Imperfect Sword

Chapter Twelve

Everything was still moving very fast, but it felt like it was happening too slowly. Marphissa watched as the Syndicate battleship, unable to counter its own momentum quickly enough, zoomed upward just past Midway’s bow instead of just past her stern. She did not actually see every weapon on Midway lash out at the stern quarter of the Syndicate battleship. It happened far too fast for human senses to register. Nor did she see her cruisers and Hunter-Killers add their fire to the barrage, or the weapons on the Syndicate warships firing back, the angle a bad one for the Syndicate battleship so that many of its weapons could not get shots off.

Manticore shuddered from a few hits, but Marphissa didn’t hear any alarms going off to signify major damage.

The two formations separated more slowly this time, the Midway formation continuing to swing outward in a flat arc while the Syndicate formation angled away.

Marphissa didn’t wait this time to see the results of the engagement. “All units, immediate execute, come up one two five degrees, accelerate to point one light speed.” Her formation bent upward again, Midway lighting off all of her main propulsion again, the warships now on their backs relative to their earlier alignment, which made no difference at all to the spacecraft or their crews.

As her ships came around, she saw the results of the engagement show up on her display.

A single Hunter-Killer still accompanied the Syndicate battleship. The light cruiser was rolling off into the distance, all systems dead, one of the Hunter-Killers had blown up, and the third had broken into several pieces, which were tumbling away.

The few surviving enemy escorts must have concentrated their fire on Manticore. A few shots had gotten through her shields but had been weakened enough that they had failed to penetrate her armor. No other friendly warship except Midway had taken hits, and every shot aimed at Midway by the Syndicate battleship seemed to have hit her bow area, where her strongest shields and heaviest armor were placed.

Marphissa inhaled deeply as she saw the results of Midway’s fire on the Syndicate battleship. She had not realized until that moment that she had been holding her breath.

CEO Boucher’s battleship looked as if a god’s hammer had slammed into its stern quarter and stern. The battleship was trying to regain maneuvering control, but having trouble, with more than half of its main propulsion units and a lot of maneuvering thrusters destroyed.

“I wish I could have seen her face,” Diaz said. “I wish I could have seen Happy Hua when she realized that Midway had all of her weapons operational, and they were all firing at her rear end as she waltzed past.”

“Yes,” Marphissa agreed. “That would have been nice. Kapitan Mercia, what’s the best way to finish off the Syndicate battleship?”

“Take us past his stern again, Kommodor. If he hasn’t regained maneuvering control, we can hammer him hard, and even if he does get control, he won’t be able to evade us. I am happy to report that all of Midway’s weapons worked at high efficiency.”

Marphissa brought her formation a bit farther down and angled it to port to match the wavering movements of the Syndicate battleship. The lone Syndicate Hunter-Killer still hung by the battleship, but the little warship offered the battleship no real additional protection. “They’re getting the battleship straightened out,” Diaz said, “but they’re having a lot of trouble. The remaining main propulsion units are all pushing to one side of the center of mass, and it’s taking all they can manage to keep the battleship from going into a wide spin.”

“They will have an easier time controlling it if they cut back on the remaining main propulsion units, Kapitan,” the maneuvering specialist offered.

“They would? Yes. I see that. But they will not because CEO Boucher will not let them.” Diaz looked at Marphissa. “Am I right?”

“Very likely,” she agreed. “It will be very hard to convince a Syndicate CEO that reducing thrust at a time like this is the right course of action. Boucher will think that she needs to keep her remaining thrust at maximum even though that’s the wrong thing to do since it’s making it harder to keep the battleship on course. We’re going to come on the stern quarter opposite the one we hit last time and hammer that battleship’s remaining main propulsion. They won’t be able to turn his bow to face us with their main propulsion shoving them in the opposite direction, so they’ll have to try turning away from us and bringing the bow all the way around the long way.”

“Even if he turns away, we’ll probably still get clean shots at his stern,” Diaz said.

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

With the Syndicate battleship wavering up and toward the star, while Marphissa’s flotilla closed in from behind and below, this was much more of a stern chase than the previous encounters, which reduced the relative speed of the encounter a great deal.

Kapitan Mercia called in. “We can brake velocity as we approach to get the relative speed close enough to zero that Midway can sit there and pound on that Syndicate bastard until he breaks.”

“Not yet,” Marphissa said. “Braking down our velocity like that would take more time and prolong our approach. If we give her enough time, Happy Hua may still figure out what she needs to do to get that battleship’s bow around in time to meet us. I want the rest of her main propulsion taken out so she can’t escape. After that, when we come back again, we’ll come in slow enough to pound the hell out of that battleship for as long as it takes.”

“Yes, Kommodor. Request permission to alter my own vector a little as necessary on the final approach to maximize my chances of hitting that battleship’s stern hard.”

“Permission granted,” Marphissa said. “I will tell the other warships not to conform to your movement this time because I want to ensure that CEO Boucher’s ship doesn’t get good shots at any of our escorts while you’re angling for a good shot from Midway.”

Mercia paused, then nodded carefully. “I should have considered that, Kommodor.”

