“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 f
rom 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 enga
ging 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.
The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight Page 25