“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. Geosynchronous orbit, you know.” Dun laughed outright. “Talk to you later.”
Drakon mimed punching the air where the comm window had been, then called Iceni. He couldn’t discuss his plans, not when Dun might be able to intercept the conversation, but he could use certain phrases known to CEOs that would indicate that he wanted the response process strung out as long as possible.
Two hours later, Malin and Morgan returned, entering together but immediately going to opposite corners of the room. Malin bobbed his head slightly up and to the side, indicating the general direction of the orbiting station. “We based the plan on the fact that Colonel Dun has spent most of her time in industrial assignments. That was the justification for giving her command of the station. Her military time has been with strategic systems.”
“Nukes?” Drakon asked.
“For the most part. Planning and design.”
Morgan smiled lazily. “She’s going to be looking for a big attack. Missiles, large assault ships, something on that order. Colonel Dun doesn’t have any experience with ground ops, special ops, or really, any ops.”
“How many stealth suits do we still have operational after the attacks on the ISS?” Drakon asked.
“Enough.” Morgan’s grin widened. “They’re in the plan.”
Drakon called it up. One talent he had worked hard to acquire was the ability to quickly review and absorb the essentials of an operational plan. Getting bogged down in details could cause a commander to miss the bigger picture, and even whether the overall plan made any sense.
This one did, but he had expected nothing less. “Two assault forces.”
Malin nodded. “One to go after any troops loyal to Dun and take her out by whatever means necessary, and the other to make sure nothing gets launched from that facility by securing and overriding all controls that could do that. We think Colonel Kai—”
“Kai’s not doing it. Neither is Gaiene or Rogero. Dun may be overconfident, but we can’t assume she’s careless enough not to have someone tracking where my top field commanders are and where I am. If I or any of those three colonels heads for orbit, or can’t be spotted down here conducting business as usual, Dun will know.”
Morgan’s eyebrows rose. “Does that leave who I think it does?”
“Yes. You two. Malin will command one assault force and you take the other.”
“Dun may be watching us, too,” Malin said.
“Maybe, but she doesn’t have infinite resources to devote to surveilling people down here, and she probably thinks she can safely assume that wherever I am, you two are also.”
“Sweet.” Morgan slowly flexed the fingers of one hand as if preparing to go into action right then and there. “I want the force that goes after Dun.”
Malin shrugged. “Fine by me. General, you asked about the reason for Dun’s assignment to this star system.”
“Yeah. What did she do?”
“We found her ISS files. There’s nothing about the reason for exile.”
Drakon peered at him. “Nothing?”
“Yes, sir. Very unusual. I’m beginning to wonder if Dun isn’t a snake herself, operating under deep cover.”
“She doesn’t match the usual profiles for someone like that,” Morgan added, “but we can’t rule it out, and if it’s true then Dun could be more dangerous than we think. There’s too much detail we could check on her career to doubt any of that, so we know her experience, but she might also be operating right now on fail-safe contingency orders from the snakes.”
“How long before you can nail her?”
“We can hide the troop movements in routine lifts to the facility and other orbital sites near there, but it will take time. Twenty-four hours. I wanted to push that until we found the blank spots in Dun’s ISS records. Now I want to make very sure we don’t tip her off.”
When Morgan advised caution, it was uncharacteristic enough to emphasize how important it was to listen to that opinion. “All right. Twenty-four hours. President Iceni and I will spin out discussions with Dun to help keep her distracted. I don’t want to hear from either one of you again until you’re in control of that facility and calling in to tell me.”
“I can run you a tight-beam link to the assault-force data feeds,” Malin offered. “Slightly time-delayed because it’ll have to run through relays to keep Dun’s people from spotting it, but we need to do that anyway for team coordination, and the link should be safe from any intercept.”
That was tempting, especially since he would have to sit here while they faced danger without him. Drakon nodded. “Thanks. Make that happen.”
Iceni had proven adept at stringing along Colonel Dun, dangling major concessions continually just out of reach. Drakon had found himself increasingly admiring her skills. That didn’t equate to trusting her, of course. In fact, watching how well she spun Dun made Drakon wonder how well he was being spun or could be spun if Iceni decided that was necessary.
He hadn’t been able to monitor the forces going up piecemeal in shuttles and boosters, packed in with normal shipments. If Dun was tracking anything, it would be whatever Drakon was watching.
It wasn’t a major assault by any means. Colonel Dun only had about forty soldiers under her command on the facility, and those were locals whose experience and training were both limited. Against that, Malin and Morgan were leading two assault teams of fifteen commandos each, all the soldiers highly trained veterans. If not for the risk of something heavy being dropped on the planet, Drakon wouldn’t have had any concerns about the outcome. But that one concern was a huge one.
An alert signal pulsed on his desk. Taking a long, slow breath, Drakon linked to the incoming signals and a multipaned window opened before him with views from the assault force.
He concentrated, blocking out all else, focusing only on the vids before him which portrayed the images seen from the stealth suits being used by the commandos. Twelve panes in the window. Two of those panes were from Malin and Morgan. The other ten marked section leaders, each controlling a team of two other commandos plus themselves.
About half of the commandos were already on the facility, some popping open specially designed crates to emerge inside warehouse compartments, others on the outside of the facility in the cold emptiness of space, the remainder coming in on long leaps from neighboring orbital locations, their stealth suits keeping them as invisible as the ingenuity of humans could devise. Malin’s head turned, his range of vision sweeping across a stretch of utilitarian fixtures that marked one section of the outer shell of the facility. Though invisible to others in their suits, the links to their fellows allowed the commandos to be “seen” by Malin as ghostly images painted on the exterior view.
Morgan’s group had also reached the facility and spread out along other portions, phantoms flitting carefully toward their targets. One of the section leaders passed a security camera watching that part of the exterior, the camera blindly tracking across the commando without pause.
The sections had reached accesses leading into the facility at different points. Some were air locks for maintenance workers to use when repairs were done, some were vents and tunnels never intended for human use. In some cases, commandos already inside cracked the air locks for their fellows. Everywhere else, the small, complex devices still known as skeleton keys after some sort of ancient means of opening locked doors were placed against key points and began breaking access codes and manipulating security bolts until barriers swung open.
Commandos began entering, each covering the others with ready weapons, some now in lighted passageways within the facility, others in still-darkened areas cluttered with canisters and boxes where only the occasional robotic minion trundled past with single-minded focus on its particular task.