Imperfect Sword

Chapter Five

Morgan had no equipment with her to help evade detection or attention by the snakes running the checkpoint and everything else in this star system. No one would be able to spot stealth equipment on her which no innocent civilian traveler should be carrying. Knowing how the snakes operated, what they looked for and what they didn’t think of, made it a lot easier to know what not to do. Thanks to experience and study of the enemy’s methods and tactics, Morgan also knew what she should do.

She wore slightly baggy, shapeless worker clothes in neutral colors, the clothes neither old nor new, neither fashionable nor unfashionable. Morgan had tinted her hair into a shade so bland that it was hard to find a descriptive word for it, and had cut it into a style matching that of countless other workers. Her skin had been similarly tinted, neither light nor dark nor shiny nor flat, but just there. Contacts shaded her eyes to an unremarkable color. She walked with a loose, slightly slouching posture, shoulders rounded a bit, matching the speed of the others around her. On her face, Morgan kept an expression of vague concentration, as if even routine actions required a little extra mental effort. She did not look scared or nervous or confident or any other emotion that might attract any attention. It wasn’t easy to project a blank presence without its becoming apparent that you were being blank, but it could be done, like a magic trick in which the observers did not even realize their attention had been distracted.

The gazes of her fellow travelers and those of the snakes at the security checkpoint slid over Morgan, finding nothing to hold their attention or attract interest or rest in their memory. Even when Morgan handed her forged documents to the snake at the screening station, his attention barely rested on her for a moment before looking beyond in search of something worth seeing. “Purpose of travel to Ulindi?” the snake asked her in a bored monotone, his gaze wandering over the other passengers.

“Looking for work,” Morgan said, her voice pitched so it could be easily heard but not any louder, her accent as generic to this region of space as possible.

“Register with neighborhood safety officials when you get accommodations.” The snake droned the standard phrase, tossing the documents back at Morgan.

Feeling slightly miffed that her excellent forging job on the documents had been wasted on a snake too dumb to really examine them, Morgan merged with the flow of workers heading for the general seating cabin of the shuttle. Once inside, she wormed her way against a bulkhead, not apparently watching anyone as she slumped in a bare metal seat. Syndicate shuttles didn’t waste money on worker comforts. Morgan did her best to continue looking unremarkable, knowing that the snakes would have sensors monitoring this cabin just as they did nearly every public place.

Without any first-class passengers aboard in the special, luxurious cabin reserved for them, the shuttle didn’t bother with gentle maneuvering. The entry into atmosphere was even more uncomfortable than a combat drop. When the shuttle had finally grounded and dropped its ramp, Morgan once again merged with the crowd. There was another security checkpoint before the terminal, naturally, and another snake who smiled unpleasantly at an attractive worker in the throng as he waved Morgan through without a glance. She passed down a long hallway, pretending she wasn’t aware of the many sensors scanning her and her bag as she walked.

Once outside of the terminal, Morgan adjusted her gait to a purposeful but not hurried walk. She looked like someone who had somewhere to go, a worker on assignment or heading to her job. Not enthusiastically. Not reluctantly. Just going. None of the police or other security personnel she passed gave her a second look.

Morgan had once thought about the irony that it took a tremendous amount of effort and concentration to look like someone who was completely uninteresting, but when actually doing that, she could not afford the distraction of extraneous thoughts. Any focus not directed at personal monotony was aimed outward at those around her. Morgan remained aware of every cop and every possible snake near her. She didn’t give the slightest sign of that awareness, but every time one of those people twitched, Morgan knew it.

She didn’t worry about looking much at the buildings, though. Syndicate cities, following central planning guidelines and approved architecture, tended to a drab sameness except for the occasional grandiose civic folly commissioned by a CEO who wanted a personal monument. After a while, even the undisciplined and erratic architecture of Alliance cities started to look the same. To Morgan, after her years of combat, all that mattered was that some buildings and some cities were broken and burning as you fought through them, and some weren’t. This city wasn’t broken or burning (yet), which made traveling through it a bit easier.

