Shattered Spear

Chapter Four

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Drakon is dangerous. He cannot be trusted.”

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

“He is Syndicate. A deep plant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nothing?”

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

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

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

The room was empty.

The door was still locked.

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

Oh, great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Very, very alone.”

“What’s the priority on this?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But not President Iceni?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The alarm cut off.

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

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

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

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

“Hey,” one of the soldiers with Drakon yelled, holding his hands high and open to show they were empty. “It’s me, Taney. We got the general with us.”

“Get inside our perimeter!” one of the soldiers ordered. A gap opened in their ranks, and Drakon, Gozen, and the two soldiers ran through it and into the armory.

Inside, a score of other soldiers were hastily donning battle armor and unracking weapons. One of them paused to salute Drakon. “Lieutenant Develier. What’s going on, General?”

“What reports do you have?” Drakon demanded, eyeing the available suits of armor. “What’s going on?”

“Our armor is reporting multiple hostile software intrusion attempts,” the lieutenant replied. “Communications are being jammed. We have line of sight only. No remote data is being relayed.”

“Somebody must have gotten access to the primary combat systems and infected them,” Gozen said as she shrugged her way into a suit of battle armor. Fortunately, the soldiers already here hadn’t taken one that was a decent fit on her. “Got to be special forces.”

“Or vipers,” Drakon said, naming the elite and vicious fighting component of the Syndicate Internal Security Service. “They must be using stealth gear with some new twists that got past our sensors.”

Gozen sealed her armor and watched her heads-up-display come to life on her armor’s face shield. There should have been a tactical picture showing what was going on everywhere inside the headquarters complex, but instead the information shown only covered what could be seen by the soldiers in the hallway outside the armory. Bright red warning signs pulsed to signify jamming and software intrusion attempts. “Do we hold here or go looking for trouble, General?”

“What do you think their target is?” Drakon asked in reply, hefting the rifle he had just activated.

“There’s only one thing here that can’t be replaced, sir,” Gozen said. “One person, rather.”

“You’re probably right.” Drakon didn’t sound upset by that, merely acknowledging that he agreed. “Which means my best course of action might be to fort up here. Except for the fact that the attackers gained access to our command software to jam it, which means they could have also spotted that I was in the break room when the attack began.”

“So they know you’re probably here.”

“Yes.” Drakon paused as he thought. “Our biggest problem is that we don’t know where the enemy is and can’t spot them if they’re in stealth gear that can hide from our armor’s sensors.”

“Yes, sir,” Gozen said. “And if we go running around in this building with the links out, someone on our side might take a shot at us, not knowing we’re friendlies.”

“So we dig in here. But not all of us.” Drakon gestured to Lieutenant Develier. “Send out a few soldiers to try to reach the command center and notify them where we are. We’ve got twenty-three soldiers here. Send out five of them.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send out my best!”

“Not all of them your best.” Drakon continued while Gozen puzzled over why he would say that. “Who’s the biggest goof-off in your unit?” he asked the lieutenant. “That’s here now?”

“Uh… that would be Private Pogue, General.”

“Make one of the five Private Pogue. Someone who makes a career out of avoiding work is most likely to know how to get around this headquarters without being noticed. Colonel Gozen, get out in the corridor and command the forces there. I’ll hold just inside the doorway and try to exercise overall command of the defense forces.”

She caught the self-mockery in Drakon’s voice and grinned. He was doing the right thing, though. If the attackers would be coming after him, he shouldn’t be presenting himself as a target in a hallway without shields or barricades.

Gozen stepped out into the hallway and pointed both ways down the corridor outside the armory. “You heard the general, Lieutenant Develier. We’re very likely dealing with the latest stealth tech, which might be too good for our armor’s sensors to spot. Get some smoke down so you can see them coming and renew it as needed. I want that smoke kept dense enough to reveal movement.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Two soldiers knelt facing in opposite directions and fired smoke charges down the hall. The charges burst five meters down the hall on either side, filling the air with a dense cloud that contained enough particulates of different kinds to not only block vision but also every other wavelength from radar down to infrared. The irony was that something designed to hide those behind it was also the most foolproof means of spotting anyone in stealth armor that rendered the wearer effectively invisible. Nothing could move through the smoke without creating an outline that would reveal its presence.

