Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) (7 page)

“Why am I here?” Mustafa asked.

“Because you were invited,” Emilie replied. “And because I pay you.”

“I should have sent Sala.”

Emilie glanced over at Mustafa and ignored the remark. The invitation came after the second blink, once they finally reached a burn with sufficient time to allow the Captain to depart his vessel. So far the only communications from the ugly naval vessel was simple, terse, and spartan.

“So who’s this Captain?” Mustafa asked.

“William Grace. Rumor is, he’s from Farshore.”

Mustafa gave a crossways look at Emilie. “Bullshit.”

Emilie shrugged and stopped at a junction. She turned and followed the wafting waves of garlic down the passage.

Her mind drifted from the dinner back to her finances. The short week they’d been in transit gave her an opportunity to sit down with static numbers. No more data-dumps from the colonies to mess up her calculations.

She was locked in—for now, at least. The line between brilliance and idiocy seemed to be coming together. In a moment of reflection, she almost had Mustafa turn around.
Almost.
She had left everything behind on a gamble, a gamble to get back home, a gamble to be something more.

“Hold on,” Mustafa said. He reached into his shirt pocket and slid out a black nanite patch the size of a thumbnail. The sides shimmered as he did a quick stick and peel just below his collar. “Can you see it?” He raised his chin.

Emilie glared at him and shook her head. “Nothing too strong, I hope?”

“No. Just a little something to take the edge off.”

She nodded, turned a corner, and found the source of the garlic.

A table sat in the center of the auxiliary mess with only half of the places set. The tableware had old, slender lines and the edges were adorned in a crisp blue piping—a beautiful reproduction of something found four centuries before. Even the silverware was heavy, almost blocky, with the Krupp logo stamped large.

A pair of Marines stood behind a buffet heaped with various garlic-scented foods. At the table stood two male Naval officers. One had a hint of command, as if it was coated on with a brush. The other officer stood taller, but seemed more nervous and fidgety. Opposite sat two women, both plump with carbon pads on their temples. Pilots, Emilie thought, and definitely not military.

Emilie walked slowly and studied the room. A quick nod to the officers and a crisp smile to the civilians. She saw the rank of a Captain, that must be Grace. The two women had the easy grace of Core pilots, and that made sense as this was a Core transport. Both wore a bored look—disconnected, she thought.

“Crew of the
Gallipoli
, I assume. I’m Captain Grace.” He smiled and beckoned to a set of open chairs. “I hope you like garlic.”

Emilie passed the chair he offered and instead sat directly next to him. She glanced at the chair next to the pilots and Mustafa moved in beside them. “Thank you for the invitation,” she said to Captain Grace.

“It is a custom for the escort to host. We’d have you aboard our ship, but it is a bit cozy,” Captain Grace said.

“Looks like a rock to me,” Mustafa said.

Captain Grace smiled and chuckled. “Yes, it is. Accountants these days will toss a crew into anything.”

“What’s her name?” Emilie asked.

Captain Grace glanced to the officer next to him, then looked back to the group. “No name, not yet, not until we settle on one.”

Mustafa snorted and sat next to a cocoa skinned woman with a thin layer of reddish orange stubble on her head. “Mustafa,” he said to her, and held out a hand.

She regarded the hand as if it was a piece of raw meat and smiled back weakly. “Cordova Wile Bonaparte,” she said.

Captain Grace nodded to the Marines. “Shall we dine?”

Emilie admired the plates before her. “Are they originals?” she asked, knowing they weren’t.

“No, be a bloody million for that,” the other woman said in an accent of cultured English.

“They are still quite exquisite,” Emilie said, gently setting the plates down. Both of the women smiled and the tension slid away in the room. They might only be corporate pilots, she thought, but they still took pride in the ship.

“What sends you to Winterthur, Ms. Rose?” Cordova asked.

She was expecting the question, and decided to respond with the simplest answer: the truth. “I purchased all of the Core assets in that sector.”

The silence in the room leveled the immensity of the purchase.

She expected that, too. A slight smile, some charm, then she’d have them. “Core is pulling back at the moment, so I saw an opportunity.”

Cordova tapped the table. “Why would one ever want to retreat to that icy world? Not even a proper pub in the whole city.”

