“What the hell do I do about this?” Iceni demanded. “How did those Dancers get to Kane? How did they get beyond Kane without passing through Midway after coming in through the jump point from Pele?” Pele had been taken by the enigmas a generation ago, and Black Jack’s fleet had been the only human presence to visit that star since then. “We have the only jump point in human space the alien races can access.”
Drakon sat relaxed in a chair, watching Iceni. Even at times like this he liked watching her walk, because there was an assurance and a grace to Iceni’s stride that naturally generated confidence. “They must have a way of getting to other jump points.”
“That is impossible, Artur,” Iceni insisted, softening her dismissal of his words by using his first name.
“Is there another explanation, Gwen?” he asked, doing the same to avoid seeming to confront her reasoning. “As far as we know, it’s impossible for the Dancers to access other jump points in human space. But here they are, and they didn’t come through the jump point from Pele.”
Iceni stopped, gazing toward the image of the beach where the waves constantly rose and receded on the sand. “Yes. It’s impossible for us. We have little idea of what the Dancers could do.”
“Do you think Black Jack would have told us if he knew the Dancers could do that?” Drakon asked.
“I don’t know. I think so. He would know how that knowledge would complicate our defense of this region of space against the enigmas. Because if the Dancers could jump to other stars, then the enigmas might also—” She broke off, turning her head to stare at Drakon. “Watch different stars. Are the Dancers telling us that the enigmas might attack somewhere other than Midway?”
“I hope not,” Drakon said. “Am I right that our warships are barely adequate to defend Midway itself?”
“Our warships are not nearly enough to be sure of defending Midway,” Iceni replied, her voice sharp with anxiety. “Especially when we have to worry about the Syndicate Worlds making another attack on us as well. The Syndicate won’t give up just because we’ve beaten them badly at Ulindi.”
The comm alert on Iceni’s desk buzzed urgently. She tapped a control. “Yes?”
The image of a watch-stander at the planetary command center appeared before her. “Madam President, we have just seen that Pele and HTTU 458 have returned through the jump point to Iwa. Kapitan Kontos reports a successful completion of his mission. He attached to his arrival report a special annex for your eyes only.”
“Send it on,” Iceni said, then waited a second for the image of Kontos to replace that of the watch-stander. She listened to the brief report of events at Iwa, her expression not betraying her reaction, then looked at Drakon. “An enigma ship detection at Iwa. It looks like you guessed right.”
Drakon grimaced, automatically mentally running through options. “I wish I hadn’t been right. We could take Iwa easily enough. A single company of Syndicate ground forces wouldn’t last five seconds against a battalion of my soldiers, even if the Syndicate ground forces put up a decent fight, which I wouldn’t do if I were in their position. But how could we afford to position enough of our warships at Iwa to stop an enigma attack and also provide protection to Midway?”
Iceni called up a display showing the nearby stars, the images floating near her desk. “You have much more military experience than I do. If you were the enigmas, what would you do?”
Drakon studied the stars, rubbing his chin as he thought and not liking what his conclusions were. “If I were an enigma? It would depend how much I knew about what was available to humans to defend Midway and Iwa. How much do the enigmas know?”
“We’ve had obvious reconnaissance visits,” Iceni said, gesturing toward the symbol for the jump point at which ships coming from Pele would arrive. “A single enigma ship jumps in, collects a snapshot of everything that can be seen in this star system, then jumps out within less than a minute. That detection at Iwa could have been the same thing.” She brightened. “And they happened to stop by while there was a battle cruiser at Iwa, and a troop transport that for all the enigmas knew could be bringing reinforcements for the garrison.”
“What if the enigmas recognized the ships as ours and the ownership of Iwa as still Midway’s?” Drakon asked, not willing to make an overly optimistic assessment.
Iceni narrowed her eyes at the display. “It would look like an invasion force, wouldn’t it?” she said. “The enigmas would probably interpret what they saw as signs that we have already conquered Iwa.” She sighed. “Is that good or bad?”
“In terms of how the enigmas see it?” Drakon asked. “Damned if I know. Assuming the enigmas think we now own Iwa, and assuming they can reach Iwa with an attack, then if I were them I’d try to hit Iwa first. The enigmas can count, and they must know that we don’t have enough warships to garrison both star systems in strength. Take Iwa, where they haven’t been thrown back twice like they have here, then hit Midway again, maybe with forces arriving from both Pele and Iwa.”
She nodded. “If we spread our forces out, we’ll be weak everywhere. But if we concentrate our forces here, the enigmas will walk in and take Iwa whether we own it or not. This stinks.” Iceni looked around, seeking someone, then sat down with another sigh. “I still keep expecting him to be here whenever I need him.”
Drakon fought down a reflexive disquiet and tried to sound neutral as he answered. “Your former assistant?”
“Yes.” From the look Iceni gave him, Drakon hadn’t been nearly good enough at hiding his feelings. “We still don’t know what happened to Mehmet Togo, Artur. Yes, he might have betrayed me then bolted. Or he might have been taken by enemies. We don’t know,” she repeated.
“He wouldn’t have been easy to take,” Drakon said carefully. “Can I ask you something?”
