Tarnished Knight

Chapter Six

“Who and where?” Drakon asked.

“Colonel Dun.”

Drakon glanced upward without thinking, even though he was inside a building and couldn’t have actually seen the main orbiting facility for this world even if it had been nighttime. “What’s she doing? The last report we had from her said that the snakes on that station had all been neutralized, she had firm control, and she accepted my authority.”

“I’m afraid that Colonel Dun’s firm control may now be the problem. I passed on some of your earlier instructions and just received a reply. Instead of indicating that she would carry out those orders, Colonel Dun said, ‘I will consider my options.’”

“Her options?” Dun wasn’t one of the subordinates Drakon had brought to Midway. She had come from another place, for a reason he didn’t know. “Remind me why Dun was still in command of that facility instead of someone we knew we could trust.”

Morgan shrugged. “She had ties to the snakes. She was giving reports to them though supposedly only under duress. That’s why she wasn’t part of our planning. And trying to ease Dun out of command of the station couldn’t be done without attracting a lot of attention and raising warning flags with the ISS. Of course, Dun could have been assassinated, opening a way for us to get someone better up there, but no one else wanted to pursue that option.”

“Maybe I should have let you do that.” Drakon walked into his office, Morgan and Malin following. This isn’t their fault, he told himself. The ISS had plenty of experience with spotting excessively ambitious CEOs who were maneuvering too many followers into too many critical positions. Moving against Dun would have been too obvious.

Morgan stopped just inside the doorway, leaning against one wall with her arms crossed. “Dun is smart enough to know what kind of leverage control of that station gives her. She can threaten to drop large, heavy objects on this planet and do what the snakes didn’t manage to accomplish. She’s also stupid enough to try blackmailing you.”

“I agree with Colonel Morgan’s assessment as to Colonel Dun’s smarts and Colonel Dun’s stupidity,” Malin said.

Drakon brought up data on the facility Dun controlled, seeing bad news that confirmed what he remembered. The orbiting facility contained extensive manufacturing plants, fed by ore brought in from asteroids, and those stockpiles of ore would make simple, impossible to stop, and horribly destructive bombs if just dropped onto the planet from orbit. The soldiers under Dun’s command were up there to ensure no rebellious crazies did that, but now Dun herself was the rebellious crazy. He imagined the impacts of tons of ore falling from orbit. As Morgan said, the devastation would easily equal that of the nukes the snakes had sought to detonate. “Options? Can we get to her soldiers? Get them to turn on her?”

“They’d all have to turn at once,” Morgan replied. “If half turned, and the other half didn’t, that gives someone plenty of time to drop rocks. I don’t think that option has much chance of success.”

“I suggest we talk to her,” Malin said. “She’ll make demands. Keep talking, give in on a few, small things, while we plan and execute an operation to take her out.”

Morgan grinned. “Even idiots get it right sometimes.”

“Neither of you think that Dun herself can be co-opted? Turned into a loyal subordinate?” Drakon asked.

Malin shook his head.

Morgan laughed. “Dun will be safe when she’s dead.”

“Then I’ll talk to her, make her think that I’m willing to play along. Meanwhile, you two get started on a plan to take that station. I need a good one, and I need it fast. First priority, ensure nothing gets dropped from that facility onto the planet. Second priority, remove Colonel Dun on a permanent basis. Oh, one other thing. Check the snake files we captured and see if any of the intact ones provide the reason why Dun got exiled here.”

“Why does that matter?” Morgan asked.

“I won’t know if it does matter until I know the reason. See if you can find it, and get that plan done.”

Malin looked resigned, and Morgan rolled her eyes, but they went off together. Despite their mutual antagonism, Morgan and Malin could work well together when it came to producing plans. Drakon had never been able to figure that out, wondering if it was the product of some bizarre love-hate relationship, even though the idea of Morgan and Malin hooking up seemed to be not just impossible but also somehow indecent.

His first look at Colonel Dun when his call to her went through didn’t cause Drakon to second-guess his decision.

Dun sat at ease, smiling like a cat that had just cleaned out a fish tank. “Congratulations, Artur,” she began.

