“True,” Iceni conceded. “Still, elections at those kinds of levels . . .”
Drakon settled back and smiled. “Elections? We’re old hands at elections, aren’t we, Madam President? You know what they can be like. Fraud, bribery, vote manipulation . . .”
Iceni returned his smile. “All of which we are veterans at.”
“And all of which, my assessments agree, those pure-minded Free Taroans will convince themselves could never happen in whatever system of elections they come up with.”
“Meaning we will have substantial influence on the Free Taroans?”
“Bought and paid for,” Drakon agreed. “It’s the Syndicate Way, isn’t it?”
“As much as I detest many things about the Syndicate Way, those particular methods may prove very useful. So, not a conquest?
“Absolutely not. An intervention, tipping the scales, not a conquest. If we try to impose our will on Taroa with what we have, it’ll turn into a quagmire that’ll suck this star system dry in no time. We’d be easy meat for the Syndicate Worlds when they came knocking at the hypernet gate demanding to be in control here again. For personal reasons, I’d rather that not happen.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy that outcome, either.” Iceni sat back, her eyes hooded in thought. “I believe that I planted some seeds at Kane for what might grow into a formal relationship between our star systems. If we could achieve similar results at Taroa, establish the grounds for creating an alliance of sorts, it could reap very important longer-term benefits. Trade, defense, a bubble of stability and order amid the collapse of the Syndicate Worlds. Three star systems isn’t much, but it would be a start toward that, and it’s a lot more than one star system.”
Drakon nodded. “Humanity only started with one, and look where we’ve ended up.”
“I don’t aspire to that degree of success. However, intervening at Taroa will require a significant investment in ground forces and mobile forces. We need those assets here.”
“We do. We also needed them here when we heard about the battleship at Kane, but it made more sense to send just about every warship to Kane. Now it makes more sense to send some of those warships to Taroa.” He could see that Iceni was convinced yet still reluctant to commit the necessary forces, so Drakon played his last card. “There’s something else concerning Taroa’s shipyards. The last few ships that went through there reported that the main construction dock is completely concealed. They’re at the stage where components of something are being assembled into a hull.”
“Something?” Iceni murmured. “Something big if they need to use the main construction dock.”
“Something big,” Drakon agreed. “And I think we could use that something big more than whoever it’s being built for right now. Which would be the Syndicate government on Prime. If we get the docks, we get that hull.”
“We get the docks? That could be exceptionally useful.” Iceni nodded and gave him a searching look. “What would you require to gain control of those docks and ensure victory for the Free Taroans?”
“I’d want to bring three brigades,” Drakon said. “That will require requisitioning some of the civilian merchant ships here. And a decent-sized flotilla of warships to deal with any light mobile forces that might show up there to give us trouble. If there are no mobile forces waiting at Taroa, what we have with us will help overawe the opposition.”
“If you want to overawe, the battleship is the way to go, but it’s not even close to ready.”
“I wouldn’t want to come in with the battleship,” Drakon said. “It’s too big, too threatening. Showing up like that would make it look like a conquest before we said a word. I want to have time to explain that we’re there to assist our, uh, friends, the Free Taroans.”
Iceni nodded again. “In exchange for control of those docks and what is being built there. All right. Three brigades. All of your soldiers, leaving me with the local troops.”
“The locals could handle anything that came up,” Drakon said, choosing his words carefully. “But what I intended was to bring two of my brigades and one of the local brigades. That would leave one brigade of absolutely reliable soldiers here.”
“Absolutely reliable?” Iceni asked, smiling thinly. “Just in case someone tried something while you were out of this star system?”
He hadn’t wanted to put it that bluntly. “If you want to think of that brigade as my insurance against you, then fine. You decided to leave that heavy cruiser here to watch me while you were gone. But that’s far from the only reason to leave that brigade here. You know as well as I do that the locals aren’t one hundred percent to be counted on.”
