by Timothy Zahn
"If Galway's the one in charge," Skyler warned. "You have any idea what kind of trap it is?"
"Not yet," Lathe said. "But I'm not sure it matters. It's an opportunity we can't afford to pass up."
"And Galway would know that," Skyler pointed out. "But even assuming we can pull this off, it'll take more than a resounding victory on a place as far off as Khala."
"I know," Lathe agreed. "That's why while I'm on Khala, you'll be taking a team to Earth."
Skyler's eyes widened slightly, but he took it in stride. "Where?"
"Back to Denver," Lathe said. "By now Anne Silcox should have her new Phoenix organization up and running, and with the supplies of Whiplash we left them they should have the whole government and Security system riddled with moles. It'll be the perfect place to stage a major uprising."
"Especially with Aegis Mountain in the neighborhood," Skyler said thoughtfully. "I wonder if she's gone back in there since we left."
"Depends on how much she trusts her new recruits," Lathe said. "I don't think she'll push it, though, especially considering that Whiplash was about the only thing of value we found in there."
"At least, the only thing accessible," Skyler agreed with a grimace. "Hopefully Kanai hasn't let anyone try to bull their way through doomsdayed doors."
"You'll find out soon enough," Lathe said. "I want Mordecai, Spadafora, and Caine with me. You can have anyone else."
"You sure you don't want a bigger team?" Skyler asked, frowning.
"We do theoretically have this Tactor Shaw and his blackcollars to draw on," Lathe reminded him. "Besides, we're certainly not going to take the tac center with a massed blackcollar charge."
"Okay," Skyler said, clearly still not entirely convinced. "In that case, I'll take Hawking and O'Hara. And Jensen."
Lathe and Mordecai exchanged glances. "You sure you want Jensen?" Lathe asked.
"He's fine," Skyler said firmly. "He's just not yet over what happened on Argent, that's all."
"I understand that," Lathe said. "The fact remains that he's become a little ... unpredictable."
"He's fine," Skyler said again. "Besides, he's got a lot of specialized skills that none of the rest of us have, not to mention being our best pilot. We may need him."
Lathe shrugged. "Okay, it's your call. In that case, are you sure you don't want a larger group yourself? We do have those new six-man drop pods."
"I'll theoretically have Kanai and Phoenix to draw on," Skyler said. "Besides, I don't want to leave Plinry any more undefended than it already is. If this works, the Ryq are likely to be very unhappy with us."
"There's that," Lathe agreed soberly. "We'll need to make sure we've got something in place before we go."
"I'll get Haven and De Vries to cover that," Skyler said. "But since you mention the six-man pods, let me go ahead and take Flynn, too."
"You want Pittman or Braune, too?" Lathe asked. "They know the area, at least a little."
"No, Flynn will do," Skyler said, looking innocently over at Mordecai. "If I can't have Mordecai, I can at least get his bag of bizarre tricks."
"There's nothing bizarre about any of them," Mordecai protested mildly. "It's all simple, clean combat technique."
Lathe suppressed a smile. If there were any two blackcollars in his group that were a study in contrasts, it was Skyler and Mordecai. Where Skyler was big, bluff, and pleasantly garrulous, Mordecai was small, wiry, and seldom spoke.
But when he did, he was usually worth listening to. "You've been very quiet, Mordecai. What do you think about all this?"
"I was just thinking about a possibility neither of you has mentioned," the smaller man said. "Namely that this could be nothing more than a ploy to split us up and send us charging off in all directions."
"To what end?" Skyler asked.
Mordecai shrugged. "They've tried twice to beat us as a group," he said. "Maybe they think breaking us into smaller chunks will help."
"If they do, they're going to be sorely disappointed," Skyler rumbled. "Even with Caine's trainees aboard we didn't exactly constitute a major assault force last year in Denver."
"I know," Mordecai said. "I'm just saying that if we do take this on, it may be the last mission for some of us."
"Maybe even for all of us," Lathe said quietly.
There was a moment of silence. "Well, no one promised we'd live forever," Skyler said at last. "I vote we go for it."
Mordecai half lifted a hand. "Agreed."
"Thank you," Lathe said, nodding to each in turn. "All right, we've got six weeks to prepare before Lepkowski and the Novak get back. Let's get started."
* * *
Six weeks later, to Galway's quiet relief, Lathe, Caine, and a group of blackcollars boarded a shuttle at the Capstone 'port and headed into the sky to rendezvous with the massive Nova-class warship waiting for them. An hour later, the Novak left orbit and headed for the stars.
"Hor long?" Taakh asked as he and Galway watched the departure on the tracking monitor.
"About eight and a half days," Galway told him. "More, if Lepkowski has other stops to make along the way."
"Then it is tine to go," Taakh said. "Our Corsair rill take three and a hakh days. Re nust 'e there ren they arri'e."
