The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  But the brutality of the snakes in the last weeks of Haris’s rule and the mass deaths they had inflicted had served to cool the hottest tempers. There had been no sign in the street debates that the various groups were interested in taking up arms. Enough seemed to be the motto of Ulindi these days, and perhaps that was not a bad basis for forming a government.

  Drakon kept his eyes on the planet, wishing that he or Malin had been able to locate any trace of Morgan. They had turned up plenty of reports of what she had been up to on the planet, along with a casualty list she had caused that would have been impressive for anyone less deadly than Morgan. As it was, Drakon had marveled at her restraint.

  And wondered if she had indeed died in the snake alternate command center. It would take a lot more excavating and DNA sampling before the answer to that would be known, and he simply could not remain in Ulindi for that long.

  Nor was Morgan the only soldier that he had lost at Ulindi. The new recruits from what had been the Syndicate division had more than filled out the losses, but there was a difference between adding personnel and replacing the individuals who were gone.

  They were bringing Conner Gaiene’s remains back with them, but Conner’s mischievous grin would not be seen again.

  The flotilla looked a lot bigger now, having gained eight troop transports. The Kommodor had described the troop transports as looking like whales to her, which was a fair description of their general size and shape. As Drakon watched the depiction of the flotilla on this ship’s display, the escorting warships resembled very large sharks and other predators swimming all around the whalelike transports.

  The commanding officer of HTTU 322, a harried-appearing man named Mack, gave Drakon an appraising look. “How are your accommodations, honored—I mean, uh, General?”

  “Comfortable,” Drakon replied. Transport executives were notorious for looking down on the ground forces they hauled from star to star, but once Drakon had reached sub-CEO, then CEO status, he had seen dramatic improvements in the way he was treated. These transport crews, who had only recently thrown off the Syndicate yoke, were still following those old patterns, and to them, Drakon was a CEO in all but name.

  Mack leaned back in his seat, looking around the transport’s bridge, which was small for the size of the ship. “It feels different without them around. The snakes. The unit, every unit I served on, always felt like a prison, and they were the guards.” He glanced at Drakon as if trying to judge his reaction to the words. “I’ve got family still in Syndicate space, but when your mobile forces came swooping in, I knew it was act or die, and dead I couldn’t help my family.”

  “There are a lot of holes in the Syndicate security perimeter these days,” Drakon said. “Holes that families can slip through. And a lot of room in the star systems around here.”

  One of the women on watch on the bridge, a senior executive whose expression seemed fixed in a state of sullen unhappiness, looked at Drakon with a spark of hope in her eyes. “I’ve heard of Kane. How is Kane?”

  “It has a good planet,” Drakon said, “and a lot of room.” He took a deep breath. “Especially since the Syndicate bombarded it. Most of those who lived there are dead. Most of what had been built there is ruin. But the planet remains good, and Kane needs those willing to help rebuild it.”

  “But if the Syndicate comes back—”

  Drakon shook his head. “Did you see the Syndicate battleship that was in this star system? The one that was destroyed? It was that warship, and the CEO commanding it, who bombarded Kane. Neither that warship nor that CEO will be bombarding any more planets.”

  “Who are you people?” Mack asked. “The snakes told us you were just rebellious CEOs out for yourselves. I’ve seen enough and heard enough to know you’re not that, but I’m still trying to figure out what you are.”

  “We are the people who are going to stand up to and stop the Syndicate,” Drakon said. “Just as we did here.” He took a last look at the planet. “I’ll be in sick bay.”

  An HTTU had pretty decent medical facilities. Nothing to equal those on a battleship or a well-equipped ground facility, but adequate for dealing with casualties among the ground forces the ship had brought to the battlefield. Drakon reached the entrance to the first of the medical bays and stopped, looking into the brightly lit compartment where rows of bunks were topped by long, rounded devices resembling ancient mummy cases. Many of the cases were open at the top end, showing the faces of men or women relaxed in deep sleep. Other cases were completely sealed, only the steady green readouts on them betraying the presence of the badly injured soldiers confined within.