Using his first name meant that Dun intended treating this as a conversation among equals. But since he had no means at hand to slap her down, he would have to live with that attitude for a little while. “What’s this I hear about you giving Colonel Malin a hard time… Sira?”

Dun grinned a little wider. “I see no need to submit to an inferior position in this new setup. Not when I’m literally looking down on you.”

“You’re not looking down at the mobile forces controlled by President Iceni.”

“President? Interesting. You’re right. But if those mobile forces try anything, I’ll see it long enough before it gets here that I can launch a doomsday barrage. And if I see anybody suspicious coming close, I’ll do the same thing. I assume you’d like to avoid that.”

“What is you’re looking for?” Drakon asked.

“It looks like you and Iceni are planning to run things as a pair. I want that to become a triumvirate.”

You just made a big mistake by giving me the perfect excuse to stall. Maybe a fatal mistake. Outwardly, Drakon made a noncommittal shrug. “I can’t decide that alone. I need to talk to Iceni.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. Geosynchronous orbit, you know.” Dun laughed outright. “Talk to you later.”

Drakon mimed punching the air where the comm window had been, then called Iceni. He couldn’t discuss his plans, not when Dun might be able to intercept the conversation, but he could use certain phrases known to CEOs that would indicate that he wanted the response process strung out as long as possible.

Two hours later, Malin and Morgan returned, entering together but immediately going to opposite corners of the room. Malin bobbed his head slightly up and to the side, indicating the general direction of the orbiting station. “We based the plan on the fact that Colonel Dun has spent most of her time in industrial assignments. That was the justification for giving her command of the station. Her military time has been with strategic systems.”

“Nukes?” Drakon asked.

“For the most part. Planning and design.”

Morgan smiled lazily. “She’s going to be looking for a big attack. Missiles, large assault ships, something on that order. Colonel Dun doesn’t have any experience with ground ops, special ops, or really, any ops.”

“How many stealth suits do we still have operational after the attacks on the ISS?” Drakon asked.

“Enough.” Morgan’s grin widened. “They’re in the plan.”

Drakon called it up. One talent he had worked hard to acquire was the ability to quickly review and absorb the essentials of an operational plan. Getting bogged down in details could cause a commander to miss the bigger picture, and even whether the overall plan made any sense.

This one did, but he had expected nothing less. “Two assault forces.”

Malin nodded. “One to go after any troops loyal to Dun and take her out by whatever means necessary, and the other to make sure nothing gets launched from that facility by securing and overriding all controls that could do that. We think Colonel Kai—”

“Kai’s not doing it. Neither is Gaiene or Rogero. Dun may be overconfident, but we can’t assume she’s careless enough not to have someone tracking where my top field commanders are and where I am. If I or any of those three colonels heads for orbit, or can’t be spotted down here conducting business as usual, Dun will know.”

Morgan’s eyebrows rose. “Does that leave who I think it does?”

“Yes. You two. Malin will command one assault force and you take the other.”

“Dun may be watching us, too,” Malin said.

“Maybe, but she doesn’t have infinite resources to devote to surveilling people down here, and she probably thinks she can safely assume that wherever I am, you two are also.”

“Sweet.” Morgan slowly flexed the fingers of one hand as if preparing to go into action right then and there. “I want the force that goes after Dun.”

Malin shrugged. “Fine by me. General, you asked about the reason for Dun’s assignment to this star system.”

“Yeah. What did she do?”

“We found her ISS files. There’s nothing about the reason for exile.”

Drakon peered at him. “Nothing?”

“Yes, sir. Very unusual. I’m beginning to wonder if Dun isn’t a snake herself, operating under deep cover.”

“She doesn’t match the usual profiles for someone like that,” Morgan added, “but we can’t rule it out, and if it’s true then Dun could be more dangerous than we think. There’s too much detail we could check on her career to doubt any of that, so we know her experience, but she might also be operating right now on fail-safe contingency orders from the snakes.”

“How long before you can nail her?”

