Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  “Here go the automated commands,” Marphissa reported as she tapped her controls. “Beginning countdown to activation.”

  Thirty seconds later, the commanding officer of C-413 called in. “What kind of plan is this?”

  “A plan ordered by President Iceni,” Marphissa replied. “Activation in twenty-five seconds. Failure to activate will have to be explained to her.”

  “I— We’ll speak of this later!”

  “Ten seconds to activation.” Marphissa gave a sudden look of alarm to Iceni. “Are you prone to motion sickness?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Activation!” the maneuvering specialist announced.

  Heavy cruiser C-448 and every other warship in Iceni’s flotilla jerked into sudden maximum acceleration as the inertial nullifiers groaned in protest. Iceni kept her eyes on her display, trying to breathe slowly and deeply despite the pressure. It would be only a few more seconds until the other flotilla saw her flotilla altering velocity. Since any combined velocity above point two light speed complicated targeting solutions and started reducing chances of hits at an increasing rate, the automated systems on the other flotilla’s ships would respond by pivoting their units around and firing off the main drives to brake their velocity.

  The force on Iceni halted abruptly as the main drives in her flotilla cut off. Other pressures jerked at her as thrusters pivoted her flotilla’s warships up and over, then the main drives kicked in again at maximum, shedding velocity as hard as they could.

  Within seconds, the other flotilla saw the moves, kicking off its own drives, pivoting its ships again, then accelerating at maximum to once more try to compensate for the maneuvers of Iceni’s flotilla.

  “Three minutes to contact,” the maneuvering specialist gasped as the main drives in Iceni’s flotilla cut off again. Once more, thrusters fired, swinging the warships up and over again toward the other flotilla, main drives lighting off at maximum before the warships had even steadied out.

  “They are going to be hating us over there,” Marphissa got out with a strained laugh as they saw the automated systems on the other warships react again. Trained human crews would have seen the small time remaining until contact and known the need to override the attempts of the automated systems to match the maneuvers of Iceni’s flotilla.

  The snakes controlling that other flotilla were not trained crews, and right about now would be feeling very disoriented.

  The other warships cut off accelerating and started swinging again, this time down, at the same moments as the two forces rushed toward contact. The bows of the opposing flotilla, where most armaments and the strongest armor and shields were clustered, were actually swinging away from Iceni’s warships. She could imagine the curses that the humans on the other flotilla were uttering as their weaponry passed out of engagement envelopes just as Iceni’s warships flashed through that moment of close contact.

  Iceni’s own ships were better aligned to fire, but far from perfectly because of the jumble of maneuvers. She felt the cruiser under her tremble slightly as hell lances and grapeshot tore out toward the other warships, her senses not really registering any of that until her flotilla had raced past the others. Iceni’s flotilla was adjusting vectors to aim straight for the increasingly close gas giant, while the other flotilla flailed around, the two forces diverging at something close to point two light speed.

  Laughter broke out on the bridge, startling Iceni. “Can you imagine their faces right now?” she heard one of the specialists say to another.

  “Quiet on the bridge,” Marphissa called, but not harshly since she was grinning, too. “Too bad we couldn’t score many hits ourselves.”

  “We hurt them a little,” Iceni observed, watching her display update as the sensors of her flotilla coordinated their readings and produced a single analysis of damage to the other ships. “But, mainly, we got past them without being hit ourselves.” The only hits on her own warships had been a few glancing blows, easily deflected by even the weak shields on the Hunter-Killers.

  Battles were supposed to be about inflicting as much damage as possible on the enemy. Her orders and Marphissa’s plan had turned that on its head, instead turning the engagement into avoiding damage. Since the other flotilla hadn’t expected that, and had been controlled by snakes with little experience at mobile commands, it had worked exactly as intended. So when the commanders of the other ships began calling in, expressing frustration and dismay over the odd engagement, Iceni answered them instead of letting Marphissa handle it. “Our goal in that engagement was to get through to the battleship with minimum delay. That we achieved. Review the rest of the plan. Once we drop off the shuttles carrying the ground forces, we are going back to hurt that other flotilla because by then it is going to be trying to get past us. Does anyone have any problems with my decisions?”

  Unsurprisingly, no one expressed such concerns to her. Everyone also stopped complaining to Marphissa, who nonetheless looked dissatisfied. “They should respect my decisions, too.”

  “They will. Or I’ll get rid of them and find commanders who do.” That statement, Iceni was sure, would also find its way around the flotilla by informal means.

  The gas giant loomed ever larger before them. Off to one side, the bulk of the mobile forces facility, slightly smaller than Midway’s, hung in a geostationary orbit which ensured it would always be within line of sight of the second planet except for a single brief window each year when the star blocked it as the second planet orbited Kane. Swinging in past the facility was the merchant ship they had been tracking, ponderously braking itself as it began to pass out of sight around the curve of the gas giant. Unlike the warships, the merchant ship could only change velocity slowly.

  “We can divert a HuK or a light cruiser out of our formation to intercept and take out that merchant ship,” Marphissa said suddenly.

  “Do it. Make it a light cruiser. I want the snakes on that freighter to know a little fear as they see it coming for them.”