Emilie smiled politely and glanced at Captain Grace. “It’s where I grew up. How about you Cordova? Where are you from?”

“New Kingston, Royale Proper.”

“Ahh, a fine town I’ve heard. Amazing bakeries, yes?” Emilie looked over to Captain Grace. “And you, Captain?”

Captain Grace stared at the empty plate and glanced at the Marines. His delay was just long enough that she thought about asking again, in case he missed the question.

“Farshore, though I was raised in Montreal.”

Mustafa and the pilots exchanged glances and watched Captain Grace as if he was a unique animal.

“Interesting,” Emilie whispered.

Captain Grace smiled weakly. No one seemed to have anything to add. The guests took a moment, shifted in their chairs, and relaxed.

Captain Grace focused on the Marines. “The cuisine tonight is Serbian. Please do enjoy.”

The Marines descended upon the table with a culture and grace that seemed at odds with the gruff faces and rough demeanor. They looked more like chefs from a prison kitchen than serving haute cuisine. Emilie admired the plating, not top notch, but good enough to get them a line job in Chicago.

“So tell me, Captain, what do you know of Winterthur?” Emilie asked.

Captain Grace looked up from his food and finished chewing. “Precious little, what my charts tell me and little more. Well established industry, good sized colony, on the edge to nowhere. We don’t plan on stopping.”

“So it is true, we’ll have no garrison?”

Captain Grace wiped his mouth and leaned his elbows onto the table. “That will pass to the colony to administer.”

Emilie felt her pulse rising. She’d have possession of the only ship with a gun. That, all by itself, would be priceless. A nice cushy contract. Her eyes caught Mustafa’s, who had already picked up on it.

“We’ll be in system as long as it takes for this transport to get loaded, the
Grouper
to offload, and for us to inspect some assets,” Captain Grace said, plucking a garlic clove from inside an ivory white dinner roll.

“
Grouper
?” Mustafa asked, a mouthful of orange noodles slapping on his chin.

Captain Grace elbowed the young officer sitting next to him.

“The uh, freighter with us, the old one, sir,” Midshipman Bryce said.

“They are not dining with us?” Mustafa asked.

“The airlock design on the freighter will not couple to this modern of a ship,” Midshipman Bryce said.

“Unfortunate, I’d like to see who flies a museum.”

Captain Grace swallowed and took a swig of blood red wine. “This is Midshipman Bryce. In case you can’t tell from the complexion, he was blessed to be born on Haven.”

Emilie could see the look in the Midshipman. “How is Haven these days, Mr. Bryce?”

Bryce smiled. “Nice, ma’am.”

Captain Grace nodded to the Midshipman.

Emilie could see that the pilots were already itching to be done. They hardly touched dinner, Emilie assumed they preferred condensed meals fed while linked to the ship.

“Your corvette, uh, Mr. Mustafa, is there a last name?” Captain Grace asked.

“There is, but Mustafa works.”

Captain Grace nodded with a raised eyebrow and looked to Emilie. “You own the corvette then Ms. Rose?”

“Chartered,” Emilie responded.

“Mercenaries?” Captain Grace asked as he shoveled another load of food into his mouth. The Marines came behind him and landed another plate of steaming garlicky goodness before him.

In the silence, Mustafa leveled a fork at the Captain and waved it before him. “You. You take away that little silver platter on your shoulder and you’re the same.”

Emilie snapped her eyes to Mustafa and frowned at the Turk. Good god, she thought, what the fuck is he doing?

Captain Grace swallowed hard and set his fork down. “Mustafa, if that is your name, I’ve had dealings with mercenaries, on a corvette similar to yours. Took it, seized it, and fled with it.” The words came out thick like a bitter syrup. “As long as the good lady sees fit to keep your leash tight, you’ll be fine. But one slip and I’ll see you hang.”

Mustafa stood and slammed his fork onto the table. He opened his mouth and stopped himself. His upper lip flapped as he took heavy breaths.

Grgur and Igor each crossed their arms and took stepped forward.

“Mustafa!” Emilie yelled. “Take a walk.” The meal was an opportunity to pump the Captain for information, learn a bit—instead, she was running damage control.

