Drakon smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the sort of smile that gave Iceni a pleasant shiver up her back. “I am angry. But anger makes me more focused. It makes me want to ensure I make the right moves, that I get whoever is responsible, and not whoever makes a handy scapegoat.”
“That’s a nice talent,” Iceni approved. “I should have realized that about you before now. You’ve shown plenty of signs of it before this. No wonder you managed to survive the Syndicate. The more they screwed with you, the more focused you must have gotten.”
“That’s right.” He looked grim once more, then nodded upward. “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to take up residence aboard the Midway sooner rather than later. Not that I want you up in space instead of down here with me, but if you’re on that battleship it will be a lot harder for anyone to get to you.”
“It’s supposed to be impossible for anyone to get to me here,” Iceni said, her voice getting sharp again. “But I see your point. I’ll miss seeing you in person, but I can handle my presidential tasks from orbit, and it will make it easier to oversee the preparations for the expedition to Iwa if I am up there.” She bent a crooked smile at Drakon. “You tried to talk me out of going to Iwa, and now here you are urging me to get going. Is that what you do with all of your lovers?”
“No,” he said.
“I’m just teasing, Artur. To help calm myself. Bear with me.” Iceni thought about what it would take to move herself up to the battleship today, but then another thought intruded. “What if my intruder goes after you once I’m no longer available?”
“I’m hoping he or she does,” Drakon said, showing that smile again.
She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t underestimate the danger.”
“I’m not. Like you said, getting through your defenses to this point was impressive. But I have a few tricks even he, or she, might have trouble with.”
Iceni found herself smiling, feeling calmer in the face of Drakon’s steady assurance. “Good. When I get back from Iwa, let’s make this relationship formal.”
“Limited time or open-ended?” Drakon asked.
“Open-ended, if you’re good with that.” She kept her voice casual, but felt tension inside as she waited for his answer.
“Yeah,” Drakon agreed. “I’m good with that. When you get back.”
“It’s a date.” After he had left to personally speak with Malin, Iceni sat at her desk for a while, pretending to work. It had been important not to hurry to make the commitment before she left, to not project any image to the citizens of appearing to fear whether or not she would return. She could tell that Artur had understood that. But it now left her worried whether, with her promise to handle that important task when she returned, she had just jinxed both of them.
* * *
AS much as he disliked meetings, Drakon realized that occasionally there was no substitute for them. As long as whoever was in charge kept the discussion moving and worthwhile instead of meandering into endless blind alleys.
And this time his brigade commanders had asked for the meeting, which hopefully meant that someone had thought of something useful.
To Drakon’s surprise, it was Colonel Kai who led the discussion about plans for Iwa. But Kai soon provided the reasons for his role.
“After careful thought,” Kai said, as if he did not always think carefully before acting and speaking, “I believe that a certain tactic employed during the second and third decades of the war with the Alliance might give us insight into how the enigmas might defend their installation.”
Kai brought up a virtual window that was visible to not only Geary and Colonel Gozen, but also to the other two brigade commanders who like Kai were attending this briefing virtually. The relatively tiny distances involved on the surface of a planet meant that there were none of the time delays that Drakon had heard bedeviled virtual conferences in space. “At the time,” Kai explained, “the Alliance was rebounding from initial setbacks and threatening to seize Syndicate installations in several star systems. Having bled out its own ground forces in a series of futile offensives, the Syndicate could not adequately defend those installations. Therefore, a policy of calibrated self-destruction was adopted.”
Drakon studied the new window and the images on it. “The installations were wired for self-destruct, but not so the whole place would blow at once.”
“Yes, sir,” Kai said. “As Alliance forces seized one portion of the installation, that portion was destroyed. When another portion was captured, it too was destroyed.”
“Along with any Syndicate ground forces or citizens left in those portions?” Colonel Safir asked in amazement. “That’s harsh even by Syndicate standards.”
“But it worked,” Kai said. “The Alliance realized what was happening after suffering serious casualties every time a newly captured or almost-captured area blew up around the victorious Alliance forces. The Alliance had to pause its offensives in various star systems in order to develop new attack methods and tactics.”
“But the Syndicate stopped using that tactic when its own ground forces were able to get back up to strength?” Drakon asked.
“Yes, sir. By accessing highly classified files previously restricted to snake CEOs, I was able to determine that the negative morale aspects of the tactic were threatening to undermine Syndicate defenses as badly as the lack of ground forces had.”
Colonel Rogero nodded, smiling bitterly. “Of course. Once the soldiers figured out that the place they were defending might blow up at any moment, instead of standing their ground they started retreating as fast as possible to avoid being killed by their own side. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” Colonel Kai said. “However, from what Black Jack’s fleet saw of the enigmas, individual enigmas rarely appeared to balk at suicidal tactics aimed at protecting their privacy. That would make this a plausible tactic for them, and, again according to Black Jack’s reporting as well as our own observations of the aftermath of space battles in this star system, the enigmas have a tendency to employ self-destruction to avoid any compromise of their secrets.”