Morgan chose a hotel suitable for a worker with just enough funds to afford a private room. Inside, she found and “accidentally” blocked a hidden surveillance unit, then underwent a swift transformation using supplies and one of the two spare outfits in her bag. Within a short time, she had changed into nice clothes that emphasized her figure, washed out the drab hair tint and washed in a subtle glow effect for her hair, recombed it to look slightly exotic, scrubbed her face free of the first tinting and replaced it with a shade darker than her natural one, and popped the contacts in favor of another set that gave her green eyes. A small prosthesis at the bridge of her nose and two more on her cheekbones, blending invisibly into her real features, would totally throw off facial-recognition software trying to identify her. Every time she varied the undetectable facial camouflage, she would appear to be a totally different person to the artificial-intelligence routines trying to get facial matches.

Leaving nothing in the room, Morgan walked again, this time a little more briskly, her shoulders back, one hip popped out whenever she paused at a crossing signal, a slight smile on her lips, pretending not to notice the occasional looks that lingered on her new appearance. It didn’t take her long to spot the sort of bar that snakes frequented. Snakes didn’t have official hangouts, but they tended to lay claim to certain places for as long as it amused them, driving away other patrons who didn’t want to risk being noticed by security personnel with a few drinks under their belts. Such places were easy to spot because of the way citizens familiar with the area avoided even looking at them as they walked past.

Morgan strolled inside, gazing around with feigned uncertainty, looking every inch like someone unfamiliar with the neighborhood who was just searching for a place to get a drink. In a minute, she was at the bar, where the tender served her with a warning glance around the room that Morgan ignored.

Two minutes after that, a male snake slid onto the seat next to hers, the ISS agent smiling in welcome. “New in town?”

Morgan nodded, smiling back. “I just came in from Gosport,” she said, naming another, smaller, city on the planet. “New assignment.”

“You must be lonely, then.”

Morgan smiled wider. “Yes. I am.”

Ten minutes afterward, they were entering a hastily rented room at a much better hotel than Morgan had visited earlier. She pointed around with a worried expression as the door closed. “I… don’t want anybody knowing about this.”

The snake laughed and brought out a palm-sized device. “Me, neither. There. It’s on. All surveillance sensors in this room are blocked. Nothing can see or hear what we—”

Morgan caught his body before it hit the floor and lowered it gently the rest of the way. She shook her hand, wincing at a mild twinge. “I must be getting old,” she told the dead snake as she knelt beside his body. “Death strokes aren’t as easy as they used to be.”

She checked him over carefully for other security gear or protective devices before pulling out his data pad. Her own data pad, outwardly an old, barely functional model, concealed an inner heart of the latest hacking and cracking software as well as the fastest hardware available.

Linking the two, Morgan swiftly broke into the ISS planetary central file system using the dead snake’s pad as a Trojan horse. She went to internal files first, locating and downloading files on every citizen tagged as a likely security risk. Four times her data pad blurped as it ate and discarded security programs from the snake systems that were trying to infect Morgan’s gear. Three other times the data pad bleeped to report it had blocked covert downloads of pigeon programs that would have secretly reported back her exact position to the snakes at every opportunity.

She checked the time. Six minutes elapsed since the snake had died. It would be another twenty minutes before ISS security systems would begin wondering why his remote monitors weren’t updating his physical location and status.

Morgan switched to another section of the database and began downloading the ISS records on Supreme CEO Haris’s armed forces. Since the ISS regarded the military as just another form of potential internal security threat, they always kept detailed files on local forces. Information on every weapon, man, woman, ship, and shuttle available to Haris poured into Morgan’s data pad. She tapped in another command, sending back her own malware to infect the ISS systems. Most of the malware would probably be spotted and eliminated, but anything that survived would be very useful in the future.

A different alert sounded from her data pad. Morgan eyed the warning that system security sharks were closing in on her tap, checked the status of the armed forces information download and malware uploads, waited another ten seconds for those to complete, then broke the connection.

She knelt again, pulled out the hand weapon the snake agent had concealed under his coat, hacked the settings to cause it to catastrophically overheat, then laid it carefully on top of the snake’s data pad, where it now rested on the floor next to the body. After rolling the dead snake on top of both, she picked up her bag, hid away her data pad, then strode out of the room with a satisfied smile on her face, ensuring the door was firmly closed behind her. The security cams in the hotel would notice nothing unexpected as she left. By the time fire alarms sounded, Morgan would be blocks away. The overheating weapon would reduce the snake’s data pad to slag and do enough damage to the snake’s body to make it unclear what had killed him, while that body blocked evidence of heat and smoke long enough for the destruction to be far along before any alarms tripped.

