The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear (8 page)

This time, Malin paused. “I found indications that may lead me closer to a target General Drakon assigned me.”

“Which target?”

“His daughter.”

Iceni fought down an angry response before speaking again. She hated being reminded of the girl, and hated that she felt that way. “I was told that Colonel Morgan had placed safeguards around wherever the baby is, and if anyone gets too close the child will die.”

“As near as I can determine, what Morgan said is true,” Malin said.

“And what were General Drakon’s orders in that regard?” Iceni pressed.

“He told me he did not want his daughter to die.”

Iceni leaned back in her chair, eyeing Malin. “Suppose I told you to press on in ways that would trigger those safeguards and ensure the child’s death. Would you do it?”

Malin did not reveal any emotion as he shook his head. “No, Madam President. I could not obey such an order.”

“Why not?”

“Because I believe that it would be a mistake to betray General Drakon’s wishes in the matter. He would regard it as a very serious breach of trust. It might sabotage his cooperation with you in the governing of, and defense of, Midway.”

“And?” Iceni asked.

“There is no other reason, Madam President.”

“No other reason? The girl is your half sister. You refused to kill Morgan for me, without revealing to me that the reason was because she was your mother. Yet now you feel no obligation toward a sister?”

Malin started to speak, paused, then tried again. “We all die, Madam President. Our sacrifices can build important things, great legacies, if we do not hesitate to do what we must.”

He sounded sincere. Iceni nodded slowly, then waved a dismissal at Malin. She didn’t want to risk anything in her voice giving away how much his reply had disturbed her.

Too many of the people working for her and Drakon were still caught in the Syndicate belief that the ends always justified the means. Worse, they were making their own decisions about means and ends.

Means don’t always produce the ends we want. Like “O’Malley” from Conall. Damn. It must be her. And I sent Kommodor Marphissa and
Manticore
out there to deal with her. The last I had heard, that girl had taken after her father. Of all the pirates out there, why did she have to sail into my region of space? That mess with her father wasn’t my worst mistake, but bad enough.

My worst mistake might be pursuing his own goals in this city right
now.

Iceni wondered what ends Togo was working toward, and what means he was willing to use.

CELIA
Gozen had fallen into bed, worn-out from work, only taking time to ensure a ready weapon was close at hand before she fell to sleep. Promotions in the Syndicate sometimes happened because “accidents” befell superior officers, and sometimes workers who spotted an opening went after a supervisor on general principles. Growing up Syndicate meant realizing that you didn’t have to be guilty of anything to become a target.

She didn’t know whether a noise or simply battle-honed instinct awakened her hours later. Buildings, even a building in the headquarters complex where people worked at all hours of every day, grew hushed at night. Gozen lay in the dark, straining her senses for a clue to what had woken her up. She didn’t know why, but she was certain that someone else was in this room. Her pistol was only a few centimeters from her right hand, but she knew the difference between reality and fiction was that in reality someone who had the drop on you wouldn’t just stand and watch while you grabbed for a weapon.

And whoever that someone was, they must be very good at what they were doing. In addition to the standard security measures in the building and the door to her room, Gozen had rigged the sort of small, portable alarms that Syndicate executives carried around routinely. But none of them had sounded, so the intruder must have neutralized them all soundlessly.

But whoever it was hadn’t yet killed her, so this couldn’t be a simple assassination attempt. Gozen spoke into the darkness, her voice very low. “What do you want?”

After a couple of seconds the reply came, in a voice also low, so it was hard to distinguish much about it except for the words. “Someone who is wise. Are you wise?”

“No,” Gozen said, unable to avoid the frank reply as she tried to estimate just where in her room the intruder was located. If she rolled to her left as her right hand grabbed her pistol . . .

“You are too modest. I know your record. If you move, I will kill you.”

Gozen took a slow breath. “What do you want?” she repeated.

“Drakon is dangerous. He cannot be trusted.”

The pause seemed to expect a reply, so Gozen chose a careful response. “Why not?”

“He is Syndicate. A deep plant.”

“Must be awful deep. He’s killed a lot of snakes.”

“The Syndicate does not worry about sacrificing pawns in order to reach the queen.”

The queen? “You mean President Iceni?” Gozen asked. The voice was definitely coming from near the door. Whoever it was hadn’t gotten very far inside. And it was a man, she thought.

“Yes. I could have killed you before you woke. But I know you hate the Syndicate. They killed your uncle.”

The only people she hated more than those who had killed her uncle were those who tried to use her uncle’s death to their own ends.
Gozen didn’t bother trying to hide the quaver of anger in her voice, knowing that the intruder would interpret that as rage at the Syndicate. “And the Syndicate wants the president dead?”

“Yes. They’ll use Drakon. All you need to do is watch, and when the time comes, do nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Doing something would be . . . a mistake.”

