The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

Iceni suppressed a shudder, imagining the havoc that must have played out aboard C-990. The crew fighting among themselves, surrounded by wreckage, no way to tell one side from the other, so that it would have been as easy to target friends as enemies in the death grapple among the intermittently lit and torn-up passageways and compartments.

“The last two mutineers, or the last two loyalists, could have killed each other, not knowing what they were doing,” Marphissa commented, echoing Iceni’s thoughts. “If there’s anyone still alive, they’ll probably be at the bridge or at engineering.”

“Send the probe to the bridge first,” Iceni ordered. That was where Kolani would surely be.

The probe wended its way though the passageways, dodging wreckage and the dead. The interior of the wrecked cruiser increasingly reminded Iceni of a nightmare, emergency lights eerily bright in some places, only flickering in others, deep patches of darkness looming that might have a single, still hand thrust out into the light, the fingers curled in a last attempt to grasp nothingness. A broken ship carrying a dead crew, like something out of a sinister legend of space.

Finally, the armored hatch leading onto the bridge loomed ahead. “That hatch was forced, too,” the probe operator said, her own voice sounding strained.

Iceni looked at the bodies visible around the hatch. “They lost a lot of people doing it.” Bridges were meant to be citadels for the officers in the event of a mutiny, thus they had active defenses as well as armor protecting them. Some of those defenses had probably been knocked out during the fight with Iceni’s warships, but enough had survived to decimate the attackers.

“The bridge is also in vacuum.” The probe approached the hatch cautiously, transmitting the codes that should disarm any surviving defenses, and eventually reached the portal.

From the hatch, the bridge appeared mostly intact, but Iceni could see bodies sprawled around. Had the bridge crew fought among themselves as well? The senior ISS agent aboard would have been there, and armed. Kolani’s officers would have been loyal to her. But what about the others, the line workers and executives of C-990’s crew?

From the viewing angle they had, it was apparent that Kolani still sat in the command seat, her back to the hatch, wearing a survival suit with her CEO markings clear in the light from the probe. But Kolani didn’t move, her body rigid. “No signs of life,” the probe operator said. “No life data coming in from any survival suits, no warm spots on infrared. Everyone on the bridge must be dead.” The probe began to move onto the bridge, while Iceni readied herself to order it stopped. She had already accumulated enough horrible memories in her life to sometimes trigger night sweats as it was. She did not want to see Kolani’s lifeless face to add to those.

But before Iceni could say anything, an alarm blared. “The probe tripped some sort of circuit,” the operator said. “Power surge detected. Some sort of command seems to have been—”

Iceni’s image from the probe went blank as a much louder alarm shouted for attention.

“C-990’s core overloaded,” Marphissa reported in a low voice. “There must have been a booby trap set, so when someone entered the bridge it would trigger the overload. We’re on the edge of the danger zone, so there’s no threat to this unit.”

Iceni kept her eyes on the spot where the image from the probe had been. Kolani had done it, she was sure. In her last moments of life, Kolani had set a trap for those who would come to gloat over her defeat. Perhaps in those final moments Kolani had had time to hope that Iceni herself would be part of that team. Sorry to disappoint you. “Gather the flotilla and return it to orbit about the planet. Let me know the moment we hear from C-625 or any other unit at the gas giant.”

They were about six light-minutes from the planet. Information would be a little time-late, but not too much. Iceni closed her eyes, massaged her forehead with the fingers of one hand, then looked for messages from Drakon.

There were several. As Iceni viewed the first messages, she had a sudden chilling vision in which the fratricide and destruction aboard C-990 had just been a prologue to similar scenes to be played out on the surface of the nearby planet.

* * *

“THEY need to see you,” Malin insisted.

“Going out in those mobs,” Morgan shot back, “is a good way to ensure he dies.”

As usual, both Malin and Morgan had good points. Drakon eyed the reports streaming in on multiple comm windows, seeing reluctant police forces and far-more-reluctant local administrators filtering in small groups among the massive crowds of celebrants. Moving discreetly behind both were platoons of soldiers, usually with more platoons watching the leading platoons.