Tarnished Knight

Chapter Four

“Fifteen minutes to contact with CEO Kolani’s force.”

Iceni sat watching her display, trying to figure out how to time what she planned to do. Sunk deep in thought, she kept running into obstacles no matter what idea she considered.

“Ten minutes to contact.”

At a combined closing velocity of point two light speed even vast distances could vanish far too quickly. Iceni knew how fast those ten minutes would disappear while she tried to puzzle out a solution. In the records she had seen, Black Jack seemed to have some sort of instinct for timing the kind of actions Iceni wanted to carry out, but she had neither Black Jack’s experience nor his talent. Some reports indicated that Black Jack also had a team of officers supporting him, people like that female battle cruiser captain on his flagship. But Iceni didn’t have—

A phrase she had heard recently ran across Iceni’s memory. You won’t be alone on the bridge. Marphissa. Was she good enough to call this? Akiri definitely wasn’t, but maybe the exec could help. “Executive Marphissa, private conference.”

Akiri betrayed a flash of worry and jealousy as Marphissa hastened to Iceni’s side, waiting silently until Iceni activated the privacy field around her seat. “Here is what I want to do. Can you time the maneuver properly?” As Iceni explained, she saw Marphissa’s eyes widen, then narrow in thought.

“Yes,” Marphissa finally replied.

Did that answer reflect overconfidence or a careful professional judgment? “You’re certain?”

“Not absolutely certain, no, Madam CEO. But I am reasonably certain that I can.”

“Is there anyone else aboard this cruiser who you believe could do better?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then you will execute that maneuver at what you feel is the best moment,” Iceni ordered. “Without announcing that fact, I will pass maneuvering control of this cruiser to you when we are one minute from contact. I will handle weapons targeting for all mobile—all warships with us.”

“Yes, Madam CEO. I understand and will obey.”

Marphissa returned to her station, while Akiri tracked her progress with worried eyes. When promotions and demotions could come at the whim of a CEO, private meetings between a subordinate and a CEO would worry any supervisor.

“Five minutes to contact.”

All weapons systems were ready on the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and HuKs under her control. Iceni itched to prioritize their target now, but waited. If Kolani somehow still had a tap into the comm net tying together those units, she might still have time to learn Iceni’s plan.

Akiri and the line workers on the bridge were all pretending not to be watching her, but Akiri’s nervousness was once again becoming visible. “Madam CEO,” he finally said, “we still require your prioritization orders for the mobile units’ combat-system targeting.”

“You will get it.” Iceni marveled at how calm her voice sounded.

“Three minutes to contact.”

Roughly five and a half million kilometers separated the two forces as they rushed together at a combined velocity of sixty thousand kilometers per second. Iceni shook her head, trying to grasp such distances and such speeds. She couldn’t really do it. Maybe even Black Jack couldn’t. All any human could do was set the scale on their display so that the distances and speeds had the illusion of being something a human mind could accept and work with.

“Two minutes to contact.”

Iceni carefully entered her targeting priorities, pausing to triple-check they were what she wanted, then sent them to the combat systems on not just her cruiser but all of the other mobile forces under her control.

Akiri seemed relieved for an instant as the orders popped up on his own display, then jerked with surprise. “What—?”

But Iceni was already entering the commands to shift maneuvering control to Marphissa. Looking back, she saw Marphissa nod to indicate she was ready.

“One minute to contact.”

Iceni took a breath, then keyed her comm circuit. “For the people,” she sent out to every listener. Perhaps the old phrase, which seemed to have lost any real meaning long ago, would now hearten her supporters.

Marphissa was rigid before her own display, concentrating, one hand poised over her controls.

Akiri gave Iceni a worried look. “Madam CEO, CEO Kolani’s force will be concentrating their fire on this cruiser.”

“This cruiser may not be where CEO Kolani’s force expects it to be,” Iceni replied.

“CEO Kolani’s force is firing missiles,” the operations line worker said.

Another nervous glance from Akiri, but Iceni shook her head. “We will hold fire except for defensive systems.”