It took another change of appearance using the last set of clothes and cosmetics in the bag and another relocation before Morgan was able to check over some of the files she had pilfered. Drakon wanted her to get in touch with and organize any possible sources of resistance to Haris on this planet. If such people existed, the snakes were probably already watching them. All she had to do was evaluate the snake files to see which ones under suspicion were probably actually disloyal to Haris.

She frowned as she scanned the data. Over a week ago, the snakes had started hauling in a lot of the people whose files she had downloaded. The usual suspects were being rounded up, along with many others. Something must have triggered that, but there was no hint of what that something might be in any of the files.

Morgan checked the time, annoyed by what she saw. She had been on the ground for three hours, and aside from successfully infiltrating the planet, breaking into the ISS files, downloading everything she needed, uploading various malware that might escape the notice of the ISS, and killing one snake, she had hardly accomplished anything yet.

Still, as the old underground joke went, what did you call one dead snake?

A good start.

Gwen Iceni stood in her office, facing the grand virtual window that dominated one wall. Once, the window had shown a cityscape, as if looking out upon a large metropolis from a vantage point in a high building, the image changing in real time as each day wore on. A real window in that wall would have shown only rock, or perhaps armor, since her entire office was buried and well fortified against attack.

She had never really worried about whether the city in the false window was real, and if so where it was really located, or whether it was just some computer-generated fantasy. It still represented her reality in a way, that what lay outside her office was not terribly important. It was just one more planet, one more place to work in before she moved on to somewhere else. Perhaps even to wherever that city was.

But, soon after the revolt against the Syndicate, Iceni had changed the view to show a beach here on Midway. A beach she knew really existed, one in the same latitude and not too far north of here, so the sunrises and sunsets and weather were the same as on the surface of the planet outside her office. She had kept the view there, and now stood watching the small waves roll in over the white beach, no two moving exactly the same or reaching the exact same height up the beach before falling back into the mass of the sea.

Like human lives, perhaps, reaching out of the universe’s mass of… something… to reach for… something… before their brief span was done, no two the same, most of them causing only the smallest changes, though every once in a while great waves driven by the storm would change the beach in a way that endured for some time. And then they were gone.

Hell, aren’t I the moody one today? Iceni thought. Maybe I feel another storm coming.

A voice spoke out of the air around her. “Madam President, Captain Bradamont has arrived.”

“Send her in.” As Bradamont entered, Iceni kept her eyes on the waves, then finally turned and faced the Alliance officer. “Good afternoon, Captain.”

“Good afternoon, Madam President.” Bradamont, looking as out of place as ever in her Alliance fleet uniform, also revealed some curiosity. “You requested that I come to see you?”

“Yes.” Iceni walked back to her desk and sat down, waving Bradamont to a chair as well. “Do you realize the level of irony that you encapsulate, Captain?”

“Probably not.” Bradamont took her seat, then gave Iceni a speculative look. “Do you mean the fact that I’m helping a former Syndicate star system fight off its enemies?”

“That’s just part of it.” Iceni waved again, and the star display sprang to life, many stars hanging in silent splendor in the air to one side of her desk. “The biggest part is this. You are an officer of the enemy, the Alliance, the force that the Syndicate, that people like me, fought and hated and killed and were killed by, for the last century. And you are also the only person in this star system that I can completely trust.”

“Surely—”

“No, not General Drakon or my closest aides or anyone else in this star system can have my full trust. In fact, all of my training and experience cautions me that the less trust I place in them the better.” Iceni leaned back. “I suppose that feels very alien to you.”

Bradamont crooked a smile. “Not compared to the enigmas. Madam President, I have worked for or with more than one person in Alliance circles who seemed to personify the same concepts of not trusting anyone. I do have trouble grasping the idea of an entire society organized along those lines.”

“Even after being here awhile?” Iceni gestured toward the door. “You left your bodyguards outside. You’ve become accustomed to having bodyguards accompany you whenever you leave the ground forces headquarters complex, and you didn’t question that those bodyguards did not come in here.” She touched a control on her desk and a slight rumbling transmitted through the walls and doors. “At a single command, I can turn this office into the equivalent of a citadel on one of our battleships. There is that much armor, that many active and passive defenses, built into it. Right now, it would take an immense amount of effort to break into here.”

