Imperfect Sword

Chapter Fifteen

Instead of answering his question, Executive Gozen looked steadily at him before asking her own. “Did you really know that guy from Chandrahas?”

“Yeah.” Drakon smiled crookedly. “He’s a bit older now, but so am I.”

“But remembering his face? After ten years?”

Drakon shook his head, looking down at the scarred pavement. “He should have been dead. All of them should have. But six of them survived and held out until we got to them. You don’t forget the face of someone who does something like that.” He looked back up at her. “You’ve got some good soldiers there. Right now, they’re beaten. Give them a week, and I wouldn’t want to tangle with them again.”

She bent one corner of her mouth up. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Good soldiers. But—I hope you won’t take this wrong,” Drakon said. “But I expected the Syndicate to send ground forces against us who were considered absolutely reliable.”

Gozen smiled without any trace of humor. “We were absolutely reliable. By which I mean as reliable as any ground forces except for vipers,” she said, naming the fanatical snake special forces. “We had a lot of people who believed in the Syndicate and wanted to help save it.”

“You weren’t one of those people,” Drakon said, making it a statement, not a question.

“No, sir.” Gozen looked to one side, her expression somber. “No, sir,” she repeated. “I wasn’t one of the hard-core loyalists. We had a good number of them, though. But they sent us against your positions, head-on assault after head-on assault. Shots and shrapnel don’t care what anybody’s politics are, but the enthusiastic workers and execs, the ones who really believed and really wanted to win another one for the Syndicate, they pushed to the front during the attacks and they pushed farther forward during the attacks and they took longer to fall back during the attacks. That would have been great if you guys had cracked. They would have been the ones forming the penetrator while the rest of us provided the mass behind them. But you didn’t break anywhere. You had too many people at each point and too much firepower and you were dug in at the base and you were just plain tough. So instead, the enthusiastic ones died a lot faster than the people who were less enthusiastic.”

Gozen looked outward to where the largest craters marred the open field. “Of course, the rocks your mobile forces dropped didn’t care who they killed, either, and they cut the units in that attack off at the knees. But that left the enthusiastic people isolated in front of your positions, so that bunch got wiped out. Bottom line, after enough attacks, what was left weren’t very hard-core.”

She waved one hand across the field. “The hard-core, the true believers, the really loyal, are lying out there. They gave it their all. And when they were gone, the rest of us asked ourselves why the hell we were doing this.”

“I see.” Drakon looked out at the dead still lying out in the open area even though teams were moving methodically through it, recovering the bodies. “The Syndicate did have a good weapon in your unit, but they broke that weapon.”

“Yeah,” Gozen said. “Like any other Syndicate unit these days, we had rot at the heart, and beyond that, people who would do their jobs out of fear or not wanting to let down their comrades, and then an outer shell that made us look strong.” She tilted her chin toward the piles of dead. “That was our shell. The rest of us wouldn’t have broken against the Alliance, no matter what. We would have held to the end, for our families and our homes. But we knew you guys were just doing what a lot of us had already thought about, and we knew you couldn’t threaten our homes. The only people who can do that now are the Syndicate and their snakes.”

“Not quite,” Drakon said. “There are other dangers out there. There are a lot of tough fights left to fight.”

“Are you always this encouraging?”

He smiled at her. “Tell me something. How did you make it this far? Why were you still an Executive Third Class instead of an inmate at a labor camp?”

“Why do you ask?” Gozen said, feigning surprise.

“That attitude thing,” Drakon replied dryly.

“There is that,” Gozen admitted. “The truth is I wasn’t going to last much longer. I’m good at what I do, I’m a damned good soldier, and I get the job done, and my workers respected me, and didn’t try to undermine me because I tried to look out for them. But I only survived long enough to get here because I had a strong patron, the sub-CEO in charge of my brigade. He was my uncle. And he had something on the CEO running the division. I don’t know what. Some potential source of blackmail that gave him leverage.”

Drakon couldn’t stop himself before his eyes went to the field of dead.

“No,” Gozen said. “He’s not out there.” She inhaled heavily, then sighed. “Just before we came here, something slipped. I don’t know what. We were told we had a new CEO for the division, and when I tried to check with my uncle I found out our sub-CEO had been replaced overnight as well. Before the day was out I was called in and told that my uncle had been arrested for crimes against the Syndicate, and the snakes had their eyes on me. I had the choices of performing heroically on this mission, which might save my butt for a while longer, or dying heroically, which would be relatively painless, or going to join my uncle, though it wasn’t specified whether I’d be joining him in a labor camp or in death.”

“A Syndicate motivational talk,” Drakon said.

“Exactly. That and a few other abrupt changes of command within the division and the addition of a lot of extra snakes to look over the shoulders of everyone was supposed to ensure that we were in the best possible shape to take you guys out.” Gozen laughed bitterly. “It had the opposite effect, of course. We moved slower against you than we would have if the bosses hadn’t just been changed and the snakes hadn’t been questioning every action before they approved it. You would have been taken out before you attacked and took the base if our effectiveness hadn’t been hurt so much by those changes.”

“The Syndicate undercut its own efforts,” Drakon said. “Nothing new there. So, what are you going to do now, Executive Gozen?” he asked again.

She gestured back toward her positions. “Make sure those guys are all right.”

“You’d be in the running to be in charge of ground forces for Ulindi,” Drakon pointed out.

“Don’t want that, sir. Not ready for it. I can handle small units well, but I was frozen out of a lot of the staff work. My uncle wanted to keep my profile low, and the other sub-CEOs wanted me to go away.”

“You could get that experience with me,” Drakon said. “If you pass the security screening.”

“Huh.” She eyed him. “General, just to be clear on one point, I don’t think I’m some big prize, and I’ve never really understood male preferences in women, but if you’re thinking I’d be the sort of protégé whose duties include satisfying your physical needs and stroking your ego, that’s not my thing.”

Drakon shook his head. “That’s not my thing, either. I don’t put that kind of pressure on my subordinates, and I have firm policies against it. I know, so does the Syndicate. But I’m serious about it.” Which was one of the reasons his failure to control himself that one night with Morgan stung so badly. No matter how drunk he had been, he should have restrained himself, should have successfully resisted her attempts. “You can ask my people about it. They’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough, General.” Gozen jerked her head toward her positions. “But those men and women come first. I can’t leave or take another job until I know they’re all right.” She blinked back tears. “And, I’ve got to tell you, General, I don’t know… We lost a lot of people. We lost too many.”