The final seconds to contact dwindled with astounding speed. Hell-lance particle beams speared out from the warships under Iceni’s command, aiming to hit the oncoming missiles. Most of the missiles blew up as the hell lances went home, and a few more detonated when last-ditch barrages of grapeshot, metal ball bearings depending on their kinetic energy and mass to do damage, slammed into the missiles short of their targets. Iceni’s cruiser jolted as a couple of missiles detonated against her shields, creating dangerous weak spots.

Iceni felt sudden forces jerk at her as Marphissa activated last-moment maneuvering commands. The drone of the inertial nullifiers, normally too low to notice, rose in pitch as they protested the demands being made upon them.

The cruiser bolted upward, fighting momentum to curve away from the track it had held for more than half an hour.

Just beneath the cruiser, the rest of the two forces tore past each other so quickly that the moment of closest approach came and went far too quickly for human senses to register. The cruiser Iceni rode had already pumped out some last-moment missiles, and the rest of her warships did as well.

But none of those weapons aimed for the cruiser being ridden by Kolani. Instead, every missile, every hell lance, went for the stern of the other cruiser in Kolani’s force. C-818 staggered as multiple hits knocked down her stern shields and impacted on her main propulsion units.

Meanwhile, the barrage of hell lances and grapeshot aimed at the spot where Iceni’s cruiser should have been tore harmlessly past just beneath, only a few grazing the shields of the heavy cruiser as it steadied out again.

“C-818 has lost all main propulsion,” the operations line worker cried. “C-818 can no longer maneuver!”

Iceni smiled. “With CEO Kolani down to one heavy cruiser in her force, the odds are now much in our favor on the next firing pass.”

“But—” Akiri was shaking his head, trying to grasp what had happened. “CEO Kolani might just run now. Avoid action.”

“That would be the prudent thing to do, in the short run,” Iceni agreed. “But you know CEO Kolani’s temperament. She isn’t thinking prudently right now. She is angry. She wants to kill me even more now than she did five minutes ago. And in the long run, arriving at Prime with only one heavy cruiser would simply guarantee a swift firing squad for incompetence. No, she’s going to attack.”

On her display, the crippled C-818 had kept onto the same vector, heading helplessly away from the other warships. But Kolani’s other ships were bending into as tight a turn as they could manage. That turn covered a lot of space at the velocity they were traveling, but it was plain that Kolani intended to reengage as soon as possible.

“All units, come up one one zero degrees.” Iceni brought the rest of her own force curving upward to join with her cruiser, then continued the upward turn, not trying to match the hull-straining tightness of Kolani’s maneuver. “She’ll come to us,” Iceni said, steadying out her force.

Using the standard human conventions for maneuvering in a star system, up was the direction arbitrarily designated above the plane of the planets orbiting the star while down would be below that. Port meant a turn away from the star while starboard meant a turn toward the star. The conventions were the only way of ensuring that one spacecraft understood directions issued by another spacecraft when they were operating in an environment without any real ups or downs. To an observer on a planet, Iceni’s warships would have turned so far “up” that they had passed the vertical and were upside down, angling farther above the plane of the star system. Kolani’s force had done the same, so that the tracks of the two forces were coming together at an angle as if aiming to complete two sides of a triangle whose base was the original tracks of the warships before their first encounter.

“This time,” Iceni said, “we will target everything on CEO Kolani’s cruiser.” There was a chance that would destroy cruiser C-990, but there was also a chance that Kolani, if she was desperate enough and convinced that victory was impossible, would still launch a bombardment of the planet. That had to be prevented even if the price was a heavy cruiser that Iceni didn’t want to lose.

“Madam CEO,” the comm line worker said, “we’re getting broadcasts from the planet that you might want to review.”

“Is General Drakon still in control?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll deal with that after we’ve finished with CEO Kolani.”

The wait wasn’t nearly as long as before as the two forces rushed back together. Akiri seemed resigned to the damage that might still be inflicted on his unit. Marphissa appeared enormously pleased with herself but was keeping it mostly under wraps.

