“Kommodor, our landing party has established contact with surviving crew members of 743,” Hawk’s commanding officer reported.
Marphissa glanced at the small virtual window that now showed the leader of the landing party facing a group of transport crew members in survival suits.
“All of the snakes aboard 743 are dead,” Hawk continued. “Our fire killed everyone on the bridge, and while we were destroying the bridge, the crew members remaining aboard were able to get into the engineering control compartment and finish off the two snakes there. But they tell me the engineering controls are wrecked, and the entire main propulsion section aft was torn up when we shot out their main propulsion units.”
Great. Marphissa glowered at the image of HTTU 743. I have a big ship with no bridge and no engineering controls clumping its way toward the jump point for Kiribati. “I need your estimate as to whether it would be worth the trouble to take that hulk in tow and get it back to the planet with us.”
She could tell the question had been relayed when every surviving crew member of the transport that she could see began shaking their heads with varying degrees of violence.
“They all say no, Kommodor. I agree,” Hawk’s commanding officer added. “From what our landing parties have seen, the 743 really is a hulk. The snakes burned out every system and circuit they could before they died, the hull structure took damage from our firing on it, and the power core is shaky because of something the snakes did to its controls.”
The other issues could have gone either way, but not a power core that was less than stable. “I want that power core rigged to self-destruct. Can you take aboard all of the surviving crew members?”
“Yes, Kommodor. It will be tight, but we can do it.”
“Keep them under guard until we can sort them out,” Marphissa said. “Set the power core to blow a half hour after you break contact with 743.”
“Only half an hour?”
“Yes. If something goes wrong, if it doesn’t blow, I don’t want to have to chase that ship halfway to the Kiribati jump point to catch it and make sure it is destroyed.”
Marphissa scanned her display again irritably. “Hawk can’t take aboard any of the crew members from the escape pods,” she told Diaz. “She’s going to be full of those who were stuck on 743.”
After glowering at her display for a moment, Marphissa tapped her comm controls. “Gryphon, Eagle, detach immediately, proceed to pick up escape pods from HTTU 743. Kapitan Stein on Gryphon is in command until your units rejoin our flotilla.”
Thirty minutes later, the remains of HTTU 743 disappeared in a flash of energy as the ship’s power core overloaded. Hawk was returning to rejoin the flotilla, and Gryphon and Eagle were beginning to recover crew members from the escape pods, as Marphissa gave the order for the rest of the ships to head for Ulindi’s habitable planet.
—
DEFEATS were always bad, but even victories could be messy.
This small portion of the surface of the habitable world orbiting Ulindi looked like some kind of construction site, sticking out as a dirt-shaded scar amid green fields and stands of trees. Drakon walked down the shuttle ramp and nodded to the local officials who stood nervously awaiting him. “This is it?” he asked.
“It’s one of the places,” a young man said, his voice trembling.
Drakon moved to the side of a fresh excavation, looking down at tumbled bodies still encrusted with the dirt that had recently covered them. The mass grave appeared to contain the remains of at least a few hundred men and women. “They look like they died a few weeks ago,” Drakon said, letting his disgust be clearly heard.
“Yes, honored—I mean, yes, General,” an older man said. “We knew there had been many arrests, that the snakes had been rounding up not only anyone they even slightly suspected but also apparently citizens at random to terrorize the rest of us into submission. But we thought they were being placed in labor camps.” His voice broke on the last words.
“Do you have any idea how many?” Drakon asked.
“Our records are a mess,” a woman said, sounding weary as well as sad. “The snakes detonated virtual bombs in all our databases and networks when it looked like they were going to lose. We’re back to paper and pens and trying to reconstruct the data from whatever unauthorized backups saved portions of the destroyed records.”
“At a guess,” the young man said, “we’re dealing with thousands of dead.”
“How about during the fighting?” Drakon asked. “How many got hurt while my forces were fighting the Syndicate and Haris’s forces?”
“Your . . . military losses . . . General?” the older man asked, puzzled. “We don’t know—”
“No,” Drakon said patiently. “Citizens. I understand most were evacuated from the city before we landed. How many got hurt during the fighting?”
They all looked shocked at a senior supervisor expressing concern for casualties among the workers and their families. “Not too many,” someone said. “Citizens were ordered out of the city you attacked even before the snake headquarters was bombarded.”
“They were afraid we would rise up and attack the Syndicate troops that were attacking you,” another said. “We had no weapons, we had no leaders, we couldn’t have done anything. But the snakes see enemies everywhere.”
“That’s funny, isn’t it?” the old man said. “They saved a lot of our lives because they thought we might be enemies and so forced us to leave the city before the fighting broke out.”
“Are there any leaders left among you?” Drakon asked.
