by Timothy Zahn
Poirot bowed his head slightly. "As you command, Your Eminence."
Bailey grimaced. The battle architect was offering Poirot all the rope he would need to ultimately hang himself ... and the general, for his part, was grabbing every bit of that rope that he could.
"Yae rill go," Daasaa said. He looked at Bailey. "'Oth o' yae."
"As you command, Your Eminence," Bailey said. Standing up, he and Poirot left the room.
"So?" Poirot asked when the door was closed behind them.
"What do you mean, so?" Bailey said. "We carry out our orders."
"That wasn't what I meant," Poirot said, his voice curiously hesitant. "What do you think—really—about this?"
Bailey sighed. "You're right about the blackcollars' last incursion not making any sense," he conceded. "Assassination was never one of their usual jobs, at least not according to the histories."
"And this particular killing made no sense on top of it," Poirot said. "Trendor was retired, hardly a threat to them or anyone else."
"True." Bailey cocked an eyebrow at the other. "But on the other hand, the Ryqril are right, too. They've been trying to get into Aegis for two years and haven't made it yet."
"True," Poirot said. "But Ryqril are hardly the most innovative people around."
Bailey looked at him sharply. How could he say such a thing? A senior officer of TDE Security?
Because he wasn't loyalty-conditioned anymore, that was how. It was something Bailey could never let himself forget. "Whatever," he said, letting his tone go plain-tan neutral. "I'll also admit that blackcollars in possession of Aegis Mountain weaponry is a very unpleasant thought."
"Then let's make sure we nail it down right now," Poirot said firmly. "You get those teams out to the pylons, and I'll see if we can come up with a way to nab them when they try to spring their friends." With a brisk nod, he headed across the situation room.
Bailey gazed at his back as he strode away. "Right," he muttered under his breath. "Assuming you really want to nab them."
"Sir?"
Bailey turned to see Ramirez come up behind him. "I've got the latest batches of reports from the scanning teams," the lieutenant said, waving a sheaf of papers.
"That can wait," Bailey told him. "I need you to find me a couple of tech teams, a few Security men to guard them, and a pair of aircraft to ferry them."
Ramirez seemed taken aback. "That's going to be a little tricky, sir. All the available techs and spotters are out with the scanning teams. The rest are on city monitor duty or getting some sleep."
"What about your Boulder people?"
"They're doing weapons scans up there, too."
"Have them put that on hold," Bailey decided. "I need someone to go check all the Idaho Springs sensor pylons and make sure they haven't been tampered with."
Ramirez grimaced, but nodded. "I'll see who I can find." He started to turn away, then paused. "By the way, I understand you had a check made of all my people last night."
"Just a precaution," Bailey assured him. "You'd already suggested the blackcollars might try to slip someone in through the returning spotter teams. I wanted to make sure the people checking them in also hadn't been infiltrated."
"Very prudent of you." Ramirez's eyes hardened a little. "I understand you also did a check on me."
Bailey felt a flicker of anger. How the hell had Ramirez found out about that? "Yes, I did," he said. "You have a problem with that?"
"I have a problem with my competence being questioned behind my back," Ramirez countered. "If you had questions about my performance, you should have brought them to me directly."
"It wasn't your competence that was at issue, Lieutenant," Bailey told him evenly.
Ramirez seemed to draw back. "You aren't serious."
"Deadly serious," Bailey assured him coldly. "As serious as our enemies are."
Ramirez's lip twitched. "And?"
Bailey studied the other's face, as plain-tan neutral now as Bailey's own. True, the check hadn't picked up any suspicious absences or obvious attitude changes. But from Poirot's experience they knew the Whiplash change could be affected in under twenty-four hours, possibly with as little as a single injection of the damned stuff. So what did even perfect work attendance prove? "You seem to be in the clear," he told Ramirez. "At least, as much as anyone else is."
"I see," Ramirez said stiffly. "Thank you, sir. I'll see about getting you those tech teams." Spinning around in a military about-face that was just a shade crisper than it needed to be, he headed for the communications station.
For a moment Bailey watched him go. Then, turning the opposite direction, he headed for the door Poirot had disappeared through a few minutes earlier. Let Ramirez be annoyed if he wanted to be. Let him think he was under suspicion, too. In fact, it might be best if everyone in Athena started watching everyone else. Just let them get on with their work and their back-watching and leave him alone for a while.
Because it had suddenly occurred to him that there might be a way to prove once and for all who was telling the truth about this alleged Aegis Mountain weapons cache. True, none of the prisoners up in the interrogation rooms had mentioned anything about either the mountain or the weapons.
But then, not all of the prisoners were in the interrogation rooms.
He took the elevator up to the garage, where a handful of Security men and drivers were standing around talking quietly together beside the line of parked vehicles. "Yes, sir?" the duty sergeant said, breaking from the group and stepping over as Bailey came in.
