Jack Campbell - Imperfect Sword

“You have some disturbingly competent subordinates,” Drakon observed.

“My warship commanders are good, aren’t they?” Iceni asked, raising her glass in triumph. “We will live another day, General.”

“Does it worry you?” he asked, looking down at his own drink.

“Their competence? No. Both Marphissa and Kontos are very loyal to me.”

He made a sharp noise, halfway between a snort and a grunt. “Don’t assume that their loyalty will necessarily lead them to the actions you want them to do.”

“Point taken,” Iceni said. “But let’s not talk about your subordinates unless you want me to handle that situation.”

Drakon frowned at her. “Don’t touch Colonel Morgan. If anything is done to her, the child dies.”

“The child is a ways from being born yet,” Iceni pointed out. “And the child was only conceived because Morgan deceived you.”

“She’s still my daughter.” Drakon met Iceni’s eyes. “I’ve spent a lifetime at war, destroying things and killing people. In all my life, I’ve only had a part in creating one single thing. So, yes, the child matters to me.”

Iceni sighed again, loud enough for Drakon to hear her frustration. “I can understand your feelings, but do you want that daughter to be born? She will also be Colonel Morgan’s daughter. What would a child of hers be like?”

“I’ve thought about that,” Drakon said in a low voice.

“Have you? Are you thinking about your little girl bringing you crayon drawings of unicorns playing with children under rainbows to hang on your walls? Because if that little girl is anything like her mother, she is more likely to be using her crayons to draw images of wolves tearing apart helpless travelers during thunderstorms. Have you really thought about what a child of Colonel Morgan’s would be like? How could you know?”

He hesitated long enough for Gwen to worry, then shook his head and spoke as if bewildered. “I know what a child of hers would be like. I know her son.”

“Her son ? Morgan has a son?” She was torn between incredulity at the news and anger that her aide Togo had not caught such an important fact when he had supposedly chased down all that could be known about Morgan. “Where is—?”

“He’s here,” Drakon interrupted. “Colonel Malin. He’s her son.”

Iceni only gradually realized that she had slumped backward, her mouth hanging open in shock. That’s why Malin refused to kill Morgan for me? He’s—? “But they’re almost the same age. How— That mission. When she was frozen in survival sleep.”

“For about twenty years,” Drakon said. “The baby, Malin, was removed from Morgan before the mission. Syndicate policy. Morgan never knew. She still doesn’t know.” The words came out quickly, followed by an abrupt silence as Drakon stared at Iceni.

You just figured out how powerful a weapon you blurted out to me? Iceni thought. If Morgan doesn’t know, and I threatened to tell her… hell hath no fury seems an apt description of what would happen next. “How are you intending to handle that situation?”

He actually smiled, though the smile held no humor at all. “I’m torn between denial and just shooting both of them.”

“I favor the second option, followed by denial.”

“If anything happens to Morgan—” Drakon began.

“Yes, yes. She’s set up mechanisms to ensure that the child dies. And if we try to find the surrogate carrying the child, that alone might trigger the child’s death. Very clever, very devious, very ruthless.” Iceni rested her chin on one hand as she gazed at him. “Have you considered the possibility that she also has backups?”

“Backups?”

“Clones. Morgan could have cloned the embryo and had the clones implanted in multiple surrogates.”

Drakon considered that, frowning deeply. “Full human cloning is so heavily regulated, and forbidden under almost all circumstances, that she would have had to have found a doctor willing to risk the consequences.”

“The CEOs running the Syndicate have no desire for identical copies of themselves to exist,” Iceni said. “All of those old stories about identical twins taking over from the originals are regarded as cautionary tales for modern-day CEOs. But you know how Syndicate society works just as well as I do. If there is a product, and any demand at all, there will be suppliers. And because parts can legally be cloned to ensure a sufficient supply of spare human organs, the expertise already openly exists.”

“And Morgan could have found people who could handle full human cloning if anyone could.” Drakon sat straighter, meeting her eyes defiantly. “I want it understood that this is my situation to deal with.”

Iceni waved an aggravated gesture toward him. “As long as it does not threaten me, you can play whatever games you like. I may control the warships, but you control the ground forces. I insist, however, that Colonel Morgan never be seen or heard by me again. Do whatever you have to in order to control her and protect your precious offspring, but if I personally see Morgan again, I will order my bodyguards to act.”

He nodded heavily. “What about Colonel Malin?”

That forced her to pause and think. Malin’s hatred for Morgan has never seemed feigned, but if he is truly Morgan’s son, that hate could either be real or faked for his advantage. But I can’t afford to have Malin’s access limited. Drakon apparently still doesn’t know that Malin has been feeding me inside information about him for some time. Not that Malin has ever given me anything negative about Drakon. “I have no quarrel with Colonel Malin,” Iceni finally said. “If he had not identified Executive Ito as a snake agent and stopped her moments before she poisoned you, you would already be dead, and this star system would be coming down around my ears.”

Drakon nodded, took a drink, then focused back on her. “If we’re done talking about my subordinates, there’s another situation I want to discuss. We’ve just repelled another Syndicate attack, this one with a bloody nose. We’re going to have a little while to work with before the Syndicate can manage another attack.”

“What is it you want to work on?” Iceni asked.

“We have to deal with so-called Supreme CEO Haris at Ulindi. He’s already attacked us once. We pulled his teeth, but he could hit us again, or go for some other nearby star system like Taroa.”

Iceni shook her head slowly as she thought. “I imagine that CEO Haris, excuse me, Supreme CEO Haris, would wait for the Taroans to get much closer to finishing their battleship before he moved in to take it and their star system. The Taroans haven’t even got the hull exterior on their battleship finished yet. But Haris might hit someone else in the meantime, as you say. What does he have available to do that?”

“Right now?” Drakon asked. “And as far as we know, not much. Which is why we should hit him now, before he acquires more, just as we’ve acquired more. And some of his neighboring star systems don’t have the means to defend themselves against very much in the way of threats.”

“Overextending ourselves won’t help anyone,” Iceni said. She called up the data she had on Ulindi Star System and frowned. “But this is more persuasive for me. It appears that Haris is maintaining the full Syndicate security structure, with his snakes running everything at Ulindi. If someone on the inside took care of Haris, they would inherit everything they needed to immediately turn Ulindi back into a base for the Syndicate.”

“That’s right,” Drakon said. “But if we can knock out Haris before he can build up his ground forces and add more warships to his assets, then we can replace his regime with someone more sympathetic to us, or at worst someone open to bribery or able to be swayed by our threats. We’ll have reinforced the defenses of this region against further attacks from Haris or the Syndicate and made it more stable all around.”