by Timothy Zahn
"Shouldn't we unload the guns?" Flynn asked as that thought suddenly struck him.
"They aren't loaded," Adamson assured him. "We didn't want a misfire or accident hurting anyone."
"We've got a few rounds in our pockets if we need them," Trapper said, squatting down and getting a grip on the coat sleeves and the rifle barrels inside them. "Say when."
A moment later he and Flynn had the makeshift stretcher up, with Jensen's back and head lying on the coat and his legs angled up to rest on Trapper's shoulders. "I know this is going to sound ridiculous," Adamson said, stepping in front of his son, "but try not to bounce him more than necessary."
"Don't worry," Flynn said, cocking an eyebrow down at Jensen. "It'll be as smooth as a drop pod entry."
"Terrific," Jensen said, closing his eyes melodramatically. "I'm dead."
"Not on my watch, you aren't," Adamson said firmly. He gave a short whistle, and the big Lab bounded back into view from behind a stand of trees, clearly eager to get moving. "Let's go."
CHAPTER 10
They dropped Poirot off in a quiet part of town five blocks from the main Athena entrance, and by the time he got the blindfold off their car had disappeared around a corner.
They'd left him his hailer, and for a minute he considered calling an autocab to take him the rest of the way. But it was a nice night, and he had a lot to think about. Squaring his shoulders, he got his bearings and headed off at a brisk walk.
He quickly regretted the decision. Quiet though the area might have been, there were still plenty of people around, none of whom had apparently ever seen a Security general before. Everyone seemed to find it necessary to stop and stare, many of them turning around and continuing their examination even after he'd passed. Some of those stares, he noted uncomfortably, had a degree of hostility to them.
But no one tried to stop him, or even talk to him, and fifteen minutes after leaving the car he turned at last into the wide, well-lit thoroughfare that led to the high fence and heavy gate of the Athena government center.
The guards at the gatehouse saw him coming, of course, and they certainly recognized him. But to his irritation, none of them made any move to leave their bunker to come out and meet him. By the time he came to a halt in front of the gatehouse's thick-glassed window, he was ready to break all four of them back to private.
"General Poirot," he identified himself tartly, as if there could be any doubt. "Open up."
No one made a move toward the gate control. "Welcome back, General," the duty lieutenant said, his voice strangely flat as it came through the speaker grill below the window. "Colonel Bailey's been extremely concerned about you."
"Then Colonel Bailey will want to see me, won't he?" Poirot growled.
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, still not moving. "Your escort's on its way."
His escort? "I don't need an escort, Lieutenant," he said, letting his tone drop into official warning territory. "Just open the damn gate."
The other looked down at the bank of monitors beneath the window and nodded. "As you wish, sir," he said. Reaching down, he twisted the release and the gate swung open. Giving him one final glare, Poirot left the window and strode through the gateway.
And stopped short. Lined up facing him were three cars and a group of eight Security men, some still in the process of getting out of the vehicles. "What's all this?" he demanded.
"We have orders to take you to headquarters, General," the sergeant in charge said, his voice as stiff as the duty lieutenant's had been. "If you'll come this way, please?"
"Absolutely," Poirot said between clenched teeth. Bailey, he promised himself darkly, was going to hurt for this.
He stomped over and got into the nearest vehicle's rear seat. A moment later he had to move quickly to the center as two of the others climbed in with him, one on either side. Two more got into the front, the rest sorting themselves out between the remaining two cars, and a minute later all three vehicles were headed inward through Athena's streets. The other two cars, Poirot noted, had taken up positions in front and behind him, standard configuration for transporting VIPs. At least Bailey—or the sergeant—had gotten that part right.
A few minutes later they reached the Security building. To Poirot's continued annoyance, though, they bypassed the main entrance and took him instead in through the tunnel. There, his protests ignored, he was put through the full battery of scans as the techs checked him for weapons, explosives, and poisons.
He half expected them to go all the way and do a strip search. Fortunately for Bailey, even the colonel apparently didn't have quite enough nerve to try that one.
Bailey was waiting for him in the middle of the situation room, a young lieutenant Poirot didn't recognize at his side. "Welcome back, General," Bailey said, nodding as Poirot strode up to them. His words were polite enough, but there was an odd sort of distance to his tone and expression. "I'm pleased to find you alive and well."
"I'm rather pleased about that myself," Poirot growled. "You'd better have a damn good reason for what you just put me through." He shifted his glare to the lieutenant. "Who are you?"
"Lieutenant Ramirez, Boulder Security office," the other identified himself. "I've been assisting Colonel Bailey with his efforts to find you."
"Well, I'm found," Poirot said. "Thank you for your assistance. Now go home."
"I'd like the lieutenant to stay a little longer, if you don't mind," Bailey put in. "There are a few matters we all need to discuss." He gestured to the row of office and conference room doors at the rear of the situation room. "If you'll come this way, please?"