"I need a car," Bailey said tersely, striding past him toward the nearest car.
"Yes, sir." The sergeant gestured, and one of the other men moved hastily to Bailey's target vehicle and opened the back door.
"I'll be driving myself," Bailey said, closing the door as he passed it and opening the driver's side.
"Yes, sir," the sergeant said, sounding a little uncertain. "Ah ... your destination, Colonel?"
"I'll be back when I'm back," Bailey said, ignoring the question. "If there's an emergency, I'll have my comm on channel six."
The other might have said something else, but the slamming of the car door cut it off. Starting the engine, Bailey pulled away and out into the Athena traffic.
Smiling tightly to himself, he headed for the hospital.
CHAPTER 12
It was late afternoon, and Flynn was re-sorting his weapons pouches at Toby's rough-topped table, when through the open door he heard the sound of an approaching air vehicle.
Lying on the bed across the room, Jensen stirred. "Sounds like a patrol boat," he said, starting to get up.
"I'll check," Flynn told him, waving him back down. "You stay put."
He was two steps from the door when Toby appeared in the doorway, moving as fast as his limp would allow. "Security," he puffed. "Get up—get up."
"Where are they?" Jensen asked. He was already sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boots.
"Looks like they're heading into town," Toby said, hobbling toward the corner that held the sink and toilet. "But I'm guessing they'll be up here soon enough."
"I don't suppose this mountain has a back door," Flynn said as he scooped up the rest of his weapons and refastened the various pouches to his belt.
"As a matter of fact, it does," Toby said. Getting a grip on the edges of the box the toilet seat was mounted on, he gave it a tug.
And to Flynn's surprise, the whole box swung forward on concealed hinges, revealing a large hole in the cabin floor.
He stepped over for a closer look. It was a large and very deep hole, he saw as he gazed down into the fissure that Toby had called his natural latrine. Narrow and steep-sided, it extended a good two hundred meters straight down. "Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to fly," Toby grunted, rummaging beneath the firewood in the bin built into the side wall. "Here—catch," he said, pulling out a coil of rope and tossing it to Flynn.
"Where'd you get this?" Flynn asked, frown
ing as he brushed bits of bark off the rope. It was old but in excellent shape, made of some unfamiliar synthetic. It was smooth enough to be easy to handle, but rough enough to hold secure knots.
"The tooth fairy," Toby said tartly. "Here's Jensen's."
Flynn caught the second coil. "Now what?" he asked, handing it to Jensen. "We tie knots in them and hang on?"
"Do it like this," Jensen said, shaking out the rope and finding one end. With deft movements, he wove the rope around his waist and thighs and chest in a deceptively simple pattern that left him securely trussed up. "Where does the other end go?" he asked Toby.
"There are a couple of pulleys under the floor on opposite sides of the hole," Toby told him, pointing toward the latrine as he resettled the wood in the bin. "Better make a knot in the end once it's through, just in case."
"Right." Carefully, Jensen lay down on his stomach by the hole and turned his head to look under the floor. "Got it," he said, reaching under the boards with his rope and fiddling with something out of Flynn's view. "Flynn?"
"Almost ready," Flynn said, tightening the last knot in his impromptu harness and giving it one last check as he stepped to Jensen's side. "These boards don't look all that sturdy," he warned as he handed over the end of his rope.
"No, but the beams the pulleys are actually attached to do," Jensen assured him as he put Flynn's rope through another unseen pulley.
"Come on, come on," Toby said urgently. "I think I see someone coming."
"Working on it," Jensen grunted, pulling industriously on his rope as he ran the slack through the pulley. He made it to the end and fed the knotted end through two of the ropes in his harness, again pulling the slack rapidly through and letting the end drop down through the hole. "Flynn?"
"As ready as I'm going to be," Flynn said, pulling his own rope taut and feeding the end through his harness the way Jensen had.
"Just do as I do," Jensen said. Gripping the rope, he slid his legs over the edge of the hole and disappeared through it.
Flynn leaned over. Jensen was dropping in a controlled fall down the ravine, playing out the rope as he lowered himself down. "This is nuts," he muttered under his breath as he sat down on the edge of the hole and prepared to follow.
"Wait a second," Toby said, hobbling toward him.
Flynn turned, flinching reflexively as he saw the small but nasty-looking slug pistol in Toby's hand. Before he could even reach for his shuriken pouch, though, the old man reversed the weapon, offering him the grip. "They might search the cabin," the other explained. "Don't drop it."
"I won't," Flynn said, his face warming in embarrassment as he took the weapon and stuck it into his belt.
"Now get moving," Toby ordered, leaning down and getting his fingers under the edge of the box. "I'll close up behind you."
Taking a deep breath, Flynn got a grip on the rope and pushed himself off into the abyss.
For a moment he hung there, fighting back a sudden flood of vertigo and a terrible sense of vulnerability. Hang gliders, even malfunctioning ones, were no big deal to him. But dangling at the end of a rope, with Security above and shattering death below, was a very discomfiting sensation.
