Tarnished Knight

Chapter Twelve

Iceni thought that her heart had stopped, only slowly realizing that Rogero had only fired once and that the shot had gone past her. She turned her head, seeing a snake still standing several meters behind her, swaying, a large hole in his chest. The snake’s weapon fell from hands that had lost life and strength, then he collapsed to the deck.

Rogero jogged past her to examine the snake and confirm that he was dead.

She swallowed, her heart pounding back into life. “I thought you said your soldiers would provide security for my visit to this unit, Colonel Rogero.”

“I have guards posted—”

“Then whichever guard is posted on that hallway is either already dead or soon will be—”

“Madam President.” Rogero’s voice halted her in midsentencing to a firing squad. “I left that passageway unguarded.”

She could either order him shot immediately or learn Rogero’s reasons. “Why?” Iceni asked with what she thought was admirable control.

“Because we knew that the snakes had seeded this unit with surveillance gear, but we couldn’t find all of it in the time we’ve had to work. Any surviving snakes would have known where I had guards on watch, would have known a shuttle was coming in, implying that a VIP was on the way, and would have seen that passageway unwatched. We also know these snakes had been conditioned to fight to the death rather than surrender. A surviving snake, seeing a path ‘accidentally’ left open, would have taken the opportunity to get the VIP using that opening rather than risk an ambush later on, an ambush that could have come at us at any time, from any direction.”

“And just how did this contribute to my security, Colonel Rogero?”

“It meant I knew exactly where and when to watch for anyone trying to attack you, Madam President.”

She stared at Rogero, still angry but realizing the logic of what he had done. “Very good. Don’t do that again.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

“Is that the sort of thing that General Drakon rewards in his subordinates?”

“Yes, Madam President.”

“I am different, Colonel Rogero. You’d be advised not to forget that. Lead me to the bridge.”

The short passageway in front of the bridge hatch felt menacing to Iceni as she walked partway down it, knowing that the eyes of the surviving crew on the bridge, and any surviving internal defenses, were focused on her. “This is President Iceni. This mobile forces unit is now under the control of the forces of the independent star system of Midway. I promise you safety. Now open up for us.”

The wait that followed seemed far too long. She was wondering if she should say more when Iceni heard gears hum into life and the soft hiss of massive bolts being withdrawn. There came a thunk, then the hatch swung inward with the ponderous movements of something that carried a lot of mass.

Iceni walked forward as Colonel Rogero and the nearby soldiers followed.

The bridge didn’t smell too good, which wasn’t surprising since its life support had been running on emergency local isolation mode for some time and the crew members inside the bridge clearly didn’t smell too good, either. Sub-Executive Kontos was forming the survivors on the bridge into two short ranks facing the entrance.

As Iceni halted, Kontos turned, the movement causing him to stagger dizzily against the nearest equipment. She waited while he straightened and saluted with an arm that wavered before Kontos’s fist hit his breast. “Sub-Executive Kontos, acting commanding officer of the outfitting crew on B-78.”

Iceni returned the salute with a solemn expression, seeing how the line workers standing in ranks swayed on their feet, their gaunt faces reflecting deprivation. “You’ve been on short rations?”

“The emergency supplies were not yet fully stocked since the unit is not operational,” Kontos replied in a clear, strong voice. “We have rationed supplies as necessary to hold our position until relieved.” Then he fell sideways again against another console and struggled to stand up.

“Everyone relax,” Iceni ordered. “Including you, Sub-Executive Kontos. Sit down, lie down, whatever you need. Colonel Rogero, get food and water up here. Kommodor Marphissa, do we still have a link?”

“Yes, Madam President.”

“Get that shuttle back to you. I want C-448’s physician and her assistant on this battleship as soon as possible. These crew members need attention. I don’t know what medical supplies are aboard this unit, so make sure she brings an emergency field pack.”

Rogero, who had finally opened his armor’s face shield, knelt to help Kontos sit back against a console. Straightening up again, he came to stand by Iceni and speak in a low voice. “He held them together. They’ve been slowly starving in here, isolated with no comms except when they managed to get around the snake blocks for brief periods, but he kept them from giving in. Pretty impressive for a junior subexecutive.”

“Do you think that I’d judge him harshly because he collapsed?”

“He is not at his best now,” Rogero said diplomatically.

“I can tell when someone has taken himself to the limit, Colonel Rogero, and I realize what it must have required to keep the rest of the crew effectively resisting.” Iceni nodded as she looked at Kontos where he sat slackly against the console. “If Sub-Executive Kontos wishes to remain with us, he will be more than welcome as one of our mobile forces officers.”

