As Iceni halted, Kontos turned, the movement causing him to stagger dizzily against the nearest equipment. She waited while he straightened and saluted with an arm that wavered before Kontos’s fist hit his breast. “Sub-Executive Kontos, acting commanding officer of the outfitting crew on B-78.”
Iceni returned the salute with a solemn expression, seeing how the line workers standing in ranks swayed on their feet, their gaunt faces reflecting deprivation. “You’ve been on short rations?”
“The emergency supplies were not yet fully stocked since the unit is not operational,” Kontos replied in a clear, strong voice. “We have rationed supplies as necessary to hold our position until relieved.” Then he fell sideways again against another console and struggled to stand up.
“Everyone relax,” Iceni ordered. “Including you, Sub-Executive Kontos. Sit down, lie down, whatever you need. Colonel Rogero, get food and water up here. Kommodor Marphissa, do we still have a link?”
“Yes, Madam President.”
“Get that shuttle back to you. I want C-448’s physician and her assistant on this battleship as soon as possible. These crew members need attention. I don’t know what medical supplies are aboard this unit, so make sure she brings an emergency field pack.”
Rogero, who had finally opened his armor’s face shield, knelt to help Kontos sit back against a console. Straightening up again, he came to stand by Iceni and speak in a low voice. “He held them together. They’ve been slowly starving in here, isolated with no comms except when they managed to get around the snake blocks for brief periods, but he kept them from giving in. Pretty impressive for a junior subexecutive.”
“Do you think that I’d judge him harshly because he collapsed?”
“He is not at his best now,” Rogero said diplomatically.
“I can tell when someone has taken himself to the limit, Colonel Rogero, and I realize what it must have required to keep the rest of the crew effectively resisting.” Iceni nodded as she looked at Kontos where he sat slackly against the console. “If Sub-Executive Kontos wishes to remain with us, he will be more than welcome as one of our mobile forces officers.”
Rogero smiled. “I was going to say that if you didn’t want him, I was certain that General Drakon would.”
“Too bad. I’ve got dibs on him, Colonel.”
“You’re already getting the battleship, Madam President.”
Iceni stared at him. Rogero had a sense of humor. Who would have thought it? “I heard that one of your soldiers was injured.”
“Wounded. Not seriously. The snakes were equipped to slaughter unprepared mobile forces crew members, not to fight combat-armored troops.”
“How very unfortunate for them.”
“President Iceni?”
“Yes, Kommodor.”
“Light cruiser CL-924 has picked up the first escape pod from the heavy cruiser. They confirm that the occupants are crew, not snakes.”
Iceni fought down a sense of relief as suspicion rose in counterpoint to it. “They have identification as crew members or they are crew members?”
“They are, Madam President. I sent their images around the flotilla, and one of them is known to someone on C-413.”
“Good.” Iceni looked at the exhausted survivors of the outfitting crew around her as some soldiers arrived bearing ration packs. “Get that doctor over here.”
She spent a while touring the battleship under the watchful eyes of two of Rogero’s soldiers, who were along just in case any more snakes were lurking in the tremendous number of compartments and passageways inside the ship. The fire-control citadel and the engineering control citadel both had fewer survivors in them than the bridge had, but the crew there reported that Sub-Executive Kontos had managed to stay in communication with them despite snake efforts to break the links.
There was considerable irony in that, Iceni realized. The citadels existed because of fear the line workers in the crew might mutiny, or that the ship would be boarded by Alliance Marines. The citadels were designed and intended as places where the officers and ISS agents could hold out for a long time until the unit could be retaken by Syndicate forces. But the measures intended to make certain of Syndicate control had instead been used to save a good portion of the outfitting crew from the snakes and had ensured that Iceni could wrest control of the battleship from the Syndicate Worlds.
“Madam President, Colonel Rogero asked us to inform you that the crew members from the bridge have been taken to the main sick bay. It’s not fully outfitted, but the beds are in, and some of the equipment is working.”
“Take me there.”
The sick bay was far larger than it felt since the extensive wards and operating rooms were all divided at regular intervals by bulkheads intended to ensure that no single large compartment could be lost to damage or lose air pressure all at once. Like all battleships and battle cruisers, this ship was designed to deal with wounded from not just its own crew but the crews of any smaller escorts, ground forces, and anyone else.
At the moment, most of those half-equipped wards and rooms were silent and empty. The surviving members of the outfitting crew were almost all in a few wards, with just one representative of their teams remaining in each of the citadel locations. “Where is Sub-Executive Kontos?” Iceni asked Rogero when she saw him.
“He insisted on remaining on the bridge until properly relieved. The physician has been to see him, and I’ve made sure he’s got food and water.” Rogero gave her a questioning look. “Are you still sure that you want him?”
“Positive. Who’s the senior surviving crew member in here?”
“Probably this one.” Colonel Rogero led the way, his combat armor large and more menacing than usual in the environment of the sick bay, stopping at a bed holding a middle-aged man in a line worker’s uniform. “The food and water, and some meds your physician dealt out, have them all half-conscious right now.”
“I know how to wake him.” The man lay flat, breathing heavily, his eyes on the ceiling but dazed and out of focus. Iceni came to a stop right by the bed. “You,” she said, giving the single word an intonation that only CEOs used, making of it the shorthand question that every worker knew had to be answered quickly and accurately. Who are you, what is your job title, and what are you doing?
Reflexes drilled into the worker by a lifetime of experience jolted him into awareness. The eyes snapped into focus and went to her face. “Senior Line Worker Mentasa, systems integration, assigned to the outfitting crew for Mobile Unit B-78.” He struggled to sit up until Iceni reached out one hand and gently pushed him back.
“Rest,” Iceni said. “What can you tell me about what happened aboard this unit?”
The line worker blinked as if unable to order his thoughts and confused by Iceni’s actions, then nodded slowly. “We were working… our usual shifts. Our commander was… Sub-CEO Tanshivan. He was… what… supply ship. The supply ship. Priority delivery.” Mentasa blinked again. “The sub-CEO… went to meet it. We were in… in comms with him. Lots of people came out of the lock. Lots. Weapons. Sub-CEO yells ‘They’re here to kill us.’ Don’t know how he knew. Yelled it. ‘Seal citadels’ he ordered. And then… and then… he died. I mean… they shot. And… we lost comms.”
“You had no warning the snakes were coming? No reasons to think they might come?”
“No. Been… demonstar… demonstrations on the planet. Heard about that. Big rallies. Before the news feeds cut off. Not our business. Not sure what it was about. I never been here before. To Kane, I mean. A few days later… they came.”