The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword (36 page)

“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 interest 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, which 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—”

“I’m not a CEO. Not anymore. Damn,” Drakon continued in an admiring tone. “You guys did an amazing job. I thought you were being given early discharge and retirement as a reward for the heroism.”

“Yes, they told us that,” the soldier said, looking at Drakon in dawning wonder. “And then a month later, when we got out of the hospital and the news vid crews had left, they told us we had done such good jobs that we were too valuable to lose. We were sent back to our unit. You’re CEO Drakon?”

“I used to be CEO Drakon.”

“You’d just taken over the Hundred Sixteenth Division back then, hadn’t you?”

“That’s right.” Drakon waved back toward the base. “That’s who you were fighting, two brigades of what was the Hundred Sixteenth.”

“Well, damn, no wonder we got beat.” Dupree shook his head. “That’s weird. I don’t feel so bad now, knowing who we were fighting.”

Drakon sat down next to the old soldier, aware of all of the nearby soldiers watching and listening. “What are your plans?”

“Try to survive, I guess,” the old soldier answered. “The usual.”

“Ulindi can use someone like you. So can I.”

“That’s for real? Why?”

“Because I got sick of seeing soldiers like you treated the way you were.”

Specialist Dupree nodded back at Drakon, his eyes serious and searching. “Your workers always fought really hard for you. I can’t stay at Ulindi, though. It’s got some rough memories now. And the Syndicate is out even if I wanted to go to a star they still controlled. I killed two snakes myself. Young fools who didn’t think an old worker like me was anyone to worry about. You’re going back to Midway? I’ve never been there.”

“There’s a lot of water,” Drakon said.

“Good beer?”

“We’re a major trading junction because of the hypernet gate and all of our jump points. We get a lot of good beer.”

The old soldier smiled broadly and sat straight. “If you’ve got any interest, uh . . .”

“General,” Drakon said. “I dropped the CEO as fast as I could.”

“Yes, sir. General. If you’d take me, I’ll join you.”

Drakon reached out and clapped the man on the shoulder. “One of the soldiers who held the point at Chandrahas? I’ll always have room for the likes of you. And, heavy weapons, you said? We could use a veteran heavy-weapons specialist.” He stood up, looking around at the crowd watching silently. “You’ve been told the choice is yours, and it is. This isn’t the sort of trick the Syndicate pulled. Just before I met Executive Gozen, I was told that our mobile forces have captured the troop transports that brought you here. We’ll use one or more of those transports to take anyone who wants to a star where they can get a lift back to Syndicate space. Or you can stay here and see what kind of star system can be built at Ulindi free of the Syndicate. Or you can ride those transports with my people and join us at Midway. It’s your call.”

He spent another hour that he couldn’t really spare walking among the defeated Syndicate soldiers, then back into the open area where the fighting had raged. “Give us some room,” Drakon told his two guards, who had not been needed and now faded back until they were ten meters away. He turned to face Gozen. “What about you, Executive Gozen?”

INSTEAD
of answering his question, Executive Gozen looked steadily at him before asking her own. “Did you really know that guy from Chandrahas?”

“Yeah.” Drakon smiled crookedly. “He’s a bit older now, but so am I.”

“But remembering his face? After ten years?”

Drakon shook his head, looking down at the scarred pavement. “He should have been dead. All of them should have. But six of them survived and held out until we got to them. You don’t forget the face of someone who does something like that.” He looked back up at her. “You’ve got some good soldiers there. Right now, they’re beaten. Give them a week, and I wouldn’t want to tangle with them again.”

She bent one corner of her mouth up. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Good soldiers. But—I hope you won’t take this wrong,” Drakon said. “But I expected the Syndicate to send ground forces against us who were considered absolutely reliable.”

Gozen smiled without any trace of humor. “We were absolutely reliable. By which I mean as reliable as any ground forces except for vipers,” she said, naming the fanatical snake special forces. “We had a lot of people who believed in the Syndicate and wanted to help save it.”

“You weren’t one of those people,” Drakon said, making it a statement, not a question.

“No, sir.” Gozen looked to one side, her expression somber. “No, sir,” she repeated. “I wasn’t one of the hard-core loyalists. We had a good number of them, though. But they sent us against your positions, head-on assault after head-on assault. Shots and shrapnel don’t care what anybody’s politics are, but the enthusiastic workers and execs, the ones who really believed and really wanted to win another one for the Syndicate, they pushed to the front during the attacks and they pushed farther forward during the attacks and they took longer to fall back during the attacks. That would have been great if you guys had cracked. They would have been the ones forming the penetrator while the rest of us provided the mass behind them. But you didn’t break anywhere. You had too many people at each point and too much firepower and you were dug in at the base and you were just plain tough. So instead, the enthusiastic ones died a lot faster than the people who were less enthusiastic.”

