He gave her that crooked smile of his. “If you’d planned hits against me, I probably wouldn’t have survived to register any complaints.”
“How nice of you to say so. But now we will have no secrets from each other.”
“Of course not.” Drakon mimicked her own sarcasm in a shared joke about how untrustworthy CEOs actually were. Neither she nor he would really believe the other wasn’t withholding some secrets.
Drakon gave a gruff farewell and left, leaving Iceni looking at her door after he had closed it. An apology and a promise, both of which appeared to be at least partly sincere. Damn you, General, you’re providing far too powerful a good example for me.
Is it just an act?
Drakon walked steadily back toward his headquarters, hardly noticing the citizens who were hastily clearing a path for him, now with every sign of enthusiasm rather than fear. He wished he could believe that the emotions the citizens showed him were genuine, but over the centuries people at every level of Syndicate society had gotten very good at hiding their true feelings, instead projecting whatever they thought they were expected to show.
Just like CEOs. He wished he could believe that Iceni was sincere.
Why did I tell her about Malin and Morgan? I didn’t tell her much, but I still revealed that my staff had a serious problem with dissension, and that’s exactly the sort of thing CEOs always want to know so they can try to exploit that dissension. Why did I tell Iceni that there was a possible crack in my defenses that she could exploit?
Of course, she might think that was a trap, designed to see if she would make a move in that direction.
I did intend to say I was sorry for not doing my job well enough. I made a mistake. The one thing I hated most in my bosses over the years has been their failure to admit when they screwed up. That was one of the pillars of the Syndicate Worlds, I guess. Never admit a mistake. I can’t remember the government ever doing that. Hell, even when Black Jack was knocking on their door with a fleet the previous Syndicate supreme council would rather have died than admit they had made any errors. And so they did die. But I doubt the new bunch at Prime is any better.
They’re CEOs, aren’t they?
But, then, so is Iceni. And so am I.
Can you teach old dogs new tricks? But I never learned the old tricks. That’s how I got here, exiled for not being self-focused enough, for not being willing to write off the lives of subordinates as the cost of my own promotions. And Iceni was exiled, too, for reporting on illegal activity instead of just trying to grab a piece of it for herself. Neither one of us fit properly into the Syndicate system.
Malin is right when he says the failure to admit mistakes means you can’t learn from them. I have plenty of experience to prove that.
Maybe it’s a good thing I told Iceni a bit about the mess between Malin and Morgan. Even though I wasn’t intending to set a trap, not consciously anyway, that’s what it is. If Iceni tries to contact either Malin or Morgan without my knowledge, I’m certain that they’ll tell me.
And then I’ll know something more about Iceni, and I’ll have to decide what to do next.
Chapter Eight
A display showing nearby stars floated above the center of the conference table. Iceni wasn’t looking at it, though. She seemed to be lost in thought, staring at the virtual window and its peaceful beach as if she wasn’t really focused on it.
“What’s up?” Drakon finally asked. “You wanted to meet on neutral ground, no aides or assistants, just you and me.”
She inhaled slowly, as if coming back to full alertness, then gazed at him. “Yes. We have some very interesting news from Taroa. The HuK I sent there returned several hours ago. Have you seen its report yet?”
“Yes.” Drakon glanced at the star display, where Taroa glowed brighter for extra emphasis, as did the star Kane for some reason. “Three-way civil war. They didn’t have that many troops on hand, so the fighting isn’t too severe, but it’s widespread. Since Taroa doesn’t have a hypernet gate, there weren’t nearly as many snakes or Syndicate troops there, so the loyalists can’t put down the other two factions.”
Iceni nodded, and he noticed that now she was looking toward not the depiction of Taroa, but that of Kane. “There was another item reported to me by the commander of the HuK. It’s not even in the classified report. He managed a face-to-face meeting with the commander of the light cruiser at Taroa, which so far has remained neutral in the struggle and may join us here.”
“That’s nice.” One light cruiser, more or less, hardly seemed that critical an issue to have Iceni so distracted.
“It’s what else that light cruiser commander told us that’s important. You know the shipyards at Taroa engaged in some significant construction for the Syndicate Worlds. Nothing compared to the major shipyards at places like Sancere, but still large projects. Taroa’s shipyards are much better than ours since the Syndicate government judged that they weren’t in as much danger from direct enigma attack and put more money into them.” Iceni’s eyes locked on his, and she leaned forward. “Taroa’s shipyards have nearly completed construction of a battleship. It only has a skeleton crew and is still fitting out.”
Drakon stopped breathing for a moment. “A battleship?” he finally said. “You told me there were only light mobile forces at nearby stars.”
“Yes. That’s what I believed to be true. The official story was that the battleship had been sent to another star system much closer to Prime for final fitting out so the Syndicate government could ensure control of it. But what actually happened was that the CEO on Taroa sent it to Kane, thinking that he might really need a battleship someday and thinking that he could get away with pocketing the battleship in the chaos following Black Jack’s victory at Prime.”
“Good guesses on his part.”
“Weren’t they? But we need that battleship more than he does. If we gain control of that battleship, we will have enough firepower to have a decent chance of fighting off any attacks on this star system.”
“Can we finish the work on it here?”
“Yes.”
His eyes went back to the star display. “And it’s at Kane. How are they hiding a battleship at Kane? It’s not a heavily populated star system, but there are plenty of citizens there and merchant ships coming and going.”
“I asked myself that same question.” Iceni zoomed the display in on Kane, and soon enough that star system floated above the table, its planets visible. “The main mobile forces facility there is like the one here, out near one of the gas giants. See these large moons? If the battleship was positioned in the right place around the curve of the gas giant and relative to the two moons, it wouldn’t be visible from inhabited locations in the star system or from the normal shipping routes. You couldn’t find it unless someone went to the gas giant looking for it.”
Drakon nodded slowly, trying to put the concept within his own experience with ground operations. “Hide it where no one would think to look. Surely, someone in Kane knows about it.”
“The light cruiser commander believes that local authorities in Kane are playing along and keeping the battleship’s presence quiet in exchange for a promise that it will be used to defend them as well as Taroa.”
He pondered the news, out of habit running through the planning implications. “If that information is accurate, we can’t afford to take time to send a scouting mission. We need to get to the battleship before the weapons are active or the people fighting on Taroa send for it to tip the scales. That means going in blind.”