Tarnished Knight

by Jack Campbell

  “You worked with the snakes to put a spy on your own staff?” Morgan stared for a moment, then laughed. “You’re crazy!” Something in her voice made it sound as if that made Drakon the most desirable man in the galaxy.

  He couldn’t help grinning. “Like a fox.”

  “Yes! So the ISS got Rogero’s Alliance bitch freed and back in their fleet? Where’s she right now? I know she’s with Black Jack’s fleet, but what is she doing?”

  “She’s in command of one of the Alliance battle cruisers.”

  Morgan paused, a smile growing. “A battle cruiser commander? In Black Jack’s fleet? And she’s hot for Rogero? Forgive me, General. You’re not just crazy. You’re crazy brilliant.”

  “Thanks.” Drakon shrugged. “Whether she’s still hot for him is an open question. The message she sent Rogero when Black Jack’s fleet passed through here last time could be summed up as ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ It subtly asked for information on the situation here but doesn’t give any clues to her current feelings.”

  Flopping onto a sofa, Morgan sprawled out, a leg cocked over one end of the sofa. “What did our lover boy reply?”

  “Rogero didn’t send a reply. Iceni managed to get him the message without the snakes finding out, but anything he sent in answer might have been spotted by the snakes and he was only supposed to communicate with the Alliance woman through them. That would have attracted attention from the snakes that could have been deadly for all of us.”

  “Yeah.” Morgan gazed thoughtfully toward the opposite wall, one hand absently stroking the hand weapon holstered at her hip. “But how does Rogero feel? Does he want to run off with this bitch?”

  Drakon hitched forward a bit, speaking more forcefully. “Rogero’s feelings are up to him as long as he stays loyal to me, and I strongly advise that you not describe the Alliance woman in that way if there is any chance of Rogero’s hearing you.”

  Morgan grinned. “He’s in looooove, huh? Men are so damned easy. He’s probably dreaming about taking a shuttle out to meet his sweetheart when that fleet comes back, so they can both have some happily-ever-after on some Alliance hick world. But, boss, you can’t let someone who knows as much as Rogero does go over to the Alliance.” She sounded relaxed and casual, but her hand, as if of its own accord, tightened about the grip of her hand weapon.

  “If Rogero makes that decision, it’s his to make. He’s earned that from me, and I know he won’t tell the Alliance anything that would hurt me.”

  “Sir, seriously, you’re crazy brilliant, but you don’t always want to do what you need to do.” Morgan smiled wider. “That’s why you need me.”

  Drakon kept his own expression somber. “I also need Rogero. Nothing is to happen to him unless I say so.”

  “General—”

  “I mean it, Morgan. I want to see what Rogero tells this battle cruiser commander of Black Jack’s when that fleet gets back here.”

  “If it gets back here, you mean,” Morgan said. “They went diving deep into enigma space. Nothing we sent in has ever come back from there.”

  “Nothing of ours,” Drakon agreed. “Except you.”

  The catlike assurance vanished and her eyes went cold for a moment, as if endless space itself were looking out through them. “They sent in someone else. She had my name, she looked like me. But she died. I came back.” The coldness faded, replaced by Morgan’s usual steely intensity. “Black Jack may have bitten off too much this time.”

  “Maybe. But then, we never beat the enigmas. He did.”

  Morgan’s eyes flashed again at that, this time with heat, and Drakon understood exactly why. It grated on him, too, that this Alliance officer, a man who by all rights should have died a hundred years ago, had not only crushed the mobile forces of the Syndicate Worlds but also smashed an enigma fleet attacking Midway Star System. The Syndicate Worlds had been in arm’s-length contact with the alien enigma race for more than a century but had learned less in that time than the Alliance had somehow figured out in a much shorter period. They had all been saved by Black Jack, but mingled with their thankfulness were very strong feelings of envy and resentment.