Bradamont looked around, impressed. “It’s amazingly well concealed. You have those defenses because of the enigma threat?”

“Every star system CEO has an office like this, Captain. Because we fear our own citizens, the people, more than we fear the Alliance or the enigmas.” Iceni touched the control again, deactivating the defenses. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. Not my warships, but the people.”

“Your people?”

Iceni hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. My people. That’s hard to say. I’m not supposed to care about the workers. They’re just another form of spare part. When one breaks, you throw it away and get another, and the fewer resources you invest in them, the better.” She made a face. “It’s supposed to be efficient, but as far as I can tell, it leads to immense inefficiencies. That’s a problem I’m trying to correct.”

“General Drakon shares your assessment of that problem,” Bradamont said.

“Yes. That is one of the factors that led me to first reach out to him as a potential ally.” Iceni rested her elbows on her desk and clasped her hands in front of her, looking at Bradamont over them. “Here’s the core of my problem, one that I can only talk about to you. Any government rests on certain legs. The more legs, the more stable it is. A traditional Syndicate star-system government depends on four legs for stability. One is the CEOs, another is the Internal Security Service, the third is the mobile forces, and the fourth is the ground forces. If one of those legs falters, the other three keep the government stable, keep the citizens in line through fear and coercion, although frankly the snakes don’t falter very often.”

Bradamont nodded, her eyes intent with thought. “In the Alliance, our star-system governments depend upon support from the people, the different branches of the government itself, the business community, out of self-interest, and backup from the Alliance government if they need assistance. I guess that adds up to a lot more than three legs.”

“When it works as intended?” Iceni pressed.

After a moment’s hesitation, Bradamont nodded again. “When it works as intended. I’m going to be honest with you. There are some in the Alliance who believe that things like secrecy and strong internal security are the most important pillar of the government.”

Iceni laughed. “If secrecy and strong internal security were the answers to stability, then the Syndicate Worlds would have been the most stable government in the history of humanity. Haven’t you learned anything from us?”

“Perhaps we’ve learned the wrong things,” Bradamont said. “Some of us, that is.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” Iceni traced an idle pattern on the surface of her desk with one finger. “Now, we have Midway Star System. How many legs support this government?”

Bradamont frowned. “Four?”

“Two.”

“But… I was thinking the leaders, you and the general, the people, the ground forces, and the warships.”

“No.” Iceni shook her head to emphasize the word. “There are only two legs. One is me, and one is General Drakon. The people do not yet form a supporting leg. It’s not a role they are used to, they do not trust General Drakon or me because they have spent their entire lives not trusting their leaders, and such lessons are hard to overcome, and they lack experience in guiding their own affairs. My warships will not act against the people on my orders. I could tell Kommodor Marphissa to bombard a city, and she would not do it.”

“You’re right,” Bradamont said. “If she did pass on the order, her crews would rebel rather than carry it out.”

“And what does Colonel Rogero tell you about the state of the ground forces?” Iceni asked.

Bradamont smiled sardonically. “I know you’ve been informed of that. They are loyal and will support you, but they won’t fire on the citizens. Not anymore.”

“Exactly. The citizens are not a leg. They are a club that could knock our legs out from under us.” Iceni brooded for a moment before saying more. “So we depend on two legs. What if something happens to Drakon or me? Then we’re trying to balance the government on one leg. It can be done, by balancing opposing forces and doing whatever is necessary, but it is a constant struggle and requires a cold-blooded willingness to betray, murder, and subvert in any way necessary to keep the government standing on that one leg. If you misjudge, if something happens to you, it topples.”

“You want something better than that?” Bradamont asked.

“I want…” Iceni spent a few more moments in thought. This wasn’t something she could risk saying to anyone other than Bradamont. “I would like to create something that depends for stability on many legs, none of which are fear of our own or of others or of the unknown. I would like to spend days coming up with new things to do, new horizons to explore, not putting out fires and plotting and trying to keep the whole mess from toppling into ruin. I would like to know that I can someday retire and not worry about being put on trial or murdered by my successor. I want to build something that endures. Something that people don’t dread but truly do see as their protector. I want the sort of thing I have never seen. And, yes, I want people to remember that I built it.”