"No, we're going to do this right here, Colonel," Poirot ground out, not moving a millimeter. There were a dozen other Security men working the various status and command boards, and it wouldn't do them any harm to hear what happened to a subordinate who forgot how to properly treat a superior officer. "Let's start with why I was put through a weapons scan before even being offered medical treatment."
"Do you need medical treatment, sir?"
"Answer the question, Colonel."
Bailey's lip twitched. "You've been in enemy hands for nearly a day, sir," he said reluctantly. "We had to make sure you weren't bringing in anything dangerous."
"And you don't think I'd have noticed if something like that had been planted on me?"
Bailey glanced at the other men at the boards. "Sir, I really think we'd be more comfortable in the conference room—"
"Answer the question, damn it."
Bailey seemed to brace himself. "If you insist, sir. No, not necessarily."
"Not necessarily?" Poirot echoed, hardly believing his ears. "You think they could have planted a bomb or loaded my pockets with cyanide ampoules without—?"
"Have you ever heard of Whiplash, General?" Ramirez asked.
Poirot glared at him. How dare he interrupt—?
And then, abruptly, it hit him ... and in that single heartbeat his simmering anger vanished into a chill like an arctic breeze. "What exactly are you implying, Colonel?" he asked between stiff lips.
"I think you know, sir," Bailey said. "You've been in blackcollar hands, and the blackcollars apparently have a drug that removes loyalty-conditioning. What would you be thinking in my place?"
For a long moment Poirot couldn't find his voice. This couldn't be happening. "All right," he said at last, forcing a calmness he most certainly didn't feel. "Yes, they injected me with the stuff. And yes, they think I'm on their side now. But I'm not."
Bailey's expression didn't even twitch. "No?"
"Of course not," Poirot insisted. "If we move fast, we have a chance to nail them once and for all."
"I suppose they sat down and discussed their plans with you, too?" Bailey suggested.
Poirot curled his hand into a frustrated fist. "They think I'm on their side," he repeated. "They think that once someone's loyalty-conditioning is gone he's automatically filled with revolutionary fervor."
"And that's not true?" R
amirez asked.
"Don't be ridiculous," Poirot snapped. "These people have no idea how much destruction the Ryqril could rain on Denver if they got it into their heads to do so. But I do. The only reason they don't—the only reason—is that they're secure in the knowledge that we have the district under control. Do you think I'd be stupid enough to deliberately wreck that status quo?"
For a minute Bailey gazed at him in silence. Poirot stared back, feeling sweat trickling down his back. "All right," the colonel said at last. The words were conciliatory, but Poirot could tell from his tone that he still wasn't convinced. "Let's go sit down and you can tell us all about it."
Poirot looked around the room. All the other Security men were busy at their posts, none of them giving any indication that they might have overheard the conversation.
But he knew they had. All of them. "Of course," he said. "Lead the way."
Silently, they all headed back to the conference room. Bailey opened the door and gestured, and Poirot stepped inside.
And came to an abrupt halt. Seated at the far end of the table were a pair of Ryqril. "Please sit down, sir," Bailey said, squeezing through the doorway past Poirot and pointing to the chair at the near end.
Silently, Poirot started forward again and sat down in the indicated chair, his brain mechanically registering the patterns on the aliens' baldrics. One of them was a battle architect, a senior tactical officer and the highest noncommand rank in the Ryqril military.
The other was a khassq-class warrior.
"General Poirot, let me introduce Battle Architect Daasaa and Khassq Warrior Halaak," Bailey said as he and Ramirez sat down on either side of Poirot. "They'll be supervising us during this crisis."
Poirot felt his stomach tighten. So it was a crisis now? "With all due and proper deference," he said, "I don't see it being quite that serious yet. As I told Colonel Bailey, my loyalty remains firmly with the government and the Ryqril."
"Yet the re'els think otherrise?" Daasaa asked.
"Yes, they do," Poirot said. "And in that error lies the key to their defeat, because I know what they intend to do."
Daasaa's dark eyes bored into Poirot's face. "Tell us."
Poirot took a careful breath. This was it. Somehow, he had to convince them that he was still on their side. "First of all, they want to rescue the members of Phoenix that Colonel Bailey arrested yesterday." He looked at Bailey. "I take it they're undergoing interrogation?"
"That's how we found out about Whiplash," Bailey said.
"Ah," Poirot said, feeling a flush of embarrassment. Of course that was how they would have learned about it. "At any rate, they want me to order the prisoners transferred someplace else—Silcox suggested the Colorado Springs interrogation center—so they can ambush the convoy along the way."
"They dae not intend tae in'ade Athena to rescae they?" Daasaa asked.
"They invaded Athena once before," Poirot reminded him, wincing at the memory. "I don't think they'd want to try that again."
"I disagree," Daasaa countered. "They ha' done that runce. They there'ore know they can dae it again."
"I understand, Your Eminence," Poirot said. "But I don't get the sense that that's how blackcollars do things."