Gozen looked outward to where the largest craters marred the open field. “Of course, the rocks your mobile forces dropped didn’t care who they killed, either, and they cut the units in that attack off at the knees. But that left the enthusiastic people isolated in front of your positions, so that bunch got wiped out. Bottom line, after enough attacks, what was left weren’t very hard-core.”

She waved one hand across the field. “The hard-core, the true believers, the really loyal, are lying out there. They gave it their all. And when they were gone, the rest of us asked ourselves why the hell we were doing this.”

“I see.” Drakon looked out at the dead still lying out in the open area even though teams were moving methodically through it, recovering the bodies. “The Syndicate did have a good weapon in your unit, but they broke that weapon.”

“Yeah,” Gozen said. “Like any other Syndicate unit these days, we had rot at the heart, and beyond that, people who would do their jobs out of fear or not wanting to let down their comrades, and then an outer shell that made us look strong.” She tilted her chin toward the piles of dead. “That was our shell. The rest of us wouldn’t have broken against the Alliance, no matter what. We would have held to the end, for our families and our homes. But we knew you guys were just doing what a lot of us had already thought about, and we knew you couldn’t threaten our homes. The only people who can do that now are the Syndicate and their snakes.”

“Not quite,” Drakon said. “There are other dangers out there. There are a lot of tough fights left to fight.”

“Are you always this encouraging?”

He smiled at her. “Tell me something. How did you make it this far? Why were you still an Executive Third Class instead of an inmate at a labor camp?”

“Why do you ask?” Gozen said, feigning surprise.

“That attitude thing,” Drakon replied dryly.

“There is that,” Gozen admitted. “The truth is I wasn’t going to last much longer. I’m good at what I do, I’m a damned good soldier, and I get the job done, and my workers respected me, and didn’t try to undermine me because I tried to look out for them. But I only survived long enough to get here because I had a strong patron, the sub-CEO in charge of my brigade. He was my uncle. And he had something on the CEO running the division. I don’t know what. Some potential source of blackmail that gave him leverage.”

Drakon couldn’t stop himself before his eyes went to the field of dead.

“No,” Gozen said. “He’s not out there.” She inhaled heavily, then sighed. “Just before we came here, something slipped. I don’t know what. We were told we had a new CEO for the division, and when I tried to check with my uncle I found out our sub-CEO had been replaced overnight as well. Before the day was out I was called in and told that my uncle had been arrested for crimes against the Syndicate, and the snakes had their eyes on me. I had the choices of performing heroically on this mission, which might save my butt for a while longer, or dying heroically, which would be relatively painless, or going to join my uncle, though it wasn’t specified whether I’d be joining him in a labor camp or in death.”

“A Syndicate motivational talk,” Drakon said.

“Exactly. That and a few other abrupt changes of command within the division and the addition of a lot of extra snakes to look over the shoulders of everyone was supposed to ensure that we were in the best possible shape to take you guys out.” Gozen laughed bitterly. “It had the opposite effect, of course. We moved slower against you than we would have if the bosses hadn’t just been changed and the snakes hadn’t been questioning every action before they approved it. You would have been taken out before you attacked and took the base if our effectiveness hadn’t been hurt so much by those changes.”

“The Syndicate undercut its own efforts,” Drakon said. “Nothing new there. So, what are you going to do now, Executive Gozen?” he asked again.

She gestured back toward her positions. “Make sure those guys are all right.”

“You’d be in the running to be in charge of ground forces for Ulindi,” Drakon pointed out.

“Don’t want that, sir. Not ready for it. I can handle small units well, but I was frozen out of a lot of the staff work. My uncle wanted to keep my profile low, and the other sub-CEOs wanted me to go away.”

“You could get that experience with me,” Drakon said. “If you pass the security screening.”

“Huh.” She eyed him. “General, just to be clear on one point, I don’t think I’m some big prize, and I’ve never really understood male preferences in women, but if you’re thinking I’d be the sort of protégé whose duties include satisfying your physical needs and stroking your ego, that’s not my thing.”

Drakon shook his head. “That’s not my thing, either. I don’t put that kind of pressure on my subordinates, and I have firm policies against it. I know, so does the Syndicate. But I’m serious about it.” Which was one of the reasons his failure to control himself that one night with Morgan stung so badly. No matter how drunk he had been, he should have restrained himself, should have successfully resisted her attempts. “You can ask my people about it. They’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough, General.” Gozen jerked her head toward her positions. “But those men and women come first. I can’t leave or take another job until I know they’re all right.” She blinked back tears. “And, I’ve got to tell you, General, I don’t know . . . We lost a lot of people. We lost too many.”