Rogero smiled. “I was going to say that if you didn’t want him, I was certain that General Drakon would.”

“Too bad. I’ve got dibs on him, Colonel.”

“You’re already getting the battleship, Madam President.”

Iceni stared at him. Rogero had a sense of humor. Who would have thought it? “I heard that one of your soldiers was injured.”

“Wounded. Not seriously. The snakes were equipped to slaughter unprepared mobile forces crew members, not to fight combat-armored troops.”

“How very unfortunate for them.”

“President Iceni?”

“Yes, Kommodor.”

“Light cruiser CL-924 has picked up the first escape pod from the heavy cruiser. They confirm that the occupants are crew, not snakes.”

Iceni fought down a sense of relief as suspicion rose in counterpoint to it. “They have identification as crew members or they are crew members?”

“They are, Madam President. I sent their images around the flotilla, and one of them is known to someone on C-413.”

“Good.” Iceni looked at the exhausted survivors of the outfitting crew around her as some soldiers arrived bearing ration packs. “Get that doctor over here.”

She spent a while touring the battleship under the watchful eyes of two of Rogero’s soldiers, who were along just in case any more snakes were lurking in the tremendous number of compartments and passageways inside the ship. The fire-control citadel and the engineering control citadel both had fewer survivors in them than the bridge had, but the crew there reported that Sub-Executive Kontos had managed to stay in communication with them despite snake efforts to break the links.

There was considerable irony in that, Iceni realized. The citadels existed because of fear the line workers in the crew might mutiny, or that the ship would be boarded by Alliance Marines. The citadels were designed and intended as places where the officers and ISS agents could hold out for a long time until the unit could be retaken by Syndicate forces. But the measures intended to make certain of Syndicate control had instead been used to save a good portion of the outfitting crew from the snakes and had ensured that Iceni could wrest control of the battleship from the Syndicate Worlds.

“Madam President, Colonel Rogero asked us to inform you that the crew members from the bridge have been taken to the main sick bay. It’s not fully outfitted, but the beds are in, and some of the equipment is working.”

“Take me there.”

The sick bay was far larger than it felt since the extensive wards and operating rooms were all divided at regular intervals by bulkheads intended to ensure that no single large compartment could be lost to damage or lose air pressure all at once. Like all battleships and battle cruisers, this ship was designed to deal with wounded from not just its own crew but the crews of any smaller escorts, ground forces, and anyone else.

At the moment, most of those half-equipped wards and rooms were silent and empty. The surviving members of the outfitting crew were almost all in a few wards, with just one representative of their teams remaining in each of the citadel locations. “Where is Sub-Executive Kontos?” Iceni asked Rogero when she saw him.

“He insisted on remaining on the bridge until properly relieved. The physician has been to see him, and I’ve made sure he’s got food and water.” Rogero gave her a questioning look. “Are you still sure that you want him?”

“Positive. Who’s the senior surviving crew member in here?”

“Probably this one.” Colonel Rogero led the way, his combat armor large and more menacing than usual in the environment of the sick bay, stopping at a bed holding a middle-aged man in a line worker’s uniform. “The food and water, and some meds your physician dealt out, have them all half-conscious right now.”

“I know how to wake him.” The man lay flat, breathing heavily, his eyes on the ceiling but dazed and out of focus. Iceni came to a stop right by the bed. “You,” she said, giving the single word an intonation that only CEOs used, making of it the shorthand question that every worker knew had to be answered quickly and accurately. Who are you, what is your job title, and what are you doing?

Reflexes drilled into the worker by a lifetime of experience jolted him into awareness. The eyes snapped into focus and went to her face. “Senior Line Worker Mentasa, systems integration, assigned to the outfitting crew for Mobile Unit B-78.” He struggled to sit up until Iceni reached out one hand and gently pushed him back.

“Rest,” Iceni said. “What can you tell me about what happened aboard this unit?”

The line worker blinked as if unable to order his thoughts and confused by Iceni’s actions, then nodded slowly. “We were working… our usual shifts. Our commander was… Sub-CEO Tanshivan. He was… what… supply ship. The supply ship. Priority delivery.” Mentasa blinked again. “The sub-CEO… went to meet it. We were in… in comms with him. Lots of people came out of the lock. Lots. Weapons. Sub-CEO yells ‘They’re here to kill us.’ Don’t know how he knew. Yelled it. ‘Seal citadels’ he ordered. And then… and then… he died. I mean… they shot. And… we lost comms.”