Above him, the diffuse light abruptly shut off as Toby swung the box back into place. Grimacing, Flynn started down.
To his mild surprise, once he was actually in motion most of the discomfort evaporated. The harness design held him securely, and Jensen's method of threading the rope through it provided enough friction to take most of his weight. It wasn't really any worse than rappelling, he decided as he picked up his pace, with the extra bonus of not having to worry about twisting his ankle as he bounced his way down a building or cliff face.
Jensen was waiting for him as far down as he could go without actually letting go of the rope. "Good," the blackcollar said as Flynn brought himself to a halt. "Now hook the knotted end around these ropes here." He indicated the technique with his own rope and harness. "That should hold you, though you'll want to keep a hand on it just in case it starts to loosen."
"Right," Flynn said, copying the other's technique. "I wonder what Toby uses these pulleys for."
"Probably not much," Jensen said. "Been a while since they've been used."
"Oh?" Flynn asked, his vertigo threatening to return as he looked up at the floor of the cabin nearly a hundred meters above him. "How long a while?"
"Don't worry, they'll hold just fine," Jensen assured him. "Nice souvenir."
"What?"
"Your new toy," Jensen said, pointing at the gun in Flynn's belt. "Toby give you that?"
"Oh." Flynn looked down at the weapon. "Yes. He didn't want any visitors catching him with it."
"I don't blame him," Jensen said, his forehead wrinkling as he gazed at the gun. "Security doesn't like concealable weapons in civilian hands."
"Security barely tolerates hunting rifles in civilian hands," Flynn countered, studying the other's expression. "Anything wrong?"
"Not really," Jensen said. "I was just thinking that gun has a definite military look about it."
Flynn glanced up at the bottom of the cabin. "You think Toby was in the war?"
"It's possible," Jensen said. "I know that on Plinry, at least, the Ryqril tried to tag all the vets when they took over, particularly the officers. Maybe Toby holed up out here hoping to evade the net."
Flynn thought about the old man living in a one-room cabin for the past thirty years. "Seems to me the hunt should be over by now."
Jensen snorted. "It was probably over three to five years after the occupation started," he said. "If he's hiding from the Ryqril, this is serious overkill."
"Maybe he likes it out here."
"Or maybe he got the gun some other way," Jensen said, his voice going dark. "Found it, or stole it."
A chill ran up Flynn's back. "Or killed for it?"
"Possibly," Jensen agreed grimly. "It might explain why he's still out at the back edge of nowhere."
"So what do we do?"
"For now, we stop talking," Jensen said, wincing as he rearranged his harness around his injured ribs. "Sound can carry strangely in the mountains."
"I just hope he's not planning to turn us in," Flynn murmured. "This would be a rotten position to fight from."
"We'd manage," Jensen assured him, peering upward. "I just hope his visitors don't ask to use the facilities."
* * *
Foxleigh was sitting at the table, whittling industriously at a random stick he'd grabbed from the wood bin, when the two Security men arrived.
Typically, they didn't bother to knock. "Boulder Security," the younger of the two said brusquely, as if their uniforms weren't enough of a clue. "Who are you?"
"Who wants to know?" Foxleigh countered, not looking up from his carving.
The man snorted and grabbed the end of Foxleigh's stick. "When I ask you a question—"
Foxleigh let go of the stick, shifted his grip to the man's wrist, and pulled it sharply downward toward the tabletop. The other stumbled forward, off balance; and as he did so, Foxleigh twisted the knife around to point toward him.
The man froze with shock and probably astonishment, the knife point no more than ten centimeters from his stomach. "Manners, sonny," Foxleigh said softly. "You'd be surprised how far they get you."
"Smith?" the kid demanded in a choked tone, his wide eyes staring at the knife.
"Easy, Griffs," the older man said soothingly. He had his paral-dart gun out, pointing it at Foxleigh. "You, too, friend. We're just here to talk."
"Tell him that," Foxleigh suggested.
"Everyone just relax," Smith said. "Griffs, apologize to the man."
"Me?" Griffs demanded. "Smith—"
"Apologize to the man," Smith said more firmly.
Griffs glared at Foxleigh, his throat working. "Sorry I grabbed your stick," he said through clenched teeth.
"There we go," Smith said encouragingly. "Now let him go, okay?"
"It's all about manners," F
oxleigh said, releasing Griffs's wrist.
Breathing hard, the other took a step back from the table and yanked out his own paral-dart pistol. "Drop it," he snarled.
"It's dropped," Foxleigh said, laying the knife on the table and folding his arms across his chest. "Now ask your questions and get out."
"Let's start with your name," Smith said, lowering his gun to point at the floor.
"I'm called Toby," Foxleigh said.
"Toby what?" Griffs demanded. His gun, not surprisingly, was still pointed at Foxleigh's face.
