by Timothy Zahn
Pittman shook his head. “I don’t know who…but Lathe was pretty damn pleased they’d come over to our side. Those are his own words.”
Quinn glanced at Galway, cocked an eyebrow. “You know these delwort toads, Galway,” he said. “What sort of group would they be likely to link up with?”
“Hey, can we deal with the important things first?” Pittman put in before Galway could speak. “Like my safety? I want to be someplace where Mordecai can’t get to me if he comes back in. I mean it, Galway—and you people owe me.”
Quinn sniffed in obvious contempt. “Your blackcollar training doesn’t seem to have supplied you with much in the way of a backbone, does it?”
“Maybe I’ve seen Mordecai in action more often than you have,” Pittman shot back. “Is there anywhere in the cell-block that would be safe?”
“We could lock you into solitary,” Quinn suggested, shifting his gaze outside. The transport’s side door was disgorging prisoners and guards now, and the general watched closely as the line disappeared through the armored door into the building. Galway held his breath, but no one made any trouble.
“No—no cell.” Pittman shook his head. “At least not a locked one. I want to be able to get out if there’s any trouble.”
“Well, then, just what the hell do you—”
“What about the emergency bunker, General?” Galway cut in. “It’s three levels underground, Pittman, with only one entrance, and it’s designed to withstand a concerted enemy attack.”
“Wait a minute, Galway,” Quinn growled, unfastening his restraints and stepping to the cockpit door. “That bunker isn’t a hotel, you know.”
“How far away from the others is this bunker, Galway?” Pittman asked.
“Shut up, Postern,” Quinn snapped. “I’ve got orders to work with you, but I don’t have to like you—and to be honest, traitors like you make me want to vomit. So I’ll tell you this just once: you give me even half a reason to do so and I’ll let Lathe weld your mouth shut. You can’t stay in the bunker, but there’s a lounge off the situation room you can cower in if you want.”
Pittman bristled. “I don’t especially care for you, either, Quinn, if it comes to that. But there’s a lot more I can tell you about Lathe and his men—stuff I’m pretty sure you and the Ryqril would like to know. I can’t tell it to you if I’m dead. So if you want to explain to the damn cockroaches how you let Mordecai get to me—”
“All right—all right,” Quinn said with an exasperated snort. “Anything to get rid of you. Galway, take him down to the lounge and tuck him in. If you can spare a moment later, we’ll be processing the prisoners.” Without waiting for an answer he opened the cockpit door and jumped out.
“Understood,” Galway muttered after him, jaw tightening at the sarcasm. Pittman’s paranoia wasn’t his fault, after all. “Come on, Pittman, move it.”
“How hard is it to get off the detention level, anyway?” the youth asked as they stepped-out onto the roof. “I’m not just being fussy, Galway—I’ve seen these guys in action.”
“They’ll be on the fifth level; you’ll be two levels underground,” the prefect growled, starting to get fed up with Pittman himself. “There’s a single elevator off the fifth level, which opens out only onto the fourth floor. The elevators off the fourth floor are then half the building away, and the entire level is guard barracks. Give Quinn a little credit for sense, okay? There really isn’t any way they can get out without getting killed.”
“Okay,” Pittman murmured, and with that finally subsided.
They made the rest of the trip in silence, a quiet that, oddly enough, matched the building as a whole. Even during the night shift Galway had never seen the place quite as deserted as this, and he found it a bit unnerving until he realized that virtually all the troops at Quinn’s disposal were either up with the prisoners or still out in Denver clearing up the aftermath of that operation.
The lounge was empty when they arrived, the handful of men who might be there clearly occupied elsewhere. “There’s a luncheon pantry over here, and drinks in the cooler here,” Galway said, pointing them out. “No beds, but the couch over there will do if you get tired enough. The situation room is through that door. Stay out of it if you don’t want Quinn to yell at you again.”
“I understand.” Pittman took a deep breath, let it out. “I expect you’ve got some important torturing to attend to, so I suppose you’d better go.”
“You’re welcome.” Galway said dryly. Turning, he stepped through the door and headed back toward the elevator.
Chapter 26
THE UNMARKED VAN PULLED to a halt by the Security building and a half-dozen men climbed out, laughing and chattering as they shouldered their laser rifles and walked up the steps to the glasstic-enclosed foyer. Seated across the street in his parked car, Mordecai watched closely through the windows as they passed the duty officer at his desk and lined up in front of a reinforced door at the reception room’s back wall. Each did something to a small upright console; the machine’s response each time was to open the door. Within a minute all six men had vanished through it, leaving the desk man alone.
Leaning back against the seat cushions, Mordecai considered. An ID check, presumably. Not completely unreasonable, even in such a supposedly secure place as Athena, but it was going to complicate things. He had an ID, of course—the dead Security man from whom he’d obtained the uniform had kept his in a breast pocket clearly designed for the purpose—and if all the machine cared about was the card itself, Mordecai was home free. If the program was also checking the bearer’s fingerprints and retinal patterns…
Mordecai pursed his lips, searching his memory: No, that was probably unlikely—and if the thing was really being that thorough, it was doing so damn quickly. Odds were good that it was only checking the cards, and that would be easy enough to handle.