“You had no warning the snakes were coming? No reasons to think they might come?”

“No. Been… demonstar… demonstrations on the planet. Heard about that. Big rallies. Before the news feeds cut off. Not our business. Not sure what it was about. I never been here before. To Kane, I mean. A few days later… they came.”

“So you sealed the citadels?”

“Yes.” Line Worker Mentasa blinked back tears. “Not everybody inside. Just our shift. But… had to seal the citadels. Damned snakes… killed the rest. Then tried to get us to open up. Stupid. Killed their hostages. Stupid, damned snakes.”

Rogero was nodding. “Their plan counted on surprise. The warning provided by the sub-CEO before he died helped negate that, but the snakes rigidly followed the same plan, killing all members of the outfitting crew as they encountered them. Only when they realized that the citadels had been sealed and couldn’t be broken into with what they had did the snakes understand that they should have kept some hostages alive to force the ones in the citadels to open up.”

“Yes, sir,” Mentasa said, peering at Rogero. “Sorry we wouldn’t open for you. We knew the lady, the… the CEO would save us.”

Iceni shook her head, angry and not certain exactly why. “I’m not a CEO. I am President Iceni.”

“I’m sorry, Madam… President? I don’t know what a president is.”

“Better than a CEO,” Rogero replied.

“Uh, yes, sir. We saw the ship coming. The freighter. We had enough opticals working to see it come around the planet. We knew it had to have more snakes on it. And then you guys… you came around behind it and… and we knew the stars would save us—” Mentasa stopped speaking, his eyes widening in alarm.

Iceni smiled down at him. “Relax,” she repeated. “I’m not afraid of your beliefs, and the rules of the Syndicate Worlds no longer apply where I am in control. If you want to speak of things like that, you can.”

“Do you believe in the stars? In the ancestors?”

That was a question she had never expected to be asked, and it startled an honest reply out of her. “I don’t… Yes.”

“Because,” Mentasa continued, his voice firming, “we saw that freighter coming. One more hour and they would have been here and we would have been dead. One more hour. Maybe half an hour. Maybe less. But you came. The stars wouldn’t let us die.”

Iceni gazed back wordlessly. Then why didn’t they save your comrades? The ones outside the citadels? Show me some reason in who lives and who dies. Why can’t the stars do that? It would be much easier to hold to the faith of my father if they would. “Where are you from?”

“I’ve been working in Taroa for about fifteen years now. Got a family there.” Wariness had returned to the worker’s eyes. CEOs had a tendency to draft workers they needed, and he must know that Iceni needed him to help get this battleship operational.

“You and the other survivors of the outfitting crew will be offered the chance to remain on this battleship and come with us,” Iceni said. “Or you can take your chances here at Kane. If you come with us, you’ll be allowed to continue on to Taroa if you want, but we’ll offer good wages for you, and safety for your family from the snakes.” Does this man know what is going on at Taroa? Almost certainly not, and there seems no purpose in bringing it up right now. “Once you’ve recovered somewhat, we’ll ask you what your choice is.”

“Thank you, Madam… President. The stars will judge you well for this day.”

Turning away, Iceni walked for the exit. If the stars or something else ever does judge my life, judges everything that I’ve done, I’m not expecting a happy outcome for myself from that.

Just outside the exit, Iceni saw the physician from C-448 as she returned from checking the crew at the citadels. “How are they? All of them?”

The physician shrugged. She was an older woman, close to retirement age, who always seemed weighted by the lives she had failed to save in all the years of her service. “They are all malnourished and suffering from severe physical stress.” She shrugged again. “When I was just starting out, I spent six months of my medical training as an assistant at a labor camp, so it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Labor camps. The Syndicate Worlds’ all-purpose form of punishment short of immediate death. All too often, labor camps had simply been a more extended means of carrying out a death sentence. She had known people sent to labor camps. A few of them had come home when their sentences were up. The others hadn’t survived long enough.

Thinking of that, and of what the snakes had tried to do here, and what the line workers had endured to make possible her own success, something inside Iceni fractured. “There will be no more labor camps. Not anywhere that I have authority.” She walked away, leaving Rogero and the physician staring in her wake, her footsteps echoing hollowly through the empty passageways of the battleship as the soldiers guarding her hastened to catch up.

“Two of the light cruisers want to join us,” Marphissa reported. C-448 had mated to one side of the battleship, like a lamprey attached to a whale, allowing easy access for crew and supplies. “And two of the HuKs. The other light cruiser and the other two HuKs that left their flotilla want to head for the star systems where most of their crews came from.”