“It’s my job to consider such matters,” Marphissa said. “Yours is to get that Syndicate battleship.”

They overtook and tore past CEO Boucher’s sadly diminished flotilla in another moment of extreme violence. This time, Manticore jerked badly a couple of times, and alarms sounded in the wake of the firing run.

“Happy Hua targeted us this time,” Diaz said, looking furious. “She couldn’t get in good shots at Midway, but she tried to nail us.”

“How bad is it?” Marphissa asked.

“A hell-lance battery out as well as one of the missile launchers. Hull penetrations in two places. Two dead and a dozen injured.”

Marphissa winced internally at the losses but kept her gaze on her display.

The Syndicate battleship’s staggering attempts to swing its bow around had not come close to succeeding. Midway had hit its stern badly, taking out all but one of the remaining main propulsion units and badly chewing up another one of the battleship’s aft quarters.

On the other hand, Manticore had not been the only escort hit by the Syndicate battleship’s fire. Gryphon had taken one bad hit, Eagle had lost some of her main propulsion, and Hawk was temporarily unable to maneuver. Marphissa had deliberately kept her Hunter-Killers away from the battleship during the engagement, which was probably the only thing that had saved them from being badly damaged or destroyed.

Marphissa searched her display for the fate of the sole surviving Syndicate escort and spotted the Hunter-Killer bolting at maximum acceleration on a long, curving trajectory that would bring it to the jump point for Kiribati, far across the star system.

She made a quick check of the fuel-cell status on her own Hunter-Killers and shook her head. “We’ll have to let him go,” Marphissa told Diaz. “Our own Hunter-Killers don’t have the fuel-cell reserves left to catch him.”

“Too bad.”

“Yes.” She touched her comm controls. “Midway, you are to detach from the formation and operate independently to finish disabling and destroy the Syndicate battleship. I will keep the rest of the formation clear to avoid sustaining any more damage until the enemy battleship has been rendered safe to approach.”

“It shall be done,” Kapitan Mercia said, baring her teeth.

“Gryphon, stay with Hawk until Hawk regains maneuvering control, then both of you rejoin the formation.”

“Yes, Kommodor,” Kapitan Stein acknowledged, not quite hiding her relief at not being asked to once more exchange fire with a battleship.

As Midway began cumbersomely swinging about to reengage the enemy battleship, Marphissa began to reverse course by pivoting her remaining ships in place and starting to kill their momentum before accelerating back along the same vector in the opposite direction. Unlike Midway, though, she wouldn’t be closing to firing range again until that enemy battleship had lost its fangs.

The Syndicate battleship no longer had the unbalanced thrust of its main propulsion shoving it to one side, but it had also lost a lot of thrusters aft. Even a ship with a lot less mass would have found it hard to maneuver under those circumstances, but a battleship faced serious trouble. And with only one main propulsion unit still working, it could not accelerate fast enough or change vectors quickly enough to have any hope of escape or evasion.

That left slugging it out with the Midway, and as Marphissa watched, the Syndicate battleship tried once again to swing its bow around in time to meet the latest charge.

But Kapitan Mercia had her thrusters and main propulsion still intact, so while the Midway remained a clumsy elephant compared to smaller warships, she was a graceful, light-footed elephant compared to the damaged enemy battleship.

Using her momentum to skate around the enemy battleship faster than it could turn, Mercia’s battleship raked the enemy from one quarter to the other, destroying the last working main propulsion unit and smashing weapons, sensors, and anything else that wasn’t fully protected by the battleship’s armor.

CEO Boucher’s battleship staggered, beginning a slow tumble under the force of the hits that its remaining thrusters strove to counter.

Having reduced her relative velocity to something nearly matching that of the Syndicate battleship, Mercia had Midway back in position within ten minutes and began hammering the enemy systematically, working her way up from the stern to smash section after section of the enemy warship while exposing Midway to only a few enemy weapons at a time.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Diaz said with awe as he watched the methodical destruction of the enemy battleship’s weapons and remaining thrusters. “You look at a battleship and you know the weapons they carry and the defenses they have, but it isn’t until you see something like this, with our battleship hurling out volley after volley that would each tear Manticore apart, and the other battleship soaking up all that damage and still going, that you really appreciate what terrible monsters they are.”

“It’s not pretty,” Marphissa agreed. “If that ship hadn’t done most of the damage at Kane, I might feel a little sorry for them.”

“There must be a lot of snakes aboard forcing them—” Diaz began.

“I don’t care,” Marphissa said, her voice low and angry. “We had snakes aboard, and we did something. They’re dying, but they could still do something.”

They were doing something, but it consisted of attempts to continue fighting. The Syndicate battleship volleyed missiles at the Midway, but the range was so short that Midway could target the missiles with hell lances right after launch as the missiles were at a low relative velocity. The few missiles that survived failed to break through Midway’s shields.

Once their missiles were exhausted, the Syndicate crew tried firing bombardment projectiles at the Midway whenever a launcher was able to bear on her. But Midway was able to use her thrusters to twist out of the way of incoming rocks, adding in bursts of acceleration from her main propulsion when necessary. No launcher got more than a single bombardment projectile off before being knocked out, since they had to be visible to Midway’s weapons in order to fire on the battleship.