“We lost too many as well,” Drakon said. “Even one would have been too many.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes irritably. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“I wish I knew another way,” Drakon said, his voice low. “I do it because it’s the only way I know of to stop the kind of people who sent you to Ulindi, who killed your uncle, who filled the mass graves here with bodies, who bombarded the helpless people at Kane, and have done so many other things to hurt and control and take.”

She looked back him, her eyes red. “If I stopped, they wouldn’t. Same old. And I owe it to Uncle Jurgen, who kept me alive this long even if he couldn’t save himself. I’m going to need happy pills to keep going, though,” Gozen said, using the common slang term for the medications and therapies used to help soldiers cope with post-traumatic stress.

“Welcome to the club,” Drakon said.

“I was already a member.” She nodded to Drakon. “By my rough estimate, about half of the surviving soldiers from my division will be interested in staying at Ulindi to help defend this star system and build new lives here, especially if they can figure out ways to get family members out here. About a quarter will want to head back to the Syndicate. And about a quarter will be interested in your offers to join you guys.”

“Which fraction do you fit into?” Drakon asked.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work for somebody who cared about their workers,” Gozen said. “And what it would be like to fight for something I wanted to win instead of fighting just because I was afraid of someone else’s winning. But I probably can’t do anything about my attitude.”

“Are you always this encouraging?” Drakon asked.

She grinned at him. “You’ve got an attitude, too, don’t you, General?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“All right. You want my kind of headache, you got it.”

“I, along with Manticore and our other cruisers and Hunter-Killers, will remain here to escort the transports, but I have to send Midway back to… Midway,” Marphissa told Drakon. All of her ships were once more orbiting Ulindi. “They need her there in case the Syndicate tries another attack.”

“Or the enigmas,” Drakon said. “I understand, Kommodor. Please inform Kapitan Mercia that the ground forces are extremely grateful for the support of her ship. Of course we’re also extremely grateful for the support your other units gave us. It’s no exaggeration to say that we probably would have been overwhelmed without that bombardment you tossed off at just the right time.”

Marphissa smiled. “We were happy to provide that support, General. I’m just glad that President Iceni shared that code phrase with you. If you hadn’t tacked that onto the end of the text message asking for assistance, I wouldn’t have known whom to target with the bombardment.”

“That code phrase.” Drakon looked at her, his expression suddenly guarded. “The one from President Iceni.”

“Yes,” Marphissa said, wondering at Drakon’s reaction.

“I’m glad the code phrase made a difference,” Drakon said.

Uncertain what was going on, she changed the topic. “Do you have an updated estimate when we can begin loading your ground forces onto our new troop transports?”

“They’re not exactly new, Kommodor,” Drakon said, appearing relaxed again. “More like previously owned. Not that I’m not happy to have them.”

“Considering that four of the freighters that brought you here were destroyed and six others kept running until they jumped for another star system, you ought to be extremely happy,” Marphissa said. “I’m not sure how we would have gotten your people home without the transports. We can load as many people on six troop transports as it took all twenty modified freighters to carry.”

“How confident are you about the crews of those transports?”

“We took off some from each transport and replaced them with some of ours. There are no grounds for worries there, General. So, that estimate?” Marphissa pressed, wondering why Drakon had avoided answering the question.

He made a face, then looked straight at her. “We promised to take any of the surrendered ground forces who wanted that back to a star system where they could find rides to Syndicate space.”

Oh. So that was it. “How many?” Marphissa asked.

“Four hundred sixty two. A lot less than expected, actually.”

“One transport can handle that.” Marphissa pondered the problem. “I am reluctant to send any ships on to Kiribati. That is entirely too likely to have some sort of ambush waiting in case some of us had tried to flee that way to escape the Syndicate flotilla. But if we bring that batch of Syndicate loyalists with us back to Midway, we can have the transport carrying them continue on to Iwa. From Iwa, they can find rides into Syndicate space. Not easily, but they can do it, which satisfies your promise to them without risking our ships in a trip to other Syndicate-controlled stars that we know less about than Iwa and that are farther away. I have no desire to stick my ships into a hornet’s nest in Syndicate space, General.”

“Iwa.” Drakon thought about it, rubbing his chin, then nodded. “That’s reasonable. We can start loading those guys as soon as you’re ready.”

“We acquired some extra shuttles along with the transports,” Marphissa pointed out.

“Major Barnes has already informed me of that and of her intentions to requisition a few of those shuttles to replace losses during our assault here. I’ll get the load plan finalized and start sending the loyalists up. Which transport?”

Marphissa frowned at her display. “HTTU 458.”

“Transport 458,” Drakon repeated. “Are you planning on giving the transports names, too?”

“That will be up to President Iceni, General.”

“I do have some input, you know,” Drakon said, a bit of an edge entering his voice again.

“Of course, General,” Marphissa said. She wasn’t about to get into the middle of a debate between Drakon and President Iceni. Especially when she was certain that Drakon was just the most senior of Iceni’s subordinates and not her equal, despite what courtesies the president had offered to him. Not that she had any problem with the general. Not after the way he had handled the crises that had erupted at Ulindi in space and on the ground. But that didn’t make him President Iceni’s other half, no matter what rumors said about their private relationship.

Nine days later, Drakon stood on the bridge of HTTU 322, watching as the entire flotilla left orbit about Ulindi’s inhabited world and accelerated toward the jump point for Midway. He felt a trace of guilt as he watched the planet receding behind them. Ulindi had the beginnings of ground forces in a unit cobbled together from reliable men and women who had once been part of Haris’s brigade or of the Syndicate division. It had no warships, though, and no government. The Syndicate was gone, Supreme CEO Haris and his snakes were gone, but what was to replace them was still up in the air, with vigorous debates under way on almost every street corner about how Ulindi should be run. Drakon felt his job was half-done.

But the brutality of the snakes in the last weeks of Haris’s rule and the mass deaths they had inflicted had served to cool the hottest tempers. There had been no sign in the street debates that the various groups were interested in taking up arms. Enough seemed to be the motto of Ulindi these days, and perhaps that was not a bad basis for forming a government.

Drakon kept his eyes on the planet, wishing that he or Malin had been able to locate any trace of Morgan. They had turned up plenty of reports of what she had been up to on the planet, along with a casualty list she had caused that would have been impressive for anyone less deadly than Morgan. As it was, Drakon had marveled at her restraint.

And wondered if she had indeed died in the snake alternate command center. It would take a lot more excavating and DNA sampling before the answer to that would be known, and he simply could not remain in Ulindi for that long.

Nor was Morgan the only soldier that he had lost at Ulindi. The new recruits from what had been the Syndicate division had more than filled out the losses, but there was a difference between adding personnel and replacing the individuals who were gone.

