The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  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 m
ean. 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 some
thing 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.”