Drakon saw a small virtual window appear on his display, the image zooming on part of the Syndicate positions as a single figure in battle armor stumbled out into the open and began running at an angle, not toward the base or back into the Syndicate lines, but through the open area between them. Whoever it was had only taken a half dozen steps before weapon discharges could be seen coming from the buildings behind. The figure stumbled, tried to regain its feet, then fell and lay unmoving.
“Unfortunately,” Malin said, “the lack of rank markers on the outside of the armor prevents us from knowing whether this was a worker, a supervisor, or a snake.”
“Should we intervene?” Safir asked.
“It could be a trick,” Kai said. “To lure us into sending troops into the open. That bit with the soldier shot down in plain sight was a bit too dramatic.”
“Colonel Kai raises an important point,” Malin said.
“There’s a lot of weapon discharges going on out there,” Safir argued. “If this is a trick, they are burning a lot of ammo and energy on it, and we’ve spotted other soldiers being hit inside the Syndicate positions.”
Drakon zoomed in his focus from the base sensors and those on his soldiers that could see the events playing out in the Syndicate line. The command network automatically integrated all of those pictures to create a single view that showed everything that could be seen.
The open area between the outer defenses of the base and the first row of buildings had once been a flat, level expanse of pavement in some spots and grass in others, kept painfully clean and clear to avoid offering cover or concealment. Now it was littered with the remnants of expired chaff round decoys and pitted by craters of varying sizes from bombardment. The remains of the soldiers that Drakon’s forces had lost assaulting the base were still out there, most of them hidden under the bodies of the much larger numbers of Syndicate ground forces who had died in repeated, futile attacks. A haze, born of the fighting, slowly dissipating chaff clouds, and the vestiges of the bombardments which had fallen on or near the open area, drifted slowly across Drakon’s field of vision, partially obscuring his view.
The buildings where his own soldiers had sheltered before taking the base, and which had been occupied by Syndicate soldiers since then, were riddled with large and small holes on their first stories. Some were merely skeletons of buildings, the curtain walls within and on their exteriors having collapsed to leave bent frames standing. Rubble from the buildings had been mounded before the largest holes to provide cover and block views, and also formed into temporary, low walls across the wide streets separating blocks of the buildings to allow concealed movement behind them. The damage allowed fragmentary views of activity among the Syndicate soldiers. Drakon could get momentary glimpses of soldiers rushing through the buildings in groups of various sizes, spot weapons discharges that were not aimed at the base occupied by his own soldiers, and occasionally what looked like brief hand-to-hand encounters. But the partial views left him unable to know what he was not seeing and did not provide a complete enough picture to be sure of what he was seeing.
Finally, he shook his head. “The odds of its being a snake trick are too high. The snakes wouldn’t hesitate to blow away one or a dozen soldiers to make a ruse look real. I’m also thinking that if we jump in, both sides in that fight might reunite to shoot at us.”
“That could happen,” Safir agreed reluctantly. “Just because they might be shooting their own officers and the snakes doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d want us taking them prisoner.”
“Do we have any more clues to what is going on?” Drakon asked.
Malin frowned at his display. “I’ve done a search for possible indications and found something. Within the last fifteen minutes, our sensors have picked up some significant ground tremors within one hundred kilometers of here, some within twenty kilometers.”
Drakon called up the data. “Looks like bombardment effects. Not a big, concentrated one, but a number of different strikes on single targets. That could have something to do with what we’re seeing in the Syndicate lines though I don’t know where the Kommodor could have gotten her hands on more rocks.”
A pulse of sound called attention to another development. “All high-powered jamming within three hundred kilometers of us has ceased,” a comm specialist soldier reported. “Someone is trying to contact us on authorized frequencies. They have our recognition codes.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Drakon asked. “It’s one of our warships, isn’t it?”
“General, they identify themselves as the Midway.”
“The Midway?” It took a few seconds for the meaning of that to work its way through his tired brain. “Our battleship? Where the hell did they come from? Patch them through to me.”
Drakon recognized the woman gazing at him from the command seat on the battleship’s bridge. He and Iceni had both had to agree on giving Mercia that command. “Kapitan Freya Mercia,” she formally introduced herself. “At your service, General Drakon. Kommodor Marphissa wishes me to advise you that the Syndicate warships in this star system have been destroyed with the exception of one Hunter-Killer which is fleeing for Kiribati and unfortunately cannot be intercepted. Midway is here to provide whatever support you require. We have already taken out a number of long-range threats to your positions, as well as active jamming sites covering your region of the planet.”
“Welcome to Ulindi, Kapitan,” Drakon said, only then realizing how dry his throat was. He hastily swallowed some water, then smiled. “I don’t know how the hell you got here, but it is very nice to see you.”
“President Iceni sent us on after you when she received information that Ulindi might be a trap,” Mercia said.
“She did?” He couldn’t wait to talk to Iceni about that. “And your weapons are working?”
“As that Syndicate battleship discovered to its sorrow. Would you like us to demonstrate on the Syndicate ground forces encircling you?”
Drakon checked his views of the Syndicate positions again, where all-out warfare was apparently raging. “Not yet. I think your appearance, on top of being pushed beyond their limits, has caused substantial portions of the Syndicate ground forces to rethink their allegiance to the Syndicate.”
She gave him a curious look. “Still, any that remain would be a threat.”
“Possibly. Or any that remain could form the nucleus for the ground forces of an independent Ulindi. Everybody down here used to be Syndicate, Kapitan.”
“Everybody up here, too. This mercy to the enemy thing is a little hard to get used to.”
“There’s still one set of enemies that we can’t afford to offer mercy. Do you have a location on the snake alternate command center?” Drakon asked.
“If the information we were provided is accurate, we do,” Mercia said.
“We need to make sure it is eliminated. Colonel— Our agent was supposed to disable the snakes’ ability to detonate their buried nukes from the alternate command center, but we haven’t heard from her and don’t know if she succeeded.”
“In a few minutes, you won’t have to worry, General.” Mercia turned to give the commands.
Malin was staring at Drakon. “General, if Colonel Morgan is still in or near that snake complex—”
“I know. Bran, I know.” Drakon met Malin’s gaze with his own. “But we can’t risk everyone else on the possibility that Roh Morgan is still alive and still in or close to the snake alternate command center. If the Syndicate ground forces are falling apart, the snakes could decide to set off those nukes at any moment, or at least the nukes under this city.”