“Modified it?”
“It’s on a timer. We think it will blow in about… what is the time now… about ten more minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” Marphissa flared. “If the power core on that battleship overloads in ten minutes, a lot of your escape pods will still be within its danger radius! They can’t accelerate fast enough to get clear!”
“We didn’t want the snakes left aboard to have time to find out what we had done and override it!”
“Idiots,” Diaz murmured, his eyes on his display. “Kommodor, our ships might be able to pick up some of the escape pods that will still be within the danger region—”
“No,” Marphissa replied. “They jury-rigged something to put that self-destruct device on a timer. We don’t know for certain when the power core will overload. I cannot risk any of my ships being caught by that blast.” She hit her comm controls, cursing vengeance-minded workers who didn’t stop to think through their plans for reprisal against their supervisors and the snakes. “All ships, this is Kommodor Marphissa. The Syndicate battleship’s power core is rigged to overload in roughly ten minutes, possibly less. All units are to immediately use maximum acceleration to clear the danger radius around the battleship. Stay clear of the danger zone until I give permission to reenter it. All ships acknowledge and get moving!”
Midway was closest to the Syndicate battleship and had the farthest to go to clear the blast radius, but fortunately she was also by far the most heavily armored and shielded of the warships and thus best able to ride out the shock if it happened too quickly. Marphissa had barely finished speaking before Midway’s thrusters came to life on full, pivoting her to one side, the battleship’s main propulsion kicking in as soon as Midway’s bow had swung far enough away from the enemy warship.
“All of our ships should be all right,” Kapitan Diaz noted. “Five minutes less warning, and it would have been a different story.”
“Are your sensors picking up definite instability indications from the battleship’s power core yet?” Marphissa asked.
“Not yet,” the engineering specialist answered. “Just what we had before. But, Kommodor, when we saw this snake device used at Midway, you remember the light cruiser they destroyed when it mutinied, there were no warning signs until the power core entered the last stages of overload, and those came with unusual rapidity.”
“That’s right.” She looked at Diaz as another thought occurred to her. “How do we know those idiot workers actually set the overload device before they fled?”
“Did you see how scared they were?” Diaz answered. “They sure seemed frightened of being caught in that blast to me. Ah. All ships are clearing the danger radius, Kommodor. Midway is the last, and she will be beyond any danger within a minute.”
“Good.” Marphissa stared at her display. “See if your comm specialist can establish contact with the Syndicate battleship. I want to speak to their commander.”
“Kommodor, that will be CEO Hua Boucher.”
“I know. I want to speak to her,” Marphissa repeated.
It took another half minute before a new virtual window appeared before Marphissa.
CEO Hua Boucher, the “Happy Hua” whose grandmotherly appearance and pleasant demeanor had lured countless victims into deadly overconfidence or confessions, sat in the command seat on the battleship as if nothing could cause her to move from it. She had a frown creasing her usually cheerful face, but otherwise what could be seen of the bridge of the battleship had a jarring feel of the routine to it. Buried deep with the hull of the warship behind immense armor and the sheer mass of all the intervening compartments, the bridge was physically untouched by the battering which had been inflicted on the Syndicate battleship’s hull. “What do you want?” Hua Boucher demanded like a disappointed elder.
Marphissa gazed back at her, marveling at how different outward appearances could be from the person inside. “I wanted to see the sort of human who could order the bombardment of Kane.”
“They were traitors. They had murdered servants of the Syndicate. They had no right to expect any other fate,” Hua Boucher explained, still in those disappointed tones.
“That’s it?” Marphissa paused, trying to find words. “I grew up in the Syndicate. I know how horrible it is. But it is supposed to be efficient, it is supposed to be practical. Why kill all those people, why destroy so much? All you did was convince everyone in this part of space that the Syndicate cannot be trusted, that they must prepare to defend themselves against the Syndicate.”
“Any other traitors will be dealt with in the same way,” Hua Boucher said. From force of habit, her words came out sounding like a firm but gentle admonition.
“No,” Marphissa said. “You can’t keep that up any longer. You must know that. The Syndicate government on Prime must know that. Why? Why did you do something that you must have known would turn more people against you?”
“If one death does not convince traitors of their errors, then ten deaths will,” Happy Hua said in her grandmotherly way. “If ten deaths do not, then a hundred will. If a hundred do not—”
Snake philosophy, laid out in the starkest possible terms. Marphissa looked away, trying to regain her composure. “You’re about to die. Do you have any regrets at all?”
“Only that you did not die first.” Happy Hua smiled. “But that may still happen. We may not be as easy to overcome as you think.”
“We’re not boarding your ship,” Marphissa said.
“Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said to Diaz, “we’re seeing a sudden jump in power fluctuations on the battleship.”
“How long do they have left?” Diaz asked.
“I estimate thirty seconds, Kapitan. No more than a minute.”
Happy Hua was still gazing back at Marphissa, but with some amused puzzlement now. “Do you intend starving us out?”
“No,” Marphissa said. She could see, in the background behind Hua Boucher, people suddenly rushing around on the Syndicate battleship’s bridge. They no longer had any means of controlling their power core from the bridge, but their instruments could tell them what was happening. “I had no choice in this. The workers you terrorized, tortured, and murdered have had their revenge. They killed you. Take that thought to hell with you.”
For the first time, Happy Hua looked rattled, her eyes widening. She started to turn to speak to someone at the back of the bridge.
Her image vanished.
“Overload, Kapitan,” the engineering specialist said.
“We are well outside the danger region,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla said. “We will feel the shock wave, but it will have spread out too much to be a danger to us.”
Diaz nodded, touching a control to speak throughout Manticore. “Brace for shock wave.”
Manticore rocked like an oceangoing vessel hit by a large swell.
“No damage to Manticore, Kapitan,” Czilla reported.
Diaz waved one hand in acknowledgment. “Kane is avenged, as are the crew who died aboard Harrier,” he told Marphissa.
“And yet I have no joy,” Marphissa murmured. “Only satisfaction that she will kill no more.” She straightened and checked her display. The Hunter-Killer that was the sole surviving Syndicate warship in this star system was still fleeing toward the jump point for Kiribati.
Marphissa touched her comm controls. “Midway, you are detached to proceed at best speed to the inhabited world and provide support to our ground forces on that planet. All other ships, operate independently to recover surviving escape pods. Keep all Syndicate personnel you recover under guard until we can screen them to see if any snakes are among them.