by Timothy Zahn
"That tavern they first stopped at," Haberdae growled.
"Right," Galway said, nodding. "Shaw's people got there first and set up surveillance. When we took off with Caine, they just followed us up to the strongpoint." He looked at Judas. "And from that point on, everything that was said and done in your presence was designed to throw you—and us—off their real plan."
"All the backbiting between Lathe and Shaw," Judas murmured, his face looking suddenly old. "The changed plans, the fake hints—all of it."
"All of it," Galway said mechanically, his thoughts freezing. Judas—the blackcollars—
"Rhat then ras their 'lan?" Taakh demanded.
"Their plan was me," Galway said, turning back to the Ryq. "Everything they did from the moment they landed was aimed toward one of two goals: to get them into Khorstron, and to get me alone for a few minutes."
"Rich they did last night."
"Exactly," Galway said, taking a casual step toward Judas. "Caine was running on his own timetable, with orders to make some kind of escape attempt after a couple of days that would hopefully lure me out of Inkosi City and up into the mountains to check on him. They already had Spadafora in position to fry the entryway sensors so that they could get in and gimmick my car while I was inside."
"Yet yae are loyalty-conditioned," Taakh said.
"I was," Galway corrected. "I just learned last night that they have a drug called Whiplash that breaks loyalty-conditioning."
"That is not 'ossi'le," Taakh said flatly.
Galway spread his hands to the sides. "I'm proof that it works," he pointed out, taking another step to his side. One more step, and he would be beside Judas's chair.
"But why?" Judas asked, clearly still not understanding. "They were already running rings around us.
What did they need you for?"
"Many things," Galway told him. "Because they weren't running rings around us, not really. Not until this afternoon. If you think back, Your Eminence, I was the one who suggested that the bunker fire was probably a diversion. I also pointed out that one of the dummies had been tossed on top of the south tunnel and suggested Shaw's men might be trying for a breach there." He looked at Haberdae. "And of course, I'm the one who turned off the corridor lasers after Haberdae turned them on."
"Fine," Haberdae said. "So they get into Khorstron. So what? There's nothing useful in here for them to steal."
"It was never about stealing anything," Galway said, taking the step that put him at Judas's side.
"Khorstron was just a means to an end. The real point of the plan is much more subtle." He turned back to face Taakh, letting his hand drop casually to Judas's left wrist.
And as he did so, his fingertips pressed against the tingler beneath the other's flexarmor sleeve.
He didn't know blackcollar tingler code. But he didn't have to. Hopefully, a long, sustained signal would be properly interpreted as a cry for help. "You see, Your Eminence, what this little exercise has demonstrated is that your universe has abruptly changed," he told Taakh. "If we can penetrate right to the center of a Ryqril base—"
"Your Eminence!" Judas barked, his eyes suddenly wide. "He's signaling with my tingler!"
"Stand aray," Taakh snarled, taking a long step forward, his hand lifted to strike.
Galway dived to his left, trying to get out of the other's reach. But the khassq was too big and too fast.
His hand slapped across the side of Galway's head hard enough to spin him halfway around.
The prefect tumbled to the floor, a stab of pain knifing through his head and neck as he scrabbled back up into a sitting position. Shoving against the floor with his feet, his bloody hands raised in front of his face, he slithered backward, trying to get away from the killing blow that would certainly be coming next.
But the blow didn't come. His back bumped up against the wall, and still the blow didn't come.
Carefully, hesitantly, he lowered his hands.
Taakh wasn't looking at him. He was turned to face the door, his hands curled into claws at his sides.
And standing facing him just inside the doorway was Mordecai.
For a moment they just stood there, gazing silently across the gap between them, each warrior apparently sizing up the other. Then, abruptly, Taakh leaped sideways, grabbed Judas's chair, and heaved it and Judas straight at Mordecai.
The blackcollar was far too quick to be caught that easily. He sidestepped effortlessly, leaving Judas to continue on to crash with a yelp onto the floor beside the door.
But Taakh hadn't really cared whether Mordecai was caught by the chair or not. Even as the blackcollar dodged, the khassq dived across the room behind the rest of the chairs, his outstretched hands reaching for the laser he'd knocked earlier from Galway's grip.