“We can hide the troop movements in routine lifts to the facility and other orbital sites near there, but it will take time. Twenty-four hours. I wanted to push that until we found the blank spots in Dun’s ISS records. Now I want to make very sure we don’t tip her off.”

When Morgan advised caution, it was uncharacteristic enough to emphasize how important it was to listen to that opinion. “All right. Twenty-four hours. President Iceni and I will spin out discussions with Dun to help keep her distracted. I don’t want to hear from either one of you again until you’re in control of that facility and calling in to tell me.”

“I can run you a tight-beam link to the assault-force data feeds,” Malin offered. “Slightly time-delayed because it’ll have to run through relays to keep Dun’s people from spotting it, but we need to do that anyway for team coordination, and the link should be safe from any intercept.”

That was tempting, especially since he would have to sit here while they faced danger without him. Drakon nodded. “Thanks. Make that happen.”

Iceni had proven adept at stringing along Colonel Dun, dangling major concessions continually just out of reach. Drakon had found himself increasingly admiring her skills. That didn’t equate to trusting her, of course. In fact, watching how well she spun Dun made Drakon wonder how well he was being spun or could be spun if Iceni decided that was necessary.

He hadn’t been able to monitor the forces going up piecemeal in shuttles and boosters, packed in with normal shipments. If Dun was tracking anything, it would be whatever Drakon was watching.

It wasn’t a major assault by any means. Colonel Dun only had about forty soldiers under her command on the facility, and those were locals whose experience and training were both limited. Against that, Malin and Morgan were leading two assault teams of fifteen commandos each, all the soldiers highly trained veterans. If not for the risk of something heavy being dropped on the planet, Drakon wouldn’t have had any concerns about the outcome. But that one concern was a huge one.

An alert signal pulsed on his desk. Taking a long, slow breath, Drakon linked to the incoming signals and a multipaned window opened before him with views from the assault force.

He concentrated, blocking out all else, focusing only on the vids before him which portrayed the images seen from the stealth suits being used by the commandos. Twelve panes in the window. Two of those panes were from Malin and Morgan. The other ten marked section leaders, each controlling a team of two other commandos plus themselves.

About half of the commandos were already on the facility, some popping open specially designed crates to emerge inside warehouse compartments, others on the outside of the facility in the cold emptiness of space, the remainder coming in on long leaps from neighboring orbital locations, their stealth suits keeping them as invisible as the ingenuity of humans could devise. Malin’s head turned, his range of vision sweeping across a stretch of utilitarian fixtures that marked one section of the outer shell of the facility. Though invisible to others in their suits, the links to their fellows allowed the commandos to be “seen” by Malin as ghostly images painted on the exterior view.

Morgan’s group had also reached the facility and spread out along other portions, phantoms flitting carefully toward their targets. One of the section leaders passed a security camera watching that part of the exterior, the camera blindly tracking across the commando without pause.

The sections had reached accesses leading into the facility at different points. Some were air locks for maintenance workers to use when repairs were done, some were vents and tunnels never intended for human use. In some cases, commandos already inside cracked the air locks for their fellows. Everywhere else, the small, complex devices still known as skeleton keys after some sort of ancient means of opening locked doors were placed against key points and began breaking access codes and manipulating security bolts until barriers swung open.

Commandos began entering, each covering the others with ready weapons, some now in lighted passageways within the facility, others in still-darkened areas cluttered with canisters and boxes where only the occasional robotic minion trundled past with single-minded focus on its particular task.

It had all been silent up to now, almost unreal, as the phantom figures barely seen on the helmet displays of their fellow commandos moved without a word through the plan they had memorized and uploaded into their suits’ tactical systems. But the commandos in the passageways could now hear the sounds of human activity, while those in maintenance and storage areas could detect dull thuds and thumps being transmitted through the structure of the facility.

A supervisor whose head was bent over her personal unit came walking around a corner and right past one section of commandos who silently parted to make way for her. She paused, raised her head with a puzzled expression, then concentrated on the unit in her hand again as she walked on down the passage.

