by Timothy Zahn
"Agreed," Adamson said. "But Martin will be back too late for us to take off. There are a couple of places along the road you definitely don't want to tackle in the dark."
"Then I guess it's first light the day after tomorrow," Flynn concluded. He looked questioningly at Jensen. "That all right?"
Jensen didn't look particularly happy about it, but he nodded. "I guess it'll have to be," he said. "I just hope Skyler doesn't start the party without us."
"First light it is, then," Adamson said. "Even that early we can't have you showing up in town, though, so I'll come up and take you to a rendezvous spot."
"Make it Goldfinch Hook," Trapper suggested. "I can wait there out of sight as long as I need to."
"Fine." Adamson looked at Jensen, a small smile touching his lips. "Well, it looks like you'll have at least one of those bed-rest days I asked for."
"Looks like it," Jensen agreed. "Speaking of days, mine has been long and fairly uncomfortable," he added, easing himself up off the bed again. "I'd like to find myself a corner and settle down for the night."
"You stay right where you are," Toby said firmly. "I've got a couple of old bedrolls the kid and I can use."
"He's right," Adamson seconded. "Let me get a thincast on you, then mix you up some of that Calcron."
* * *
Adamson got the blackcollar fixed up, and he and his son headed back to town.
Leaving Foxleigh and his new houseguests alone.
Despite the long day Jensen had mentioned, he and Flynn didn't go immediately to sleep. Instead, they whispered together for nearly half an hour, Jensen on the bed, Flynn on his borrowed bedroll on the floor beside him.
They kept their voices too low for Foxleigh to hear what they were saying. But that didn't matter. Three things were already certain, and they were all he needed. One: in a little over a day Flynn would be going to Denver, leaving Jensen behind. Two: Jensen was definitely one of the blackcollars he'd seen slipping into Aegis Mountain a year ago. And three: with Adamson's thincast wrapped around his torso, Jensen wasn't going to be fitting into his fancy flexarmor shirt anytime soon.
Which meant the time had finally come.
Rolling over on his bedroll, wincing at the unaccustomed hardness of the floor beneath him, Foxleigh drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 11
"As I said before, there's a lot of guesswork here," Shaw warned as he dropped the stack of rolled papers on one end of the kitchen table and selected one from the pile. "But it's all we've got."
"Understood," Lathe said. "Let's take a look."
Standing beside Mordecai at the side of the table, Judas craned his neck as Shaw unrolled the sheet and spread it out. To his surprise, it looked nearly as detailed as an actual blueprint would have been. If this was guesswork, he thought with a shiver, he would hate to see what blackcollars came up with when they actually had something to work with.
"This is the main floor," Shaw identified it. He tapped at the four sides in turn. "Here are the four entrances we saw yesterday; the eight entrance bunkers, two per door; and the reinforced bases at each of the eight corners for the antiaircraft lasers."
"Where's Spadafora?" Judas asked, looking around as he suddenly realized the third Plinry blackcollar wasn't there. In fact, now that he thought about it, he realized he hadn't seen the other leaving for their look at Khorstron the previous afternoon.
"He's out on another job," Lathe said.
"Comsquare Lathe has him dealing with the sensors in the fence," Shaw added.
"The sensors?" Judas asked, his stomach tightening. Surely they weren't attacking today, were they? "You mean we're—today?"
"No, no," Shaw soothed, looking rather amused. "Certain things take time, Trainee Caine. Aged whiskey and out-link sensor systems are two of them."
Judas swallowed. "Oh," he said, feeling his face warming. "Sorry."
"Looks like there are mantrap foyers inside each entrance," Lathe said, tapping the large oval rooms behind the east entrance.
"Probably," Shaw agreed. "We don't know how they're furnished, of course, but from the thickness of the walls and these support points we assume each will have a couple of autotarget lasers flanking the inner door and a pair of guard holes a meter or two around the curve from them."
Judas winced. "That doesn't sound good."
"Depends on how they're set up," Lathe said. "Autotargeters can sometimes be disabled with a shuriken or two."
"Though you do tend to get only one shot at a given laser," Shaw said.
"There's that," Lathe agreed. "Tell me more about these entrance guard bunkers. You implied earlier that they didn't have any outer doors?"
"Right—they open directly through the wall into the base."
"So you could get inside through the bunkers?"
"Yes, but I wouldn't count on that being very useful," Shaw said. "The bunker walls themselves are relatively thin, but the entry doors behind them are every bit as tough as the main door they're protecting. And of course, with no external door on the bunker you'd have to blow the front off the thing to even gain access."
"Still, it would avoid the mantrap problem," Lathe pointed out. "What about the outer bunkers, the ones at the gate entrances?"
"Same deal, only the guards get in from the base via underground tunnels," Shaw said. "Here, here, here, and here. And, of course, once you were through the tunnels you'd have the same serious door to get through at the base end."