But if Mordecai was too fast to be caught by a thrown chair, he was also too smart to be taken in by such an obvious diversion. Taakh was still two meters from the laser when a shuriken flashed across the room to bury itself into the weapon's side. There was a flicker of light and a brief cloud of sparks, and the weapon was dead.
Taakh scooped it up anyway, squeezed the trigger once to make sure, then spun and hurled it at Mordecai's head. Again Mordecai managed to evade the missile, but this time it cost him the accuracy of his next shuriken. The throwing star flashed past Taakh's head without connecting as the Ryq dodged out of the way and again threw himself across the room, this time aiming for his short sword. Another shuriken caught him in the upper arm as he hit the floor and rolled back to his feet with the sword ready in his hand. Spinning around to face Mordecai, he pulled the shuriken from his arm and charged.
The blackcollar leaped to the side, whipping out his nunchaku and spinning it in a blinding arc toward Taakh's head. The Ryq swung his sword up to meet the flail, and the weapons met with an earsplitting crash and a brief shower of hardwood splinters. Taakh let the impact bounce the sword back, riding its altered momentum around in a tight circle and stabbing up toward Mordecai's side. The blackcollar danced back out of its way, and as the tip burned bare millimeters past his ribs he snapped his left arm down and around, catching the back of Taakh's sword hand with his own forearm and adding a little extra momentum to his thrust. Taakh seemed to stumble as his center of balance was thrown off; twisting around, Mordecai threw a spinning kick at the Ryq's torso as he simultaneously swung the nunchaku at his head.
The flail missed, but the kick connected. With a grunt, Taakh swung his sword again, a pair of quick, downward blows toward Mordecai's shoulders and head. The blackcollar dodged both attacks and leaped back out of range, his back bouncing against the wall as he suddenly ran out of maneuvering room. With a roar, Taakh leaped forward, this time swinging his sword horizontally at Mordecai's torso. Ducking under the blow, Mordecai braced one hand against the wall and snapped a side kick into the alien's abdomen.
It was a solid, powerful blow, the sheer impact of it sending Taakh staggering back. Shoving off the wall, Mordecai followed it up with another nunchaku attack, but the Ryq managed to get his sword back up in time to block the swinging flail. But the impact threw him a little farther off balance, allowing Mordecai to duck past him away from the wall and back into the center of the room. Taakh spun to face him, and for another moment the two opponents seemed to pause, sword and nunchaku poised and ready.
For Galway, his head and neck and fingers throbbing as he gazed at the tableau, it was a moment of unrelieved blackness. Taakh, khassq-class warrior of the Ryq, stood strong and tall and muscular, hardly affected by the blows his opponent had managed to land. Mordecai, human blackcollar, was unmarked, but in the confined space of the monitor room he could hardly avoid his enemy forever.
And with the Ryq standing nearly twice his height and pulling perhaps three times his weight, it wouldn't take more than a single solid punch or sword slash to bring the fight to an end.
Galway looked desperately around the room, searching for something—anything—he could use as a weapon. Somet
hing he could use to tip the odds even a little in Mordecai's direction.
He was still looking when Taakh, his moment of combat meditation apparently over, leaped again to the attack.
Once again, he slashed his sword down toward Mordecai's head. This time, though, Mordecai didn't simply dodge away, but instead lifted his nunchaku upright, one stick gripped in each hand with the connecting plastic chain stretched horizontally above him, ready to receive the blow. The blade slammed into the chain, its momentum pressing it downward toward Mordecai's head. Turning his body out from under the descending weapon, Mordecai swiveled one of the nunchaku sticks around, letting the sword's momentum carry the weapon down past his shoulder. Before Taakh could recover his balance, the blackcollar swung his left arm around the sword point, looping the nunchaku around the weapon. The chain wrapped solidly around the base of the blade, trapping it in place.
Taakh's roar of anger changed to a grunt of pain as Mordecai slammed his right elbow across the other's forearm, clearly trying to shake the sword loose from his grip. He slammed the Ryq's arm again; and then Taakh took a long step backward, gripped the sword with both hands, and pulled up and back.
