The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  “There may have been some misunderstanding, CEO Iceni. Our orders were that your safety would be imperiled if we did not get you into a secure area as soon as possible.”

  Her safety would be imperiled? There was more than one possible way to interpret that statement. Iceni looked back at the snake as if she hadn’t heard him clearly, stretching out a few more seconds, then glanced back at her bodyguard. Alone, he wouldn’t stand a chance, face-to-face against four snakes.

  * * *

  “GO to hell, Hardrad.”

  For the first time in Drakon’s experience, he saw Hardrad’s composure crack. “You will be the one who dies when I destroy this rebellious city! You and everyone with you!”

  “Then I’ll personally kick you through the gates when we both get to hell,” Drakon said with a laugh. “Since when have you made deals with people? You never bargain, you just bring the hammer down. Offering me a deal means you don’t really have those codes.”

  “I have them! I’ll use them!”

  “CEO Hardrad, if you had those codes, you’d just use them. No threats. No deals. Just take everyone else down with you because dying to you is a lot less important than making sure no one else ever wins. You gave me too much of a chance to watch you work, too many opportunities to see how you do things. But I guess you didn’t spend as much time learning how I do things.” Maybe he had made the wrong assessment about Hardrad’s being more willing to die than to lose, but Drakon knew with absolute confidence that Hardrad couldn’t be trusted to keep any deal. For Drakon and for Iceni, it was a matter of winning or dying.

  Drakon broke the connection so that he could focus on the fight once more. If he spoke to Hardrad again before either of them died, it would be face-to-face in the snake command center.

  Perhaps the distraction had helped him. Checking the display after not looking at it for a few moments, Drakon could now see an opening that he could exploit in the movements and fighting among soldiers and snakes. Drakon ordered the soldiers with him into motion again, down one hallway, through a door, past another hall, then to a corner. They came out behind two viper fire teams blocking attackers coming from the other direction. Drakon leveled his own weapon as his soldiers hit the vipers from the rear. His targeting sight glowed as it registered a good shot, the weapon jerked as an energy pulse blasted out, and a viper in the act of turning lurched against the nearest wall. Two more hits from other weapons tore the viper in half.

  As expected, the vipers fought to the death, the last one turning her weapon on herself to avoid being taken alive by those she had helped torment.

  “That way!” Drakon ordered the other platoon, then led the platoon still with him deeper into the complex, following his helmet display’s directions toward the ISS command center.

  “—floor clear!” he heard Morgan call, then the connection broke.

  “Morgan! If you can hear me, send a few platoons up to clear the top floors and get the rest down here!” According to their information, the upper floors had very little in the way of defenses, being regarded as too vulnerable to attack and bombardment compared to those floors going below ground level where Drakon was. Naturally, that meant those upper floors also held the lowest-ranking members of the ISS, who could be rounded up at leisure once the lower floors had been cleared.

  He didn’t know if Morgan had received the command, but his display showed patches of assault troops streaming through passageways above and to the sides, some penetrating to the next floor down, while clusters of defenders blinked in and out of contact, sometimes disappearing as attackers rolled over them.

  Something hit Drakon’s shoulder, knocking him back, then the soldiers near him were firing down the hall at another viper strongpoint. One of the soldiers aimed a squat tube down the hall and fired, followed by a terrific concussion that knocked the soldiers with Drakon off their feet.

  Drakon lay blinking for a moment in confusion, his armor blaring alarms about damage and a near breach where the viper shot had hit home. His focus on what was happening had broken completely this time, and for that instant he could see and feel nothing but chaos. Drakon clamped down on his nerves, concentrating fiercely until the muddle on his display resolved once again into a recognizable flow of events, then struggled back to his feet. His soldiers were already up and racing to the end of the hallway, where stunned vipers were still trying to gather their wits, only to be slaughtered by close-in fire before they could stand. As Drakon watched them die, he experienced a curious lack of feeling, elation and vengeance also locked away inside him for the moment.

