by Timothy Zahn
"I understand," Skyler said. "What about Reger's people, the ones you picked up after we crashed your party at his estate?"
"Crashed rather literally," Poirot growled, rubbing the side of his neck in memory. "Don't worry about them. We've established that none of them know anything about Reger's connection with Phoenix, and we've got more urgent things to do right now than bother with minor flight and resisting-arrest violations. They're all being released, probably this afternoon."
"That should make Reger happy," Skyler said. "Then I guess we're set."
"I hope so," Poirot said, and meant it. If this worked, and if they were able to capture even one of the blackcollars, it would go a long way toward convincing Bailey and the Ryqril that he was still loyal. "Anything else you need?"
"I don't think so," Skyler said. "Oh, wait—there was one other thing. What's the threshold size for Athena's defense lasers?"
Poirot blinked. "The what?"
"The size something has to be to trigger those big Green Mountain autotarget lasers that guard Athena's outer fence," Skyler said. "Is it basketball size, baseball size—what?"
A cold chill ran up Poirot's back. Could Daasaa have been right about Skyler planning to attack Athena? "I don't have that number off the top of my head," he said through stiff lips. "I'll have to look it up."
"Do that," Skyler said. "Let me know tomorrow when you call to confirm the final details for the transfer."
"Look, I can't keep leaving my post at odd times and coming out here this way," Poirot insisted. "Someone's bound to get suspicious."
"Since when is lunch an odd time to be coming and going?" Skyler countered.
"Since most government workers eat in Athena, not out in the city," Poirot said with strained patience.
"Okay, fine," Skyler said reasonably. "Give me a time that wouldn't be odd. You must come out to make your rounds or pick up your laundry or something."
Poirot grimaced. He didn't want to come out here again—every contact with Skyler just increased the chances that he'd make some sort of slip. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of a plausible reason to decline. "Let's make it midmorning," he said reluctantly. "I can tell them I'm checking with one of my informers. Say, ten-thirty?"
"Ten-thirty it is," Skyler confirmed. "Here's your new rendezvous." He read off a street corner halfway across town. "Talk to you then."
The phone went dead. With a curse, Poirot hung up and headed back to his car. The van would be making its own return to Athena along an entirely different route and timetable, but in an hour or so he and Bailey should be able to sit down and discuss this new twist.
If, that is, Bailey wanted to discuss it with him. If Bailey was interested in helping Poirot clear himself, rather than just trying to keep his own nose clean as far as the Ryqril were concerned.
If Bailey wasn't actually after Poirot's job.
He shook his head in annoyance at the absurdity of that thought. Bailey was ambitious, but not enough to stab his superior in the back. Not even with this damned Whiplash thing giving him the perfect excuse to do so.
At least, he hoped not.
He shook his head tiredly. With loyalty-conditioning, the thought once again flicked through his mind, a man always knew who he could trust.
Without it, how could anyone know anything?
* * *
Skyler hung up the phone and glanced around at the pedestrians and cars moving along the streets and walkways around him, wondering if Security could have traced the call and gotten a team here this quickly. Unlikely, he decided. Taking a quick look at the cloudy sky above him, he headed down the street to where Anne and the car were waiting.
He'd gone five steps when his tingler came on. Tracker confirmed, O'Hara reported. White van with surveillance equipment.
Skyler slid his fingers to his own tingler. Subject aware of tracker?
There was a pause as O'Hara mulled at the question, running his observations through the filter of his blackcollar instincts. Probably.
Skyler grimaced. But it was hardly an unexpected development. If the lower-level government workers Phoenix had freed from their loyalty-conditioning weren't interested in risking their comfortable jobs, there had always been little hope that the head of Security himself would be willing to do so.
But Skyler had a secret streak of optimism, and he'd quietly nurtured that hope. Still, now they knew for sure. Return home, he told O'Hara. Watch your backtrack.
Acknowledged.
So they would have to do this the hard way. Moreover, they would have to do it shorthanded.
He scowled. Blast you anyway, Jensen, he growled silently toward the distant mountain peaks. He'd wondered if the other had had some private agenda when he'd volunteered so quickly to stay with Flynn and his damaged hang glider. Possibly an agenda involving that observer he claimed to have seen when they'd entered Aegis Mountain on their last trip to the area. Skyler hadn't known about that at the time, but Mordecai had clued in him and Lathe afterward.
And now, if Poirot was to be believed, he was out there killing Ryqril.
Lathe had warned him not to bring Jensen along. Skyler, of course, had known better. Now look where it had gotten him.
Above the sound of the traffic came the faint but distinctive whine of a spotter. Instinctively, Skyler lowered his head to make his face harder to see, while simultaneously craning an eye upward toward the incoming vehicle.
It turned out not to be a single spotter but a pair of them, flying low and slow a dozen meters apart with a wide, flat sensor disk strung on cables between them. Not a visual scanner, as Skyler might have expected, but rather the kind of microradar and materials echo-sensors designed to look for particular metals and compounds, plus power sources and other forms of radiation.