  “This is Kommodor Marphissa to light cruiser CL-773. Detach from formation, intercept as soon as possible and destroy the freighter tagged by my targeting system.”

  “This is CL-773. Understand detach and destroy. Confirm we are not to accept surrender of the merchant?”

  Marphissa looked to Iceni, who shook her head. “Confirm destroy, do not accept surrender, CL-773.”

  “Yes, Kommodor.”

  “We couldn’t trust that they would actually abide by a surrender offer,” Iceni commented, annoyed with herself that she was justifying her decision to her subordinates.

  “They would not,” Marphissa agreed. “It would be a trick to buy them time to reach the battleship.”

  The flotilla had begun bending around the curve of the gas giant, the maneuvering systems pivoting the warships again so that they could brake velocity down once more, this time for a sustained period, and arc onto a vector that would, for a while, match a partial orbit about the gas giant. As they did so, CL-773 angled away, its vector aiming in a tight curve for an intercept with the frantically decelerating freighter.

  “There it is!” Marphissa cried as part of the battleship finally appeared, its bulk hanging in a low orbit. “Communications, we’re a lot closer and in line of sight. Try to punch a message through to Sub-Executive Kontos and let him know we’re almost there.”

  Iceni inhaled deeply, feeling relief flood her. If the snakes hadn’t broken through to Kontos yet, then success might be very close indeed. “Colonel Rogero, are your forces ready?”

  “Yes, Madam President.” Like the rest of the ground forces, Rogero wore full combat armor, the mass of it looming in the passageway where the special forces waited to run through the access tube and into the shuttle mated to the outside of the heavy cruiser. Iceni checked the other heavy cruisers, seeing their status reports indicating their shuttl
es preparing for separation.

  The strain on the warships grew as they swung closer to the gas giant and the battleship while simultaneously trying to reduce their velocity so that it would be slow enough to safely release the shuttles for their assault on the battleship. Normally, this kind of maneuver, a close swing by a planet or star, was made to use their gravity to accelerate ships. Iceni’s flotilla was instead fighting that, and she could hear the hull of the heavy cruiser creak alarmingly as it protested the forces wrenching at it. The moan of the inertial nullifiers rose to a higher-pitched shriek as they maxed out. Iceni’s display flashed red, frenzied warnings blinking for attention.

  Reengage maneuvering safeties immediately.

  Exceeding maximum stress conditions.

  Hull failure possible.

  Inertial nullifiers overstressing.

  System failures imminent.

  “Kom . . . mo . . . dor,” Iceni struggled to say over the strain of the g-forces.

  “Forces . . . are . . . passing . . . maximum . . . now,” Marphissa got out, and as she finished Iceni could feel the pressure on her body ease and hear the pitch of the nullifiers begin to descend.

  The battleship was growing in size at alarming speed while the warships kept slowing as fast as their main propulsion units and hull structures could manage. “Go, Colonel,” Iceni said, but Rogero already had his soldiers in motion, the hulking figures in their armor stumbling down the access tube into the shuttle and latching into the seats there. Without the power assist from their armor, the soldiers couldn’t have moved under such conditions.

  “Forty seconds to shuttle launch,” the operations specialist announced.

  Iceni watched the last soldiers hurling themselves onto the shuttle as the seconds scrolled down. “We’re still going too fast,” she said to Marphissa.

  “We’ll be within acceptable parameters when we launch the shuttles,” Marphissa replied, her eyes locked on her display.

  Iceni could see the velocity markers edging down steadily, dropping to meet the safety margins for shuttle launch, and wondered if they would make that. The battleship appeared to be right on top of them, so huge compared to even the heavy cruisers that it seemed to be more a moon shaped like a massive pregnant shark rather than something made by the hands of humanity.

  “Ten seconds to launch.”

  “We’re not there, Kommodor!” Iceni said.

  “We will be.” Marphissa didn’t take her eyes off of her display, one hand hovering over the command for the shuttle launch.

  Off to one side, light cruiser CL-773 tore past the merchant ship, pumping out hell-lance fire and slamming two grapeshot bundles into the ship’s command deck, the impacts knocking the merchant ship off course. Rolling slightly, the merchant ship wobbled onto a descent toward the gas giant.

  “Five seconds.”

  The velocity markers and launch margins were coming together as Marphissa’s hand swept down a small distance. “Launch!”

  Iceni watched the symbol of the shuttle detach from her heavy cruiser, the other two shuttles breaking free of their own cruisers within a couple of seconds and following the first in a dive toward the battleship which now seemed to fill space before them.

  “We’re coming under fire,” the combat specialist exclaimed. “Hell lances from the battleship.”

  “How many?” Marphissa demanded.

  “One . . . three . . . four hell-lance projectors. They’re not firing in a volley. They must be under local control.”

  “The snakes,” Marphissa said. “Sub-Exec Kontos’s people still command the fire-control center, so the snakes can only employ as many hell lances as they can manually aim and fire.”

  “Four hell-lance projectors is still too many when we only have three shuttles!” Iceni retorted.

