Blackcollar: The Judas Solution

by Timothy Zahn

  "It's Foxleigh."

  "Whatever." Jensen gestured back toward the elevator. "Come on. You're going home."

  Silently, they made their way back down to the Level Nine storage room where they'd first entered Aegis Mountain. Sitting Foxleigh down on one of the crates, Jensen poked around for a few minutes and came up with a short length of thin cord. "I'm going to tie your hands together," he told Foxleigh as he set to work. "It'll make some parts of the trip a little tricky, I'm afraid, but a former fighter pilot should be able to make do."

  "What about the rope ladder?" Foxleigh asked. "I can't climb it this way."

  "The housing on the sonic Torch set up at the base of the shaft has a couple of sharp edges on it," Jensen told him. "I damn near sliced my hand open on one of them on our way out last time. A little work and you should be able to cut yourself free."

  "And meanwhile you'll be committing suicide?"

  "I'll be avenging fallen comrades," Jensen corrected. "And, with luck, I'll be helping bring all this to an end. Okay; on your feet."

  "Wait a second," Foxleigh said as Jensen took his arm helped him up. "What do you mean, bring it to an end? Bring what to an end?"

  "The Ryqril domination, of course," Jensen said. "What else is there?"

  "No—hold it," Foxleigh protested as Jensen started pulling him toward the tunnel. "How is shooting up one Ryqril base going to do that?"

  "Just part of the larger whole," Jensen said. "I'd love to chat about it, but I've got work to do." Gently but firmly he pushed Foxleigh through the opening. "Get going."

  "Jensen, I want to be a part of what you're doing," Foxleigh said, trying one final time. "I need to be a part of it."

  "And don't try to come back," Jensen added, shoving Foxleigh's gun into his own belt. "If you do, I'll kill you." Turning, he strode back across the room.

  Foxleigh watched him go, his heart feeling like a chunk of lead. It had been his absolute last chance.

  And he'd blown it.

  Jensen disappeared out the door. Foxleigh stood there a little longer, wondering if he should follow the other and try again. All the blackcollar could do would be to follow through on his warning and kill him.

  And one way or another, Foxleigh was already dead.

  With a sigh, he turned his back on the base. Yes, he was dead, but even a dead man had obligations. At the very least, Adamson deserved to hear the whole story, and to finally know what kind of person he'd spent all these years protecting.

  When he did, maybe the old medic would kill him himself.

  Lowering his head, balancing himself with his tied hands, he headed for home.

  * * *

  Skyler drifted back to consciousness with a sense that he was sitting up, his chin lolling against his chest, his arms pinioned together in front of him. Carefully, expecting to find himself in a Security interrogation cell, he opened his eyes.

  He wasn't inside a cell, or even indoors. He was seated on the ground not five meters from where they'd been attacked, his back braced against the trunk of a tree at the edge of the small clearing. His feet were free, but his forearms were pinned securely together by a pair of heavy-duty mag-lock shackles, the sort that couldn't be removed without special equipment. His nunchaku had been taken, as had his slingshot and the knives and shuriken from his various pouches and sheaths.

  He turned his head a couple of degrees to his left. Flynn was sitting against the next tree over, his head still bowed against his chest but his eyes half open as he worked his way awake. Beyond him at successive trees were O'Hara and Hawking, similarly trussed up, similarly coming awake.

  "Yae are arake," a Ryqril voice said.

  There didn't seem much point in pretending he wasn't. Opening his eyes all the way, Skyler lifted his head.

  A half dozen Security men were standing across the small clearing, some of them watching the four prisoners, the others peering into the now open air vent grating. Standing a few feet to the side were General Poirot, Colonel Bailey, and an unfamiliar man wearing lieutenant's insignia. Thirty meters above the clearing a Corsair hovered like a vulture waiting for its prey to die.

  And standing directly in front of Skyler, three meters away, were a pair of armed Ryqril.

  "Good day to you, khassq warrior," Skyler greeted the nearer of the two aliens, forcing his voice to remain calm as he eyed the other's distinctive baldric. He'd faced a few khassq during the war, and even with all his weapons and faculties to call on those contests had been tricky. Here, weaponless and with his hands pinioned, he wouldn't have wanted to face even a regular Ryqril warrior. "I'm Commando Rafe Skyler."