“Where are those star systems?” Iceni asked, leaning back in the command seat of the battleship. Few of its controls worked at the moment, but it still felt awesome to sit there. With just her and Marphissa present, it only emphasized how much larger and impressive the battleship’s bridge was compared to that of a heavy cruiser.

“The light cruiser wants to get to Cadez. The HuKs are aiming for Dermat and Kylta.”

“None of those are close.” Iceni sighed, feeling a curiously weary sensation now that the tension of the last several days was relieved by the successes. “But if they’re home for those crews, I wish them luck. What about the light cruiser and two HuKs that headed for the second planet?”

“They’re in orbit there. We’ve seen some shuttle activity. There are no signs of trouble on the planet, though, or in comms.” Marphissa paused, her gaze wandering across the almost deserted bridge. “I talked with Colonel Rogero about that. We think the citizens here are waiting to see what you do, Madam President, and what the senior snakes do.”

“That’s a good guess. Citizens who don’t learn to wait and see what their superiors are up to tend to pay a big price.” Iceni smiled wryly at Marphissa. “Are you and the colonel friends now, Kommodor?”

“Not exactly friends. Mutual respect is probably the best term, I think. And I’m not crazy enough to want to get involved with a dirt eater even if he weren’t giving off vibes of already being involved with someone else.”

“Really?”

“It’s just an impression. You know how some people seem to be wearing a ring even when they’re not. Colonel Rogero felt like that to me.”

Wearing a ring? With an Alliance officer involved? “Did he make a play for you?”

That brought a laugh from the Kommodor. “No. I’m sure if he intended that, he knew he’d be wasting his time.”

“You’re committed to someone?” Iceni asked. It never hurt to know little details about people that might be useful in the future.

This time Marphissa smiled, but sadly. “There’s only been two men that I might have committed to. One died at Atalia before that happened, fighting the Alliance. The other told me after my brother was arrested by the snakes that associating with me any longer might harm his career.”

“How nice,” Iceni commented.

“I’m sure once he got out of the hospital, he went on to some other fool woman.” Marphissa looked around the bridge again, clearly wanting to change the topic. “Where are we going to get enough people to crew this battleship?”

“We’ll have to recruit. Maybe in other star systems, like Taroa. A lot of people there are probably eager to leave right now.” Iceni gave Marphissa a half smile. “This battleship is going to need a commander. Any suggestions?”

“I… will have to go through personnel files for the other field-grade mobile forces commanders available to us—”

“Kommodor Marphissa, this is where you’re supposed to say something like ‘I would be honored if you would consider me for such an assignment.’”

Marphissa stared at her. “Two months ago, I hadn’t even commanded a heavy cruiser.”

“And two months ago, I was a CEO, not a president. The individual in command of this battleship has to be someone I trust, someone who can handle the responsibility, and someone who can serve as my senior mobile forces commander.” And someone who isn’t too ambitious. If you had immediately volunteered yourself, you might not have been offered the assignment. “If you want it, the job’s yours.”

“I am honored by your trust and confidence in me, Madam President. Yes. I would be pleased to accept such an assignment.” She looked around again, this time with a growing sense of ownership visible in her eyes. “B-78. Somehow it seems it should have more of a name than that.”

“Oh? Like the Alliance does? The Inexplicable or the Undesirable or the Insufferable?”

Marphissa grinned. “The crews already give the mobile units nicknames.”

“I know. When I was a subexecutive, I was on heavy cruiser C-333. The line workers called it the Cripple Three when they thought no officer could hear them.”

“The crew on C-448 call the cruiser the Double Eight. If our warships are going to have names, don’t they deserve better names than that?”

“Like what?” Iceni waved around the bridge. “What should B-78 be called?”

Kommodor Marphissa looked slowly about her, then back at Iceni. “B-78 will be the flagship of the Midway Star System?”

“Of course.”

“We could call it the Midway. Battleship Midway. I’m certain she would proudly represent that name.”

“Hmmm.” She? Give a ship a name, and people immediately started talking about it as if it were a living thing. But, then, the line workers, the crews, had always done that, too. About every ten years or so in the past someone higher up would propose formally naming mobile units, citing intangibles like morale and unit cohesion, but the proposals had always died in the bureaucracy, which cited cost, the lack of proven concrete benefits, and the redundancy of giving a name to something that already had a perfectly good unit number. One of the few cases where bureaucrats have repeatedly objected to redundancy. And they killed some of my proposals, too, on equally arbitrary grounds. It would be nice to make this happen knowing how unhappy it would make the bean counters. “I’ll consider it.”

