The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword (29 page)

“I know, but if he starts firing again, you can continue reducing his defenses.” Marphissa pointed to her display, where an image mostly covered with red damage markers represented the enemy ship. “If they are ready to surrender, we can use that battleship, even if only as a source of parts.”

“The snakes won’t surrender, Kommodor,” Mercia insisted.

“I know that,” Marphissa said. “The snakes on my ships didn’t surrender, either. We got rid of them. If the crew on that battleship has finally had enough, they may be eliminating the snakes aboard as we speak.”

“How long do you want me to wait?”

“I’ll let you know.” Marphissa ended the call, feeling annoyed. Mercia might have said she was ready to acknowledge Marphissa’s authority when everything was going her way, but when Marphissa’s orders had conflicted with Mercia’s desires, there had been some obvious friction.

They waited, watching the mauled Syndicate battleship roll and tumble slowly through space. “Are we seeing any signs of what is happening inside?” Marphissa asked.

“Nothing, Kommodor,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla said. “No messages, no signs of activity, nothing being detected by our other sensors.”

Another five minutes crawled by, while Marphissa tried to decide how much longer to wait before ordering Mercia to open fire again. She felt a perverse desire to stretch out the time before such an order just to punish Mercia for being less than enthusiastically compliant, but rejected the thought. “If nothing happens in five minutes more,” she told Mercia, “you are authorized to resume firing.”

Mercia kept her expression and voice professionally dispassionate as she replied. “Yes, Kommodor. I will have
Midway
in position.”

With just two minutes to go, activity finally occurred.

“Escape pod launch from the Syndicate battleship,” Czilla reported. “Another . . . three . . . four more. They’re coming out fast, lots of them.”

“Get me contact with one of those pods,” Marphissa ordered. “I want to know who is abandoning ship and why. Kapitan Mercia, continue holding your fire until we learn what is going on.”

“I am not to target the escape pods?” Mercia asked.

“No. We do not— That is no longer policy, not where President Iceni has authority.”

“O brave new world that has such people in it,” Mercia said, citing the old quote usually used sarcastically. But she gave Marphissa a look that was anything but sarcastic or biting. “Sometimes I don’t know whether these new policies are real until I see what President Iceni’s people do when presented with opportunities to violate those policies.”

“I hope you approve,” Marphissa said, her tone sharper than she had intended.

“Yes, Kommodor. My apologies if earlier I did not act with sufficient respect.”

She seemed sincere enough, so Marphissa waved a dismissive hand. “It takes time to adjust to new situations.”

“It does indeed.”

As far as the escape pods from the Syndicate battleship went, it also took a little time, a few more minutes, to gain contact with one of them while Marphissa waited with growing impatience.

“We have a pod,”
Manticore
’s comm specialist announced.

“Show me,” Marphissa ordered.

The virtual window that popped into existence before her showed the interior of a standard Syndicate warship escape pod, this one packed with personnel. Looking over the figures she could see, Marphissa judged that all were workers since no portions of executive or sub-CEO outfits could be seen under their survival suits. “I am Kommodor Marphissa of the Free and Independent Midway Star System. Who are you?”

The workers nearest the vid pickup looked at each other, then one middle-aged man licked his lips and answered. “Line Worker Tomas Fidor. Propulsion Section Five. Maintenance Office One. Engineering Department.”

“What is happening on the battleship that you left?”

“We left . . . um . . . honored . . .”

“I am the Kommodor in command of Midway’s warships in this star system,” she said, hearing the snap of command enter her voice. “We are not Syndicate. I know that you left your battleship. I want to know why. Was an order given to abandon ship? Is there fighting going on inside that ship?”

Fidor nodded quickly, then shook his head. “No. I mean, yes. There was no order to abandon ship. The word was passed among the workers. There is fighting. The snakes, they are crazy. There are so many of them. A lot are dead, but we couldn’t get them all.”

“How many of the crew are left aboard?” Marphissa demanded. “How many snakes?”

