The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  Though he had felt something with Iceni. She seemed to be looking for that, too, some bigger reason to be in charge, some purpose beyond survival.

  Unfortunately, Iceni wasn’t here. She was light-years distant. Drakon looked around. Sentries stood here and there, watching for threats. He wasn’t alone, but he didn’t exactly have company either. Kai was half a continent away. Gaiene was probably already drunk and trying to see how many women he could get through in one night. Colonel Senski wasn’t sufficiently well-known to relax with. Malin was off setting up the spy network. And Drakon didn’t think he had the energy or patience to deal with Morgan’s idea of conversation tonight.

  The Interim Congress of Free Taroa had shown its appreciation for him by giving him the living quarters of the former star-system CEO for the night. That had cost them nothing, of course. Drakon hadn’t been able to find out what had happened to that CEO. Everyone knew that the CEO had left for refuge with the ISS when the civil war broke out, but after that, the trail got hazy. The CEO might have caught a ride on one of the ships the snakes had managed to send out of the star system, but other reports claimed that the CEO had been executed for failure or treason or whatever grounds the snakes wanted to use and the body disposed of. Either way, there didn’t seem much chance of the CEO’s showing up again, and the living areas and offices had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb for surveillance devices and booby traps.

  Drakon keyed in the access code and entered, looking around with amusement. The former CEO on Taroa had some luxurious tastes, especially considering that Taroa hadn’t been that wealthy a star system even before the civil war hit it hard. The former CEO must have engaged in some truly epic skimming of tax revenue to afford such a setup. The bedroom featured not just expensive art and sculptures, not just a full bar well stocked even with liquors from Alliance planets that had been available only through the black market for the last century, and not just a bed big enough for an entire squad of soldiers to have used without squeezing together, but also an actual fireplace in one corner, framed by an expansive marble mantel.

  None of it had done that CEO much good when the revolution started. As a matter of fact, the corruption this place implied had probably helped trigger the three-way fight that had sent the CEO fleeing.

  Drakon strolled over to the fireplace, peered at the controller almost invisibly set into the marble, then activated it. A decent blaze erupted from the logs, filling the room with flickering light. Laughing self-mockingly at the indulgence, Drakon walked to the bar and examined the contents. Rum from Hispan! Amazing. Filling a tall glass, Drakon sprawled into a plush chair and gazed at the fire.

  He had forgotten the problem with fires. When the flames danced, you could see things in them. After having risen to the rank of CEO, after having fought far too many battles, the things Drakon saw in the fire were not born of pleasant memories. Crowding to the forefront was that city. Where had it been? Some Alliance planet. Burning. Square kilometers in flames, no one to put them out, all automated firefighting systems destroyed, soldiers in armor moving among the holocaust, adding to the destruction as they struggled for control of the city ablaze around them. He had never seen so many things burning. Towering buildings, long stretches of low-slung housing, trees . . .

  He remembered being told as he stood with his surviving soldiers amid the smoking ruins that the Syndicate ground forces had triumphed and controlled what had once been a city. A week later, with Alliance reinforcements storming into the star system, Drakon and the others still alive had been evacuated as the badly outnumbered remnants of the Syndicate mobile forces withdrew.

  In official reports, it had been described as a Syndicate victory.

  The first drink didn’t douse the fires in his memories. He went back to the bar for a second. That was better. But recollections of old battles and dead friends still kept crowding in to destroy the tranquillity he sought, and that undefined sense of discontent with events at Taroa still troubled him, so Drakon got a third. He rarely did this, rarely drank so much, but that night he understood Gaiene better than usual. Even thinking about that new battleship, which might be a year away from being completed and operational, didn’t help. If he couldn’t find temporary tranquillity tonight, temporary oblivion would have to do.

  He was well into the third large drink when the door alarm sounded. Nobody could have gotten to that door without passing a lot of sentry posts, so Drakon called out “open” and watched the locks release and the portal swing wide.

  Morgan walked in like a panther fresh from a kill. The light from the fire glimmered on her black skin suit as the door swung shut again. Instead of being absorbed by the dull fabric, the firelight seemed to pick out every curve visible under the tight garment. “Hey, boss.” She looked around with a comically puzzled expression. “I expected to see lots of ravaged women lying around here.”

  Drakon made a face. “That’s not my style, Morgan.”

  “General, I know you like women.”

  “I do. But I don’t force women. Never have. Never will. That’s for weaklings and cowards.” He finished the third drink in a single swallow while the little monkey in the back of his male mind made excited noises as it watched Morgan move a few steps closer with lethal grace.

  “You could hire a woman. Or two or three,” Morgan suggested with a sly smile. “Malin could get them for you. That man is a born pimp if I ever saw one.”

  “I don’t need to hire women,” Drakon said with some heat.

  “Of course you don’t. You can have any woman you want. They’d come to you willingly. Because you’re a winner, General.” Morgan had stopped a few feet from him, smiling down at Drakon where he sat. “And if you listen to those who want you to win, you can do anything.”