As the escorts watched the slow crushing of the Syndicate battleship’s ability to fight, Gryphon and Hawk rejoined Marphissa’s formation, the light cruiser having managed to get enough thrusters working again to maneuver.

Midway had meticulously hammered about two-thirds of the hull of the enemy battleship when the enemy abruptly stopped firing.

“Hold fire,” Marphissa ordered.

Mercia didn’t look happy at the command. “The Syndicate battleship is still dangerous.”

“I know, but if he starts firing again, you can continue reducing his defenses.” Marphissa pointed to her display, where an image mostly covered with red damage markers represented the enemy ship. “If they are ready to surrender, we can use that battleship, even if only as a source of parts.”

“The snakes won’t surrender, Kommodor,” Mercia insisted.

“I know that,” Marphissa said. “The snakes on my ships didn’t surrender, either. We got rid of them. If the crew on that battleship has finally had enough, they may be eliminating the snakes aboard as we speak.”

“How long do you want me to wait?”

“I’ll let you know.” Marphissa ended the call, feeling annoyed. Mercia might have said she was ready to acknowledge Marphissa’s authority when everything was going her way, but when Marphissa’s orders had conflicted with Mercia’s desires, there had been some obvious friction.

They waited, watching the mauled Syndicate battleship roll and tumble slowly through space. “Are we seeing any signs of what is happening inside?” Marphissa asked.

“Nothing, Kommodor,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla said. “No messages, no signs of activity, nothing being detected by our other sensors.”

Another five minutes crawled by, while Marphissa tried to decide how much longer to wait before ordering Mercia to open fire again. She felt a perverse desire to stretch out the time before such an order just to punish Mercia for being less than enthusiastically compliant, but rejected the thought. “If nothing happens in five minutes more,” she told Mercia, “you are authorized to resume firing.”

Mercia kept her expression and voice professionally dispassionate as she replied. “Yes, Kommodor. I will have Midway in position.”

With just two minutes to go, activity finally occurred.

“Escape pod launch from the Syndicate battleship,” Czilla reported. “Another… three… four more. They’re coming out fast, lots of them.”

“Get me contact with one of those pods,” Marphissa ordered. “I want to know who is abandoning ship and why. Kapitan Mercia, continue holding your fire until we learn what is going on.”

“I am not to target the escape pods?” Mercia asked.

“No. We do not— That is no longer policy, not where President Iceni has authority.”

“O brave new world that has such people in it,” Mercia said, citing the old quote usually used sarcastically. But she gave Marphissa a look that was anything but sarcastic or biting. “Sometimes I don’t know whether these new policies are real until I see what President Iceni’s people do when presented with opportunities to violate those policies.”

“I hope you approve,” Marphissa said, her tone sharper than she had intended.

“Yes, Kommodor. My apologies if earlier I did not act with sufficient respect.”

She seemed sincere enough, so Marphissa waved a dismissive hand. “It takes time to adjust to new situations.”

“It does indeed.”

As far as the escape pods from the Syndicate battleship went, it also took a little time, a few more minutes, to gain contact with one of them while Marphissa waited with growing impatience.

“We have a pod,” Manticore’s comm specialist announced.

“Show me,” Marphissa ordered.

The virtual window that popped into existence before her showed the interior of a standard Syndicate warship escape pod, this one packed with personnel. Looking over the figures she could see, Marphissa judged that all were workers since no portions of executive or sub-CEO outfits could be seen under their survival suits. “I am Kommodor Marphissa of the Free and Independent Midway Star System. Who are you?”

The workers nearest the vid pickup looked at each other, then one middle-aged man licked his lips and answered. “Line Worker Tomas Fidor. Propulsion Section Five. Maintenance Office One. Engineering Department.”

“What is happening on the battleship that you left?”

“We left… um… honored…”

“I am the Kommodor in command of Midway’s warships in this star system,” she said, hearing the snap of command enter her voice. “We are not Syndicate. I know that you left your battleship. I want to know why. Was an order given to abandon ship? Is there fighting going on inside that ship?”

Fidor nodded quickly, then shook his head. “No. I mean, yes. There was no order to abandon ship. The word was passed among the workers. There is fighting. The snakes, they are crazy. There are so many of them. A lot are dead, but we couldn’t get them all.”

“How many of the crew are left aboard?” Marphissa demanded. “How many snakes?”

The image fuzzed as something interfered with the signal, then cleared, showing the worker grinning nervously. “I don’t know. Everyone was trying to get off. Everyone but the snakes.”

“Where is CEO Boucher? Is she still alive?”

The worker’s face spasmed with hate. “She is still alive. No one can get to her.”

“Is CEO Boucher sealed into the bridge citadel?”

“Y-yes. No one can get in there. No one can get close.”

“What about the weapons-control citadel and the engineering control citadel?” Marphissa asked.

“Weapons was abandoned. Nobody there anymore. The weapons-integration systems crashed, and the weapons couldn’t fire from central control, so everyone left. Except some snakes, but they couldn’t do anything.”