Only twenty seconds from contact, the odds changed again.

Iceni watched an alert pulse on her display as two of the three light cruisers under Kolani’s control and three of the four HuKs with her suddenly altered their tracks, pulling away from the rest of Kolani’s warships. A last-moment trick to create trouble for Iceni?

“They’re pulling away from contact,” Marphissa said. “Bolting out of CEO Kolani’s force.”

Iceni only had time to nod before the remaining warships slashed by each other. All of Kolani’s remaining units hurled their fire at the cruiser holding Iceni, but that now amounted to only one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, and one HuK. On Iceni’s side, three heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and four HuKs concentrated their weaponry on Kolani’s flagship as the two sides raced past each other in far less time than the blink of an eye.

Iceni’s cruiser C-448 was still shuddering from the hits on her shields when the sensors began reporting on the status of Kolani’s cruiser. C-990 had been hit hard. Kolani’s flagship tumbled through space, with maneuvering systems knocked out, the bow a total ruin, and numerous hull penetrations marking internal damage. “Try to get communications with C-990,” Iceni ordered.

“We could finish off the ship,” Marphissa offered. “C-990’s shields are completely gone.”

“No.” They were watching her, clearly wondering at a CEO displaying any sign of mercy. Iceni felt her jaw tighten as her expression hardened, and the crew of her own cruiser hastily turned back to their tasks. “I want to recover and repair that ship if possible. We need every hull we can get.” There. That sounded like a nice, pragmatic justification for not slaughtering the helpless crew of C-990. “And send surrender demands to the rest of CEO Kolani’s units.”

The light cruisers and HuKs, both those that had stuck with Kolani and those that had bolted, accepted Iceni’s authority in a staggered series of messages that must have reflected how long it had taken each of them to wipe out the snakes aboard. Last came C-818, the cruiser’s executive submitting to Iceni. “I regret to report the death during the engagement of our former commander, Sub-CEO Krasny,” the exec reported tonelessly.

Akiri frowned and shook his head. “How could Krasny have been killed by hits on the stern of his cruiser?”

“A freak accident, I suppose,” Iceni said.

Marphissa gave Iceni a glance that clearly shared Iceni’s real opinion, that Krasny had not desired to yield, and his subordinates had taken matters into their own hands. Being a lot more discreet than Akiri, though, she wasn’t about to say that out loud. There wasn’t any sense in giving the crews of these warships any more ideas about what they could do to senior execs, and CEOs, aboard their own units.

The comm line worker sighed with frustration. “We can’t pick up any signals off C-990, Madam CEO. All comm systems on C-990 may be dead. We may have to send a shuttle over.”

“C-990’s comm systems may be dead, but surely the entire crew is not,” Marphissa objected. “Someone could have reached an air lock by now and be sending flashing light messages.”

“An escape capsule just left C-990,” the operations line worker announced. “There goes another.”

“Only two?” Akiri muttered.

Marphissa gestured in the direction of C-990. “We could close on the cruiser, get near enough to send a boarding party over and establish control.”

“Madam CEO,” Akiri said quickly, “I advise against that. Something is not right with C-990. If CEO Kolani is still alive and in charge, some communications should have come to us, even if only defiance. She could try to fire bombardment projectiles at the planet. Something. But there’s nothing.”

“But if CEO Kolani is dead or prisoner because her crew revolted, they should have established communications as well,” Marphissa said.

“Exactly! Something is wrong. I do not recommend closing with C-990 within the danger radius of a core overload.”

Iceni regarded Akiri for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe that is a wise suggestion. We can’t rule out the chance of a deliberate core overload, or one brought about by fighting among the surviving crew. Get closer, but not within the danger radius, and send over an uncrewed probe to see what’s going on.”

