up.”

“Ah, fair,” she allowed. “Um. I…”

He snorted and leaned back in his chair.

“All right, mutton burgers it is,” he promised. “If you tell me what’s bothering you.”

Kira met his gaze and he smiled at her reassuringly.

Sighing, she flipped the report to him with a small gesture.

“Corosec System, in our home sector. You know it?” she asked.

“Vaguely,” he admitted. “Extra-stellar territory of Apollo, right? Transuranics mining, among other things?”

“Exactly. Someone wiped them out.”

Her boyfriend was suddenly very stiff and still.

“There were…several million people there,” he murmured.

“Three, per the news reports on the incident,” she confirmed. “And an asteroid fort. Parties unknown appear to have disabled the fort and overrun the system. They stole everything that wasn’t nailed down and kidnapped anyone they didn’t kill.”

“And then nuked everything to cover their trails,” Konrad whispered. “Gods.”

“I’m trying to see if I can find anything in the publicly available data to work out who did it.” She sighed. “I know wiser heads with more information are working on the same thing back on Apollo, but I can’t help but feel I have some perspective they don’t.”

“You think it was Equilibrium,” he concluded. His eyes were flickering back and forth as he reviewed the same data she’d been reading. “This report seems pretty definitive it wasn’t Brisingr.”

“And that report was from an Attacan destroyer, not an Apollo or Brisingr ship,” Kira noted. “The Attaca System is part of the old Friends of Apollo and they are pissed about our surrender. The Agreement forced them to scrap two practically complete battle carriers.”

“So, they hate both Apollo and Brisingr,” Konrad said drily. “That does make them a somewhat trustworthy source. And the old-light data seems…clean enough.”

“The fortress never even fired. It just sat there until they rigged everything in the system with nukes and vaporized it with the mining stations,” Kira told him. “But the ships…I don’t recognize them.”

“Neither do I,” her boyfriend admitted. “Not from Brisingr service, not from Equilibrium service, either. I’d say they’re mostly…armed transports, not even warships. They knew the fort was going to be out of commission.”

“Whoever they are, they killed or kidnapped three million people,” she said. “If we can find a clue, that’s a contract I’ll take at a bloody discount.”

“And the whole damn fleet will line up behind you to do it,” Konrad promised.

“Without question,” Milani added. “Very few people end up as mercenaries without having some kind of encounter with piracy. On this scale… Memorial Force will follow you into hell to find any of those poor bastards who are left.”

“Thanks, Milani,” Kira told her subordinate. “Fortunately, dealing with a pirate fleet willing to do something like this… That might be the only thing in the galaxy even I think the Brisingr Kaiserreich Navy might be good for!”

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