Presumably. He’d find out for sure in a minute.
The duty officer glanced up as he entered, nodded briefly, and returned his attention to his display. Mordecai nodded in return and strode briskly past him toward the rear door. Chances were good that Security men from both day and night shifts had been called up for this operation, and if the blackcollar behaved as if he belonged here anyone he met would probably assume the unfamiliar face simply belonged to someone on another crew.
Assuming, of course, that they hadn’t paid close attention to the photos Galway had surely circulated.
The console by the door was indeed as simple as he’d hoped, apparently nothing more than a scan screen and a reset button. But there was always the potential for surprises. Palming a shuriken in his free hand, he pressed his stolen ID against the screen and held his breath.
There was a quiet beep, and the door ahead opened—and as he started through he noticed a display that hadn’t been visible from the car outside. Three columns of names filled the screen, their positions shifting subtly as one more was added.
Which meant he’d been worried about nothing. Safe, fat, and sassy here in the middle of Athena, the Security bigtops evidently hadn’t even considered the possibility of unauthorized entry. All they cared about was knowing who was on duty and available in the building and who wasn’t.
Smiling tightly, Mordecai stepped through the door. So much for both enemy preparedness and blackcollar overcaution.
Beyond the door, a handful of people moved briskly along on unknown errands.
Glancing once at his watch, Mordecai joined them, matching their businesslike air as best he could.
The situation room was considerably larger than Pittman had expected it to be, and for a long minute he just stood in the lounge doorway and gazed around at it. Four men were currently on duty, splitting their attention between a large overview screen of Denver, a bank of screens that looked to be from mobile units, a long panel that evidently handled voice-only communications from the field, and a second bank of screens that showed nothing but hallways and small rooms.
Hallw
ays, small rooms, and a fair number of Security uniforms.
“You got the general’s permission to be here?” one of the Security men said as Pittman moved toward the latter bank of displays.
Pittman nodded toward the screens. “That the detention level?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the other said briefly, getting up and walking over to him. “Let’s see your authorization.”
“I don’t have any, but Galway said I could wait in the lounge next door,” Pittman said, his attention still on the displays. “You keeping a good eye on those guys?”
The Security man snorted. “Oh—right. You’re Postern, aren’t you? The informer.”
Pittman’s jaw tightened momentarily. He was getting tired of the contempt that always seemed to accompany that identification. “Yes,” he acknowledged shortly. “You haven’t answered my question.”
One of the other officers snickered, swiveling his chair lazily toward Pittman. “Worried they’ll come down and pay you a visit, are you? Maybe you should go back to the lounge and hide under the couch.”
Pittman sent a cold look in his direction, then turned back to the original speaker. “Well?”
The Security man sighed. “Look, kid, there’s really nothing to worry about. Your friends are harmless—they’ve been searched, they’re surrounded by guards, and in a few minutes they’ll all be locked away. I don’t care how good blackcollars are, they can’t be very dangerous inside little steel cubes.”
“Hey!” one of the others called from the first display bank. “They’ve remote-forced the ambulance down—no one in it.”
“Oh, hell,” one of the others murmured. “Quinn’s not going to like this one.”
“Get Marsala and Abrams tied in,” Pittman’s challenger instructed, striding over to the display bank and frowning at one of the screens. “We’ll want a fast diagnostic telemetry set up, see if the thing’s been on autopilot since leaving or whether someone could have bailed out en route.”
“Oh, come on,” a third man put in, joining the others. “We’ve had it under surveillance practically the whole time.”
The discussion continued, and for the moment Pittman was forgotten. Giving the detention display bank one final scan, he returned to the lounge, closing the door behind him. As it had been since he first arrived, the room was deserted; crossing it, he slipped out the far door and headed down a hallway toward the elevator.
Already the building was beginning to fill up as more and more Security troops filtered in from the aftermath of the capture. Pittman shared the elevator with three men in combat garb who were apparently on their way upstairs after checking their heavy weapons into the building’s armory. All three gave Pittman a quick once-over, and though they remained silent he could sense that they knew who he was. Gritting his teeth, he got off at ground level, letting them continue to the fourth-floor barracks on their own.
Six heavily armed men were waiting by the elevators, laser rifles slung over their shoulders, obviously headed for the armory. Pittman gave them a wide berth, eying the rifles longingly, and began looking around for the building’s front entrance. It turned out to be only a single turn and a dozen meters ahead, and was as secure-looking as he had expected. A small display set into the wall beside the door showed the view from the duty officer’s, desk; a single Security man was briefly visible as he passed the desk and headed for the door. No one else was in sight; all seemed perfectly quiet.
For a moment Pittman paused, wondering if he ought to head out into the lobby for a moment and talk to the desk officer. But everything appeared to be adequately under control out there. Which meant it was now time for the real test: to find out just how secure Quinn’s fifth-floor cells really were. Turning, he headed back toward the elevators.
