Drakon glanced that way, seeing Iceni locked in close conversation with her personal assistant/bodyguard/assassin Mehmet Togo. Both Iceni and Togo had moved a few steps away. Drakon didn’t need a scanner to be certain that their conversation was also being protected by personal jammers.
“Iceni is planning her own escape,” Morgan whispered. “Watch. She’ll bolt out of here with some lame excuse and head for a shuttle. I’ve got snipers posted. We can nail her before she reaches the launch area.”
Drakon frowned though he kept facing toward the display and not Iceni. “No.”
The force of that reply earned him a searching glance from Morgan. “Why not? Is there some . . . personal reason?”
“Of course not,” Drakon snapped back at her. He had gotten to know Iceni a lot better, had been able to learn more about the person behind the once-CEO and now-President, and he had found himself both having more (probably irrational) faith in her and enjoying their meetings. But none of those things were influencing him now. He was certain of that. “We need Iceni. If we get through this somehow, we need her control of the warships.”
“Once the enigmas are done here, there won’t be any warships,” Morgan pointed out. “Except theirs.”
“Stand down the snipers immediately. I don’t want any accidents.”
“You need to—”
“I need to have my orders obeyed, Colonel Morgan!”
That might have been too loud for even the personal jammers to completely mask. No one actually looked toward Drakon and Morgan, because everyone in this command center knew better than to appear as if they were aware of any arguments among superiors, but he could sense a stiffening among those nearest, as if they were trying very hard to overcome the natural impulse to glance at the sound of rising voices.
Colonel Malin, normally very sensitive to Drakon’s moods, now seemed totally absorbed in his own work. As much as he disliked Morgan, he also knew better than to let Drakon see him taking any interest or pleasure in her being chewed out.
Drakon took a long, slow breath before speaking again, not looking at Morgan’s furious eyes, gazing out of a face gone stone-cold. “I have my reasons. I always have my reasons for taking a chance on someone.”
He knew she would catch the reference. Morgan herself, judged barely stable enough for duty after a disastrous mission into enigma space, had been turned down by every other commanding officer until Drakon gave her an opportunity.
The fury in Morgan flickered, and her mouth twitched, then she abruptly went back into projecting jaded amusement. “Sometimes that might work out. But I’m one of a kind, General.”
Fortunately, Drakon thought. Could the universe handle more than one Roh Morgan? “Get the snipers stood down and work with Rogero, Kai, and Gaiene to get forces deployed to defend against a landing. We’ve got plenty of time to get people dispersed and dug in. Maybe the enigmas will sit in orbit and bombard us to hell, but if the enigmas want this planet in any shape for them to use, they’ll have to come down here and take it from us. I intend making sure the price they pay will be one they remember.”
Morgan grinned wolfishly and tapped the sidearm holstered at her hip. “If they do come down here, I can look one in the eyes as I nail it.”
“And as it nails you,” Malin said.
“It’s been tried,” Morgan replied, her tone teasing now. “Unsuccessfully.”
Malin didn’t flinch at the reference to an incident on an orbital platform in which his shot had narrowly missed Morgan before nailing an enemy. That incident had looked to Drakon all too much like an attempt to kill Morgan under cover of a firefight, but Malin had insisted otherwise, and the shot had killed a dangerous opponent.
Malin looked back at Morgan for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Perhaps you will die in enigma-controlled space after all.”
“You sound unhappy at the idea.”
“You’re imagining things,” Malin said, then turned to his display.
Drakon studied the display grimly as Morgan left to carry out his orders. Hopefully all of his orders. “Colonel Malin, ensure that none of our personnel are on any kind of alert status near this installation.”
“I’ll check on it, General. If there are any nearby, what am I to do?”
“Ensure that they’re stood down and returned to their units.” If only Morgan weren’t so valuable as an assistant. But then, the more valuable people were, the more difficult they seemed to be to live with. Drakon had seen a number of CEOs who got rid of anyone who was hard to live with and instead surrounded themselves with people who caused no drama or problems at all. No problems at all, except for letting the CEOs in question go down in flames through sheer ineptitude, lack of initiative, lack of imagination, and/or lack of brains. Neither Malin nor Morgan was an easy subordinate, but they had bailed him out more than once in situations where kowtowing, compliant assistants would have been overmatched. “How is internal security going? Have the citizens figured out what’s happening?”
“Word is spreading rapidly,” Malin said, “but so far the citizens are not panicking.” He looked thoughtful. “This may seem an inopportune time to mention the upcoming elections that you and President Iceni have allowed to go forward for low-level political positions—”
“It’s a damned inopportune time,” Drakon broke in roughly.
“But, General, you should be aware that a substantial number of the candidates for office have contacted local appointed authorities and asked if they can assist in keeping the citizens calm.”
Drakon frowned in surprise. “They’re taking responsibility for that? Even though they haven’t been elected yet and may not be elected?”
“Apparently,” Malin said, “many of the individuals running for office have already been playing leadership roles among the citizens though in underground, unauthorized ways. The opportunity to participate in real elections has convinced the people who are unofficial leaders to come out into the open.”
