“Our IR signatures have been visible for several minutes, and the electromagnetic-displacement shocks must be tripping every alarm they have. Not to mention we have just parked the largest WarShip they have ever seen on Skye’s door. They know, Galaxy Commander. They know. And they are already transmitting news of our arrival dirtside.”

“There go the two merchants,” a sensor technician called out. “We have energy blooms in the military vessels as well. KF drives are charged. They stand ready to jump.”

She began to say something, but the Star admiral interrupted her. “Distance checks?” he ordered. “Are we close enough for our own KF drive to get caught in the energy backwash?”

“Neg, Star Admiral. Interference will be negligible.”

Malvina stifled her impulse to lash out at the admiral. His caution had been appropriate, and under time constraints. “They have had long enough,” she decided. “Open a channel to the recharge station.”

The Star admiral nodded her request on to his communications tech. “Gondola Station,” he informed her as the connection was made.

“Gondola Station, this is Malvina Hazen of Clan Jade Falcon. You will surrender unconditionally. You will do so within the next thirty seconds.”

On the auxiliary screen, the image of the recharge station winked out, to be replaced by a whip-thin Republic naval officer fastening the cuffs at his wrists. His reddish orange hair stuck out to the left, still tousled and matted from sleep.

“This is Commodore Billings aboard Gondola. With what forces do you challenge for this station?”

The man sounded almost bored. An insult worse than his attempt at batchall. When the Clans first invaded the Inner Sphere, adopting Clan bidding practices and twisting honor rules had become a commonplace tactic. In effect, the treacherous surats helped the Clans to defeat themselves. Malvina was not quite the student of history that her brother had been, but she knew better than to allow Inner Sphere barbarians any access to such customs.

“If you will look at your primary monitor, you will see what forces I have deployed in challenge. You now have fifteen seconds.”

Perhaps the tired officer’s mind was still bedded down in his shipboard bunk. Perhaps he simply could not believe what Malvina was telling him, even when the truth stared him in the face with open gunports and sensor lock. “I don’t understand. My sensors show no fighter craft deployed. Just… the WarShip.” He shook his head. “We have six aerospace fighters standing by on—”

“Five seconds,” Malvina cut him off angrily. This man would never have made it out of a Clan sibko alive. The Republic should take greater care whom they posted to important positions. She was not here to hold his hand and explain her demands as if to a child. She didn’t especially care if he understood or not. She did not need his edification.

She needed an example.

This order did not go to Star Admiral Binetti. Malvina gave it herself, directly to portside gunnery. The man had a hawklike nose and a jutting chin, and a fanatic’s light in his eyes as she told him, “Open fire.”

The command was relayed through secure systems to the weapons bays, with less than three seconds elapsed between her order and the first naval-grade PPC slashing out with cold, ruthless talons to rake critical wounds across the station’s bow. Naval autocannon and a pair of capital-ship Gauss cannon followed, hammering at the Olympus with Thor’s own fury.

On-screen, the commodore’s face twisted itself into a mixture of confusion and fear as his station shook violently.

“Wait,” he pleaded, trying to get back on top of the situation. “We can—”

Malvina reached forward and switched the monitor by her own hand from his cowardly visage to a gun-cam view of Gondola Station. Air frosted out of a half dozen deep wounds, jets of ice crystals streaming into space as the station bled to death. She saw a body tumble out, blown clear in the rapid decompression, arms flailing about for less than ten seconds. Then another body. This one got caught between the Emerald Talon and Gondola Station, ripped in half by the next naval PPC, which struck the station amidships in its small fighter bay.

More weapons converged over the thick doors, blasting them into ruin and reaching deep within. No aerospace fighters would launch now.

“We have one military vessel jumping,” a sensor tech called out. “There goes the second one as well.”

Running for safety. One or both might simply have jumped for the nadir station, where they would recharge and await orders from Skye. They might just as easily flee for the relative safety of another system altogether, spreading word of the attack.

That also was fine with Malvina Hazen.

Sporadic return fire rose up from the recharge station as a few defiant crewmen struck back with light autocannon and wave after wave of long-range missiles. A few particle cannon joined in, late. These were conventional weapons, with pathetic range compared with capital-ship guns, and even worse damage profiles. They barely scratched the Nightlord’s armored hide.

“Hit them again,” Malvina said calmly. Even though she had never given an order to cease fire, she wanted it clear that she approved of the continuing barrage.

Gunners walked a line of horrific damage from stem to stern, pounding the hapless facility without mercy. As Malvina desired. A few escape pods launched. Some even managed to clear the storm of weapons fire that filled the vacuum between WarShip and station. Nickel-ferrous masses launched by the Emerald Talon’s rail guns snapped off three of the station’s six jumpsail supports, and several square kilometers of solar sail creased and tangled into its own cables. Capital lasers carved deep into the engineering spaces, darkening Gondola’s station-keeping drive.

A few seconds later the flickering power went out for good. The hull-mounted spotlights darkened. No weapons were fired at the attacking WarShip.

There was no further attempt at communication.

Malvina let the assault hammer into Gondola Station for another moment, pounding it into unrecognizable scrap. Finally she nodded. “Enough.”

The station’s corpse continued to bleed air into the cold vacuum of space. A nimbus of scrap metal and bodies tumbled about, caught only in the WarShip’s massive spotlights. When Malvina ordered the lights extinguished a moment later, nothing could be seen of the once graceful station except where its mangled bulk excluded the starlight.

Gondola Station was dead.

“I congratulate you,” Beckett Malthus said when she joined him on one of the Emerald Talon’s secure administrative decks. The two of them entered her shipboard office. “My aides inform me that you allowed one lifeboat and a half dozen escape pods to clear the kill zone. Skye must know all about the attack by now.”

Malvina shrugged. Now that it was over, she saw very little point in reliving the moment. It had been vaguely unsatisfying. Not personal enough for her.

“As it was on Chaffee,” she said, taking a seat at her desk, leaving Malthus to stand or accept one of the room’s inferior chairs. “The survivors are carriers. They will spread their fear to everyone with whom they come into contact. Skye will know what is in store for it.”

“And they will have a week to stew while we travel in-system.” The WarShip’s massive drives burned hot and silent several dozen decks below, pushing the Nightlord into Skye’s system at just over one standard gravity of acceleration. “Quite an efficient use of terror as a weapon, I would say.”

“As an object lesson it will serve its purpose.”

“I wonder,” Malthus said, taking a seat and leaning forward as if sharing a secret with Malvina. “How will Skye react, do you think, once the Emerald Talon’s lasers start probing down from orbit?”