Watching it happen, Drakon remembered the strange feeling of exhilaration that came with being invisible in a stealth suit, an elation that had to be carefully controlled because it could so easily lead to mistakes that would reveal your presence. Bumping against something, or someone bumping against you, a misstep that created too much noise and vibration, even the faint breeze created by your movement that could alert age-old instincts in humans. Defensive training for sentries emphasized paying attention to such almost subliminal alerts. If you feel a faint wind when there shouldn’t be a wind, it may be the last thing you feel. And if sentries or others were alerted inside an installation like this, defenses could flood important passageways and rooms with mists designed to make it easy to spot the shapes of anyone wearing even the best stealth suits.

But these commandos were experienced and careful, and the people they encountered did not seem to be concerned about attack. Had Colonel Dun told them what she was doing? Perhaps not. More than one sub-CEO and CEO operated on the philosophy that it was easier to keep workers in the dark. Once you start explaining things, one of them had once admonished Drakon after catching him briefing his unit, they’ll start expecting reasons for whatever they’re told to do instead of just doing it.

His eyes flicked from virtual window to virtual window in a constant dance, seeing the commandos’ progress in a dozen different areas. One section had already reached the primary load control center, fanning out to take positions from which they could instantly disable every bulk transport system. Another was inside a room holding emergency backup controls and circuits, the room completely automated so that the commandos could load in software that blocked functions without alerting the control-system software guardians.

As Morgan slowly turned a corner, the view from her suit showed a small hallway where a soldier stood on bored sentry at an access panel. On one arm he wore a metabolic cuff, designed to automatically sound alarms if it were removed without the proper codes or if the sentry’s metabolism showed signs of severe stress. Drakon had never forgotten the sentry in his unit who had arranged a hookup during a late-night shift, not realizing that the metabolic excitement generated by sex could set off his cuff. That sentry had doubtless never forgotten it either; but then, he had been lucky he hadn’t been shot the next day.

The section with her followed as Morgan took several quick strides to the sentry, who just had time to glance around with a perplexed look before one of the commandos slammed a disabler into his arm. The soldier’s body spasmed, his voluntary muscle control abruptly cut off while involuntary functions like breathing and heartbeat continued unhindered. The cuff produced no warning as the sentry was gently lowered to the floor, then the commandos were going through into the secure area containing the facility’s command center and Colonel Dun’s offices.

Most of Malin’s sections were in position and he was leading the rest in a rush toward the rear of the secure area to cut off any attempt at escape. Morgan’s sections were spreading fast through the secure area, dropping the occasional roving sentry before the guards knew they faced any danger. The lucky sentries, those wearing metabolic cuffs, were left helpless but alive. The unlucky ones died silently and swiftly.

Drakon’s eyes went to stress monitors, seeing that the commandos were feeling the strain of the quick movement, of the long approach, of the unnatural gliding stride necessary to reduce the sounds of steps while in a stealth suit. It all wore out anyone pretty fast, even someone as well conditioned as these troops.

But everything was going perfectly.

Until one of the stealth suits failed.

To the workers kicking back as they watched equipment readouts in the transport control center, it was if a soldier in light combat armor suddenly appeared in their midst. The smart ones froze, even their breathing coming to a temporary halt, prehistoric instinct telling them that the only way to survive the attack of a predator was to remain absolutely motionless.

But one of the workers was either brave, or she panicked, slamming the emergency-alert button next to her hand before any of the soldiers could react. An instant later her head rocked under a brutal blow from a weapon’s butt end and she collapsed, still alive only because Drakon had ordered the commandos to kill workers only if there was no alternative.

Red lights pulsed and alarms thundered, bringing everyone on the facility to full alert. “Move!” Morgan shouted, and her commandos broke into full runs, no longer using the concealment stride.

Malin’s section blew open the rear exit, firing as they came through at a guard running toward them. The guard jerked backward under multiple hits before spinning to hit the wall and flop to the floor lifeless.

Soldiers started to pour out of one of the barracks rooms, only to meet a barrage of fire that dropped the first ones through the door. At least one soldier in the barracks tried the emergency exit and found out the hard way about the explosive charge placed there by the commandos.

