The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  Just inside the facility access, a snake sitting at the personnel screening desk died before she knew what was happening, her alarm untouched. A group of civilian workers fled in panic, some huddled against the deck in fright, but the soldiers ignored them until one reached for an alarm panel, only to be knocked sprawling against the nearest wall.

  Drakon stayed back, trying to remain near the center of the mass of soldiers as they spread through the facility. He focused not on the action in the area right around him but on the big picture shown on his helmet display, watching for trouble, especially with any of the units heading for the main construction dock and those charging toward the control compartment for the orbital docks.

  Colonel Gaiene seemed to be everywhere, always in the lead, pushing his troops in a race to occupy as much of the facility as possible and overrun as many local soldiers as they could before alarms sounded.

  A team of combat engineers locked into the control circuitry of the docks and began downloading software to take over systems and prevent any new commands from being entered by the defenders.

  Still no alarm as Gaiene’s troops charged through still-open hatches and down undefended passageways. The barracks nearest the docks got swamped by a wave of attackers, the surprised defenders blinking in amazement as they were suddenly confronted by overwhelming numbers of armored soldiers. None were foolish enough to resist.

  The attack spread through the facility in a ragged bubble as different sections were overrun. A break room full of off-shift workers was seized. A workshop occupied. “Secondary docks cleared,” a battalion commander reported to Gaiene and Drakon. “Heading into the main dock now.”

  Drakon focused on the displays from unit leaders charging into the dock. The security doors were unmanned, using automated readers that were overridden in instants, then soldiers were swarming into the main construction dock. “Hot damn,” one of the unit leaders exclaimed as he saw the object hidden inside until then. “Battleship or battle cruiser. Sure as hell.”

  “It’ll be one of those things someday,” another leader commented. “Right now, it’s just a shell.”

  Startled late-shift workers were dropping tools and raising their hands as the soldiers swept among them. “No resistance here. No guards. Main construction dock is secured.”

  “Make sure there are no charges planted to sabotage that hull,” Drakon ordered. “Go over the whole thing with some of those workers in tow.”

  Alarms finally blared as someone, somewhere realized that trouble had arrived. But with Drakon’s engineers confusing the information coming into the control compartment, no one yet seemed to have grasped that an attack was under way. Bewildered automated systems trying to figure out exactly which emergency was the problem mixed the tones of various alerts, the onboard fire alarm switched to the object-collision alarm, which became the riot alarm, which changed to the decompression alarm, which turned back into the fire warning.

  Where the hell are the snakes? Drakon wondered, scanning his display for any sign of them. “Do we have all control circuits locked down?”

  “No, sir,” the reply came from the combat engineer commander. “There are some redundant, totally independent circuits that we haven’t been able to reach yet.”

  “Colonel Gaiene, make sure your soldiers get access to all circuits for the engineers as soon as possible. Bypass other objectives if necessary until we get everything under control.”

  One platoon found a snake barracks filled with ISS personnel hastily trying to don battle armor. After a single instant in which both sides stared at each other, Gaiene’s soldiers launched grenades into the bunched snakes, followed by a rush in which the soldiers fired at anything that still moved, some of them continuing to flay the bodies with shots until their commanders slammed fists against their helmets.

  Drakon snarled with frustration as he saw red markers on his display showing vital circuits and compartments not yet seized. But the civilians on this facility were all awake, some piling into the passageways in panic and slowing down Drakon’s attack. He couldn’t put off the next step any longer. “Broadcast the message.”

  Over the pulsing of the different alarms still clamoring for attention, voices boomed over the internal announcing system hijacked by the comm specialists with Drakon’s troops. “This facility is now under the control of soldiers of the Midway Star System under the command of General Drakon. Do not resist. Any citizens and soldiers who surrender will not be harmed. Return to your quarters and remain there. Do not offer resistance.”

  Another snake barracks, this one alerted but with only a few occupants, who fought viciously before being wiped out.

