The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

“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.”