“All right,” Drakon finally said, loud and clear, causing Malin and Morgan to stop sniping at each other. They knew when he spoke like that to start listening. “We might well be able to suppress those crowds with firepower, but that’s a short-term solution. We learned that on occupied Alliance planets when we tried to maintain order that way. I need a long-term answer, and a long-term answer requires the majority of those citizens to be our allies in maintaining order.”

He looked at Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene. “I’m going to pass these same orders to every ground forces commander on the planet. You will contact the local police and order them to get their butts out of their stations and on the streets. Tell them that we will back them up, not threaten them, and deploy platoons of troops to do just that. Not squads. Platoons. We need to ensure that subexecs are in charge of each unit, not senior line workers. Tell the police that I’ll be taking other steps to deal with the mobs, but we need their boots on the street because their job hasn’t changed.”

“What about our own soldiers?” Colonel Gaiene asked. “Discipline is very shaky, especially in the local ground forces.” Outwardly, Gaiene usually displayed a devil-may-care attitude, so the open concern in his expression underlined the seriousness of the problem.

“Pair the locals with platoons of our people and issue instructions that any soldier who refuses to follow orders will be shot. Any other questions?”

“The local authorities, sir?” Kai asked. “What do we do with them?”

“I’ll be giving them orders. If there are any problems getting them to do what they’re told, I’ll notify you to send troops. Local soldiers can handle that job since none of them have any love for their appointed-elected leaders.”

“What about the snakes’ housing compounds?” Rogero added. “We’ve swept up the snakes who were still home, but there are families there. Sooner or later, the crowds of citizens will head for those compounds, and you know what will happen to those families.”

“The same thing that’s happened to a lot of other people’s families for a long time at the hands of the snakes,” Gaiene commented. “I won’t shed any tears if the citizens take revenge.”

Drakon hesitated, then shook his head. “We’re not the snakes. I’m not Hardrad. Put guards around the snakes’ family compounds. Enough guards to keep the crowds off, and make sure those guards are our people and not local ground troops.”

“We’re going to be spread thin as it is,” Kai said. “We’ve all seen children die, sir. It’s ugly, but…”

“I know. We killed some of them in the fighting on Alliance worlds. I hated it then, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Now I can, and I don’t want to see any more dead kids. Understand?” All three colonels nodded. “Now, get your people and the police moving.”

“Yes, sir.” Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene chorused, all saluting before their images vanished.

Morgan shrugged. “At least you got that part about shooting anyone who doesn’t obey orders right. But the mobs—”

“I’m not done,” Drakon said. “How much of the snake comm net still exists? The stuff they used to issue proclamations and propaganda to the populace and give orders to local authorities?”

“It’s intact,” Malin said with a grin. “Not the control nodes in the headquarters and subsector stations, of course. Those have been destroyed. But we’ve seized the relay points, so we can modify the software to allow them to broadcast signals from an improvised control node.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Make it five.”

It actually took about six minutes, which gave Drakon time to issue the same orders to the rest of the ground forces on the planet that he had given to Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene, and time to come up with something to tell the growing mobs of citizens that hijacked ISS surveillance systems were spotting everywhere. Exactly what to say had taken a little thought before he realized that the Syndicate Worlds had long provided the perfect rationale in its own propaganda.

“This is General Drakon,” he said into the net linking all local officials. “I am in control of all the ground forces on this planet and am operating with CEO Iceni. We are in charge. All local officials are ordered to get onto the streets and calm the situation. You are to help maintain order, you are to reassure the citizens that the snakes have been dealt with, and you are to direct all celebrating into harmless paths. Use your local police to ensure that all liquor stores, bars, and pharmacies are closed and locked down immediately. There will be ground forces detachments visiting your homes to make sure that you are following these directions. Get going.”

Malin shook his head. “They’d be a lot more effective if they actually represented the citizens in their areas. Being able to control voting software is a lot easier than controlling voters.”

“Shift me to full broadcast,” Drakon ordered, waiting as Malin entered the commands. When he spoke next, his words would go out to every phone, vid screen, terminal, speaker, public announcing system, and anything else on and off the planet with the ability to receive messages.

