The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

Her imagination filled with an image of being shoved out of an air lock by laughing workers, Iceni jerked nervously when the door to her office announced a visitor. Togo. Him she shouldn’t have to fear, but the fact that she had overreacted didn’t help her disposition. Wonderful. She hadn’t even boarded a shuttle or left her own office yet and she was already unnerved.

“What is it?” Iceni snapped as Togo entered.

“You asked for whatever I could discover about Colonel Malin and Colonel Morgan,” Togo said, imperturbable in the face of her grumpiness. “I thought I should provide you with what I knew before you left. Forgive me if I was in error.”

“No. You aren’t mistaken. I’d like to know more about Drakon’s team before I leave this star system in their hands.” Iceni closed her eyes, calming herself, then looked at him. “Take a seat. What did you find?”

Togo sat down, not relaxing in the chair but keeping his back erect. He hadn’t lasted this long as personal assistant to a CEO by presuming on his acquaintance with those of high rank. Bringing out his reader, Togo cleared his throat, then began reciting his report. “Colonel Malin is the child of an unmarried officer in the medical service who was widowed four years before his birth when her husband died fighting the Alliance.”

“Frozen embryo or a fling?” Iceni asked.

“Apparently a fling. The identity of the father is unknown.”

There wasn’t anything unusual about that, not after so many years of war. So many husbands and wives had died, so many men and women had sought someone to help them bear heirs of their bodies, no questions asked.

“Bran Malin’s mother helped him get into the subexecutive ranks,” Togo continued. “She reached the rank of sub-CEO before retiring, but died several years ago as the result of long-term ailments contracted while working at a classified medical research facility. After a few assignments in a variety of support and frontline positions, Bran Malin asked to be assigned to the ground force commanded by Drakon. He is now twenty-eight years old and has served with Drakon for seven years, first commanding ground units directly and eventually becoming a close and trusted adviser to Drakon.” Togo lowered the reader. “That is all there is though I can recite his assignments prior to Drakon’s command. Your earlier assessment, that Malin is controlled and careful, is borne out by every source I could find. Since he is both controlled and careful, there is nothing in Malin’s record indicating that he has ever expressed any unhappiness with Syndicate rule.”

Iceni pondered that, then nodded. “And Morgan?”

“Her history is much more interesting.”

“Somehow, I thought that it would be.”

That earned Iceni a small smile from Togo before he resumed his usual unrevealing expression. “Roh Morgan’s parents died in action when she was very young, and she was raised in a succession of official-duty orphanages. She joined the ground forces as soon as legally old enough at seventeen and volunteered for the commando branch. Her training for that was cut short, and it took considerable digging to find out what happened after that.”

Iceni leaned forward, intrigued. “Some secret assignment?”

“Extremely secret, Madam President. So secret that the code name itself has apparently been wiped from the records. But I was able to piece together the concept with what remained in ISS files. It was an operation aimed at the enigma race.”

“The enigmas?” She hadn’t expected that. “Every operation the Syndicate Worlds has staged over the last century to try to learn more about the enigmas has been a total failure.”

“As was that involving Roh Morgan,” Togo confirmed. “I was able to determine that the plan involved the use of small, natural asteroids, which would be hollowed out to each hold a single commando frozen into survival sleep along with just enough equipment to maintain that state. The asteroids were launched from a ship outside an enigma-held star system, pushed inward toward the planets at velocities low enough to seem normal.”

“No wonder they put the commandos into survival sleep! At those velocities, it would be decades before the asteroids reached any planets.”

“Yes.” Togo paused, then shook his head. “When close enough to a planet, the commandos would be awakened, and were then expected to land and send out any information they could before being hunted down and killed by the enigmas.”

Iceni stared at him. “A suicide mission lasting for decades and no guarantee that it would actually accomplish anything. Morgan volunteered for that?”