“Kommodor!”

Marphissa clenched her jaw. “There’s never any rest, is there?” she commented, then accepted the call. “Here. I’m on the bridge of the battleship.”

“There’s something happening on the mobile forces facility.”

“Something?”

“Internal and external explosions, Kommodor.”

Iceni tapped her own comm unit. “Colonel Rogero, get someone up here fast to watch the bridge. I need to get back over to the C-448.”

Settling into her seat on the bridge of the heavy cruiser, Iceni called up a close-in look at the mobile forces facility. Though that was orbiting the gas giant just like the battleship, it was distant enough to be almost invisible around the curve of the planet and no threat to the ships with Iceni.

But something was definitely happening there. “We don’t have comms that might indicate what’s going on?”

“There’s fighting taking place,” the specialist currently occupying the operations console offered.

“Is there?” Iceni put all the crushing force of a CEO’s sarcasm into that reply.

Marphissa turned to face all her specialists. “Find out who is fighting and any indications of why. Someone on there must be talking to someone else.”

“President Iceni?”

“Yes, Colonel Rogero.”

“I understand there is fighting on the mobile forces facility. Will you require any of my soldiers to conduct operations there?”

That was a very reasonable question. Iceni felt like slapping herself at having forgotten for a moment that she had ground forces available.

But only three squads. And that mobile forces facility might not be large by shipyard standards, but it was damned big by most other criteria. “Do we have any idea how many people are on that facility?”

The operations specialist, perhaps trying to make up for his earlier gaff, answered her quickly. “That design should have a standard base-occupancy level of six hundred, with up to one thousand more possible based on current work under way.”

“I’ll need more ammunition,” Colonel Rogero said. “If that facility actually has that many workers on it.”

“There’s no sign of other ships being worked on,” Marphissa said. “If we could see inside the primary dock—”

“We have a blowout on the primary dock,” the operations specialist announced as the information flashed onto their displays. “Something blew up inside. Our systems are estimating a Hunter-Killer with partial core collapse.”

“That’s as good as a look inside. It means there is nothing inside that dock,” Marphissa said to Iceni. “Nothing left, that is. Nothing left of the dock, either.”

“Somebody was trying to get away,” Iceni guessed. “But who?”

“Madam President, we have a message for you from the facility.”

“Show me.” Iceni saw the window pop up before her, revealing a stern-looking woman in the uniform of a senior maintenance line worker.

“This is… this is Stephani Ivaskova. I am a free worker!”

Oh, damn. That’s not good.

“We have taken this facility from the ISS and from the Syndicate Worlds. Our workers’ committee is in charge. We want you to… to recognize our control!”

Iceni waited a moment longer to see if Free Worker Ivaskova was done, then replied. Since the orbiting mobile forces facility was only a couple of light-seconds distant, the delay in communications wouldn’t really be noticeable. “This is President Iceni of the Midway Star System. We have no reason to attack you as long as you refrain from any actions against us.”

“You… whatever president means, we don’t want any more CEOs or executives telling us what to do.”

“This isn’t my star system,” Iceni said. “I have no interest in trying to control anyone here.”

“You are holding property belonging to us,” Ivaskova declared. “We insist that you turn it over to our workers’ committee.”

“What property would that be?”

“The battleship.”

Iceni shook her head, keeping her expression unrevealing. “We took that battleship from the Syndicate Worlds, not from you. I intend keeping it. As soon as we know it’s safe to move, we’ll take it to Midway to finish readying it for full operational capability.”

Ivaskova turned her head, talking to what seemed to be more than one other person, the off-side conversation rendered deliberately unintelligible by the comm software. Based on the changes in Ivaskova’s expression and the way her gestures became more and more emphatic, the talk rapidly escalated into a vigorous argument of some kind.

“Workers’ committee?” Marphissa asked Iceni. “What is that?”

“Another word for anarchy. Workers’ committees are like a virus, Kommodor. A plague. We need to ensure that plague does not spread to our warships. Get our comm experts to work blocking every means of communicating with that facility except through one channel that you personally control.”

“The back doors—”

“Shut them down as fast as new ones open,” Iceni ordered. “This is top priority for your comm personnel.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

“And ensure that someone is watching the comm personnel to make sure that they aren’t talking to the workers’ committee either.”

As Marphissa worked, Ivaskova finally turned back to Iceni. “We demand the battleship.”

