Jack Campbell - Perilous Shield

“Do you want to warn him about going to Sobek?” Drakon asked.

“Do I have to?”

“No. If we saw the threat there, we can be certain that Black Jack saw it, too.”

Iceni headed for the secure office off the command center that she had been using lately, followed closely by Togo. “When was the last time we know that the hypernet gate could access other stars than Sobek?” she asked Togo, as they walked.

Togo consulted his data pad. “Two days. A freighter came in from Nanggal.”

“Nothing since then? That’s unusual but not too unusual. No wonder this came as a surprise.”

She entered the room, Togo behind her pausing to ensure the door closed securely, she glancing back to check the green glow of the lights pronouncing the room safe, reaching the desk, and beginning to walk around it to the chair—

“Freeze!”

Togo did not use that word or that tone of command unless it was very, very necessary.

Iceni jerked herself to a stop so quickly that a muscle protested. But she ignored that pain, concentrating on not moving.

She saw Togo come past her, studying one of his security devices, his eyes flicking toward the desk beside Iceni. His motions slowed, becoming very cautious and deliberate, as Togo knelt to look beneath the desk. He remained there for several seconds that felt much longer to Iceni, who was even trying to breathe without making any excess motion.

Togo stood up, his movements still careful but no longer minimized. “A bomb, Madam President, planted under the desk, invisible to the naked eye because it is formed into a thin sheet which was applied to the undersurface of the desk. Directional explosive. It would have cut you in half.”

“Am I still in danger?”

“Not where you are standing, Madam President. It is aimed at the chair.” Togo paused, no emotion visible on his face. “The fuse uses a biometric trigger, keyed to your physical traits.”

“Biometric.” Keyed on her. The bomb would not have exploded if anyone else sat in that chair. But if she had sat there again, she would have suffered certain death. “I’ve heard of those kinds of assassination devices. They’re not easy to acquire.” She wondered why she suddenly felt so calm.

“The Syndicate government kept tight control of them,” Togo agreed. He had knelt again and was working under the desk. “It is deactivated.”

Iceni relaxed, standing up straight. She looked toward the door of the room and the panel above it, where the lights still glowed green to indicate there were no taps, no bugs, no bombs, no threats of any kind in this office. Obviously, someone had not only planted the bomb but also hacked the supposedly secure sensors that would warn of the bomb. And of other things. How long ago was that done? Is this room bugged as well? How private have the conversations held in here really been?

The momentary calm was being replaced by anger again. “This room was compromised. How?”

Togo lowered his head in apology. “I do not know, Madam President. I will find out.”

“You’d damn well better. You saved my life, but if you’d done your job right, my life never would have been in peril. I need to know how someone got in here, everything they did, how the room got compromised without anyone’s detecting it, and most importantly, who it was.”

“I will find the answers, Madam President.” Togo indicated the desk. “But the answer to the last question may already be before us. This device contains explosives with military tags embedded in it.”

Military? Snakes had access to their own explosives, which contained no tags allowing them to be traced to their sources. The only people on Midway who would have access to specialized military explosives of this sort would have to be—

Togo was speaking again, his tone that of someone pronouncing sentence on the guilty. “General Drakon. Or someone on his staff.”

Under the circumstances, Iceni thought she sounded appropriately concerned but not as rattled as someone who had narrowly escaped assassination. She had chosen another secure room in the command center at random, had it swept for hazards, then sat down to send her reply to Black Jack. “A freighter arrived two days ago from the gate with Nanggal and did not report any problems. I assure you that we are extremely concerned by the news you have given us. We cannot explain the problems you are having accessing gates elsewhere in the Syndicate hypernet. My information prior to our break with the Syndicate was that every standing gate had already been equipped to prevent collapse by remote means. I cannot believe that the new government on Prime would have deliberately destroyed almost all of their hypernet. The impact on corporate activity and profits would be incalculable.

“That said, we have no idea what has happened. There are no indications that our own gate is suffering any problems or malfunctions. We have closely monitored it for any signs of software or hardware sabotage, especially during the period when CEO Boyens’s flotilla was in this star system.

“If you discover anything, or find any anomalies in the operation of the gate, we would be grateful if you would provide us with that information. For the people. Iceni, out.”

As she gazed at the small display above the desk, it occurred to her that if Black Jack had departed as scheduled, the bomb aimed at her would have gone off either just after his fleet left this star system or so close to that time that news of the event could not have reached Black Jack before his fleet entered the hypernet gate. Whoever did that did not want Black Jack to know. That tells me something very important—that Black Jack was not involved.

The big question now was what to do. Strike back? Syndicate etiquette called for an equivalent response, which would mean an attempt to put an end to Drakon.

Iceni kept her eyes on the display, but she wasn’t seeing the play of ships through the star system anymore. What am I feeling? Disappointment. No, something more than that.

How could Drakon have done such a thing? Or, if he didn’t order the attempt, let someone like that insane Morgan go after me? They should have known that even if the plot succeeded the military-tagged explosives would point—

Her eyes refocused. So did her brain.

Yes. They should have known. Get a grip, Gwen. Would Drakon or one of his close staff, people with access to commercial explosives, people who overran and control the snakes’ old headquarters facilities and so must have access to snake explosives, use military explosives that would clearly implicate them?

I must be getting old. Why did it take me so long to spot that?

She sat back, thinking, running through every fact, every event. After several minutes, Iceni keyed in a comm address. “General Drakon, I need to speak with you. Alone. Not at the command center. I have learned that at least some of the supposedly secure rooms here have been compromised.”

Drakon watched her, his eyes questioning. Concerned. She could tell he was worried, but his next words caught her off guard. “Are you all right?”

His first question was about her? She was what he was concerned about? Iceni’s mind floundered for a moment, surprised. “I’m fine. Where do you want to meet? We need somewhere new, somewhere secure, where no one would have expected us to meet.”

“There’s only one place I know of that fits that description, but you might not want to go there.”

“Tell me.”

Drakon waited at the entrance to the office once occupied by CEO Hardrad, former head of the Internal Security Service in the Midway Star System. The snake headquarters complex had been badly shot up when Drakon’s troops took the heavily fortified building, but Hardrad’s office deep inside it bore only one sign of the fate of both CEO Hardrad and the snakes on this planet. On one wall, behind Hardrad’s former desk, stains were still visible, marking where Hardrad had been standing when Colonel Morgan put a bullet through his head.