"Plus whatever additional goodies the Ryqril put in the tunnels themselves to discourage trespassers," Lathe said.
Shaw nodded. "Plus that."
"Why four entrances?" Mordecai asked suddenly.
"What?" Shaw asked, frowning at him.
"Four entrances, but the only thing nearby is Inkosi City to the west," Mordecai said. "There aren't any towns shown anywhere else, or even any real roads leading to the area. So why bother with the north, south, and east gates?"
Shaw shrugged. "Maybe they're just there for emergencies. Maybe they're planning to build barracks or auxiliary facilities on those sides. Or maybe they just got a good deal on reinforced doors. The point is that we have four possible ways of getting in and not just one."
"Yes," Lathe murmured. "Convenient."
"You want to look at this or don't you?" Shaw growled. "You do? Fine." He leaned over the table and tapped a circular opening in the center. "Here's the heart of the place, dead center on the first floor. No big surprise there—it's the most protected spot in the building."
"What's in there?" Judas asked.
"The gold at rainbow's end," Shaw said. "Or at least, all the gold we care about. The core's where all the data comes in, which is then parceled out to the various collation and analysis stations in other parts of the building. Once everything's been sifted, the analyses and conclusions are sent back to the core, where the permanently stationed half circle of Ryqril command officers make decisions and send out orders. There are things we could glean from offices all over the building, but the core's the only place to get everything at once."
"And they obviously know it," Lathe said. "I see they've got a complete double wall around it."
"With plenty of room between the layers for pressurized gas traps, antipersonnel explosives, or even a few roaming khassq if they feel so inclined," Shaw said grimly. "You can also bet they've got more autotarget lasers set up outside the doors, ready to turn the last five or ten meters of corridor into a killing zone."
"Only three doors into the place, too," Judas commented. "What about these three narrow rooms wrapped around the big central one?"
"One of them will be the base's main security monitor room," Shaw said. "This one, probably, from the number of secure display conduits we saw them putting in the walls. The other two are probably a guard room and a lounge for the command officers."
"Seems horribly inefficient," Judas said, studying the three wide corridors that led from the perimeter corridor to the central circle and its wraparoun
d rooms and the five sets of cross corridors cutting across them. "With an octagonal shape, wouldn't it make more sense to parallel that design on the inside? Or at the very least to go with a four-sided corridor/room pattern instead of a triangular one?"
"They probably borrowed it from one of their victims," Lathe said. "They borrow everyone else's technology. Why not their architecture, too?"
"Anyway, that's the overview," Shaw said. "We've also got a little more detail on some of the areas—"
"Why the first floor?" Mordecai interrupted, gazing at the diagram.
"Excuse me?" Shaw asked.
"Probably because the second floor's more exposed to air attacks," Judas explained, frowning. Even to him that one seemed obvious.
"I meant why on the surface at all?" Mordecai said. "Why not put it underground? We know the ground can be dug into—they've got tunnels leading to the fence bunkers."
"He's got a point," Lathe agreed, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "For that matter, why not put the whole base underground?"
"For starters, underground facilities take a lot longer to build," Shaw pointed out. But he, too, was frowning down at the paper.
"Or the place may not be as valuable as they want us to believe," Mordecai said.
There was another silence, a longer one this time. Surreptitiously, Judas looked at each of the others in turn, his heart pounding uncomfortably. If they gave up now, this whole thing would have been for nothing.
And if that happened, there was no telling what might happen to his family back in Interlaken. Galway had promised them safety and security, but the unspoken condition was that Galway would continue to be in a position where he could make good on that guarantee. If the mission failed, the Plinry prefect wasn't likely to remain in the Ryqril's good graces for long.
To his relief, Lathe shook his head. "No," he said. "Haberdae must have deduced by now that Khorstron is the reason we're here. If they didn't care whether or not we got in, they wouldn't have tried to take us out of the game last night."
Judas breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "Besides, as you said earlier, Lepkowski's already gone to tell the Chryselli about it," he added. "We have to get inside."
"Right," Lathe agreed. "So let's quit worrying about why Ryqril do things the way they do and concentrate on how we're going to get in there. Tactor?"
"Okay," Shaw said, selecting another roll of paper. "This one's a closer look at the west door area...."
* * *
Neatly framed in the center of the display was a wide rectangular post, a meshwork pattern extending out from it on both sides. "It's one of the Khorstron fence posts," Haberdae identified it. "So?"
"Just keep watching," Galway told him. "Especially the upper third."
"Galway, I don't have time for gam—"
He broke off in midword as a gray projectile suddenly shot in from the edge of the display and slapped into the upper part of the fence post, the impact flattening it into a misshapen blob. "What the hell?" Haberdae muttered.
"You were wondering earlier where Spadafora had disappeared to?" Galway gestured to the display. "There you go."
