The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

“The other flotilla is coming back, heading straight for the battleship. We’re twenty minutes from intercept. How are the dirt eaters doing?”

“So far, so good. Get my attention when we’re ten minutes from intercept. I want fire concentrated on the heavy cruiser and the light cruisers. Those HuKs could pound the battleship all day and hardly scratch it.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

Back to Rogero, who was in yet another long passageway but moving more slowly, his soldiers moving in groups of two which rushed forward while others covered their movement with their weapons. The bridge was located deep inside the hull, well protected and linked to exterior sensors so that it had as good a view as if it were on the outside of the hull in a compartment lined with picture windows. Windows on a warship. What a funny idea, Iceni thought. Who would put actual windows on any spaceship instead of using virtual ones and keeping the hull as strong as possible everywhere?

“Ten meters to the bridge citadel boundaries,” one of the soldiers said. “Where the hell are they?”

“Hopefully not in—” The soldier who had spoken flung himself backward as weapons fire lashed the passageway.

“We found ’em!” someone yelled as Rogero’s team all fired, the crisscrossing patterns of fire in the passageway momentarily intense enough to cause Rogero’s face shield to protectively darken nearly to black.

“Move!” Rogero yelled. The soldiers charged forward, the fire from the light weaponry of the snakes glancing off their armor and staggering the soldiers as they ran straight at the defenders.

Iceni couldn’t grasp what was happening for the next few moments as images flashed by too quickly to interpret. Rogero was with his soldiers, firing, shapes in lighter armor were falling, springing up, trying to run, only to fall, sometimes in pieces as more than one hit from the soldiers’ weapons literally tore apart some of the snakes.

“Area clear.”

“Spread out and check for more,” Rogero ordered, stepping over one of the dead snakes to peer around a corner. Down a short passageway sat the heavily armored main hatch leading onto the bridge. Scars on the armor told of attempts to break through it, and damage to the nearby bulkheads and overhead marked active defenses for the bridge that had been destroyed by the snakes so they could gain access to the hatch.

The plug-in for the local comm net was still fine, though. Rogero shoved a wireless link into it. “On the bridge, this is Colonel Rogero. The snakes out here are dead.”

The reply took a moment. “Colonel?”

“Sub-CEO. We’ve changed our rank titles now that we’re no longer subject to Syndicate rule. Do you have control of the internal monitoring system? We don’t know how many snakes are aboard or where they are.”

Another voice broke in on Rogero. “Team Three has reached the fire-control center. Contacting occupants now.”

“Team Two is engaging another snake strongpoint just short of engineering control.”

The voice from the bridge came on, loud and stressed. “Main propulsion! You need to get to main propulsion!”

“We’ve got people almost to engineering control—” Rogero began.

“No! Main propulsion. The snakes couldn’t run the main drives, but they could rig the fuel cells to blow! They threatened to do that if we didn’t surrender.”

“Now you tell us,” Rogero growled. “Team Two, Team Three, new orders. Leave sections to protect the fire-control center and engineering control, and the rest of you get down to the fuel-cell bunkers as fast as you can and look for sabotage. The snakes have threatened to blow the cells.”

“What are we looking for, Colonel?”

“Explosive charges, det cord, timers, nuclear weapons, anything that doesn’t belong.”

“Sir, we don’t know what belongs in fuel-cell bunkers—”

Iceni broke in, speaking to both Rogero and Marphissa. “We’re setting up a link to engineers on the warships for your soldiers. By the time they get down there, we can have engineer eyes to assist their search.”

“Understood,” Rogero called back. “The sooner the better.”

“I’ve got a battle to fight here!” Marphissa snarled as she frantically hit some commands. “We’re eleven minutes from contact with the other flotilla . . . ten minutes now. Comms, get engineers on the heavy cruisers linked to the ground forces net. Everyone else, eyes on the other flotilla!”

Ten minutes. Iceni checked her display, where the two flotillas were coming together at a slight angle this time since the other force was aiming for the battleship rather than trying to hit Iceni’s flotilla. That didn’t make them any less dangerous, though, and her own CL-773 light cruiser was still trying to claw back into formation but a bit behind.