  "Khassq rarrior Halaak," the other rumbled, and Skyler found himself breathing a little easier. A khassq wouldn't bother giving his name if was planning a quick and simple kill. Exchanging names implied he intended to at least wait a while before dealing with the prisoners, and any extra time was to the blackcollars' advantage.

  He shifted his attention to the second Ryq. This one wore the less elaborate but equally distinctive baldric of a battle architect, the Ryqril equivalent of a senior tactical officer. "And good day to you as well, Battle Architect," he added.

  "And tae yae, Connando Skyler," the other said, his grating voice almost courteous. "I an 'Attle Architect Daasaa. Yae ha' 'ought rell and rith courage."

  "Thank you," Skyler said, not about to be out-courteoused by a mere Ryq. "General Poirot told me the Ryqril military had taken an interest in this operation. I had no idea just how serious that interest was, though." He looked past the Ryqril at Poirot. "You might have warned me, General."

  "And I might have betrayed my people and position," Poirot countered, his voice stiff. "Unfortunately for you, I did neither."

  "So I see," Skyler agreed, taking a moment to study Colonel Bailey and the unidentified lieutenant. Both of them were showing the same tension he could see in Poirot's face. "Your force seems rather heavy with senior officers, General. Is this some sort of refresher field trip?"

  "We just wanted to be in on the victory," Bailey said before Poirot could answer.

  "Or more likely, this just happens to be where your Ryqril masters told you to stand," O'Hara put in.

  Poirot's face went rigid. "Listen, blackcollar—"

  "Enou'," Daasaa cut him off tartly. "Yae rill now tell us, Connando, what tra's there are inside Aegis Nountain."

  "I don't know anything about any traps," Skyler said. "But if you're worried, I'd be more than happy to go in and check."

  "Yae rill not no'e 'ron that s'ot," Halaak growled.

  Daasaa murmured something to him in Ryqrili. Probably explaining the concept of sarcasm, Skyler guessed. "There is no need 'or that," the battle architect said. "Yaer 'ellow hunans rill disco'er any such dangers."

  There was a small flurry of commotion by the air vent, and a pair of techs in slightly dirty uniforms emerged through the opening into the late afternoon sunlight. Poirot and Bailey stepped over to them, and for a minute they talked together in low tones.

  "Skyler?" Flynn murmured from Skyler's side.

  "Yes, I'm here," Skyler said sourly, watching the two Ryqril. Halaak still had his eye on the prisoners, but Daasaa had half turned to face the conversation going on by the grating.

  "That trick throw of Mordecai's," Flynn said. "The spinning throw? He invented it to be used by a man in forearm shackles."

  "Really," Skyler said thoughtfully. Now that he thought about that, he could see that Flynn was right.

  Leave it to Mordecai. "You have anything left to throw?"

  "No," Flynn said. "But you do."

  Skyler's eyes dropped to the silver dragonhead ring on his right hand. "Understood," he murmured. "Let me pick the timing."

  Daasaa turned back. "So," he said. "Again General 'Oirot ras correct. The 'assage'ay is not large enou' 'or Ryqril tae 'ass. The hunans rill go in alone."

  Skyler suppressed a grimace. Into Aegis Mountain, where Jensen almost certainly had his own plan well underway. Unknow
ingly, probably uncaringly, the Ryqril were sending those men to their deaths. "I suppose they will," he murmured.

  For a moment Daasaa gazed at him, as if trying to read the alien human face. Then, with a snort, he turned away, pushing aside one of the long branches that hung just low enough for its leaves to brush the top of his head. "General 'Oirot, yae rill send yaer nen into the nountain," he ordered. "They rill 'ind the control 'or the nain door and o'en it."

  "As you command, Your Eminence," Poirot said. "I'd like permission to accompany them."

  "Denied," Daasaa said. "Yae and the other o'icers rill stay here."

  Poirot's lips compressed briefly. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said again.

  Halaak took a step closer to the prisoners. "Yae rill renain here, too," he added, his eyes glittering, his hand resting on the hilt of his short sword. "Unless yae rish tae try tae escape."

