by Timothy Zahn
"And he definitely shouldn't be going in there and pulling the plug personally," O'Hara added. "If we decide to wreck the base, there have to be ways of doing it by remote control."
"Perhaps that's what he intends," Kanai suggested.
"I don't think so," Skyler said with a sigh. "He's been ... well, never mind."
"He's gotten it into his head that he owes the universe a huge debt," Hawking said. "He's spent the last two years looking for a way to pay it off."
Across the room, Anne Silcox stirred. "Then you'd better go and try to stop him, hadn't you?" she said quietly.
"What about your people?" Skyler asked.
"What about them?" she retorted, an edge of bitterness in her voice. "You said yourself the whole convoy will be one gigantic trap."
"True, but even the best traps don't always work," O'Hara pointed out. "And frankly, with the Ryqril taking a personal hand, I'm not expecting this to be one of the best."
"Besides, Jensen's not planning his move until tomorrow night," Hawking said. "We can head up there tomorrow."
"That's cutting things a little close," Flynn warned.
"No way around it," Skyler said firmly, his tone making it clear that he'd made his decision. "As Hawking said, we've got till tomorrow to get to Jensen. Anne's people are being moved tonight. Ergo, we continue the operation as planned."
"If for no other reason than to keep them thinking we still trust Poirot?" Reger asked.
"That's another reason, yes," Skyler agreed. "What's happening with the small explosives you said you could get?"
"Draper has them ready," Reger said. "He's got the tankers you wanted, too."
"Excellent," Skyler said. "Anne, you'll rendezvous with Draper and move the explosives to Site Three.
The wind's still predicted to be coming from the north this evening?"
"That's what they say," O'Hara confirmed.
"Site Three it is, then," Skyler said. "And be sure to transport the explosives in small quantities—
Security might make more sensor runs over the city and I don't want a collection big enough for them to zero in on. Flynn, give her a hand—she can fill you in on the plan along the way."
"Won't we need Flynn to help with the truck hijacking?" Hawking asked.
"That's been scrubbed," Skyler said. "Turns out Reger has access to enough jellied fuel for what we need."
"Ah," Hawking said. "Then it sounds like we're ready."
"Pretty much," Skyler said. "Let's tie up the last details and get to our positions."
"And hope that Security doesn't have any trump cards of their own to play," Reger warned.
"Oh, I'm sure they will," Skyler assured him with a smile. "That's what makes this so much fun."
Reger's only response was a snort.
* * *
Between the hundred-meter climb, the disorienting sonic, and Foxleigh's bad leg, the first part of the trip into Aegis Mountain was sheer torture. Fortunately, after that it got somewhat easier.
Until, that is, they reached the final part, the narrow tunnel Torch had carved through a hundred and fifty meters of solid rock to bypass the lethal traps of the first-stage air filter system. Foxleigh kept running his knees into small outcroppings of rock as he walked, sending ripples of pain through him and draining what little strength was left in his leg. Jensen, for his part, had to duck his head through much of it, a posture that wasn't doing his injured ribs any good. "At least we don't have to worry about an attack from the rear," Foxleigh muttered when as they reached the midway point. "No Ryq over the age of five would ever fit through here."
"Torch probably designed that way on purpose," Jensen said. "Of course, that just means they'd have to stand at the far end and shoot us from there."
Foxleigh looked back along the mostly straight tunnel behind them. "Oh," he said, and kept going.
The far end of the tunnel opened up into a fifty-meter-long storage room. Foxleigh hobbled inside, panting in the stale air and gazing at the dusty crates waiting patiently to be opened by people who were long dead. All of them except him.
After thirty years, he was finally back inside Aegis Mountain.
"Sorry about the mess," Jensen said. He was breathing a little heavily himself. "Maid's day off."
"I figured," Foxleigh puffed back. "What now?"
"We'll look around a little," Jensen said, wincing as he tried to rub his side through the thincast, an exercise Foxleigh knew from personal experience to be a complete waste of time. "Then we'll rest a while, maybe get something to eat."