  Another soldier loomed through the smoke, stepping out of a hole blown by the concussion charge. “Are you all right, sir?” Malin asked.

  “Yeah.” Drakon’s display showed that they were not far from the command center, which was still one more floor down. “What have you got with you?”

  “Two squads.”

  “I’ve got most of three squads. Head over that way and try to blow an access into the command center from overhead. That may make the snakes think we’re only trying to get in that way. I’ll take mine down and through here, and hit them from the east.”

  “Yes, sir.” Malin vanished into the countermeasure-created murk, then Drakon took his small force down some stairs that stretched unnaturally long for a flight only going down one level. But that told him the stolen schematics which had revealed a substantial layer of armor above the ISS command center had been proven right again. The lead soldier in the group finally hit a landing, only to be thrown back and to the side as the explosion of a mine rocked the stairwell. Leaping over the new hole in the landing, Drakon followed as his soldiers pounded down another passageway.

  More heavy fire came down the corridor, lashing at the assaulting soldiers. Drakon huddled against one wall, breathing heavily, feeling the sweat coating his face under the helmet and face shield of his armor, wishing that he could wipe off the sweat and wishing that he had another concussion weapon at hand.

  A subsection leader dropped to the floor near Drakon. “We think this is automated, sir. Last-ditch defenses for the command center and survival citadel.”

  “Pretty damned heavy for last-ditch defenses,” Drakon mumbled, scrolling through his display. As far as he could tell through the interference, Malin’s force hadn’t yet been able to punch through the command center’s massive overhead armor. That was mainly intended as a diversion, though, and other assault forces were converging on the command center. How long do we have left until the snakes activate whatever doomsday defenses they have? Iceni swore that without the codes she held as system CEO the snakes would need extra time to engage the override codes, but she didn’t know how much extra time.

  The entire complex shook from a prolonged explosion so heavy that Drakon wondered if the structure overhead was about to collapse. In the wake of the big explosion, the building shuddered again, a prolonged and diffuse trembling as if parts of it were indeed caving in. He felt a chill inside, almost frozen by fear that Hardrad had gotten the codes from Iceni or managed the work-around and carried out his threat to nuke the city.

  But his suit hadn’t registered any radiation burst, and the shock had seemed to come from within the building rather than hitting the outside in the kind of seismic blow that would have been felt when the subsurface nuke created a massive ground shock in the center of the city.

  Drakon realized that the defensive fire from ahead had faltered substantially. His display had fuzzed out almost completely except for the floor-plan schematics, but then it flickered to show assault forces streaming into the command center from the side opposite him. Red symbols marking snakes and vipers were melting away from the assault, some winking out as they were destroyed and others moving fast toward the hallway he was in. “Hold positions!” Drakon yelled, readying his weapon. “Snakes on the way!”

  Armored figures appeared ahead, mixed with others wearing only survival suits, all of them fleeing toward Drakon’s position. He and
the soldiers with him opened fire, cutting down the snakes trying to escape from the trap their own command center had become.

  The last one of the routed snakes stopped and held out hands in surrender, then slammed backward and down as a shot went dead center into the snake’s chest. “Oops,” one of the soldiers said without emotion. “My finger slipped.”

  Drakon didn’t bother getting the soldier’s identity. He had known going in that no mercy would be shown the snakes; but then the snakes had never to his knowledge shown mercy to the general populace.

  A momentary pause came, Drakon cursing as his display fluttered and blurred again. Green symbols popped up at the other end of the hallway, and the automated defenses ceased firing completely. Moments later, Drakon’s display cleared as the last snake active countermeasures were shut down and clean links were established with soldiers throughout the ruin of the ISS complex.

  He got up and moved to meet the soldiers coming his way, hearing their cheers and those of the other soldiers. For the moment, comm discipline seemed to have fallen apart completely as the soldiers celebrated the deaths of the feared snakes and a sense of freedom they had never before known.