“How big a mistake?” Gozen asked, then wanted to slap herself for the flippant reply. She waited for the intruder to say something else, but the silence stretched unbroken.

Gozen brought up her right hand, moving with slow deliberation, then swung it over until it grasped her pistol. She eased her arm around until the pistol was pointed in the direction she had heard the voice coming from, then with her left hand flicked the lights on.

The room was empty.

The door was still locked.

When Gozen got up and checked, her alarms were untouched.

Oh, great.

That guy said he knew my record, then he gave me an order. Is he stupid? I guess I’m supposed to be too afraid to do “something.” Screw that.

It’s only a few minutes until reveille. Why did my visitor leave so little time before almost everyone in this complex would be waking up?

*   *   *

BY
the time she threw on a uniform, ensured her sidearm was holstered and ready to fire, and walked briskly to the command center, the wake-up call had sounded and the passageways were beginning to fill with bleary-eyed soldiers.

Drakon was just entering the command center when she got there.

“General, I need to talk to you alone,” Gozen said, trying not to
look nervous. In her experience, senior officers didn’t tend to trust juniors who appeared to be jumpy.

Drakon paused on his way inside, giving Gozen a searching look. “How alone?”

“Very, very alone.”

“What’s the priority on this?”

“Very high.” She waited for more questions asking why he should alter his plans for some unstated reason.

But Drakon eyed her silently for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “Come on.” To her surprise, he didn’t lead on into the command center and his office right off of it. Instead, Drakon led the way through the complex until he reached a small break area with a few tables and a couple of vending machines to one side. A couple of soldiers slumped over coffee cups jolted to attention as he entered. “Keep an eye outside for a few minutes,” Drakon told them, waiting until they left before he took a seat and gestured Gozen to one next to him.

“One thing I confirmed when we took snake headquarters on this world,” he commented to Gozen, “was that the break areas were all bugged.”

“Sure they were,” Gozen said as she sat down. “Everybody figured they were.”

“But from the snake headquarters I was able to burn out the bugs in some of those break areas.” Drakon smiled, sitting back in the uncomfortable chair. The Syndicate bureaucracy, in one of its few truly inspired moves, had deliberately designed break room chairs to be uncomfortable so as to discourage anyone’s lingering in break rooms when they should be working for the Syndicate. “This is a place everyone assumes is bugged, so nobody talks about secret stuff here.”

“And nobody else will plant a bug here because everyone knows nobody will talk about anything important in this room?” Gozen asked, grinning. “Sir, that is genius.”

“It’s just thinking sideways. I wanted a place no one would think to bug. Now, you and I know that. Nobody else. Don’t share the info.”

Gozen’s smile shifted to an uncertain frown. “Not even Colonel Malin?”

“Not even Colonel Malin,” Drakon confirmed. “From what I saw of you at Ulindi, you don’t cry wolf. What’s going on? Is Colonel Malin what you want to talk about?”

“No, sir.” Gozen took a deep breath, then quickly sketched out the events of the previous night. “There has to be a hidden access to my room, sir.”

“Which is supposed to be impossible in this complex,” Drakon said, “now that we’ve sealed off everything we learned about from captured snake files.”

“Maybe the CEO who commanded the ground forces here before you had it done,” Gozen suggested.

“There’s no way of telling now since she was given the opportunity to either die heroically for the Syndicate or watch her family be sent off to labor camps,” Drakon said. “She took the hero option. I can get a survey team into your quarters and they’ll find that access, but it’ll probably lead to somewhere that doesn’t give us any clues.”

“It’ll still make me feel a whole lot better if it’s sealed,” Gozen offered.

“I’m sure it will.” Drakon gave her another appraising look. “It sounds like you handled that situation right. Any guesses as to who the intruder was?”

“No, sir,” Gozen said, shaking her head. “I figure it was a male, but I can’t even be certain of that.”

Drakon frowned at the table’s surface, thinking. “I can guess why you didn’t do as you were told,” he finally commented dryly, looking back up at her. “Why didn’t you believe your visitor about me being some deep plant?”

Gozen shrugged. “Snakes are crazy, sir, and I don’t underestimate
them. But your being a deep plant makes no sense. One word from you, and the snakes on Midway would have nailed the president before she made her first move. You’ve easily had dozens of chances since then to cause Midway to fall back under Syndic control, but you haven’t. You could have let your soldiers get wiped out at Ulindi just by not making a few decisions and come out looking like a hero who miraculously survived the destruction of Midway. But you didn’t. How long a game are the snakes supposed to be playing? Are they waiting until you reach Prime and are ready to nail the head CEOs?”

“Good reasoning,” Drakon said. “Why do you suppose the intruder tried to get you to believe that was true?”

“Because he, if it was a he, believed it was true.” Gozen shook her head at Drakon. “He . . . she, it . . . thinks you’re a Syndicate agent, sir. And it sounded to me like they were waiting for a chance to nail you.”