They were bringing Conner Gaiene’s remains back with them, but Conner’s mischievous grin would not be seen again.

The flotilla looked a lot bigger now, having gained eight troop transports. The Kommodor had described the troop transports as looking like whales to her, which was a fair description of their general size and shape. As Drakon watched the depiction of the flotilla on this ship’s display, the escorting warships resembled very large sharks and other predators swimming all around the whalelike transports.

The commanding officer of HTTU 322, a harried-appearing man named Mack, gave Drakon an appraising look. “How are your accommodations, honored—I mean, uh, General?”

“Comfortable,” Drakon replied. Transport executives were notorious for looking down on the ground forces they hauled from star to star, but once Drakon had reached sub-CEO, then CEO status, he had seen dramatic improvements in the way he was treated. These transport crews, who had only recently thrown off the Syndicate yoke, were still following those old patterns, and to them, Drakon was a CEO in all but name.

Mack leaned back in his seat, looking around the transport’s bridge, which was small for the size of the ship. “It feels different without them around. The snakes. The unit, every unit I served on, always felt like a prison, and they were the guards.” He glanced at Drakon as if trying to judge his reaction to the words. “I’ve got family still in Syndicate space, but when your mobile forces came swooping in, I knew it was act or die, and dead I couldn’t help my family.”

“There are a lot of holes in the Syndicate security perimeter these days,” Drakon said. “Holes that families can slip through. And a lot of room in the star systems around here.”

One of the women on watch on the bridge, a senior executive whose expression seemed fixed in a state of sullen unhappiness, looked at Drakon with a spark of hope in her eyes. “I’ve heard of Kane. How is Kane?”

“It has a good planet,” Drakon said, “and a lot of room.” He took a deep breath. “Especially since the Syndicate bombarded it. Most of those who lived there are dead. Most of what had been built there is ruin. But the planet remains good, and Kane needs those willing to help rebuild it.”

“But if the Syndicate comes back—”

Drakon shook his head. “Did you see the Syndicate battleship that was in this star system? The one that was destroyed? It was that warship, and the CEO commanding it, who bombarded Kane. Neither that warship nor that CEO will be bombarding any more planets.”

“Who are you people?” Mack asked. “The snakes told us you were just rebellious CEOs out for yourselves. I’ve seen enough and heard enough to know you’re not that, but I’m still trying to figure out what you are.”

“We are the people who are going to stand up to and stop the Syndicate,” Drakon said. “Just as we did here.” He took a last look at the planet. “I’ll be in sick bay.”

An HTTU had pretty decent medical facilities. Nothing to equal those on a battleship or a well-equipped ground facility, but adequate for dealing with casualties among the ground forces the ship had brought to the battlefield. Drakon reached the entrance to the first of the medical bays and stopped, looking into the brightly lit compartment where rows of bunks were topped by long, rounded devices resembling ancient mummy cases. Many of the cases were open at the top end, showing the faces of men or women relaxed in deep sleep. Other cases were completely sealed, only the steady green readouts on them betraying the presence of the badly injured soldiers confined within.

Two medical personnel were seated on opposite sides of a desk talking in low voices to each other. One noticed Drakon and both stood up, their movements betraying fatigue.

“How is everything?” Drakon asked.

“No problems that aren’t being fixed,” a woman with weary eyes told him. He recognized her as belonging to the medical team attached to Kai’s brigade. “They’re all in rec sleep, General,” she added, using the common term for a deep form of sedation that hastened healing.

“Thank you, Doc. I know medical hasn’t had much chance to rest.” Drakon looked at the man with her. “I don’t know you.”

He nodded nervously before answering. “Worker Gundar Castillon, Medical Specialist, Field Treatment, uh…” The man faltered as he realized that he couldn’t recite a work-unit assignment.

Drakon smiled reassuringly. At least, he hoped it was a reassuring smile. He had been told that when he was really tired, his attempts at reassurance could look a little demonic. “A medic. Were you with the Syndicate division?”

“Yes, honored—I mean, yes, sir.”

“We want him in our med team, General,” the doctor said. “He pitched right in on the surface. Just started doing everything he could because he was there and saw some soldiers who needed help.”

“I don’t see why he can’t be part of your med team, then,” Drakon said, gesturing toward the chairs the two had vacated. “Sit down.” They took their seats again, the doctor gratefully and the new medic a bit stiffly, as if expecting Drakon to yank him back to attention at any moment. “Consider the unit assignment approved. How much longer have you got on duty?”

The doctor yawned. “Thank you, General. Another hour, sir. Then eight off.”

“Good.” Drakon leaned against the nearest bulkhead, wanting to sit down as well but afraid he would have too much trouble getting up again if he did. He looked down the rows of sleeping soldiers again. “You guys do miracles.”

The doctor quirked a smile. “General, if I could do miracles, I’d be about forty light-years from here in a soft bed with someone to keep me warm.”

“Would you? Or would you be where you were needed?”

“That’s not a fair question, General,” the doctor protested. She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I admit it’s going to be nice to rest for a while. This was a rough one.”

“They’re all rough ones for the ones who get hit,” Drakon said. “Thanks for fixing up all the soldiers that can be saved.”

“You know, General, if you didn’t break them in the first place, we wouldn’t have to try to fix them.”

The new medic looked horrified, as if expecting Drakon to shoot the doctor on the spot.

But he nodded to her. “If I knew a way to never break another, I’d use it. But life isn’t that simple.”

“No,” the doctor agreed. “I guess not. Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying, though.” She waved one hand to indicate the rows of bunks. “I fix them, they go out, sometimes they come back, sometimes their next hurt is so bad nothing can save them. It’s like shoveling sand. We break our backs to save them, but how much difference do we really make?”

Drakon met her eyes. “Let me tell you something I sometimes wonder. I sometimes wonder about the human race, about our seemingly limitless capacity to inflict death and destruction on each other. I wonder if there’s any reason to keep trying to make anything better, to try to save anything, when someone else is just going to come along and kick over whatever I built.”

He nodded again, this time toward the sleeping wounded. “But then I see people like you, giving their all to save others. The medics, like you, Specialist Castillon, braving enemy fire to do all they can for someone who got hit. And it makes me realize that the human race has some good in it. That there are people who work at least as hard to save others as some other people work to destroy. That’s why I keep trying.”

The doctor smiled tiredly. “You’re welcome.”

Drakon looked at the medic. “Are you all taken care of? A place to sleep, eating arrangements set up?”

“Not yet, General,” the medic said.

“If you run into any trouble,” Drakon said, “have your team leader”—he pointed at the doctor—“contact me about it.”