“If you do build something like that,” Bradamont said, “you will be remembered. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re not one of us, you haven’t been poisoned by the experiences we have had, and because I am worried, Captain Bradamont. I am worried about external enemies. But I am also worried about the mood of the people of this star system, who have this bright, shiny new toy offering them more freedom, more power, and more responsibility than they have ever been allowed in Syndicate space. You know what has happened in many other star systems as Syndicate control weakened or collapsed. Fragmentation of authority, internal fighting, endless argument and warfare over who gets to control things. I sense this star system tottering on the edge of such a cliff precisely because I have allowed the people here more right to decide and to rule themselves, and they simply lack the experience to do so without repeating the mistakes of the only form of government they really know—the Syndicate form of government. Moreover, there are agents among them, enemy agents, snakes and possibly others, who are trying to create trouble, feeding fears, trying to get our people to do things that will knock the legs out from under this government.”

“Does General Drakon share those fears?” Bradamont asked.

“No. Or, at least, he hasn’t expressed them in any form I can see.” Iceni waved toward the star display again. “General Drakon is focused on external threats, on building… well, defensive walls. And he’s not wrong that we need to deal with Ulindi. He wasn’t wrong that intervening in Taroa was in our best interest. He was willing to spend precious resources to let the people of Kane, those who still survive, know that we want to help them and that we are nothing like the Syndicate. However, the walls won’t do us any good if the people inside them go on a rampage.”

“But you’re focused on internal stability,” Bradamont said. “In a good way, from all I am hearing. Is that a bad division of labor? General Drakon looking toward external threats and you to internal stability?”

“Not if you put it that way,” Iceni conceded. “You have to understand that neither General Drakon nor I have much experience with actually working together with other CEOs. What seems to you a reasonable division of labor seems to us to be a dangerous ceding of authority to someone else.”

“Or, ceding some authority to the people?” Bradamont suggested. “That’s the same thing to you, isn’t it? Something dangerous?”

“It is. I’ll tell you frankly,” Iceni added, “that it’s easier to trust Drakon than it is to trust the people, but neither comes easily. What do you know about the situation regarding Colonel Morgan?” It was strange how hard it was to say that woman’s name without putting her feelings into her tone of voice.

Bradamont made a face. “Only what Colonel Rogero was told, that Colonel Morgan no longer speaks for General Drakon and no longer has command authority. I understand she has also been sent on a special assignment.”

“What is your impression of Colonel Morgan?” Iceni asked.

“She scares the hell out of me,” Bradamont admitted.

“That makes two of us. Why do you suppose General Drakon placed so much trust in her for so long?”

Bradamont hesitated. “I am reluctant to betray confidences…” she began in more formal tones.

“If you don’t want to talk about what Colonel Rogero has told you, just share your own impressions.”

“Then I would say that General Drakon trusted her because Colonel Morgan has a fanatical level of loyalty to him. He could tell that. Maybe he was flattered by that, especially coming from a woman like Colonel Morgan. But I don’t think General Drakon was manipulated by her. I think he believed her and believed in her.”

“Men.” Iceni put a world of meaning into the single word.

Bradamont smiled. “They all need some work, don’t they?”

“As do all of us,” Iceni said. “I would welcome your suggestions, Captain Bradamont, on handling the people in this star system.”

“I think you’re doing a good job,” Bradamont said. “But you are, I believe, absolutely right that the people need to become a stable leg of the government. That means they need to see the government as their government. They need to see you not just as the leader but as their leader. Whatever you do has to reinforce the idea that you and the people are the same. Words won’t matter, not among people who are used to their government’s lying to them. What will make a difference is what you do. The steps you have taken to reform the legal system for example, to make it a system actually interested in justice, are very important. The changes to the legal system are a bit disruptive, but you can’t afford to halt them because simply halting forward progress would be seen as backsliding.”

“Very true, but if the citizens begin rioting, if they are provoked into rioting, my options will be limited,” Iceni said moodily.

“I understand. One thing Admiral Geary always emphasized to us was to think in terms of what the enemy wanted us to do, what the enemy expected us to do, and not to do those things. If agents hostile to you are trying to stir up your people, then they want you to do certain things in response to that.”