  That sense of freedom might cause problems later, probably would cause problems later, but he would deal with that.

  Drakon entered the command center, which was still filled with drifts of smoke and floating countermeasures that hadn’t yet settled. The equipment consoles and desks he could see had been ripped open with close-range fire and clearing charges. Bodies of dead snakes and a few soldiers lay scattered about where they had fallen. He could see across the large space to the opposite wall, where a huge hole gaped.

  Morgan stepped out of the murk, her armor pitted from several hits that hadn’t penetrated, and rapped her right fist against her left breast in salute. “All resistance has been neutralized, sir.”

  “What the hell blew that hole through the command center’s armor?” Drakon demanded.

  He couldn’t see Morgan’s grin through her armor, but he could hear it. “The engineers rigged up six wall-breaching charges to fire in tandem at the same point, sir.”

  “Six? How did you know that wouldn’t bring the building down on top of us?”

  “The engineers said it should be safe, sir. That is, they were fairly confident the building wouldn’t collapse.”

  Fairly confident. He knew who had ordered the engineers to rig that breaching charge that way. “Good work, Morgan.”

  Malin appeared, too, his armor mostly unmarred but his weapon still glowing with waste heat from frequent firing. “I talked to a prisoner before he died. They were trying to activate hidden nukes buried in a dozen locations, one of them centered in this city, but were still about three minutes from final firing approval.”

  “Three minutes?” Hardrad had lied, then. Iceni hadn’t betrayed them. “If they’d had the codes, we never would have made it this far in time.”

  “Yes, sir. Good thing CEO Iceni really did withhold those activation codes.”

  “Where’s CEO Hardrad?” Drakon asked, looking around at the shattered command center.

  “Dead,” Morgan replied.

  “That’s what he is. Where is he?”

  “What’s left of him is in his personal office.” Morgan pointed off to one side. “He was working away at activating those detonation codes when his brains got turned into a wall decoration.”

  Drakon didn’t have to wonder exactly who had blown out Hardrad’s brains. But he couldn’t fault her for the action given what the ISS leader had been trying to accomplish. For all Morgan had known, Hardrad could have been a couple of seconds from detonating those nukes. “Have a team go through that office, checking for traps and anything still operating. Some important files might have survived, and I want anything our people can recover.”

  Malin passed on the order, listened, then waved about in a grand gesture. “The assault forces in the other cities have reported in. Sub-CEOs Kai, Rogero, and Gaiene say the three ISS subcomplexes have been taken. Neighborhood ISS stations everywhere else are being overrun. They’re helpless without backup from the subcomplexes and this place. The planet is under your control, sir.”

  That left the orbiting facilities, but at worst those would be mop-up work if the attacks there failed. Drakon smiled, his breathing slowing as his body began coming down from its hyped-up battle state. He once again looked around the smoking wreckage that had been the ISS command center, and one of the centers for the authority of the Syndicate Worlds in this star system. That authority was now broken. “Then my first official action is to reinstate the old military-rank system in the ground forces. I am now General Drakon, not CEO Drakon. Do you approve, Colonel Morgan?”

  “Yes, sir!” Morgan crowed. “I assume Major Malin also approves.”

  “Bran is a colonel, too, Roh.”

  Malin pointed toward Morgan. “I’d think she’d be more worried about herself being promoted beyond her level of competence. Oh, wait, that’s already happened long before this.”

  “You’re both colonels,” Drakon said. “End of discussion. Colonel Malin, please inform Sub-CEOs Kai, Rogero, and Gaiene that they’re also colonels now. Colonel Morgan, please have this entire complex swept to ensure no snakes got away or are still holed up anywhere inside.” He gazed at broken and shattered equipment consoles, thinking about how long this planet, this star system, had been effectively ruled from this room. “Any loyalist resistance to our attack, or anyone else wanting to rebel against us, will require time to organize. All we have to worry about for the moment is those warships out there.”