The doctor smiled again, watching Drakon closely. “If you don’t mind my saying so, General, I’m diagnosing you as being almost as tired as I am. You’re sort of wavering on your feet even though you’re leaning on that wall.”

“You don’t have to prescribe bed rest,” Drakon said. “I’m on my way.” He straightened, looking at the injured soldiers again, thinking of those who hadn’t made it this far. “Why can’t we save them all? Couldn’t we replace anything they needed?”

“Up to a point,” the doctor said. “A few centuries back, they started running into something odd.” She sighed, her eyes closing as if she didn’t want to look upon history. “Medical science had progressed to the point where we could replace anything as it failed with some sort of device. Cloned parts worked fine. But stuff we made, artificial parts, started causing problems if they made up too much of a person. We can build a cyborg, but they’re unstable, especially if we’ve built them from someone who got blown apart in combat and put back together. There are lots of theories, most of them built around the idea that the artificial parts create some cumulative impact on the nervous system, so once you pass a certain threshold, a certain percentage of the body that was built instead of grown, the cyborg becomes untreatably psychotic and either goes into a coma or goes berserk.”

“That’s not just a rumor?” Drakon said. “I’ve seen that plot used in a lot of horror vids, but I didn’t know it was based on reality.”

“It’s real,” the doctor said. She opened her eyes and gazed at Drakon. “You know what else is real? They found out if someone had been hit badly enough, if they had been medically dead long enough before being revived, then when they brought them back, something was missing. It was like those cyborgs were just robots with human programming. Something that made them actually human was gone. We’ve never figured out what that something is. That’s why we don’t try to bring them all back. Even the Syndicate got scared by that.”

It took him several seconds to reply. “Good reason.” The old “rest in peace” saying took on new meaning for him as he considered what the doctor had said. Didn’t someone like Conner Gaiene deserve that chance to rest even if what was left of him could have been brought back to life? Or, rather, back to some form of life that would be a sorry way to repay someone who had been a friend and comrade for so long. “Thanks for the nightmare fodder.”

“It’s what doctors do to laypeople who listen to our shop talk.”

“I keep forgetting that.” Drakon waved a farewell, then made his way to his stateroom. He couldn’t recall the last time he had been able to get an adequate amount of rest, but it was definitely before they had arrived at Ulindi.

Despite that, he still needed a down patch to calm his mind enough to sleep, and finally dropped off, haunted by visions of battle.

“Welcome back.” Iceni tried to put genuine feeling into the words, but in reply received a tense look from Drakon.

“You missed me that much?” he asked.

“It got a bit hectic here,” she said, waving him to a chair. “Not as bad as it did for you at Ulindi, but bad.”

“Colonel Rogero has already briefed me,” Drakon said as he sat down. “We all dodged the bullet this time.”

“Our enemies spun a much wider and cleverer net than we realized,” Iceni said, clasping her hands on her desk before her as she sized up Drakon’s mood. “And we may have thought we were cleverer than we actually are.”

“It’s hard to outsmart an opponent who knows what cards you hold,” Drakon said, his voice flat. “As I’m sure your Kommodor has briefed you, the Syndicate knew a lot about our plans.”

So that was the source of Drakon’s tension. Was he going to accuse her of betrayal? Did he believe that she had betrayed him? “Yes,” Iceni said, keeping her own voice serious but free of tension. “They apparently had many details, including very specific information about the timing of our planned attack.”

“They not only had that information,” Drakon said, “they based their plans on having that information. The entire trap was constructed assuming that they would be able to time the arrival of their reinforcements to just before we arrived, and to have CEO Boucher’s flotilla show up just early enough to conceal itself behind a gas giant. That information couldn’t have been provided by someone who watched us depart. They couldn’t have gotten the information to Ulindi in time.”

Drakon had hunched forward, tapping his forefinger forcefully on her desk to emphasize his words. “The Syndicate source must have known our date of departure as soon as you and I had settled on it. Anyone could have seen the preparations, but no one could have known when we would actually get moving for the jump to Ulindi because that exact time depended on a lot of factors and a joint decision by you and me. Given the time needed to get that information to the Syndicate at Ulindi and wherever else their forces were, and the time needed to land those Syndicate soldiers and get their flotilla in place, there simply wasn’t enough time for them to do it unless that date was dispatched to them within a day of when we made the final decision.”

She let frost enter her voice. “Are you implying something about me?”

He frowned, momentarily puzzled by the question. “You? No. That… never occurred to me.”

Either he was a much better actor than Drakon had previously shown, or the words were sincere. But Iceni still felt angry and defensive. “Then what are you saying?”

“That someone very close to you or me must have fed that information to the Syndicate.”

“Who on your staff knew the exact date of departure that early?” Iceni demanded, trying to keep Drakon on the defensive.

“Colonel Malin, Colonel Kai, Colonel Gaiene.”

“Not Colonel Morgan?”

“How could she have known? She was already at Ulindi when we made the decision, and had been there for weeks.”

Iceni managed to stifle her disappointment. The momentary hope that Morgan could be a prime suspect in the trap was running headlong into simple questions of time and space that definitely eliminated her as a suspect. “But the information she sent us was woefully incomplete,” Iceni pointed out.

“It was,” Drakon agreed, some defensiveness entering his voice. “The files we captured when the Syndicate staff abandoned the divisional headquarters confirmed that CEO Haris himself wasn’t even in the loop on the trap. He, and Ulindi, were dangled as bait for us. We didn’t guess that the Syndicate would completely cut Haris out of their plans, but then we didn’t guess that Haris was really still working for the Syndicate.”

“It should have been obvious,” Iceni said, her voice sharp, seeing Drakon’s defensive glower deepen. “Oh, I’m not pointing the finger at you for that, General. I share plenty of the blame. Haris supposedly made himself independent from the Syndicate but took along the entire snake apparatus at Ulindi? All of it intact?”

“A charismatic leader could have done that,” Drakon said. “Do you want to know what the files we captured said about the Syndicate source at Midway?”

Iceni tried not to stiffen, wondering what bomb Drakon was about to drop. “What did they say?”

“Nothing.”

It was her turn to glower. “Did you really want to see how I would react to the implication that those files contained important information?”

Drakon closed his eyes, speaking slowly but still with force. “I was at Ulindi, pinned between two enemy forces, knowing that the odds greatly favored my entire force’s being wiped out, and knowing that I had led them there.”

Iceni leaned toward him, letting each of her words drop like a hammer. “Do you actually believe that I would have set you up that way? That I would have conspired to destroy not only you but two-thirds of the professional ground forces available to this star system? Do you think I am that stupid?” Because, she realized, that was what was bothering her the most. She could be ruthless. She could double-deal. But weaken her own future prospects by that much overkill? “If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you and kept all of those valuable ground forces soldiers. Do you really think I am that incompetent?”