The locals exchanged glances. None of them seemed eager to claim the title of leader or offer up any names. He knew why. They didn’t trust him not to also round up anyone who might be a leader among the citizens. “Listen up, all of you,” Drakon said as if speaking to his troops. “Neither I nor my soldiers intend staying at Ulindi. We had to get rid of Haris and the Syndicate because they were a threat to this entire region. But we aren’t going to rule Ulindi. It’s your star system. You need to put together a government to make decisions and plan and coordinate actions. You’ve had your fill of the Syndicate. One of your decisions will have to be whether you want to voluntarily align yourselves with Midway Star System. Nobody is going to be forced to join, but we’re trying to set up a mutual defense arrangement to protect the local star systems from the Syndicate, from warlords, and from the enigmas.”
They were staring at him again. One finally spoke. “The . . . enigmas?”
“You must have heard rumors of them even though the Syndicate did its best to keep them secret.” Drakon waved toward the sky. “An alien species, intelligent and hostile. They pushed the Syndicate out of star systems like Hina and Pele, and have tried to take Midway Star System more than once.”
“There have been rumors,” a woman confirmed. “You know this is true?”
“They’ve attacked Midway Star System. I’ve seen their ships.”
“You just came to get rid of Haris and the Syndicate?” someone else asked in a bewildered voice. “But if they are gone and you leave, who is in charge?”
“Who do you want to be in charge?” Drakon said. “I’m going to leave you all some records we have of events that have taken place recently at star systems like Taroa, Kane, and Midway. We, and by we I mean the soldiers of my ground forces and the crew members of our warships, are giving you a gift. It’s a dangerous gift. We’re going to let you decide who will rule you and how. We’ll offer advice. We’ll show you what happened elsewhere and the choices others made, and you’ll see the mistakes others made.”
“We . . . we need to be safe,” the old man faltered. “Why did you get rid of the Syndicate just to leave us without any protection? At least they—”
Drakon pointed at the mass grave. “They did this. Look at it. Do you feel safe when you do? That’s the Syndicate form of protection, where you die to keep them in power. I have no interest in killing any of you, nor do I have any interes
t in any of my soldiers dying to make you do what I want. I’ve already lost too many people here. As long as you don’t threaten Midway Star System, or ally with someone who threatens us, I don’t care what you do. But the decision will be yours. Figure out who you want to speak for you. We’re leaving you what amounts to a reinforced brigade of ground forces, made up of the remnants of the ground forces that used to be here and those soldiers from the Syndicate division who want to stay here and help you guys defend yourselves.”
“But who will be in charge of those ground forces?” a woman demanded. “Who will tell us what to do?”
Drakon paused as he was about to head back to the shuttle, turning to face them all once more. “If you want my advice, and that’s all it is, advice, because I’m not going to tell you what to do, I would tell you to get together and decide which people you think can run things pretty well, who you know have looked out for the people around them and under them when they didn’t have to, and even when it caused them problems, and who don’t want the job of helping to run the planet. Put them in charge, and the minute any of them start acting like they’re better than you, replace them. You know how to run things. Just like every other place in Syndicate space, you’ve been keeping things running despite the Syndicate bureaucracy that existed to serve itself and the Syndicate CEOs who were just out for themselves and the snakes who did their best to weed out anyone who was ethical or smart or thought for themselves. So run things. There are lots of references in the underground library that talk about ways to run a star system that aren’t the Syndicate way. Whatever you decide on won’t be perfect, it never is, but if you start shooting at each other, that means you’re doing it wrong.”
He walked toward the shuttle but stopped and pivoted to say one more thing to the citizens who were staring after him. “And if you keep the labor camps open, if you lock up people for saying the wrong thing or for disagreeing with you like the Syndicate does, then you’re doing it wrong. Some of my people died to give you a chance at doing things better. A chance at freedom. Don’t waste it.”
As Drakon walked up the ramp and inside the shuttle, he wondered when he had become such a radical. Freedom. It had only been about survival and maintaining their own power when he had joined Gwen Iceni to revolt against the Syndicate.
Hadn’t it?
He settled into his seat as the shuttle rose into the sky, slewed about, and headed back toward the former Syndicate base. After a few moments of watching landscape scroll by on the display before his seat, Drakon called Malin. “Anything new?”
Malin nodded, his expression shadowed. “I picked up some interesting fragments of information, General. Not long before the snake alternate command center was bombarded and destroyed, there was a lot of chatter about Supreme CEO Haris having been assassinated.”
“Haris assassinated?” It would be nice to confirm the death of the former Supreme CEO who had overseen the murder of so many citizens, but . . . “Is there anything about who did it or how?”
“There are references to a lone assassin and gunfire, General. No other description.”
“Do we need more?” Drakon asked. “One person who penetrated security at a snake command center and killed their CEO with a gun?”
Malin smiled grimly. “It does sound like Colonel Morgan, sir.”
“What happened to her?”
“Unknown, sir. There is chatter about the assassination, a few details like the ones I mentioned, then nothing as the roof of the snake alternate command center literally fell in when Midway’s bombardment hit.” He gave Drakon an unreadable look. “At least it narrows down our search. If Colonel Morgan was in the snake alternate command center soon before it was destroyed, she must still be nearby.”