Iceni nodded, impressed that Black Jack had known that. But of course he knew that. Based on what he had accomplished, Black Jack was twice the political schemer that anyone else could ever be. “Yes. War and Syndicate politics have a lot in common. One of my own early mentors gave me the same advice. Never let the wolves herd you in the direction they want you to go, is what he said.”

“Do you have any idea what direction the wolves want you to go, Madam President?”

“I can only speculate,” Iceni said. “But my best guess is that they will want me to do things that foster an image contrary to what you suggested. They want to push me to act not as the leader of the people but in a typical Syndicate CEO manner, arrogant and dictatorial.”

Bradamont looked around the office. “A short time ago, you showed me how easily you can turn this office into a fortress, because Syndicate CEOs fear their own people. Is it possible your enemies will want you to act in that way as well, as someone who fears and distrusts the citizens rather than someone who is their leader? Something as simple as holing up in here would convey a powerful message. The citizens won’t believe that the government is their government if it is hiding behind walls and armed guards.”

“That would be the wrong kind of message,” Iceni agreed. “If I look fearful, I look weak, and if I am fearful of my own citizens, that means I don’t trust them, or that I am doing things that I don’t want them to know about. I would look very much like a Syndicate CEO and not like a president. Yes. Thank you for pointing that out. Distrust of the people, fear of the people we rule, is so much a part of the way I have been trained to think that I could easily have fallen into such displays without even realizing what I was doing.”

“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?”

Malin smiled without visible humor. “Haris is worried. He is seeing more enemies everywhere and striking out at everyone. The sort of mass arrests that Colonel Morgan reported will further turn the population and the ground forces against him.” The smile went away. “However, it means that Colonel Morgan’s attempts to form resistance cells may be limited in success.”

“Through no fault of hers,” Drakon said, frowning. “Haris must be smart enough to know that mass arrests are going to destabilize the populace. It’s the fear of arrest that keeps most Syndicate citizens in line. If the arrests become so common that no one appears safe, they become counterproductive. Haris is courting serious trouble in the long run.”

“Perhaps he is not smart enough to know that, General.”

Drakon eyed Malin. “Colonel, I know you want this operation to be carried out. You want Ulindi turned from threat to ally. Maybe we can achieve that. But I don’t want eagerness to cause anyone to turn a blind eye to potential difficulties.” He was feeling the lack of Morgan here. She would have been challenging Malin’s assumptions, keeping him honest, and pointing out alternatives. And Malin, anticipating her jabs, would have taken extra effort to double-check his own plans.

As mother/son relationships went, it was sort of messed up, but then Morgan didn’t know it was a mother/son relationship, and it had worked pretty well for military planning as far as Drakon was concerned.

“Sir, I am considering all possibilities,” Malin said.

And, to be honest, Drakon couldn’t see any significant problems with what Malin was presenting. “Even if the military in Ulindi stays loyal to Haris,” Drakon said, “we should still be able to take them with no trouble with two brigades of our own supported by warships in low orbit. Captain Bradamont says it should be simple to take down the few antiorbital defenses that Ulindi has.”

“I agree with her assessment,” Malin said. “Morgan also included her assessment that morale is low among the ground forces in Ulindi. It looks… almost easy.”

Drakon nodded, twisting his mouth as he gazed at the display, glad that Malin had brought that up. “Too easy. What are we missing?”

“I can’t find anything, sir. Morgan’s information is very complete, and no matter her other… activities… Colonel Morgan is very good at this sort of thing. Supreme CEO Haris’s recent actions, the surge of arrests and executions, do not suggest confidence or a feeling of strength on Haris’s part.”

“He’s acting scared, isn’t he? But it still looks pretty easy.”

“We could bring three brigades,” Malin suggested. “There should no longer be a requirement to stiffen the locals—”

“No.” Drakon smiled briefly to soften the firm rejection of Malin’s suggestion. “Two brigades won’t short this effort. Haris is not acting like someone with a hidden trump card ready to play, and Morgan would have spotted any hidden trumps. If everything were quiet here, and we had the necessary lift on hand, I’d take all three of our brigades, but President Iceni needs backup, and getting enough lift for two brigades is going to be hard enough. What’s your assessment of the security situation here?”