“But you want to take a brigade of them on this mission?”
Was she subtly taunting him? Or probing for his justifications? Drakon made an open-handed gesture. “My own soldiers can stiffen the locals if necessary, and the locals should be able to handle anything we find at Taroa.”
“So we’ll both feel safer if you leave one of your brigades here?”
“That’s right.”
“How thoughtful of you, General.” Iceni rested her chin on one fist as she regarded him. “Which brigade? Which colonel?”
“Colonel Rogero’s brigade.”
“Colonel Rogero? Again? Is Colonel Rogero particularly fond of me?”
Drakon laughed briefly. “I don’t know his personal feelings about you. I do know he can be trusted here.” Gaiene, for all his skills and loyalty, if left alone for an extended period was likely to be shot by an enraged husband or furious father, and Gaiene might well be drunk when the bullet hit if he wasn’t worried about Drakon showing up to check on him. Kai wouldn’t run out of control, in fact seemed to have no vices at all or any other interests outside of his job, but was too rigid, not flexible enough to react quickly if something unexpected occurred and Drakon wasn’t around to give new instructions. “Colonel Rogero also got to lead the force that went to Kane with you. Colonels Gaiene and Kai deserve a chance at action, too.”
“And which local brigade?”
“The One Thousand Fifteenth. Colonel Senski’s command.”
“Colonel Senski. Hmmm.” She didn’t seem convinced, but Iceni finally nodded a final time. “You will also be taking your two aides?”
“Colonels Malin and Morgan? Yes.”
“Then I agree to your proposal. How long will it take before you are ready to go?”
“Normally,” Drakon began, “it takes a while to set up a movement of this size, but—”
“But you started preparing well before I got back, anticipating that I would agree to the mission,” Iceni finished. She said it not as if guessing, but as if she had known that coming into the meeting.
Either Iceni was trying to rattle him by pretending to know good intelligence, or she really had some very good inside information on Drakon’s troops. The best reaction at the moment was probably no particular reaction. He smiled at her as if her foreknowledge was not an issue at all. “That’s correct.”
Iceni smiled back. “I’ll consult with Kommodor Marphissa on the size of the flotilla to accompany you. We will have to resupply those warships, and that will take a while. I’d estimate at least a week for them to get back here and prepare to go out again. I won’t mislead you as to my intentions. I will want to hold back enough warships to protect this star system and my battleship while it’s being fitted out, but I’m sure whatever we send with you will include at least one heavy cruiser.”
Drakon gave her an inquiring look. “Your battleship?”
“Did I say that? Our battleship, of course.”
“And I understand it has a name now.” Why not flaunt his own information gathering?
“The Midway. Yes.”
He had expected her to take the obvious course and name it after herself, which would have been a clear sign of ambition and ego. The fact that she had chosen something else reassured Drakon considerably. “Are you going to name the other warships, too?”
<
br /> Iceni smiled again. “I already have. The implementing order is going out today. The heavy cruisers will be the Manticore, the Gryphon, the Basilisk, and the Kraken. The light cruisers will be named Falcon, Osprey, Hawk, Harrier, Kite, and Eagle. The Hunter-Killers will be Sentry, Sentinel, Scout, Defender, Guardian, Pathfinder, Protector, Patrol, Guide, Vanguard, Picket, and Watch.”
“Really? Those are pretty good.”
“I’m glad that I surprised you in that respect, General. Obviously, I cannot accompany you on this mission, so command of the mobile forces will be given to Kommodor Marphissa.”
Drakon nodded. “I’ve heard that she’s capable.”
“She is. She also has an unfortunate tendency to speak her mind. I hope that you can work with that.”
“I’ve got some experience with subordinates like that,” Drakon said dryly, thinking of Malin and Morgan. “They can be the best kind of subordinates if they know what they’re talking about, and if you’re lucky.”
Iceni gave him a surprised look. “Yes, General. They can indeed.” She paused for a long moment before speaking again. “Will you tell me something?”