  Drakon tried to silence the jabbering alcohol-fueled monkey that was bouncing around so wildly in his head that he couldn’t focus on the warnings his common sense seemed to be trying to get across. “Sure. Look. I’m tired and stressed. Why don’t you—”

  “I know you’re stressed. How long has it been, General? I know men. I know how you get. A man needs certain things, and the bigger the man, the more he needs.” Her smile had widened and taken on a quality that the monkey really, really liked. “You need a strong woman. A woman as strong as you are.”

  “Morgan—” Drakon began, then the thought of whatever he was going to say vanished from his mind as Morgan reached up and started unsealing her skin suit.

  She ran the seal open from shoulder to thigh with one long, languorous motion, then slowly peeled off the suit. The firelight shimmered on her body, Morgan’s eyes glinting with a muted red glow in the reflected light of the flames. “Let’s celebrate your victory,” she said.

  He tried to say no, but the drinks had given the monkey enough power to silence any other voices in his head. And the monkey wanted her more than anything. Morgan pounced across the remaining distance between them, tearing at his clothes, and he could see nothing, know nothing, want nothing but the feel of her.

  * * *

  WHEN he awoke the next morning she was gone, leading to a very brief flash of hope that the whole thing had been an exceptionally vivid, detailed, and extended dream. But then he spotted the torn sheets, felt some bruises and scratches that hadn’t been there the night before, and realized that he never could have imagined some of the things Morgan had done with him.

  It wasn’t the hangover that made him punch the wall hard enough to splinter the fine wood paneling.

  * * *

  DRAKON did not want to reenter the former CEO’s bedroom suite once he had cleaned up and dressed. The office next to that set of rooms, though, had an impressive set of security equipment and would do fine for any work he had to accomplish. And there was definitely something that he had to do. “Colonel Morgan, I need to speak with you privately.”

  She arrived a few minutes later, outwardly acting normally. Normally for Morgan, that was. But he probably wasn’t imagini
ng the ghost of a smile that kept appearing whenever she looked at him. “Yes, General?”

  He stayed as unbending as he could manage. “I wanted to ensure that you understood that the events of last night would not be repeated.”

  “Last night?” Morgan did smile openly this time. “Wasn’t it worth repeating?”

  He hoped his reaction hadn’t shown. I’ve never had a night like that, and I want it again, and again, but I won’t. “You know how I feel about sleeping with subordinates. I’m disappointed that you didn’t respect that.”

  She looked puzzled. “Did I force you?”

  “No.” Arguing that she took advantage of his being drunk would sound silly as well as weak. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  “That’s your decision, General.”

  “Do you mind telling me what you hoped to accomplish?”

  Morgan grinned once more. “I think it was pretty obvious what I was trying to accomplish last night. And I succeeded. More than once.”

  Memories of that night warred with his desire to remain angry. “And that was it? That was all you were after?”

  “Oh . . . yeah.” Morgan’s smile changed, and her voice grew serious. “General Drakon, everything I do is in your best interests.”

  “Then respect my wishes. I won’t speak of this again.”

  “I like a man who doesn’t boast about his conquests.” Morgan pretended to flinch at Drakon’s expression. “I understand, General. One-night stand. It’s over.”

  “That’s all.”

  Several minutes after Morgan left, Malin arrived. Was it just his imagination, or did Malin seem more formal than usual? Drakon had no illusions that no one else was aware that Morgan had spent a good, long time in his private quarters. Few besides Malin would fault him for that, and for some reason, that aggravated him even more. “What?” he asked Malin.

  Malin paused at Drakon’s tone of voice. “I have an update on the ‘wounded’ that Colonel Gaiene sent up to the orbital docks, General.”

  “Oh.” The world went on, despite his own failures and discomfort. “Have they completed interrogating and screening them?”

  “Yes, General. Full-scale interrogation, and none displayed signs of having been trained to mislead that.” Malin checked his reader. “Of the eighty-seven who surrendered to Colonel Gaiene’s brigade, six are confirmed as having actively participated in atrocities against citizens. Nineteen more witnessed such atrocities but did not participate themselves. The remainder belonged to subunits whose commanding officers evaded orders to carry out atrocities against Syndicate citizens. They neither witnessed nor participated in such actions.”

  Drakon sat back, trying to focus on those numbers. “Did any of those subunit commanding officers survive and surrender to us?”

  “Two, General. One executive and one subexecutive are among the eighty-seven.”

  “Offer them comparable positions in our forces. I want the nineteen soldiers who witnessed atrocities rescreened. Make sure they didn’t participate in doing things like that to our own citizens because they wouldn’t, not because they just weren’t personally asked. I want to know what soldiers in my command will do instead of wondering what they’ll do. Offer positions in our forces to the soldiers who didn’t commit or witness atrocities, but spread them around through the brigades, and if they accept, I want their service records altered to indicate they belonged to one of the units the Free Taroans said didn’t commit atrocities.” He didn’t bother adding that such alterations should be undetectable. Malin was very good at such things and would make sure that no one could tell that the service records had been changed.

  Malin nodded, making notes. “And the six?”