  So that was why they'd left the blackcollars' legs unshackled. "Looking to add a few blackcollars to your trophy wall?" he asked.

  "One o' yae killed a Ryqril rarrior outside the Aegis Nountain 'ase," Halaak said, his voice dark. "I rould relcone the chance tae a'enge his death."

  "I'm sure you would," Skyler said quietly. "Maybe you'll get your chance."

  CHAPTER 18

  The sun had disappeared behind the buildings of Inkosi City as Judas and the three Plinry blackcollars sat in a car at the town's southeastern edge. Visible through the sparse woodland to their right was the Khorstron Tactical Center. An hour or so until sundown, Judas estimated, plus another hour to allow dusk to turn into night, and the attack would finally begin.

  Seated beside him behind the steering wheel, Lathe stirred. "Almost time," he said.

  Judas frowned past him at the clear blue sky. "We're not waiting until full dark?"

  "With modern sensors there's not a lot of difference between day and night," Mordecai reminded him from the backseat.

  "Except that they'll also probably assume we'll wait until dark," Spadafora added from behind Judas.

  "The first rule of warfare is to try not to play to the enemy's expectations."

  "Of course," Judas murmured, wondering briefly if Galway and Haberdae would be caught by surprise by the schedule. If they weren't inside Khorstron already, he suspected, they weren't going to get there in time. "So how exactly is Shaw handling the initial attack?" he asked. "You're not all going to try to climb the fence at that one spot where the sensors got fried, are you?"

  "With the Ryqril in the bunkers shooting leisurely at us as we popped over?" Lathe pointed out. "No, we have some nice camouflage all prepared." He pointed. "Here it comes now."

  Judas peered out the windshield, shading his eyes with his hand. An unmarked panel truck was driving slowly down the access road leading to Khorstron's western fence gate. "I don't remember any truck bombs in the original planning," he said uneasily.

  "A truck bomb wouldn't work here," Spadafora told him. "The fence's sensor array includes explosives detectors. A load that big couldn't get within three blocks without setting them off."

  "Just stick with us, Caine," Lathe added. "We'll try to get you through what's ahead."

  "Wait a second," Judas said, his skin starting to crawl. "I thought I was supposed to be on the penetration team."

  "You are," Lathe said, smiling tightly as he gestured to the four of them. "We're it."

  Judas stared at him ... and before he could think of anything to say the truck blew up into a cloud of heavy, dense, white smoke.

  "Here we go," Lathe muttered as he started the car. "Filters."

  "What is that?" Judas asked as he fumbled for his gas filter.

  "It's your standard high-tech smoke screen," Spadafora said, his voice muffled by his own filter. "Shaw had a few left over from the war. Basically, it's a heavy chemical fog rich in suspended metallic particulates, which—well, there you go."

  The Ryqril in the two guard bunkers flanking the gate had opened fire on the truck now, its outline barely visible through the fog rolling its leisurely way toward the tac center on a stiff westerly breeze.

  With each laser shot, the entire cloud lit up like a brilliant green strobe light. "Not only does it scatter some of the laser light, thereby reducing its effectiveness," Spadafora went on, "but as an extra bonus, it bounces that light all around and right back into everyone's eyes."

  "Makes it very hard to see unless your goggles include a special polarized layer," Lathe added as he settled his own goggles into place. "Which ours do, of course."

  He'd barely finished when the laser barrage apparently hit a sensitive spot and the truck disintegrated into a burst of flame that lit up the billowing cloud even more brilliantly than the lasers had. "Phase One complete," Spadafora commented as a fresh surge of white smoke boiled upward like a volcanic plume and started falling leisurely over toward the tac center grounds.

  "Phase Two begun," Lathe said, pointing across Judas's chest. A dozen vehicles had suddenly appeared from various areas around the southern and western sides of the center, bouncing wildly as they drove at high speed through the trees. "They're coming in on the east and north sides, too," the comsquare added.

  All of them heading straight for the sensor fence, Judas saw, and the sonic trap Shaw had warned was built into the posts. "And what exactly is this supposed to accomplish?"

  "Just watch," Spadafora advised, an edge of malicious amusement in his voice. "Watch, and learn."

