“Yes.” From the look Iceni gave him, Drakon hadn’t been nearly good enough at hiding his feelings. “We still don’t know what happened to Mehmet Togo, Artur. Yes, he might have betrayed me then bolted. Or he might have been taken by enemies. We don’t know,” she repeated.
“He wouldn’t have been easy to take,” Drakon said carefully. “Can I ask you something?”
“No.” But then she smiled slightly. “Go ahead.”
“Why don’t you think that I or one of my people took out Togo?”
She took a long moment to answer, her gaze on the beach again. “Because you wouldn’t do that to me. And if one of your people did it… you would have found out and told me.”
Drakon grimaced again, feeling a mix of anger and unhappiness. “You know how badly I misjudged how much I knew about my two closest assistants,” he said.
Iceni nodded, still watching the waves. “Colonel Morgan died on Ulindi.”
“I won’t be sure of that until I see a body, and even then I’ll wonder if she cloned one to cover her going deep without my knowledge. Apparently, you still trust Colonel Malin.”
Another nod. “As much as I trust anyone.” Another pause. “Except you.”
He stared at her, wondering why Iceni had said something that Syndicate CEO training and experience insisted no one should ever say. “Um… in that case… since you need a capable assistant whom you trust, I can lend you Colonel Malin.”
Iceni laughed, turning her head to look at him again. “Make your agent my personal assistant, privy to all my secrets and actions? Exactly how much do you think I trust you?”
“It’s not about that,” Drakon said, wondering if he was telling the truth. “It’s about how much you trust Malin.”
“I see.” Iceni still looked amused. “And with both Colonel Morgan and Colonel Malin gone, who do you have for a personal assistant?”
“Colonel Gozen.”
Iceni’s eyebrows rose. She reached out, tapping a few commands, then read from the data that appeared before her. “Former Syndicate Executive Third Class Celia Gozen? Recently captured at Ulindi?”
“She wasn’t really captured,” Drakon said defensively. “She’s a fine soldier. And she has been extremely well screened, a process overseen by Colonel Malin.”
“I see.” Iceni gave Drakon an arch look. “And how does Colonel Malin feel about the elevation of Colonel Gozen to such a position?”
“He’s unhappy,” Drakon said. “Which is why I know that if he’d found a speck of information indicating that Gozen was problematic he would have pounced on it.”
Iceni leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk, gazing skeptically at Drakon. “But still, Artur. Someone that new getting that level of trust?”
“I have a gut feeling,” he said, knowing that he sounded even more defensive and hoping that Iceni wouldn’t bring up his misplaced trust in Colonel Morgan.
She did, but not in the way Drakon expected. “Hmmm. Even the very-probably-late Colonel Morgan didn’t betray you in her own eyes. She thought she was helping you. What is it that makes you want Gozen so close to you?”
Drakon shrugged. “She’s… blunt. She’s usually properly respectful, but she has no difficulty telling me when she thinks I’m wrong or that I’ve missed something. And unless I very much have misjudged her, she cares about the people who work for her more than she cares about the ego of her boss. Someone in my position needs someone like that, and people like that are very hard to find.”
Iceni’s eyebrows went up again. “She was still an executive in the Syndicate ground forces? Why hadn’t Gozen already been executed or sent to a labor camp for telling her boss when she thought the boss was wrong?”
“She had a patron.” Drakon waved toward the information Iceni had displayed. “Her uncle, in the same unit. I’m sure you know all about it.”
“Yes.” Iceni rested her chin on her hand as she looked at Drakon. “I also know that you could have raised the same objections when I quickly promoted Kapitan Mercia to command of the Midway, the battleship that is by far our most powerful warship. But you didn’t. You trusted my judgment. So I shall trust yours. I don’t really have any right to pass judgment on your personal staff, so I appreciate your obvious willingness to discuss the matter with me.”
“You’re using that word ‘trust’ an awful lot,” Drakon pointed out, grinning with relief.
“I know. I’m going to turn into some bleeding-heart Alliance officer, aren’t I? Boasting about my honor and proclaiming my virtue over those scum-of-the-earth Syndics.” Iceni looked down for a moment, her expression softening into something like sorrow. “We were, weren’t we? Scum of the earth. The things I did to survive, to reach CEO rank—”
“We both did a lot of things that we don’t like to remember,” Drakon broke in. “We did it to survive, so we could someday do something better. And we are doing something better.”
“Something better, hell. I wanted to be in a position so strong I couldn’t be threatened, and powerful enough that I’d be able to avenge myself on some of those who had harmed me. That’s what it was about, Artur.” She used her arms to lever herself back to her feet. “That’s the past. Today, we have a chance at something better, and a star system to defend. I want a meeting with more minds than yours and mine. Agreed? You, me, Captain Bradamont, your Colonel Malin… and Colonel Gozen. Anyone else?”
“What about your Kommodor?”
Iceni glanced at the display. “Manticore is a light hour from us. Marphissa couldn’t contribute in any meaningful way with that sort of time delay. Midway and Pele are even farther away.” She paused in midturn, shaking her head. “I was about to order Togo to set up the meeting. He was with me for a long time.”
Drakon nodded, standing as well. “I’ll have Gozen set it up. It’ll be a nice test of how well she functions off the battlefield.” His eyes went back to the display as well, focusing on the images of the Dancer ships. He had once heard old legends about certain birds whose arrival was thought to warn of imminent battle or other woes, and he wondered if those battle-scarred alien ships would prove to be such heralds as well.
Gwen Iceni left the protection of her heavily armored VIP limo, moving between twin lines of ground forces soldiers in battle armor who formed nearly solid walls of protection for her. The security measure irked her, so when she reached the door to the meeting facility she paused to look at the female soldier in an obviously new uniform who was standing at attention. “Colonel Gozen?”
“Yes, Madam C—” Gozen bit off the word just a moment too late.
Iceni smiled without any humor. “A lifetime’s habits are not easily forgotten, but you need to work on that. It is Madam President, and I am uncomfortable with a degree of personal security more appropriate to a Syndicate CEO.”
Gozen had the look of someone who had just been told that gravity made things float away. In her experience, of course, CEOs always insisted on every perk they could muster as a means of displaying their importance relative to the citizens and other CEOs. “Ma’am?”
“It’s simple,” Iceni said. “I’m not a Syndicate CEO.” Not anymore, anyway. “I don’t play by Syndicate CEO rules, where the more security you get the more important you must be. I don’t fear the citizens of this world.” She made sure to say that last loudly enough to carry, because every word spoken in public had to be used to reinforce the message Iceni wanted to send. Of course, the statement wasn’t strictly true. Some of those citizens were surely gunning for her, and the enthusiasm of the mob scared her since Iceni knew how easily mobs could shift. But most of the citizens of Midway now appeared to genuinely want her as their leader and were not only willing to follow her lead but happy to do so. “I have my bodyguards. That’s enough.”