The blackcollars' own equipment, of course, didn't have enough metal to lift them out of the background clutter, and aside from tinglers and short-range radios they used no power sources at all. That was the whole reason they'd adopted such low-tech weapons in the first place.
Which meant those spotters weren't hunting for Skyler's team. So what were they hunting?
And then it clicked, and he smiled tightly to himself. Of course: his throwaway comment to Poirot about Phoenix's secret cache of weapons. He'd dropped the line mainly to make the rebel forces look bigger and more powerful than they really were, trying to make them look more like the probable winning side. Apparently, the general had taken the line seriously.
Which was fine with Skyler. The more men and vehicles Security wasted on useless searches for huge organizations and nonexistent weapons dumps, the fewer they would have available for actually tracking down the real threat.
He reached the car and got in. "Well?" Anne asked.
"You were right," Skyler admitted. "He's still on their side."
"I told you," Anne said. "So what now?"
"We play them like they're trying to play us," Skyler said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. This tactics stuff really wasn't his strong point.
"Meaning we go ahead with the plan?"
"Unless you want to let them keep your people."
"The people who would be leading their normal lives right now if you hadn't shown up?"
"We'll get them back," Skyler assured her. "Let's head home."
Reaching down, Anne started the car. "I talked to my contact in Boulder this morning while you and O'Hara were reconnoitering the area," she said as she pulled out into the traffic flow. "She isn't happy about it, but she's agreed to get us the rolling scramble-freq radio system Security's spotters use and a couple of the general authorization codes. That's all she'll do, though."
"It'll be enough," Skyler said. "Don't worry—this is going to work."
Anne didn't answer.
* * *
"And you're absolutely sure you weren't followed?" Poirot asked as he and Bailey walked together across the situation room.
"I'm sure," Bailey said, trying hard to hold onto his
temper. It had been a highly unproductive and frustrating morning, and having Poirot asking different versions of the same question over and over wasn't helping. "Trust me, General, we do know what we're doing."
Poirot made as if to speak again, seemed to think better of it, and fell silent.
The two Ryqril were waiting for them in the conference room, poring over maps and sifting through pages from a stack of reports. "Sit," Battle Architect Daasaa said without preamble, pointing the two humans to seats across from them. "Khassq Rarrior Halaak and I are not 'leased rith yaer re'ort."
"We do have more information now, though," Poirot offered. "The blackcollars—"
"I an not s'eaking tae yae," Daasaa cut him off. "Yae—Colonel 'Ailey—yaer sur'ey is not acce'ta'le."
"My apologies, Your Eminence," Bailey said, feeling his stomach tighten. His men had been working like demons to get their aerial survey of the city finished in the time Daasaa had allotted them, and for the most part they'd succeeded. But all they had to show for it was negative information. "We've begun a second sweep of the city proper, but I don't expect to find anything on this one, either. Still, there are many large tracts in the outlying rural areas that are still being searched."
"Searched for what?" Poirot asked in a low voice.
"The weapons cache you said Phoenix had buried away somewhere," Bailey told him.
"Are you fine-tuning for gunmetal?" Poirot asked. "Because if you're looking just for metal—"
"I know how to do a weapons search," Bailey cut him off, turning back to the Ryqril. "My apologies for the interruption, Your Eminences."
"Yae rill continyae the search," Daasaa said. "General 'Oirot. Tell us a'out yaer contact."
Bailey listened with half an ear as Poirot detailed the brief conversation with Skyler, most of his mind busy trying to extrapolate to what the blackcollars might be planning.
"The 'lackcollars rill attack Athena," Halaak said firmly when Poirot had finished.
"That does now seem more likely," Bailey said cautiously. "On the other hand, Skyler might have asked about the defense laser thresholds just to mislead us."
"Dae yae think they dae not trust General 'Oirot, then?"
"They do trust me," Poirot insisted. "They have no reason to think I'm working against them." He glared at Bailey. "Unless they spotted Colonel Bailey's van and figured out that he was tapping the conversation."
"No," Bailey said firmly. "We were very careful. There's no way they could have made us."
"Then the 'lackcollars rill attack Athena," Daasaa concluded. "Yae rill nake ready to sto' this attack."
Bailey grimaced. More of his men diverted from the task at hand, this latest batch earmarked to guard against an attack they all knew couldn't possibly succeed. But Daasaa's mind was clearly made up, and it would be dangerous to argue further. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said, suppressing a sigh. "What about the prisoner transfer? Do we still go ahead with that?"
"Yae rill trans'er they as 'lanned," Halaak said. "If re nust s'lit forces, then so nust they."