“Or in the rubble,” Drakon said, deliberately being brutally direct. “Bran, if Roh made it out alive, why hasn’t she contacted us?”
“You are asking me to rationalize the actions of Colonel Morgan, sir?”
He snorted a very brief laugh. “That’s a good point. But why did she go after Haris? That wasn’t part of her assignment here.”
Malin shook his head, looking down. “I don’t know, sir. Whatever reason Colonel Morgan had, it was a reason that made sense to her.”
“I’m sorry, Bran.”
“I’m not sure that I am, General,” Malin responded, his brow furrowed as if trying to solve the puzzle of his own emotions.
“Have we run into any hitches in the mop-up operations?” Drakon asked to spare Malin from having to internally examine in any detail his relationship to Morgan.
“No, sir. The few Syndicate support units still intact are surrendering as soon as our soldiers arrive. Ulindi is still a frontier world, with only a few cities of any size and not many towns worthy of the name, so we haven’t had to secure all that many locations.”
“If we had faced the problem of dealing with a really large population, we wouldn’t have tried this with only two brigades,” Drakon said. “Any word from the Kommodor?”
“We just received a message from her that eight of the ten Syndicate troop transports were captured. One other was destroyed by the snakes aboard it and the last sustained too much damage during its capture to be worth salvage and was scuttled.”
“Scuttled? What’s scuttled?”
“I believe Kommodor Marphissa picked up the term from Captain Bradamont,” Malin explained. “‘Scuttled’ is an ancient word still used by the Alliance fleet. It means ‘blown up.’”
“I suppose that’s better than the official Syndicate term ‘dissolution of the asset.’ Eight transports is more than enough troop-carrying capacity given the ground forces we have,” Drakon said, feeling a lift to his spirits. “We owe Executive Gozen a big debt for letting us know they were there.”
Malin frowned again. “You do realize, General, that the snakes would consider the loss of ten troop transports as a small price to pay for getting one of their undercover agents close to you.”
“You’ve cautioned me about Executive Gozen about a dozen times already, Colonel. I assure you that I have paid full attention to you each time,” Drakon said. “Especially given what I learned not long ago about secrets my closest aides were keeping from me.”
Malin had the good grace to openly flinch. “I understand, General. I just feel a duty to—”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind your watching Executive Gozen. If you find anything, any solid grounds for identifying her as a possible snake agent, I want to know it.”
“Yes, sir.” Malin hesitated. “Executive Gozen has asked to meet with you.”
“Patch her through. I have time to talk to her on the way back.”
“In person, sir.”
He thought about that, then nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. I can evaluate her better face-to-face than through a comm link. I’ve been thinking I should take a personal look at her soldiers, as well.”
Malin nodded resignedly. “Yes, sir. How many escorts, sir?”
“Just a couple. No battle armor. I want guards on hand if someone lunges at me, but I shouldn’t need more.”
“General, you do need more—”
“No. This is about my being so confident of my authority and my strength that I don’t need a swarm of bodyguards. I need to impress these soldiers, Bran, so none of them start thinking they can get away with anything. But I don’t want to impress them as being like a Syndicate CEO, and a lot of bodyguards would show them exactly that image.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was amazing how much emotion the normally impassive Malin could pack into two short words.
—
“EXECUTIVE Third Class Gozen,” she said, standing at attention and saluting.
Drakon returned the salute with enough care to show that he respected the person who had rendered it. “You look like hell,” Drakon said.
Gozen had put aside her battle armor, its surface scarred from the recent fighting, and stood in her working uniform, whic
h was considerably the worse for the days it had been worn under armor and through combat. She had smudges on visible skin, and her short hair was grimy and matted from being continuously under a battle armor helmet for days. Her eyes were shaded by fatigue and her lips badly chapped.
She looked surprised at his words, then grinned. “I feel like hell, sir. I don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything.”
“Let’s walk.” Drakon strode alongside Gozen as she led him through the nearest portions of the ruined buildings that had been part of the Syndicate positions. The buildings were packed with surrendered Syndicate soldiers who gazed back at him with sullenness, or resignation, or hope, or curiosity. He stopped to talk to some of them, getting a feeling for their mood that couldn’t be conveyed by reading reports or watching vids.
Drakon stopped before one old soldier who was sitting hunched over, staring at nothing. “Weren’t you at Chandrahas?”
Startled, the soldier looked up, then leaped to his feet as he realized who Drakon was. “Devon Dupree, Combat Systems Worker First Class, Heavy Weapons, Fifth Company—”
He broke off as Drakon made a chopping gesture. “You don’t need to recite that. Were you at Chandrahas? About ten years ago?”
“Yes, honored CEO,” the soldier replied, rigidly at attention, looking straight ahead.
“Sit down,” Drakon ordered. The man sat. “Now, relax. You were with the . . . Three Hundred Seventh Division then, weren’t you? You were one of the soldiers who held a position for six hours against heavy Alliance attacks.”
The old soldier blinked at Drakon in surprise. “Yes, honored—”
The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword Page 33