“No.” But then she smiled slightly. “Go ahead.”
“Why don’t you think that I or one of my people took out Togo?”
She took a long moment to answer, her gaze on the beach again. “Because you wouldn’t do that to me. And if one of your people did it . . . you would have found out and told me.”
Drakon grimaced again, feeling a mix of anger and unhappiness. “You know how badly I misjudged how much I knew about my two closest assistants,” he said.
Iceni nodded, still watching the waves. “Colonel Morgan died on Ulindi.”
“I won’t be sure of that until I see a body, and even then I’ll wonder if she cloned one to cover her going deep without my knowledge. Apparently, you still trust Colonel Malin.”
Another nod. “As much as I trust anyone.” Another pause. “Except you.”
He stared at her, wondering why Iceni had said something that Syndicate CEO training and experience insisted no one should ever say. “Um . . . in that case . . . since you need a capable assistant whom you trust, I can lend you Colonel Malin.”
Iceni laughed, turning her head to look at him again. “Make your agent my personal assistant, privy to all my secrets and actions? Exactly how much do you think I trust you?”
“It’s not about that,” Drakon said, wondering if he was telling the truth. “It’s about how much you trust Malin.”
“I see.” Iceni still looked amused. “And with both Colonel Morgan and Colonel Malin gone, who do you have for a personal assistant?”
“Colonel Gozen.”
Iceni’s eyebrows rose. She reached out, tapping a few commands, then read from the data that appeared before her. “Former Syndicate Executive Third Class Celia Gozen? Recently captured at Ulindi?”
“She wasn’t really captured,” Drakon said defensively. “She’s a fine soldier. And she has been extremely well screened, a process overseen by Colonel Malin.”
“I see.” Iceni gave Drakon an arch look. “And how does Colonel Malin feel about the elevation of Colonel Gozen to such a position?”
“He?
??s unhappy,” Drakon said. “Which is why I know that if he’d found a speck of information indicating that Gozen was problematic he would have pounced on it.”
Iceni leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk, gazing skeptically at Drakon. “But still, Artur. Someone that new getting that level of trust?”
“I have a gut feeling,” he said, knowing that he sounded even more defensive and hoping that Iceni wouldn’t bring up his misplaced trust in Colonel Morgan.
She did, but not in the way Drakon expected. “Hmmm. Even the very-probably-late Colonel Morgan didn’t betray you in her own eyes. She thought she was helping you. What is it that makes you want Gozen so close to you?”
Drakon shrugged. “She’s . . . blunt. She’s usually properly respectful, but she has no difficulty telling me when she thinks I’m wrong or that I’ve missed something. And unless I very much have misjudged her, she cares about the people who work for her more than she cares about the ego of her boss. Someone in my position needs someone like that, and people like that are very hard to find.”
Iceni’s eyebrows went up again. “She was still an executive in the Syndicate ground forces? Why hadn’t Gozen already been executed or sent to a labor camp for telling her boss when she thought the boss was wrong?”
“She had a patron.” Drakon waved toward the information Iceni had displayed. “Her uncle, in the same unit. I’m sure you know all about it.”
“Yes.” Iceni rested her chin on her hand as she looked at Drakon. “I also know that you could have raised the same objections when I quickly promoted Kapitan Mercia to command of the Midway, the battleship that is by far our most powerful warship. But you didn’t. You trusted my judgment. So I shall trust yours. I don’t really have any right to pass judgment on your personal staff, so I appreciate your obvious willingness to discuss the matter with me.”
“You’re using that word ‘trust’ an awful lot,” Drakon pointed out, grinning with relief.
“I know. I’m going to turn into some bleeding-heart Alliance officer, aren’t I? Boasting about my honor and proclaiming my virtue over those scum-of-the-earth Syndics.” Iceni looked down for a moment, her expression softening into something like sorrow. “We were, weren’t we? Scum of the earth. The things I did to survive, to reach CEO rank—”
“We both did a lot of things that we don’t like to remember,” Drakon broke in. “We did it to survive, so we could someday do something better. And we are doing something better.”
“Something better, hell. I wanted to be in a position so strong I couldn’t be threatened, and powerful enough that I’d be able to avenge myself on some of those who had harmed me. That’s what it was about, Artur.” She used her arms to lever herself back to her feet. “That’s the past. Today, we have a chance at something better, and a star system to defend. I want a meeting with more minds than yours and mine. Agreed? You, me, Captain Bradamont, your Colonel Malin . . . and Colonel Gozen. Anyone else?”
“What about your Kommodor?”
Iceni glanced at the display. “Manticore is a light hour from us. Marphissa couldn’t contribute in any meaningful way with that sort of time delay. Midway and Pele are even farther away.” She paused in midturn, shaking her head. “I was about to order Togo to set up the meeting. He was with me for a long time.”
Drakon nodded, standing as well. “I’ll have Gozen set it up. It’ll be a nice test of how well she functions off the battlefield.” His eyes went back to the display as well, focusing on the images of the Dancer ships. He had once heard old legends about certain birds whose arrival was thought to warn of imminent battle or other woes, and he wondered if those battle-scarred alien ships would prove to be such heralds as well.