  Black Jack must have been in survival sleep for that century, Drakon thought. He didn’t seem to have aged much if at all. Had the Alliance actually lost him after the battle at Grendel? There were unconfirmed intelligence reports that that might have been the case, that Black Jack had been in a damaged survival pod. Or had the Alliance deliberately kept their hero in cold storage for decade after decade until they decided things were desperate enough to thaw him out? That was what the Syndicate government would have done with a hero who was big enough to possibly challenge them. The Alliance government claimed to be different from the Syndicate government, but was it?

  Morgan sat silent before looking back at Drakon and smiling again. “I could get to him. Like Rogero got to that Alliance battle cruiser commander. When Black Jack gets back, I’ll send him some messages. Hero-worship stuff. Adoring-female attention. He’ll bite.”

  Drakon returned her gaze, seeing how she was draped across the sofa, her tight skin suit emphasizing every curve. Beautiful and dangerous, a combination that set the little monkey that all men carried in their heads to jumping up and down with excitement. And Morgan knew it. “Black Jack might already have a woman. There are some rumors.”

  “Not a woman like me.” Morgan winked and stood up. “It’s worth trying, right?”

  He tried to weigh the idea dispassionately, feeling a spark of jealousy at the thought of Morgan with Black Jack, and doing his best to bury that feeling. Leverage over Black Jack. Inside information on what he intended. It was impossible to overstate how valuable those things could be. “Maybe. Did you discover anything else?”

  “Nope. If there are any more snake sleepers out there, none of them are in command positions in the ground forces,” Morgan declared confidently.

  That was good news. If anyone could have found those sleepers, it would have been Morgan.

  * * *

  SUB-CEO Akiri never knew what killed him.

  The assassin who entered his room through bypassed alarms and locks stabbed a nerve paralyzer into Akiri’s neck, waited a moment to confirm that Akiri was dead, then headed for the next target.

  Mehmet Togo, blessed with keener instincts or perhaps the protection of guardian ancestors that he had secretly continued to revere despite official Syndicate discouragement of such “superstition,” awoke as the assassin entered his bedroom. Grabbing his weapon, rolling off the bed, and firing as he dropped to the floor, Togo watched dispassionately as the killer fell backward and lay unmoving. In his haste, he had aimed a killing shot rather than an incapacitating one, an inexcusable failure which meant the assassin would be answering no questions.

  * * *

  SUB-CEO Marphissa’s life was saved by an unauthorized secondary hatch alarm that she had rigged up and bribed the cruiser’s electrical officer to ignore. The silent alarm woke her in time for Marphissa to seize the hand weapon that every prudent Syndicate CEO, sub-CEO, and executive kept near at hand in the event that someone else sought improved promotion opportunities. As the assassin finished bypassing the regular alarm and entered her stateroom Marphissa put a shot into his chest, then, despite strict regulations to capture intruders so they could be subjected to exhaustive interrogation, slammed three more shots into him as he hit the far bulkhead.

  Regulations be damned; she had no intention of letting the killer get back up again.

  * * *

  SUB-CEO Marphissa’s call came in as Iceni was receiving Togo’s report. “I have alerted all mobile forces, but it appears that there was only one assassin,” Marphissa said. “No others have been detected, and no one was killed, so I was either the first target or the only target. I do not think this was a . . . routine . . . assassination attempt.”<
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  “I agree,” said Iceni. “We also had an assassin strike down here. Sub-CEO Akiri was not as fortunate as you. He and the assassin are both dead.”

  “Someone struck at both me and Sub-CEO Akiri?”

  “That’s correct. In the same night.” Iceni looked at Togo. “Have my bodyguards found anyone else inside the complex?”

  “No, Madam President. I have analyzed how the assassin penetrated the complex, and it does not appear that she could have reached your living area. The means she had to penetrate security were not good enough to overcome those defenses.”

  “Good. Have you identified the assassin on your cruiser, Sub-CEO Marphissa?”

  Marphissa made an angry noise before she answered. “He is a blank. Not part of the crew, not listed on any mobile forces registry. But we’re nowhere near any occupied orbiting facilities. No one could have reached this unit from a distant location without being detected!”