  Turning them back over to the Taroans would be an admission that he had pulled loyalist soldiers up to the orbital docks, as well as risking the six soldiers’ telling the Taroans that others from their units were still in Drakon’s custody.

  Besides, he had a responsibility to deal with this.

  “Firing squads. Get it done, and get rid of the bodies. They died on the planet. Understand?”

  “Yes, General.” Malin turned to go.

  “Colonel Malin.” Drakon waited while he halted. “Is there anything else you want to say?” The invitation would give Malin a chance to talk, and for some reason Drakon wanted to know what Malin would say.

  Malin took a moment to reply, then faced Drakon squarely. “I request clarification as to Colonel Morgan’s future status, General.”

  “Unchanged.”

  Was that relief that flickered across Malin’s features?

  Another pause, then Malin spoke with extreme care. “General, I realize that I have no right to ask this—”

  “It won’t happen again,” Drakon said. He definitely saw relief this time. And he had to tell someone. “I got drunk. I wasn’t thinking. It’s not going to happen again.”

  Malin looked down, nodding. “General, she has an agenda. I don’t know what it is, but Morgan is after more than . . . sharing your bed for one night.”

  “And what is it that you’re after, Colonel Malin?”

  Malin paused. “What I do, General, is always in your best interests.”

  Drakon stared at the door after he had left, wondering why Malin and Morgan had used almost identical language to describe their intentions toward him.

  That afternoon, he took a shuttle up to the orbital docks, wanting to be quit of the soil of Taroa. He was tired of dealing with people who couldn’t be told to do what needed to be done but had to be convinced. A single, strong leader could get things done.

  But they didn’t have that at Midway, either. He had to get Iceni’s approval for things like this. What if she had objected? How could anything with two heads function properly? And what if she heard about Morgan? He shouldn’t care if Iceni heard, shouldn’t care how she reacted to it if she heard, but all of those questions bothered him, further souring his mood.

  Even a tour of the battleship hull didn’t help. Going through it only emphasized how much remained to be done, how empty and incomplete the hull was compared to the one that Iceni had brought back from Kane.

  It took a while to get all of the soldiers of the three brigades and their equipment as well back up to the docks and the modified freighters. The Interim Congress of Free Taroa dithered and debated, but thanks to copious bribes doled out by Colonel Malin and the efforts of agents working for him, the congress eventually approved the two temporary agreements on self-defense and trade, to last until a government was seated and voted them up or down.

  “Major Lyr.” Drakon waved Colonel Gaiene’s second-in-command to a seat. “How’d you like to be a colonel?”

  Lyr regarded Drakon with the wariness of a veteran. “What’s the catch, sir?”

  “Independent command.”

  It only took a moment for Lyr to figure that out. “Here, sir?”

  “Right.” Drakon leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. “You’re a good soldier, a good administrator, and I know how much you’ve done to keep your brigade in top condition.” He didn’t add how important that had been in light of Colonel Gaiene’s more-than-occasional lapses in periods without combat. Lyr knew that Drakon knew, and Drakon never bad-mouthed officers in front of their subordinates. “You’ll keep two companies from Gaiene’s brigade plus one company made up of regulars from Taroa who’ve been judged most reliable. This job will require someone who can operate on their own and also work with the Free Taroans. That part will be tough. You have to avoid being too overbearing with them because we want them thinking of us as partners, but you can’t let the Free Taroans think they can tell us what to do. I think you can handle that.”

  Lyr nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “There’ll be a civilian left here, too. One of President Iceni’s representatives whose job is to handle all of the trade and diplomatic stuff that doesn’t involve military or security matters. Freighters should be making fairly frequent ru
ns between here and Midway, so there shouldn’t be any problem keeping me informed. Handle the little problems and try to spot big problems in time for me to act.”

  “So,” Lyr said, “nothing too difficult or demanding.”

  Drakon smiled, knowing that Lyr meant the opposite. “Exactly.”

  “I’ll do my best, General.”

  “I know, Colonel. That’s why you got the job and the promotion.” As hard as Lyr’s job would be, Drakon thought, it probably wouldn’t be as difficult as finding a replacement for Lyr as Gaiene’s second-in-command. But, what the hell, I need to grow more senior officers. Nobody ever claimed my job was easy, either.

  A week after Drakon had taken the shuttle up, his brigades were fully embarked, the agreements were in hand, and the freighters and warships broke orbit en route to the jump point for Midway. Having been moody for most of that week, Drakon wondered who would be happier to get back to Midway, himself or Kommodor Marphissa and the crew of the heavy cruiser, who would be able to bid farewell to him there.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DRAKON’S mood didn’t match his information.

  “You seem to have succeeded in everything we agreed you should go to Taroa to do,” Iceni said.

  “Not everything,” Drakon replied. “There wasn’t even the beginnings of a stable government when we left.”

  “You could scarcely wait around until there was one. From what my representatives reported, Taroa is already leaning toward a formal alliance with us. That will be a start, and an incentive for other star systems near us to consider the same.” Iceni rubbed her eyes with one hand. “In less positive news, I assume that you’ve heard from Colonel Rogero.”