The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword (12 page)

“How serious are your concerns at this moment?”

Iceni rested her head on one hand as she looked at Bradamont. “Captain, can you walk through a ship and feel the state of the crew? Their mood and their morale?”

“Yes,” Bradamont said.

“I can do the same with the citizens. Yes, I sometimes disguise myself and go out alone to walk among them. There’s no better way to get a sense of how they really feel, and there is an instability there that worries me. The citizens are the Achilles’ heel of this star system. Our opponents know that.”

“Can I speak of this to Colonel Rogero?”

Iceni considered the question before answering it. Anything Bradamont told Rogero would surely be passed to Drakon. “No.” She laughed. “My pardon, Madam Military Emissary of the Alliance. I can’t order you around. It is my wish that you not discuss the matter with Colonel Rogero as of yet.”

“I will respect your wishes in the matter, Madam President,” Bradamont replied. “But I will say that I do not believe that you have any grounds to fear General Drakon. He has given explicit orders to his commanders not to move against you.”

“Unless the orders to move against me come from him,” Iceni said wryly.

“He didn’t caveat the instructions at all, Madam President. He said do not move against the president. Period.”

Iceni looked at Bradamont, sitting with a straight-backed military posture, her uniform adorned with rank insignia and the ribbons representing medals and commendations won in long years of fighting against the Syndicate. It was hard to believe that a woman who had been through so much could be so naïve.
Drakon knew that Rogero would tell you and that you were likely to tell me. So this reassurance means nothing. But you, with your honor, can’t even see that.
“Thank you. Have you seen anything else that you believe I should be aware of?”

“I assume that you’ve been getting reports on the progress of fitting out
Midway
and getting her ready for battle.”

“Yes.” Iceni leaned forward a bit. “The reports say that everything is going well. In fact, if I didn’t trust Kommodor Marphissa as much as I do, I’d be inclined to think they were exaggerating the amount of progress.”

“They’re not,” Bradamont said. “The crew is working very hard, and Kapitan Mercia has come up with a number of improvements to procedures that are allowing much more rapid progress than would have been possible under the old system.”

“The Syndicate system, you mean.” Iceni remembered references to that. Mercia had conceived of the improvements years ago, but of course the Syndicate bureaucracy hadn’t been interested in changes suggested by some mobile forces executive. “The vast majority of
Midway
’s crew is made up of survivors from the Reserve Flotilla. What is your impression of them?”

Bradamont sketched a brief smile. “They know their business. They are also highly motivated. There is a pervasive sense among the crew that they were dishonored by the actions of Executive Ito.”

“Dishonored?” Iceni asked, making clear her mockery of the term.

“I’m sorry, Madam President, but I don’t know any other term that fits. Perhaps none of them understand what the Alliance fleet calls
honor
, but I feel that they understand
dishonor
, even if they could not place that name on it. They are determined to make up for what Ito tried to do. And they all know that
you
saved them. Kommodor Marphissa never hesitates to remind them that the flotilla that picked them up from Varandal, that escorted them safely here past the Syndicate, was ordered to do that by you despite the risks.” Bradamont smiled again, her eyes challenging Iceni. “They don’t want to let you down, after you have done so much for them.”

Iceni made a snort of combined disbelief and derision to cover up her internal confusion. Bradamont couldn’t be right. Workers didn’t think like that.

But suppose they could think like that if motivated by things other than fear? She had considered the idea before, but time and again it had been shoved into the background by the need to deal with emergencies and unforeseen developments.

For a long time after Bradamont had left, Iceni sat gazing into the distance, thinking about things she had been told were true, had seen were true, but that might not be true.

—

MORGAN
nodded to the man who had been designated in snake files as a potential security threat. Not a serious potential threat. Those had all been arrested or had simply disappeared before she had even reached Ulindi. The accelerated rate and number of arrests argued that Supreme CEO Haris was planning something in the near future, but every check Morgan had made revealed nothing in snake files about any impending activity.

