Jack Campbell - Perilous Shield

After Malin had left to pass on the orders, Drakon held up a hand to forestall Iceni. “Can we talk privately?”

She looked toward Togo and pointed at the door. Togo hesitated, then nodded and walked out. “What do you need?”

“I need to know what the problem is the last few days. Did someone tell you I planted that bomb at your desk?”

Iceni smiled humorlessly. “Of course someone did. I have no evidence to support that charge, though.”

“It looks like you believe it,” Drakon said, his voice sounding rougher than he had intended.

“I— Why are you saying that?”

“The way you’re acting toward me,” Drakon said bluntly. “Look, I understand that you don’t like me. If that’s the way it is, fine. But I thought we could work together.”

Iceni looked back at him, perplexed. “You think I don’t like you?”

“I’m not a fool.”

“On that point, we may be in serious disagreement, General Drakon.”

“What?”

She sighed, looked upward as if beseeching aid from the deities they had been taught not to believe in, then back at Drakon. “I don’t don’t like you.”

“What?” Drakon said again. “You don’t don’t like me?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Can you explain what it means?”

“It means we can work together,” Iceni said, looking exasperated. “Artur, you can’t be that big an idiot!”

Is she trying to make me angry? Something clicked in his head. “Hold on, if you don’t don’t like me—”

“Ancestors!” Iceni cried, looking upward again. “Save me!” She glared at Drakon. “I must be a bigger idiot than you are!”

His anger grew in response to hers. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Perhaps you’ll figure it out before one of us is dead! Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have a battleship to save!”

Iceni swept out, leaving Drakon sitting there, mystified.

“I should do it,” Morgan complained.

“Gaiene can handle it,” Drakon replied.

“Him and that brat on the battleship?”

Drakon rested the left side of his chin on one fist as he looked at her. “You don’t like Kontos? I understood that you’d been sending him long, chatty communications.”

Instead of acting guilty, Morgan just grinned. “I’m flirting with him like crazy.”

“‘Flirting’ is a fairly innocent term,” Drakon observed.

“Maybe it’s a bit more than flirting, then. I want the kid interested in me. I want him willing to do what I want, what you want, with that battleship of his.”

“You’re trying to turn Kontos against Iceni?” Part of him, the part that looked at cold reality and its demands, saw the merit in such tactics. Another part of him, the part that knew Gwen Iceni, rejected the idea of undermining her authority with a mobile forces officer.

On the other hand, if Morgan can turn Kontos, Gwen needs to know that. Gwen has been acting like I annoy her no end, but she still deserves my support, and I still need her support.

“How’s your plan going?” Drakon asked.

Morgan made a diffident wave with one hand. “It’s a work in progress. If I can get him alone, he and I together, I think I can make the innocent young lad forget all about Her Royal Majesty the President.”

Drakon shook his head, trying to mask the reaction her words created in him. “I’m uncomfortable with those kinds of tactics.”

“Kontos won’t actually get any,” Morgan said with a grin. “It’s holding out the possibility that makes men do really stupid things.” As if realizing that Drakon might take that as a derisive reference to what had happened at Taroa, Morgan’s smile abruptly vanished. “Besides, I don’t sleep around, no matter what that worm Malin tells you.”

“Colonel Malin is not part of this conversation and has not made such accusations.” Given how much Malin dislikes Morgan, it is a bit odd that he has never even implied that Morgan is promiscuous, but then, Malin doesn’t seem the type to heedlessly use that sort of slur as a weapon against a woman. He might have tried to kill her during that incident in orbit, or he might instead have saved her from being killed by someone else as he claims despite the improbability of his doing that, but he’s never called her a slut. I guess his mother raised Malin right. “Even if all you’re doing is offering something you don’t intend to ever deliver on, the whole thing strikes me as too much like what the snakes would do to entrap somebody.”

Morgan shrugged. “If the enemy does something smart, do you reject using the same idea because the enemy came up with it? General, it would be extremely useful for us to have effective control of that battleship. You still don’t know who sicced those assassins on you, and maybe on me, but you can’t rule out the possibility that our President wants to clear the field of competitors. If you want Gaiene to lead this op, that’s fine. Let me go along so I can do some, uh, close-in maneuvering with Kontos and get him really interested in doing what we want.”

“No offense, Roh, but that tactic wasn’t too successful when you tried it on Black Jack.”

She made a scornful sound. “That slug Malin was there cramping my style. And that woman, the one that Black Jack was obviously sleeping with. I still could have gotten to Black Jack if Malin hadn’t been there. That Alliance drab wasn’t anything special.”

Drakon laughed. “She was an Alliance battle cruiser commander. And Black Jack’s wife.”

“Wife?” Morgan cocked on eyebrow at Drakon. “When did that happen?”

“Not too long ago, I guess.”

“He’ll get restless. Now, what about our boy Kontos?”

I don’t like it, and I don’t want to do anything that would feed any suspicions that Gwen has of me. But I have to put this in terms that Morgan can understand. “Here’s the thing, Colonel. If you make an explicit play for Kontos, and he doesn’t bite but instead reports it to his superiors, where does that place us? You’ll be on his ship. He can record everything you say and do with him even if you two are supposedly in an unmonitored compartment.”

Morgan scowled at that. “He probably would, too. Just to protect himself. If that happens, our own plans could be exposed.”

“I need you here, anyway,” Drakon added. “You’re right that we need to run down whoever ordered the attack that almost got you and me. You’re the best for that job.”

“Damn right I am. Whoever set that up covered their tracks really well.” Mollified by Drakon’s praise, Morgan saluted jauntily. “But I’ll find whoever it was.”

“And then you will tell me, and I will decide what to do. Right?”

“Yes, sir,” Morgan replied with another grin.

“ Especially if you think either Colonel Malin or President Iceni were involved,” Drakon emphasized with his hardest glare. “Nothing is to happen to President Iceni.”

Morgan’s smile didn’t waver. “Yes, sir.”

“Madam President, the military explosives used in the bomb at your desk have been traced to the armory of a subunit of the brigade commanded by Colonel Rogero of General Drakon’s division,” Togo reported dispassionately.

“Someone must have issued those explosives,” Iceni observed. They were in her office, as secure a place to talk as possible. Her desk display showed a stream of shuttles heading upward from one of Drakon’s camps toward a single freighter in orbit.

Togo, standing facing her desk, nodded diffidently. “Interrogations were begun to determine who had issued the explosives and under what pretences. One of the supply sergeants, however, was found dead in his quarters before questioning began. The cause of death appeared to be an overdose of the illegal drug known as Rapture.”