Someone had figured out that stealth suits were being employed, and at critical areas inside the facility passageways and rooms filled with a fine mist. But the commandos already controlled every important point in the civilian side of the facility, and before the mist had fully deployed one of Morgan’s sections got into the military command center and wiped out the soldiers on watch there.

Morgan moved with reckless speed, killing two soldiers near the entrance to Dun’s quarters so fast that they were both still falling as she reached the door. A commando put a breaching charge in place, then they all went to either side as the charge tore the door off its hinges and fried automated defenses just inside the doorway.

Drakon could see Malin coming along fast, closing on Morgan’s position as she led her section into Dun’s quarters. He was pushing the pace, too. Why? Did he want Dun dead? Or did he want to save Dun for interrogation before Morgan reached her?

The inner door protecting Dun’s personal area blew inward as another breaching charge went off, then Morgan was inside the last barrier, her weapon questing for targets.

Malin had reached the back of Dun’s area, his own section blasting its way inside from that direction.

Morgan put a round into the center of Dun’s bed, then centered shots in each closet door before the commandos with her yanked open the doors. “Not here,” a commando reported.

The image from Morgan’s suit swung wildly as she surveyed Dun’s bedroom, then centered on a wall panel that betrayed signs of being newer than the panels to either side of it. “There!” Two shots failed to penetrate, but a final breaching charge shattered the concealed armored door.

Morgan, who had been against the wall next to the last door as it was blown, was still coming around to face that door when Dun stepped into view, weapon leveled at her. Drakon could see it all from several points of view at once, but he could do nothing. For a few instants, time seemed to slow down as Morgan tried to bring her weapon to bear, as Dun’s hand tightened on the trigger of her weapon, as the commandos with Morgan found their lines of fire blocked by her, and as Malin burst into the room with his commandos, Malin’s weapon already pointed at Morgan’s back.

“No!” was still coming out of Drakon’s throat when Malin fired.

“Why?” Drakon’s gaze was centered on Malin, who stood at rigid attention.

“Dun had to be stopped before she activated any fail-safes,” Malin reported, his tone as emotionless as his expression.

“That was Morgan’s primary duty. You knew that.”

“It was my assessment, on the scene, that she needed backup.”

“Do you think that excuse is ironclad?” Drakon almost shouted.

“Sir, you have always encouraged us to act based on our assessments—”

“Dammit, Malin, if your shot had been aimed a fraction of a millimeter different it would have blown off Morgan’s head instead of Dun’s! Why the hell did you take that kind of chance? Or was it a chance? You knew that after Dun shot Morgan she wouldn’t have gotten off a second shot before the commandos with Morgan nailed her. Was this just a perfect opportunity to end your quarrels with Morgan by ‘accidentally’ blowing her away during a firefight?” Drakon was shouting now. “If you wanted her dead that bad, why not let Dun do it? Or were you afraid that Dun would miss?”

Malin had paled, but he kept his voice steady. “I… General Drakon…”

“Yes or no! Did you try to kill Morgan?”

“No!” His voice cracking, Malin stared at Drakon. “No,” he repeated in a lower but still-strained voice. “She… I knew Morgan wanted to get Dun. I thought… she would… need help.”

Drakon moved back and sat down heavily, glaring at Malin. “Dammit to hell, Bran. You were worried about Morgan’s getting hurt? That’s your defense?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I didn’t know you, if I hadn’t seen a thousand times just how professional and dependable you are, I wouldn’t believe you. I still have trouble believing you.” He blew out an angry breath. “Your shot could easily have killed her. But Morgan would probably be dead if you hadn’t fired. I hope you’re not expecting her to thank you.”

“Colonel Morgan has already made clear her feelings in that regard,” Malin said.

“Yeah. You’re damned lucky I was tied into the command circuit and could activate overrides to freeze her suit. Otherwise, she would have killed you then and there. Why, Bran?”

“I did not try to kill Morgan, sir. You can put me in the highest level interrogation room you desire, and I will repeat that statement as many times and ways as you wish.”