  Two medical personnel were seated on opposite sides of a desk talking in low voices to each other. One noticed Drakon and both stood up, their movements betraying fatigue.

  “How is everything?” Drakon asked.

  “No problems that aren’t being fixed,” a woman with weary eyes told him. He recognized her as belonging to the medical team attached to Kai’s brigade. “They’re all in rec sleep, General,” she added, using the common term for a deep form of sedation that hastened healing.

  “Thank you, Doc. I know medical hasn’t had much chance to rest.” Drakon looked at the man with her. “I don’t know you.”

  He nodded nervously before answering. “Worker Gundar Castillon, Medical Specialist, Field Treatment, uh . . .” The man faltered as he realized that he couldn’t recite a work-unit assignment.

  Drakon smiled reassuringly. At least, he hoped it was a reassuring smile. He had been told that when he was really tired, his attempts at reassurance could look a little demonic. “A medic. Were you with the Syndicate division?”

  “Yes, honored—I mean, yes, sir.”

  “We want him in our med team, General,” the doctor said. “He pitched right in on the surface. Just started doing everything he could because he was there and saw some soldiers who needed help.”

  “I don’t see why he can’t be part of your med team, then,” Drakon said, gesturing toward the chairs the two had vacated. “Sit down.” They took their seats again, the doctor gratefully and the new medic a bit stiffly, as if expecting Drakon to yank him back to attention at any moment. “Consider the unit assignment approved. How much longer have you got on duty?”

  The doctor yawned. “Thank you, General. Another hour, sir. Then eight off.”

  “Good.” Drakon leaned against the nearest bulkhead, wanting to sit down as well but afraid he would have too much trouble getting up again if he did. He looked down the rows of sleeping soldiers again. “You guys do miracles.”

  The doctor quirked a smile. “General, if I could do miracles, I’d be about forty light-years from here in a soft bed with someone to keep me warm.”

  “Would you? Or would you be where you were needed?”

  “That’s not a fair question, General,” the doctor protested. She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I admit it’s going to be nice to rest for a while. This was a rough one.”

  “They’re all rough ones for the ones who get hit,” Drakon said. “Thanks for fixing up all the soldiers that can be saved.”

  “You know, General, if you didn’t break them in the first place, we wouldn’t have to try to fix them.”

  The new medic looked horrified, as if expecting Drakon to shoot the doctor on the spot.

  But he nodded to her. “If I knew a way to never break another, I’d use it. But life isn’t that simple.”

  “No,” the doctor agreed. “I guess not. Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying, though.” She waved one hand to indicate the rows of bunks. “I fix them, they go out, sometimes they come back, sometimes their next hurt is so bad nothing can save them. It’s like shoveling sand. We break our backs to save them, but how much difference do we really make?”

  Drakon met her eyes. “Let me tell you something I sometimes wonder. I sometimes wonder about the human race, about our seemingly limitless capacity to inflict death and destruction on each other. I wonder if there�
��s any reason to keep trying to make anything better, to try to save anything, when someone else is just going to come along and kick over whatever I built.”

  He nodded again, this time toward the sleeping wounded. “But then I see people like you, giving their all to save others. The medics, like you, Specialist Castillon, braving enemy fire to do all they can for someone who got hit. And it makes me realize that the human race has some good in it. That there are people who work at least as hard to save others as some other people work to destroy. That’s why I keep trying.”

  The doctor smiled tiredly. “You’re welcome.”

  Drakon looked at the medic. “Are you all taken care of? A place to sleep, eating arrangements set up?”

  “Not yet, General,” the medic said.

  “If you run into any trouble,” Drakon said, “have your team leader”—he pointed at the doctor—“contact me about it.”