"We could have done that at my cabin," Foxleigh pointed out. "What exactly are we here for?"
Jensen sent a gaze around the dusty chamber. "For thirty years the Ryqril have been the ones dealing out death and destruction," he said, his voice suddenly as dark and cold as Aegis itself. "It's about time we showed them that we can do that, too."
"And how much death and destruction exactly are we talking about?"
"Enough." For a moment Jensen just stood there, his eyes unfocused as if gazing across a long line of ghosts from the past. Foxleigh watched him, his heart thudding unpleasantly. For the first time, he realized, he was seeing past Jensen's layer of control and civilization to what lay beneath it. The man was ready to kill.
He was more than ready to die.
And as that realization sank in, Foxleigh became acutely aware of the pistol pressed against his side beneath his shirt. If he had to use it ...
Abruptly, Jensen shook his head, a quick doglike water-shedding movement. "Sorry," he said, his voice back to normal. "Memories."
"I have a few of those myself," Foxleigh said. "So when does this all death and destruction happen?"
"Tomorrow night," Jensen told him. "But we can start the prep work right away."
"Or at least after that rest and meal you mentioned?"
"Sure," Jensen said. "Come on, I'll take you to the medical area. The lighting's better, and there are lockers of emergency rations we can raid." He smiled, his veneer of civilization back in place. "It's a lot cleaner too."
"That's certainly the important thing," Foxleigh said, forcing a lightness into his voice that he didn't feel.
"Lead the way."
* * *
Shaw's blackcollars had apparently begun arriving early that morning. By the time Lathe took Judas down to their underground staging area there were a good fifty of them present, busily uncrating and organizing various pieces of equipment.
"Looks like we're getting serious," Judas commented as they passed a pair of gray-haired men uncrating a group of flat, one-by-two-meter rectangular body shields. The staging area itself, he now recognized, was another part of the city's former subway system. "I hope this doesn't mean Shaw's taken over the planning again."
"Don't worry, he hasn't," Shaw's voice came from behind them.
Judas turned, his face warming. The tactor was striding toward them, one of the body shields hanging from his left forearm. "Sorry," he apologized. "I meant—"
"Here—try it on," Shaw interrupted, sliding his arm out of the shield's straps and offering it to Judas.
It was considerably heavier than Judas had expected. "Antilaser?"
"Alternating layers of reflective and ablative material to first scatter the light and then diffuse it," Shaw said. "The reflective parts are also highly heat-conductive, so the laser has to basically evaporate the whole layer to get to the next one."
Judas nodded. "What's this?" he asked, touching a thick metal ribbon coiled tightly against the lower left edge of the shield.
"More heat-conductive material," Shaw said. "It gets unrolled behind you to act as a heat sink."
"Must be really conductive," Judas said, eyeing the ribbon dubiously.
"It's the same stuff they used to layer on starfighters to protect them against Ryqril laser cannon." Shaw looked at Lathe. "But I can tell you right now that they're not going to get you across fifty meters of open ground."
"They won'
t have to," Lathe said. "I understand the sensors in our target fence post are pretty well gone?"
Shaw nodded. "Got the report this morning," he said. "He'll keep plugging pellets against it for the rest of the day, though, just to make sure."
"So we're going tonight?" Judas asked carefully.
"Tomorrow night," Lathe said. "We've still got some other prep work to do tonight."
"Plus a set of dress-rehearsal drills," Shaw added.
"Sounds good," Judas said, a shiver running up his back. Barely three days on the ground, and already they were nearly ready to attack a major Ryqril base. Fast, clean, and—hopefully—successful.
Of course, it was no longer the small infiltration force Galway had envisioned when he'd set this scheme in motion. Still, as long as they made it inside maybe the size of the force wouldn't matter.
"You'll be picked up at your house at four-thirty this afternoon," Shaw said. "Be ready in full combat gear."
"I will," Judas said.