Marphissa narrowed her eyes at the worker’s image. “What about engineering?” she pressed.

“Engineering? Um… engineering…”

“I am trying to decide whether or not to board that battleship to gain possession of it,” Marphissa lied. “I will be very unhappy if there is something I should know before that happens, and you do not tell me.”

“I— You don’t want to go aboard that unit! Just don’t!”

“They’ve done something,” Diaz said. “Before they left the battleship. Engineering specialist, are we picking up anything from the battleship?”

The engineering specialist standing watch on Manticore’s bridge answered immediately. “Minor fluctuations in the power core, Kapitan. That’s understandable given the amount of damage the battleship has sustained. Different systems will be erratically dropping online and off-line in ways that cause core fluctuations as it copes with the variations in power demand.”

“Is that the only explanation or the most likely explanation?”

The specialist did not hesitate. “The most likely, Kapitan. There is a chance it could also be early signs of instability in the core itself.”

“What did you do?” Marphissa asked the worker, her voice low but commanding.

“I did nothing!”

“What is about to happen?”

The worker’s expression visibly wavered with indecision.

“I can ask anyone else in any other escape pod,” Marphissa said, her tone now implacable. “If you plan on living, one of my ships has to pick you up. Now, give me a straight and clear answer with no further delays.”

“Y-yes, honored supervisor.” The man swallowed, looking terror-struck. “There’s a mechanism that the snakes installed. To cause an overload. After all the snakes in the engineering control areas died,” he said, phrasing it as if the snakes had all just suddenly dropped dead of their own accord, “we modified it.”

“Modified it?”

“It’s on a timer. We think it will blow in about… what is the time now… about ten more minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” Marphissa flared. “If the power core on that battleship overloads in ten minutes, a lot of your escape pods will still be within its danger radius! They can’t accelerate fast enough to get clear!”

“We didn’t want the snakes left aboard to have time to find out what we had done and override it!”

“Idiots,” Diaz murmured, his eyes on his display. “Kommodor, our ships might be able to pick up some of the escape pods that will still be within the danger region—”

“No,” Marphissa replied. “They jury-rigged something to put that self-destruct device on a timer. We don’t know for certain when the power core will overload. I cannot risk any of my ships being caught by that blast.” She hit her comm controls, cursing vengeance-minded workers who didn’t stop to think through their plans for reprisal against their supervisors and the snakes. “All ships, this is Kommodor Marphissa. The Syndicate battleship’s power core is rigged to overload in roughly ten minutes, possibly less. All units are to immediately use maximum acceleration to clear the danger radius around the battleship. Stay clear of the danger zone until I give permission to reenter it. All ships acknowledge and get moving!”

Midway was closest to the Syndicate battleship and had the farthest to go to clear the blast radius, but fortunately she was also by far the most heavily armored and shielded of the warships and thus best able to ride out the shock if it happened too quickly. Marphissa had barely finished speaking before Midway’s thrusters came to life on full, pivoting her to one side, the battleship’s main propulsion kicking in as soon as Midway’s bow had swung far enough away from the enemy warship.

“All of our ships should be all right,” Kapitan Diaz noted. “Five minutes less warning, and it would have been a different story.”

“Are your sensors picking up definite instability indications from the battleship’s power core yet?” Marphissa asked.

“Not yet,” the engineering specialist answered. “Just what we had before. But, Kommodor, when we saw this snake device used at Midway, you remember the light cruiser they destroyed when it mutinied, there were no warning signs until the power core entered the last stages of overload, and those came with unusual rapidity.”

“That’s right.” She looked at Diaz as another thought occurred to her. “How do we know those idiot workers actually set the overload device before they fled?”

“Did you see how scared they were?” Diaz answered. “They sure seemed frightened of being caught in that blast to me. Ah. All ships are clearing the danger radius, Kommodor. Midway is the last, and she will be beyond any danger within a minute.”

“Good.” Marphissa stared at her display. “See if your comm specialist can establish contact with the Syndicate battleship. I want to speak to their commander.”

“Kommodor, that will be CEO Hua Boucher.”

“I know. I want to speak to her,” Marphissa repeated.

It took another half minute before a new virtual window appeared before Marphissa.

CEO Hua Boucher, the “Happy Hua” whose grandmotherly appearance and pleasant demeanor had lured countless victims into deadly overconfidence or confessions, sat in the command seat on the battleship as if nothing could cause her to move from it. She had a frown creasing her usually cheerful face, but otherwise what could be seen of the bridge of the battleship had a jarring feel of the routine to it. Buried deep with the hull of the warship behind immense armor and the sheer mass of all the intervening compartments, the bridge was physically untouched by the battering which had been inflicted on the Syndicate battleship’s hull. “What do you want?” Hua Boucher demanded like a disappointed elder.

Marphissa gazed back at her, marveling at how different outward appearances could be from the person inside. “I wanted to see the sort of human who could order the bombardment of Kane.”

“They were traitors. They had murdered servants of the Syndicate. They had no right to expect any other fate,” Hua Boucher explained, still in those disappointed tones.