“Citizens,” Drakon began, “I am speaking on behalf of myself and CEO Iceni. We have eliminated the ISS on this planet and throughout this star system. Henceforth, Midway will be an independent star system. We will no longer follow orders from the failed Syndicate Worlds.

“It is critical that while we celebrate this day, we also do not forget the importance of protecting our homes and our families. A breakdown of order could too easily result in the destruction of our homes, the places where you work, and loss of life. I have ordered the police onto the streets to ensure that everyone and every place is kept safe from anyone careless or irresponsible enough to threaten the safety and security of all our citizens. Because of the possibility that some ISS personnel might still be hidden among the crowds celebrating today, I am also ordering out ground forces troops to back up our police. Be aware that anyone urging actions that could lead to rioting or looting could be an ISS agent attempting to lure you into danger.” Perhaps that would lead the crowds themselves to turn on anyone trying to turn them into mobs.

“Celebrate our independence, but do not forget the enemies who will endanger it.” That had always been the mantra of the Syndicate Worlds. Invoke the fear of external and internal enemies, of disorder, to maintain support from the citizens. “Though this has been kept secret up until now by the ISS, other star systems have fallen into anarchy and massive loss of life and property following the collapse of Syndicate authority. I will not allow that to happen here. All citizens are to follow the orders they are given by the police and ground forces. Peaceful and orderly celebration is allowed and encouraged, but anyone who riots or loots will be shot on sight. They will not be allowed to endanger their fellow citizens or to steal from their fellow citizens. This is General Drakon, for the people, out.”

That last phrase sounded particularly false this time even though he had said it countless times, the repetition and lack of sincerity each time rendering the words “for the people” meaningless to everyone who used it. But this time he had felt those words and been stung by their lack of real significance. We didn’t do this for the people. We did it for ourselves, to survive.

Drakon turned back to Malin and Morgan. “Get a reporting system set up to consolidate what the automated systems are seeing. I need to know whether the crowds get out of control anywhere.”

Morgan shrugged. “We can do that, but what will you do if one of the mobs does start to run amuck? Give them another stern lecture?”

“I’ll send in reinforcements and kill as many as I have to in order to restore order.” He had learned that, too. You did what was necessary, whether you liked it or not. Maybe there were other ways of handling out-of-control mobs, but he didn’t have access to any of those ways just then. “I will not have this planet turned into ruins overrun by rioters.”

The optical sensors on the heavy cruiser holding Iceni were no match for those on a battle cruiser or battleship, but they were still good enough to easily spot small objects across light-hours of distance. So close to the battered C-990 every surface detail could be made out, and when holes smashed into the hull came into view the sensors could catch glimpses inside.

Both of the escape pods which had fled C-990 had been recovered by forces loyal to Iceni. One was empty, and the other held only dead members of the crew who had been shot at close range and apparently died after they managed to launch the pod. From the outside, the cruiser itself still seemed lifeless.

“Could they have killed everyone?” Akiri asked in sickened tones. “Just kept fighting until the entire crew was dead?”

“That’s possible,” Iceni replied. “How long until the uncrewed probe enters C-990?”

“Three minutes. The approach is taking longer because C-990 is tumbling and the probe has to match the motion before it can enter.”

When the probe finally managed to slip inside through one of the rents in C-990’s hull, at first nothing was visible but torn equipment and bulkheads. Then the first bodies came into view.

“These were killed by hell-lance fire,” Marphissa said. “They were dead before decompression hit.”

Iceni just nodded in reply. One skill we all learned through experience, how to identify how people had died. Too many people, too much experience. And it hasn’t ended.

The probe made its way past the dead, angling toward the bridge. “Vacuum everywhere,” the probe’s controller reported. “No signs of patching holes to maintain pressure. That hatch was forced when there was vacuum on this side and pressure on the other. That didn’t happen when we fired on the cruiser.”

The bodies on the other side of the hatch only reinforced that observation. “Damage to their survival suits from hand weapons.”

“How many were attacking and how many defending?” Akiri demanded.