"As you command, Your Eminence," Galway said with a sigh. After all the months he'd spent on Earth and Khala, first locating Judas and then overseeing his training, the past six weeks had seemed to fly by. Now, once again, he was going to have to leave his wife, his home, and his world.
He wondered if he would ever see any of them again.
CHAPTER 2
With a jolt of shattered bolts, the drop pod released itself from the descending shuttle, throwing the five men inside into instant freefall. "Oof!" Flynn grunted as he gripped the straps holding him to his section of wall.
"Steady," Skyler warned, eyeing the young man closely in the dim light. "It's supposed to feel this way."
"Yes, thank you," Flynn managed between clenched teeth. "I'm okay."
"First time's always the hardest," O'Hara said soothingly. "Just take it easy and breathe through your nose."
"I'm okay," Flynn repeated. "It just feels like—well, we are falling, aren't we?"
"That we are," Skyler confirmed, watching the softly glowing altitude gauge. Another thirty seconds, he estimated. "But not for much longer."
"After that it'll be time for fun with hang gliders and mountain air currents," Hawking put in.
"Just remember that without a chute slowdown we're going to be coming in a lot faster than usual when we pop," Skyler warned. "The gliders are designed to take the extra speed and stress, but be ready."
"I just hope Reger hasn't upgraded his security system since the last time we were there," Hawking muttered. "Dropping in on the man uninvited could prove hazardous to our health."
"I thought you said you and Jensen installed the system," O'Hara said blandly. "How does one upgrade from perfection?"
"Good point," Hawking said dryly.
Skyler looked over at Jensen. But the other was gazing straight ahead, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
A light on the altimeter flashed red. "Get ready," Skyler ordered, getting a grip on the release as he watched the gauge. "Five seconds ... three, two, one."
He squeezed the release; and with a violent jerk and an upward rush of icy air, the drop pod's floor disintegrated. The wall sections came apart at the seams, flinging the five men attached to them into the night sky.
For a few seconds Skyler clung tightly to his straps, watching the stars and the dark ground tumble crazily around each other. Then, with a snap of spring-loaded connectors, the wings of his hang glider extended themselves from both sides of his pod wall section. There were a few more seconds of vertigo, and then the glider leveled itself and he found himself hanging beneath the stars and his own gray canopy, swooping through the frigid air.
He took a deep breath, sternly ordering his stomach and inner ear to behave themselves a
s he looked around. He'd warned the others to expect a rough ride, but even he hadn't been quite prepared for just how rough it had been.
But he could see four other dark silhouettes blacking out the stars. Apparently, they'd all come through it all right. "Report," he said into the mike curving around the side of his cheek.
One by one, the others checked in. "Good," Skyler said when they were finished. "Everyone turn due east—"
"Skyler?" Flynn cut in. "I think I've got a problem."
"What kind?" Skyler asked, frowning again at the other silhouettes. One of them was definitely dipping beneath the others.
"I'm not getting much lift," Flynn said. "I seem to be crabbing to the right, too."
"I see you," Hawking said. "Looks like your glider didn't completely deploy."
Skyler swallowed a curse. Five klicks over mountainous terrain was not the place for an equipment malfunction. "Can you get to him?" he asked.
"I've got him," Jensen put in before Hawking could answer. "Hold as level as you can, Flynn."
"Trying."
Across the distance, Skyler saw one of the silhouettes make a tight curve and head back toward the sinking glider. "What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I'll start with the whack-it-with-a-hammer approach," Jensen said. "If that doesn't work, we'll have to try something else."
The two gliders had come together now, merging into one oversized shadow far below the others. Across the night breeze, Skyler heard a dull thud as Jensen slammed his nunchaku into the glider rib connectors. "Well?" O'Hara asked.
"Nothing," Jensen said. There was another thud, then two more in rapid succession. "Not looking good," he said grimly. "I guess it's papoose time. Flynn, I'm going to come over you and hook us together."
"You're not going to get much distance that way," O'Hara warned.
"He's right," Flynn said. "How about just letting me go down the way I am? I think I've got enough lift to land safely, just not enough to make it all the way to Reger's. The rest of you can go make contact, I'll hike to the nearest road, and you can send someone back to pick me up."
"No," Jensen said firmly. "One man alone in unfamiliar wilderness is a recipe for trouble. I'll link up, get you landed, and we'll hike it together."
"But—"
"Make that an order, Flynn," Skyler cut him off. "Jensen?"
"Give me a second."
The two shadows came together, and Skyler held his breath. "Okay, that's it," Jensen reported. "Gliders are linked. You three go on ahead and contact Phoenix. We'll find our own way to Reger's."
Skyler grimaced. Splitting up three-two wasn't a whole lot better than Flynn's suggested four-one. But Lathe had them on a tight schedule, and he couldn't afford for all five of them to go for a long hike in the woods. "You have maps with you?"
"We've got maps, rations, and fighting gear," Jensen said, starting to sound a little impatient. "We'll be fine. Get out of here, will you?"