"There I go where?" Haberdae growled. "What the hell is that?"
"A small piece of plutonium embedded in a putty-like substance, delivered via slingshot by a blackcollar sharpshooter," Galway told him. "That was the fifteenth he's landed on the post since dawn. The fifteenth we've noticed, anyway—he might have sent in more of them before we caught on. You can see how well the putty matches the color of the post."
"And this is in aid of what?" Haberdae asked. "I trust you're not going to suggest there's enough radiation in there to decrystalize the metal of the post and bring it down."
"No, of course, not," Galway said. "But if you place the pellets over critical sensor or sonic net electronics—and all fifteen of them are over such places—there's more than enough radiation to begin slowly degrading them. Fairly unnoticeable, too, since the diagnostic sensors are being scrambled at the same time."
Haberdae looked sharply at Galway, then back at the display, then a little less truculently at Galway. "How slow are we talking about?"
"I don't know yet," Galway said. "Hours, or a low number of days. The techs are researching that now. The point is that they've actively started their plan."
"I guess so," Haberdae said, scratching his chin. "So where is he?"
"We're not sure about that, either." Galway gestured to the tech, who tapped his control board. With dizzying speed, the view on the display pulled back from the fence post and settled down into an overall view of the southwest quadrant of the Khorstron area. "Here's the affected post," he said, touching a spot on the southwest part of the fence. "We're guessing he's in a camouflage setup in or near one of the trees over here to the south of the base." He ran a hand over a thirty-degree arc through the forested area outside the fence. "There's also this abandoned shack over here, along with this shed, either of which he could also be using."
"He'd have to shoot a hundred meters from either of those buildings," Haberdae objected. "And through that whole patch of forest on top of it."
"As I said, he's a sharpshooter," Galway reminded him. "Which is why he's here instead of one of the others. Neither Lathe nor Mordecai has anywhere near the necessary skill with a slingshot."
"But a hundred meters?"
"Actually, I don't think he's that far away," Galway said. "I'm guessing he's somewhere in the woods. Unfortunately, no one saw him get in there and set up shop, and the pellets themselves are too small to get a decent trajectory vector from. And we certainly don't want to send in a team that might spook him."
"No, of course not," Haberdae said darkly. "We want them to feel nice and safe for their little raid."
"Actually, yes, we do."
"That's what I said," Haberdae insisted. "Did you think I was being sarcastic?"
Actually, Galway wasn't sure what kind of tone that had been. But there'd been something there, something nasty lurking beneath the surface. "No, of course not."
"Good." Haberdae nodded toward the display. "Let me know as soon as you have an idea how long it'll take for them to wreck the sensor system. I want to know when they'll be ready to move."
* * *
The public phone Skyler had specified was on a busy corner squarely in the middle of downtown lunchtime traffic. Poirot arrived two minutes early and stood to the side, watching the passing pedestrians and cars and feeling decidedly uncomfortable in his civilian clothing.
The phone rang, and Poirot scooped up the handset. "Yes?"
"You alone?" Skyler's voice came back.
With an effort, Poirot forced himself not to look at the van parked half a block away where Bailey and his tech team were monitoring the call. "I'm on a street corner in Denver," he countered instead. "How alone can I be?"
There was a soft chuckle. "Point taken," Skyler said. "What have you got for me?"
Poirot took a deep breath. This was it. "I've persuaded them to let me move the prisoners tomorrow night," he said. "They'll be—"
"Who's this them you had to persuade?" Skyler interrupted. "I thought you were the head of Security here."
"I am," Poirot said, and it took no acting at all to add a bitter edge to his voice. "The Ryqril are taking a personal interest in this. It seems your missing blackcollar killed one of their sentries last night."
There was a long moment of silence. "Really," Skyler said at last, his voice giving no hint as to what he was thinking.
"Yes, really," Poirot said. "I hope to hell whatever he's doing is worth the trouble he's stirred up."
"I hope so, too," Skyler said evenly. "Tomorrow night, you said?"
"Yes," Poirot confirmed. "They'll be loaded aboard a group of vans which will leave Athena at seven o'clock and head for Colorado Springs."
"That's when city traffic will be at its minimum, I presume?"
"Correct," Poirot said. "It's lightest between six-thirty and seven-thirty. That'll make it
easier to spot any tails. They'll also have five or six spotters at high cover, and probably an armed patrol boat or two ready in case they need extra firepower."
"That last part could be unpleasant," Skyler said. "Any chance of getting it cancelled?"
"I doubt it," Poirot said. "It was the Ryqril's idea."
"Well, if we can't ground them, we'll just have to work around them. How many vans will you be using?"
"The current plan is to have six," Poirot said. "One prisoner per van, with a driver and a couple of guards along. Of course, bear in mind that the Ryqril could come in at any time and change any or all of that."