Dark walls loomed around them, most of the light provided by the devices in Morgan’s hand which were blocking any hidden surveillance system. Two more snakes had died to provide her with the right equipment.

The man stared back at her, one eye twitching nervously. “I don’t know what you want.”

“The same things that Citizen Torres wants,” Morgan said smoothly.

“Wanted. Past tense. Torres is dead. If you think you’re going to lure me into saying or doing anything disloyal, you’re wrong.”

Torres was also dead? The snakes had been two steps ahead of her on that one. “Haris’s time is limited,” Morgan said. “If you choose the right option, you can help bring about his downfall.”

The man shook his head rapidly, gazing around as if trying to meet the eyes of unseen observers. “I have no interest in that. I am loyal. I will report you, though.”

“Is that what started the snakes hauling in so many citizens? You reported on people?”

“No! The dragnet just began, out of nowhere! No one had done anything! I hadn’t done anything!”

Morgan let a moment of silence build fear in the man while she thought about means to make him blurt something useful. “What about Citizen Galanos?” she finally asked. “What would he think of what you’re saying?”

“Galanos? I . . . I don’t know any Galanos.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Morgan said. “The snakes know you’ve met with Galanos.”

“That’s not true! If it were, I’d be—” The man stopped, swallowing before he could speak again. “I am loyal,” he protested weakly.

Morgan would have taken the man’s denials a little easier if he wasn’t the fifth contact who had refused to even begin working with her. Four others she had tried making contact with had either disappeared or died before she could reach them. She was feeling frustrated and more than a little upset.

Before she could say anything else, though, a small alarm chirped in her left ear, followed by a blinking light on the masking equipment she was carrying.

Snarling, Morgan slammed her palm against the man’s forehead hard enough to launch him backward into the wall behind him. The impact could be clearly heard, doubtless alerting whoever was sneaking toward her from the left, but Morgan still paused long enough to run her gear over the man’s body. Sure enough, he had been wired. The snakes had been a step ahead on him as well.

She yanked out the memory clip on the wire and ensured the man was dead, then thumbed the timer on an improvised explosive that she had concocted, setting the device in the dark shadows near the wall opposite the man’s body. Drawing the weapon she had taken off a dead snake, Morgan faded back to her right, moving quickly and surely along the escape path she had worked out before setting up the meeting. There had been another path available to the left if the snakes had come from the other direction.

Not that this one was safe after all. Morgan froze, scanning the darkness for another sign of whatever trace of movement or sound had registered on her subconscious. There. And there. She waited patiently, counting silently to herself, weapon lined up on one of the almost-impossible-to-spot figures.

Morgan pulled the trigger a second before the improvised explosive detonated in the alley behind her. Without waiting to see the result of her shot, Morgan jumped sideways, firing twice more at the second figure who had become visible in the momentary light of the explosion, the sound of her shots masked by the echoes of the blast.

As the light faded, and darkness fell again, Morgan raced down the alley past the two dead or wounded snake sentries. Shots rang out behind her, and some to the side, but she was moving too fast along her preplanned route.

As she cut through a segment of an underground utility tunnel, a figure appeared to one side. Morgan didn’t wait to identify the person or see if they posed a threat, one hand flashing out to inflict what could have been a killing blow. She didn’t pause to find out if the strike had been lethal, continuing onward without pause.

Every plan had to be modified when necessary. The idea of getting armed resistance cells going here had seemed a good one but was proving to be way too hazardous and lacking in any actual recruits for the cells.

Morgan finally stopped in a carefully prepared hiding place, going to work to change her appearance again and dispose of anything that could be used to identify or track her.

She had to wait for daylight to move again without attracting all the wrong kinds of attention, so Morgan sat back and thought.

There had been a lot of arrests in this city and elsewhere on the planet in the last month, beginning a couple of weeks prior to her arrival. A lot of arrests. The bugged citizen who had died tonight had been near the bottom of the sort of long list of usual suspects that snakes routinely maintained. No one on a Syndicate world publicized arrest statistics, but from what Morgan had been able to put together by listening to murmured comments on the street and scanning the want ads for suddenly available job positions, there had been thousands of arrests recently.