“That depends what it is.”
“When you were facing the flotilla commanded by CEO Gathos, why didn’t you betray me to save yourself? You could have claimed that you had just played along with me in order to get me to expose myself. It might not have saved you, but it would have given you some chance.”
Drakon looked back at her for a while before replying. “If you want the truth, and if you want to believe that it’s the truth, that never occurred to me.” It had never occurred to Malin or Morgan, either. Or if either of them had thought of it, neither had brought it up. Why not? Malin should have seen the possibility, and that kind of opportunity was the sort of thing Morgan usually thought of first. Why had neither of them suggested turning on Iceni to at least buy some time?
“It didn’t occur to you?” Iceni sat watching him. “I know a lot about you, but I don’t really know you, General Drakon. Trying to predict what you’re going to do next can be difficult.”
“I have the same problem with myself at times,” Drakon said.
“Do you? I know what you should do in any given situation, based on what we’ve been taught and our experiences, but I don’t always know what you will do.”
He shrugged, surprised that she was openly discussing such things. “There are a lot of situations where being a bit unpredictable can be an advantage.”
“Of course,” Iceni agreed. “But . . .” She studied him again. “Do you intentionally do it as a tactic, or is it part of you? Something you would do even if it didn’t bring you an advantage?”
His own defenses were automatically rising, trying to keep him from betraying too much of what he thought. Drakon shrugged again. “Why would a CEO do something that didn’t bring an advantage?”
“That’s a good question. Yet here you are. You were exiled to Midway, and unlike me, who got sent here for bad luck as much as anything, you were sent here for doing something that had no possibility of benefiting you personally.”
Drakon met her eyes. “That depends what you consider a benefit. I did what I considered to be the . . . correct thing.”
“As opposed to the right thing?”
“The right thing? You mean like morally right? Nobody does that.”
“Nobody admits to it,” Iceni corrected him. “We know what the Syndicate Worlds looks like on the outside, and how a lot of it really works on the inside. And we know how the people around us look on the outside, but not what’s really inside because we all learn to hide that.”
“Yes.” Despite his wariness, Drakon felt his internal barriers lowering. What she was saying matched his own thoughts, the sort of thing you couldn’t discuss because you never knew who might use it against you. “I don’t know you, either. I don’t know who you are inside. I didn’t know that you thought about stuff like that.”
Iceni smiled in a self-mocking way. “I just spent a while traveling. You know what that’s like. All the books and movies you could ask for at your fingertips, but also a lot of time to think if you want to spend your time doing that. Especially in jump space. Nothing is happening outside, so inside you can . . . think.”
“What else did you think about?” he asked, and realized genuine interest had prompted the question.
“Have you ever wondered who you would be if you hadn’t grown up in the Syndicate Worlds?”
“You mean, if I’d been born on some Alliance planet?”
“Perhaps,” Iceni said. “Or perhaps somewhere else. Some star system far away, where they’ve never heard of the Alliance or the Syndicate Worlds or the war. Suppose you had grown up there? Who would you be?”
He could have laughed off the question, but Drakon thought about it. “You mean who would I be if I wasn’t me?”
“Not exactly.”
“Who would you be?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” Iceni answered. “And that bothers me. Who would I be? I’ve spent my life, as you have, being careful, being afraid, toeing the line, playing the system, sometimes being a victim and sometimes being a victor. When we stuck our necks out, those necks, and the rest of us, ended up here in exile. Which was lucky because those necks could have been chopped off. Now the system is ours. We could make it what we want.”
“Like that thing about the trials?”
“Like that.”
Drakon felt himself really smiling, not just faking the gesture. “I guess that is nice to think about.”
“At least when none of our aides or assistants or guards are around to keep us on guard. It’s like living in a straitjacket sometimes, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Drakon agreed. “Freedom is, well, frightening in some ways. But we’ve never really had it, so we don’t know what it could be.”