“I should have expected that,” Drakon said. Just how “real” the elections would actually be was a matter he and Iceni were still debating, but even the maximum level of vote manipulation being considered by them was a pale shadow of the total farce that Syndicate elections had been.
But it seemed that offering the citizens a real buy-in to the government, even if a low-level one, had already produced some benefits. Drakon bent his head, thinking. “Make sure we keep track of everyone who offers to help and check back after this is over to see how successful they were.” Odds were that after this was over, they would all be dead, but it never hurt to plan for the future even when that seemed insanely optimistic.
Out of the corner of his eye, Drakon could see Togo backing away from Iceni, an uncharacteristic amount of unhappiness visible on Togo’s normally impassive face. But, unhappy or not, Togo nodded in acknowledgment of some instruction and left the command center.
Iceni looked around, focused on Drakon and walked briskly back over to him. He admired the walk, and not just because Iceni had the sort of walk any man would enjoy watching. She also knew exactly how to pace it. Just fast enough to communicate urgency and control but not so fast as to give the impression of fear or worry about being able to handle whatever happened.
She stopped near him, still radiating apparent confidence but her eyes questioning. “Will you be staying at the command center, General?”
“Yes. Are you going to stay, too, or are you planning on restructuring your business model?” It was an old joke, perhaps as old as the Syndicate Worlds, a semipolite way of asking if someone was preparing to abandon former partners and cut their losses.
Iceni’s gaze on him didn’t waver. “I think I will stay. Restructuring doesn’t seem like the most profitable option at the moment.”
“But staying does?” Drakon asked. “That’s an odd business plan.”
“I’m not running a business,” Iceni said, her voice growing harder. “I’m responsible for . . . many other things. This is the best place to monitor events and pass on orders to Kommodor Marphissa as our warships defend this star system.” Iceni looked toward the display as if the situation shown there were, if not favorable, at least survivable.
Drakon took one step closer and spoke quietly. “Careful. You’re very good, but if you look too confident in the face of this, the workers might think you’re insane.”
“I want them to think I have a secret weapon in reserve,” Iceni replied in the same low tones.
“Do you?”
“No. How about you, General?”
Was she telling the truth? “None that I know of. The only rational thing to do is something neither of us seems to be doing.”
Iceni glanced his way. “I have my reasons. What’s your reason?”
He paused. “We made a deal.”
That actually brought a brief, mocking smile to her lips. “Even you can’t believe that’s your rationale for staying. But, feel free to claim that if you want. Isn’t that what you told me just before we overthrew Syndicate authority here?”
“Something like that,” Drakon conceded. “Even if I bolted right now, getting away wouldn’t be easy or guaranteed. I’d rather not die running away.”
“Having learned what I have about you, that’s a reason I can believe,” Iceni said. “I assume that you have been urged to try to escape anyway?”
“You assume correctly. I think you and I have disappointed some of our subordinates, Gwen.” He let down his guard with that statement, but what the hell. If she was going to betray him, she already had plenty of knowledge of him to use as ammunition.
She smiled again for a moment. “It’s just as well the people who work for us don’t start thinking that they can call the shots, isn’t it?” The smile faded as Iceni pointed at the display with one forefinger. “Where do you think the enigmas will go first?”
“If it were me, I’d head for the hypernet gate. They have to be worried about that now that we know how much damage one of those gates can do when it collapses.” Drakon nodded again, this time slowly. “You know, we do have a secret weapon. Maybe not so secret, but it’s nasty enough that even though we may lose here, we can make sure they don’t win.”
“Collapse the hypernet gate?” Iceni asked as casually as if Drakon had commented on the weather. She raised her hand, tapping one of the bracelets about her wrist. “I can send the command any time I want to.”
“I know.”
“Of course you did. I know that you’re thorough, and finding out whether I could do that would have been an obvious thing to check on before we even started our rebellion.” Iceni lowered her arm. “The command will disable the safe-collapse system and cause a collapse of the gate that generates the maximum-level burst of energy. About point seven nova-scale, I was told by the technicians who did the work.”
There wouldn’t be very much left at Midway if a point seven nova-scale burst of energy rampaged through the star system. The planets might remain, but scoured of their atmospheres and with ravaged surfaces. The star would be badly disrupted. Asteroids and comets would be vaporized or hurled into the darkness between stars.
Nothing human would survive.
But nothing belonging to the enigmas would survive, either.
“Do you think they’d believe us if we threatened them with that?” Drakon asked. “Get out now, or we destroy everything?”
“I’m sure they would believe us capable of carrying out such a threat,” Iceni said. “We are human, after all, and humans do things like that when our backs are to the wall. But the enigmas may be able to stop us from carrying out that threat. The information the Alliance gave us, which implied the gates were originally enigma technology deliberately leaked to us, would mean the enigmas know more about the gates than we do. We’ve learned how to stop the enigmas from collapsing the gates and destroying human-occupied star systems, but they may still have a backdoor means to halt us from doing the same thing.”
