Iceni nodded, her eyes still on him. “You’re right. What are you telling me, Artur?”
“I’m telling you that the reason we decided to work together in the first place is still valid. If we’re going to survive, if we’re going to win, we need to work as a team.” I don’t know why I want her to believe that so badly, but I do. Anyway, it’s true. Alone, either one of us will be toast.
She finally smiled. “I wanted to hear you say that. I agree with you, but I wanted to know that you still understood what we’re facing. But does everyone else understand? Everyone who works for us?”
“No.” There wasn’t any sense in beating around the bush. “Not for me, anyway.”
“Not for me, either.” Iceni stood up, then reached a hand toward him. “Is there anyone you trust in this star system?”
He had to think carefully before answering, then stood as well and very briefly grasped her offered hand. “Yes.”
He knew Iceni was waiting to hear more before they both headed for the door, but, still smarting from her statement that she could only trust the Alliance liaison officer, Drakon said nothing else.
Black Jack’s fleet had departed but had left something behind that required Drakon’s personal presence in the main orbiting facility. The Syndicate citizens who had been captured and kept imprisoned by the alien enigma race had all chosen to stay at Midway, all three hundred and thirty-three of them. Black Jack had offered them eighteen, but at the critical moment, when the former prisoners would have been separated from each other, the rest of the group had changed their minds. It was the sort of thing you would expect from people suffering the effects of long imprisonment together. But now they were all free, and they were all coming here. They knew nothing about the enigmas, but their presence at Midway would still be a diplomatic coup of sorts.
Drakon sat alone in the passenger compartment of a military shuttle as it rose above the atmosphere. The large display at the front of the compartment was set for a split screen, one half looking upward to endless dark and endless stars, the other half down to where white clouds drifted above vast expanses of water broken by chains of islands and a couple of small island-continents. He had a sensation of being suspended between extremes, a feeling that his own decisions and actions could keep him here, balanced between the heavens and a living world, or propel him down to a fiery reentry or up to be lost in the cold dark.
The urgent chime of his comm unit provided a welcome interruption to the disturbing reverie. “What’s up?” he asked as the image of Colonel Malin appeared. “Is President Iceni going to be delayed?” Iceni was taking her own shuttle up. While the public image of them riding together might have helped cement the citizens’ view of Drakon and Iceni as co-rulers working in what passed for harmony under a Syndicate definition of the term, the risk of having two extremely lucrative targets in one vehicle had been judged far too great. Besides, accidents did happen. Real accidents, as opposed to the sort of accidents that conveniently removed rivals.
“No, sir,” Malin replied. “The President’s shuttle has lifted. But we have an interesting development. A freighter arrived at the hypernet gate a few hours ago. It came from Taniwah.”
He started to dismiss the news as inconsequential, then stared at Malin. “Taniwah? Not Sobek? You’re certain?”
“Yes, sir. When the freighter showed up, Kommodor Marphissa ordered Kraken to approach the gate and search for destinations. Every known gate in the Syndicate Worlds hypernet, except those like Kalixa, which were previously destroyed, was listed as an option.”
Drakon sat back, rubbing his chin. “We’ve got access to the entire hypernet again. The CEOs on Prime didn’t destroy the Syndicate hypernet.”
“No, sir. What they did do was somehow temporarily block access to any gate except Sobek for any ship or ships leaving here.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“It’s not supposed to be possible,” Malin replied. “We don’t know how to do it. However, we have to assume that Prime now knows how to do it.”
“Wonderful. Where did you get this information?”
“It was forwarded to us from the planetary command center by order of President Iceni, General.”
“What are the chances that our spies in Syndicate space can find out how to work that trick with the hypernet, and maybe how to counter it?”
“I will send instructions to our sources in Syndicate-controlled space,” Malin said. “But since the instructions must go along with routine freighter movements that will take circuitous routes to avoid the official Syndicate blockade of us, it will take some time for those instructions to be received, and I do not know whether any of our sources can achieve the access needed to get that information. The Syndicate is certain to be holding it in the most-highly-classified channels.”
“What about our techs? Can they come up with the answer now that they know it can be done?”
“They have been notified, General. I understand that President Iceni has made that research a priority.”
“Good. Thank you.” As Malin’s image vanished, Drakon turned his gaze back to the display at the front of the compartment, where the stars and the surface of the planet offered their visions of opposing but equally dire fates.
The buzz of conversation among the main orbiting facility workers and family members who had gathered to view the arrival of those who had been captured by the enigmas rose as Drakon walked into view. He did his best to look casual, stopping to speak with the soldiers who were providing security in the shuttle-dock area for the event. “How does it feel?” he asked the major in charge of the guard force. “Do you have enough troops on hand?”
“The citizens are excited, General,” the major replied. “No anxiety, no sense of trouble brewing, though. No one thinks we’re hiding anything. We’ve got plenty of soldiers here if something unexpected happens.”
Drakon nodded, his eyes on the hatch through which the liberated prisoners would come. “I don’t know about you, Major, but I’m discovering that it’s sort of nice to be on the same side as the citizens.”
The major grinned, as did the soldiers within earshot. “Yes, sir. Instead of doing the dirty work for the snakes and the CEOs, we’re working for the people. I could get used to that.”
“It’s a welcome change, isn’t it?” These soldiers, and many others, had been used for security details often in the past. The snakes wouldn’t deign to dirty their hands with routine crowd control, or riot suppression, or other “mass internal security” actions, so the CEOs would order regular troops to do the disagreeable tasks.
But as Drakon took in the attitudes of his soldiers, saw that they stood and reacted toward the crowd as if they were part of it rather than a separate force to control it, he wondered what would happen if orders were given to use force against this crowd or any other. Iceni had said that she and Drakon still had the ability to use force to control the citizens, but looking at the situation here and now, Drakon wondered if that was still true.
I’ll check with my brigade commanders for their impressions when I get back to the surface. First, this operation has to be done right. “Stay alert when the prisoners start coming out,” Drakon ordered. “There was some trouble when they were picked up by our shuttles.”
The major’s smile faded into a frown. “The Alliance?”
“No. Apparently the Alliance treated them well. The trouble was because these citizens have been imprisoned by the enigmas. They’re fragile.”