“Good job,” Drakon said. “I bet you’re right. Ground tactics built around blowing up an entire installation as soon as it was attacked would just lead to quick defeat of the enigma race. But holding out until the entire installation was nearly occupied would give away too many of their secrets. Blowing up their bases in segments would allow them to tailor the self-destructs to match the situation, and discourage any attempts to capture those bases.”
“For those reasons, General,” Kai added, “I believe it is safe to assume that the enigmas will have developed a flexible self-destruct capability in their ground installations that can be tailored to meet requirements. They can probably quickly and easily designate exactly which portions of the installation to destroy and immediately carry out the task.”
Drakon sat back, one hand to his mouth, still looking at the old diagrams and thinking. “How do we beat that?”
“If we simply want to destroy the installation piece by piece,” Kai suggested, “then send in robotic scouts. We would need a lot of scouts, though, as we must assume the enigma defenses would inflict serious losses on anything trying to enter their base.”
“We don’t have that many, not even close, and the enigmas must have watched humans try to employ robotic combatants often enough to have seen all of the countertactics the Syndicate and the Alliance have used over the last century,” Drakon said. “The command and control links are too easily severed by jamming, or intruded upon.”
“The enigmas have demonstrated extensive capabilities to mess with software on our warships,” Safir said. “They can surely do the same to our battle armor and other ground forces software.”
Drakon stared at her as Safir’s words penetrated and he realized the implications. “Where is the armor those three soldiers fr
om Iwa were wearing?”
“Still on that ship, I think,” Rogero offered. “It was going to be brought down on a routine shuttle run.”
“The code monkeys on that ship can scan for enigma quantum-coded worms in their own software, right? Did they do any scans like that of the battle armor software that came off Iwa?”
Everyone else finally understood. “Our system software might also already be laced with enigma worms?” Safir said, horrified. “If we went into a fight against them like that—”
“They’d wipe us out,” Rogero finished. “Maybe that’s what happened to that unit the three soldiers were in. Maybe enigma worms provided the long-range targeting. But then how did going passive save the three soldiers from death?”
“Let’s see if we can find out,” Drakon said. “Colonel Kai, what tactics did the Alliance ultimately develop to use against the Syndicate’s calibrated self-destruction?”
Kai spread his hands. “I could find nothing in the files available to us that speaks specifically about Alliance countertactics. There are just general statements that such tactics had been or were being developed.”
Drakon turned to Gozen, who had been sitting silently to one side of Drakon’s office, listening to the discussion. “Colonel Gozen, take the lead on working with the space apes to check the armor of those three soldiers for enigma worms. Let me know if any are found. If that battle armor is infected, we’ll have to check every set of armor and every system down here as well.” He turned back to face the others. “Colonel Rogero, check with Captain Bradamont on whether she ever heard anything about Alliance countertactics against that calibrated self-destruction. I’m not expecting her to have ever heard of it, but maybe somebody mentioned something.”
“Would Black Jack know anything about it?” Safir asked. “He’s from back around then, right?”
Rogero shook his head. “Black Jack was lost in survival sleep after one of the first battles of the war. All he knows of the first decades of the war is what he might have read in old reports. But I will ask Captain Bradamont.”
Hunching forward over his desk, resting his arms on the surface, Drakon eyed his colonels. “This job keeps getting more difficult. I know that can be discouraging. However, we have never met a challenge we could not overcome. I have the utmost confidence that together we will figure out a way to kick the enigmas out of their underground base at Iwa and not lose our own butts in the process.”
When Gozen reported back two hours later, her eyes were wide. “Those space code monkeys say the three sets of battle armor from Iwa are pumped full of so many enigma worms that they feel like fishing bait buckets.”
“Great.” Drakon considered his first response, then repeated it in more enthusiastic tones. “Great. We’ve discovered some of the enigma weapons that would have been used against us. Those warships know how to scrub out all the worms, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Gozen said. “It’s sort of weird. Instead of anti-malware software like we’re familiar with, the stuff the warships use scans the operating software for stable, persistent patterns at the quantum level, and if it finds any it cancels out the patterns using quantum wave interference. Whoever thought of that was a genius.”
“So I understand,” Drakon said. “She was an Alliance battle cruiser commander. Someone whom Captain Bradamont knew.”
“Knew?” Gozen asked.
“She died at Varandal, fighting our own Reserve Flotilla.”
Gozen shook her head. “More waste. How much human potential did that war grind into dust? And our side, the Syndicate, killed the person who might provide a critical boost to our efforts to beat the enigmas?”
“Yeah,” Drakon said. There really wasn’t any need for more words than that.
She sighed, then saluted him. “I’ve already arranged through Colonel Malin for warship code monkeys to come down here and run our people through the drills so they can scan all of our stuff. Colonel Malin gave it priority from the president’s office, so it should only take three hours for the shuttles to get those monkeys to us, then an estimated hour longer for scans to start.”