Drakon locked eyes with Malin. “If I put you in that room, and asked you why you worked so hard to catch up to Morgan, what would your answer be?”

Malin hesitated. “To… keep her from being killed. Sir.”

“You two hate each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So? Do you have some kind of sick thing going on with Morgan?”

Paling again, Malin shook his head, looking revolted. “I have nothing like that going on with Morgan.”

After several seconds, Drakon made an angry gesture. “I have to believe you. Or have you shot. I prefer to believe you. The official story from this moment forward is that you acted to save Morgan, even though no one who knows you two will believe it. But if anything like this happens again, I don’t care whether or not Morgan gets hit, understand? You’ll be toast.”

Malin appeared briefly disconcerted. “You… will let me continue working on your staff?”

“You and Morgan. Yes. She’s all right with that. Once Morgan calmed down, she was impressed that you’d tried to nail her yourself under the only circumstances where you might have succeeded and could have gotten away with it. That’s the sort of thing Morgan admires in people. She still won’t turn her back on you again, but now she seems to think you’re worth killing.”

Taking a deep breath, Malin nodded. “I guess I should watch my back.”

“Yeah. That would be a real good idea even though I told Morgan that I needed both of you. And I’m telling you the same thing. If either of you kills the other, I’m going to make sure the survivor wishes they’d been the one who died. Is that absolutely, completely, totally clear, Colonel Malin?”

“Yes, sir.”

Iceni sat in her office, wondering why Drakon hadn’t called yet, when he finally did. The virtual image of her co-ruler appeared seated across the desk from her. “The orbital facility is completely secured,” Drakon said. “We swept it down to the quark level and except for Colonel Dun’s surprises we found nothing that shouldn’t be there except the usual contraband, pornography, and recreational drugs. The bad news is that we are now certain that Colonel Dun was working for the ISS.”

“Dun? An ISS agent?” Iceni asked, projecting surprise. She didn’t want Drakon to know that she had already learned of that from her source close to him.

“There’s no doubt at all. Dun had a secondary, small office hidden next to her bedroom. Heavy armor, shielded from detection, and tied in to all the systems on the facility. Only the snakes could have put that sort of thing in place without anyone’s spotting it.”

“Yet there was no indication prior to that Dun was in the employ of the ISS?”

Drakon shook his head. “No. The snakes had even misled us by leaking information that she was an occasional informant of theirs. Lots of people were occasional informants of the snakes because when they came asking not many citizens could say no. Dun was under really deep cover. She must have been recruited decades ago. And I’ll admit that worries me. If Dun could be so carefully hidden, who else in this star system might be a deep-cover agent for the snakes?”

“One of the strongest weapons of the ISS was sowing distrust among everyone,” Iceni commented. “Not that we didn’t work on doing that to ourselves as well. So, deep-cover snakes and other hidden agents of the ISS must be added to our list of concerns. Thank you, General Drakon. Is there anything else?”

“No. Not at this time.”

After Drakon’s image vanished, Iceni turned to Togo, who had been standing off to one side, rendered unseeable to Drakon by Iceni’s communications software. “What didn’t he tell me?”

Togo consulted his own reader. “Just prior to Colonel Dun’s hidden office’s being broken into, she sent a burst transmission to C-625. The cruiser would have received it half an hour before it entered the hypernet gate.”

“Do we have any idea what the message was?”

“No,” Togo replied. “Colonel Dun’s equipment self-erased and -destructed. I have been unable to determine whether or not General Drakon’s people have been able to recover anything from it at all.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“There are widespread rumors that during the attack on the facility, one of General Drakon’s closest aides, Colonel Malin, attempted to murder the other, Colonel Morgan. I believe this actually occurred, or something like it that could be interpreted as an attempt by Malin to kill Morgan.”

“Interesting.” Iceni had believed that Drakon kept that sort of thing under control. “From what I have seen of them, I would have thought Morgan would have tried to kill Malin, not vice versa.” She drummed the fingers of one hand on her desk, frowning in thought. “Take another look at Colonel Morgan. Dig for whatever you can find now that we also have access to the snake files. I need to know more about her.”