  “Warships? We are going retro, aren’t we? No matter what we call them, we don’t have any way to stop an orbital bombardment,” Morgan pointed out.

  “CEO Iceni has some space-combat experience. We’d better hope that’s enough.”

  “We’d also better hope that she’s still allied with us and isn’t planning to get rid of all of her competition in this star system,” Morgan added as she turned to carry out her orders. “Otherwise, all hell is going to start dropping onto this planet in a few hours.”

  * * *

  ABOARD the heavy cruiser C-448, in orbit about the primary world of the Midway Star System, the senior snake opened his mouth to say something to Iceni, then paused with a startled look as his own comm unit blared an alarm. In that moment, as the snakes took a few precious instants to absorb the fact that something serious was happening, Iceni made a quick gesture to Akiri and Marphissa.

  Snake suits had built-in defenses against attack, but the suits left their upper necks bare. The knife Executive Marphissa suddenly produced came around from behind the senior snake and sliced so deeply into his neck that the blade disappeared for a moment. Only one of the other snakes had time to even try to react before all of them were lying on the deck, their blood forming a rapidly spreading pool. Iceni’s bodyguard had twitched forward when the knives appeared, then returned to silent watching as the snakes died.

  Marphissa listened to a message on a comm unit, then nodded to Akiri. “The last snake, in their snoop room, is also dead.”

  “How did you get someone in there?” Iceni asked, knowing how carefully the snakes protected their little citadels within units.

  “The snake left on duty fancied one of the crew,” Marphissa explained, “who offered a liaison while the other snakes were busy. But the climax was a bit more intense than the snake was prepared for.”

  “The old tricks are the best,” Iceni said dryly. “Sub-CEO Akiri, my agents on the other ships whose commanders have pledged loyalty would have acted when the attack on the surface began. Now I need to formally tell every ship, and CEO Kolani, that I am assuming command.”

  “How many are with you?” Akiri asked.

  “With us, Sub-CEO Akiri. We’re all in this together.” Akiri didn’t seem entirely convinced of that as Iceni waved around her. “Most of the mobile forces, the warships, are committed to me. Perhaps enough of t
hem to convince Kolani not to fight. But we’ll see. Let’s get to your bridge.”

  Iceni looked down at the bodies on the deck, moving her feet slightly to avoid a broad, slow-moving river of blood angling toward her. Despite her feelings about the snakes, and even though this act had been necessary, Iceni found her stomach knotting at the sight and smell. But this was no time to betray squeamishness or irresolution, especially when the citizens around her had already smelled the blood of one set of dead masters. During her difficult climb into the ranks of CEOs, Iceni had gotten very good at pretending not to be bothered in the least by anything she had to do. “Have someone clean up this mess.”

  With her bodyguard and Marphissa following, Iceni followed Akiri toward the cruiser’s bridge, feeling oddly deflated for someone in the midst of a rebellion. There was very little chance that Kolani would accept Iceni’s authority, which meant there would be a fight up here as well as on the surface of the planet, and Iceni was already sick of death this day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ICENI felt a sense of familiarity as she walked through the passageways of the cruiser. One of her first junior-executive assignments had been on such a warship, and there hadn’t been any major design changes in the years since then. That C-333 had been destroyed in a battle (to be seamlessly replaced by another C-333) two months after Iceni had transferred to another assignment, continuing on her path upward through executive ranks, cultivating mentors and connections, discrediting and outmaneuvering rivals. Eventually, she had briefly commanded flotillas of mobile forces, surviving a few bloody battles with Alliance warships whose crews had an ugly yet admirable tendency to fight to the bitter end, before a snake loyalty sweep had left a star system without a senior CEO, and one of Iceni’s mentors had rigged the replacement process in her favor.

  She laughed very softly at the memory, drawing a brief glance from Executive Marphissa walking beside her. “What would you do, Executive, if you stumbled across a major smuggling and tax-evasion scheme that seemed to have no senior CEO involvement?”