  “Colonel, we’ve got a platoon holed up near engineering control. They’re . . . Damn! Got a soldier down. These guys are fighting.”

  “Take them out,” Gaiene ordered. “They had their chance.”

  Soldiers converged on the holdouts from three sides, overwhelming the defenders with a barrage of fire before charging in and finishing off any who were still alive.

  Drakon watched it all, remembering so many fights just like it. Then the enemy had been Alliance soldiers. We were taught to fight without mercy. They fought without mercy, too. Now we’re fighting ourselves the same way.

  Is that why Black Jack told his people to start taking prisoners again and stop bombarding citizens? Because he realized that if merciless behavior becomes habit, you can end up turning those tactics on yourself? The Syndicate government has been willing to do things like that for a long time, and here we are, without the Syndicate ordering it or the snakes forcing it on us, repeating that pattern.

  We’ve got to break out of it. “This is General Drakon. Everyone will provide opportunities to surrender to any defender at any point. Only if they keep fighting are they to be killed.”

  “General?” Gaiene questioned. “Your orders going in—”

  “Have changed. We’re not snakes.”

  “. . . Yes, sir.”

  Drakon’s eyes went to part of his display. He frowned, wondering what had drawn his attention, then saw an anomaly warning pop up near the main construction dock. “Heads up at the dock. There’s someone coming your way!”

  Moments later, a hatch blew open, and snakes and loyalist soldiers poured through it toward the massive hull under construction. Fire from Gaiene’s soldiers pummeled them while Drakon started moving himself, calling to some of Gaiene’s nearby units. “To the main dock! Now!”

  Why should it matter? What could a few dozen snakes and soldiers do to something as massive and uncompleted as that hull? But they were fighting like hell to get to it, so there had to be some important reason. “Hold them!” he ordered the soldiers inside the dock. “Keep them away from that hull!”

  “Too many!” one of Gaiene’s soldiers cried, the signal cutting off abruptly on the last word as fire ripped into her.

  Reinforcements entered the dock from three locations, one group led by Drakon. They could see the force of snakes and loyalist soldiers moving toward the hull, their advance hindered by the stubborn defense from Gaiene’s original occupying force. Drakon’s force had come in from the side, giving them clean shots at the attackers. Leveling his weapon, Drakon sighted on a snake dashing forward, his shot hitting home moments before two others, the combined blows taking out the snake.

  The other two reinforcing elements opened fire as well, putting the snakes and loyalist soldiers in a cross fire coming from three directions on top of the shots still pummeling them from the defenders of the hull.

  A loyalist soldier jumped up to run, only to fall as the nearest snake pumped a shot into him. A second later, the snake died, too, as the loyalist soldiers turned on the ISS agents among them.

  “Hold fire!” Drakon ordered as the last of the snakes on the dock died and the loyalist soldiers dropped their weapons, then stood with empty hands raised in surrender. For an instant of time, the fate of the loyalists balanced on the knife-edge of veteran soldiers fig
hting their own instincts and experience to kill without mercy.

  But no more shots were fired. As Drakon took a deep breath and refocused on the situation elsewhere, he heard one of the loyalists broadcasting an appeal in a shaking voice. “You guys know us! We’ve fought together! Don’t scrap us!”

  And the reply from one of Gaiene’s soldiers. “Frost out, brother. We don’t work for some CEO. We’re General Drakon’s troops. His orders are to accept surrender.”

  “Drakon? Praise our ancestors! Hey, the snakes said they needed to reach two places inside that hull. We don’t know why. Here are the readouts.”

  “Let’s check those locations,” a captain ordered some of her soldiers. “You two engineers, come with us in case something needs disarming.”

  “General?” Colonel Gaiene’s voice came.

  “Yeah.” Drakon finally relocated Gaiene on the map on his helmet display, seeing Gaiene leading a force down the passageway toward the primary control compartment. “They tried to get to the hull. Don’t know why yet. How are things on your end?”

