"Once Platform Two is down, we move into low orbit then harrow up Platforms Three and Four in a line, until reaching Corisanthe Main."
Two Captains began speaking at once: Tlaster Cobe and Orvram Davidson. Davidson then fell silent and let Cobe speak. "But, taking that route, we'll come under fire from Corisanthe II."
"Yes," replied Harald, "which is why only four ships will be conducting that attack. When they have dealt with Platforms Two and Three, those ships will then be in danger, at which point Desert Wind, Harvester and Slate will assault Corisanthe II."
"There are over a hundred thousand people aboard Corisanthe II," reminded Davidson.
"I am aware of that fact," said Harald. "There is a similar number on Corisanthe III, which has been growing in recent years since Combine began assembly of its space liners there. We will also need to attack that station, to prevent resupply to the other stations from there. This is why I am relating this plan to you now, so you have a chance to voice any objections." He studied the faces before him. He expected no protest from those he had already chosen for the assault on Corisanthe II, but Cobe and Davidson of Stormfollower and Resilience respectively, and perhaps Schumack of Musket, might begin to show signs of rebellion now.
"I am sorry, but I cannot—" began Davidson.
The screen showing Captain Lorimar of hilldigger Slate suddenly blanked out. Almost immediately Harald received a concerted scream from the tacoms aboard all the other ships, "Minefield!" He stood up and, using his control glove, crowded the images of all the Captains into one screen, noting that Davidson, Cobe and Schumack had now cut their connections. There was no tacom connection from Slate—absolutely nothing. Before he even needed to ask for it, the tacom from Wildfire—the ship nearest to Slate's location—sent him visual feed which he now projected on one of the empty screens before him. Debris glittered across space, and tumbling through it came the rear section of a hilldigger, exposed girders glowing against darkness and its engine galleries open to vacuum.
Harald just stared, unable to make any sense of what he was seeing, until someone's gasp of Slate's gone' set his mind in motion again. Thousands had just died, and an entire hilldigger was just a spreading cloud of radioactive detritus. He felt a horrible, bone-deep guilt and, though he was accepting what he was currently seeing and hearing, he just didn't know how to react. Then he detected, amid the chatter, the words, "Stealthed mines."
"What do you have for me, Harvester tacom?" Harald managed.
"Am relaying now. They are invisible to most forms of scan, but we get a time-discrepancy on laser detection," replied the tacom officer serving on that ship.
At last feeling some control, Harald called up views fed from other ships on the large screens before him and in his eye-screen. An explosion a hundred miles out from Desert Wind blanked instruments for a short while, but it proved that they were now able to detect these near-invisible mines. Slowly, in a representative view, the minefield began to be revealed.
"They're moving," came a general tacom report.
The flare of drive flames created brief constellations out in vacuum. However, the same flames immediately located every mine for Fleet's instruments. More explosions—two mines drawing too close to Harvester. Harald realised that Combine had expected that, after one or two detonations, the mines would inevitably be detected, so had programmed them to become missiles like this, giving them the remote possibility of causing more damage.
"Remove them," Harald instructed, and multiple explosions filled space around the hilldiggers. Switching from view to view, he coldly studied the spectacle, but these camera angles also presented him with an unwelcome reality: Stormfollower, Resilience and Musket were turning. It disappointed him that all the Captains he suspected might rebel, had now done so.
"Captains Davidson, Cobe and Schumack," he broadcast. "Return to formation, or you will lose command of your ships."
After a long delay, Davidson reinstated his comlink. "A hundred thousand people? To be honest with you, Admiral, I have not been in agreement with all your actions since you took command, but my loyalty to Fleet has so far kept me from disobeying. Now I cannot obey you any longer. Captain Ildris once gave me a lecture on the responsibility of command and one particular phrase stands out in my mind: 'History has taught us that saying one was only obeying orders can never be an excuse for committing atrocity'."
Even while Davidson spoke, Harald opened com channels he had long ago prepared for this moment. Communications were the key, he had told Yishna, but even she could not have guessed to what extent he meant this. Immediately the tacom officers aboard the three departing ships, though quite possibly still loyal, were frozen out. But routed through their equipment, Harald began to seize control of the hardware of those ships. With a single thought he shut down their engines. With an analytical omniscience he gazed through Bridge cameras at the three Captains and their crews, as they began to realise that the controls were no longer responding to them.
Other views showed emergency lights flashing in various vital sections of each ship. Harald observed a crowd of engineers struggling into survival suits as they abandoned the engine galleries of Resilience, once the last of the stragglers got out of there, the heavy blast doors quickly closed off that particular area. As weaponry areas—also equipped with blast doors because of the danger from exploding munitions—were abandoned because of similar false emergencies, Harald closed them off too. Exterior views showed him airlocks opening those areas to vacuum—if anyone remained behind, their life-spans would now be measured by the air supply in their survival suits. Harald next shut off all the internal lifts, and the internal rail system, closed off more selected areas and opened more to vacuum, shut maintenance tunnels, locked spacesuit lockers, disabled EVA units and shuttles. He set recognition programs to work through the camera systems, ready to alert him should the crew try to return to any vital zones, and there prepared some nasty surprises for them should they try.
"Captain Soderstrom," he finally broadcast. "As we agreed, in this eventuality, I am slaving Stormfollower and Musket to your ship, Harvester, and you will take them in with you when you attack Corisanthe II. Resilience I will slave to Wildfire for the attack on Corisanthe III. Meanwhile, myself and Franorl, in Ironfist and Desert Wind, will take out the defence platforms and assault Corisanthe Main."
"You can't do this," protested Davidson.
Ignoring him, Harald restarted the engines of the three ships, and turned them round.
McCrooger
The spin section juddered to a halt and a stink of barbecue immediately filled the air. Luckily someone had thought to strap me into my bed, so I wasn't thrown across the room.