“Hold fire!” Drakon ordered as the last of the snakes on the dock died and the loyalist soldiers dropped their weapons, then stood with empty hands raised in surrender. For an instant of time, the fate of the loyalists balanced on the knife-edge of veteran soldiers fighting their own instincts and experience to kill without mercy.
But no more shots were fired. As Drakon took a deep breath and refocused on the situation elsewhere, he heard one of the loyalists broadcasting an appeal in a shaking voice. “You guys know us! We’ve fought together! Don’t scrap us!”
And the reply from one of Gaiene’s soldiers. “Frost out, brother. We don’t work for some CEO. We’re General Drakon’s troops. His orders are to accept surrender.”
“Drakon? Praise our ancestors! Hey, the snakes said they needed to reach two places inside that hull. We don’t know why. Here are the readouts.”
“Let’s check those locations,” a captain ordered some of her soldiers. “You two engineers, come with us in case something needs disarming.”
“General?” Colonel Gaiene’s voice came.
“Yeah.” Drakon finally relocated Gaiene on the map on his helmet display, seeing Gaiene leading a force down the passageway toward the primary control compartment. “They tried to get to the hull. Don’t know why yet. How are things on your end?”
“We’re about to knock on a door.”
Drakon called up direct video from Gaiene’s armor, seeing a soldier leveling a Ram tube at the reinforced hatch protecting the control compartment. The Ram fired, blowing the hatch completely off its mountings, and before the hatch had hit the deck Gaiene led a force through the hatchway into the main control compartment. Inside, screaming workers were trying to flee a half-dozen snakes in armor who were firing into them. “Try someone who can fight back!” Gaiene shouted as his first shot shattered the faceplate of one of the snakes.
The other snakes died in a flurry of fire, leaving a curious stillness around the soldiers. Through Gaiene’s armor, Drakon could hear the shuddering gasps and pained cries of the surviving civilian workers, who were watching the soldiers with dread. “Start first aid and get some medics in here fast,” Gaiene ordered his troops, then spoke to Drakon. “System operators. It looks like the snakes were going to kill them all, then try to blow the system controls. Totally pointless since we’ve already remotely seized command of those circuits. Just senseless, bloody slaughter.” Gaiene took a step to stand over one of the snakes lying lifeless on the deck, pointed his weapon at the head of the dead body, and fired another shot. “Bastards.”
Who would you be if you weren’t you? Iceni’s question came back to Drakon then. Who would those snakes have been? In a different place and time, would they have still been willing to do such things? Was it because they had been taught that such actions were right? Or had the ISS sought out those who were always to be found among humanity in every place and time, the ones who for a cause or for no reason at all would kill the helpless without blinking? The answer didn’t matter just then. He and Gaiene had to deal with who the snakes were. “Good job, Colonel.”
The main control deck had been one of the last places to be reached where resistance could be expected. Elsewhere, the flood of soldiers continued to spread rapidly through the rest of the facility, but aside from an occasional isolated loyalist soldier who stood with empty hands raised in surrender, no more defenders were left. “How’s it look to you, Colonel Gaiene?”
“I’ve got teams checking a few last spots right now, General. But it looks like we’ve got this one put away.”
A few minutes later, Gaiene called again. “All secure,” he reported. “Odd that one force tried so hard to get to a hull that couldn’t have gotten under way without several months of work.”
“We should hear from the soldiers who went in to check on that real soon.” Drakon studied the lists of data being downloaded from Gaiene’s armor. “We took a few casualties.”
“It could have been far worse, General. It was for the defenders.” The elation and excitement was draining from Colonel Gaiene’s voice, replaced by weariness and gloom. “I have a report from those who are inside the hull. They’ve found the packages the snakes wanted so badly.”
Video popped up on one side of Drakon’s helmet display. “Two nukes,” an engineer reported. “Sealed behind false bulkheads. We severed the command links before they could be remotely detonated, so the only way the snakes could set them off was by getting to them.”
“They sure didn’t want anyone making off with this hull,” the captain who had led the searchers commented. “If they’d blown those, it would have also trashed this whole dock facility.”
“Get the nukes disarmed, disassembled, and removed,” Drakon ordered. Had news of what Iceni had accomplished at Kane already reached Taroa, resulting in an extra measure of security against someone’s stealing an uncompleted warship? Or did this just reflect snake paranoia of possible rebellion on the dock? He remembered the cooperation some of the prisoners had rendered and how they had turned on the snakes with them. “Colonel Gaiene, I want the loyalist soldiers who surrendered evaluated for candidates to come over to us. What I’m seeing shows that they’re all Syndicate troops as opposed to Taroan locals.”
“That matches my information,” Gaiene said. “Apparently, the snakes didn’t trust locals up here.”
“They don’t seem to have trusted the loyalist regulars all that much, either. With good cause.”
Gaiene’s smile mixed melancholy and satisfaction. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer nest of reptiles. We’ll put the option of joining your forces to these soldiers and see what happens. I assume we want full screening of each and every one of those volunteers before we accept them?”
“You assume correctly. There have been way too many deep-cover snake agents showing up at Midway.”
“And the civilians?”
“We’ll screen them gradually. For now, I’ll keep the facility at lockdown for another hour, then relax it by stages. That should keep any civilians from doing anything dumb and any snake agents among them from doing anything until we’re ready to deal with it.”
Feeling exhausted but grateful that coming down off the adrenaline rush from an operation was eased by the need to concentrate on cleanup details, Drakon called the freighter. “Put me through to Senior Line Worker Mentasa.” There were risks involved in using Mentasa, but those were more than balanced by the advantages in having someone known and trusted by the workers here. Mentasa also had firsthand knowledge of which specialists were most needed to finish out the work on the battleship at Midway.
“Here, General Drakon,” Mentasa said, doing his best to stand in a military posture even though the cramped quarters on the freighter made that difficult, and even though his citizen-worker appearance made his attempts to look military seem a little silly.
“The facility has been taken. It’s still on lockdown, but I want you to get on the comm system. I’m sending you an authorization so the blocks we put on it will let you through. Start talking to people you know. Tell them who we are, reassure them that they are safe, tell them what we want, find out what they’ve been building in the main construction dock, and see if anyone is interested in being hired to work at Midway. I also want to know everything you can find out about the hull in the main construction dock. Battleship or battle cruiser, how far along, how long it will take to finish, and whether Taroa has everything needed to complete it.”
“Yes, General.” Mentasa hesitated. “General, is it permissible to contact anyone on the planet?”
“Personal business or business?” Drakon asked, already knowing the answer by the look in Mentasa’s eyes.