“No!” was still coming out of Drakon’s throat when Malin fired.
“Why?” Drakon’s gaze was centered on Malin, who stood at rigid attention.
“Dun had to be stopped before she activated any fail-safes,” Malin reported, his tone as emotionless as his expression.
“That was Morgan’s primary duty. You knew that.”
“It was my assessment, on the scene, that she needed backup.”
“Do you think that excuse is ironclad?” Drakon almost shouted.
“Sir, you have always encouraged us to act based on our assessments—”
“Dammit, Malin, if your shot had been aimed a fraction of a millimeter different it would have blown off Morgan’s head instead of Dun’s! Why the hell did you take that kind of chance? Or was it a chance? You knew that after Dun shot Morgan she wouldn’t have gotten off a second shot before the commandos with Morgan nailed her. Was this just a perfect opportunity to end your quarrels with Morgan by ‘accidentally’ blowing her away during a firefight?” Drakon was shouting now. “If you wanted her dead that bad, why not let Dun do it? Or were you afraid that Dun would miss?”
Malin had paled, but he kept his voice steady. “I… General Drakon…”
“Yes or no! Did you try to kill Morgan?”
“No!” His voice cracking, Malin stared at Drakon. “No,” he repeated in a lower but still-strained voice. “She… I knew Morgan wanted to get Dun. I thought… she would… need help.”
Drakon moved back and sat down heavily, glaring at Malin. “Dammit to hell, Bran. You were worried about Morgan’s getting hurt? That’s your defense?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I didn’t know you, if I hadn’t seen a thousand times just how professional and dependable you are, I wouldn’t believe you. I still have trouble believing you.” He blew out an angry breath. “Your shot could easily have killed her. But Morgan would probably be dead if you hadn’t fired. I hope you’re not expecting her to thank you.”
“Colonel Morgan has already made clear her feelings in that regard,” Malin said.
“Yeah. You’re damned lucky I was tied into the command circuit and could activate overrides to freeze her suit. Otherwise, she would have killed you then and there. Why, Bran?”
“I did not try to kill Morgan, sir. You can put me in the highest level interrogation room you desire, and I will repeat that statement as many times and ways as you wish.”
Drakon locked eyes with Malin. “If I put you in that room, and asked you why you worked so hard to catch up to Morgan, what would your answer be?”
Malin hesitated. “To… keep her from being killed. Sir.”
“You two hate each other.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So? Do you have some kind of sick thing going on with Morgan?”
Paling again, Malin shook his head, looking revolted. “I have nothing like that going on with Morgan.”
After several seconds, Drakon made an angry gesture. “I have to believe you. Or have you shot. I prefer to believe you. The official story from this moment forward is that you acted to save Morgan, even though no one who knows you two will believe it. But if anything like this happens again, I don’t care whether or not Morgan gets hit, understand? You’ll be toast.”
Malin appeared briefly disconcerted. “You… will let me continue working on your staff?”
“You and Morgan. Yes. She’s all right with that. Once Morgan calmed down, she was impressed that you’d tried to nail her yourself under the only circumstances where you might have succeeded and could have gotten away with it. That’s the sort of thing Morgan admires in people. She still won’t turn her back on you again, but now she seems to think you’re worth killing.”
Taking a deep breath, Malin nodded. “I guess I should watch my back.”
“Yeah. That would be a real good idea even though I told Morgan that I needed both of you. And I’m telling you the same thing. If either of you kills the other, I’m going to make sure the survivor wishes they’d been the one who died. Is that absolutely, completely, totally clear, Colonel Malin?”
“Yes, sir.”
Iceni sat in her office, wondering why Drakon hadn’t called yet, when he finally did. The virtual image of her co-ruler appeared seated across the desk from her. “The orbital facility is completely secured,” Drakon said. “We swept it down to the quark level and except for Colonel Dun’s surprises we found nothing that shouldn’t be there except the usual contraband, pornography, and recreational drugs. The bad news is that we are now certain that Colonel Dun was working for the ISS.”
“Dun? An ISS agent?” Iceni asked, projecting surprise. She didn’t want Drakon to know that she had already learned of that from her source close to him.
“There’s no doubt at all. Dun had a secondary, small office hidden next to her bedroom. Heavy armor, shielded from detection, and tied in to all the systems on the facility. Only the snakes could have put that sort of thing in place without anyone’s spotting it.”
“Yet there was no indication prior to that Dun was in the employ of the ISS?”
Drakon shook his head. “No. The snakes had even misled us by leaking information that she was an occasional informant of theirs. Lots of people were occasional informants of the snakes because when they came asking not many citizens could say no. Dun was under really deep cover. She must have been recruited decades ago. And I’ll admit that worries me. If Dun could be so carefully hidden, who else in this star system might be a deep-cover agent for the snakes?”
“One of the strongest weapons of the ISS was sowing distrust among everyone,” Iceni commented. “Not that we didn’t work on doing that to ourselves as well. So, deep-cover snakes and other hidden agents of the ISS must be added to our list of concerns. Thank you, General Drakon. Is there anything else?”
“No. Not at this time.”
After Drakon’s image vanished, Iceni turned to Togo, who had been standing off to one side, rendered unseeable to Drakon by Iceni’s communications software. “What didn’t he tell me?”
Togo consulted his own reader. “Just prior to Colonel Dun’s hidden office’s being broken into, she sent a burst transmission to C-625. The cruiser would have received it half an hour before it entered the hypernet gate.”
“Do we have any idea what the message was?”
“No,” Togo replied. “Colonel Dun’s equipment self-erased and -destructed. I have been unable to determine whether or not General Drakon’s people have been able to recover anything from it at all.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“There are widespread rumors that during the attack on the facility, one of General Drakon’s closest aides, Colonel Malin, attempted to murder the other, Colonel Morgan. I believe this actually occurred, or something like it that could be interpreted as an attempt by Malin to kill Morgan.”
“Interesting.” Iceni had believed that Drakon kept that sort of thing under control. “From what I have seen of them, I would have thought Morgan would have tried to kill Malin, not vice versa.” She drummed the fingers of one hand on her desk, frowning in thought. “Take another look at Colonel Morgan. Dig for whatever you can find now that we also have access to the snake files. I need to know more about her.”