by Timothy Zahn
Galway shrugged. "Something like that," he said. Unlike Quinn, the prefect didn't seem to be getting any special pleasure out of this.
"He's been very useful, too," Quinn said, "and not only regarding this mission. We'll be able to take that snake school of yours apart as soon as we debrief him fully and get a squad of commandos out to Plinry."
Caine bit down hard on his tongue, knowing full well that that was the kind of reaction Quinn was looking for but not giving a damn. The cameras in the room would be recording all their expressions and body language for later analysis, and he knew he should be sitting as passively as Lathe, Skyler, and Jensen beside him. But he couldn't. He'd trained with Pittman, had worked side by side with him, had risked his life with him... and the realization that he'd been so wrong about the other's character was more than he could bear.
"Of course," Quinn went on offhandedly, "the Ryqril might consider leaving your people alone for a while if we knew what your mission here was—keep their paperwork and records clean, you know.
It had to do with Aegis Mountain, didn't it?"
"Why don't you go to hell?" Lathe suggested conversationally. "You're just wasting our time here, Quinn, and you know it. We're not giving anything away free, and your chances of getting it without our cooperation range from slim to zero."
Quinn snorted. "And you're of course sticking to your ridiculous offer of information for the release of your teammates? Don't make me laugh, Lathe."
The comsquare shrugged. "Suit yourself. So, Galway: enjoying your visit to the homeworld?"
The prefect remained silent, and Caine shifted his eyes from the two seated officials to the knot of three Security guards lounging four meters away by the room's door. Standing there with no special alertness—no lasers or other heavy weaponry, their paral-dart pistols still in their holsters—it was a breakout begging to happen. And Caine could almost cry with frustration... because as vulnerable as the guards looked, they might as well have been in an armored bunker a klick away. Seated naked on bolted-down chairs, hands cuffed behind their backs and ankles hobbled by twenty centimeters of chain, he and the blackcollars were about as helpless as Caine could imagine being. About the only other thing Quinn could have done would have been to chain them bodily to their chairs, and it was slowly becoming apparent that the general's failure to do that was, along with the sloppy guard arrangement, a deliberate touch designed to tantalize his prisoners.
Caine didn't know about the others, but for him the gambit certainly worked. And it made him hate the bastard even more.
Lost in his own thoughts, he was startled when Galway abruptly got to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, General," the prefect said, "I'd like to get back to the situation room, see if there's any word on Mordecai."
"Sit down, Galway," Quinn said coldly. "You've spent a lot of your time here foam-mouthing about how these blackcollars of yours were unstoppable and unbreakable. Well, you were wrong about the first, and you're damn well going to watch while I prove you wrong about the second, too."
Skyler stirred, his ankle hobbles clinking as he did so. "You make friends wherever you go, don't you, Quinn?" he said dryly. "You know, I'll bet that if I walked over there and started beating your head in, half your subordinates would line up outside that door to buy tickets to the show."
Quinn glowered at him. "Perhaps we ought to experiment—but with you as the subject. What do you think of th—"
The last word was cut off by the abrupt blaring of alarm horns outside in the hallway. "What the hell?" Quinn snarled, turning to look at the door. "Sergeant, find out what's going on out there."
"Yes, sir." One of the guards reached for the door— It happened so quickly that if Caine's eyes hadn't already turned back to the blackcollars he would have missed it completely. Without warning, Skyler suddenly dropped out of his chair onto his back, knees tucked tightly against his chest.
Almost before he'd even hit the floor, Jensen was also in motion, throwing himself full-length onto the big blackcollar as if attacking him. He landed with his belly on Skyler's feet—
And with a convulsive shove, Skyler kicked the other over his head to crash into the knot of guards.
The Security men didn't have a chance. Bound hand and foot and without any balance to speak of, Jensen still tore into them like a tiger into sheep. His head, knees, and feet became blurs as he knocked the guards to the floor, jabbing them to death with short but vicious blows even as they struggled impotently to escape.
A motion to his right caught Caine's eye, and he turned to see Lathe similarly sprawled over Quinn and Galway, holding them down as Skyler rolled over to assist him. Breaking his paralysis, Caine got to his feet and hopped over to where Jensen was levering himself to a kneeling position. "Check their pockets for the key to these things," the blackcollar instructed, already searching one of the limp forms himself. Swallowing, shame at his own inaction hot on his cheeks, Caine obeyed.
"Got it," Skyler announced. "Right where you'd expect—didn't trust anyone but yourself with the key, did you, General?"
"Damn—you," Quinn managed, the sound muffled by his own arm pinned across his mouth. "You'll never get off this floor alive."
"Really? I've heard that song before." Releasing his restraints, Skyler freed Lathe and then tossed the keys across to Caine.
