“You’ve been bluffing this whole time?” Drakon asked. “Seriously?”
“Yes, sir, honored CEO,” Gozen said.
“Executive, I don’t know what you want to do when this is all over, but if you’re looking for a job and pass the security screening, I would really like to have an officer of your caliber. Now, I’ll have my comm specialist bounce you a link to send that virus over, and we’ll see if my people can make those snakes light up.”
“You just offered me a job?” Gozen laughed. “You must be a glutton for punishment.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“All right, General. I’ll tell you one other thing I’ll do for you. I’ll try to get word across to the soldiers still under snake control that you guys take prisoners. That ought to help both of us, right? They won’t fight as hard, and more of the ones who are still alive will stay that way. Let me know before you go on the attack, so I can make sure you know where my lines are.”
“Do you know where your former CEO and his command staff are?” Drakon asked.
“That I don’t mind giving you,” Gozen said. A coordinate appeared on Drakon’s display. “That is where the exalted CEO Nassiri and his staff was in place. You will note that it is in a comfortable building a ways back from the front lines.”
“And there’s a bar nearby,” Drakon said as his display located the building on the city map that matched the coordinates.
“Yes, sir. Convenient for the CEO, huh?” Gozen looked to one side, listening. “Got to go, General. Give me that link and remember what I asked in exchange for it.”
“I don’t forget that sort of thing,” Drakon said just before Gozen’s image disappeared.
Drakon pointed a finger at his comm specialist. “We need a link passed to that executive which can be used to download a file that will be quarantined and sent to the code apes.”
“I’m on it, General.”
“Sir,” Malin said, a frown uncharacteristically making his feelings clear, “we should treat everything regarding any alleged Syndicate rebels with extreme caution.”
“I’m aware of that,” Drakon said. “Is there something in particular about Executive Gozen that concerns you?”
“She clearly impressed you, General, just as Executive Ito impressed Colonel Rogero.”
“She wasn’t trying to impress me,” Drakon pointed out, “unlike Executive Ito, who acted like a puppy happy to find a new owner. Don’t worry, Bran. If Gozen wants to join us, she’ll get a full security screening. For now, I want you to contact the guards for our prisoners. Have them ask if anyone knows Executive Gozen.”
Malin frowned again, this time in thought. “To confirm that Gozen is not a snake agent?”
“No. If she’s that good, they wouldn’t know. If we find any, I want to release one or two of them and send them back to Gozen so she’ll know we really took prisoners. If we can get the former Syndicate soldiers with her to submit to us, it could save some of our own people’s lives, and from what I saw of her, Gozen will be able to convince them to do what she says.”
“But, General,” Malin tried again, “someone with that kind of behavior toward her superiors could not possibly have survived in the Syndicate system. Unless she was a snake.”
“That’s a good point, and I’ll want to know what kept her from being shipped off to a labor camp. Now call those guards.”
“Yes, sir.”
It took ten minutes for the code apes to call back. “Can you do it, Sergeant Broom?” Drakon asked.
“Yes, General. It’s a nice worm. It’s a beautiful worm. We just have to use a horse to get it into the Syndicate network.”
“A horse?”
“A Trojan horse,” Broom explained. “I hear there’s a prisoner going to be released? Sent back to the ones that killed all of their snakes?”
“How did you— Never mind. Stop hacking the private command circuits.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Broom said. “I mean, no, sir, that would be improper spying on my superiors.”
“Which is exactly the sort of thing the Syndicate liked to order you to do when we were under Syndicate command. I mean it. Mess around with other systems to find vulnerabilities all you want, but if you find any more back doors into my private command circuits, I want them shut and locked. But what does releasing a prisoner to Executive Gozen’s group have to do with—” Drakon smiled with sudden understanding. “We send back another prisoner?”
“To the other side, yes, sir. They don’t know we talked to Executive Gozen. We say we don’t know what’s going on, but there are obviously two factions, and can we make a deal with you if the other guys are still hard-core Syndicate? Not really. But the prisoner we send to the snake side has a very special present hidden in their battle armor’s systems, and when the snakes link with them to find out what the former prisoner can tell them, they open a path for our little friend here.”
Drakon nodded. “The snake firewalls won’t stop it?”
“They won’t see it,” Sergeant Broom said. “Nor will the security sharks guarding the network software. It will be totally stealthy thanks to its being embedded in an innocuous program that is so uninteresting nothing will notice it.” He smiled and tapped his helmet where the comm link was located. “I call the program my Serge Protector.”
“I see. Good.” Drakon fixed the sergeant with a glare. “If I have our systems screened to see if this innocuous-seeming software is anywhere in our systems, I won’t find anything, will I?”
“No, sir. Absolutely not. You won’t find anything when you run that scan.”
“Even if I ran it right now?” Drakon asked, seeing the reaction that question provoked. “Sergeant, you are valuable to me because you think and work outside the box. That’s why I got you out of that Syndicate labor camp just before you were going to be shot for hacking into the wrong network.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll never forget your getting me out of there alive,” Broom said. “You told me you needed someone who would spot things that no one else would in places that no one else would think to look, and I’ve been doing that.”
“And you do it very well,” Drakon said. “The Syndicate didn’t get anywhere in our systems that I didn’t want them to be before we revolted, and neither did the snakes. More importantly, they couldn’t tell that there were parts of our systems that they weren’t seeing. That took one hell of a good programmer to pull off. And you and your people have spotted every attempted intrusion into our systems since then. But if you wander too far outside the box, it becomes a problem for me, and that means it becomes a problem for you. I’m not going to order you to be shot like your last boss did, but I need to know you’re not getting into stuff that would make both of us unhappy. Maybe when Colonel Morgan gets back, I’ll have her run some checks on your work.”
“Colonel Morgan? That’s really not necessary, sir.”
“I’ll think about it,” Drakon said. Sooner or later, word might get around that Morgan was presumed dead, but until then, fear of her would remain useful. “Right now, let’s find a prisoner who meets our needs and get his systems loaded with our special delivery for the snakes.”
It took about twenty more minutes to set up the whole thing, while Drakon alerted both Kai and Safir to be ready to sally out if the snake-controlled Syndicate soldiers launched attacks on the rebellious soldiers commanded by Executive Gozen. “Colonel Safir,” he said, as they once again gathered for a virtual conference, “when the worm has been delivered, we’re going to hit the snakes opposite your positions. They need to be priority targets. If we can take them down, resistance from the remaining Syndicate ground forces should collapse.”