Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  But suppose they could think like that if motivated by things other than fear? She had considered the idea before, but time and again it had been shoved into the background by the need to deal with emergencies and unforeseen developments.

  For a long time after Bradamont had left, Iceni sat gazing into the distance, thinking about things she had been told were true, had seen were true, but that might not be true.

  —

  MORGAN nodded to the man who had been designated in snake files as a potential security threat. Not a serious potential threat. Those had all been arrested or had simply disappeared before she had even reached Ulindi. The accelerated rate and number of arrests argued that Supreme CEO Haris was planning something in the near future, but every check Morgan had made revealed nothing in snake files about any impending activity.

  Dark walls loomed around them, most of the light provided by the devices in Morgan’s hand which were blocking any hidden surveillance system. Two more snakes had died to provide her with the right equipment.

  The man stared back at her, one eye twitching nervously. “I don’t know what you want.”

  “The same things that Citizen Torres wants,” Morgan said smoothly.

  “Wanted. Past tense. Torres is dead. If you think you’re going to lure me into saying or doing anything disloyal, you’re wrong.”

  Torres was also dead? The snakes had been two steps ahead of her on that one. “Haris’s time is limited,” Morgan said. “If you choose the right option, you can help bring about his downfall.”

  The man shook his head rapidly, gazing around as if trying to meet the eyes of unseen observers. “I have no interest in that. I am loyal. I will report you, though.”

  “Is that what started the snakes hauling in so many citizens? You reported on people?”

  “No! The dragnet just began, out of nowhere! No one had done anything! I hadn’t done anything!”

  Morgan let a moment of silence build fear in the man while she thought about means to make him blurt something useful. “What about Citizen Galanos?” she finally asked. “What would he think of what you’re saying?”

  “Galanos? I . . . I don’t know any Galanos.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Morgan said. “The snakes know you’ve met with Galanos.”

  “That’s not true! If it were, I’d be—” The man stopped, swallowing before he could speak again. “I am loyal,” he protested weakly.

  Morgan would have taken the man’s denials a little easier if he wasn’t the fifth contact who had refused to even begin working with her. Four others she had tried making contact with had either disappeared or died before she could reach them. She was feeling frustrated and more than a little upset.

  Before she could say anything else, though, a small alarm chirped in her left ear, followed by a blinking light on the masking equipment she was carrying.

  Snarling, Morgan slammed her palm against the man’s forehead hard enough to launch him backward into the wall behind him. The impact could be clearly heard, doubtless alerting whoever was sneaking toward her from the left, but Morgan still paused long enough to run her gear over the man’s body. Sure enough, he had been wired. The snakes had been a step ahead on him as well.

  She yanked out the memory clip on the wire and ensured the man was dead, then thumbed the timer on an improvised explosive that she had concocted, setting the device in the dark shadows near the wall opposite the man’s body. Drawing the weapon she had taken off a dead snake, Morgan faded back to her right, moving quickly and surely along the escape path she had worked out before setting up the meeting. There had been another path available to the left if the snakes had come from the other direction.

  Not that this one was safe after all. Morgan froze, scanning the darkness for another sign of whatever trace of movement or sound had registered on her subconscious. There. And there. She waited patiently, counting silently to herself, weapon lined up on one of the almost-impossible-to-spot figures.

  Morgan pulled the trigger a second before the improvised explosive detonated in the alley behind her. Without waiting to see the result of her shot, Morgan jumped sideways, firing twice more at the second figure who had become visible in the momentary light of the explosion, the sound of her shots masked by the echoes of the blast.

  As the light faded, and darkness fell again, Morgan raced down the alley past the two dead or wounded snake sentries. Shots rang out behind her, and some to the side, but she was moving too fast along her preplanned route.

  As she cut through a segment of an underground utility tunnel, a figure appeared to one side. Morgan didn’t wait to identify the person or see if they posed a threat, one hand flashing out to inflict what could have been a killing blow. She didn’t pause to find out if the strike had been lethal, continuing onward without pause.