It felt odd, Drakon thought. This was a crisis situation. He could see the enigma attack fleet and the Syndicate flotilla as well as the mobile forces under the command of Iceni. Yet the opposing forces were light-hours distant. What he was seeing of the enigmas was what they had been doing four and a half hours ago. And no matter what they were doing now, it would take days for any forces to come into contact. “It can’t hurt to try to bluff the enigmas.” If Iceni was talking about a bluff rather than a cold-blooded plan to ensure mutual destruction if the enigmas were on the verge of wiping out the humans here.
“How far do you think can we trust CEO Boyens?” she asked.
“We both know Boyens.” Drakon held up one hand, the forefinger and thumb barely a centimeter apart. “We can trust him about that far, in my opinion.”
“He does some have some good qualities.”
“And right now those qualities are focused on riding the waves of change rolling across Syndicate-controlled space so that he ends up alive, afloat, and adorned with high rank.”
Iceni cocked her head slightly to one side as she thought. “That leaves room to appeal to his self-interest.”
“It does,” Drakon agreed. “What do we offer him?”
“We will submit this star system to his control without resistance or damage to any facilities as long as he works with us against the enigmas.”
“He’ll never believe it. Boyens knows we’d never keep such an agreement.” Drakon frowned. “But it might be the best offer he can hope for with the enigmas here. Give it a try.”
She made an exasperated sound. “We need more leverage. If only our battleship were operational. If only the battleship we captured at Taroa had been almost completed instead of being under construction.”
“The Free Taroans weren’t happy that we kept it,” Drakon remarked. “Or that we kept the main orbiting docks at Taroa after we took them from the Syndicate.”
“They’ll have to live with it, though they’re dragging their heels on getting us the supplies and workers we need to complete that ship.”
Colonel Malin spoke with careful deference. “Madam President, if I may, what if we gave the battleship and ownership of a significant portion of those orbiting docks to the Free Taroans?”
Iceni had the look of someone who had heard something impossible to understand. “Why would we do that?”
“We need allies. We have Black Jack,” Malin pointed out, “but he is distant, and so his help cannot be counted upon in a crisis. Taroa is close.”
“Do you,” Iceni asked, “have any conception of how much firepower a battleship carries? Of how much military capacity you are suggesting we offer to give away?”
Malin smiled thinly. “I have been on the receiving end of bombardments from Alliance battleships, Madam President. However, the battleship at Taroa has no military capacity and will not for some time. Its hull isn’t complete. It is still not even able to leave the construction dock. Nor am I suggesting that we not ask for anything in return. The Free Taroans are already grateful for the military assistance our ground forces provided in defeating the Syndicate there. They are quibbling over the wording of mutual-defense agreements, though.”
Drakon narrowed his eyes at Malin. “I imagine the Taroans would agree to just about any wording, to just about anything, in order to get their hands on that battleship.”
“And then, rather than drag their heels, they would bend every effort to get the battleship completed and ready to fight as soon as possible,” Malin agreed.
Iceni eyed them both, her eyes now hooded. “An interesting suggestion. We tie Taroa closer to us by playing on Taroa’s desire for that battleship. Taroa invests the necessary resources into getting the battleship operational, thereby saving us the costs and effort. We gain a nearby ally
who is even more grateful to us and committed to providing substantial support with a battleship that will be ready far sooner than if we try to do it all ourselves. A very interesting suggestion, Colonel. What if Taroa decides to betray us?”
Malin smiled. “We have complete access to the ship and will retain some access while it is being finished. There are many safeguards that can be covertly installed in the ship and its systems to ensure that any attempt to use it against us fails.”
Their quiet discussion was interrupted by the subdued chime of an alert from the system display. “There’s a shuttle lifting from this planet,” one of the console operators reported. On the display, a symbol appeared with a graceful arc showing its projected path up into orbit. “It’s not a scheduled lift, and all facilities were informed that lifts are not to occur during this alert period unless authorized from here.”
Iceni’s eyes hardened. “Who is aboard this shuttle?”
“They are reporting a routine cargo lift, normal crew, no passengers,” another operator replied.
“A routine lift? When routine lifts have been ordered suspended?” Before Iceni could ask anything else, Togo had appeared again by her side.
“A regional governor cannot be accounted for,” Togo said dispassionately. “Neither can his mistress. An industrial executive and her boyfriend are also not able to be located using planetary surveillance systems.”
“Governor Beadal?” Iceni asked in a voice grown cold.
“Yes, Madam President. Perhaps he became aware of the investigations closing in on him, or perhaps he simply seeks to flee the enigmas despite orders for all executives to remain in place. The industrial executive is Magira Fillis, heavy construction office.”
“She won’t be missed.” Iceni had her eyes on the track of the shuttle as it strained to clear atmosphere. “And Regional Governor Beadal’s failures as an administrator leave me no reason to overlook his petty corruption and violation of a directive from me. But I hate to lose a shuttle.”
Colonel Malin spoke up. “It’s not ours. The shuttle is from one of the merchant ships in orbit. The ship is flagged to the Xavandi Group, but the executive in command of the freighter claims that it has gone rogue and is operating independently.”