Jack Campbell - Imperfect Sword

Gozen looked outward to where the largest craters marred the open field. “Of course, the rocks your mobile forces dropped didn’t care who they killed, either, and they cut the units in that attack off at the knees. But that left the enthusiastic people isolated in front of your positions, so that bunch got wiped out. Bottom line, after enough attacks, what was left weren’t very hard-core.”

She waved one hand across the field. “The hard-core, the true believers, the really loyal, are lying out there. They gave it their all. And when they were gone, the rest of us asked ourselves why the hell we were doing this.”

“I see.” Drakon looked out at the dead still lying out in the open area even though teams were moving methodically through it, recovering the bodies. “The Syndicate did have a good weapon in your unit, but they broke that weapon.”

“Yeah,” Gozen said. “Like any other Syndicate unit these days, we had rot at the heart, and beyond that, people who would do their jobs out of fear or not wanting to let down their comrades, and then an outer shell that made us look strong.” She tilted her chin toward the piles of dead. “That was our shell. The rest of us wouldn’t have broken against the Alliance, no matter what. We would have held to the end, for our families and our homes. But we knew you guys were just doing what a lot of us had already thought about, and we knew you couldn’t threaten our homes. The only people who can do that now are the Syndicate and their snakes.”

“Not quite,” Drakon said. “There are other dangers out there. There are a lot of tough fights left to fight.”

“Are you always this encouraging?”

He smiled at her. “Tell me something. How did you make it this far? Why were you still an Executive Third Class instead of an inmate at a labor camp?”

“Why do you ask?” Gozen said, feigning surprise.

“That attitude thing,” Drakon replied dryly.

“There is that,” Gozen admitted. “The truth is I wasn’t going to last much longer. I’m good at what I do, I’m a damned good soldier, and I get the job done, and my workers respected me, and didn’t try to undermine me because I tried to look out for them. But I only survived long enough to get here because I had a strong patron, the sub-CEO in charge of my brigade. He was my uncle. And he had something on the CEO running the division. I don’t know what. Some potential source of blackmail that gave him leverage.”

Drakon couldn’t stop himself before his eyes went to the field of dead.

“No,” Gozen said. “He’s not out there.” She inhaled heavily, then sighed. “Just before we came here, something slipped. I don’t know what. We were told we had a new CEO for the division, and when I tried to check with my uncle I found out our sub-CEO had been replaced overnight as well. Before the day was out I was called in and told that my uncle had been arrested for crimes against the Syndicate, and the snakes had their eyes on me. I had the choices of performing heroically on this mission, which might save my butt for a while longer, or dying heroically, which would be relatively painless, or going to join my uncle, though it wasn’t specified whether I’d be joining him in a labor camp or in death.”

“A Syndicate motivational talk,” Drakon said.

“Exactly. That and a few other abrupt changes of command within the division and the addition of a lot of extra snakes to look over the shoulders of everyone was supposed to ensure that we were in the best possible shape to take you guys out.” Gozen laughed bitterly. “It had the opposite effect, of course. We moved slower against you than we would have if the bosses hadn’t just been changed and the snakes hadn’t been questioning every action before they approved it. You would have been taken out before you attacked and took the base if our effectiveness hadn’t been hurt so much by those changes.”

“The Syndicate undercut its own efforts,” Drakon said. “Nothing new there. So, what are you going to do now, Executive Gozen?” he asked again.

She gestured back toward her positions. “Make sure those guys are all right.”

“You’d be in the running to be in charge of ground forces for Ulindi,” Drakon pointed out.

“Don’t want that, sir. Not ready for it. I can handle small units well, but I was frozen out of a lot of the staff work. My uncle wanted to keep my profile low, and the other sub-CEOs wanted me to go away.”

“You could get that experience with me,” Drakon said. “If you pass the security screening.”

“Huh.” She eyed him. “General, just to be clear on one point, I don’t think I’m some big prize, and I’ve never really understood male preferences in women, but if you’re thinking I’d be the sort of protégé whose duties include satisfying your physical needs and stroking your ego, that’s not my thing.”

Drakon shook his head. “That’s not my thing, either. I don’t put that kind of pressure on my subordinates, and I have firm policies against it. I know, so does the Syndicate. But I’m serious about it.” Which was one of the reasons his failure to control himself that one night with Morgan stung so badly. No matter how drunk he had been, he should have restrained himself, should have successfully resisted her attempts. “You can ask my people about it. They’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough, General.” Gozen jerked her head toward her positions. “But those men and women come first. I can’t leave or take another job until I know they’re all right.” She blinked back tears. “And, I’ve got to tell you, General, I don’t know… We lost a lot of people. We lost too many.”

“We lost too many as well,” Drakon said. “Even one would have been too many.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes irritably. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“I wish I knew another way,” Drakon said, his voice low. “I do it because it’s the only way I know of to stop the kind of people who sent you to Ulindi, who killed your uncle, who filled the mass graves here with bodies, who bombarded the helpless people at Kane, and have done so many other things to hurt and control and take.”

She looked back him, her eyes red. “If I stopped, they wouldn’t. Same old. And I owe it to Uncle Jurgen, who kept me alive this long even if he couldn’t save himself. I’m going to need happy pills to keep going, though,” Gozen said, using the common slang term for the medications and therapies used to help soldiers cope with post-traumatic stress.

“Welcome to the club,” Drakon said.

“I was already a member.” She nodded to Drakon. “By my rough estimate, about half of the surviving soldiers from my division will be interested in staying at Ulindi to help defend this star system and build new lives here, especially if they can figure out ways to get family members out here. About a quarter will want to head back to the Syndicate. And about a quarter will be interested in your offers to join you guys.”

“Which fraction do you fit into?” Drakon asked.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work for somebody who cared about their workers,” Gozen said. “And what it would be like to fight for something I wanted to win instead of fighting just because I was afraid of someone else’s winning. But I probably can’t do anything about my attitude.”

“Are you always this encouraging?” Drakon asked.

She grinned at him. “You’ve got an attitude, too, don’t you, General?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“All right. You want my kind of headache, you got it.”

“I, along with Manticore and our other cruisers and Hunter-Killers, will remain here to escort the transports, but I have to send Midway back to… Midway,” Marphissa told Drakon. All of her ships were once more orbiting Ulindi. “They need her there in case the Syndicate tries another attack.”