He had opened his eyes and was staring at her, then abruptly laughed. “Oh, hell, you think I suspect you? You personally? Why the hell would you have sent the battleship to save the day if the whole trap had been your idea to begin with? No, I don’t think you’re stupid or incompetent, but I think someone close to us is playing both of us and wanted me dead.”

She eyed him, thinking. “Yes. The plan would have led to your death. As well as the deaths of Colonels Kai, Gaiene, and Malin. Only Colonel Rogero of your senior staff would have survived.” Her mind whirled down new paths as it considered possible scenarios. “He would have replaced you, General. Colonel Rogero would have been the senior ground forces officer, commander of the only loyal professional soldiers left to me. He could have faked that assassination attempt aimed at him.”

Drakon, instead of getting defensive again, just shook his head. “For security reasons, I didn’t tell Rogero the departure date. He didn’t need to know it.”

“He could have learned what it was. He must have sources. It would have been as simple as chatting with Gaiene when he was drunk.”

“That’s true.” Drakon finally sat back again, watching her. “But I can’t believe it. Donal Rogero. If he could so cold-bloodedly plot to murder me and two-thirds of the others in the division, along with Conner Gaiene, who was his friend, then he’s so good at being a snake that I don’t know how I survived this long.”

She grimaced, then nodded. “You’re right. Especially since he could have very easily died when he exposed himself to the crowds along with his soldiers. That action would make no sense if he intended to survive as your successor.” Iceni took a deep breath. “Which leads us back to my side of the table.”

“I am confident that Kommodor Marphissa is loyal,” Drakon said.

“As am I. Not all of the former Reserve Flotilla members have been fully screened, but none of them had access to the departure information early enough to have alerted the Syndicate.”

“Who does that leave?” he asked.

Iceni tapped her desk surface lightly to cover up the turmoil inside her. “My personal assistant.”

“There isn’t anyone else?” Drakon said, startled.

“Not on my end. We kept it to those who needed to know until the ships actually started moving,” Iceni said.

“Where is your assistant?” He looked around, his hands moving in ways that she knew must be readying the hidden weapons and defenses built into his uniform.

“I don’t know.” She met his surprised gaze with her own level look. “Mehmet Togo disappeared shortly before the mobs took to the streets. I have not been able to find out anything regarding him since that time.”

Drakon twisted his mouth, looking into the distance. “Your Togo struck me as someone who would be pretty hard to take out.”

“Extremely hard. If someone did eliminate him, they must be a very dangerous threat.”

“If?” Drakon asked. “You think he may have chosen to go into hiding?”

“I don’t know.” She indicated her desk. “I’ve taken the precaution of resetting every password and access that Togo knew. I’ve also reset the passwords and accesses that Togo was not supposed to have known.”

“If he gave that information to the Syndicate—”

“I know!” Iceni calmed herself. “But he can’t be loyal to the Syndicate. If that were so, he would have tipped them off before we revolted. Neither one of us would have survived. And, if he wanted only you dead, all Togo had to do was pass word of your plans to the late and unlamented CEO Hardrad early enough that my own involvement could have been covered up.” She chewed her lip, gazing worriedly at Drakon. “Togo knows a great deal. There are means available to extract information from even those capable of withstanding standard interrogation methods.”

“If he’s not choosing to give that information freely,” Drakon said. “But those means of forcibly extracting information that you’re talking about don’t leave anything recognizably human behind.”

“I know that. I also know that they are not foolproof, and can sometimes destroy the information they seek, and so even the Syndicate rarely employed them. But I can’t disregard the possibility. Perhaps Togo betrayed me for reasons I don’t know. Or perhaps the information he carried was harvested. I don’t know. I am bending every effort to locate him.”

“Colonel Rogero didn’t mention being involved in that.”

“I haven’t asked the ground forces to assist,” Iceni said, waving a cutting gesture of denial with one hand. “It seemed to be a purely internal matter.”

“It might have been until we learned someone fed the Syndicate information,” Drakon said. “I would like to inform my staff. Your assistant knows a lot of my secrets, too, secrets that I shared with your office.”

“Damn.” Iceni slapped her forehead. “Codes. Togo would have been able to gain access to some of your codes as well. Yes. Yes. Tell your workers so they can take the necessary steps to protect your data and networks.”

Drakon frowned downward, then back at her. “If your assistant did have a deal with the Syndicate, they were going to betray him. The Syndicate plan included a quick follow-on attack here. Wipe us out at Ulindi, then bring all of those soldiers and CEO Boucher’s flotilla here to hit you before you had any warning.”

She inhaled deeply, taking in that information. “CEO Boucher would not have shown any mercy to me or anyone else no matter what deal Togo might have made. Togo was involved in enough executive actions to know that the Syndicate has a history of making many promises to turncoats, publicly hailing them, then privately eliminating them to ensure that they could never turn their coats again. Though we still don’t know that he betrayed me. Why disappear if he was certain that you would die at Ulindi?”

“I hope you won’t mind my remaining suspicious,” Drakon said with obvious sarcasm. “Speaking of secrets being spilled, how did you find out about the trap at Ulindi? All Freya and Bradamont knew was that you had received some highly credible information.”

“CEO Boyens told me.” She saw the immediate skepticism in him. “It was a matter of self-interest.”

Drakon snorted. “That makes it plausible. I wish Boyens had coughed up that information before I left.”

“I made it clear to him how disappointed I was,” Iceni said.

“Is he dead? Or just wishing he was?”

“Neither. Yet.”

“I might want to have a personal talk with him about it,” Drakon said. “His little game of withholding information almost cost us everything.”

“You don’t have to emphasize that to me.” She looked down at her hands. “Until Midway came back with the news of your survival, of your victory, I spent some time coming up with imaginative means of making Boyens regret not speaking earlier. But here you are. Still in one piece. Coming home with more soldiers than you left with, and more ships than you left with. You really are amazing, you know.”

Drakon sat back, giving her an enigmatic look. “If you really believe that, perhaps you’ll explain something else that I’m curious about.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I had some time to talk to your Kommodor.” Drakon cocked his head to one side, still gazing at Iceni. “She said she got a text from my command that told her we had taken the base, and needed some help with the Syndicate troops attacking us from the outside. But there’s one thing about that message that I don’t understand. Kommodor Marphissa said she knew the message was authentic, and not a Syndicate trick, because of a code phrase it contained. A code phrase that she said President Iceni had provided to a few trusted people to use in emergencies.” Drakon leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he looked at Iceni. “Your Kommodor thought I was the one who had sent the message with the special code phrase in it. Only, I didn’t.”

