The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

Malin appeared, too, his armor mostly unmarred but his weapon still glowing with waste heat from frequent firing. “I talked to a prisoner before he died. They were trying to activate hidden nukes buried in a dozen locations, one of them centered in this city, but were still about three minutes from final firing approval.”

“Three minutes?” Hardrad had lied, then. Iceni hadn’t betrayed them. “If they’d had the codes, we never would have made it this far in time.”

“Yes, sir. Good thing CEO Iceni really did withhold those activation codes.”

“Where’s CEO Hardrad?” Drakon asked, looking around at the shattered command center.

“Dead,” Morgan replied.

“That’s what he is. Where is he?”

“What’s left of him is in his personal office.” Morgan pointed off to one side. “He was working away at activating those detonation codes when his brains got turned into a wall decoration.”

Drakon didn’t have to wonder exactly who had blown out Hardrad’s brains. But he couldn’t fault her for the action given what the ISS leader had been trying to accomplish. For all Morgan had known, Hardrad could have been a couple of seconds from detonating those nukes. “Have a team go through that office, checking for traps and anything still operating. Some important files might have survived, and I want anything our people can recover.”

Malin passed on the order, listened, then waved about in a grand gesture. “The assault forces in the other cities have reported in. Sub-CEOs Kai, Rogero, and Gaiene say the three ISS subcomplexes have been taken. Neighborhood ISS stations everywhere else are being overrun. They’re helpless without backup from the subcomplexes and this place. The planet is under your control, sir.”

That left the orbiting facilities, but at worst those would be mop-up work if the attacks there failed. Drakon smiled, his breathing slowing as his body began coming down from its hyped-up battle state. He once again looked around the smoking wreckage that had been the ISS command center, and one of the centers for the authority of the Syndicate Worlds in this star system. That authority was now broken. “Then my first official action is to reinstate the old military-rank system in the ground forces. I am now General Drakon, not CEO Drakon. Do you approve, Colonel Morgan?”

“Yes, sir!” Morgan crowed. “I assume Major Malin also approves.”

“Bran is a colonel, too, Roh.”

Malin pointed toward Morgan. “I’d think she’d be more worried about herself being promoted beyond her level of competence. Oh, wait, that’s already happened long before this.”

“You’re both colonels,” Drakon said. “End of discussion. Colonel Malin, please inform Sub-CEOs Kai, Rogero, and Gaiene that they’re also colonels now. Colonel Morgan, please have this entire complex swept to ensure no snakes got away or are still holed up anywhere inside.” He gazed at broken and shattered equipment consoles, thinking about how long this planet, this star system, had been effectively ruled from this room. “Any loyalist resistance to our attack, or anyone else wanting to rebel against us, will require time to organize. All we have to worry about for the moment is those warships out there.”

“Warships? We are going retro, aren’t we? No matter what we call them, we don’t have any way to stop an orbital bombardment,” Morgan pointed out.

“CEO Iceni has some space-combat experience. We’d better hope that’s enough.”

“We’d also better hope that she’s still allied with us and isn’t planning to get rid of all of her competition in this star system,” Morgan added as she turned to carry out her orders. “Otherwise, all hell is going to start dropping onto this planet in a few hours.”

* * *

ABOARD the heavy cruiser C-448, in orbit about the primary world of the Midway Star System, the senior snake opened his mouth to say something to Iceni, then paused with a startled look as his own comm unit blared an alarm. In that moment, as the snakes took a few precious instants to absorb the fact that something serious was happening, Iceni made a quick gesture to Akiri and Marphissa.

Snake suits had built-in defenses against attack, but the suits left their upper necks bare. The knife Executive Marphissa suddenly produced came around from behind the senior snake and sliced so deeply into his neck that the blade disappeared for a moment. Only one of the other snakes had time to even try to react before all of them were lying on the deck, their blood forming a rapidly spreading pool. Iceni’s bodyguard had twitched forward when the knives appeared, then returned to silent watching as the snakes died.

Marphissa listened to a message on a comm unit, then nodded to Akiri. “The last snake, in their snoop room, is also dead.”

“How did you get someone in there?” Iceni asked, knowing how carefully the snakes protected their little citadels within units.