  “We’re about to knock on a door.”

  Drakon called up direct video from Gaiene’s armor, seeing a soldier leveling a Ram tube at the reinforced hatch protecting the control compartment. The Ram fired, blowing the hatch completely off its mountings, and before the hatch had hit the deck Gaiene led a force through the hatchway into the main control compartment. Inside, screaming workers were trying to flee a half-dozen snakes in armor who were firing into them. “Try someone who can fight back!” Gaiene shouted as his first shot shattered the faceplate of one of the snakes.

  The other snakes died in a flurry of fire, leaving a curious stillness around the soldiers. Through Gaiene’s armor, Drakon could hear the shuddering gasps and pained cries of the surviving civilian workers, who were watching the soldiers with dread. “Start first aid and get some medics in here fast,” Gaiene ordered his troops, then spoke to Drakon. “System operators. It looks like the snakes were going to kill them all, then try to blow the system controls. Totally pointless since we’ve already remotely seized command of those circuits. Just senseless, bloody slaughter.” Gaiene took a step to stand over one of the snakes lying lifeless on the deck, pointed his weapon at the head of the dead body, and fired another shot. “Bastards.”

  Who would you be if you weren’t you? Iceni’s question came back to Drakon then. Who would those snakes have been? In a different place and time, would they have still been willing to do such things? Was it because they had been taught that such actions were right? Or had the ISS sought out those who were always to be found among humanity in every place and time, the ones who for a cause or for no reason at all would kill the helpless without blinking? The answer didn’t matter just then. He and Gaiene had to deal with who the snakes were. “Good job, Colonel.”

  The main control deck had been one of the last places to be reached where resistance could be expected. Elsewhere, the flood of soldiers continued to spread rapidly through the rest of the facility, but aside from an occasional isolated loyalist soldier who stood with empty hands raised in surrender, no more defenders were left. “How’s it look to you, Colonel Gaiene?”

  “I’ve got teams checking a few last spots right now, General. But it looks like we’ve got this one put away.”

  A few minutes later, Gaiene called again. “All secure,” he reported. “Odd that one force tried so hard to get to a hull that couldn’t have gotten under way without several months of work.”

  “We should hear from the soldiers who went in to check on that real soon.” Drakon studied the lists of data being downloaded from Gaiene’s armor. “We took a few casualties.”

  “It could have been far worse, General. It was for the defenders.” The elation and excitement was draining from Colonel Gaiene’s voice, replaced by weariness and gloom. “I have a report from those who are inside the hull. They’ve found the packages the snakes wanted so badly.”

  Video popped up on one side of Drakon’s helmet display. “Two nukes,” an engineer reported. “Sealed behind false bulkheads. We severed the command links before they could be remotely detonated, so the only way the snakes could set them off was by getting to them.”

  “They sure didn’t want anyone making off with this hull,” the captain who had led the searchers commented. “If they’d blown those, it would have also trashed this whole dock facility.”

  “Get the nukes disarmed, disassembled, and removed,” Drakon ordered. Had news of what Iceni had accomplished at Kane already reached Taroa, resulting in an extra measure of security against someone’s stealing an uncompleted warship? Or did this just reflect snake paranoia of possible rebellion on the dock? He remembered the cooperation some of the prisoners had rendered and how they had turned on the snakes with them. “Colonel Gaiene, I want the loyalist soldiers who surrendered evaluated for candidates to come over to us. What I’m seeing shows that they’re all Syndicate troops as opposed to Taroan locals.”

  “That matches my information,” Gaiene said. “Apparently, the snakes didn’t trust locals up here.”

  “They don’t seem to have trusted the loyalist regulars all that much, either. With good cause.”

  Gaiene’s smile mixed melancholy and satisfaction. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer nest of reptiles. We’ll put the option of joining your forces to these soldiers and see what happens. I assume we want full screening of each and every one of those volunteers before we accept them?”