“We lost too many as well,” Drakon said. “Even one would have been too many.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes irritably. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“I wish I knew another way,” Drakon said, his voice low. “I do it because it’s the only way I know of to stop the kind of people who sent you to Ulindi, who killed your uncle, who filled the mass graves here with bodies, who bombarded the helpless people at Kane, and have done so many other things to hurt and control and take.”

She looked back him, her eyes red. “If I stopped, they wouldn’t. Same old. And I owe it to Uncle Jurgen, who kept me alive this long even if he couldn’t save himself. I’m going to need happy pills to keep going, though,” Gozen said, using the common slang term for the medications and therapies used to help soldiers cope with post-traumatic stress.

“Welcome to the club,” Drakon said.

“I was already a member.” She nodded to Drakon. “By my rough estimate, about half of the surviving soldiers from my division will be interested in staying at Ulindi to help defend this star system and build new lives here, especially if they can figure out ways to get family members out here. About a quarter will want to head back to the Syndicate. And about a quarter will be interested in your offers to join you guys.”

“Which fraction do you fit into?” Drakon asked.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work for somebody who cared about their workers,” Gozen said. “And what it would be like to fight for something I wanted to win instead of fighting just because I was afraid of someone else’s winning. But I probably can’t do anything about my attitude.”

“Are you always this encouraging?” Drakon asked.

She grinned at him. “You’ve got an attitude, too, don’t you, General?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“All right. You want my kind of headache, you got it.”

—

“I,
along with
Manticore
and our other cruisers and Hunter-Killers, will remain here to escort the transports, but I have to send
Midway
back to . . . Midway,” Marphissa told Drakon. All of her ships were once more orbiting Ulindi. “They need her there in case the Syndicate tries another attack.”

“Or the enigmas,” Drakon said. “I understand, Kommodor. Please inform Kapitan Mercia that the ground forces are extremely grateful for the support of her ship. Of course we’re also extremely grateful for the support your other units gave us. It’s no exaggeration to say that we probably would have been overwhelmed without that bombardment you tossed off at just the right time.”

Marphissa smiled. “We were happy to provide that support, General. I’m just glad that President Iceni shared that code phrase with you. If you hadn’t tacked that onto the end of the text message asking for assistance, I wouldn’t have known whom to target with the bombardment.”

“That code phrase.” Drakon looked at her, his expression suddenly guarded. “The one from President Iceni.”

“Yes,” Marphissa said, wondering at Drakon’s reaction.

“I’m glad the code phrase made a difference,” Drakon said.

Uncertain what was going on, she changed the topic. “Do you have an updated estimate when we can begin loading your ground forces onto our new troop transports?”

“They’re not exactly new, Kommodor,” Drakon said, appearing relaxed again. “More like previously owned. Not that I’m not happy to have them.”

“Considering that four of the freighters that brought you here were destroyed and six others kept running until they jumped for another star system, you ought to be extremely happy,” Marphissa said. “I’m not sure how we would have gotten your people home without the transports. We can load as many people on six troop transports as it took all twenty modified freighters to carry.”

“How confident are you about the crews of those transports?”

“We took off some from each transport and replaced them with some of ours. There are no grounds for worries there, General. So, that estimate?” Marphissa pressed, wondering why Drakon had avoided answering the question.

He made a face, then looked straight at her. “We promised to take any of the surrendered ground forces who wanted that back to a star system where they could find rides to Syndicate space.”

Oh. So that was it. “How many?” Marphissa asked.

“Four hundred sixty two. A lot less than expected, actually.”

“One transport can handle that.” Marphissa pondered the problem. “I am reluctant to send any ships on to Kiribati. That is entirely too likely to have some sort of ambush waiting in case some of us had tried to flee that way to escape the Syndicate flotilla. But if we bring that batch of Syndicate loyalists with us back to Midway, we can have the transport carrying them continue on to Iwa. From Iwa, they can find rides into Syndicate space. Not easily, but they can do it, which satisfies your promise to them without risking our ships in a trip to other Syndicate-controlled stars that we know less about than Iwa and that are farther away. I have no desire to stick my ships into a hornet’s nest in Syndicate space, General.”

“Iwa.” Drakon thought about it, rubbing his chin, then nodded. “That’s reasonable. We can start loading those guys as soon as you’re ready.”

“We acquired some extra shuttles along with the transports,” Marphissa pointed out.

“Major Barnes has already informed me of that and of her intentions to requisition a few of those shuttles to replace losses during our assault here. I’ll get the load plan finalized and start sending the loyalists up. Which transport?”