“That’s it?” Marphissa paused, trying to find words. “I grew up in the Syndicate. I know how horrible it is. But it is supposed to be efficient, it is supposed to be practical. Why kill all those people, why destroy so much? All you did was convince everyone in this part of space that the Syndicate cannot be trusted, that they must prepare to defend themselves against the Syndicate.”

“Any other traitors will be dealt with in the same way,” Hua Boucher said. From force of habit, her words came out sounding like a firm but gentle admonition.

“No,” Marphissa said. “You can’t keep that up any longer. You must know that. The Syndicate government on Prime must know that. Why? Why did you do something that you must have known would turn more people against you?”

“If one death does not convince traitors of their errors, then ten deaths will,” Happy Hua said in her grandmotherly way. “If ten deaths do not, then a hundred will. If a hundred do not—”

Snake philosophy, laid out in the starkest possible terms. Marphissa looked away, trying to regain her composure. “You’re about to die. Do you have any regrets at all?”

“Only that you did not die first.” Happy Hua smiled. “But that may still happen. We may not be as easy to overcome as you think.”

“We’re not boarding your ship,” Marphissa said.

“Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said to Diaz, “we’re seeing a sudden jump in power fluctuations on the battleship.”

“How long do they have left?” Diaz asked.

“I estimate thirty seconds, Kapitan. No more than a minute.”

Happy Hua was still gazing back at Marphissa, but with some amused puzzlement now. “Do you intend starving us out?”

“No,” Marphissa said. She could see, in the background behind Hua Boucher, people suddenly rushing around on the Syndicate battleship’s bridge. They no longer had any means of controlling their power core from the bridge, but their instruments could tell them what was happening. “I had no choice in this. The workers you terrorized, tortured, and murdered have had their revenge. They killed you. Take that thought to hell with you.”

For the first time, Happy Hua looked rattled, her eyes widening. She started to turn to speak to someone at the back of the bridge.

Her image vanished.

“Overload, Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said.

“We are well outside the danger region,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla said. “We will feel the shock wave, but it will have spread out too much to be a danger to us.”

Diaz nodded, touching a control to speak throughout Manticore. “Brace for shock wave.”

Manticore rocked like an oceangoing vessel hit by a large swell.

“No damage to Manticore, Kapitan,” Czilla reported.

Diaz waved one hand in acknowledgment. “Kane is avenged, as are the crew who died aboard Harrier,” he told Marphissa.

“And yet I have no joy,” Marphissa murmured. “Only satisfaction that she will kill no more.” She straightened and checked her display. The Hunter-Killer that was the sole surviving Syndicate warship in this star system was still fleeing toward the jump point for Kiribati.

Marphissa touched her comm controls. “Midway, you are detached to proceed at best speed to the inhabited world and provide support to our ground forces on that planet. All other ships, operate independently to recover surviving escape pods. Keep all Syndicate personnel you recover under guard until we can screen them to see if any snakes are among them.

“The space of this star system is ours. You have won it. For the people, Marphissa, out.”

Iceni ate dinner in her office, seeking solitude to recover from the shock of the day’s events and the stress of having dealt one-on-one with so many citizens without a single intermediary. It hadn’t killed her, but it had been so different from anything in her experience that she was still trying to adjust to the mental and emotional strain of it.

“Madam President, we have received a message from the Alliance mobile forces. It is marked as a reply to your earlier message.”

Iceni took a drink of wine before answering. “Send it to me. There’s still no sign of Mehmet Togo?” She had wondered if he had somehow been trapped by the mobs, penned into some location from which he couldn’t escape without attracting far too much attention. But if that had been the case, he should have been able to move again after the threatening mobs turned into participants in a planetwide festival that was still ongoing in many places.

“No, Madam President.”

She peered at the command center supervisor. “How long have you been on duty? Didn’t I speak to you this morning?”

“Yes, Madam President, you did, but we were ordered to remain on full alert until stood-down, so I have remained on duty.”

Iceni barely managed not to roll her eyes in exasperation. Some senior supervisor had decided to play it as safe as possible by keeping all of the more junior personnel on full alert. “Stand down from alert status. Return to normal routine. Advise all offices of that, then you get some rest.”

The supervisor smiled in sudden relief. “Thank you, Madam President. You… thank you.”

She sighed as that window vanished and another appeared with Black Jack’s message ready to play. If her supervisors started acting like those citizens in the plaza, there wouldn’t be anyplace left for her to hide.

Iceni poured more wine and leaned back, determined to be as relaxed as possible while viewing Black Jack’s message. If it was bad news, being tensed up wouldn’t make it better. She touched the play command.

Black Jack must have sent his reply as soon as he received Iceni’s message. He looked a bit stressed and worn, but given his responsibilities, that was understandable. Still, maybe someday she could give him a few pointers on managing his external appearance. Maybe at the same time he could give her pointers on dealing with masses of worshipful citizens.