"It is 'asic tactics," Daasaa insisted. "A rarrior uses the skills he has."
"In general, that's certainly true," Poirot agreed carefully. "But if the warrior's opponent has already seen a particular tactic in action, it might make sense to switch to something—"
"The re'els are o' no use tae they," Halaak cut him off firmly. "They rish yae tae send out a con'oy tae draw yaer nen aray fron Athena."
Poirot looked at Bailey in silent appeal. But the colonel's face was expressionless. "All right, perhaps they are planning an attack on Athena," he said, conceding defeat. "There's no reason we can't prepare for both possibilities."
"Tae in'ade Athena, they rill need an aircra't," Daasaa went on. "Re nust guard against that."
Poirot squeezed the arm of his chair tightly. Was Ryqril thinking really so limited that they could only look back at what had already been done? Was that why they needed to loyalty-condition their conquered peoples, so those peoples could be trusted to do their thinking for them? "This time they won't have access to any aircraft, Your Eminence," he promised. "We won't be sending out any ambulances they can commandeer, or patrol boats, or—"
"The spotters," Ramirez said suddenly.
All eyes turned to him. "What?" Poirot asked.
"We have spotters flying all over the mountains west of Boulder," Ramirez said, a note of urgency in his voice. "We think one to three more blackcollars might have come in with Skyler's team."
"Skyler said they'd only lost one on the way in," Poirot said. "You haven't found him yet?"
"There's a lot of forest out there," Bailey reminded him. "Not to mention a lot of animals to mess up IR readings. You saying Skyler just volunteered this information?"
"Yes," Poirot murmured, gripping the chair arm a little tighter as a sudden uncertainty dug at him. Now that he thought about it Skyler had been pretty loose with that comment. Could the blackcollar have been deliberately feeding him misinformation, expecting that he wouldn't betray his job and his people? "He said the man was probably waiting for the searchers to go away."
"How convenient," Ramirez murmured. "So while we waste time and manpower—"
"It is not rasted," Halaak cut him off sharply. "There is another 'lackcollar." His dark eyes seemed to go even darker. "He has killed a Ryq rarrior."
Poirot felt his breath freeze in his throat. "Where?"
"In the hills a'ove our Aegis 'ase," Daasaa said, his eyes going back and forth between the three humans, clearly looking for some kind of reaction. "He ras killed rith a star rea'on in his throat."
Poirot winced. A human killing a Ryq was about as bad as it got. Dimly, he wondered if Skyler had any idea of the crate of snakes his wayward commando had just opened up. "He must have gotten lost," he said. "Probably saw the warrior and panicked."
"Or else was deliberately heading for the base," Ramirez murmured thoughtfully.
"Re rill ca'ture he," Halaak said, and Poirot shivered at the menace beneath the words. "Yae rill continue yaer search."
"Yes, Your Eminence," Bailey said, his voice suddenly hesitant. "Are we sure there was just one of them?"
"Re 'ound his glider," Daasaa said. "It had a second glider 'astened 'eneath it."
"One man pretending to be two," Poirot said, nodding. "Splits up the search parties."
"Or intensifies the search," Bailey said. "More to the point, that still leaves one slot unaccounted for in this six-man pod of theirs. What we may have is one blackcollar stirring up trouble while his partner waits quietly for one of the search teams to land an aircar in a convenient location."
"And then uses the s'otter tae in'ade Athena," Daasaa concluded, a note of vindication in his voice. "It is as I said."
"Or they might even be planning to attack the Aegis Mountain base," Ramirez said. "Maybe the first blackcollar wasn't just stirring up trouble, but was scouting it out."
Halaak made a rumbling sound in his chest. "That cannot 'e allored," he ground out. "The 'ase nust 'e 'rotected."
Daasaa motioned to him, and for a minute the two Ryqril held their heads close together as they conversed quietly in Ryqrili. Then, Daasaa straightened up again. "Yae rill rithdraw the s'otters at runce," he ordered. "The ground search rill continue."
A muscle in Bailey's cheek tightened momentarily. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said. "But I must warn you that without the spotters—"
"Dae yae kestion ne?"
The same cheek muscle twitched again. "No, of course not, Your Eminence," he said hastily. "The spotters will be withdrawn immediately." He looked at Ramirez. "See to it, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," Ramirez said, looking quietly relieved to be getting out of this particular frying pan. Standing up, he hurried from the room.
"General 'Oirot?" Halaa
k asked.
Poirot started. "Yes, Your Eminence?"
"A'ter the 'risoners rere taken, rhat ras their 'lan?"
"Basically, just to cause as much trouble as they could," Poirot said. "Skyler didn't go into details, but I got the feeling they planned to launch attacks on any Security men they could find outside Athena. He also mentioned a cache of weapons Phoenix had hidden somewhere."
"Rhat sort o' rea'ons?" Halaak asked.
"I don't know," Poirot said. "Again, he didn't give any details."
"None of the prisoners has said anything about a weapons cache," Bailey put in.