  “C-555 is taking hits,” the operations specialist said. “They’re targeting the heavy cruisers.”

  Iceni laughed in sudden relief. “Idiots. They probably haven’t even noticed the shuttles yet.” Her heavy cruiser, like the other warships, was pivoting again, turning to continue around the curve of the gas giant, gratefully accepting the gravity assist from the huge planet as the flotilla began accelerating once more.

  The battleship was there, then behind them, still heart-stoppingly close. But the shuttles were almost in contact with the hull now. “Make sure you drop relays,” Iceni ordered. “I want to be able to monitor the special forces once we’re out of line of sight. Have you managed to contact Sub-Exec Kontos?”

  “No, Madam President. We’ll drop two relays as we come around the planet.”

  “Shuttles have made contact,” the operations specialist said. “Reporting solid locks on the hull at targeted locations.”

  “They’re inside the firing zones of the hell lances,” the weapons specialist added. “The shuttles are safe from defensive fire.”

  On her display, Iceni’s eyes held for a moment on an image of the crippled merchant ship, its control gone, gliding past the battleship and sliding inexorably closer to the gas giant’s atmosphere. Anyone still alive on that ship wouldn’t be alive much longer. There’s nothing I can do about it. They’re too far behind us now for any of my ships to get back there in time even if I wanted to rescue snakes from that fate.

  But it’s still an awful way to die.

  “Give me a display linked to the ground forces assault teams,” Iceni ordered. Moments later the display popped up next to her. All she had to do was turn her head and touch individual screens to see exactly where the team leaders were and what they were doing. The screens flickered, then steadied. “What was that?”

  “Something on the battleship tried to jam the connection,” the comms specialist said. “We powered through it.”

  “Give me the— Where’s the—” Iceni finally hit the right touch spot, and the view from Rogero’s armor expanded while his comms became audible to her.

  The view felt odd, looking through the vacuum of space at an angle along a slightly curving wall where other suits of combat armor clung. “Get the lock open,” she heard Rogero order.

  One of the soldiers placed a palm-sized device with care, then waited while information scrolled across the readout on the device. “Access code broken,” the soldier near the device reported. “Override code blocked. Autolock overridden. Local lock disengaged.”

  A large section of wall faded back, then slid sideways. From Rogero’s position, Iceni could see the outer layer of armor on the battleship forming a thick bar on the side of the lock. “Inside,” Rogero ordered. “Full combat footing, weapons free to fire.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE had read Rogero’s plan and knew that each team of special forces had an objective. One would head for the engineering control center to rescue the surviving crew there. The second for the weapons fire-control center. And the third, with Rogero, for the bridge.

  They had to get through two more air locks to reach the interior of the battleship, passing successive layers of heavy armor and leaving tiny comm relays in their wake to keep the signals clear even when the air-lock hatches sealed behind them. The soldiers encountered no one as they cleared the last lock and stood within the passageways of the battleship, stretching eerily empty in all directions.

  One soldier raised an arm to point. “Surveillance cam up there watching the lock exit. That’s not on standard battleship schematics.”

  “Snake gear,” Rogero said. “They know we’re inside now. Get going.”

  Rogero moved in the middle of his group as the three sets of soldiers scattered, heading for their respective goals. “Sub-Executive Kontos, this is Colonel Rogero of the independent Midway Star System. We are inside the hull and heading for your location. Can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  Iceni saw a swarm of symbols swim acr
oss Rogero’s heads-up display. “Team Two has encountered resistance,” someone reported to him, her voice slightly distant across the comm system tying the suits into one network whose every piece was mobile. “Not, repeat not, vipers.”

  “Try to get one alive,” Rogero ordered, “so they can tell us how many of them are aboard and whether there are vipers anywhere on this thing.”

  “Negative. All dead.” The other team leader didn’t sound too regretful. “Proceeding to objective.”

  “How big are these damned things?” one of the soldiers muttered into the comm as they rounded a corner and headed down another long passageway broken at intervals by bulkheads with armored survival hatches set into them.

  “You can get lost for days,” another soldier remarked. “How come none of the internal hatches are being sealed on us, Colonel?”

  “Controlled from the bridge,” Rogero replied. “Part of the antimutiny system. The snakes can only override one hatch at a time. Left here,” he ordered as they reached an intersection of passageways.

  “But the plan in our suits—”

  “Is a straight shot to the bridge. Guess where the snakes will be waiting for us?”

  “Team Three meeting resistance. One soldier down.”

  “Team Two has hit an ambush. Four, five snakes. Got one still alive.”

  “Make the snake talk,” Rogero said, his voice toneless despite the exertion in it as his team trotted down another stretch of passageway.

  “Team Three through resistance. Four snakes dead.”

  “Team Two reporting prisoner died before talking. Looks like conditioning-driven suicide.”

  “That is sick,” a soldier grumbled.

  “They’re damned snakes; what do you expect?”

  “Keep it down,” Rogero ordered. “Right here and up that ramp.”

  Iceni pulled her attention away from the soldiers for a moment, refocusing on the bridge of her heavy cruiser. “How does it look?” she asked Marphissa.