Jack Campbell - Perilous Shield

Iceni turned a gaze on Togo, which must have communicated a message, because he nodded once and slipped out of the room.

“Find Morgan,” Drakon said to Malin, not willing to trust in whatever Iceni’s lackey aimed to accomplish. “Tell her, from me, that there may be a… snake agent in the command center. I want her to find that person.”

Malin hesitated. “Sir, Morgan’s methods—”

“She can be as subtle and sneaky as a demon when she wants to be. You know that. I want her on this. The odds against us are bad enough. I don’t want a snake, or anyone else, feeding Boyens information on what we’re doing before we do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Morgan I want the agent identified, then notify me so a decision can be made on what to do.”

“Sir,” Malin said with careful formality, “I feel compelled to remind you that if you target Morgan on someone, she may not act in a restrained manner. I also feel obligated to point out one other thing. The tight-beam transmission was sent toward CEO Boyens’s flotilla. That does not mean the transmission was intended for CEO Boyens.”

Iceni picked up on that immediately. “The Syndicate flotilla surely has ISS representatives on board. Or are you implying there may be other players as well?”

“I am saying there are other possibilities, Madam President.”

Malin’s statement was clearly aimed at Drakon as well. He regarded Malin, wondering why he was bringing this up in front of Iceni. If she had been contacting the snakes aboard Boyens’s ships…

But why would she do that? Iceni wasn’t a fool. She knew the snakes wanted her blood. Iceni, the senior CEO in the star system, hadn’t only revolted against the Syndicate Worlds. She had also, along with Drakon, ensured the slaughter of the snakes in this star system. The families had been sent back to Prime, but the ISS surely wanted to make a memorable example of Iceni to avenge their dead comrades and make anyone else think twice before massacring snakes.

There’s no one who wants me dead as much as they want her dead. She knows that. She probably sent her man Togo to make sure I didn’t send that message.

Whatever else Malin might have said was interrupted by a call from the command center’s main room. “The enigmas are moving!”

Iceni walked quickly out of the office, but Drakon held up a restraining hand to Malin when he moved to follow. It felt silly to rush to see something that had happened over four hours ago, especially when this offered a good opportunity for private conversation with Malin without attracting anyone’s notice. “There’s a possibility that you didn’t mention,” Drakon told Malin. “The chance that the President herself sent that tight-beam message, a prerecorded offer for a secret deal that cuts me out in every sense of the word.”

Malin spoke carefully as he replied. “General, I have no information indicating that President Iceni has undertaken such a move. Nor would such a move make sense.”

“I know, and I have too much respect for Iceni to think she doesn’t know that as well. But old habits die hard. How good is your information on what she’s doing now?”

“I feel confident that I would know if she was planning to move against you, sir.”

“Hmmm.” Drakon glanced toward the doorway leading into the command center. “That’s your assessment, or you have solid information?”

“Both, sir.” Malin sounded confident, assured, as if he knew all the angles.

He sounded, in fact, like Morgan did at such times. Despite their immense dislike for each other, and despite being different in many ways, Malin and Morgan sometimes seemed disturbingly similar. “Keep your eyes open, anyway, and make sure you question everything you think you already know.”

“Yes, sir.” Malin smiled. “You have taught me that. It’s a good rule to follow in planning any operation.”

“I learned it the hard way, Bran. Get going.”

After Malin left, Drakon walked into the command center to join Iceni where she was watching the display. Even a ground forces soldier like him had no trouble seeing what was playing out. “The enigmas are moving to intercept Black Jack.”

The two forces, Alliance and enigma, were hurtling together at velocities a ground forces officer had trouble grasping. More than point two light speed. Drakon did the math. About sixty thousand kilometers every second. How can any human get their mind around that kind of speed? I’m used to dealing with an environment on the surface of planets, where a kilometer is a significant distance.

Nor did ground forces rush together as these warships did. He knew the reasons for the ways that spacecraft fought. The ships could see each other across huge distances, yet the warship weapons had such short ranges relative to the vast reaches of space and the tremendous speed at which the spacecraft moved that warships had to get close to each other in order to fight. They could waltz around forever, avoiding contact, if one side didn’t want to fight and didn’t have to go to some specific objective such as a hypernet gate. “Forever” wasn’t all that long in this case, of course, being limited by the fuel and food supplies on the ships.

I don’t like it. Drakon felt his jaw tightening as he watched the two forces rushing into contact. Space warfare is too mechanical. You never see the enemy as people, just as ships. They can fly all over space, across distances so great it takes hours for light itself to make the journey, but in the end they have to bash head to head. How can you really use tactics when the other side can see everything you do no matter how far away you are? When there’s nothing to hide behind and no way to conceal yourself? It all comes down to two groups of people running up to each other and hitting the other guys as hard as they can.

But then how did Black Jack blow away the mobile forces of the Syndicate Worlds in battle after battle? There’s got to be something else here, something different from what I know.

He looked around the display at the rest of the star system: the planets swinging in leisurely, nearly circular orbits; comets and asteroids following their own orbits along paths in any shape from circular to huge, narrow ellipses running from the cold dark near the edge of the star system to the bright heat near the star itself; the hypernet gate looming off to one side; the occasional group of warships; and a gratifying number of commercial ships, mostly transports passing through on their way to somewhere else and currently doing their clumsy, lumbering best to stay out of the way of the warships. It all made for a very different battlefield than those he was accustomed to.

Though as battlefields went, Midway was also different than the average star system. Drakon knew that jump points had roughly the same influence on space battles as passes through mountain ranges or bridges across major rivers had on surface fights. Anyone coming or going had to use them. Whereas the average star had two or three jump points, and an exceptional star might have five or even six, Midway boasted a remarkable eight jump points that led to eight other stars—Kahiki, Lono, Kane, Taroa, Laka, Maui, Pele, and Iwa. That alone had earned Midway its name.

Then, about forty years ago, the Syndicate Worlds had constructed the hypernet gate here as well, a massive structure orbiting slowly about five light-hours from the star. The gate gave direct access to any other star in Syndicate space with a gate of its own. All of this made Midway the junction for a lot of trade, for ships carrying cargo and people to any number of other stars, and for defense of this region of space. But it had also made Midway a target, even though officially there had been no enemy here, on the far side of Syndicate space from the Alliance.