It took him several seconds to reply. “Good reason.” The old “rest in peace” saying took on new meaning for him as he considered what the doctor had said. Didn’t someone like Conner Gaiene deserve that chance to rest even if what was left of him could have been brought back to life? Or, rather, back to some form of life that would be a sorry way to repay someone who had been a friend and comrade for so long. “Thanks for the nightmare fodder.”
“It’s what doctors do to laypeople who listen to our shop talk.”
“I keep forgetting that.” Drakon waved a farewell, then made his way to his stateroom. He couldn’t recall the last time he had been able to get an adequate amount of rest, but it was definitely before they had arrived at Ulindi.
Despite that, he still needed a down patch to calm his mind enough to sleep, and finally dropped off, haunted by visions of battle.
“Welcome back.” Iceni tried to put genuine feeling into the words, but in reply received a tense look from Drakon.
“You missed me that much?” he asked.
“It got a bit hectic here,” she said, waving him to a chair. “Not as bad as it did for you at Ulindi, but bad.”
“Colonel Rogero has already briefed me,” Drakon said as he sat down. “We all dodged the bullet this time.”
“Our enemies spun a much wider and cleverer net than we realized,” Iceni said, clasping her hands on her desk before her as she sized up Drakon’s mood. “And we may have thought we were cleverer than we actually are.”
“It’s hard to outsmart an opponent who knows what cards you hold,” Drakon said, his voice flat. “As I’m sure your Kommodor has briefed you, the Syndicate knew a lot about our plans.”
So that was the source of Drakon’s tension. Was he going to accuse her of betrayal? Did he believe that she had betrayed him? “Yes,” Iceni said, keeping her own voice serious but free of tension. “They apparently had many details, including very specific information about the timing of our planned attack.”
“They not only had that information,” Drakon said, “they based their plans on having that information. The entire trap was constructed assuming that they would be able to time the arrival of their reinforcements to just before we arrived, and to have CEO Boucher’s flotilla show up just early enough to conceal itself behind a gas giant. That information couldn’t have been provided by someone who watched us depart. They couldn’t have gotten the information to Ulindi in time.”
Drakon had hunched forward, tapping his forefinger forcefully on her desk to emphasize his words. “The Syndicate source must have known our date of departure as soon as you and I had settled on it. Anyone could have seen the preparations, but no one could have known when we would actually get moving for the jump to Ulindi because that exact time depended on a lot of factors and a joint decision by you and me. Given the time needed to get that information to the Syndicate at Ulindi and wherever else their forces were, and the time needed to land those Syndicate soldiers and get their flotilla in place, there simply wasn’t enough time for them to do it unless that date was dispatched to them within a day of when we made the final decision.”
She let frost enter her voice. “Are you implying something about me?”
He frowned, momentarily puzzled by the question. “You? No. That… never occurred to me.”
Either he was a much better actor than Drakon had previously shown, or the words were sincere. But Iceni still felt angry and defensive. “Then what are you saying?”
“That someone very close to you or me must have fed that information to the Syndicate.”
“Who on your staff knew the exact date of departure that early?” Iceni demanded, trying to keep Drakon on the defensive.
“Colonel Malin, Colonel Kai, Colonel Gaiene.”
“Not Colonel Morgan?”
“How could she have known? She was already at Ulindi when we made the decision, and had been there for weeks.”
Iceni managed to stifle her disappointment. The momentary hope that Morgan could be a prime suspect in the trap was running headlong into simple questions of time and space that definitely eliminated her as a suspect. “But the information she sent us was woefully incomplete,” Iceni pointed out.
“It was,” Drakon agreed, some defensiveness entering his voice. “The files we captured when the Syndicate staff abandoned the divisional headquarters confirmed that CEO Haris himself wasn’t even in the loop on the trap. He, and Ulindi, were dangled as bait for us. We didn’t guess that the Syndicate would completely cut Haris out of their plans, but then we didn’t guess that Haris was really still working for the Syndicate.”
“It should have been obvious,” Iceni said, her voice sharp, seeing Drakon’s defensive glower deepen. “Oh, I’m not pointing the finger at you for that, General. I share plenty of the blame. Haris supposedly made himself independent from the Syndicate but took along the entire snake apparatus at Ulindi? All of it intact?”
“A charismatic leader could have done that,” Drakon said. “Do you want to know what the files we captured said about the Syndicate source at Midway?”
Iceni tried not to stiffen, wondering what bomb Drakon was about to drop. “What did they say?”
“Nothing.”
It was her turn to glower. “Did you really want to see how I would react to the implication that those files contained important information?”
Drakon closed his eyes, speaking slowly but still with force. “I was at Ulindi, pinned between two enemy forces, knowing that the odds greatly favored my entire force’s being wiped out, and knowing that I had led them there.”
Iceni leaned toward him, letting each of her words drop like a hammer. “Do you actually believe that I would have set you up that way? That I would have conspired to destroy not only you but two-thirds of the professional ground forces available to this star system? Do you think I am that stupid?” Because, she realized, that was what was bothering her the most. She could be ruthless. She could double-deal. But weaken her own future prospects by that much overkill? “If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you and kept all of those valuable ground forces soldiers. Do you really think I am that incompetent?”
He had opened his eyes and was staring at her, then abruptly laughed. “Oh, hell, you think I suspect you? You personally? Why the hell would you have sent the battleship to save the day if the whole trap had been your idea to begin with? No, I don’t think you’re stupid or incompetent, but I think someone close to us is playing both of us and wanted me dead.”
She eyed him, thinking. “Yes. The plan would have led to your death. As well as the deaths of Colonels Kai, Gaiene, and Malin. Only Colonel Rogero of your senior staff would have survived.” Her mind whirled down new paths as it considered possible scenarios. “He would have replaced you, General. Colonel Rogero would have been the senior ground forces officer, commander of the only loyal professional soldiers left to me. He could have faked that assassination attempt aimed at him.”
Drakon, instead of getting defensive again, just shook his head. “For security reasons, I didn’t tell Rogero the departure date. He didn’t need to know it.”
“He could have learned what it was. He must have sources. It would have been as simple as chatting with Gaiene when he was drunk.”
“That’s true.” Drakon finally sat back again, watching her. “But I can’t believe it. Donal Rogero. If he could so cold-bloodedly plot to murder me and two-thirds of the others in the division, along with Conner Gaiene, who was his friend, then he’s so good at being a snake that I don’t know how I survived this long.”