“But not President Iceni?”

“No, sir. You’re a threat to the president, so you have to be taken out. That’s what my visitor said.”

Drakon thought again, tapping one finger on the surface of the table. “Have you heard what happened on this world while we were fighting on Ulindi?” he asked. “Someone, maybe a lot of someones, tried to assassinate Colonel Rogero and stir up mobs that would have torn apart a lot of property and shattered the government that the president is establishing.”

“I heard about it,” Gozen said. “Scared the hell out of a lot of people on this planet.”

“It did. But it backfired. President Iceni faced the mob, faced them down without any guards or support, and she won them over. They love her. She’s their champion.” Drakon glanced at Gozen. “But some of the people who love the president may still figure I’m a danger to her. That love for President Iceni might be what is motivating whoever this intruder was.”

“Maybe, General.” Gozen felt a thought lurking just around the corner of her brain and tried to coax it out of hiding.

“You handled this right. Don’t tell anyone else any details. I’ll have a survey team in your quarters within the hour. Anything else?”

Gozen almost said no, then the thought finally leaned out into view. “Sir? You said the plan backfired?”

Drakon had been about to rise, but paused and sat firmly again. “Yes. Why?”

“I’ve talked to Colonel Rogero, sir, and I have no doubt someone tried to kill him and cut off the head of the ground forces on this planet. But . . .” Gozen paused to make sure she said her next words just right. “We don’t know what the plan was for President Iceni. Nobody tried to kill her, even though she exposed herself to danger.”

“What else would the plan have been?” Drakon asked, not in a dismissive way but actually trying to draw out her thoughts.

Gozen felt a wave of elation at that. She hadn’t guessed wrongly about the type of leader that Drakon was. “If someone believed that the President was a great leader, then they might have thought she would prevail, that she would find a way to get the people under control, and with the ground forces looking to her for leadership, too, she would be totally secure. Just like she is now in terms of how the people think of her, but without you to worry about.”

Drakon rubbed his chin. “That’s possible. We assumed the plan was to unseat Iceni, to create chaos on this world. But it could have been aimed at forcing her to make the moves she did, which greatly strengthened her position. And you’re right that no attempt was made on her life.”

“Like tempering metal,” Gozen said. “Somebody believed in President Iceni a whole lot, and doesn’t believe in you. And from the sound of things, the next plan involves killing you. Why haven’t they tried already?”

“They have.” Drakon smiled briefly and without humor. “I have very effective bodyguards and assistants.”

“Had, sir, in one case. I’m not bad at doing my job, but everybody tells me that Colonel Morgan was in a class by herself.”

“She was unique,” Drakon agreed heavily. “And you’re right about her being a very effective bodyguard. I’ll miss . . . that. Thank you, Colonel Gozen. Keep your eyes open and your weapon armed.” He got up. “As long as you’re here, do you want any snacks?”

“No, sir,” Gozen said, standing as well. “I only ever tasted one thing that was worse than a Syndicate food bar.”

“You found something worse than a Syndicate food bar?”

“Yes, sir. We captured some Alliance rations. Most of it was pretty good, but they had these bars. Danaka Yoruk. The name is engraved on my guts.” She shuddered at the memory. “They must feed those rations to Alliance workers to punish them.”

Drakon grinned. “What did you do with them?”

“Some snakes stopped by and demanded the best of the captured rations, so we gave them all the Yoruk bars.” Gozen shrugged. “Either the Alliance killed those snakes later on, or the snakes ate the Yoruk bars and died from that, because we never saw them again.”

Drakon’s laugh was cut short by the blare of the Priority One Alarm.

“Headquarters complex has been penetrated by a hostile force!” a voice boomed on the general announcing system loudly enough to be heard over the wail of the alarm. “Composition unknown! Headquarters complex has be—”

The voice cut off, but neither Drakon nor Gozen were listening to it any longer. They had both bolted from the break room into the corridor, where the two soldiers that Drakon had told to stand watch were crouching, staring in opposite directions along the hallway. “Where’s your armory?” Drakon demanded.

“Down there, sir,” one soldier said, pointing to the left.

“Let’s get to it.” Drakon and Gozen both had their sidearms out, and as the small group hastened down the corridor they watched ahead and behind.

The alarm cut off.

“All clear,” a voice announced. “False alarm.”

“They’ve gotten into the base operating system,” Drakon told Gozen, his weapon up and sweeping the corridor before them. “If that was an all clear sent by my people they would have also reported that Colonel Oskar was in the command center.”

“There’s no Colonel Oskar in this unit,” Gozen said, keeping her weapon and her eyes on the hallway behind them.

“Exactly. That’s our verify code.” They rounded a corner and found a hallway where a half-dozen soldiers in battle armor were already in position around the door to the local armory. Weapons swung their way as the soldiers spotted their movement.