“Your demand is noted. Are any of your executives still alive?” Iceni asked, fairly sure that she could easily distract the workers’ committee.

“Uh, yes, a few. Most died, either fighting the snakes or fighting us, especially when the HuK in the main dock blew while they were trying to get away. We know that Sub-CEO Petrov died there.”

“What has been happening on the second planet? It seems very quiet, but so did your facility until recently.”

Ivaskova might be a free worker in name, but a lifetime of answering to authority caused her to reply to Iceni without questioning her role. “The snakes took over. They killed a lot of people. There were demonstrations going because the citizens, the workers, demanded more rights. We wanted the CEOs and the snakes to go, so we could govern ourselves. And then the snakes hit, and nobody wanted to do anything for a while since the snakes controlled the mobile forces. But we saw you beat them, so we moved. Those three mobile units orbiting the second planet, they’re snake-controlled still, right? As long as they’re in orbit, the people on the planet might wait. But maybe not. We’re tired of this. Sick of this. We’d rather die than be slaves any longer.”

This just kept getting worse. If that kind of thinking spread to Midway… Iceni felt sudden gratitude for Colonel Malin’s advice to throw a bone to the citizens to keep them from demanding the entire feast. “I appreciate your assistance, Worker Ivaskova. I will be back in touch with you.” Iceni ended the call, then let out a heavy sigh.

How to keep this confined to Kane?

And what would those mobile forces units controlled by the snakes do if the planet they orbited broke into full revolt? She knew the answer, and it sickened her to think of the destruction and death that would rain down on the planet from above.

Not that she could afford to worry about that. Nor should she. It’s about protecting my own position at Midway. If I start worrying about the welfare of the citizens… All right, I do worry about that. “It would be useful for Kane to end up allied with us.”

“Madam President?” Marphissa asked.

“I was just thinking aloud, Kommodor. Aside from comms, do you think the people on that mobile forces facility can pose any threat to us? They were very insistent on wanting the battleship.”

Marphissa’s brow furrowed in thought. “If they want it, they won’t try to destroy it by improvising mass throwers, but we still should move it beyond their reach. If I mate another heavy cruiser to the battleship we can tow it, slowly, until the planet blocks any view of it from the mobile forces facility.”

“Excellent. Do that.”

“If they didn’t blow up all of their tugs when that HuK was destroyed, they might use some of them to try to reach the battleship. If that happens, we can either destroy the tugs en route or let Colonel Rogero’s soldiers deal with the workers when they debark.”

“The second approach will be more subtle if it comes to that.” Iceni frowned at her display. “We need to send someone after those three warships still controlled by the snakes.”

“We can’t catch them,” Marphissa said. “Not unless they decide to give battle.”

“No, but we can chase them away from the second planet. According to the workers on the mobile forces facility, the snakes suppressed earlier mass dissent and are still in charge on that planet, but the population is ready to rise up again. There can’t be that many snakes left here, so they’re holding the population hostage using those warships.”

“If we send a force to drive off the warships…”

“The senior snakes will either have to take their chances among the populace or get on those three units and head for the nearest jump exit,” Iceni finished. “Two of our heavy cruisers are going to be tied up towing the battleship a short ways.”

“That leaves one heavy,” Marphissa said. “We send C-555, plus four light cruisers and four HuKs. That will be plenty enough to overwhelm the remaining snake forces if they try to fight, and leave us the two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and the remaining five HuKs here in case we have to defend the battleship from a suicidal attack or some other flotilla showing up at an awkward moment.”

“Get that going. Notify the commander of C-555 that he will be in command of the detached flotilla. I want to see how he handles that. And one more thing. Detach a single HuK to proceed back to Midway immediately to provide General Drakon with information on what has happened so far. Make sure the HuK has the latest, best estimate for when we can move that battleship under its own power again without worrying about its blowing up.”

Iceni looked at her display, trying to think, trying to recall if she had forgotten anything. She had been talking about a single HuK. Was there another single HuK that had been a concern? Oh. “Kommodor, did you hear what the workers on the mobile forces facility said happened to that HuK in their primary dock?” she asked Marphissa in a voice pitched low enough that it seemed intended for only the Kommodor, but that the specialists on the bridge would also be able to hear. “They blew it up when those aboard were trying to leave. Everyone aboard died.”

“Everyone?” Marphissa eyed her, then understanding dawned. “The entire crew? They didn’t just kill the snakes?”