Elevators, and the lobbies where people gathered to wait for them, had a unique sound profile about them, and it was child’s play to recognize that the place he sought was just down the hall from the entrance door. Senses alert, Mordecai headed off in the proper direction…but he’d barely taken five steps when he realized that the clothing of the man walking away ahead of him was familiar. The clothing, as well as the posture and the walk.
Pittman.
The blackcollar’s lip twitched in a grim smile as he slowed his pace to avoid overtaking. Pittman didn’t turn around, but continued around the next corner without pausing. A group of armed Security men were waiting for the elevator there, and for a moment Mordecai considered jumping them and getting himself a little extra firepower. But prudence won out, and instead he took up a casual position against the wall near the corner, staying well back from the others. Hanging his head in a posture of thought that would both discourage idle conversation and mask his features a bit, he waited.
Two of the elevators arrived almost simultaneously. “Going up?” Pittman called into the one nearest him. “I need to get to four.”
“It’s headed down, stupid—read the arrow,” one of the armed Security men growled at him before anyone inside could reply. Shouldering past Pittman, he and the other four stepped into the car. The door closed; muttering something under his breath, Pittman stepped into the other elevator. Mordecai waited until it, too, was on its way before moving forward and punching the up button. He didn’t know exactly where Pittman was headed, but odds were that it was somewhere he wanted to be, too.
Another elevator arrived within the minute, and he stepped inside with the two Security men already there. The fourth-level button had been pushed; stepping to a back corner, the blackcollar rubbed his lip thoughtfully and began the quiet psychological preparation for combat.
The door opened. He let the others leave first, then stepped out himself and looked around…and realized with a shock that he’d walked into a massive trap.
Combat reflexes flared; but even as his hand twitched toward his concealed nunchaku his brain caught up with that first impression and he noticed that the dozen gray-green uniforms weren’t converging on him—were not, in fact; even paying any attention to him. Carefully, he let his hand drop back to his side and gave the bustling Security men another, closer, look. Casual conversations, body language that spoke of unconcern.
Level four was a Security barracks.
Great. Just great. Well, it could have been worse. Licking his lips briefly, the blackcollar tried to look inconspicuous as he looked around for Pittman. The other wasn’t hard to find, striding down the hall to Mordecai’s right as if he owned the place. The blackcollar set off after him, again making sure not to get too close.
The hall was a long one, and at its end was a desk with a Security duty officer and—surprisingly—a single elevator. The implications were clear enough and with almost a sense of relief Mordecai realized the difficult part was over and the fighting was about to begin. The only way to get to Lathe and the others would be via that elevator—and the ID machine he could see on the duty officer’s desk was sure as hell not going to be simply taking roll call.
He picked up his pace, and was within earshot when Pittman reached the desk. “I want to go up and see General Quinn,” the younger man announced to the duty officer. “Do I just get in the elevator there, or do you need to check me through first?”
“Neither,” the Security man said tartly. “Only authorized personnel are allowed on the detention level, and you’re not one of them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Pittman said. “Galway said I could come up here if I wanted to—”
“Galway’s not in charge here, Postern—and if I were you, I wouldn’t keep using his name to try and slide your way into places where you’re not wanted.”
“Now look, you—”
Quietly, Mordecai slipped past the argument and gave the elevator door a quick once-over. Armored, certainly, and with no visible controls. Probably operated from the duty desk after IDs and authorizations had been properly checked. The blackcollar turned back, scanning the desk for anything that looked like a panel; saw a touch plate by the officer’s ri
ght knee—
“Hey!” the desk man half turned to glare at Mordecai. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get back here and check through—”
And abruptly recognition flared in his eyes. “My God—” he gasped.
Mordecai lifted his eyes a fraction, caught Pittman’s.
And the younger man leaned over the desk to jab stiffened fingers into the Security man’s throat.
With a strangled choke the officer slumped in his seat. Glancing over Pittman’s shoulder, Mordecai stepped to the stunned man’s side. “ID,” he said quietly to Pittman. “Upper left pocket.”
“Any reaction?” Pittman asked as his fingers dug into the pocket and emerged with the card.
“Not yet,” Mordecai said, still watching over the other’s shoulder. But that wouldn’t last long, he knew. At the moment Pittman’s body was hiding the duty officer from view of the milling Security men farther down the hall, but that would change as soon as they made for the elevator. “This is the only way to the cells?”
Pittman nodded. He had the ID pressed against the reader screen now and was trying to maneuver the officer’s hand onto the fingerprint plate. “The only monitor station I know of is down in the situation room, and it’s not getting that much attention.”
Mordecai grunted. The officer, his wind starting to come back, was attempting to struggle. The blackcollar took a moment to punch him at the base of the skull and he went limp again. “We’ll be taking out the cameras right away, anyway. You have your battle-hood and gloves?”
Pittman grimaced. “No—I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to keep them. They may be up where the others’ gear is stored, though, in a room just down the hall from the elevator. I saw some of the stuff being put away on the monitors when I was downstairs.”
“Any real firepower up there, or just paral-dart guns?”
“All I saw the guards carrying was the latter, but that room looked like it doubled as a small armory. Sorry, but I couldn’t find a quiet way into the big one downstairs.”