“There’s no way to tell.”

Iceni suppressed a shudder, imagining the havoc that must have played out aboard C-990. The crew fighting among themselves, surrounded by wreckage, no way to tell one side from the other, so that it would have been as easy to target friends as enemies in the death grapple among the intermittently lit and torn-up passageways and compartments.

“The last two mutineers, or the last two loyalists, could have killed each other, not knowing what they were doing,” Marphissa commented, echoing Iceni’s thoughts. “If there’s anyone still alive, they’ll probably be at the bridge or at engineering.”

“Send the probe to the bridge first,” Iceni ordered. That was where Kolani would surely be.

The probe wended its way though the passageways, dodging wreckage and the dead. The interior of the wrecked cruiser increasingly reminded Iceni of a nightmare, emergency lights eerily bright in some places, only flickering in others, deep patches of darkness looming that might have a single, still hand thrust out into the light, the fingers curled in a last attempt to grasp nothingness. A broken ship carrying a dead crew, like something out of a sinister legend of space.

Finally, the armored hatch leading onto the bridge loomed ahead. “That hatch was forced, too,” the probe operator said, her own voice sounding strained.

Iceni looked at the bodies visible around the hatch. “They lost a lot of people doing it.” Bridges were meant to be citadels for the officers in the event of a mutiny, thus they had active defenses as well as armor protecting them. Some of those defenses had probably been knocked out during the fight with Iceni’s warships, but enough had survived to decimate the attackers.

“The bridge is also in vacuum.” The probe approached the hatch cautiously, transmitting the codes that should disarm any surviving defenses, and eventually reached the portal.

From the hatch, the bridge appeared mostly intact, but Iceni could see bodies sprawled around. Had the bridge crew fought among themselves as well? The senior ISS agent aboard would have been there, and armed. Kolani’s officers would have been loyal to her. But what about the others, the line workers and executives of C-990’s crew?

From the viewing angle they had, it was apparent that Kolani still sat in the command seat, her back to the hatch, wearing a survival suit with her CEO markings clear in the light from the probe. But Kolani didn’t move, her body rigid. “No signs of life,” the probe operator said. “No life data coming in from any survival suits, no warm spots on infrared. Everyone on the bridge must be dead.” The probe began to move onto the bridge, while Iceni readied herself to order it stopped. She had already accumulated enough horrible memories in her life to sometimes trigger night sweats as it was. She did not want to see Kolani’s lifeless face to add to those.

But before Iceni could say anything, an alarm blared. “The probe tripped some sort of circuit,” the operator said. “Power surge detected. Some sort of command seems to have been—”

Iceni’s image from the probe went blank as a much louder alarm shouted for attention.

“C-990’s core overloaded,” Marphissa reported in a low voice. “There must have been a booby trap set, so when someone entered the bridge it would trigger the overload. We’re on the edge of the danger zone, so there’s no threat to this unit.”

Iceni kept her eyes on the spot where the image from the probe had been. Kolani had done it, she was sure. In her last moments of life, Kolani had set a trap for those who would come to gloat over her defeat. Perhaps in those final moments Kolani had had time to hope that Iceni herself would be part of that team. Sorry to disappoint you. “Gather the flotilla and return it to orbit about the planet. Let me know the moment we hear from C-625 or any other unit at the gas giant.”

They were about six light-minutes from the planet. Information would be a little time-late, but not too much. Iceni closed her eyes, massaged her forehead with the fingers of one hand, then looked for messages from Drakon.

There were several. As Iceni viewed the first messages, she had a sudden chilling vision in which the fratricide and destruction aboard C-990 had just been a prologue to similar scenes to be played out on the surface of the nearby planet.

“They need to see you,” Malin insisted.

“Going out in those mobs,” Morgan shot back, “is a good way to ensure he dies.”

As usual, both Malin and Morgan had good points. Drakon eyed the reports streaming in on multiple comm windows, seeing reluctant police forces and far-more-reluctant local administrators filtering in small groups among the massive crowds of celebrants. Moving discreetly behind both were platoons of soldiers, usually with more platoons watching the leading platoons.

