“A subexecutive commanding a battleship?” Marphissa commented. “Has that ever happened?”
“During battles, when a crew was almost wiped out,” Iceni replied.
Kontos started speaking again. “We are barricaded within the primary citadels. We are the… survivors of the outfitting crew. Myself and… a number of line workers. We control the bridge, engineering, and the primary fire-control center.” Kontos was clearly doing his best to recite a correct report but occasionally stumbled over the words. “We… have been able to hold out because of the internal armor and the… antimutiny defenses.”
“Who are you holding out against?” Iceni mumbled angrily.
“The ISS,” Kontos said, as if answering her question. “We… don’t know how many. They overran some locations… My last order received was to… seal ourselves inside critical control areas and… wait for relief. We have not heard anything since… except demands… from the ISS… that we surrender. External comms have… been… blocked, but we managed a work-around in time to… hear your message.”
“The snakes have taken over here,” Marphissa said, her voice hardening.
“That explains it all, doesn’t it?” Iceni said. “The snakes wiped out the officers and who knows how much of the crews on those warships. The only thing I don’t understand is why they didn’t order CEO Janusa to assist them.”
“Perhaps they actually knew who you were despite the avatar and have known you were playing them. If you’d gone to the second planet and docked our warships at one of their facilities for resupply, we might have been overwhelmed by boarding parties before we could get away.”
“Oh, damn. You’re likely right. That’s where they’d have access to enough personnel to do that.”
“We request assistance,” Sub-Executive Kontos asked. His voice cracked on the last word, and Kontos sagged a moment before straightening to attention again. “We know they’re bringing… breaching gear strong enough to get into the citadels. Request… assistance.”
The message began to repeat, then abruptly cut off.
“The snakes found their work-around and blocked it,” Marphissa commented.
“Sub-CEO—” The operations specialist caught herself. “Kommodor, we’ve been tracking a freighter moving at a good clip toward that gas giant. It fit the profile of a rush resupply mission, so we haven’t paid much attention to it, but it might be bringing the breaching gear for the snakes.”
“As well as more snakes, no doubt. Can we get there before it does?” Marphissa asked.
“It will beat us by about ten minutes if we hold our vector.”
Iceni nodded slowly. We charge in at best speed, brake hard, blow away that freighter, and get our ground forces on that battleship. Simple. As well as incredibly complicated to carry out.
“It could be a trap,” Marphissa cautioned. “To get us in there close to the battleship. If its armament is operational, we could sustain enough damage that the flotilla here could finish us off.”
“It could be,” Iceni agreed. “But if so, that subexecutive is the best actor I’ve ever seen. Certainly a lot better than ‘CEO Reynard’ or ‘Sub-CEO Petrov.’ Are you bringing up a possibility, or do you believe this is a trap?”
Marphissa sat watching her display for a moment before answering. “Only a possibility. If it were a trap, they could have sent us a message from Sub-Executive Kontos a long time ago to see what we would do. I think the snakes had been willing to starve out the survivors from the outfitting crew. That would cause less damage to the battleship than breaking into the antimutiny citadels. When we showed up, the snakes knew they had to get the breaching equipment there and crack open the bridge. But because we came in this quickly and straight for the gas giant, they haven’t had enough time.”
“Then let’s go save Sub-Executive Kontos and his brave line workers, Kommodor.”
Chapter Ten
“Sub-executive Kontos, this is President Iceni. We are on our way to relieve you. Hold out as long as you can. We wiped out the snakes at Midway, and we will do the same here. If you manage to get comms working again, keep us apprised of your status.” Odds were that Kontos wouldn’t be able to receive her message, let alone reply, but if they could hear any of it that might inspire the surviving crew to hold out long enough.
Marphissa raised one finger toward her display. “How do we take down the other flotilla quickly enough to get our ground forces to that battleship? We don’t have enough of a firepower advantage to knock out all of those other warships in a single pass.”
“We’re not going to try.” Iceni settled back in her seat, feeling a surge of confidence. She had viewed the records of Black Jack’s battles over and over again in the last few months, trying to spot patterns, and suddenly one of those patterns had come clear to her. Whenever possible, Black Jack had avoided doing what his opponent wanted. It seemed so simple a thing. If the enemy wanted you to attack in such a way at such a place, then if you could you did something else. That hadn’t been how war had been fought for… how long? Kill the enemy, destroy the enemy’s forces, slam head-to-head until one side gave way. That’s how it had been since those who knew how to fight in other ways had died in the first decades of the war, those they had partly trained dying soon afterward. But Black Jack had come from that earlier time. And he never did what his opponents wanted.
“Madam President?” Kommodor Marphissa waved at her display again. “We need to destroy that flotilla.”
“No, we don’t. We need to defeat it. What do they want? To slow us down. To inflict damage on us. To keep us occupied long enough for the snakes to gain full control of that battleship. We won’t let them do any of those things.”
Marphissa nodded in the manner of someone who wanted to acknowledge she understood what had been said but not necessarily what it meant. “What will we do instead?”
“We will get past that oncoming flotilla without engaging it, brake our velocity far enough to release the shuttles carrying our ground forces assault team close to the battleship, then accelerate again and engage and defeat the other flotilla as it returns to fight us.”
Another nod of partial understanding. “How will we do that, Madam President?”
Iceni smiled. “I have established our goals and objectives, Kommodor. As you are the flotilla commander and experienced operator of mobile forces, I will leave it up to you to find the best means of accomplishing those goals and objectives.”
“I… see.” Marphissa stared at her display for a little while. “Thank you for this opportunity to excel, Madam President.” Remarkably, not a bit of sarcasm came through when she said that.
“I have every confidence in you, Kommodor.”
Marphissa sat for long minutes, just looking at her display, saying nothing, her eyes intent. Finally, her hands moved, tracing out possible actions so that the ship’s maneuvering systems could produce predictions.
“Kommodor?”
Jerking out of her absorption in her planning, Marphissa turned an annoyed scowl on the operations specialist. “What is it?”
“Kommodor,” the specialist said with a nervous swallow, “I was thinking, if the ISS is controlling the other flotilla’s mobile forces, and if they are running them on automatic controls because the officers are dead or under arrest, then those are the same automated systems as our own mobile units use.”