“If you could do anything, absolutely anything, right now, what would you do?” Iceni asked.
“Um . . .” He didn’t want to answer that honestly, because he had always found women with that kind of curiosity, that kind of intellect, to be extremely attractive. But he doubted that Iceni would be flattered by an expression of physical desire, right now, for her, even if the desire was generated by her brain and not the other parts of her. “I don’t know. Run naked into the woods, I guess.”
Iceni laughed. “Really? What an interesting idea. What made you say that?”
“It was the craziest thing I could think of,” Drakon said.
“It sounds like fun. Let me know if you ever decide to do it.”
If only he could trust her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DRAKON preferred simple plans. They had fewer things that could go wrong. Even the simple parts could turn into a total goat rope, but if you kept the parts limited in number, that at least offered a chance to limit the number of goat ropes you would have to deal with when the plan hit reality head-on. “Not bad.”
Malin checked his own readout of the plan, and Morgan gave Drakon a surprised look. They knew that “not bad” wasn’t the same as “good to go.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Morgan asked.
“Only one thing.” He pointed to the display over his desk where the plan for entering the Taroa Star System played out in three dimensions. “You’ve got one freighter loaded with half of one brigade coming in early and alone to surprise and capture the primary orbiting docks before the rest of the force shows up. That’s good. It’s critically important that we capture those docks intact along with whatever is being built there and the skilled workers building it. But your plan calls for you to use part of Gaiene’s brigade, with Morgan along to represent me, while Malin and I follow with Kai’s brigade, the rest of Gaiene’s soldiers and Senski’s local brigade.”
“I can handle it,” Morgan said, bridling.
“Yes, but in action you and Gaiene are both very aggressive. What’s needed there along with Colonel Gaiene is someone to watch the flanks
and rear, someone to make sure we get whatever is being built in that main construction dock—”
“I’m just as good at that as Malin, there.”
“—and someone who can immediately deal with the Free Taroans before they realize that we stole their primary docking facility. That’s me.”
It was Malin’s turn to object. “Sir, that lead freighter is going in without any escort. If there is even one light mobile unit in the Taroa Star System, and it is under control of the snakes or Syndicate loyalists, then it could choose to intercept that freighter. That would put you at very great risk.”
“The last word we had is that there are no Syndicate or snake-controlled mobile units at Taroa,” Drakon said. “If one has shown up, it won’t be hanging around the jump point for Midway. It’ll be at the fourth planet, where most of the population is and the snakes and Syndicate loyalists are fighting the other two factions. Our freighter will be able to evade it for long enough if a warship like that comes for us, and once the rest of the force shows up, we’ll have enough firepower to make it run.”
“General, you are too important to risk yourself that way. If the loyalists have any nukes emplaced on those docks, they can blow the entire thing to hell if they realize in time what’s happening. I can—”
“No,” Morgan broke in. “I can handle it.”
“You’re both good,” Drakon said, “but this is my job. Morgan, you’ll ride with Colonel Kai, and Malin, you’ll be with Colonel Senski. End of discussion.”
They talked a bit longer about details, working those matters out, then Malin left.
Morgan paused before leaving, however. “If this is because you think that Gaiene would hit on me if we were on the same ship, you’re wrong.”
“That’s not it.” Not that exactly, anyway. The idea of Gaiene and Morgan cooped up together on the freighter for a few days had bothered him, but not for the obvious reasons suggested by Morgan’s allure and Gaiene’s randiness. They both knew when to rein in those aspects of themselves. Just why having them jointly on that freighter for this mission did concern him, Drakon didn’t know, but he had learned to listen to his gut feelings. And he did want to make sure that he, and no one else, was the first one talking to the Free Taroans. “It’s about my being in direct contact with the people on the primary inhabited planet at Taroa. Your ideas of diplomacy are a little more aggressive, and involve a little more firepower, than may be appropriate there.”
The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight Page 30