“I’ll never understand sailors,” Bradamont said.
“You understand them well enough. Welcome back, you Alliance monster.”
“I’m glad to be back, you Syndic devil.”
It hadn’t been easy waiting at Atalia. It wasn’t easy transiting back through Kalixa. But Marphissa had reserved most of her worries for what might await them at Indras.
Why did I have to be right?
“Damned snakes,” Kapitan Diaz spat.
There were now three light cruisers and five Hunter-Killers at Indras, and they were orbiting ten light-minutes from the jump exit to Kalixa, along the most direct route from there to the hypernet gate.
“Maybe we can bluff our way past them,” Marphissa said. She was once again wearing the Syndicate CEO suit. Don’t sit too straight. Look bored. Act like you are the biggest thing in this star system and every surrounding star system.
She reached for her comm control and schooled her voice again to an arrogant drawl. “This is CEO Manetas. Our mission at Atalia has, naturally, been successfully completed. We are returning to Prime with prisoners for special evaluation and interrogation. All ships are to remain clear of the path of my flotilla. Manetas, for the people, out.”
“I’m praying again,” Diaz told her after the transmission ended. “My parents taught me how to do that in secret.”
“They did? I hope you learned well.”
Their answer came much quicker than expected. “Kommodor, it is an eyes-only message, from the Syndicate flotilla ahead of us, for your private viewing.”
Marphissa knew what everyone expected. She would go to her stateroom and view the message alone, a message that probably contained secret offers as lucrative as the Syndicate could come up with. That was what Syndicate bosses did. “I’ll watch it here,” she said. “Anything the Syndicate has to say to me is not private.”
“Yes, Kommodor,” the comm specialist said, betraying a pleasant sort of surprise. “On your display.”
The man looking out at them was clearly a snake. A senior snake. Marphissa felt her blood growing cold just seeing him, despite knowing that his eyes could not actually see her. Such eyes, such a gaze, had been the last thing many of her friends and acquaintances had ever seen before being hauled off to a labor camp or simply disappearing without a trace.
“I am Sub-CEO Qui. I don’t know who you really are, but I will find out. You have something the Syndicate Worlds needs. What we need is you. The Syndicate Worlds requires good CEO material. You have proven your abilities by the accumulation of a substantial flotilla of mobile forces, a flotilla that follows your orders.
“If you were of lesser talents, you would not receive this offer, which is fully backed and guaranteed by the government on Prime. If you accept Syndicate authority again, if you bring these mobile forces back under the command of Prime, you will immediately gain actual CEO rank, as well as full immunity for any actions that might have violated Syndicate law or regulations or procedures. Blanket immunity for any possible offense, as well as a leap into the highest ranks of the Syndicate Worlds.
“I hope you recognize the benefits of this very generous offer,” Sub-CEO Qui continued, his eyes and smile equally cold. “You gain high rank and a certainty of safety, and the Syndicate Worlds gains a very talented CEO and a small but valuable flotilla of mobile forces units. You need not fear opposition from your subordinates or workers. We will provide you with a plan to get sufficient forces aboard each unit to subdue any resistance.”
Qui’s smile changed, gaining a terrible kind of promise. “Or, you could reject this offer. It would be an awful waste of your talent. We’ll destroy every freighter with you before you can reach the gate, which means you will return to wherever your home is as a failure. You know the rewards that come to failures. And we will determine who you are, and where your family is, and we will hold them accountable for the crimes against the Syndicate Worlds you have surely committed, and they have surely conspired to assist.
“Far better to pursue the most profitable course. I’ll await your reply on this channel. Qui, for the people, out.”
The silence on the bridge when the message ended was close to absolute, broken only by the soft noises from the ship’s automated systems and the breathing of the men and women around Marphissa.
She laughed, letting all the scorn she could manage go into the sound. “Does he think I am like him? Does he think I really am a Syndicate CEO? Is he so stupid as to think I would betray those who follow me, who have sworn to follow President Iceni, who fight for our freedom and the freedom of our families?”
“I think the answer to all of those things is yes,” Kapitan Diaz replied.
Bradamont had been listening with disbelief painted large on her face. “He actually proposed that, thinking you would accept?”
“It’s probably how he got to be a CEO. By accepting similar offers and selling out people who were depending upon him,” Marphissa explained. “And he’s a snake. He doesn’t mean it. Every word was a lie. I would die along with everyone else in a command position, while the workers were shipped off to slave labor. He thinks my greed will override my common sense and cause me to ignore my experience with watching people being betrayed every time they were fools enough to believe the soothing words of a snake.”
“Are you going to tell him that?” Diaz asked with a grin.
Marphissa almost said yes, then shook her head. “No. I want to buy time for us by making him think I am considering his offer. The closer we get to the gate before the Syndicate mobile forces start attacking, the better chance we have of getting some of the freighters through.”
She looked around the bridge at the grim expressions her last words had brought to life. “We have to accept this. We outnumber them, but stopping them from hitting the freighters is going to be very difficult. We’ll do our best.”
“Those freighters are packed with workers,” Diaz said. “Any hit at all will kill many.”
“We will do our best! Let me send my reply to Sub-CEO Qui. Comm specialist, can you give me a digital background that makes it look like I am in my stateroom?”
“It is done, Kommodor,” the comm specialist said. “Ready for your transmission.”
Marphissa put on a wary expression this time before hitting the reply command. “Sub-CEO Qui, your offer is intriguing. I am carefully considering it. You understand that I must maneuver carefully to ensure none of my subordinates suspect they may be supplanted. I will give you my reply soon. Out.”
She looked around. The Syndicate flotilla was ten light-minutes distant, so it was a bit over an hour and a half before any physical contact was possible. “I’m getting out of this CEO suit now,” Marphissa announced. “If I’m going to fight, it will be in the uniform of Midway.”
She was back on the bridge a few minutes later, in time to hear the operations specialist call out a warning. “The Syndicate flotilla is maneuvering.”
Marphissa watched, waiting, as the vectors on the Syndicate mobile forces changed. “They’re accelerating to intercept. I guess Sub-CEO Qui didn’t like my answer.”
“Forty minutes to contact on their current vector,” Diaz noted. “He said he’d be going after the freighters, and even though snakes always lie, I think this time he told us what he was actually going to do.”
The freighters were sitting ducks and would be all of the long transit from this jump exit to the hypernet gate. The light cruisers and HuKs the snakes had at their disposal couldn’t defeat Marphissa’s warships, but they could target the freighters and blow the large, clumsy ships apart one by one.