The Turk turned and walked out of the room in silence. Captain Grace’s eyes followed him until he was gone. He shrugged it off and jammed another hunk of rich red pseudo-protein garlic sausage into his mouth. “You have my apologies, Ms. Rose, but I’ve seen the worst mercenaries can do.”

“Of course, Captain, now please do tell me about your chefs.”

She felt lucky to have struck on something Captain Grace enjoyed. The remainder of the meal was spent discussing the finer points of the dinner. Both of the Marines looked quite pleased by the finish of the evening. She regretted not being able to talk more shop with the Captain. He carefully deflected any critical question back to the topic of food.

The evening ended. Her last glimpse of Captain Grace was him stuffing garlic rolls into his pockets. She did a double take and shook her head as she walked away.

Typical Navy, she thought. Duty, country, a ship, and not much else. As predictable as economic units of citizens. She didn’t mean to think ill of him, but she knew that he was, to someone, just a pawn on a board. Her plan would go much smoother without a Naval asset in place. The sooner he was out and gone, the quicker she could secure a contract for patrol.

She found Mustafa sulking before the airlock. He glanced up and turned his head aside. They weren’t due to be picked up for another hour. The edge of the personnel carrier was cool with a hint of garlic still in the air.

“What was that? What the fuck was that?” Emilie asked. She leaned against the side wall and shook her head at Mustafa.

“We won’t have to deal with him anymore,” Mustafa said in a low voice.

“He hit a fucking nerve, didn’t he?” She watched Mustafa divert his gaze and shrug lightly. The Captain did hit a nerve she thought. “What did you go to prison for?”

Mustafa looked up from the floor and shook his head slowly. “That’s off limits.”

“Bullshit, it could jeopardize my contract. Which means it’ll jeopardize your pay.” She stabbed a finger at him. “What did you do?”

Mustafa ran a finger over his bare upper lip and licked his teeth. “We ran a job screening a corporate jump, early assets out of unclaimed space.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Emilie groaned. “Who did you steal from?”

“Dythco. But we were just a screen, we never touched the shit,” Mustafa said.

“So someone else ran, had a load of minerals, and you were left without any pay and a nice little prison sentence.”

Mustafa nodded slowly. “That’s about it.”

Emilie shook her head and pictured the operation. One ship would go in and seize the manufacturing operation while the other ran interference in case the owners popped in. Except in this case, when the owners showed up, Mustafa’s partner ran. “What happened to the other guy?”

Mustafa snorted. “They made it out. Laundered the minerals.”

“Just like that? Done?”

He nodded and shrugged. “Hard to argue with a battlecruiser.”

“How long?”

Mustafa looked at the floor and muttered, “two years.”

“So why the enmity? You got caught, did your time, that’s it.”

Mustafa stared and stepped closer. “It was my ship. They took everything! All they left me with was a hulk. Bare and stripped. I get out and she’s tethered on Luna, baking in the sun. My ship!
Mine!
” He shook with anger. “So you take that Captain, strip off his rank, and he’s just a merc with someone else’s ship. At least I own mine.”

Emilie didn’t like it. She didn’t like the fact that Mustafa had such a grudge. She didn’t understand, but she knew that owning a starship was like owning a house. It was personal, linked right to the soul. But more than a home, a world, a place where everything insured survival. She could see how someone could get attached to it.

“Just play it cool. We’ll be clear of them soon enough.”

“Then what?”

“Then we get a nice contract for system security and you’ll be the one busting ore thieves.”

Mustafa waited in silence.

––––––––

T
he small convoy plied the routes and passed the discarded jetsam like litter on the side of a highway. At every blink they saw empty canisters, wrecked transports, discarded containers, and mining debris. The shattered remnants of asteroids drifted and hung like clouds of sand.

After leaving Earth and passing through the icy bands that was the Oort cloud, they blinked through a region of interstellar deadness. The places where only radio waves sung. Starship traffic was light and the majority headed back to Earth.

Word of the attack reached the outer colonies and now they were responding. At every encounter, the convoy would open the datastream and transmit their previously loaded newsfeeds. One of the last data dumps they received was packed with news for the colonies. Everything from mineral prices to the latest gossip from the vids. At every encounter they sent it all.

“How’s the war? Did we slam ‘em?” one Chilean freighter asked, though they seemed more interested in the latest World Cup.