“President Iceni, this is Admiral Geary,” he began. “We came here only to escort the Dancers back to Midway. They are proceeding home from here on their own. We cannot remain in this star system one minute longer than absolutely necessary because of the danger that the hypernet gate may be blocked before we can leave. I don’t know when any Alliance ships will be able to come through here again. Perhaps not until we figure out how to override that ability to block access to the gates. I regret that we cannot offer any assistance at this time and also that we cannot offer any suggestions as to the meaning of the message the Dancers sent you. Good luck, and may the living stars aid you. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

She sat thinking after the message had ended. She couldn’t fault Black Jack for not wanting to be trapped here if the Syndicate used its trick to block access to the hypernet. Until it was learned how the Syndicate was able to do that at times and places of its choosing, and more importantly how to counteract or nullify the block, everyone had to treat the hypernet as a potential one-way street that could leave them stranded far from home.

It would be a good idea to keep as secret as possible that Black Jack had no idea when he might return with a fleet at his back. Not that Black Jack showed up very often, but the uncertainty tied with the amount of power that the ruler of the Alliance wielded surely helped discourage some parties from planning aggression against Midway Star System and its allies. The Syndicate wasn’t the only problem out here.

May the living stars aid you. What exactly did that mean? She sent the query into her database, receiving a long answer about old religious beliefs and how they tied in with even older ones.

As she read, it gradually dawned on Iceni that the phrase meant that Black Jack was genuinely wishing for her success and invoking the most powerful influences he believed in to help her.

Well. That was good. That was very good.

Iceni raised her wineglass in a toast to a man who by now was somewhere nowhere in the hypernet. You are a very good friend to have, Black Jack. Here’s to what I hope will be a beautiful friendship.

But thinking of friends and the support they could offer somehow led to thoughts of Artur Drakon and wondering whether Midway had reached Ulindi in time to make a difference. That took a lot of joy out of the moment.

From this high up, the city where the ground forces had landed didn’t look too bad except for one large crater where the snake headquarters complex had once been and a big field littered with smaller craters that marked the site of the ground forces base. The base itself lay under an uneven, heavily cratered expanse that marked extensive surface-level bombardment.

Midway slid with ponderous grace into low orbit, hurling out bombardment projectiles that turned Syndicate artillery positions into more craters. A forest of hell lances danced downward from the battleship, tearing apart aerospace craft racing to hide or escape.

“Find the highest-power jamming sources,” Kapitan Mercia told her bridge crew. “I want them taken out so we can speak with our ground forces.”

“Bombardment?” her weapons specialist asked.

“Uh, no. Not unless they occupy isolated locations. We’re not Syndicate anymore. The people… are safe from us.” That felt very odd to say, but also very good. Mercia looked over at Bradamont, wondering if the Alliance officer was judging her, but instead Bradamont looked as if she was remembering unpleasant events. Of course. The Alliance had bombarded citizens, too. The realization that Bradamont would not be lording it over her about the Alliance’s smug moral superiority in that regard (and all others) relieved Mercia, but also saddened her that such a thing had to be among their shared experiences. “Do you think humans will ever reach the point where something like Kane could not happen?” she asked Bradamont.

The Alliance officer looked back at her. “Humans seem to have too great a talent for that sort of thing. But I hope we can make such things as rare as possible.”

“That’s something worth working for,” Mercia agreed.

“Something is going on in the Syndicate positions.”

Drakon raised his head, blinking away fatigue. How many days had it been since the assault force landed? He wondered if another up patch would be a good idea but decided to put that off a little longer. “What are you seeing?”

Colonel Kai pursed his lips judiciously. “It looks like fighting.”

“Fighting? In the Syndicate positions?”

“Yes, General. It could be a trick, of course, but to all appearances, the Syndicate troops encircling us are fighting each other at various points opposite my brigade.”

“General?” Colonel Safir called in. “What Colonel Kai is talking about, I’m seeing that spreading into the parts of the Syndicate line facing me.”

“Colonel Malin,” Drakon called, “are we picking up anything about the activity we’re seeing in the Syndicate positions?”

It took Malin a moment to answer. “General, there’s still a lot of jamming, so we’re not seeing any comms. Our sensors are spotting weapons fire that isn’t aimed at us, though. Wait. Here’s something. Watch this replay of an event that we just observed opposite sector five.”

Drakon saw a small virtual window appear on his display, the image zooming on part of the Syndicate positions as a single figure in battle armor stumbled out into the open and began running at an angle, not toward the base or back into the Syndicate lines, but through the open area between them. Whoever it was had only taken a half dozen steps before weapon discharges could be seen coming from the buildings behind. The figure stumbled, tried to regain its feet, then fell and lay unmoving.

“Unfortunately,” Malin said, “the lack of rank markers on the outside of the armor prevents us from knowing whether this was a worker, a supervisor, or a snake.”

“Should we intervene?” Safir asked.

“It could be a trick,” Kai said. “To lure us into sending troops into the open. That bit with the soldier shot down in plain sight was a bit too dramatic.”

“Colonel Kai raises an important point,” Malin said.

“There’s a lot of weapon discharges going on out there,” Safir argued. “If this is a trick, they are burning a lot of ammo and energy on it, and we’ve spotted other soldiers being hit inside the Syndicate positions.”

Drakon zoomed in his focus from the base sensors and those on his soldiers that could see the events playing out in the Syndicate line. The command network automatically integrated all of those pictures to create a single view that showed everything that could be seen.

