The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

On her display, Iceni’s eyes held for a moment on an image of the crippled merchant ship, its control gone, gliding past the battleship and sliding inexorably closer to the gas giant’s atmosphere. Anyone still alive on that ship wouldn’t be alive much longer. There’s nothing I can do about it. They’re too far behind us now for any of my ships to get back there in time even if I wanted to rescue snakes from that fate.

But it’s still an awful way to die.

“Give me a display linked to the ground forces assault teams,” Iceni ordered. Moments later the display popped up next to her. All she had to do was turn her head and touch individual screens to see exactly where the team leaders were and what they were doing. The screens flickered, then steadied. “What was that?”

“Something on the battleship tried to jam the connection,” the comms specialist said. “We powered through it.”

“Give me the— Where’s the—” Iceni finally hit the right touch spot, and the view from Rogero’s armor expanded while his comms became audible to her.

The view felt odd, looking through the vacuum of space at an angle along a slightly curving wall where other suits of combat armor clung. “Get the lock open,” she heard Rogero order.

One of the soldiers placed a palm-sized device with care, then waited while information scrolled across the readout on the device. “Access code broken,” the soldier near the device reported. “Override code blocked. Autolock overridden. Local lock disengaged.”

A large section of wall faded back, then slid sideways. From Rogero’s position, Iceni could see the outer layer of armor on the battleship forming a thick bar on the side of the lock. “Inside,” Rogero ordered. “Full combat footing, weapons free to fire.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE had read Rogero’s plan and knew that each team of special forces had an objective. One would head for the engineering control center to rescue the surviving crew there. The second for the weapons fire-control center. And the third, with Rogero, for the bridge.

They had to get through two more air locks to reach the interior of the battleship, passing successive layers of heavy armor and leaving tiny comm relays in their wake to keep the signals clear even when the air-lock hatches sealed behind them. The soldiers encountered no one as they cleared the last lock and stood within the passageways of the battleship, stretching eerily empty in all directions.

One soldier raised an arm to point. “Surveillance cam up there watching the lock exit. That’s not on standard battleship schematics.”

“Snake gear,” Rogero said. “They know we’re inside now. Get going.”

Rogero moved in the middle of his group as the three sets of soldiers scattered, heading for their respective goals. “Sub-Executive Kontos, this is Colonel Rogero of the independent Midway Star System. We are inside the hull and heading for your location. Can you hear me?”

No answer.

Iceni saw a swarm of symbols swim across Rogero’s heads-up display. “Team Two has encountered resistance,” someone reported to him, her voice slightly distant across the comm system tying the suits into one network whose every piece was mobile. “Not, repeat not, vipers.”

“Try to get one alive,” Rogero ordered, “so they can tell us how many of them are aboard and whether there are vipers anywhere on this thing.”

“Negative. All dead.” The other team leader didn’t sound too regretful. “Proceeding to objective.”

“How big are these damned things?” one of the soldiers muttered into the comm as they rounded a corner and headed down another long passageway broken at intervals by bulkheads with armored survival hatches set into them.

“You can get lost for days,” another soldier remarked. “How come none of the internal hatches are being sealed on us, Colonel?”

“Controlled from the bridge,” Rogero replied. “Part of the antimutiny system. The snakes can only override one hatch at a time. Left here,” he ordered as they reached an intersection of passageways.

“But the plan in our suits—”

“Is a straight shot to the bridge. Guess where the snakes will be waiting for us?”

“Team Three meeting resistance. One soldier down.”

“Team Two has hit an ambush. Four, five snakes. Got one still alive.”

“Make the snake talk,” Rogero said, his voice toneless despite the exertion in it as his team trotted down another stretch of passageway.

“Team Three through resistance. Four snakes dead.”

“Team Two reporting prisoner died before talking. Looks like conditioning-driven suicide.”

“That is sick,” a soldier grumbled.

“They’re damned snakes; what do you expect?”

“Keep it down,” Rogero ordered. “Right here and up that ramp.”

Iceni pulled her attention away from the soldiers for a moment, refocusing on the bridge of her heavy cruiser. “How does it look?” she asked Marphissa.