The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

Reports were also coming in on damage to the other side as the sensors on Iceni’s warships spotted and evaluated whatever could be observed, and Iceni could see damage markers blinking into existence on the symbol of the lone heavy cruiser in the other flotilla. “At least we hurt him worse than he did us.”

The extra firepower of Iceni’s three heavy cruisers had made a difference, inflicting serious damage on the enemy cruiser. “He’s completely lost maneuvering, drifting away from the rest of his formation,” the operations specialist said.

“But he’s not dead yet.”

“No. It looks like he still has comms to the rest of his force, and there are some weapons assessed still operational.”

Iceni turned a narrow-eyed look on Marphissa, who was frowning in thought. “I think we should go for the kill on the heavy cruiser,” Marphissa said.

“Why?”

“Because we can’t catch the rest of the other flotilla before it reaches the battleship. But if the commander on that heavy cruiser gets scared enough, they will be yelling for help and may order back their own units to save them.”

Another set of bad choices to choose from. “There’s no way of catching the light cruisers?”

“Not unless they turn back toward us.”

“A possibility that you didn’t mention when asking me to concentrate our fire on the heavy cruiser!” Iceni tried to suppress anger and frustration, knowing that she had to make the decision quickly and still worried about what might be happening on the battleship. Go for the head. When dealing with snakes, always go for the head. “Get the heavy cruiser. This time I want it destroyed.”

“Yes, Madam President!” Kommodor Marphissa adjusted the course of her units, curving away from a stern chase of the light cruisers and HuKs remaining in the other flotilla, and aiming for the crippled heavy cruiser. “Twelve minutes to intercept.”

“Get my attention at five minutes.” Iceni turned to focus on the display showing the soldiers again.

Many of them still showed empty passageways. A few revealed worn-looking mobile forces personnel in the engineering and fire-control citadels, their faces still reflecting disbelief and joy at the arrival of rescuers. Rogero and some soldiers with him were still stalled outside the bridge.

But roughly half showed engineering spaces, most of them with ranks of fuel cells looming nearby, the soldiers’ points of view swinging as they hastily examined the area for evidence of sabotage.

“I can’t see anything here that shouldn’t be,” an unfamiliar voice complained, probably one of the engineers on one of Iceni’s heavy cruisers. “Try to find something that doesn’t belong,” the engineer instructed the soldiers.

“How can I find something that doesn’t belong when I don’t know what does belong?” one of the soldiers replied in exasperated tones.

“Look for something that looks like it could explode.”

“I thought everything down here could explode!”

“It can! You want to find the things that could explode but aren’t supposed to be there, so they don’t blow up the things that could explode but are supposed to be there!”

“What?”

Rogero’s voice broke in. “Just scan as much as you can as fast as you can. Engineers, tell me what the most effective means of setting off the fuel cells would be. That might help us narrow our search.”

A pause, while the images of the fuel cells continued to stream past, then another voice came on. “Actually, if you want to make sure they all blew, you’d want to ensure the cells didn’t just rupture but were hit hard enough to detonate.”

“What would that take?” Rogero asked.

“Umm . . . ten-kiloton nuclear device or larger.”

“We can detect nukes. There aren’t any down there.”

“Then . . . oh. It’s not in the fuel cell area at all.”

Another engineer’s voice. “You don’t mean sympathetic ignition?”

“Yes, that would do it.”

A third engineer’s voice. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? If you work the calculations—”

Rogero, almost shouting this time. “Where. Is. It?”

“Primary feed for the fuel cells. If you rig the feed to release all energy in a single event instead of a controlled release into the power core, you’d get a blowback into the fuel-cell storage area, which would detonate the rest of the cells in storage, and the entire stern of the battleship would be blown to atoms. That’s assuming the power core didn’t also overload—”

“Get to that feed,” Rogero ordered his soldiers. “You in engineering control, I need a software check to see if any snake viruses are in the propulsion-regulation systems or power-core-regulation systems.”

“But, Colonel,” one of the soldiers protested, “the snakes said the fuel cells—”

“Run that statement by one more time and see what’s wrong with it! ‘The snakes said’? Doesn’t that mean the truth is going to be anything but that?”

“Five minutes, Madam President.”