“How big a mistake?” Gozen asked, then wanted to slap herself for the flippant reply. She waited for the intruder to say something else, but the silence stretched unbroken.
Gozen brought up her right hand, moving with slow deliberation, then swung it over until it grasped her pistol. She eased her arm around until the pistol was pointed in the direction she had heard the voice coming from, then with her left hand flicked the lights on.
The room was empty.
The door was still locked.
When Gozen got up and checked, her alarms were untouched.
Oh, great.
That guy said he knew my record, then he gave me an order. Is he stupid? I guess I’m supposed to be too afraid to do “something.” Screw that.
It’s only a few minutes until reveille. Why did my visitor leave so little time before almost everyone in this complex would be waking up?
By the time she threw on a uniform, ensured her sidearm was holstered and ready to fire, and walked briskly to the command center, the wake-up call had sounded and the passageways were beginning to fill with bleary-eyed soldiers.
Drakon was just entering the command center when she got there.
“General, I need to talk to you alone,” Gozen said, trying not to look nervous. In her experience, senior officers didn’t tend to trust juniors who appeared to be jumpy.
Drakon paused on his way inside, giving Gozen a searching look. “How alone?”
“Very, very alone.”
“What’s the priority on this?”
“Very high.” She waited for more questions asking why he should alter his plans for some unstated reason.
But Drakon eyed her silently for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “Come on.” To her surprise, he didn’t lead on into the command center and his office right off of it. Instead, Drakon led the way through the complex until he reached a small break area with a few tables and a couple of vending machines to one side. A couple of soldiers slumped over coffee cups jolted to attention as he entered. “Keep an eye outside for a few minutes,” Drakon told them, waiting until they left before he took a seat and gestured Gozen to one next to him.
“One thing I confirmed when we took snake headquarters on this world,” he commented to Gozen, “was that the break areas were all bugged.”
“Sure they were,” Gozen said as she sat down. “Everybody figured they were.”
“But from the snake headquarters I was able to burn out the bugs in some of those break areas.” Drakon smiled, sitting back in the uncomfortable chair. The Syndicate bureaucracy, in one of its few truly inspired moves, had deliberately designed break room chairs to be uncomfortable so as to discourage anyone’s lingering in break rooms when they should be working for the Syndicate. “This is a place everyone assumes is bugged, so nobody talks about secret stuff here.”
“And nobody else will plant a bug here because everyone knows nobody will talk about anything important in this room?” Gozen asked, grinning. “Sir, that is genius.”
“It’s just thinking sideways. I wanted a place no one would think to bug. Now, you and I know that. Nobody else. Don’t share the info.”
Gozen’s smile shifted to an uncertain frown. “Not even Colonel Malin?”
“Not even Colonel Malin,” Drakon confirmed. “From what I saw of you at Ulindi, you don’t cry wolf. What’s going on? Is Colonel Malin what you want to talk about?”
“No, sir.” Gozen took a deep breath, then quickly sketched out the events of the previous night. “There has to be a hidden access to my room, sir.”
“Which is supposed to be impossible in this complex,” Drakon said, “now that we’ve sealed off everything we learned about from captured snake files.”
“Maybe the CEO who commanded the ground forces here before you had it done,” Gozen suggested.
“There’s no way of telling now since she was given the opportunity to either die heroically for the Syndicate or watch her family be sent off to labor camps,” Drakon said. “She took the hero option. I can get a survey team into your quarters and they’ll find that access, but it’ll probably lead to somewhere that doesn’t give us any clues.”
“It’ll still make me feel a whole lot better if it’s sealed,” Gozen offered.
“I’m sure it will.” Drakon gave her another appraising look. “It sounds like you handled that situation right. Any guesses as to who the intruder was?”
“No, sir,” Gozen said, shaking her head. “I figure it was a male, but I can’t even be certain of that.”
Drakon frowned at the table’s surface, thinking. “I can guess why you didn’t do as you were told,” he finally commented dryly, looking back up at her. “Why didn’t you believe your visitor about me being some deep plant?”
Gozen shrugged. “Snakes are crazy, sir, and I don’t underestimate them. But your being a deep plant makes no sense. One word from you, and the snakes on Midway would have nailed the president before she made her first move. You’ve easily had dozens of chances since then to cause Midway to fall back under Syndic control, but you haven’t. You could have let your soldiers get wiped out at Ulindi just by not making a few decisions and come out looking like a hero who miraculously survived the destruction of Midway. But you didn’t. How long a game are the snakes supposed to be playing? Are they waiting until you reach Prime and are ready to nail the head CEOs?”
“Good reasoning,” Drakon said. “Why do you suppose the intruder tried to get you to believe that was true?”
“Because he, if it was a he, believed it was true.” Gozen shook her head at Drakon. “He… she, it… thinks you’re a Syndicate agent, sir. And it sounded to me like they were waiting for a chance to nail you.”
“But not President Iceni?”
“No, sir. You’re a threat to the president, so you have to be taken out. That’s what my visitor said.”
Drakon thought again, tapping one finger on the surface of the table. “Have you heard what happened on this world while we were fighting on Ulindi?” he asked. “Someone, maybe a lot of someones, tried to assassinate Colonel Rogero and stir up mobs that would have torn apart a lot of property and shattered the government that the president is establishing.”
“I heard about it,” Gozen said. “Scared the hell out of a lot of people on this planet.”
“It did. But it backfired. President Iceni faced the mob, faced them down without any guards or support, and she won them over. They love her. She’s their champion.” Drakon glanced at Gozen. “But some of the people who love the president may still figure I’m a danger to her. That love for President Iceni might be what is motivating whoever this intruder was.”
“Maybe, General.” Gozen felt a thought lurking just around the corner of her brain and tried to coax it out of hiding.
“You handled this right. Don’t tell anyone else any details. I’ll have a survey team in your quarters within the hour. Anything else?”
Gozen almost said no, then the thought finally leaned out into view. “Sir? You said the plan backfired?”
Drakon had been about to rise, but paused and sat firmly again. “Yes. Why?”
“I’ve talked to Colonel Rogero, sir, and I have no doubt someone tried to kill him and cut off the head of the ground forces on this planet. But…” Gozen paused to make sure she said her next words just right. “We don’t know what the plan was for President Iceni. Nobody tried to kill her, even though she exposed herself to danger.”
“What else would the plan have been?” Drakon asked, not in a dismissive way but actually trying to draw out her thoughts.
Gozen felt a wave of elation at that. She hadn’t guessed wrongly about the type of leader that Drakon was. “If someone believed that the President was a great leader, then they might have thought she would prevail, that she would find a way to get the people under control, and with the ground forces looking to her for leadership, too, she would be totally secure. Just like she is now in terms of how the people think of her, but without you to worry about.”