Iceni managed not to reveal her feelings. Damn. This is going to be awkward. And right after I protested against him suspecting me of anything. “Really? Who did?”

“I don’t know. But I’d like to know.”

She sighed and held up both hands in mock surrender. “Colonel Malin. It must have been him. I had, purely as an emergency measure, given him one of the code phrases.”

“Why Colonel Malin instead of me?” Drakon asked. He sounded and looked curious, not angry, but that meant nothing. When he really wanted to, the man could hide his true feelings as well as any CEO.

“I could lie—” Iceni began.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

That had come out with more force than Drakon had probably intended, Iceni thought. “—but I’ll tell you the truth,” she continued smoothly. “I wanted a backup. I knew that Kommodor Marphissa would accept something that she knew was from you. But you were going into battle. Something might have happened to you. I wanted Colonel Malin to have a means of letting the Kommodor know that he could be trusted.”

Drakon studied her, looking perplexed. “You trust Colonel Malin? When did that happen?”

“Over time,” Iceni replied with a shrug.

“Even after you found out he was Morgan’s son and had kept that information from me?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what the hell to think of that.”

Iceni met his eyes. She didn’t have to pretend to be speaking the truth as she continued. “Artur, I felt confident that Colonel Malin would not betray you. If Colonel Rogero had been going along, I would have given him the code phrase, but he stayed here. It was about ensuring that Kommodor Marphissa would know when a critical message was authentic, and it worked as intended. Without that code phrase, she could not have learned the situation on the ground in time to intervene as she did.”

Blowing out a long breath, Drakon sat back again, his eyes hard. “I would have preferred knowing. As it is, even though it indeed worked very well, it feels like a measure taken not as insurance for me but insurance against me.”

“That’s not true.” Iceni surprised herself with the heat of her reply. “It was not based on any fear of you, or distrust of you. But I thought if you knew Colonel Malin had the code phrase, it would cause you to distrust him, or anyone else with such a phrase.”

Drakon nodded. “That’s probably right. I know you didn’t trust Conner Gaiene.”

She looked away, distressed. “I am very sorry that he died, Artur. He was not my favorite man, but his death ennobled him.”

“Conner was always that noble man inside. He had just gotten very good at hiding it,” Drakon said, his voice heavy. “You and Colonel Kai haven’t interacted much, that I know of—”

“We haven’t,” Iceni said.

“So it makes sense that you would have entrusted Malin with that code phrase.” He looked straight at her again. “But I would very much not want to have that sort of thing happen again without my knowledge.”

She could tell that Colonel Malin would have some pointed questions directed at him when Drakon got back to his headquarters. If Drakon stopped trusting Malin at all, it would greatly lessen his effectiveness as a source of information for her. “I should also tell you that Colonel Malin thought you were already aware of the arrangement.”

Drakon paused, searching her face. “You misled him as well?”

“That’s what we do, isn’t it?” She had been hoping for more openness with Drakon, for a lowering of barriers, but he obviously had plenty of defenses up, so she could scarcely afford to lower hers. “But I will not take such actions again.”

He took several seconds to answer, then spoke with care. “There are forces working to keep us distrustful of each other. We can’t afford to let them succeed.”

“Forces?” Iceni asked. “Do you mean the Syndicate?”

“Certainly the Syndicate. Divide and conquer is an old CEO tactic. But maybe your assistant Togo as well. And maybe…” He gave her a look that carried an admission of his own failure. “Maybe that’s part of what Colonel Morgan wanted.”

Iceni’s smile was hard and cold. “I don’t know about you, but I hate being yanked around on anyone’s strings.”

“I never cared for it, either.”

“Then let’s move forward,” she said. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we did win both here and at Ulindi.”

He nodded to her. “Or the fact that we won at Ulindi because you sent the battleship there.”

“Oh, hell, Artur, that battleship could have done nothing but avenge you if you hadn’t saved yourself and your soldiers.” She looked back at the star display. “Speaking of being yanked around, have you been told the message the Dancers sent to us?”

“Colonel Rogero passed it on,” Drakon said. “Watch the different stars. Do we have any idea what that means?”

“I talked to our astrophysicists,” Iceni said, “and according to them, all stars are different. No two stars are identical.”

“Why would the Dancers tell us to watch all stars? And if they wanted us to do that, why wouldn’t they say watch all the stars? What is it the Dancers expect us to do?”

Iceni smiled humorlessly, leaning back in her seat. “Or, what is it the Dancers are trying to manipulate us into doing? I get the impression that the Alliance is taking the Dancers at their words, as if they are completely sincere, truthful, and guileless.”

Drakon raised both eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Whereas you and I know that no one, no matter their external shape, is completely sincere, truthful, and guileless. The Dancers have an agenda. They want us to do certain things, which may be to our benefit, or may be to the benefit of the Dancers.”

“They did save this planet,” Drakon pointed out.

“Agreed. Which would give them every right to express their wishes openly to us because we owe them payment for that debt. Instead, they offer vague warnings.”

Drakon shook his head, looking stubborn. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s hard enough to make people do what you want when you directly tell them what you want. Trying to manipulate them with vague statements is likely to make them do the opposite of what you want.”

“Maybe the Dancers don’t realize that. Maybe they’re using a tactic that works with Dancers.”

“Maybe.” Drakon eyed the star display, rubbing his chin as he thought. “Let’s assume that for whatever reason, the Dancers think that message is useful. Different stars. All right. I spent a lot of time in the Syndicate ground forces as opposed to the government or industry branches. To me, watch is a cautionary word. It means you’re looking for danger, or guarding something.”

She sat forward. “Then the Dancers would be telling us to guard or be on guard somewhere? That’s nothing we don’t already know.”

“Somewhere different,” Drakon said. “Which would mean not the usual places, or the places we’re already doing that.”

Iceni indicated the star display. “We’ve had a couple of enigma ships show up at the jump point from Pele while you were gone. They appear, turn, and jump back to Pele.”

“Scouts,” Drakon said. “We saw one right after we got back.”

“Yes. Keeping an eye on us and what we’re doing. The first one showed up while there were only a few cruisers and Hunter-Killers here, plus our battle cruiser Pele. That worried me that the enigmas would launch an attack as soon as possible, having seen our relative weakness. But the second enigma ship showed up after you and the Midway had returned.”