"And your pickup will be at five," Shaw added, looking at Lathe.
"We'll be ready," the comsquare assured him.
Shaw nodded and moved off. "Why the different times?" Judas asked.
"Because we're going to different locations," Lathe explained. "Mordecai and I are on the initial assault team; you'll be with interior penetration group."
"Won't the assault team be coming in, too?" Judas asked, frowning.
Lathe smiled grimly. "Some of us will," he said. "Others ... won't."
A strange sensation bubbled through the pit of Judas's stomach. Up to now, this whole thing had played through his mind almost as if it was a bizarre adventure game played on a city-sized board with living pieces. Even the carnage he'd seen in the aftermath of Security's casino trap had seemed distant and vaguely unreal.
But suddenly that unreality had evaporated. These were real men, going in against real Ryqril with extremely real weapons.
And the Ryqril would use those weapons with all the skill they possessed. Galway—and Haberdae—
would make sure of that.
For many of the men assembled here, today would be their last full day alive.
"I understand," he managed. "I'll be ready."
"Good," Lathe said. "Now get over to that corner and tell Comsquare Bhat I said to start checking you out on the special equipment you'll be using."
"All right," Judas said. "What about you?"
"I need to go talk to Shaw," Lathe said. "We still have a few details to work out." He looked across the staging area at the other blackcollars, a strangely wistful look on his face. "Because win, lose, or die, tomorrow is the night."
* * *
Earlier that day, as he had every day of his captivity, Caine had run himself through an exercise regimen consisting of some of the martial arts katas he'd been taught back on Earth during his Resistance combat training. The workout, while certainly nothing spectacular, had nevertheless run up a good sweat, necessitating a shower in his transparent stall.
But unlike the previous days, when he'd finished drying off and flipped his wet towel over the edge of the stall, this time he made sure it landed in such a way as to neatly block the spy camera hidden there.
And with that, the stage was set. It would have been nice to disable the bedpost camera as well, but Security had sneaked in last night to clear and regimmick that one as he'd hoped they would, and he couldn't keep changing the paper over the lens without them eventually getting wise to the game.
Besides, with the shower camera halfway across the room from his bed, there was a chance they'd be slightly less alert when they came in tonight to clear it.
Still, whether they were or not, the die had been tossed and was now spinning its way across the floor.
He had the patterns of his prison figured out, he had the method of his escape planned, and he had the tools with which to carry it out.
All he needed now was for someone to open his cell door for him.
He settled onto bed early that night, taking his manuscript book with him as if deciding to feign his reading in bed instead of feigning it in his comfort chair. The chair itself he had already subtly relocated to the spot where he needed it to be, sitting midway between him and the blocked shower camera. That alone should help allay any suspicions; a potential escapee would certainly not be careless enough to deliberately leave a large obstacle between himself and the first enemy he would have to neutralize.
By the time they shut off his lights, he was ready. Stretched out on his foam pellet-stuffed mattress beneath his thin blanket, clothed in his orange jumpsuit and boot-slippers, he slipped his hand down and began stealthily peeling sheets of paper off the top of the manuscript stacked on the floor by his head.
Win, lose, or die, tonight was the night.
CHAPTER 14
The prisoner convoy, Poirot had said, would be leaving at seven in the evening. As it turned out, the six vans actually slipped through Athena's main gate a half hour earlier.
But that was all right. Skyler had rather expected them to try something like that anyway.
Convoy leaving, Flynn's specially boosted message came over his tingler from the empty high-rise apartment just north of Athena where he and Anne were watching the gate. Six vans; one car front, one car rear.
Acknowledged, Skyler signaled back. A surprisingly weak escort, even considering that the vans themselves were carrying their own collection of Security men. Clearly, General Poirot was trying to make it look like he'd manipulated the situation for the ambushers' benefit, just as he'd claimed he would. Route?
Primary.