Which wasn't at all how it worked, Bailey knew. Skyler could just as easily choose to concentrate his forces against one of his possible targets and ignore the other completely. But again, it wasn't something he dared argue at this point. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said again. "In the meantime, Skyler will expect General Poirot to provide some numbers on the laser threshold tomorrow. What do you want us to tell him?"
"Re rill consider," Daasaa said. "Yae rill gi' the orders."
"As you command, Your Eminence," Bailey said, standing up and gesturing to Poirot.
But instead of getting out of his chair, the general was frowning hard at the far side of the room. "A moment, please," he said slowly. "It just occurred to me that there's another possible location for this Phoenix weapons cache, a location I know you haven't searched."
"There are a lot of places we haven't yet—"
"I mean Aegis Mountain."
Bailey broke off, staring at the other. "That's impossible," he said. "Even the Ryqril haven't been able to find a way in."
For a moment Poirot didn't answer, his lips moving slightly as if he was talking to himself. Then, abruptly, his head snapped around. "My God," he breathed, his eyes suddenly blazing with passion. "It fits. It all fits."
"General—"
"No—listen to me," Poirot cut him off, his words tumbling over themselves in his excitement. "Last year when Lathe came, we thought they were here to assassinate former Prefect Ivas Trendor. But that never made any sense."
"They also got into Athena and ran games through the Security building," Bailey reminded him.
"Only because General Quinn pushed them into it," Poirot said, wincing visibly at the memory. "And then once Trendor was dead, they suddenly closed up shop and left." He tapped a finger on the tabletop. "But what if the assassination was just a blind? What if what they were really here for was to get into Aegis?"
Slowly, Bailey sat down again. "All right," he said, thinking hard. "But if they have all these weapons, why haven't they used them?"
"Because they first needed Silcox and Reger to build them a proper rebel force," Poirot said. "And we know they did—we've got six of the leaders locked away upstairs."
"And now Skyler's come back to lead them into battle?"
"Why not?" Poirot countered. "They have the personnel, they apparently have the weapons, and with the blackcollars they have some top-notch military leadership." He looked at the Ryqril. "And one of them was obviously snooping around the main entrance into Aegis," he reminded them.
"And of course, with Whiplash they also have the spies?" Bailey suggested.
Poirot stared at him, the excitement draining from his face. "You don't believe me, do you?" he said, his voice subdued again. "You think this is something Skyler told me to feed you."
Bailey shrugged uncomfortably. He hated having to think the worst of his superior this way. "All I know is that none of the Phoenix prisoners has even mentioned Aegis."
"Maybe none of them know about it," Poirot said. "Maybe only Silcox and the blackcollars know. In fact, maybe that's why they worked so hard to get her away from us in the first place."
"Aegis Nountain is sealed," Daasaa said. "Re ha' 'een trying 'or two years tae 'enetrate it. It cannot 'e done."
"Can you afford to take that chance?" Poirot asked.
Halaak's eyes narrowed, his left hand dropping to the short sword belted at his left hip. "Dae yae s'eak thus tae a khassq?" he demanded.
Poirot's lips tightened. "I meant no disrespect, Your Eminence," he said. His voice was properly deferential, but Bailey could hear the clenched teeth behind it. "But I'm concerned that if the blackcollars do intend an attack on Athena, we may find ourselves facing more than catapulted bowling balls or whatever else they can improvise."
"Yae rish tae di'ert e'en nore o' yaer nen tae search the nountain?" Daasaa asked.
"Actually, that may not be necessary," Bailey put in. He still wasn't ready to buy Poirot's conveniently timed reasoning, not by a long shot. But at the same time, he had to admit it wasn't something they could afford to dismiss out of hand. "We know they can't get in or out of Aegis through the main entrance, not with your base there, and you've got the highway blocked as well. All the rest of the terrain in the area is pretty rugged, far too rugged for land vehicles."
"Reach yaer 'oint, Colonel," Halaak rumbled.
"The point is that we have a ring of sensor pylons around the Idaho Springs area that were specifically designed to watch for aircraft," Bailey said. "If there is a back door into Aegis, and if the blackcollars try to move anything substantial out through it, those sensors ought to spot them."
"Assuming the pylons haven't been tampered with," Poirot warned.
"Exactly," Bailey agreed. "I propose, therefore, that we send out a couple of teams to inspect all the pylons and make sure they're functioning properly. Unless they find a problem they should all be back well before n
ightfall. Even if Skyler does intend to attack Athena, he surely won't move until then."
For a moment the Ryqril conferred between themselves. Bailey kept his eyes on Poirot, who in turn seemed to be carefully ignoring him. "'Ery rell," Daasaa said at last. "Send yaer nen tae exanine the sensors." His eyes bored into Bailey's. "They rill 'e 'ack 'e'ore dark."
"Absolutely, Your Eminence," Bailey assured him.
"What are your orders for me?" Poirot asked.
Daasaa regarded him thoughtfully. "Yae rill continue tae assist 'lanning 'or the 'risoner con'oy," he said.
