She laughed. “Ah, yes. My loyal knight, his armor a bit worn and torn, but still determined to fight to the last for what he believes in. Do you really believe in me?”
That one was easy. “Yes.”
Iceni looked away, still smiling. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
She left, head high and a bounce in her step. Colonel Malin, waiting outside, gave her a speculative look before following her.
Drakon walked out of the conference room and saw both Bradamont and Gozen watching Iceni leave. Both women switched their gazes to him, neither revealing anything in their expressions. For some reason that irritated Drakon.
“I’m going to be having dinner with President Iceni tonight,” he told Gozen. “To… discuss the proposed plan. You won’t be needed. It’ll be a private dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” Gozen said, poker-faced. “Is it possible the meeting will run late?”
Drakon’s gaze on her sharpened, but Gozen wasn’t betraying any hint of what she was thinking. “Possibly.”
“I’ll arrange transportation, sir,” Gozen said.
“Thank you.” Drakon walked toward his office, fighting off a temptation to look backward suddenly to see if Bradamont and Gozen were daring to crack smiles.
Chapter Ten
Colonel Bran Malin stood silently in a slice of shadow just large enough to cover him, trying not to move and breathing as shallowly as possible to avoid giving off any signs that someone could spot. The city was unusually active this late at night, but there were still many areas where silence and stillness reigned.
President Iceni had told him to take the night off without explaining why, but it had not been difficult to find out that General Drakon was to be her guest this evening. Malin had long wanted to encourage such a relationship, but had been at a loss for how to do so. He knew that physical intimacy by itself was unlikely to produce any good results, and that in theory a strong relationship between Drakon and Iceni would involve emotional ties and intimacy.
In theory. Malin gazed into the darkness, remembering the woman who had raised him as her own. She had loved him, and he had thought he loved her in return. But then he had learned of his real mother and sought her out. Roh Morgan. A woman who knew a great deal about anger and pain, but seemingly nothing about any softer emotions except as tools to wield against the targets of her plans. And Malin had found he had a natural skill at the same sort of machinations. Inherited, apparently, along with who knew what else.
He had walled off his feelings as much as possible, trying to bend his work toward some greater goal that might prove he had overcome his mother’s legacy. There was an irony in the fact that both he and Morgan had fixed on Drakon as the means to achieve their ends, though those ends differed hugely.
Was she dead? Malin stayed motionless, gazing into the night, wondering why he felt a conviction that Morgan had somehow survived the destruction of the snake alternate headquarters on Ulindi.
Neither Drakon nor Iceni trusted him as much as they once had, but that was fine. It wasn’t about him. What mattered was that the two former CEOs seemed to have finally reached out to each other in a way that should help preserve this experiment at Midway, this attempt to build a government and a society that were both strong and free.
Malin inhaled slowly and deeply, repeating in his mind a mantra he had recited countless times. I have been a slave to my past, but I will free myself by freeing others from their pasts.
His instruments registered a flicker of motion in an area half a block down and to the left, an area that should be empty at this time of night. Malin moved like a wraith through the darkness, determined that this time he would run his quarry to earth.
Move. Hide. Pause. Move. His prey was moving with great care as well. Did the prey know of the hunt this time? Probably not. There had been no moves so easy to spot that they were obviously intended to draw Malin on. And though the path his prey wended through the dark areas of the city veered in direction to remain well concealed, that path kept coming back to a course centered on the region near the main spaceport.
A rat skittered away through the trash, causing Malin to freeze once more while waiting to see if the movement had attracted attention. Part of him mentally noted the state of this back alley and the need to direct that those responsible clean it up, while another part wondered at the absurdity of being concerned about trash in an alley while engaged in a deadly pursuit, and yet a third part pondered the symbolism of the fact that humanity had brought rats to the stars.
And, somewhere inside, part of Malin wondered if Morgan had experienced those kinds of complex, cascading thought streams. It had always been impossible to ask her, and the question might have led Morgan into a line of investigation that would have had her discovering that Malin was her son. Morgan’s reaction to that might have rivaled a nova in its destructive fury.
Malin moved cautiously again as he spotted more traces of his quarry on his sensor readouts. Still tending toward the spaceport. Interesting. Were more snake agents expected, slipping in among cargo shipments and passengers?
But as he neared the spaceport itself, Malin gradually became aware of a third player in the stealthy pursuit. Somewhere, there off to his left, someone was pacing both him and his target. That someone moved like a ghost, the signs of their presence so subtle that Malin saw them as much by instinct as by indications on his sensors. Was the third party an ally of Malin’s quarry? Or another agent of Drakon’s or Iceni’s pursuing the same target as he? But Malin knew of no other agent with that level of skill.
The path finally led to a large warehouse near the security boundaries of the spaceport. The walls, lights, and defenses around the spaceport glowed with a riot of data on Malin’s sensors. He realized with grudging respect that this location had been chosen because the noise from those systems, as well as the fairly high levels of foot and vehicle traffic, helped mask those who did not want their presence noted.
A link using the highest level of security override disarmed the lock and alarm on one of the doors. Malin studied the pingback from that command, seeing that the security software had distinct signs of snake coding. Sloppy of them to leave that kind of clear sign, but snakes sometimes underestimated the intelligence and capabilities of their opponents, or were so rushed in carrying out a command that corners were cut.
He glided inside the warehouse, every sense alert and every sensor built into his clothing at maximum sensitivity. Cargo containers were stacked in neat rows, each container bearing security stamps from dozens of star systems.
The barest noise reached Malin, something out of place in this warehouse. His weapon in hand, Malin ceased moving and crouched next to a stack of cargo containers.
He waited. Often, in this kind of life-and-death game, waiting was a winning tactic. Someone would get impatient. Someone would move. The one who waited as if turned to stone would eventually see the one who could not wait long enough.
Whoever else was in here was not linked in to the city’s official security software as warehouse guards or police would be. It was always possible that they were nonetheless innocent of any crime, but Malin waited with grim resolve, willing to kill the innocent if necessary to ensure he got the guilty. President Iceni would not approve. Neither would General Drakon. Which was why Malin took the burden of the action on himself. He would pay any price demanded by fate for his actions, and spare the others that guilt.
There. Two of them, one covering the other as they eased through the warehouse, checking out each lane between rows of cargo containers. The warehouse security scanners should have spotted any intruders, but the searchers were smart enough to know that anyone who could get inside without triggering any alarms was also likely smart enough to have blinded the security scanners to his or her presence.