  The doctor smiled again, watching Drakon closely. “If you don’t mind my saying so, General, I’m diagnosing you as being almost as tired as I am. You’re sort of wavering on your feet even though you’re leaning on that wall.”

  “You don’t have to prescribe bed rest,” Drakon said. “I’m on my way.” He straightened, looking at the injured soldiers again, thinking of those who hadn’t made it this far. “Why can’t we save them all? Couldn’t we replace anything they needed?”

  “Up to a point,” the doctor said. “A few centuries back, they started running into something odd.” She sighed, her eyes closing as if she didn’t want to look upon history. “Medical science had progressed to the point where we could replace anything as it failed with some sort of device. Cloned parts worked fine. But stuff we made, artificial parts, started causing problems if they made up too much of a person. We can build a cyborg, but they’re unstable, especially if we’ve built them from someone who got blown apart in combat and put back together. There are lots of theories, most of them built around the idea that the artificial parts create some cumulative impact on the nervous system, so once you pass a certain threshold, a certain percentage of the body that was built instead of grown, the cyborg becomes untreatably psychotic and either goes into a coma or goes berserk.”

  “That’s not just a rumor?” Drakon said. “I’ve seen that plot used in a lot of horror vids, but I didn’t know it was based on reality.”

  “It’s real,” the doctor said. She opened her eyes and gazed at Drakon. “You know what else is real? They found out if someone had been hit badly enough, if they had been medically dead long enough before being revived, then when they brought them back, something was missing. It was like those cyborgs were just robots with human programming. Something that made them actually human was gone. We’ve never figured out what that something is. That’s why we don’t try to bring them all back. Even the Syndicate got scared by that.”

  It took him several seconds to reply. “Good reason.” The old “rest in peace” saying took on new meaning for him as he considered what the doctor had said. Didn’t someone like Conner Gaiene deserve that chance to rest even if what was left of him could have been brought back to life? Or, rather, back to some form of life that would be a sorry way to repay someone who had been a friend and comrade for so long. “Thanks for the nightmare fodder.”

  “It’s what doctors do to laypeople who listen to our shop talk.”

  “I keep forgetting that.” Drakon waved a farewell, then made his way to his stateroom. He couldn’t recall the last time he had been able to get an adequate amount of rest, but it was definitely before they had arrived at Ulindi.

  Despite that, he still needed a down patch to calm his mind enough to sleep, and finally dropped off, haunted by visions of battle.

  —

  “WELCOME back.” Iceni tried to put genuine feeling into the words, but in reply received a tense look from Drakon.

  “You missed me that much?” he asked.

  “It got a bit hectic here,” she said, waving him to a chair. “Not as bad as it did for you at Ulindi, but bad.”

  “Colonel Rogero has already briefed me,” Drakon said as he sat down. “We all dodged the bullet this time.”

  “Our enemies spun a much wider and cleverer net than we realized,” Iceni said, clasping her hands on her desk before her as she sized up Drakon’s mood. “And we may have thought we were cleverer than we actually are.”

  “It’s hard to outsmart an opponent who knows what cards you hold,” Drakon said, his voice flat. “As I’m sure your Kommodor has briefed you, the Syndicate knew a lot about our plans.”

  So that was the source of Drakon’s tension. Was he going to accuse her of betrayal? Did he believe that she had betrayed him? “Yes,” Iceni said, keeping her own voice serious but free of tension. “They apparently had many details, including very specific information about the timing of our planned attack.”

  “They not only had that information,” Drakon said, “they based their plans on having that information. The entire trap was constructed assuming that they would be able to time the arrival of their reinforcements to just before we arrived, and to have CEO Boucher’s flotilla show up just early enough to conceal itself behind a gas giant. That information couldn’t have been provided by someone who watched us depart. They couldn’t have gotten the information to Ulindi in time.”