Mordecai tried to hold on, but the Ryq's size and weight were far more than he could handle. Even as he was lifted bodily off the floor he let go with his left hand and allowed the nunchaku to swing around and away from the blade as Taakh continued to yank the sword upward. Both of them raced to get their weapons back under firm control; Mordecai won by a fraction of a second, swinging a stinging nunchaku blow across Taakh's face before being forced to leap away from the sword's whistling slash.
Lifting the weapon again, the Ryq leaped forward, pressing his attack as he tried to once again to push Mordecai to the wall. But he was finally starting to show some fatigue, and his swinging weapon was moving marginally but noticeably slower. Mordecai dodged with relative ease, and again managed to slip out of the potential trap and back to the center of the room.
But Mordecai was slowing down, too, missing two of his blocks as he fended off the flashing sword, only reflex and luck keeping the blows from taking him out of the fight permanently. He was in trouble; and as Galway watched helplessly, he realized suddenly that Mordecai was trying to work his way back to the door and escape.
Taakh saw it, too. With every step toward the door that Mordecai tried to take, the Ryq countered with one that forced him back toward the center of the room.
And then, as Taakh continued to press him back, Mordecai's foot caught the edge of the laser Taakh had thrown at him earlier, and he jerked slightly as he tried to regain his balance.
It was all the opening Taakh needed. Leaping forward, he slashed his sword downward again toward Mordecai's head. With his feet still tangled beneath him, Mordecai had no option but to once again swing his nunchaku up in a two-handed grip and catch the descending blade on the chain. Twisting to the side, barely making it in time, he again whipped the left-hand stick around the sword, twisting the chain around the hilt.
Only this time, Taakh was ready. Instead of simply pulling back and trying to free his sword, he reached over with his free hand and wrapped his hand around Mordecai's in an unbreakable grip.
And with that, Galway knew, it was all over. In his mind's eye he could see the inevitable outcome: Mordecai hauled off his feet, dangling helplessly in midair from his own nunchaku while the Ryq kicked him into a bloody, broken puppet. With a triumphant bellow, Taakh planted his feet and heaved himself backward, his massive shoulder and arm and back muscles bulging as he pulled the puny human off the floor.
Only to Galway's astonishment, Mordecai didn't resist the maneuver. Instead, he moved with it, leaping upward as he pulled down on his nunchaku for extra power, his efforts combining with Taakh's to send him flying toward the ceiling. Tucking his knees to his chest, rotating around the pivot point like an athlete around a high bar, he swung completely over the startled khassq's shoulder, straightening out his legs again as his body slammed hard against Taakh's back. Arching his own back, he pulled with all his strength on the nunchaku still wrapped around the base of the sword blade.
And with Ryqril muscles still pulling the sword up, and human ones pulling it down and back, the sword tip was driven solidly into Taakh's forehead.
Some trick of balance and locked muscles held the Ryq upright for another half second. Then, without a sound, his legs collapsed beneath him, and he toppled over onto the floor.
Slowly, Galway tore his eyes away from the dead khassq and looked at Mordecai. "You killed him," he heard himself say.
"Yeah," Mordecai said, breathing hard. "It seemed the thing to do."
"What happens now?" Judas asked, his voice shaking.
Galway looked down again at Taakh. "Nothing," he said. "It's all over."
* * *
"The bottom line," Skyler said, "is that it's all over."
Daasaa's eyes flicked to Bailey, standing under Flynn's watchful eye, then back to Skyler. "I dae not understand."
"I think you do," Skyler said. "In fact, as a battle architect, you probably understand better than any Ryq on the planet." He nodded back at Halaak's body. "Certainly better than he would have."
Daasaa shook his head. "Yae cannot 'ight us," he insisted. "There are not enou' o' yae tae rin."
"But that's just the problem—you don't know how many of us there are," Skyler said. "Worse than that, you don't know who we are." He pointed at the crumpled bodies of Poirot and the lieutenant. "You see, you don't have just a single Judas in your governmental ranks, or even just two or three. You have a whole army of them. And there's no way to identify them. Not until it's too late."