“No. Apparently they think of mobile forces personnel in the same way as they do snakes.” Her statement, which would surely be repeated around the flotilla, was a small but hopefully effective inoculation against the infection threatened by the workers’ committee on the mobile forces facility. At least it would help ensure that any overtures from those workers were met with suspicion by the crews of her warships.

Twelve hours later, Iceni watched the shape of the mobile forces facility slowly begin to slide around the curve of the gas giant as heavy cruisers C-448 and C-413 strained to move the mass of the battleship to a new position in orbit. Watching a visual of the mobile forces facility, it was as if the facility was what was moving, not the battleship, creeping a bit at a time out of sight. “We can’t accelerate any more than this?” Iceni asked.

Marphissa spread her hands. “We could, Madam President, but we have to slow it down again. The faster we get it going, the more momentum, the longer it will take us to stop it.”

“Even presidents have to answer to the laws of physics, I suppose.” A comm alert sounded. “I’m being called by the mobile forces facility,” Iceni said. “They’ve probably noticed that the battleship is going away.”

“Even a workers’ committee should have realized that they don’t have any means of making you give it back.” Marphissa leaned closer, activating the privacy field around her chair. “There’s talk among the crews about what happened at that facility. Little agreement with what they did but what seems to be general agreement with their grievances.”

“That’s not good.”

“On the positive side, some of the things you’ve done, like changing their titles from line worker to specialist, are viewed as evidence that the workers will be treated with more respect by you than they have grown used to expecting from Syndicate CEOs.”

But what did that mean they would expect from her in the future? “How much longer until we can move this battleship under its own power?” Iceni asked for what must have been the twentieth time.

“The latest estimate is another sixteen hours. Madam President, it would be dangerous to get that battleship under way with only the outfitting crew. There’s not enough of them to operate that unit safely. I strongly advise cannibalizing the crews of the heavy cruisers for enough personnel to get the battleship to Midway.” Marphissa paused, then continued. “I should add that if we did so, the combat capability of the heavy cruisers would be significantly compromised.”

Why did I ever become a CEO? Or rather, a president? “I’ll consider the suggestion.” Keep the battleship safe by taking crew members from the cruisers, which meant the cruisers couldn’t adequately defend the battleship, and the reason the cruisers needed to be there was to keep the battleship safe. It would be nice every once in a while to have some good alternatives to choose among.

At least this time she had plenty of opportunity to consider her decision. With the mobile forces facility no longer able to view the battleship, the heavy cruisers had begun pivoting the battleship up and over so they could point it and them in the other direction and begin using their main propulsion units to slow it back down. Iceni watched the perspective of the gas giant on her close-in display shift slowly as the battleship and the two heavy cruisers mated to it gradually brought their noses up and up. It wasn’t quite as bad as watching grass grow, but must rank as a close second even though in the visual light spectrum the images of the clouds on the gas giant could be dramatic.

That was the problem with space. On rare occasions, things happened way too fast, with only moments to make crucial decisions and only tiny fractions of a second to engage the enemy, but by far the majority of the time everything happened slowly. Even with the tremendous velocities that modern spacecraft could achieve, it took a long time to cover billions of kilometers, and light itself seemed slow when it took hours to cross the distance between you and another group of ships, or between you and a planet. The flotilla she had sent to the second planet to chase off the snake-controlled warships had left nearly twelve hours ago, but was still nearly three hours from getting there even when traveling at thirty thousand kilometers a second. And whenever the snake-controlled warships reacted to the approach of that flotilla, it would take her about an hour and a half simply to see it.

Simultaneously bored and tense, finding it hard to focus on the decisions that had to be made at some point but not immediately, Iceni thought about Marphissa’s proposal to name the battleship. If she named that battleship, then there would have to be names for the other warships as well, the cruisers and the HuKs. Was there supposed to be some kind of system to that?

If there was, the Alliance would use such a system. And naming conventions were the sort of thing Alliance prisoners would have spoken freely about since they didn’t involve anything the Syndicate Worlds could have used in the war. Iceni did a search of interrogation results, finding a series of reports on that very topic.

The first answered a question she had actually wondered about for some time but never gotten around to looking up an answer for. Why didn’t the Alliance politicians stroke their egos by naming Alliance battleships and battle cruisers after themselves? The answer involved those same egos, because it turned out they could never agree on who got the honor, instead engaging in endless squabbles. Which raises the question of why the Syndicate Worlds never named our battleships and battle cruisers after the highest-ranking CEOs. I can’t believe the Alliance politicians have bigger egos than the top CEOs that I’ve encountered. Maybe our CEOs, like their politicians, couldn’t agree on whom among them to honor.