  Togo’s voice stayed unperturbed. “The assassin here is also a blank. No identity files match her, not ground forces, or mobile forces, or any citizen files.”

  “How is that possible?” Marphissa asked. “ISS surveillance software would have spotted the presence of someone who wasn’t in the files even if they were never seen. I know that. Someone like that leaves a hole, a place where someone is doing things but that has no one apparently in it, that’s obvious to the software.”

  “The assassin here could have come from many places,” Iceni said.

  “Sub-CEO Marphissa is correct, though, that the killer would have needed assistance to remain undetected on the planet,” Togo said. “Someone in a high position.”

  Iceni eyed him. “Are you prepared to name that person?”

  “I note only that General Drakon has not notified us of an assassin striking his staff this night, Madam President. There have been no alarms or unusual activity from any ground forces location.”

  That could be a damning bit of evidence, except that Iceni was certain Drakon knew how to do things like this right. Identify someone expendable on your own staff, someone you didn’t mind getting rid of, and off them at the same time as assassins hit your opponent. It provided cover and helped get rid of deadwood on your own staff. That was basic CEO tactics. If she had judged Drakon even remotely right, he couldn’t have been stupid enough to leave himself unmarked if he had targeted Iceni’s people this night. “How could General Drakon have gotten a killer onto Sub-CEO Marphissa’s cruiser? Sub-CEO, you say the assassin on your cruiser could only have come from one of the warships near you?”

  “Yes, Madam President.”

  “What if he used one of those ground forces stealth suits?”

  “We would have found it after we killed him,” Marphissa said. “We did find a standard survival suit in a waste receptacle that hadn’t been purged, but it could have come off any unit.”

  “The killer disposed of his survival suit?” Iceni asked. “Then it was a suicide mission, not just an assassination.”

  “Yes, Madam President. I would have to agree.”

  A suicide mission. That didn’t sound like Drakon’s ground forces. It sounded like—“ISS.”

  Marphissa gazed at Iceni uncomprehendingly. “You think there were still snakes among the crews on our mobile units? But every one of these units has purged Syndicate loyalists from the crews, and no one could have left a unit, even just in a survival suit, to come over to this cruiser without someone on that unit detecting the departure.”

  Iceni glanced at Togo. “These purges were thorough?”

  “Yes!” Marphissa insisted. “Look what happened on HuK-6336 when they left the other loyalist units. Two-thirds of that crew died in the fighting!”

  “That would seem to—” Iceni stopped speaking, recalling that when she had first heard that HuK-6336 had left the other loyalist warships, she had recently finished talking to Drakon.

  About the discovery of a deep-cover agent for the ISS. Someone who did not seem to be ISS.

  “Sub-CEO Marphissa,” Iceni said, trying to keep her voice calm, “did you not tell me once that you never spoke with the officers aboard HuK-6336 prior to the overthrow of the snakes?”

  “Yes, Madam President,” Marphissa replied, plainly surprised at the question. “They had arrived in this star system only a week prior to our operation and spoken only with CEO Kolani.”

  “Then your first personal knowledge of the officers on HuK-6336 came after they said they had killed all of the snakes aboard as well as all Syndicate loyalists?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know any of the officers on HuK-6336 prior to that? Did anyone on any of the other units with you?”

  “No, Madam President, but that’s far from impossible. The mobile forces have many officers in them.”

  Togo understood. He had realized what Iceni was driving at and had tensed.

  “How,” Iceni asked, “do you know that the men and women you have spoken with actually are mobile forces officers?”

  “I . . . we looked at the crew roster they provided when they joined up . . . but what—” The sub-CEO’s mouth fell open. “Do you mean . . . ?”