"Then re rill sin'ly reno'e all o' they," Daasaa countered.
"You can't do that, either," Skyler countered right back. "There aren't nearly enough of you in the TDE
to control us without the collaborationist bureaucracy you've set in place. Your only option would be to bring in a bunch of troops to take their place. Only you can't, because if you do you won't have enough forces to keep back the Chryselli."
"You see, friend, you've suddenly run into military doctrine's number one blunder," Hawking put in.
"You've got yourselves a two-front war."
"Yae cannot 'ight us," Daasaa insisted again. "Re can destroy yaer cities rhene'er re rish."
"Can you?" Skyler asked pointedly. "Can you really? Aside from the defenses around your private enclaves and maybe a few hundred Corsairs, you have practically nothing in the TDE under your direct control. Most of the weaponry is handled by your tame Security forces ... who aren't going to be tame much longer."
For a long minute Daasaa didn't reply. Skyler listened to the distant chirping of the evening insects, mentally crossing his fingers. If Daasaa didn't go for this, the TDE was going to be in for a long, bloody nightmare of attrition that could end up being worse than anything they'd seen during the actual war itself. "Re rill not gi' u' rithout 'attle," the Ryq said at last.
"But it's a battle you can't win," Skyler told him. "Oh, you can certainly kill a lot of humans, if that's what matters to you. But we have the numbers, and with Whiplash we'll have access to the weaponry, and the people, and the inner fortresses. Eventually, inevitably, you'll lose." He paused. "But there is an alternative."
Daasaa's dark eyes were steady on him. "I an listening."
"You leave," Skyler said flatly. "All of you—tonight, tomorrow, next week, but you all leave. You pull out your people and your troops—hell, take all the weapons you can stuff aboard your ships if you want to. But you pull out."
Daasaa barked a short, derisive laugh. "And this gains us rhat?"
"It gains you breathing space," Skyler said. "You see, if you pull out slowly, scorching the ground as you go, you'll give humanity time to organize and build back the political control systems we need to function as a cohesive society. But if you leave now—" he grimaced "—I guarantee months or years of chaos as your government flunkies try to hold onto power an
d the various Resistance groups try to seize it and everyone else just tries to figure out how the hell this freedom thing works. We've seen it happen time and time again when a nation or region is suddenly freed from tyranny. Trust me, it'll happen this time, too."
Daasaa snorted, his gaze drifting to the bodies of the two Security officers Halaak had killed. "Sone
'eo'les rere not neant to 'e 'ree," he said contemptuously.
"Sometimes I wonder about that myself," Skyler conceded. "And you're welcome to think that we're not fit to be anything but Ryqril slaves if that makes you feel better. Only believe me when I tell you it's the only way."
Daasaa shook his head. "The high connand rill not acce't this," he said. "Re need the 'actories and rea'ons
'roduction lines."
"They're gone, Battle Architect," Skyler said. "Your weapons plants will be the first things we go after.
We'll infiltrate Whiplashed people and either take them over or blow them up."
"Thousands o' yaer 'eo'le rill die."
"So will dozens of yours," Skyler countered. "I've already said that you can hold on for a while if you really want to. But it'll cost you time and energy and people, none of which you can spare. And in the end you'll be forced out anyway."
He gestured up toward the sky. "Maybe you can win against the Chryselli while we're fumbling around trying to figure out who the mayor and governor and dogcatcher should be. Maybe you can't. But it's your only hope of avoiding a two-front war that you absolutely cannot win."
Daasaa snorted again, but this time it was a softer, more contemplative sound. "I rill take yaer 'ro'osal tae the high connand," he said. "They rill decide."
"Just tell them to decide quickly," Skyler warned.
"I rill take that nessage." Daasaa hesitated. "It rill take nearly a nonth tae recei'e a decision," he said.
"Rill yae halt yaer attacks until then?"
Skyler thought it over. Considering how miniscule an army they actually had at the moment, it would be a ridiculously easy promise to make. "Agreed, provided you take no action against us in the meantime," he said. "And provided you release the two Phoenix members you still have in custody."