Malin paused before answering. “General, there is no doubt that someone is working to create problems with the citizens. My sources have yet to identify who that someone is, but with the changes that President Iceni has made, it will be much harder for them to cause civil unrest. The local forces under her control should be more than sufficient—”

“I think President Iceni requires one of our brigades,” Drakon said in a way that made it clear the matter was closed. “Your last guess was that snakes weren’t actually involved,” Drakon pressed. “Do you still believe that?”

“No, sir,” Malin admitted. “Midway needs the commerce that passes through this star system, but that commerce can easily mask the movements of Syndicate agents. I suspect that has happened. There are also very likely more snakes among the personnel from the Reserve Flotilla. I have cautioned against crewing the battleship almost exclusively with them, and against giving command of the battleship to a Reserve Flotilla veteran as well. I still believe that is a mistake we may all regret.”

Drakon made a casting-away gesture with one hand. “That’s a lost battle, Colonel. President Iceni has the utmost faith in Kapitan Mercia. I understand that Captain Bradamont also believes the crew of the Midway are overwhelmingly loyal.”

“How many snakes does it take to bite?” Malin asked. He always projected a cool demeanor, one that many thought actually cold, but now the heat behind his question came through. “If we lose that battleship, then nothing else can possibly make up for it.”

“It’s pretty hard to destroy a battleship,” Drakon said, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his desk. “You’re not really worried about Midway, are you?”

“Sir?” Malin gazed back with an uncomprehending expression.

“You’re worried about Colonel Morgan. You want to ensure that we can take Ulindi so she can be safely recovered.”

“General, with all due respect,” Malin said, his voice stiff, “that is not my primary concern.”

“I didn’t say it was. But you’ve already admitted that you’ve been protecting her for years, without her knowledge.”

“Only when absolutely necessary. She has been sent on a hazardous mission,” Malin said, speaking with extreme care. He had gone cool again, betraying no feeling. “I would be concerned about any officer under those circumstances. But the mission always comes first.”

“Of course,” Drakon agreed, sure that Malin believed what he was saying, but also pretty certain that it wasn’t true. There had been too many incidents in the past which had only become understandable after Malin’s relationship with Morgan had been revealed.

“Sir, all three brigades—” Malin tried again.

“Are not going.” He didn’t know why he felt a growing certainty that a brigade had to be left here. It was like that sixth sense that warned that someone was aiming a shot at him. What it meant, he didn’t know, but Drakon had learned to pay attention to those kinds of intangible premonitions. In this case, though, he had some very tangible reasons as well. “Apart from other considerations, having to arrange transport for and load a third brigade will add significantly to our preparation time for this operation. I won’t waste weeks of time in order to pad our margin of victory, which seems very comfortable already. Do you believe that is a misperception, Colonel?” Drakon asked.

Malin shook his head, poker-faced. “No, sir, I do not. Two brigades of our soldiers, supported by orbital bombardment from our warships, should easily succeed. Which brigade will be left behind, General?”

“I’ll talk to President Iceni about that.”

“Colonel Kai—”

“I’ll talk to President Iceni,” Drakon said, emphasizing the words this time to ensure that Malin knew he was pushing it.

After Malin had left, Drakon hunched over his desk, trying to grasp what was bothering him. Part of it was Malin himself. After years of feeling that he knew everything important about Bran Malin, feeling that Malin could be counted on, he now found himself questioning Malin’s actions and motivations.

Morgan, of course, always questioned Malin’s actions and motivations. That had left little need for Drakon to do it. But without Morgan, the dynamic had changed abruptly.

Perhaps I’ve grown too dependent on Malin and Morgan. As a team, they were often a pain, but they were also very, very capable. That made it too easy to lean on them and take their support for granted.

That’s gone, though, and it can’t return.

Is there anything else that could be giving me subconscious worries?

Things were quiet here, despite the impossible-to-eliminate rumors among the military and the civilians. Morgan had confirmed the state of Haris’s forces, so they knew exactly what they would be facing in Ulindi. And Ulindi did have to be dealt with, despite the inevitable risks of any military operations, and despite the problems they would face rounding up enough freighters modified for carrying troops and attaching temporary air locks and shuttle clamps to them so that the two brigades could get to Ulindi and hit the ground hard and fast.

It all seemed pretty simple.

He had to be missing something.