The five-soldier contact team moved off to the left, Private Pogue in the lead, vanishing into the cloud in that direction.

With six soldiers in the armory watching the interior walls, and Drakon in the doorway, Gozen and the lieutenant distributed the remaining nine soldiers facing both ways down the corridor, then took positions themselves facing in opposite directions. Gozen settled herself comfortably, knowing that distractions caused by an uncomfortable posture might divert her attention at the wrong time.

“Listen up,” Drakon said to the defenders. “Anyone who comes through that smoke in regular armor is probably one of ours. Anyone in a stealth suit is probably the enemy. You are weapons free for anyone in stealth armor. If your target is wearing regular battle armor they may be friendly, so wait for either I, Colonel Gozen, or Lieutenant Develier to give a firing order. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Gozen replied, waiting as the rest of the soldiers present also answered. She wondered why Drakon had given his order that way instead of simply telling the soldiers to fire on stealth armor and wait for authorization to fire on regular armor. After a long moment of puzzlement, Gozen realized that the general had actually explained why the soldiers should treat the two kinds of targets differently. Instead of being given apparently arbitrary commands, Drakon’s soldiers now knew the rationale behind them.

It wasn’t the Syndicate just-do-as-you’re-told way. And it meant these soldiers were far more likely to be effective and carry out their orders properly.

No wonder these guys kicked our butts on Ulindi. Gozen sighted down her rifle at the smoke filling the hallway before her, confident that her choice to join Drakon’s forces had been a wise one.

“I’m picking up noise,” a soldier to one side of Gozen reported. “It sounded like energy rounds impacting.”

“My armor didn’t pick up anything,” Lieutenant Develier said.

“Check my armor systems, Lieutenant. There’s the record. See?”

“Undetermined,” Develier muttered. “It could have been impacts. Echoes of impacts.”

“Then they’re coming from the way I’m facing,” Gozen said. “Give us another smoke round down there,” she ordered the soldier next to her. “Everybody stay sharp. Lieutenant, keep your people watching the other way even if we start shooting. It might be a diversion, or they could be coming from both directions.”

Gozen found watching the smoke through her face shield’s gun sight to be a bit disorienting, but she kept her eyes locked on the slow swirls, watching for any sign of a shape.

Shapes appeared, moving very fast, bursting through the smoke so quickly they would have vanished again in moments.

Would have, if Gozen and the others facing that way hadn’t opened up the instant the shapes appeared. Solid slugs and energy bolts slammed into the attackers, each one causing a gap in the stealth protection even if they didn’t penetrate.

Gozen was firing as fast as she could aim when an object raced overhead from behind. The grenade exploded among the frontmost attackers, knocking two off their feet and slowing those behind them.

She rose to a crouch, ignoring the shots coming at her from the attackers, and put a careful round straight into the face shield of an enemy barely a meter away. The soldiers with her dropped three more who were still charging.

One attacker made it past them, spinning to face the door to the armory then jerking backward under the impact of a shot from Drakon at point-blank range. The attacker hit the wall behind, then before he or she could leap forward again a dozen more hits from the other soldiers riddled the attacker’s armor.

“Get your eyes back on sentry!” Gozen yelled, seeing that nearly every soldier was now facing inward toward where the last attacker had fallen. “Comply!”

Under the lash of that command the soldiers hastily took up positions facing outward again.

Gozen checked her display for signs of damage to her own armor and to the other soldiers. “Lieutenant, have one of the soldiers on your side get Private Honda inside the armory and try to patch him up. Medina, how bad are you?”

“I’ll live,” Medina said. “It hurts and my sensors are degraded, but I’m still combat effective, Colonel.”

A warning note sounded inside Gozen’s armor, accompanied by a blinking red danger symbol. She was still lining up her rifle when two shots were fired from soldiers near her.

The not-quite-dead-yet enemy who had suddenly swung a weapon toward them jerked under the hits, then lay still.

“Make sure they’re all dead,” Gozen snapped.

More shots, each one aimed at the helmet of a fallen foe. Then silence again.

“They’re vipers all right,” Drakon said.

Gozen didn’t have to turn to see that he was kneeling to examine the attacker who had gotten closest to him. Her display showed Drakon’s position behind her. “Sir, are you sure that one is safe?”

“Yeah. I used a minipulse to fry her armor’s systems. Her systems are all as dead as she is.”