  Every plan had to be modified when necessary. The idea of getting armed resistance cells going here had seemed a good one but was proving to be way too hazardous and lacking in any actual recruits for the cells.

  Morgan finally stopped in a carefully prepared hiding place, going to work to change her appearance again and dispose of anything that could be used to identify or track her.

  She had to wait for daylight to move again without attracting all the wrong kinds of attention, so Morgan sat back and thought.

  There had been a lot of arrests in this city and elsewhere on the planet in the last month, beginning a couple of weeks prior to her arrival. A lot of arrests. The bugged citizen who had died tonight had been near the bottom of the sort of long list of usual suspects that snakes routinely maintained. No one on a Syndicate world publicized arrest statistics, but from what Morgan had been able to put together by listening to murmured comments on the street and scanning the want ads for suddenly available job positions, there had been thousands of arrests recently.

  Was Supreme CEO Haris that scared? Good. He should be.

  Where were the snakes keeping all the citizens they were rounding up?

  That might be an important thing to learn though Morgan suspected the answer would be an unpleasant one.

  She hoped the information she had already smuggled out to General Drakon would be enough for him to achieve another overwhelming victory. Not that the general needed much help in winning battles. Strategic vision, that was another matter, but the general had her to keep that firmly targeted.

  Morgan twisted her head up and to the side so she could peer up into a crack of night sky visible from her hiding place. Dawn was beginning to pale the darkness above, but the brightest stars were still visible.

  Our daughter will rule those stars.

  Despite the discomfort of the position, Morgan held it, watching until the last star’s glow was lost in the spreading light of the new day.

  —

  GENERAL Drakon leaned back, indicating the display. His office was smaller than Iceni’s, and more Spartan than luxurious, but those were as much lingering manifestations of what the Syndicate demanded of different levels of CEOs as they were reflections of Drakon’s preferences. The exact size of a ground forces CEO office in any star system was laid out in detail in Syndicate regulations. A CEO could exceed the limits of office size for his or her position, but only at the cost of advertising ambition and risking preemptive actions by superiors. Since the revolt, Drakon could have expanded his office to match Iceni’s, but he hadn’t seen the point. As far as he was concerned, the size of a man’s office didn’t matter as long as there was enough room for a desk and a trash can, and bigger offices didn’t make bigger men or women. “Did you go over the information Colonel Morgan sent?” he asked Colonel Malin.

  “Yes, sir. It’s very complete.” Malin called up an image of Ulindi Star System. “It confirms some of our other information. Supreme CEO Haris was badly hurt by his failed attempt to seize our battleship. He lost his battle cruiser and four Hunter-Killers, leaving him with only one heavy cruiser that we knew of. Morgan’s information tells us that Haris also has
a single light cruiser at his disposal. Our prisoners from Haris’s former battle cruiser suspected that he had the light cruiser but also thought it might have defected from Haris.”

  “And no warships under construction or repair,” Drakon said. “Two cruisers can’t stop us from landing troops wherever we want in Ulindi.”

  “Not if President Iceni sends along a sufficiently strong flotilla as escort,” Malin agreed. “I would recommend asking for two heavy cruisers and two or more light cruisers. If either Kommodor Marphissa or Kapitan Kontos commands the flotilla, two-to-one superiority will be more than enough to ensure the neutralization of Haris’s warships.”

  “That’s about half of our warships. I think President Iceni will agree to a flotilla of that size. Why not ask to bring the battle cruiser as well?”

  “There’s no need for the battle cruiser, General,” Malin said. “Unless Haris suddenly produces a much more serious warship threat. But if we arrive at Ulindi and see such a threat, we can cancel the landing operation and withdraw.”

  “I expect that President Iceni would say the same thing if I asked for the battle cruiser as well as half of her other warships,” Drakon conceded. “I understand why she would want to keep Pele protecting Midway. If we don’t keep our base here safe, taking Ulindi won’t do us any good.”