“So they saw we have some teeth,” Drakon said. “But the Dancers must have known we are already watching the jump point from Pele. That can’t be what they were talking about.” He paused. “A warning to watch different stars. It has to be related to the enigmas, not the Syndicate. The only place we know of that the enigmas can access human space is through Pele, then here at Midway. Were the Dancers telling us to worry about the enigmas being able to reach other stars? Different stars than Midway?”

Iceni gave him a startled look. “That is plausible. Black Jack gave us some star charts showing enigma territory.” Inwardly cursing Togo’s absence, which meant he wasn’t here to do this, Iceni played with the display’s controls until it zoomed out and framed a wide region of space. “There. This is the picture Black Jack’s fleet put together from actually traversing part of enigma space and from what they could get out of the Dancers.”

Drakon studied the star chart, shaking his head. “If that chart is complete, then Pele is all the enigmas can reach for a long way using jump drives. They could go scores of light-years up, down, right, or left and find other access points to human-occupied space, if there’s nothing blocking them from going those directions, but nothing else near here. And it also matches our experience since the Syndicate boundaries got pushed back from Pele. The only place that has shown evidence of enigma activity since then is here at Midway.”

What had she been told about jump drives? Iceni frowned, thinking, then nodded. “Captain Bradamont told me something, confirming what I had seen in a Syndicate intelligence report. Do you remember when Black Jack’s fleet hit Sancere?”

“Not really. That was a big Syndicate shipbuilding star system, right?”

“Yes,” Iceni confirmed. “The thing is, Black Jack’s fleet shouldn’t have been able to reach Sancere from the star system where they entered jump space. But he knew some tricks, from the old days, that allowed the range of the jump drives to be extended a bit. The Syndicate had guessed that was what he had done, and Bradamont confirmed it for me.”

Drakon gazed at the star display again, plainly reevaluating his earlier assessment. “If the enigmas can jump farther than we think, far enough to access human space from other stars, why haven’t they done it already?”

“Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to do it. But how would the Dancers have learned of that?” She glared at the glittering stars on the display in frustration. “Every question we have just leads to more questions.”

“One thing I do know,” Drakon said. “Speaking in military terms. When you hit an obstacle, there are two approaches you can try. The first is to keep hitting it, trying to break through it. That happens a lot. The other approach is to go around it, to try to find some way of bypassing the obstacle. I don’t care how enigmas or Dancers think. Those are basic realities. The enigmas have tried going through Midway twice, and they’ve been thrown back twice. That’s another reality. So, either they keep trying to push into human space through Midway, or they try to find a way around us.”

“A different star?” Iceni chewed her lower lip as she looked at the star display. “It doesn’t help much, does it? If we don’t have a range to work with, any human star could potentially be within range of the enigma jump drives. Which ones are the different ones that we’re supposed to watch?”

“Maybe the astrophysicists can give us some clues,” Drakon suggested.

“Maybe they can. I’ll tell them to get together with our best jump-drive technicians.” Iceni smiled. “It will drive them crazy. Theoretical physicists hate dealing with engineers.”

“And vice versa,” Drakon pointed out.

Iceni sighed. “There’s been something I’ve been avoiding asking, but since we brought up the subject of crazy…”

He didn’t need her to specify what she meant. “I don’t know whether or not Colonel Morgan is dead,” Drakon said bluntly, his voice harsh. “But, as of when I left Ulindi, she had not contacted any of our people or been found by anyone, and there were a lot of ways she could have died. Odds are, what’s left of her is buried in the rubble of the snake alternate command center.”

Drakon shrugged before continuing. “If she didn’t die there, well, planets are big places, and that planet has a lot of smashed buildings and craters and rubble now. They’ll still be finding remains of people in the wreckage a century from now.”

As much as she did not want to feel any sympathy for Drakon where Morgan was concerned, Iceni could see how his shrug was an unsuccessful attempt to cover up his own distress. “I know she served you well, but she also betrayed you. If she died in the line of duty, that may have been the best possible outcome.”

“Yes. If she died,” Drakon agreed, nodding heavily.

“You think she might still be alive?”

“Until I see a body, I will not be sure. Morgan could be almost superhuman at times.”

“And you are no longer concerned about the child, who by this time might already have been born?”

Drakon sat looking at nothing for several seconds before replying. “Either Morgan’s fail-safe plans took effect, and the girl is already dead as well, or what Morgan told me about provisions being made was true, and the girl has been allowed to survive Morgan’s death. That will give me time to find her.”

He focused on Iceni. “That makes one more person we need to find, but it seems to me the priority is to find your former assistant.”

“We do not know he acted against us,” Iceni repeated. “He may be pursuing whoever did pass that information to the Syndicate.”

Drakon let his skepticism show. “I’m sure that’s what he will say. If he shows up at your door. You changed all your codes, so he shouldn’t be able to get through that door.”

Iceni shook her head. “If Togo wants to get somewhere, he’ll do it. The tougher the defense, the longer he will take to get through, but he will succeed.” She lightly tapped one sleeve of her jacket, the one from which Drakon had once seen a weapon appear with startling swiftness. “If necessary, I can defend myself, and I will shoot to kill, but my chances against him, if he has turned, are not nearly as good as I would like.”

“Do you need extra security?” Drakon asked. “I can send over some people and some equipment.”

“Me?” Iceni laughed. “Need extra protection? I’m invincible, General Drakon. The people idolize me.”

“I saw the vids,” Drakon said. “You did look invincible.” It was hard to tell how he felt about that.

“You didn’t see me once I got back inside this office,” Iceni said. She let her defenses slip. There was quite literally no one else with whom she could share this. “I am frightened, Artur.”

He sat straighter, alarmed in a way that gratified her. “Of what?”

“Them. The people. Not in the Syndicate way. I am frightened of what they will do for me, what I can ask of them. You weren’t there, Artur. You didn’t feel it.” Iceni ran both hands through her hair. “I got back into this office when it was over, and I swear I could hear the gods laughing at me. Have you ever held a weapon so dangerous that you were afraid to use it?”

“It really felt like that?” Drakon asked.

“Yes. I know that I can do some very big things now, Artur. But that means I can make some very big mistakes.” She closed her eyes, seeing the vast crowd again in her memory. “We’ve been worried about giving them more freedom, enough freedom, enough rights, that they wouldn’t revolt against us.”

“Yes,” Drakon said. “The last elections should have kept them quieter longer than this.”

“No!” She opened her eyes and glared at him. “They didn’t want more freedom from me. They wanted a leader. They wanted safety and security and surety. I could have reinstituted all sorts of Syndicate rules then and there, and they would have cheered me.”

Drakon just stared at her. “You’re sure of that?”