“Vipers usually operate in units of twelve,” Gozen said. “We only killed six.”

“That’s a good start,” Lieutenant Develier commented, his voice a little ragged. Common soldiers might hate the agents of the Internal Security Service who were nicknamed snakes, but even that hate paled next to their revulsion toward the elite vipers who were often used to execute battlefield discipline on soldiers who were thought to have committed crimes, or who were judged to have been insufficiently aggressive, or who had just been picked at random to be killed as lessons to the other soldiers.

“We don’t know which direction the next six will come from,” Gozen warned. “Everybody stay sharp. Drop some more smoke in both directions.”

They waited again. Gozen, her armor automatically tied in to the command net when she suited up, could see that Drakon was trying to work around the jamming still blocking their longer-range communications and the tactical picture outside their line of sight.

Her display abruptly came to full life and incoming calls began clamoring for her attention. Gozen was trying to grasp all of the new information when she heard Drakon bellow a command.

“Focus on what’s in front of you!”

Cursing, she raised her weapon again just as more shapes appeared exiting from the smoke. Gozen and the others on her side pumped out shots, this time joined by two grenades that broke the enemy charge.

As the last attacker fell, Gozen felt a twinge of something wrong. “How many?” she demanded. “Get me a count!”

“Four… no five. Five, Colonel.”

“We got one viper unaccounted for!” She switched circuits to broadcast that to everyone in the building now that her links were active again. “Eleven vipers dead at my position. Likely one remaining enemy still active!”

Lieutenant Develier spoke again, his voice worried. “I can’t spot the five soldiers we sent to link up with the command center.”

“Dead zone!” someone called. “We got a dead zone on our sensor displays! It looks active, but it’s a dummy picture!”

“It’s inside the command center!”

“Get into it!”

“Move!”

As multiple units began to converge on the command center, another order rang out. “All units hold. The command center is secured.”

Gozen let out a long breath as she heard Colonel Malin’s voice. The guy was scary, but that was good in a situation like this.

“What have you got?” Drakon asked Malin.

“One dead snake, General,” Malin answered, his voice cold and precise. “Several dead soldiers and watch-standers. And one portable nuclear device that the snake was prepared to activate. The nuke has been rendered safe.”

“Suicide mission,” Develier muttered.

“Good work, everyone,” Drakon said. “Now, all units, remain on alert. We’re going to flood the headquarters complex with smoke and sweep every room and every corridor to make sure there aren’t any other attackers hiding in here. Colonel Malin, coordinate the sweeps from the command center. Colonel Gozen and I are moving to join you.”

Leaving six soldiers to guard the wounded and watch over the dead vipers, and accompanied by the rest of the soldiers, Gozen and Drakon headed for the command center along hallways that were rapidly filling with smoke. “Cleaning up after this is going to be a chore,” Gozen commented.

“It won’t be much compared to the cleanup if that nuke had detonated,” Drakon replied.

They started meeting other soldiers, most in armor and gathered into larger and smaller groups based on whoever had been closest when the attack started. With the links active again, everyone could track everyone else easily, eliminating surprises that might have led to friendly soldiers firing on other friendlies. Gozen, still not too familiar with the layout of the headquarters, was relieved when they reached the command center.

Standing just outside were Private Pogue and the other four soldiers who had gone with him. “Sir,” the corporal in charge of the small group reported, “we got here just as the jamming cleared.”

“It takes a while longer to get somewhere if you don’t want to be noticed,” Private Pogue argued defensively.

“Fall in with us,” Lieutenant Develier ordered. “Do you want us to stay with you, General?”

“No,” Drakon said. “Report in as available for joining in the security sweep of the building. I won’t forget any one of you,” he said to the group. “You did well. Damned well. You’ve got some fine soldiers, Lieutenant, and that reflects well on you.”

“Thank you, sir!”

Gozen felt herself relaxing as she followed Drakon into the command center. There were several bodies still on the floor, the watch-standers who had apparently been killed without warning, and a dozen living soldiers present who were checking over the equipment to ensure no other sabotage had been committed by the vipers.

Colonel Malin stood next to what Gozen recognized as a portable nuke. His eyes swept across General Drakon, centered on Gozen, then his pistol came up, aiming straight at Gozen’s face shield.