The image fuzzed as something interfered with the signal, then cleared, showing the worker grinning nervously. “I don’t know. Everyone was trying to get off. Everyone but the snakes.”

“Where is CEO Boucher? Is she still alive?”

The worker’s face spasmed with hate. “She is still alive. No one can get to her.”

“Is CEO Boucher sealed into the bridge citadel?”

“Y-yes. No one can get in there. No one can get close.”

“What about the weapons-control citadel and the engineering control citadel?” Marphissa asked.

“Weapons was abandoned. Nobody there anymore. The weapons-integration systems crashed, and the weapons couldn’t fire from central control, so everyone left. Except some snakes, but they couldn’t do anything.”

Marphissa narrowed her eyes at the worker’s image. “What about engineering?” she pressed.

“Engineering? Um . . . engineering . . .”

“I am trying to decide whether or not to board that battleship to gain possession of it,” Marphissa lied. “I will be very unhappy if there is something I should know before that happens, and you do not tell me.”

“I— You don’t want to go aboard that unit! Just don’t!”

“They’ve done something,” Diaz said. “Before they left the battleship. Engineering specialist, are we picking up anything from the battleship?”

The engineering specialist standing watch on
Manticore
’s bridge answered immediately. “Minor fluctuations in the power core, Kapitan. That’s understandable given the amount of damage the battleship has sustained. Different systems will be erratically dropping online and off-line in ways that cause core fluctuations as it copes with the variations in power demand.”

“Is that the only explanation or the most likely explanation?”

The specialist did not hesitate. “The most likely, Kapitan. There is a chance it could also be early signs of instability in the core itself.”

“What did you do?” Marphissa asked the worker, her voice low but commanding.

“I did nothing!”

“What is about to happen?”

The worker’s expression visibly wavered with indecision.

“I can ask anyone else in any other escape pod,” Marphissa said, her tone now implacable. “If you plan on living, one of my ships has to pick you up. Now, give me a straight and clear answer with no further delays.”

“Y-yes, honored supervisor.” The man swallowed, looking terror-struck. “There’s a mechanism that the snakes installed. To cause an overload. After all the snakes in the engineering control areas died,” he said, phrasing it as if the snakes had all just suddenly dropped dead of their own accord, “we modified it.”

“Modified it?”

“It’s on a timer. We think it will blow in about . . . what is the time now . . . about ten more minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”
Marphissa flared. “If the power core on that battleship overloads in ten minutes, a lot of your escape pods will still be within its danger radius! They can’t accelerate fast enough to get clear!”

“We didn’t want the snakes left aboard to have time to find out what we had done and override it!”

“Idiots,” Diaz murmured, his eyes on his display. “Kommodor, our ships might be able to pick up some of the escape pods that will still be within the danger region—”

“No,” Marphissa replied. “They jury-rigged something to put that self-destruct device on a timer. We don’t know for certain when the power core will overload. I cannot risk any of my ships being caught by that blast.” She hit her comm controls, cursing vengeance-minded workers who didn’t stop to think through their plans for reprisal against their supervisors and the snakes. “All ships, this is Kommodor Marphissa. The Syndicate battleship’s power core is rigged to overload in roughly ten minutes, possibly less. All units are to immediately use maximum acceleration to clear the danger radius around the battleship. Stay clear of the danger zone until I give permission to reenter it. All ships acknowledge and get moving!”

Midway
was closest to the Syndicate battleship and had the farthest to go to clear the blast radius, but fortunately she was also by far the most heavily armored and shielded of the warships and thus best able to ride out the shock if it happened too quickly. Marphissa had barely finished speaking before
Midway
’s thrusters came to life on full, pivoting her to one side, the battleship’s main propulsion kicking in as soon as
Midway
’s bow had swung far enough away from the enemy warship.

“All of our ships should be all right,” Kapitan Diaz noted. “Five minutes less warning, and it would have been a different story.”

“Are your sensors picking up definite instability indications from the battleship’s power core yet?” Marphissa asked.