Was Supreme CEO Haris that scared? Good. He should be.

Where were the snakes keeping all the citizens they were rounding up?

That might be an important thing to learn though Morgan suspected the answer would be an unpleasant one.

She hoped the information she had already smuggled out to General Drakon would be enough for him to achieve another overwhelming victory. Not that the general needed much help in winning battles. Strategic vision, that was another matter, but the general had her to keep that firmly targeted.

Morgan twisted her head up and to the side so she could peer up into a crack of night sky visible from her hiding place. Dawn was beginning to pale the darkness above, but the brightest stars were still visible.

Our daughter will rule those stars.

Despite the discomfort of the position, Morgan held it, watching until the last star’s glow was lost in the spreading light of the new day.

—

GENERAL
Drakon leaned back, indicating the display. His office was smaller than Iceni’s, and more Spartan than luxurious, but those were as much lingering manifestations of what the Syndicate demanded of different levels of CEOs as they were reflections of Drakon’s preferences. The exact size of a ground forces CEO office in any star system was laid out in detail in Syndicate regulations. A CEO could exceed the limits of office size for his or her position, but only at the cost of advertising ambition and risking preemptive actions by superiors. Since the revolt, Drakon could have expanded his office to match Iceni’s, but he hadn’t seen the point. As far as he was concerned, the size of a man’s office didn’t matter as long as there was enough room for a desk and a trash can, and bigger offices didn’t make bigger men or women. “Did you go over the information Colonel Morgan sent?” he asked Colonel Malin.

“Yes, sir. It’s very complete.” Malin called up an image of Ulindi Star System. “It confirms some of our other information. Supreme CEO Haris was badly hurt by his failed attempt to seize our battleship. He lost his battle cruiser and four Hunter-Killers, leaving him with only one heavy cruiser that we knew of. Morgan’s information tells us that Haris also has a single light cruiser at his disposal. Our prisoners from Haris’s former battle cruiser suspected that he had the light cruiser but also thought it might have defected from Haris.”

“And no warships under construction or repair,” Drakon said. “Two cruisers can’t stop us from landing troops wherever we want in Ulindi.”

“Not if President Iceni sends along a sufficiently strong flotilla as escort,” Malin agreed. “I would recommend asking for two heavy cruisers and two or more light cruisers. If either Kommodor Marphissa or Kapitan Kontos commands the flotilla, two-to-one superiority will be more than enough to ensure the neutralization of Haris’s warships.”

“That’s about half of our warships. I think President Iceni will agree to a flotilla of that size. Why not ask to bring the battle cruiser as well?”

“There’s no need for the battle cruiser, General,” Malin said. “Unless Haris suddenly produces a much more serious warship threat. But if we arrive at Ulindi and see such a threat, we can cancel the landing operation and withdraw.”

“I expect that President Iceni would say the same thing if I asked for the battle cruiser as well as half of her other warships,” Drakon conceded. “I understand why she would want to keep
Pele
protecting Midway. If we don’t keep our base here safe, taking Ulindi won’t do us any good.”

Malin gestured toward the display. “The data on the ground forces also matches what we knew, with only one brigade of regular Syndicate forces assigned. That brigade lost some of its soldiers, who were added to the battle cruiser’s crew to assist in capturing our battleship. All of those died when we took the battle cruiser.” Malin paused, eyeing the display. “And then there are a couple of battalions of planetary militia which are considered unreliable, and the snakes loyal to CEO Haris. Some of the ground forces and some of the snakes are deployed to orbital bases and locations around the star system. From the records Morgan procured, I estimate the actual ground strength of the opposition will be about sixty percent of officially authorized personnel for the Syndicate brigade.”

“One brigade of regular forces at sixty percent strength,” Drakon repeated, “and a couple of battalions of planetary military that have no heavy weapons because the snakes don’t trust them. What do you make of the arrests that started before Morgan got there?”