  Malin gestured toward the display. “The data on the ground forces also matches what we knew, with only one brigade of regular Syndicate forces assigned. That brigade lost some of its soldiers, who were added to the battle cruiser’s crew to assist in capturing our battleship. All of those died when we took the battle cruiser.” Malin paused, eyeing the display. “And then there are a couple of battalions of planetary militia which are considered unreliable, and the snakes loyal to CEO Haris. Some of the ground forces and some of the snakes are deployed to orbital bases and locations around the star system. From the records Morgan procured, I estimate the actual ground strength of the opposition will be about sixty percent of officially authorized personnel for the Syndicate brigade.”

  “One brigade of regular forces at sixty percent strength,” Drakon repeated, “and a couple of battalions of planetary military that have no heavy weapons because the snakes don’t trust them. What do you make of the arrests that started before Morgan got there?”

  Malin smiled without visible humor. “Haris is worried. He is seeing more enemies everywhere and striking out at everyone. The sort of mass arrests that Colonel Morgan reported will further turn the population and the ground forces against him.” The smile went away. “However, it means that Colonel Morgan’s attempts to form resistance cells may be limited in success.”

  “Through no fault of hers,” Drakon said, frowning. “Haris must be smart enough to know that mass arrests are going to destabilize the populace. It’s the fear of arrest that keeps most Syndicate citizens in line. If the arrests become so common that no one appears safe, they become counterproductive. Haris is courting serious trouble in the long run.”

  “Perhaps he is not smart enough to know that, General.”

  Drakon eyed Malin. “Colonel, I know you want this operation to be carried out. You want Ulindi turned from threat to ally. Maybe we can achieve that. But I don’t want eagerness to cause anyone to turn a blind eye to potential difficulties.” He was feeling the lack of Morgan here. She would have been challenging Malin’s assumptions, keeping him honest, and pointing out alternatives. And Malin, anticipating her jabs, would have taken extra effort to double-check his own plans.

  As mother/son relationships went, it was sort of messed up, but then Morgan didn’t know it was a mother/son relationship, and it had worked pretty well for military planning as far as Drakon was concerned.

  “Sir, I am considering all possibilities,” Malin said.

  And, to be honest, Drakon couldn’t see any significant problems with what Malin was presenting. “Even if the military in Ulindi stays loyal to Haris,” Drakon said, “we should still be able to take them with no trouble with two brigades of our own supported by warships in low orbit. Captain Bradamont says it should be simple to take down the few antiorbital defenses that Ulindi has.”

  “I agree with her assessment,” Malin said. “Morgan also included her assessment that morale is low among the ground forces in Ulindi. It looks . . . almost easy.”

  Drakon nodded, twisting his mouth as he gazed at the display, glad that Malin had brought that up. “Too easy. What are we missing?”

  “I can’t find anything, sir. Morgan’s information is very complete, and no matter her other . . . activities . . . Colonel Morgan is very good at this sort of thing. Supreme CEO Haris’s recent actions, the surge of arrests and executions, do not suggest confidence or a feeling of strength on Haris’s part.”

  “He’s acting scared, isn’t he? But it still looks pretty easy.”

  “We could bring three brigades,” Malin suggested. “There should no longer be a requirement to stiffen the locals—”

  “No.” Drakon smiled briefly to soften the firm rejection of Malin’s suggestion. “Two brigades won’t short this effort. Haris is not acting like someone with a hidden trump card ready to play, and Morgan would have spotted any hidden trumps. If everything were quiet here, and we had the necessary lift on hand, I’d take all three of our brigades, but President Iceni needs backup, and getting enough lift for two brigades is going to be hard enough. What’s your assessment of the security situation here?”

  Malin paused before answering. “General, there is no doubt that someone is working to create problems with the citizens. My sources have yet to identify who that someone is, but with the changes that President Iceni has made, it will be much harder for them to cause civil unrest. The local forces under her control should be more than sufficient—”

  “I think President Iceni requires one of our brigades,” Drakon said in a way that made it clear the matter was closed. “Your last guess was that snakes weren’t actually involved,” Drakon pressed. “Do you still believe that?”