"We'll have Reger send someone out to find you," Skyler promised, turning his glider back toward the east. Their second drop over Earth, and the second time something had gone wrong. What was it about this place? "Hawking, O'Hara—let's go."
* * *
The three silhouettes receded rapidly into the eastern sky until they had become part of the blackness of the night. Flynn watched them go, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. Even with Jensen along, this wasn't going to be fun.
It certainly wasn't the way things were supposed to have gone. Did all military missions have setbacks right out of the box this way?
"Flynn, are you turning south?"
Flynn snapped his attention back. They did seem to be making a lazy turn to the right. "No," he said, experimentally fiddling with his control bar. It seemed all right. "At least, not on purpose."
"Must be your broken wing," Jensen grunted, and Flynn winced as a series of jolts rippled through his glider. "Or else we've picked up a northerly crosscurrent."
Flynn peered off to the east, but the other three gliders were already lost to view. "Shouldn't we let Skyler know?"
"We're already out of range," Jensen said. "Besides, it's not like there's anything he can do about it."
Flynn grimaced. Terrific. "Ah, well," he said, trying to be philosophic about it. "They say long walks in the woods are very therapeutic."
"Yes, they do, don't they?" Jensen said, suddenly sounding thoughtful.
Flynn twisted his neck to look up, a complete waste of effort with the glider wing between him and Jensen. "Something?"
"It just occurred to me that, given we're heading south anyway, maybe we should see if we can get close enough to Aegis Mountain for a quick look."
"I thought there was a Ryqril base just outside the main entrance."
"There is," Jensen confirmed. "That's what I want to look at."
A sudden lump formed in Flynn's throat. "Oh. Uh ... you think that's a good idea?"
"What, you worried about a simple little Ryqril base?" Jensen scoffed. "And it is only a little one."
"Has it got autotarget antiaircraft lasers on its walls?"
"A couple."
"In that case, yes, I'm worried," Flynn said.
"It'll be a quick look, just to see if they've abandoned the idea of breaking into the mountain," Jensen soothed. "We'll pop our heads over the ridge, pop them back down again, then go straight back to the nearest road and head for Reger's. Okay?"
"Sure, why not?" Flynn said with a sigh. He looked up at the wing arching over his head. "It's not like I'm driving or anything."
"That's the spirit," Jensen said approvingly, turning them toward the southwest. "Settle in, and enjoy the ride."
* * *
The three blackcollars had lost a lot of altitude while they'd been circling around trying to fix Flynn's glider. Now, as Skyler watched the tops of the mountains passing them on both sides, he realized they weren't going to make it.
Hawking had clearly come to the same conclusion. "Looks like we're in for something of a hike ourselves," he commented.
"Walking's good for you," Skyler said encouragingly, trying to hide his own misgivings. The territory west of Reger's estate was extremely rugged, and the only roads through it might well be watched by Security agents and other unfriendlies. Nothing they couldn't handle, but it would cost them valuable time.
"Skyler, look about ten degrees right," O'Hara said suddenly. "There's a very dim light about a third of the way up the mountain that's blinking its little heart out."
Skyler frowned into the darkness. There it was, as dim and sputtery as O'Hara had said.
But it wasn't just blinking at random. It was blinking in Morse code. "Can anyone read that?" he asked. "It's going too fast for me."
"Yeah, I've got it," Hawking said slowly. "But it's not making any sense. Right hand—open, closed to fingertips, slide thumb—" With a snort, he broke off. "Oh, isn't that cute?"
"What's cute?" O'Hara demanded.
"Our friend there on the mountainside," Hawking said. "He can't know what kind of encrypt we might have with us, and even if he did we sure as hell can't do much in the way of serious decoding from hang gliders. And he can't just say, 'Welcome, blackcollars,' either, because he knows we'll suspect a trap and avoid him like the plague. So what does he do?"
Skyler frowned; and then it clicked. "He Morses us a description of a blackcollar hand signal."
"Oh, for—" O'Hara snorted. "Must be the altitude. Low oxygen flow to the brain."
"That, or senility is hitting all of us early," Skyler agreed, watching the light repeat its message. The hand signal their unknown contact was describing was the third-tier configuration for safe—come ahead. Security agents might have observed and documented any number of the first- and even second-tier hand signals over the years, but a third-tier signal was something only another blackcollar should know. "What say we wander over and take a look?"
The light turned out to be coming from the window of a small cabi
n built against a rocky cliff face. An area about twenty meters square directly in front of the cabin had been cleared of trees and brush, perhaps with hang glider landings in mind. Skyler dropped neatly into the center of the clearing, Hawking and O'Hara going for the more problematic but better concealed forested areas to either side.
Skyler had just popped free of his harness when a floodlight suddenly blazed from a corner of the cabin's roof, bathing the whole landing area in light.
Instantly, he leaped to the side, snatching a shuriken from his belt and sending it spinning toward the light. But even before it hit the light winked out again. "Welcome back, Skyler," a voice said from behind him.
