Only twenty seconds from contact, the odds changed again.
Iceni watched an alert pulse on her display as two of the three light cruisers under Kolani’s control and three of the four HuKs with her suddenly altered their tracks, pulling away from the rest of Kolani’s warships. A last-moment trick to create trouble for Iceni?
“They’re pulling away from contact,” Marphissa said. “Bolting out of CEO Kolani’s force.”
Iceni only had time to nod before the remaining warships slashed by each other. All of Kolani’s remaining units hurled their fire at the cruiser holding Iceni, but that now amounted to only one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, and one HuK. On Iceni’s side, three heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and four HuKs concentrated their weaponry on Kolani’s flagship as the two sides raced past each other in far less time than the blink of an eye.
Iceni’s cruiser C-448 was still shuddering from the hits on her shields when the sensors began reporting on the status of Kolani’s cruiser. C-990 had been hit hard. Kolani’s flagship tumbled through space, with maneuvering systems knocked out, the bow a total ruin, and numerous hull penetrations marking internal damage. “Try to get communications with C-990,” Iceni ordered.
“We could finish off the ship,” Marphissa offered. “C-990’s shields are completely gone.”
“No.” They were watching her, clearly wondering at a CEO displaying any sign of mercy. Iceni felt her jaw tighten as her expression hardened, and the crew of her own cruiser hastily turned back to their tasks. “I want to recover and repair that ship if possible. We need every hull we can get.” There. That sounded like a nice, pragmatic justification for not slaughtering the helpless crew of C-990. “And send surrender demands to the rest of CEO Kolani’s units.”
The light cruisers and HuKs, both those that had stuck with Kolani and those that had bolted, accepted Iceni’s authority in a staggered series of messages that must have reflected how long it had taken each of them to wipe out the snakes aboard. Last came C-818, the cruiser’s executive submitting to Iceni. “I regret to report the death during the engagement of our former commander, Sub-CEO Krasny,” the exec reported tonelessly.
Akiri frowned and shook his head. “How could Krasny have been killed by hits on the stern of his cruiser?”
“A freak accident, I suppose,” Iceni said.
Marphissa gave Iceni a glance that clearly shared Iceni’s real opinion, that Krasny had not desired to yield, and his subordinates had taken matters into their own hands. Being a lot more discreet than Akiri, though, she wasn’t about to say that out loud. There wasn’t any sense in giving the crews of these warships any more ideas about what they could do to senior execs, and CEOs, aboard their own units.
The comm line worker sighed with frustration. “We can’t pick up any signals off C-990, Madam CEO. All comm systems on C-990 may be dead. We may have to send a shuttle over.”
“C-990’s comm systems may be dead, but surely the entire crew is not,” Marphissa objected. “Someone could have reached an air lock by now and be sending flashing light messages.”
“An escape capsule just left C-990,” the operations line worker announced. “There goes another.”
“Only two?” Akiri muttered.
Marphissa gestured in the direction of C-990. “We could close on the cruiser, get near enough to send a boarding party over and establish control.”
“Madam CEO,” Akiri said quickly, “I advise against that. Something is not right with C-990. If CEO Kolani is still alive and in charge, some communications should have come to us, even if only defiance. She could try to fire bombardment projectiles at the planet. Something. But there’s nothing.”
“But if CEO Kolani is dead or prisoner because her crew revolted, they should have established communications as well,” Marphissa said.
“Exactly! Something is wrong. I do not recommend closing with C-990 within the danger radius of a core overload.”
Iceni regarded Akiri for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe that is a wise suggestion. We can’t rule out the chance of a deliberate core overload, or one brought about by fighting among the surviving crew. Get closer, but not within the danger radius, and send over an uncrewed probe to see what’s going on.”
“All right,” Drakon finally said, loud and clear, causing Malin and Morgan to stop sniping at each other. They knew when he spoke like that to start listening. “We might well be able to suppress those crowds with firepower, but that’s a short-term solution. We learned that on occupied Alliance planets when we tried to maintain order that way. I need a long-term answer, and a long-term answer requires the majority of those citizens to be our allies in maintaining order.”
He looked at Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene. “I’m going to pass these same orders to every ground forces commander on the planet. You will contact the local police and order them to get their butts out of their stations and on the streets. Tell them that we will back them up, not threaten them, and deploy platoons of troops to do just that. Not squads. Platoons. We need to ensure that subexecs are in charge of each unit, not senior line workers. Tell the police that I’ll be taking other steps to deal with the mobs, but we need their boots on the street because their job hasn’t changed.”
“What about our own soldiers?” Colonel Gaiene asked. “Discipline is very shaky, especially in the local ground forces.” Outwardly, Gaiene usually displayed a devil-may-care attitude, so the open concern in his expression underlined the seriousness of the problem.
“Pair the locals with platoons of our people and issue instructions that any soldier who refuses to follow orders will be shot. Any other questions?”
“The local authorities, sir?” Kai asked. “What do we do with them?”
“I’ll be giving them orders. If there are any problems getting them to do what they’re told, I’ll notify you to send troops. Local soldiers can handle that job since none of them have any love for their appointed-elected leaders.”
“What about the snakes’ housing compounds?” Rogero added. “We’ve swept up the snakes who were still home, but there are families there. Sooner or later, the crowds of citizens will head for those compounds, and you know what will happen to those families.”
“The same thing that’s happened to a lot of other people’s families for a long time at the hands of the snakes,” Gaiene commented. “I won’t shed any tears if the citizens take revenge.”
Drakon hesitated, then shook his head. “We’re not the snakes. I’m not Hardrad. Put guards around the snakes’ family compounds. Enough guards to keep the crowds off, and make sure those guards are our people and not local ground troops.”
“We’re going to be spread thin as it is,” Kai said. “We’ve all seen children die, sir. It’s ugly, but…”
“I know. We killed some of them in the fighting on Alliance worlds. I hated it then, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Now I can, and I don’t want to see any more dead kids. Understand?” All three colonels nodded. “Now, get your people and the police moving.”
“Yes, sir.” Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene chorused, all saluting before their images vanished.
Morgan shrugged. “At least you got that part about shooting anyone who doesn’t obey orders right. But the mobs—”
“I’m not done,” Drakon said. “How much of the snake comm net still exists? The stuff they used to issue proclamations and propaganda to the populace and give orders to local authorities?”
“It’s intact,” Malin said with a grin. “Not the control nodes in the headquarters and subsector stations, of course. Those have been destroyed. But we’ve seized the relay points, so we can modify the software to allow them to broadcast signals from an improvised control node.”