“The space of this star system is ours. You have won it. For the people, Marphissa, out.”
Iceni ate dinner in her office, seeking solitude to recover from the shock of the day’s events and the stress of having dealt one-on-one with so many citizens without a single intermediary. It hadn’t killed her, but it had been so different from anything in her experience that she was still trying to adjust to the mental and emotional strain of it.
“Madam President, we have received a message from the Alliance mobile forces. It is marked as a reply to your earlier message.”
Iceni took a drink of wine before answering. “Send it to me. There’s still no sign of Mehmet Togo?” She had wondered if he had somehow been trapped by the mobs, penned into some location from which he couldn’t escape without attracting far too much attention. But if that had been the case, he should have been able to move again after the threatening mobs turned into participants in a planetwide festival that was still ongoing in many places.
“No, Madam President.”
She peered at the command center supervisor. “How long have you been on duty? Didn’t I speak to you this morning?”
“Yes, Madam President, you did, but we were ordered to remain on full alert until stood-down, so I have remained on duty.”
Iceni barely managed not to roll her eyes in exasperation. Some senior supervisor had decided to play it as safe as possible by keeping all of the more junior personnel on full alert. “Stand down from alert status. Return to normal routine. Advise all offices of that, then you get some rest.”
The supervisor smiled in sudden relief. “Thank you, Madam President. You… thank you.”
She sighed as that window vanished and another appeared with Black Jack’s message ready to play. If her supervisors started acting like those citizens in the plaza, there wouldn’t be anyplace left for her to hide.
Iceni poured more wine and leaned back, determined to be as relaxed as possible while viewing Black Jack’s message. If it was bad news, being tensed up wouldn’t make it better. She touched the play command.
Black Jack must have sent his reply as soon as he received Iceni’s message. He looked a bit stressed and worn, but given his responsibilities, that was understandable. Still, maybe someday she could give him a few pointers on managing his external appearance. Maybe at the same time he could give her pointers on dealing with masses of worshipful citizens.
“President Iceni, this is Admiral Geary,” he began. “We came here only to escort the Dancers back to Midway. They are proceeding home from here on their own. We cannot remain in this star system one minute longer than absolutely necessary because of the danger that the hypernet gate may be blocked before we can leave. I don’t know when any Alliance ships will be able to come through here again. Perhaps not until we figure out how to override that ability to block access to the gates. I regret that we cannot offer any assistance at this time and also that we cannot offer any suggestions as to the meaning of the message the Dancers sent you. Good luck, and may the living stars aid you. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”
She sat thinking after the message had ended. She couldn’t fault Black Jack for not wanting to be trapped here if the Syndicate used its trick to block access to the hypernet. Until it was learned how the Syndicate was able to do that at times and places of its choosing, and more importantly how to counteract or nullify the block, everyone had to treat the hypernet as a potential one-way street that could leave them stranded far from home.
It would be a good idea to keep as secret as possible that Black Jack had no idea when he might return with a fleet at his back. Not that Black Jack showed up very often, but the uncertainty tied with the amount of power that the ruler of the Alliance wielded surely helped discourage some parties from planning aggression against Midway Star System and its allies. The Syndicate wasn’t the only problem out here.
May the living stars aid you. What exactly did that mean? She sent the query into her database, receiving a long answer about old religious beliefs and how they tied in with even older ones.
As she read, it gradually dawned on Iceni that the phrase meant that Black Jack was genuinely wishing for her success and invoking the most powerful influences he believed in to help her.
Well. That was good. That was very good.
Iceni raised her wineglass in a toast to a man who by now was somewhere nowhere in the hypernet. You are a very good friend to have, Black Jack. Here’s to what I hope will be a beautiful friendship.
But thinking of friends and the support they could offer somehow led to thoughts of Artur Drakon and wondering whether Midway had reached Ulindi in time to make a difference. That took a lot of joy out of the moment.
From this high up, the city where the ground forces had landed didn’t look too bad except for one large crater where the snake headquarters complex had once been and a big field littered with smaller craters that marked the site of the ground forces base. The base itself lay under an uneven, heavily cratered expanse that marked extensive surface-level bombardment.
Midway slid with ponderous grace into low orbit, hurling out bombardment projectiles that turned Syndicate artillery positions into more craters. A forest of hell lances danced downward from the battleship, tearing apart aerospace craft racing to hide or escape.
“Find the highest-power jamming sources,” Kapitan Mercia told her bridge crew. “I want them taken out so we can speak with our ground forces.”
“Bombardment?” her weapons specialist asked.
“Uh, no. Not unless they occupy isolated locations. We’re not Syndicate anymore. The people… are safe from us.” That felt very odd to say, but also very good. Mercia looked over at Bradamont, wondering if the Alliance officer was judging her, but instead Bradamont looked as if she was remembering unpleasant events. Of course. The Alliance had bombarded citizens, too. The realization that Bradamont would not be lording it over her about the Alliance’s smug moral superiority in that regard (and all others) relieved Mercia, but also saddened her that such a thing had to be among their shared experiences. “Do you think humans will ever reach the point where something like Kane could not happen?” she asked Bradamont.
The Alliance officer looked back at her. “Humans seem to have too great a talent for that sort of thing. But I hope we can make such things as rare as possible.”
“That’s something worth working for,” Mercia agreed.
“Something is going on in the Syndicate positions.”
Drakon raised his head, blinking away fatigue. How many days had it been since the assault force landed? He wondered if another up patch would be a good idea but decided to put that off a little longer. “What are you seeing?”
Colonel Kai pursed his lips judiciously. “It looks like fighting.”
“Fighting? In the Syndicate positions?”
“Yes, General. It could be a trick, of course, but to all appearances, the Syndicate troops encircling us are fighting each other at various points opposite my brigade.”
“General?” Colonel Safir called in. “What Colonel Kai is talking about, I’m seeing that spreading into the parts of the Syndicate line facing me.”
“Colonel Malin,” Drakon called, “are we picking up anything about the activity we’re seeing in the Syndicate positions?”
It took Malin a moment to answer. “General, there’s still a lot of jamming, so we’re not seeing any comms. Our sensors are spotting weapons fire that isn’t aimed at us, though. Wait. Here’s something. Watch this replay of an event that we just observed opposite sector five.”