The open area between the outer defenses of the base and the first row of buildings had once been a flat, level expanse of pavement in some spots and grass in others, kept painfully clean and clear to avoid offering cover or concealment. Now it was littered with the remnants of expired chaff round decoys and pitted by craters of varying sizes from bombardment. The remains of the soldiers that Drakon’s forces had lost assaulting the base were still out there, most of them hidden under the bodies of the much larger numbers of Syndicate ground forces who had died in repeated, futile attacks. A haze, born of the fighting, slowly dissipating chaff clouds, and the vestiges of the bombardments which had fallen on or near the open area, drifted slowly across Drakon’s field of vision, partially obscuring his view.

The buildings where his own soldiers had sheltered before taking the base, and which had been occupied by Syndicate soldiers since then, were riddled with large and small holes on their first stories. Some were merely skeletons of buildings, the curtain walls within and on their exteriors having collapsed to leave bent frames standing. Rubble from the buildings had been mounded before the largest holes to provide cover and block views, and also formed into temporary, low walls across the wide streets separating blocks of the buildings to allow concealed movement behind them. The damage allowed fragmentary views of activity among the Syndicate soldiers. Drakon could get momentary glimpses of soldiers rushing through the buildings in groups of various sizes, spot weapons discharges that were not aimed at the base occupied by his own soldiers, and occasionally what looked like brief hand-to-hand encounters. But the partial views left him unable to know what he was not seeing and did not provide a complete enough picture to be sure of what he was seeing.

Finally, he shook his head. “The odds of its being a snake trick are too high. The snakes wouldn’t hesitate to blow away one or a dozen soldiers to make a ruse look real. I’m also thinking that if we jump in, both sides in that fight might reunite to shoot at us.”

“That could happen,” Safir agreed reluctantly. “Just because they might be shooting their own officers and the snakes doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d want us taking them prisoner.”

“Do we have any more clues to what is going on?” Drakon asked.

Malin frowned at his display. “I’ve done a search for possible indications and found something. Within the last fifteen minutes, our sensors have picked up some significant ground tremors within one hundred kilometers of here, some within twenty kilometers.”

Drakon called up the data. “Looks like bombardment effects. Not a big, concentrated one, but a number of different strikes on single targets. That could have something to do with what we’re seeing in the Syndicate lines though I don’t know where the Kommodor could have gotten her hands on more rocks.”

A pulse of sound called attention to another development. “All high-powered jamming within three hundred kilometers of us has ceased,” a comm specialist soldier reported. “Someone is trying to contact us on authorized frequencies. They have our recognition codes.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Drakon asked. “It’s one of our warships, isn’t it?”

“General, they identify themselves as the Midway.”

“The Midway?” It took a few seconds for the meaning of that to work its way through his tired brain. “Our battleship? Where the hell did they come from? Patch them through to me.”

Drakon recognized the woman gazing at him from the command seat on the battleship’s bridge. He and Iceni had both had to agree on giving Mercia that command. “Kapitan Freya Mercia,” she formally introduced herself. “At your service, General Drakon. Kommodor Marphissa wishes me to advise you that the Syndicate warships in this star system have been destroyed with the exception of one Hunter-Killer which is fleeing for Kiribati and unfortunately cannot be intercepted. Midway is here to provide whatever support you require. We have already taken out a number of long-range threats to your positions, as well as active jamming sites covering your region of the planet.”

“Welcome to Ulindi, Kapitan,” Drakon said, only then realizing how dry his throat was. He hastily swallowed some water, then smiled. “I don’t know how the hell you got here, but it is very nice to see you.”

“President Iceni sent us on after you when she received information that Ulindi might be a trap,” Mercia said.

“She did?” He couldn’t wait to talk to Iceni about that. “And your weapons are working?”

“As that Syndicate battleship discovered to its sorrow. Would you like us to demonstrate on the Syndicate ground forces encircling you?”

Drakon checked his views of the Syndicate positions again, where all-out warfare was apparently raging. “Not yet. I think your appearance, on top of being pushed beyond their limits, has caused substantial portions of the Syndicate ground forces to rethink their allegiance to the Syndicate.”

She gave him a curious look. “Still, any that remain would be a threat.”

“Possibly. Or any that remain could form the nucleus for the ground forces of an independent Ulindi. Everybody down here used to be Syndicate, Kapitan.”

“Everybody up here, too. This mercy to the enemy thing is a little hard to get used to.”

“There’s still one set of enemies that we can’t afford to offer mercy. Do you have a location on the snake alternate command center?” Drakon asked.

“If the information we were provided is accurate, we do,” Mercia said.

“We need to make sure it is eliminated. Colonel— Our agent was supposed to disable the snakes’ ability to detonate their buried nukes from the alternate command center, but we haven’t heard from her and don’t know if she succeeded.”

“In a few minutes, you won’t have to worry, General.” Mercia turned to give the commands.