  “You assume correctly. There have been way too many deep-cover snake agents showing up at Midway.”

  “And the civilians?”

  “We’ll screen them gradually. For now, I’ll keep the facility at lockdown for another hour, then relax it by stages. That should keep any civilians from doing anything dumb and any snake agents among them from doing anything until we’re ready to deal with it.”

  Feeling exhausted but grateful that coming down off the adrenaline rush from an operation was eased by the need to concentrate on cleanup details, Drakon called the freighter. “Put me through to Senior Line Worker Mentasa.” There were risks involved in using Mentasa, but those were more than balanced by the advantages in having someone known and trusted by the workers here. Mentasa also had firsthand knowledge of which specialists were most needed to finish out the work on the battleship at Midway.

  “Here, General Drakon,” Mentasa said, doing his best to stand in a military posture even though the cramped quarters on the freighter made that difficult, and even though his citizen-worker appearance made his attempts to look military seem a little silly.

  “The facility has been taken. It’s still on lockdown, but I want you to get on the comm system. I’m sending you an authorization so the blocks we put on it will let you through. Start talking to people you know. Tell them who we are, reassure them that they are safe, tell them what we want, find out what they’ve been building in the main construction dock, and see if anyone is interested in being hired to work at Midway. I also want to know everything you can find out about the hull in the main construction dock. Battleship or battle cruiser, how far along, how long it will take to finish, and whether Taroa has everything needed to complete it.”

  “Yes, General.” Mentasa hesitated. “General, is it permissible to contact anyone on the planet?”

  “Personal business or business?” Drakon asked, already knowing the answer by the look in Mentasa’s eyes.

  “Both. If that’s—”

  “It’s fine. After you talk to the citizens up here and get me that information on the hull that’s under construction, feel free to talk to citizens down on the planet. Let your people know that you’re all right. By the time you talk to them, I’ll have let the Free Taroans know why we’re here.”

  Drakon took a few moments to check out his appearance, trying to look impressive but not too intimidating. The Free Taroans had open comm links, of course, broadcasting their propaganda and seeking recruits. Drakon’s comm software
easily hijacked one of the those circuits. “This is General Drakon of the Midway Independent Star System. My soldiers now control the primary orbiting dockyard in this star system. We have come here to assist the Free Taroans. The leaders of the Free Taroans are to contact me as soon as possible using this circuit.”

  That ought to produce a quick reaction.

  How the Free Taroans would react to this unasked-for help had been the biggest variable in the planning. If the Free Taroans balked, if they were more afraid of Drakon’s aid than they were eager to win, then things might get a bit complicated when he insisted on holding on to the docks.

  He would have to wait and see. There were some things that couldn’t be solved with soldiers.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE response from the Free Taroans took about half an hour, about what he had expected from a group that seemed to think voting on everything was the way to do business.

  He recognized the woman who answered, but in that haven’t-I-seen-her-before way rather than precise identification.

  She saluted him. “Sub-CEO Kamara. I once served in a force under your command, General Drakon.”

  Kamara? Now he remembered. Not the finest sub-CEO that he had ever worked with, but far from the worst. She had been good enough to impress herself on his memory. “You’ve joined the Free Taroans?”

  “Yes. A number of the Syndicate troops did. We’re tired of being slaves.” She said that pointedly, eyeing Drakon as if it were a challenge.

  “I’m not interested in becoming anyone’s new master,” he assured Kamara. “I brought forces to help the Free Taroans win here.”

  “That comes as a great surprise to us. Naturally, we’re worried about other surprises. What is expected in exchange for your aid?”

  Drakon smiled grimly. “What we get from the deal is simple. We win when you win. Midway doesn’t want the snakes to achieve victory here. I shouldn’t have to explain why. What we’ve heard of the third faction here makes it sound like they would be as bad as the snakes as far as we’re concerned. Taroa is our neighboring star system. We’d like it controlled by someone we can work with.”