Here and there, brief spasms of violence played out as someone tried to break into a liquor store or other business and was repulsed by quick and brutal use of first nonlethal riot-control agents, then direct gunfire on anyone who resisted. But such incidents stayed few as the great majority of those celebrating showed no sympathy for lawbreakers. Generations of conditioning on the need to obey authority could not be shed in a day, not when authority was on the streets and acting only against those who were clearly breaking laws.

But still, there was a sense, something that Drakon felt even if he couldn’t quantify it, that the situation was balanced on a knife-edge. The mood of the crowds oscillated around a tipping point, giddy, happy, irresponsible, reckless, an ocean of humanity whose waves could shift the wrong way in a heartbeat.

“They’re happy to see the soldiers,” Malin said. “They see our troops as liberators because we slew the snakes. You need to personalize that, General Drakon. You need to be the liberator, the man who freed this star system from the grip of the Syndicate Worlds and the fear of the ISS.”

“They’ve seen him,” Morgan replied. “Everyone saw him when he made that broadcast.”

“It’s too remote, too isolated. He needs to be among the citizens.”

“Where any nut can decide to take a shot at him!”

Drakon let the sound of their debate subside to a buzzing at the back of his head as he considered his options. Malin and Morgan had a good habit of clearly stating their positions and the rationales behind them right up front, as well as a bad habit of then restating the same points in endless back-and-forth argument. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he finally said, putting an instant stop to the debate.

A couple of minutes later, still wearing his combat-battered armor but with the helmet and face shield open, Drakon strode out of his headquarters and out among the crowds. Malin and Morgan both followed a few paces behind, wearing only their black skin suits but carrying unobtrusive and deadly weapons as they watched the crowds around Drakon. As Drakon had expected, all eyes went to him in his armor, paying little attention to those who followed him. In that armor he loomed a bit taller and wider than the citizens, appearing to be a figure literally larger-than-life.

The first mass of citizens he encountered paused in their celebrating, uncertainty in their eyes, as they realized that a CEO was among them. Drakon smiled at them, the same sort of comradely-but-I’m-in-charge smile he would give his soldiers. “It’s a good day!” he called. “This is our star system now, our planet, and we’re going to take care of it!”

The crowd cheered, ripples of reaction running away from Drakon like rings in a pond in which a rock has fallen. He walked slowly but deliberately through the crowd, the omnipresent security cameras picking up his image and sending it everywhere on the planet. Citizens reached out tentative hands to touch his armor, some straining to touch the scars of recent combat against the snakes. Drakon felt the power of the mob as if it were a single vast organism, huge and immensely powerful, and fought down his wave of fear. He had seen armored troops pulled down and overwhelmed by masses of civilians on Alliance planets and had a healthy respect for what an aroused mob could do. But he tried not to show any concern, instead holding that smile and maintaining his steady pace as he called out occasional vague words about order and law and safety.

A younger citizen, just coming to draft age by the look of him, eyes afire with emotion, thrust himself before Drakon, heedless of the weapons that Malin and Morgan immediately trained upon him. “When are the elections? When will we truly choose those who govern us?”

“We’ll get to that,” Drakon replied loudly. “Things have changed.” No one spent a lifetime dealing with and working among the Syndicate Worlds bureaucracy without developing a skill at mouthing meaningless reassurances that promised nothing.

The passionate young man looked uncertain, then he was pushed aside by other citizens and lost in the crowd. But Drakon had a bad feeling that his question would not be so easily disposed of in the days to come.

Iceni and the others on the bridge of the heavy cruiser watched video from the surface, showing Drakon’s triumphal procession through the streets and the adulation the citizens were heaping upon him. “You’d think that I’d done nothing,” she commented to those around her, keeping her tones partly annoyed and partly amused to hide the concerns those images created. If Drakon becomes the face of the rulers of this star system, he can more easily push me aside. Drakon may have to be dealt with after all.