Malin was staring at Drakon. “General, if Colonel Morgan is still in or near that snake complex—”

“I know. Bran, I know.” Drakon met Malin’s gaze with his own. “But we can’t risk everyone else on the possibility that Roh Morgan is still alive and still in or close to the snake alternate command center. If the Syndicate ground forces are falling apart, the snakes could decide to set off those nukes at any moment, or at least the nukes under this city.”

Malin closed down, emotion vanishing from his face. He nodded. “That is true, General. We have no choice. It must be done as soon as possible. I know that if we did have a choice, you would act on it.”

“I would.” Despite everything that Morgan had done, and everything that she might yet do if still alive, she deserved that much for the services she had rendered him in the past.

Supreme CEO Haris walked rapidly through the halls of the Internal Security Service alternate command center, moving toward the entrance of the secret bolt-hole that would let him escape to a concealed hangar where a shuttle awaited, a shuttle equipped with the latest stealth gear available to the Syndicate. Several heavily armed bodyguards walked three meters ahead of him and several more three meters behind him.

Haris wiped sweat from his brow, trying to keep from breaking into a run, trying to figure out what had happened and how it had happened. After a career spent focused on promotion, on sucking up to his superiors and frequent transfers to punch as many tickets as possible, he hadn’t actually managed to acquire all that many concrete job skills. Doing the job hadn’t been the point. Not for him. Doing the job got in the way of maneuvering for that next promotion.

It was a career pattern that had produced some unexpected problems when he was secretly told to proclaim himself Supreme CEO of this star system. The biggest problem, to CEO Haris’s way of thinking, was that being diverted off the main ISS track meant he no longer had any promotions to vie for. That robbed him of purpose. The other problem, which Haris found annoying, was his lack of experience with the kind of day-to-day work that needed to be done when he could no longer count on someone else’s doing it. His current crop of subordinates had shown a growing tendency to fall down on doing his job, despite Haris’s attempts to motivate them by such measures as random arrests and executions.

In fact, he had started wondering if his superiors had chosen him for this job specifically because of his lack of effective skills other than those focused on promotion. Had they expected him to be unable to spot the ultrasecret preparations for the trap intended for Midway’s forces at Ulindi?

He had missed them—he had known only what he was told—but how could that be his fault? Hadn’t he simply been what his superiors wanted? That had always worked in the past.

Nothing had worked this time, though. The rebel ground forces had not only survived, they had wiped out Haris’s own brigade and taken his ground forces base. The Syndicate division had slaughtered itself attacking the base and, according to the reports he was receiving, was now disintegrating as the workers and some of the executives mutinied. CEO Boucher’s flotilla had been smashed by a battleship that the rebels weren’t even supposed to have in working condition, and now that rebel battleship was in orbit and turning what was left of the visible Internal Security Service infrastructure on the planet into tangled junk.

Fine. His superiors had left him without guidance, and his subordinates had failed. He was leaving, and the subordinates and workers could have the mess created by their own failure to support him properly. Not for long, though. Once Haris reached the entrance to the bolt-hole, he would enter the detonation codes to begin the countdowns for the nuclear weapons buried under every city on this planet. He would be well clear of the surface before nuclear fires terminated every incompetent on the planet along with every enemy on the surface.

As for him, he would just consider this another transfer, an opportunity to identify new positions to vie for in other star systems. It would take some creative wording to make the events here seem like a success justifying another promotion, but that was the one job skill Haris knew very well.

The end of the corridor came into sight as Haris and his bodyguards turned a corner and passed a security checkpoint whose occupants didn’t realize they would soon have the honor of sacrificing themselves to cover his escape. Another few hundred meters and—

The ceiling ahead suddenly erupted as a rectangular patch going all the way across the hall and perhaps four meters wide was outlined by a strip of fire. Haris stared, not recognizing that the cut-through represented breaching tape laid on the floor of the level above this one, breaching tape powerful enough to cut instantly through the armor in the ceiling. If he had been able to think quickly enough, he would have wondered what had happened to the guards and security sensors covering that section of the complex above him.

The section of ceiling outlined by the explosion dropped onto the bodyguards who had been walking just in front of Haris. There must have been a pinhole camera watching this corridor from above, to ensure the explosion was triggered at just the right moment.

Haris hadn’t really noticed the woman standing on the segment of ceiling as it fell, riding down on the broken fragment as if it were the floor of an elevator. He hadn’t noticed her wild smile, or the weapon in her hand as it fired three times, and never realized that three shots had slammed into his head before the falling portion of the armored ceiling had time to crush the leading set of bodyguards.

As his lifeless body dropped limply, Haris was also unaware of the corridor’s exploding into a storm of gunfire as his surviving bodyguards at the rear poured an avalanche of fire at the assassin.

The bombardment that Midway aimed at the concealed snake alternate command center fell through the sky as frightened citizens huddled and watched the fiery tracks. But the rocks did not fall on any of them. Instead, the buildings and parking lots of a drab industrial park were turned into a mass of rubble occupying the bottom of a crater. Anyone examining the crater would have found among the rubble the remnants of many things that had no place in an industrial park and would have noted that its depth implied quite a few layers of floors underground, but the people of Ulindi had a lot of other things to worry about at the moment. They couldn’t spare time for yet another pile of wreckage, or for wondering who might have died in it.