“Association?” the young man from Ulindi asked. “Is that what it would be called?”
“No.” Iceni smiled, tapping another control. An image appeared next to her, showing a raptorlike bird with spread wings rising from the atomic fires of a star. “We thought we would call it the Phoenix Stars. Strong. Indestructible. Rising from the ashes of what was before.”
The Syndicate had never been that big on symbolism. It got in the way of efficiency, it cost extra money, and anyway workers lacked the imagination to understand symbols, or so the bureaucracy thought. They produced crests and insignias for ships and ground forces, but only because that helped identify them. The actual images used, and any accompanying mottos, were always what a long chain of bureaucrats thought looked good. Everyone mocked the resulting symbols except for those who had generated them.
It had never been a smart way of doing business, but it was far from the stupidest thing done in the name of uniformity, conformity, efficiency, and of course in hopes of saving a little money. “Small cuts can make for big costs,” one of Iceni’s mentors had once explained, and she had never forgotten that. She had also never forgotten how effective well-chosen symbols could be.
No one said anything, but the eager smiles on the faces of the star system representatives told Iceni what she needed to know. This symbol could rally star systems to a single cause.
“Send our offer to your star systems,” Iceni directed. “I’ll provide you with the proposed text for the agreement of association. Get formal answers from them and be sure they know of the threat from the enigmas. In light of the urgency of the information about the enigmas, we do not want you to have to wait for transport to your own star systems. We will provide each of you with a Hunter-Killer from our mobile forces for transport for yourself or whoever else you want to convey the message.” The temporary loss of the use of four HuKs was not a small price, but once again the symbolism was worth the cost.
She looked at the representative from Ulindi. “There will be an extra passenger going to your star system.”
“An extra passenger?”
“Another survivor from the old Reserve Flotilla. He wants to emigrate to Ulindi. Perhaps he will be able to render some assistance to you in organizing things there.”
* * *
“A freighter arrived from Ulindi today,” Colonel Malin reported. “We had an agent aboard it who reported that no detections of enigma ships had been seen at Ulindi before the freighter jumped for Midway.”
Iceni nodded shortly, glaring at her desk. “But nothing from Taroa yet?”
“No, Madam President.”
“If the enigmas hit us again, we may be wishing the Syndicate was back. I’m getting every standard report on events in this region of space. I want you to ensure that I see any important information that doesn’t make its way into those reports because someone decided it wasn’t worth reporting.”
“Yes, Madam President. I did discover some more information about Granaile Imallye which was buried in captured Syndicate files. She is operating under her real name, but once was more widely known by a false one.”
“A pirate using an alias?” Iceni remarked sarcastically. “What an amazing development.”
“She once called herself O’Malley. As best I can determine, she originally came from Conall Star System and that was the name she used there.”
Iceni realized she had stopped breathing, and slowly inhaled. “A woman who went by the name O’Malley? From Conall? How certain are you of that?”
Malin was watching her closely. “Not absolutely certain, but at least eighty percent certain. Do you know of her?”
“Possibly,” Iceni said, trying to sound dismissive of the news. “I once knew a woman who used that name, after an ancient pirate she admired.” Could it be her? There were surely many, many real O’Malleys in that star system. But if it was her . . .
Iceni needed something to distract Malin from this topic, and fortunately she had just the thing right at hand. “You were out for a while last night, Colonel.”
“Yes, Madam President.” If Malin had noted her change of the subject, or was surprised that Iceni had been able to discover he had been unaccounted for during the evening, he didn’t show any traces of either.
“Did you find anything about Togo?”
“No, Madam President. There has been no trace of Togo. The security forces have found nothing, and system defense experts have not identified any attempted intrusions that could be sourced to him.”
“Togo is more than capable of making his intrusion attempts look like someone else’s work,” Iceni told Malin. “Look at all of the intrusion attempts being detected and see if any pattern exists that could identify a target for Togo’s actions.”
“That effort is already under way,” Malin said. “There has been a slight uptick in attempts against your security systems and those of General Drakon, but the increase is within normal variation levels. No successful intrusions have been detected.”
“If Togo manages an intrusion, you won’t detect it,” Iceni said. “I need to know what he is trying to do. Have you discovered anything else?”
This time, Malin paused. “I found indications that may lead me closer to a target General Drakon assigned me.”
“Which target?”
“His daughter.”
Iceni fought down an angry response before speaking again. She hated being reminded of the girl, and hated that she felt that way. “I was told that Colonel Morgan had placed safeguards around wherever the baby is, and if anyone gets too close the child will die.”
“As near as I can determine, what Morgan said is true,” Malin said.
“And what were General Drakon’s orders in that regard?” Iceni pressed.
“He told me he did not want his daughter to die.”
Iceni leaned back in her chair, eyeing Malin. “Suppose I told you to press on in ways that would trigger those safeguards and ensure the child’s death. Would you do it?”
Malin did not reveal any emotion as he shook his head. “No, Madam President. I could not obey such an order.”
“Why not?”
“Because I believe that it would be a mistake to betray General Drakon’s wishes in the matter. He would regard it as a very serious breach of trust. It might sabotage his cooperation with you in the governing of, and defense of, Midway.”
“And?” Iceni asked.
“There is no other reason, Madam President.”
“No other reason? The girl is your half sister. You refused to kill Morgan for me, without revealing to me that the reason was because she was your mother. Yet now you feel no obligation toward a sister?”
Malin started to speak, paused, then tried again. “We all die, Madam President. Our sacrifices can build important things, great legacies, if we do not hesitate to do what we must.”
He sounded sincere. Iceni nodded slowly, then waved a dismissal at Malin. She didn’t want to risk anything in her voice giving away how much his reply had disturbed her.
Too many of the people working for her and Drakon were still caught in the Syndicate belief that the ends always justified the means. Worse, they were making their own decisions about means and ends.
Means don’t always produce the ends we want. Like “O’Malley” from Conall. Damn. It must be her. And I sent Kommodor Marphissa and Manticore out there to deal with her. The last I had heard, that girl had taken after her father. Of all the pirates out there, why did she have to sail into my region of space? That mess with her father wasn’t my worst mistake, but bad enough.
My worst mistake might be pursuing his own goals in this city right now.
Iceni wondered what ends Togo was working toward, and what means he was willing to use.
CHAPTER FOUR
CELIA Gozen had fallen into bed, worn-out from work, only tak
ing 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 pl
ant?”
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?”