“Did Colonel Morgan say why she didn’t tell us she didn’t die on Ulindi?” Gozen asked.
“She didn’t say anything. I can only guess at her motivations right now, too.”
“Is Colonel Morgan a threat?” Gozen asked in the tones of someone who didn’t really want to know the answer but knew she had to ask.
“Not to me,” Drakon said. “But I have no idea who else she might decide to go after.”
“Maybe it was her, not Togo, who broke into the president’s quarters.”
Drakon stared at Gozen. “I hope you’re wrong.” Two trained killers who had both slipped their leashes and were now seeking out targets on their own. It was the unstated worry of everyone who employed assassins, that such deadly weapons would turn upon their former owners, or would simply begin choosing their own victims.
When he was assured of total privacy, Drakon gazed at his comm, remembering not only how lethal Roh Morgan was but also the many times her talents had proven extremely valuable. Arguably, Drakon had long owed his own life to Morgan, since it was she who had successfully deleted any information that might link him to the escape of a subordinate whom the snakes wanted to arrest. The snakes had seen Drakon exiled to Midway anyway, but they had chosen to wait for him to trip up again, and perhaps expose other disloyal Syndicate personnel, rather than nail him immediately.
He owed her. Even now.
Drakon tapped the comm to call Morgan’s number. The comm waited patiently for an answer, finally informing Drakon that no one had acknowledged the call and that, for reasons unknown to the comm unit, the location of the comm called could not be determined at all. But he could leave a message. “Roh, whatever you’re doing, please contact me. I want to talk. I promise no attempts to trace your location. If you are hunting Togo, that’s what I would order you to do if I could speak with you. But no other targets, Roh. No. Other. Targets. President Iceni is not to be harmed. Oh, and thank you. You saved my life. Again. I have not and will not forget how loyal and capable you are. But no other targets, Roh. Call me. Drakon, out.”
If Morgan did go after Iceni out of some twisted sense of loyalty, he would have to kill her.
Chapter Twelve
“So, what’s the plan?” Colonel Safir asked as she formally took over responsibility for the areas of the planet where Colonel Rogero’s brigade normally provided security.
“We’re still working on that,” Rogero admitted.
“If we were still under the Syndicate,” Safir reminisced, “they’d order us to send in a worker to make the aliens blow a segment of their installation, then send in another worker to blow up another segment, and so on until either the aliens ran out of segments or we ran out of workers.”
“I have a feeling the enigmas have a way of dealing with a tactic like that,” Rogero said. “They must have a way, because according to Black Jack’s people the enigmas have likely fought among themselves. They have to have developed a means of fighting a ground opponent that doesn’t guarantee victory to the commander most willing to send someone in to die.”
“Yeah,” Safir agreed. “Because from all we know the enigmas don’t have any problem with dying in the line of duty. Hey, you know what might work?”
“If this is a new idea, I’d love to hear it.”
“If they had some way to blind attackers,” Safir said. “Not just what we think of as jamming. I mean, block everything. Visual, infrared, radar, comms, sound. You’re fighting them, you’re in the installation, but you can’t see anything or hear anything, so the enigmas wouldn’t have to blow a section until they actually lost control of it.”
Rogero stared at her. “What made you think of that?”
“I used to explore caves when I was a kid. One time my light failed and… it was dark.” Safir shuddered. “I just remembered that, and how I could have been surrounded by stobor or fuzzies or anything and I wouldn’t have known.”
“I think you figured it out. Now all I have to do is figure out how to counter whatever means the enigmas have for full-spectrum blinding and sound suppression.”
“Your transports won’t be pulling out for a little while yet. I’ll talk to Kai and the general and see if we can’t come up with some ideas.” Safir made an ancient sign, the sort of thing that would have been prohibited under Syndicate rule. “Good fortune.”
“Thank you. Take care of things around here while I’m gone.” Rogero returned the gesture that his own family had secretly passed down, then headed back to his unit to oversee their lift up to the troop transports waiting in orbit.
It only took two of the big troop transports captured from the Syndicate at Ulindi to carry all of Colonel Rogero’s brigade. The brigade’s soldiers, who had stayed at Midway to provide security during Ulindi and had since endured considerable taunting for “missing the hard fight,” were in generally good spirits despite the rumors about the difficulties of their impending mission. That was at least partially because the troop quarters on the transports, which were of the usual Syndicate bare-bones type for workers, were still much superior to the cramped accommodations on converted freighters which the soldiers had endured on earlier missions.
Rogero stood on the bridge of troop transport HTTU 332 along with Leytenant Mack, the commanding officer. Mack, like HTTU 332, had been Syndicate before being captured at Ulindi. Mack and his crew had been happy to change allegiances, but he appeared to be far from enthusiastic about taking the soldiers to Iwa to confront an alien enemy. He had nonetheless handled every part of the embarkation efficiently enough to impress Rogero.
“Can I ask you something, Colonel?” Mack said during a pause in shuttle arrivals.
“Of course,” Rogero said.
“These aliens I’m hearing about. They control space beyond Pele Star System?”
“That’s right,” Rogero said. “The Syndicate had expanded into that region a century ago, but then started getting rolled back by a mysterious opponent whose ships were invisible to Syndicate sensors. The Syndicate ended up being pushed back as far as Midway over the next several decades, then not long ago what we call the enigma race tried to take Midway as well.”
“And you guys stopped them,” Mack said, visibly impressed.
“Black Jack’s fleet stopped them,” Rogero corrected. “He’d just ended the war with the Syndicate, and came here to save Midway from the enigma attack.”
Mack called up a small display of nearby space and pointed to one of the stars beyond Pele Star System. “Some relatives of mine were among those sent by the Syndicate to colonize this star system. All my family ever knew was that they stopped getting messages back. The Syndicate never told anyone anything.”
“What had happened was inconvenient for the Syndicate to admit to,” Rogero said, “so the Syndicate just rewrote history again and wrote that part out of it.”
“But now I’ve got some idea what happened.” Mack gazed at the display, his face grim. “They never got anybody back?”
“No. Not once the enigmas had taken a place. Not until we pulled those three soldiers off Iwa. Every place the enigmas have taken they have eliminated every trace of humans once being there.”
“My people are long gone, then. No descendants to try to contact.” Mack gave Rogero a determined look. “We’ll get you to Iwa and get you and your ground forces down to that planet. Take a piece out of those enigmas, for my family, all right?”
“We’ll do our best,” Rogero promised.
One week later, the expedition to Iwa was ready to depart.
It was the largest force Midway Star System had ever assembled. Small by the standards of the immense war with the Alliance that had ended not long ago, or by comparison to the fleet that Black Jack had brought through Midway more than once, the flotilla was nonetheless impressive when measured against the forces now operating in this region of space that had once been firmly under control of the rebellion-wracked Syndicate Worlds.