* * *
GWEN Iceni left the protection of her heavily armored VIP limo, moving between twin lines of ground forces soldiers in battle armor who formed nearly solid walls of protection for her. The security measure irked her, so when she reached the door to the meeting facility she paused to look at the female soldier in an obviously new uniform who was standing at attention. “Colonel Gozen?”
“Yes, Madam C—” Gozen bit off the word just a moment too late.
Iceni smiled without any humor. “A lifetime’s habits are not easily forgotten, but you need to work on that. It is Madam President, and I am uncomfortable with a degree of personal security more appropriate to a Syndicate CEO.”
Gozen had the look of someone who had just been told that gravity made things float away. In her experience, of course, CEOs always insisted on every perk they could muster as a means of displaying their importance relative to the citizens and other CEOs. “Ma’am?”
“It’s simple,” Iceni said. “I’m not a Syndicate CEO.” Not anymore, anyway. “I don’t play by Syndicate CEO rules, where the more security you get the more important you must be. I don’t fear the citizens of this world.” She made sure to say that last loudly enough to carry, because every word spoken in public had to be used to reinforce the message Iceni wanted to send. Of course, the statement wasn’t strictly true. Some of those citizens were surely gunning for her, and the enthusiasm of the mob scared her since Iceni knew how easily mobs could shift. But most of the citizens of Midway now appeared to genuinely want her as their leader and were not only willing to follow her lead but happy to do so. “I have my bodyguards. That’s enough.”
Gozen’s eyes went to the heavily armored limo, but she was smart enough not to make any comment about Iceni’s chosen mode of transportation. “I understand and will comply.”
“You’re on exceptionally good behavior today, aren’t you?” Iceni commented in a low voice as she walked past Gozen and into the building where the meeting would take place. There had been a time when she and Drakon would only meet at neutral locations, directly controlled by neither of them, but the time for those games had passed. Especially since the fortified structures that made up Drakon’s headquarters complex offered a comforting sense of security.
Everyone else was already in the conference room. Iceni noticed Gozen avoiding looking at Captain Bradamont, whose Alliance uniform had been a symbol of the enemy for a century, and tried again to get a rise out of her. “You’re not used to this sort of company, Colonel Gozen?”
Gozen gave Iceni a bland look in reply. “I’m still getting my feet under me, Madam President. Thank you for your concern.”
Iceni raised both eyebrows at her. “You are good at borderline insubordination, aren’t you? How did even your uncle manage to keep you out of labor camp?”
“He was an exceptional man,” Gozen said.
“Were you able to find which labor camp he was sent to?” Iceni pressed. “We still have covert contacts within the Syndicate that we might be able to use.”
Gozen shook her head, revealing no emotion as she spoke. “I’m sorry, Madam President, but records that were captured after the fall of Ulindi revealed that my uncle had been summarily executed when the snakes took over command of my old unit.”
Damn. The game of assessing Gozen had just turned dark. That too easily happened when discussing history within the Syndicate. “I’m sorry,” Iceni said.
Her sincerity must have come through, because Gozen let a flash of surprise show, then smiled briefly but genuinely. “Thank you, Madam President.”
Iceni and Drakon took their seats on opposite sides of the table out of habit, Bradamont sitting next to Iceni, Gozen and Malin sitting on either side of Drakon. “I want candid discussion,” Iceni began. “We’re facing some unprecedented issues that require an open exchange of ideas.”
Drakon nodded, then gestured toward Malin. “Before we do anything else, Colonel Malin has something to report.”
Iceni turned a questioning gaze on Malin. As far as she knew, Drakon still wasn’t aware that Malin had been a covert source for her for some time. But Drakon knew that she had more trust in Malin than she did in oth
ers. Had Drakon figured out the reasons for that? Assigning Malin to her would limit Malin’s ability to find out what was going on in Drakon’s headquarters. Not that Iceni worried much about that anymore, especially with the fanatical and unpredictable Colonel Morgan out of the picture.
Malin looked as icily correct as usual, sitting straight in his chair, hands clasped before him, speaking with cool dispassion. “Last night there was an explosion in the city.”
Iceni nodded. “Cause unknown, I was told. Possibly organized-crime related. Do you know more about it?”
“Yes, Madam President. I was pursuing a suspect. The suspect realized I was trailing him or her, and attempted to kill me with an explosive planted along their path.”
“I see.” Iceni glanced at Drakon. “I have the impression that Colonel Malin is exceptionally skilled at tracking suspects.” Actually, she knew it for certain, but it wouldn’t do to betray that knowledge.
“He’s very good,” Drakon confirmed.
“Whoever I was tracking was better,” Malin said, still betraying no emotion that would reveal how he felt about that. “That is of particular concern. I only know of two people on Midway who could have moved so stealthily, detected my own pursuit, and nearly taken me out with an ambush. One was Colonel Morgan. It was not her last night. I would have been able to tell.”
“Who is the other?” Iceni asked, feeling her gut tighten because she already knew what the answer must be.
“Your missing personal assistant, Madam President. Mehmet Togo.”