  “I mean, perhaps what actually happened was that the snakes and firmest Syndicate Worlds loyalists aboard HuK-6336 slaughtered the real officers and any of the crew whose loyalty was in any way doubted, then replaced the actual crew roster with one showing the snakes as the officers and identifying the real officers as the dead snakes. HuK-6336 didn’t surprise C-625 by staying behind when the cruiser took the hypernet gate. That was an act to fool us. The snakes on HuK-6336 had orders to stay behind.”

  “A Trojan horse full of snakes,” Marphissa whispered, her eyes wide. “And they’re positioned near the other mobile forces now. Madam President, I don’t have any means of boarding HuK-6336 and taking it over. Not by surprise, and not by assault. We have no special forces on any of my units.”

  That was something she should have already arranged with Drakon, Iceni thought irritably, and there was no time to get those special forces sent up there now. “What else can you do?”

  Marphissa paused, eyes intent. “I can cut HuK-6336 out of the command net without its being known to that unit. They’ll think they’re still linked in. Then I can order the rest of my warships to power up their shields and their hell lances.”

  “Won’t HuK-6336 be able to spot that?”

  “They will, after the process is well under way on the other units. If I see that HuK is starting to get its own shields up and weapons readied, I’ll order them to stop. If we can get full combat preparations on the other warships and the HuK hasn’t matched them, they’ll be helpless.”

  Iceni looked for holes in what of necessity had to be a quickly improvised plan. “What if the HuK keeps preparing for combat despite your orders?”

  “Then, with your permission, I will have all other units fire upon HuK-6336. That will be the only option that will prevent HuK-6336 from either escaping or inflicting damage on other units.”

  “That seems an extreme solution given that we are only operating on suspicion as of yet,” Iceni said.

  “Madam President, if those on HuK-6336 are mobile forces officers, they will obey my orders not to prepare for action. They would not be insane enough to go against those orders, knowing that I could destroy them.”

  After a long moment, Iceni nodded. “You make a good argument, and I agree that we have no other choice. Can you knock out the HuK and leave it able to be boarded later?”

  “It will be difficult . . .”

  “Concentrate on knocking it out. If there’s anything left, that will be a bonus. Hopefully, they’ll surrender when they realize that it’s hopeless.” But Iceni saw the looks in both Togo’s and Marphissa’s eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing that she was, that the sna
kes hadn’t shown any willingness yet to surrender.

  “Once the crews of these other ships realize what was done to most of the crew on the HuK,” Marphissa cautioned, “there will be little chance of the snakes’ being allowed to surrender even if they attempt it.”

  “I understand. Can you keep me linked in while you carry out this operation?” The mobile forces flotilla was still in orbit, close enough that the time lag between Marphissa and Iceni was too small to be a problem.

  “Yes,” Marphissa replied immediately though her eyes had grown distant as she focused on other matters.

  Iceni watched, silent, as Marphissa entered commands, waited, checked, called orders to her line workers on the bridge of the cruiser, paused, then began calling the other warships with the exception of HuK-6336. “At time two zero, you are to begin bringing shields to full strength and powering up all hell lances. The target will be HuK-6336 if it resists following orders.”

  Another pause, then Iceni heard a question coming in. “Sub-CEO, can you tell us why HuK-6336 is being targeted?”

  “The officers and crew we have dealt with on HuK-6336 are probably actually snakes. President Iceni and I believe that the snakes assigned to that HuK killed the actual officers and most of the crew. Those crew members remaining are the ones who were willing to assist the snakes in their slaughter of their companions. Are there further questions?”

  Togo nodded approvingly. “A clear and strongly motivating response,” he commented to Iceni.

  “She will make a good commander of my mobile forces,” Iceni agreed. But something was still bothering her, something besides the snakes on HuK-6336. Why had Akiri been the assassin’s first target? Akiri’s skills as an executive had seemed marginal at best, yet Kolani had kept Akiri in command despite her reputation for relieving anyone who displeased her, and now an assassin had made him a primary target. Unfortunately, it was too late to stick Akiri in an interrogation cell to see what might be learned from him. “I want Akiri’s room and belongings thoroughly searched for anything out of the ordinary,” she told Togo.