  * * *

  Taakh snarled something, and the half-dozen Ryqril techs seated at the security monitor room's wraparound console bent feverishly to work. "What did he say?" Haberdae muttered.

  "I don't know," Galway murmured back. In the year he'd spent with Taakh he'd managed to pick up a little bit of Ryqrili, but not nearly enough for a situation like this. And the conquerors had been very careful not to give any formal language instruction to their human slaves. "Best guess is that he wants them to analyze the smoke screen."

  Haberdae grunted and fell silent. Shifting his attention away from the approaching smoke, Galway concentrated instead on the monitors showing the views to north and south.

  One of the techs was giving a short speech now. Taakh listened in silence, then turned to the two humans. "It is a chenical cloud designed tae con'use sensors," he told them. "It also scatters sone o' the strength o' laser 'ire." He jabbed a finger at Galway. "Yae rill nake a note o' it."

  Galway nodded. "As you command, Your Eminence."

  The Ryq turned back to the monitors. The smoke had passed the fence, Galway saw, and was starting to roll around the building itself.

  And there they were, right on cue: fifty cars appearing suddenly from streets and driveways and from beneath camo nets, all of them charging at full speed straight toward the Khorstron fence.

  One of the techs had obviously seen them, too. He snapped something at Taakh, and the big khassq stepped to his side. "Are they 'ools tae think re rill 'e caught un're'ared?" he growled contemptu-ously.

  "Maybe they're a diversion while the real infiltration team sneaks over the fence where they fried the sensors," Haberdae suggested. "Without sensors, you'll never spot them in this damn smoke."

  "Somehow, I don't think sneaking is the plan," Galway said.

  "I thought that's what blackcollars did best," Haberdae growled.

  Galway nodded at the monitors. "Let's find out."

  The smoke screen was filling the entire grounds now, and the techs had switched the displays from straight visual to the false-color images of sensor scans. Galway had never found such scans to be very clear, and even the best of the images were now being hampered further by snowlike flickers. The worst of them showed nothing but multicolored static. "Those must be the pictures coming from the sensors on the building," Haberdae said, gesturing toward the latter group.

  "With the ones where you can actually see something coming from the sensors in the fence posts,"

  Galway agreed, nodding. "Whatever they've got in that smoke, it's
damn good."

  Haberdae grunted. "I just hope they don't realize how blind we really are."

  Around the perimeter, the cars were braking to a halt, stopping ten to fifteen meters back from the fence.

  The doors swung open and blackcollars emerged into the smoke in groups of three, each group huddling close together as they hurried across the remaining distance. "What are they doing?" Haberdae demanded, starting to sound uneasy. "I thought they knew about the sonics in the fence posts."

  "That's what Judas said," Galway agreed. The groups reached the fence, and in near-perfect unison the two end men in each set reached down to grab the feet of the man in the middle and hurl him up and over the fence.

  Haberdae inhaled sharply. "What the hell—?"

  "Relax," Galway said, pointing to the monitors as the flying blackcollars hit the ground and toppled over to lie flat and unmoving. "They're down. The sonic must have gotten them."

  "The sonic and the mines," Haberdae corrected, pointing to the grounds schematic where five orange lights were flashing at various points just inside the fence. "I wonder whether that flexarmor is good enough to block scud grenade needles."

  Across the room, one of the techs spat something. "So that is their 'lan," Taakh rumbled. "The in'iltrators carry large quantities o' ex'losi'es."

  "You think they're trying to blast the fence?" Haberdae asked.

  "They could have done that from the outside and stayed away from the sonic and mines," Galway reminded him. On the displays, the shadowy images of the blackcollars still outside were drifting away, heading back toward their cars.

  "'Re'ect Galray is correct," Taakh agreed. "They think tae wait until the sur'i'ing in'iltrators are reco'ered, then use their ex'losi'es tae 'last down the doors."

  "While meanwhile the blackcollars still outside drive the cars through the fence?" Haberdae suggested.

  "I' that is their 'lan, they rill 'e disa'ointed," Taakh said with malicious satisfaction. "The 'ence is 'ar tae strong tae crash through."

  "Meanwhile, we have the inside group to deal with," Haberdae reminded him.