Why not name the battleship after her? The Iceni. There was something breathtaking about the idea of a battleship Iceni. But something in her felt a little odd at the idea, too, as if she were an incredibly ancient ruler with an incredibly huge ego constructing a massive monument to herself. Like one of those… what were they called… pyramids back on Old Earth.

Still… All right, say I name it after me. If all goes well, at some point we will find a way to get another battleship or a battle cruiser. I’d have to name it after Drakon. Assuming that something hasn’t happened to Drakon before that. But then what about a third? Who gets that name? I’ve seen how vicious internal fights can get over far smaller issues of ego and precedence and recognition. Do I really want that kind of headache? Do I want my largest warships to be pretentious monuments to living politicians? And what if I named one Drakon, and he and I had a falling-out? Rename it. Maybe rename it again. And again. And the name means nothing to anyone because everyone knows it’s just a flavor-of-the-month sort of thing.

Could the Syndicate bureaucracy’s refusal to give warships names have actually been a smart thing to do given the way CEOs are? I suppose even the Syndicate bureaucracy gets things right every once in a while.

But naming it Midway, as Marphissa suggested, would avoid those problems. And if she acquired allied star systems, the next battleship or battle cruiser could be, say, Kane. That would stroke the egos of an entire star system. A useful thing to be able to do.

What about the smaller warships? The Alliance, it seemed, named its heavy cruisers for armor or fortifications or simply hard substances, like Diamond. The light cruisers were named for both offensive and defensive things, and the destroyers, larger than Syndicate HuKs but with the same kinds of missions, were named after weapons.

She needed that kind of category system but couldn’t use the Alliance system. No one would like that. What else was there? As she had with the rank system, Iceni called up historical files, searching for ships once associated with the Syndicate Worlds or parts of it that had names. She had to go back a long way, to the period when the star systems in this region were first being colonized, some by very long voyages from Old Earth itself to stake a human claim to as much space as possible at a time when there were worries about quickly encountering another intelligent species.

There were some names in those old historical files. A lot were human names, individuals whose meaning and onetime importance had been long since lost. Perhaps some of those names had belonged to politicians, but if so, their quest for immortality through that means had fallen far short of eternity.

But there were other names. Manticore, Basilisk, Gryphon. She knew some of those. Mythical creatures. Powerful mythical creatures. And the names were also linked to long ago, to the ships used by the ancestors that the crew members had covertly continued to worship despite official disapproval. Good. Very good. That took care of the heavy cruisers.

Phoenix. Iceni kept her eyes focused on that name, thinking about that creature. She had been increasingly bothered by the scorched-earth tactics of the snakes and even non-ISS types like the late CEO Kolani when they were cornered. The thought had already occurred to her that such people wanted to leave behind nothing that Iceni could use, nothing but ashes that would provide no benefit for the citizens of rebelling star systems.

But in mythology, the phoenix rose from ashes. A rebirth. That particular symbol was not for any one ship. No. She would hold that one ready, to symbolize what might become far more than one star system linked by association, ready to work together against their former masters and any other threat. They would build something new from the ashes of the Syndicate Worlds.

But that was a matter for another day. For now, what about names for the light cruisers? Iceni looked at her display in hope of inspiration. On the display, the detached flotilla still hung moving slowly against the image of this part of the star system. The projected vector for the flotilla curved toward the second planet, like the path of a bird of prey swooping down upon its victim.

A bird of prey? Hawk, Eagle, Raven? Was a Raven a bird of prey? Never mind. She liked the imagery.

That left the HuKs. What to signify with them? Something she wanted to encourage. But what? The sort of thing she had seen with Sub-Executive Kontos, standing sentry on the bridge of the battleship until relieved.

Standing sentry.

Sentry.

Sentinel. Defender. Guardian. Scout. Warrior. There were a lot of options there. And crew members who had been happy to be changed from being line workers to being called specialists would surely like the idea of their ships having similarly less generic titles.

Decision made. No bureaucracy to be consulted.

Iceni looked to Marphissa. “So, Kommodor, when do you want to be formally appointed the commanding officer of the battleship Midway?”

Marphissa’s face lit. “She will get a name?”

“Yes.” She. I guess that I’d better get used to hearing that.

“Madam President, I am honored beyond measure that—”

“Kommodor!” the operations specialist said. “Activity near the second planet!”

Iceni swiveled her gaze back to her display. An hour and a half ago, the snake-controlled warships had done something. But what?