“Positive. They will do what I ask, but I still can’t force them. Does that make any sense? It’s true. Let’s lay this out. You must know from what Colonel Rogero told you that the ground forces can no longer be used to enforce our rule.”

“Yes,” Drakon agreed. “Which means I can’t launch a coup against you.”

She lowered her hands and deepened her glare. “That wasn’t my point. I still consider this a partnership.”

“Even though you no longer have to consider it a partnership?” Drakon smiled thinly. “Thanks. It’s been trending this way for a while. I’ve seen it. To the citizens, and to the mobile forces, you’re the one in charge. I’m your senior assistant.”

“You are my partner,” Iceni insisted.

“Not to the citizens. And you were just talking about how much power they have given you.”

“It’s not like I could order my warships to bombard the planet! I’m not talking about coercion! Don’t you understand that?”

“Yes, I do.” Drakon shrugged again. “It’s called leadership. Real leadership. It’s why my division followed me here and why they followed me when we moved against the Syndicate. You’ve built something stronger than that with the citizens, and,” he continued, “you earned it. That was an incredibly gutsy move, facing that crowd with nothing between you and them but whatever defenses were worked into your suit.”

“My suit’s defenses wouldn’t have accomplished anything against that many people except making them angrier,” Iceni said. “Thank you. You understand what it took for me to do that.”

“And you surely understand how it feels to know your co-ruler could get rid of you and not fear any backlash or other trouble.”

She tried to hold her temper in check, because she did know how that would feel. “If you think I could dispose of you and not have a lot of trouble from the likes of Colonel Rogero, you are seriously mistaken. I will admit that because I came up through the Syndicate system, just as you did, I could not help but realize the option existed for me to simplify the ruling arrangements in this star system. But,” she added, letting her voice harden, “I hope you realize that I am capable of seeing where such an action would lead. It would take me right back into the Syndicate system no matter what name I gave it. I do not want that legacy, Artur Drakon. I also do not want to spend however much life I have left swatting down anyone who might threaten my control of this star system.”

“I don’t want to be pushed aside,” Drakon said, “but I won’t threaten what you have. I will not pull down the stars in an attempt to lessen your authority.”

She did not answer at once, trying to think through the right thing to say. “Do you understand that I am not attempting to lessen your authority?”

This time he took a moment to answer. “Actually, you did. That bit with the people. The mob that worshipped you. That was all about you.” Drakon held up a restraining hand as Iceni began to respond, hot words ready to fly. “But. You didn’t have any choice. You had to make it all about you. I can see that. I’m unhappy, but I can’t fault you. You did what you had to do, and I think you understand as well as I do that you and I could destroy this star system very effectively if we started really trying to undercut each other.”

“Yes,” Iceni said, keeping her answer short to avoid saying something angry and wrong, wanting to disagree but unable to find grounds for doing that.

“Let’s talk about what stirred the people up,” Drakon suggested. “Snake agents must have been involved, but I can’t shake the feeling that there are other parties playing in this game.”

“I have the same feeling,” Iceni said. “If… if Mehmet Togo is working his own agenda, he could be one of those parties.”

“Could be,” Drakon agreed. “One of them, but not all of them.”

“Not even close. You already said it. We have to stand together. Any division between us will offer leverage to those wanting to pry apart this star system.”

He smiled crookedly. “We’d better not stand too close. There are already rumors about you and me.” Before she could comment on that, Drakon went on. “I’ve brought back a lot of new people, as did your Kommodor. We need those people, but, obviously, they represent potential danger. As I’ve been reminded repeatedly lately, the snakes would pay almost any price to get someone close enough to you or me.”

“Agreed,” Iceni said, grateful that Drakon’s transition to the new recruits meant that she didn’t have to discuss the rumors about her and Drakon with the man himself. “We finally have plenty of crew members for all of our warships. But our security screening processes are overloaded. How confident are you of the loyalty of the soldiers you acquired at Ulindi?”

“Fairly confident,” he said. “For some of them, extremely confident. But they are all getting screened.”

She blew out a breath in exasperation. “Eventually, they will all get screened. The new soldiers you recruited, the crew members from the transports, and the survivors from some of the Syndicate ships destroyed at Ulindi.”

“Your Kommodor didn’t want any of the crew members who survived the destruction of CEO Boucher’s battleship. I agreed with her.”

“So do I,” Iceni said. “Even if they were reliable, they helped destroy much of Kane. We don’t need any trace of that legacy among our crews.”

“Even if snake agents are among our new people,” Drakon said, “they shouldn’t sabotage our defense against the enigmas if a larger force shows up based on what the enigma scouts reported. And we took out a lot of Syndicate power at Ulindi. The ground forces, the flotilla, all of the snakes there, and Ulindi itself, which won’t be able to serve as a Syndicate base without being conquered by the Syndicate again.”

“You’re saying our primary external worry in the near future is the enigmas?” Iceni fell back in her seat, gazing at the ceiling. “We can’t forget about or underestimate the Syndicate. That almost caused total disaster for us at Ulindi. And there are other concerns. We’ve received information about warlords in other sectors.”

“We’ve been worrying about nearby warlords for a while. Is this information about threats anywhere close to us?” Drakon asked.

She lowered her gaze back to him. “Close enough. Moorea might be threatened. Or it might already be part of someone else’s sphere of influence.”

“Moorea? Should we have sent Pele and the transport to Iwa?”

“If there are problems at Moorea, if Moorea has shifted from the Syndicate to some warlord’s dominion, Pele might be able to learn something about it while she’s at Iwa,” Iceni said. “I told Kapitan Kontos to find out all he can. If he doesn’t learn anything there, I might consider sending a heavy cruiser on to Moorea on a scouting mission.”

Drakon nodded with a rueful expression. “Trying to preempt trouble at Ulindi nearly got us wiped out, but I still think trying to spot and deal with problems before they hit us is a good policy.”

She sat forward, her eyes intent. “Then we need to spot and deal with the internal problems as well. Whatever our enemies are planning in this star system, they will never assume that you and I are working together as closely as possible.”

“I agree,” he said. “But, Gwen, can we do it? Can two people raised and trained as Syndicate CEOs actually work together without constantly keeping their guards up against each other? Especially when we have things like that trap at Ulindi to worry about? If it wasn’t your assistant Togo who tipped off the Syndicate, then we have someone still close to us who is working against us.”

“And if it was Togo, he will remain a serious threat until eliminated. Do you believe that I am working against you?”

He gazed back at her. “No.”

Did he mean it? “No matter what our subordinates do, if you and I do not figure out how to work without any suspicions between us, Artur Drakon, the next trap set for us will not fail.”