  Drakon had hunched forward, tapping his forefinger forcefully on her desk to emphasize his words. “The Syndicate source must have known our date of departure as soon as you and I had settled on it. Anyone could have seen the preparations, but no one could have known when we would actually get moving for the jump to Ulindi because that exact time depended on a lot of factors and a joint decision by you and me. Given the time needed to get that information to the Syndicate at Ulindi and wherever else their forces were, and the time needed to land those Syndicate soldiers and get their flotilla in place, there simply wasn’t enough time for them to do it unless that date was dispatched to them within a day of when we made the final decision.”

  She let frost enter her voice. “Are you implying something about me?”

  He frowned, momentarily puzzled by the question. “You? No. That . . . never occurred to me.”

  Either he was a much better actor than Drakon had previously shown, or the words were sincere. But Iceni still felt angry and defensive. “Then what are you saying?”

  “That someone very close to you or me must have fed that information to the Syndicate.”

  “Who on your staff knew the exact date of departure that early?” Iceni demanded, trying to keep Drakon on the defensive.

  “Colonel Malin, Colonel Kai, Colonel Gaiene.”

  “Not Colonel Morgan?”

  “How could she have known? She was already at Ulindi when we made the decision, and had been there for weeks.”

  Iceni managed to stifle her disappointment. The momentary hope that Morgan could be a prime suspect in the trap was running headlong into simple questions of time and space that definitely eliminated her as a suspect. “But the information she sent us was woefully incomplete,” Iceni pointed out.

  “It was,” Drakon agreed, some defensiveness entering his voice. “The files we captured when the Syndicate staff abandoned the divisional headquarters confirmed that CEO Haris himself wasn’t even in the loop on the trap. He, and Ulindi, were dangled as bait for us. We didn’t guess that the Syndicate would completely cut Haris out of their plans, but then we didn’t guess that Haris was really still working for the Syndicate.”

  “It should have been obvious,” Iceni said, her voice sharp, seeing Drakon’s defensive glower deepen. “Oh, I’m not pointing the finger at you for that, General. I share plenty of the blame. Haris supposedly made himself independent from the Syndicate but took along the entire snake apparatus at Ulindi? All of it intact?”

  “A charismatic leader could have done that,” Drakon said. “Do you want to know what the files we captured said about the Syndicate source at Midway?”

  Iceni
tried not to stiffen, wondering what bomb Drakon was about to drop. “What did they say?”

  “Nothing.”

  It was her turn to glower. “Did you really want to see how I would react to the implication that those files contained important information?”

  Drakon closed his eyes, speaking slowly but still with force. “I was at Ulindi, pinned between two enemy forces, knowing that the odds greatly favored my entire force’s being wiped out, and knowing that I had led them there.”

  Iceni leaned toward him, letting each of her words drop like a hammer. “Do you actually believe that I would have set you up that way? That I would have conspired to destroy not only you but two-thirds of the professional ground forces available to this star system? Do you think I am that stupid?” Because, she realized, that was what was bothering her the most. She could be ruthless. She could double-deal. But weaken her own future prospects by that much overkill? “If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you and kept all of those valuable ground forces soldiers. Do you really think I am that incompetent?”

  He had opened his eyes and was staring at her, then abruptly laughed. “Oh, hell, you think I suspect you? You personally? Why the hell would you have sent the battleship to save the day if the whole trap had been your idea to begin with? No, I don’t think you’re stupid or incompetent, but I think someone close to us is playing both of us and wanted me dead.”

  She eyed him, thinking. “Yes. The plan would have led to your death. As well as the deaths of Colonels Kai, Gaiene, and Malin. Only Colonel Rogero of your senior staff would have survived.” Her mind whirled down new paths as it considered possible scenarios. “He would have replaced you, General. Colonel Rogero would have been the senior ground forces officer, commander of the only loyal professional soldiers left to me. He could have faked that assassination attempt aimed at him.”

  Drakon, instead of getting defensive again, just shook his head. “For security reasons, I didn’t tell Rogero the departure date. He didn’t need to know it.”