“Good.”
“And Colonel Rogero asked me to tell you that when he asked Captain Bradamont about an obscure aspect of Alliance ground forces tactics eighty years ago he received in reply a quote blank stare unquote.”
Drakon couldn’t suppress a grin. “That’s what I expected. Anything else?”
“The docs say that one of those three soldiers from Iwa is broke too bad for him to get back into combat condition,” Gozen reported. “From what they got out of him and the other two, his unit had been chewed up fighting a rebellion-suppression mission at some star about two dozen jumps from here. Instead of sending the survivors in for treatment, the Syndicate broke up the unit and sent the survivors out piecemeal as replacements to units that needed the warm bodies.”
His smile vanished as Drakon clenched a fist. “Already nearly broken and the Syndicate just sent him out again, without even the support his former comrades could have offered. He’s the one who couldn’t talk to me? I suspected something like that. Tell the docs to see what they can do and to take their time. Maybe they can pump enough happy pills into him to help him be functional again in some non-combat job.”
“Already told them that, sir.”
“What about the other two?”
“Not nearly as settled as they ought to be,” Gozen said. “But good enough if you want to take them along with the assault.”
“I’ll get a final appraisal on them just prior to the assault force leaving before I make that decision,” Drakon said. “You do realize that I am not going to Iwa?”
Gozen nodded. “Permission to ask a question, sir?”
“In my headquarters, officers do not have to ask permission to ask questions, Colonel. What is it?”
“Why not, sir? It’s going to be one tough fight, and, well, you’re pretty damned good.”
“Thank you,” Drakon said dryly. “I’m not happy about it. But President Iceni has to go to Iwa. Between you and me, I’m not happy about that, either. That means I have to stay at Midway as leader of the government in the president’s absence.”
Gozen grinned. “Is that going to make me some kind of high-ranking government official who can take her pick of any guy who catches her eye?”
“No, it’s going to make you a colonel with a smart mouth, which is what you already are,” Drakon added. “Let me know what we get from the software scans of our systems.”
* * *
ONE of the things that Drakon had vowed never to do if somehow he ended up in charge of everything was to rush through preparations for an operation in the name of sticking to a timeline, even when critical questions remained unanswered. Critical questions such as just how his ground forces would take an installation very deep beneath the surface of a planet and defended by fanatical paranoids willing to die in massive explosions rather than permit a glimpse of themselves.
But this operation was being driven as much by the need to lure Imallye into an attack at Iwa as it was by the need to cut off at the roots the attempt by the enigmas to establish a base inside human-occupied space.
So it was that Drakon found himself riding in an armored VIP limo toward the spaceport. Gwen Iceni, who had always sat on the opposite side of the vehicle, now sat with him. On the virtual windows on both sides of the limo, crowds of citizens could be seen lining the streets.
“They look worried,” Drakon said.
“I noticed.” She tapped the control to talk to the driver. “Stop the vehicle. The general and I will be walking from here.”
“Walking?” Drakon said.
“Yes. The people have to see me confident as I go off to fight the ogre. Or the dragon. Or whatever we want to characterize Imallye and the enigmas as. And we want to be absolutely certain that Imallye knows that I
am going to Iwa. The best way to do that is to make a big event out of it and announce our intentions to everyone, as if we were totally confident of the outcome. So you and I will walk and wave and look completely certain of victory as we proceed on foot the rest of the way to the spaceport.” She gave him a sad look. “This will be our last private moment. Before I return. Take care of yourself, Artur.”
“You, too.” He found himself tongue-tied again, so Drakon just held her very tightly for a long moment before Iceni sighed, broke away, and released the locks on the armored doors to the limo’s passenger compartment.
The people cheered when Iceni stepped into sight. She smiled and waved, offered her hand to Drakon as he also left the limo, and the cheers redoubled.
Bodyguards got out of the armored escort vehicles ahead and behind them on the road, but Iceni gestured to them all to maintain their current distance rather than closing in tightly around her and Drakon as the bodyguards normally would have done.
The several blocks left to be walked to the spaceport were nothing in terms of physical exertion, but Drakon found them stressful all the same. The need to conceal his worries for Gwen, and the need to constantly scan the masses of citizens for anyone who looked dangerous, wore at him.
But it was heartening to see that Gwen had been right about how much the people had taken her to heart as their leader. Mixed in with the approval was clear concern for her welfare.
At the entrance to the spaceport, where security loomed to block the crowds from entering, Iceni stepped up onto a security barrier and turned to face the crowd that filled the entire street behind them. “Thank you!” she cried loudly. “I am going to Iwa to personally deal with threats to this star system. To deal with threats to you. Our warships will depart within a few weeks, with me leading them. I will leave this star system in the capable and dependable hands of my partner, General Artur Drakon, who has always been my close coworker in liberating this star system from the greedy grasp of the Syndicate and in making it a place that is for the people!”