“Not yet,” the engineering specialist answered. “Just what we had before. But, Kommodor, when we saw this snake device used at Midway, you remember the light cruiser they destroyed when it mutinied, there were no warning signs until the power core entered the last stages of overload, and those came with unusual rapidity.”

“That’s right.” She looked at Diaz as another thought occurred to her. “How do we know those idiot workers actually set the overload device before they fled?”

“Did you see how scared they were?” Diaz answered. “They sure seemed frightened of being caught in that blast to me. Ah. All ships are clearing the danger radius, Kommodor.
Midway
is the last, and she will be beyond any danger within a minute.”

“Good.” Marphissa stared at her display. “See if your comm specialist can establish contact with the Syndicate battleship. I want to speak to their commander.”

“Kommodor, that will be CEO Hua Boucher.”

“I know. I want to speak to her,” Marphissa repeated.

It took another half minute before a new virtual window appeared before Marphissa.

CEO Hua Boucher, the “Happy Hua” whose grandmotherly appearance and pleasant demeanor had lured countless victims into deadly overconfidence or confessions, sat in the command seat on the battleship as if nothing could cause her to move from it. She had a frown creasing her usually cheerful face, but otherwise what could be seen of the bridge of the battleship had a jarring feel of the routine to it. Buried deep with the hull of the warship behind immense armor and the sheer mass of all the intervening compartments, the bridge was physically untouched by the battering which had been inflicted on the Syndicate battleship’s hull. “What do you want?” Hua Boucher demanded like a disappointed elder.

Marphissa gazed back at her, marveling at how different outward appearances could be from the person inside. “I wanted to see the sort of human who could order the bombardment of Kane.”

“They were traitors. They had murdered servants of the Syndicate. They had no right to expect any other fate,” Hua Boucher explained, still in those disappointed tones.

“That’s it?” Marphissa paused, trying to find words. “I grew up in the Syndicate. I know how horrible it is. But it is supposed to be efficient, it is supposed to be practical. Why kill all those people, why destroy so much? All you did was convince everyone in this part of space that the Syndicate cannot be trusted, that they must prepare to defend themselves against the Syndicate.”

“Any other traitors will be dealt with in the same way,” Hua Boucher said. From force of habit, her words came out sounding like a firm but gentle admonition.

“No,” Marphissa said. “You can’t keep that up any longer. You must know that. The Syndicate government on Prime must know that. Why? Why did you do something that you must have known would turn more people against you?”

“If one death does not convince traitors of their errors, then ten deaths will,” Happy Hua said in her grandmotherly way. “If ten deaths do not, then a hundred will. If a hundred do not—”

Snake philosophy, laid out in the starkest possible terms. Marphissa looked away, trying to regain her composure. “You’re about to die. Do you have any regrets at all?”

“Only that you did not die first.” Happy Hua smiled. “But that may still happen. We may not be as easy to overcome as you think.”

“We’re not boarding your ship,” Marphissa said.

“Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said to Diaz, “we’re seeing a sudden jump in power fluctuations on the battleship.”

“How long do they have left?” Diaz asked.

“I estimate thirty seconds, Kapitan. No more than a minute.”

Happy Hua was still gazing back at Marphissa, but with some amused puzzlement now. “Do you intend starving us out?”

“No,” Marphissa said. She could see, in the background behind Hua Boucher, people suddenly rushing around on the Syndicate battleship’s bridge. They no longer had any means of controlling their power core from the bridge, but their instruments could tell them what was happening. “I had no choice in this. The workers you terrorized, tortured, and murdered have had their revenge.
They
killed you. Take that thought to hell with you.”

For the first time, Happy Hua looked rattled, her eyes widening. She started to turn to speak to someone at the back of the bridge.

Her image vanished.

“Overload, Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said.

“We are well outside the danger region,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla said. “We will feel the shock wave, but it will have spread out too much to be a danger to us.”

Diaz nodded, touching a control to speak throughout
Manticore
. “Brace for shock wave.”

Manticore
rocked like an oceangoing vessel hit by a large swell.

“No damage to
Manticore
, Kapitan,” Czilla reported.