The most straightforward route, in other words, for a convoy heading to Colorado Springs, and thus the route where any potential attackers would concentrate their efforts. Again, to all appearances, Poirot was doing his best to open the convoy to attack.
Unfortunately for him, the men Reger had scattered along the likely routes had already reported the extra Security vehicles that had been drifting quietly into position along that same primary route for most of the day. As Anne had predicted, and O'Hara's gut had already concluded, Poirot had indeed betrayed them.
Still, even in their attempt to be clever, the enemy was in fact being very predictable. Skyler could only hope his own plan wouldn't be equally transparent. Air activity?
Chatter indicates six spotters, all out of visual range.
Acknowledged, Skyler replied again, silently offering thanks to whichever it was of Anne's Whiplashed contacts who had been willing to stretch out her own neck far enough to provide them with the spotters'
rolling-freq radio setup.
Leaning over the edge of his rooftop, he peered down the street. No sign of the convoy yet, but it wouldn't be much longer. Backing away from the edge, he made one last check of the small zip-line mortar he'd fastened securely to the rooftop five meters back. They hadn't had any place secure enough to do a complete test of the mortars, but the devices had come from Kanai's stock and Skyler trusted the other to have kept them in good condition. Tucking the remote for the mortar's take-up reels into his sleeve where it would be handy, he returned to the edge of the roof and slid his fingers under his sleeve to his tingler. Flynn: launch diversion one.
Acknowledged. Diversion one launching.
* * *
"They've cleared the perimeter," Ramirez announced to no one in particular. "And the gate is closed.
Doesn't look like there were any attempts at infiltration."
"Agreed," Bailey said, his eyes on the Denver map and the green lights that indicated the convoy vans, listening with half an ear to the quiet murmur of status reports drifting around the situation room.
"Anything from the spotters?"
Ramirez looked over at the status display. "Just normal city traffic," he said.
"Yae rill 'ind nothing else," Daasaa rumbled, striding restlessly back and forth. Bailey had offered him and Halaak seats, but both Ryqril had chosen instead to stand. At the moment, the
battle architect's pacing had put him directly behind Poirot, and Bailey could see the general flinching away a little from the alien's proximity. "The 'lackcollar 'ositions rill 'e rell canou'laged," Daasaa added.
"Agreed, Your Eminence," Bailey said. "Still, there's a chance that either the infrared or the microradar will—"
"Colonel?" Ramirez cut in, his forehead creasing in a frown as he leaned closer to one of the displays.
"How many spotters did you order up?"
"There are supposed to be six," Poirot put in before Bailey could answer. "Are we missing someone?"
"No, sir, just the opposite," Ramirez said, pointing to the display. "Two more have just been scrambled from Boulder."
"What?" Bailey demanded, stepping to Ramirez's side. "On whose orders?"
"Major?" Ramirez prompted, nudging the spotter officer.
"She identified herself as Athena Special Ops," the controller said, running his fingers across his keyboard. "Here's the playback."
He touched a final key. "Boulder spotter control, this is Athena Special Ops Command," an authoritative female voice said crisply from the speaker. "You're to scramble two spotters immediately to assist in convoy escort duty."
"Recognize the voice?" Ramirez murmured.
"No," Bailey murmured back. "You?"
Ramirez shook his head. "Authorization code?" the Boulder dispatcher asked, just as crisply.
"Alpha-nine-seven-beta-three-three," the woman replied. "This operation is under the direct jurisdiction of General Poirot."
"I gave no such order," Poirot insisted, glancing furtively at the Ryq towering over him.
"Code acknowledged and accepted," Boulder control said. "Spotters on their way."
"Acknowledged," the woman said. "They're to maintain radio silence, and to accept no signals or orders except mine or General Poirot's."
"Acknowledged."
"That's it," the major said, shutting down the recording. "Spotters' ETA to convoy, approximately three minutes."
"I gave no such order," Poirot insisted again. "It has to be the blackcollars."
"How did they o'tain the radio data?" Halaak demanded. "Colonel 'Ailey?"