“As far as we can determine, she is not sleeping with General Drakon.”

Which gave Drakon a few points for common sense, Iceni thought, as well as possibly some credit for ethics. Technically, superiors in the Syndicate Worlds were required to avoid having subordinates as sex partners since it was far too easy to abuse power that way. But in reality it had long been common practice, and almost every other CEO turned blind eyes to the abuse because they didn’t want to give anyone reasons to check them for their own violations of the law. “One of the reasons I trusted Drakon enough to work with him was because he’s not sleeping with anyone who works for him. But Morgan is attractive enough in many ways to have been able to attach herself to some CEO more powerful than Drakon, especially after he got exiled here. She chose to come here with him. All my instincts tell me that Morgan intends playing a deeper game than simply sleeping her way to the top.”

“There is a widespread belief that a few of her rivals have vanished in the past,” Togo noted.

“Yes. Get into every file, check every source, find out what you can. I need to know what she might do.”

“And Colonel Malin?”

“Him, too.” Iceni paused in thought again. “My impression has been that Malin is careful, controlled, and wants to leave behind Syndicate ways of doing things. But if he tried to kill Colonel Morgan during that military action, it would have been a hasty, impulsive act, and one fully in keeping with Syndicate ways of doing business. See if you can find out who the real Malin is.”

After Togo had left, Iceni sat looking at some documents on her screen but not really reading them. Why didn’t Drakon tell me about the message Dun sent? I wonder what was in it? My source says Drakon’s workers haven’t been able to get anything out of Dun’s equipment. The failure to inform me about internal problems with his staff is another matter and more understandable. No CEO ever admits to that kind of thing going on even if there are dead executives littering all of the conference rooms and the survivors are busy trying to wash the blood off their hands. But I’ve always thought it was a sloppy way of doing business. Only the boss should be deciding who gets the axe.

That was a joke, wasn’t it? Sort of a pun. Too bad there’s no one else in this star system who would find it funny.

Another incoming message arrived, from Sub-CEO Akiri on C-448. “Madam C—excuse me, Madam President, there has been an unexpected development.” Akiri paused, plainly reveling in being the bearer of important news, while Iceni seethed at the small delay in actually hearing that news. “One of the Hunter-Killers with C-625 did not enter the hypernet gate with the other mobile forces. It remained, and we have just received a transmission from HuK-6336 saying that they have overcome the ISS agents and those loyal to the Syndicate Worlds and will be joining us. HuK-6336 reports substantial personnel casualties in overcoming the snakes and loyalists, but says all equipment is operational.”

“Good,” Iceni said. “What about the three HuKs loyal to me that were shadowing C-625?”

“They are still about a light-hour from the hypernet gate, awaiting further orders.”

“Tell them to proceed on their missions to the other star systems. I need to know what’s going on at Lono, Taroa, and Kahiki. Make sure the commanders of those HuKs know that anyone who recruits more warships for our star system can expect to receive suitable rewards.”

“Yes, Madam President.” Akiri looked a bit disappointed because he had no chance at those rewards, but there was no way she was going to let one of her heavy cruisers go wandering off. They were needed right here.

Well, that news wasn’t planet-shaking. A single HuK didn’t have much capability. But it was a small piece of good news, so she wouldn’t turn her nose up at it, and she desperately needed every warship she could get her hands on. I’ve put up a good front. I wonder if Drakon suspects how much I haven’t told him, especially about how worried I am with such a small flotilla to stave off any attempt at reconquest by the Syndicate Worlds government. They say the stars help those who help themselves, but the shipyards here can only produce warships up to the size of heavy cruisers, and that only one or two at a time if I order them to build nothing else. The government on Prime would have heard about the revolt here eventually, but C-625 will bring word to them much faster than I’d hoped. Thanks to Black Jack, Prime doesn’t have much, but it won’t take much to brush aside a flotilla built around four heavy cruisers. It will take my own HuKs a while to reach the jump points for the stars they’re visiting, and then a while for the jump transits. Time I don’t have to spare.

If we don’t find more warships soon, this may be a very short-lived revolution.