  “No, sir,” Malin admitted. “Midway needs the commerce that passes through this star system, but that commerce can easily mask the movements of Syndicate agents. I suspect that has happened. There are also very likely more snakes among the personnel from the Reserve Flotilla. I have cautioned against crewing the battleship almost exclusively with them, and against giving command of the battleship to a Reserve Flotilla veteran as well. I still believe that is a mistake we may all regret.”

  Drakon made a casting-away gesture with one hand. “That’s a lost battle, Colonel. President Iceni has the utmost faith in Kapitan Mercia. I understand that Captain Bradamont also believes the crew of the Midway are overwhelmingly loyal.”

  “How many snakes does it take to bite?” Malin asked. He always projected a cool demeanor, one that many thought actually cold, but now the heat behind his question came through. “If we lose that battleship, then nothing else can possibly make up for it.”

  “It’s pretty hard to destroy a battleship,” Drakon said, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his desk. “You’re not really worried about Midway, are you?”

  “Sir?” Malin gazed back with an uncomprehending expression.

  “You’re worried about Colonel Morgan. You want to ensure that we can take Ulindi so she can be safely recovered.”

  “General, with all due respect,” Malin said, his voice stiff, “that is not my primary concern.”

  “I didn’t say it was. But you’ve already admitted that you’ve been protecting her for years, without her knowledge.”

  “Only when absolutely necessary. She has been sent on a hazardous mission,” Malin said, speaking with extreme care. He had gone cool again, betraying no feeling. “I would be concerned about any officer under those circumstances. But the mission always comes first.”

  “Of course,” Drakon agreed, sure that Malin believed what he was saying, but also pretty certain that it wasn’t true. There had been too many incidents in the past which
had only become understandable after Malin’s relationship with Morgan had been revealed.

  “Sir, all three brigades—” Malin tried again.

  “Are not going.” He didn’t know why he felt a growing certainty that a brigade had to be left here. It was like that sixth sense that warned that someone was aiming a shot at him. What it meant, he didn’t know, but Drakon had learned to pay attention to those kinds of intangible premonitions. In this case, though, he had some very tangible reasons as well. “Apart from other considerations, having to arrange transport for and load a third brigade will add significantly to our preparation time for this operation. I won’t waste weeks of time in order to pad our margin of victory, which seems very comfortable already. Do you believe that is a misperception, Colonel?” Drakon asked.

  Malin shook his head, poker-faced. “No, sir, I do not. Two brigades of our soldiers, supported by orbital bombardment from our warships, should easily succeed. Which brigade will be left behind, General?”

  “I’ll talk to President Iceni about that.”

  “Colonel Kai—”

  “I’ll talk to President Iceni,” Drakon said, emphasizing the words this time to ensure that Malin knew he was pushing it.

  After Malin had left, Drakon hunched over his desk, trying to grasp what was bothering him. Part of it was Malin himself. After years of feeling that he knew everything important about Bran Malin, feeling that Malin could be counted on, he now found himself questioning Malin’s actions and motivations.

  Morgan, of course, always questioned Malin’s actions and motivations. That had left little need for Drakon to do it. But without Morgan, the dynamic had changed abruptly.

  Perhaps I’ve grown too dependent on Malin and Morgan. As a team, they were often a pain, but they were also very, very capable. That made it too easy to lean on them and take their support for granted.

  That’s gone, though, and it can’t return.

  Is there anything else that could be giving me subconscious worries?

  Things were quiet here, despite the impossible-to-eliminate rumors among the military and the civilians. Morgan had confirmed the state of Haris’s forces, so they knew exactly what they would be facing in Ulindi. And Ulindi did have to be dealt with, despite the inevitable risks of any military operations, and despite the problems they would face rounding up enough freighters modified for carrying troops and attaching temporary air locks and shuttle clamps to them so that the two brigades could get to Ulindi and hit the ground hard and fast.