"What's going on?" Caine asked, twisting around to pick up the keys and setting to work on Jensen's wrist cuffs. An uncomfortable suspicion was starting to set in. "Is that Mordecai running amok out there?"
"Mordecai and Pittman both," Lathe told him, fastening his former restraints securely around Quinn.
"At least—"
"Pittman?" Caine gasped. Across the room Galway inhaled sharply. "But Quinn said—"
"Oh, come on, Caine," Skyler chided mildly as he fastened Galway's ankles to one of the chairs.
"You know better than to take a collie's word for anything, don't you? How's it look out there, Jensen?"
Jensen had opened the door a crack and was peering out cautiously. "All the activity's around the corner down there, near the elevator. If we hurry, we ought to be able to surprise the collies with a rear-action sortie." Squatting down, he started to strip the uniform from one of the guards.
"Good," Lathe nodded. "Just make sure Mordecai doesn't get you in the process." He turned back to Quinn. "You'll forgive us if we take leave of your hospitality," he said, reaching down to draw the general's paral-dart pistol from its holster. "Pleasant dreams, and better luck next time."
"You won't get out of here alive," Quinn spat, his face contorted with fury... and then the burst of needles caught him in the chest and he slumped in his chair.
"Lathe," Galway said as the comsquare turned to him. "If you're not lying—if Pittman's really on your side—"
"I know," Lathe said. "One way or another, it'll all be over soon."
Galway hissed between clenched teeth, his expression a mirror of emotions too convoluted for Caine to unravel. Then Lathe's pistol cracked and the prefect joined Quinn in helplessness.
A minute later the former prisoners were outside in the hall. "Let's get at them," Lathe said briskly,
"and hope Mordecai got the armory open before they sealed it from downstairs. We'll need what's inside some of the nunchaku if we're going to get out of here."
Caine took a deep breath. "Whatever you've got in mind, I hate it already."
The comsquare almost smiled. "As it happens, Caine, the hard part is actually over. Help me make sure all the cameras and microphones are disabled and I'll tell you all about it."
—
"Well?" Major Eberly O'Dae demanded.
The man at the monitor bank shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry, Major, but without vision and audio there's no way to tell for sure what's happening up there. All I can say is that there's no more running going on anymore—people are still walking around, but no one's running."
O'Dae cursed under his breath. So the fighting was over—or else had
gone to a stalemate siege—and there was no way to tell which side was on top. Though it unfortunately wasn't too hard to make a good guess.
And General Quinn was square in the middle of it.
"You're sure they got into the armory?" he asked, wishing an instant later that he'd kept his mouth shut. It was at least the third time he'd asked that same question, and the others were bound to notice that.
There was a general shuffling of feet around the situation room, and the man at the monitors threw him an odd look before answering. "Yes, sir, quite certain. They haven't been fired yet, but the power-pack readings show several of the laser rifles have definitely been moved from the armory to other parts of the floor."
"The fact the lasers haven't been fired probably means the blackcollars are in control," someone murmured from the side.
"I'd figured that out, thank you," O'Dae growled. When you don't need a senior officer, he thought bitterly, they're always right there on top of you. Colonel Poirot was supposed to be on his way, but until he got here O'Dae was in charge of this mess, and he knew full well he was out of his depth.
"Major! Got something now," the man at the monitor announced abruptly. "Laser fire... about fifteen meters down the hall from—ah-ha." He looked up. "They're trying to burn through the wall by the main elevator bank, the ones that bypass five."
O'Dae felt a flood of relief. "Oh, they are, are they?" he said, and someone else snickered. The steel protecting those elevator shafts was specially reinforced against just this trick; the prisoners could fire all night and most of the next day without breaking through.
Which meant that O'Dae was off the hook. However long it took Poirot to get here, he could now afford to simply sit back and wait until then. The blackcollars weren't going anywhere—
"Major!"
O'Dae turned and looked over the crowd to the man at the audio comm panel. "Yes, what is it?"
"Explosion outside the Central Municipal Building, sir—the night guards there say the door's been blown."
"What?" O'Dae shoved through the others to the panel, stomach churning with fresh tension. The Central Muni held a lot of records, more than a few of them top-classified. Not to mention several pieces of equipment that were well-nigh irreplaceable. "Anyone trying to get in?"
"Not yet—at least they don't think so," the other said, shaking his head. "But they want some backup, fast."
"No kidding. Captain! Get a double squad over there, on the slider."
"Yes, sir." The officer left the situation room at a dead run.
O'Dae took a ragged breath, but he'd barely let it out before the man beside him swore. "Damn it.
Major—another blast, this one near the spotter hangar."
O'Dae stared, hardly believing it. "What the hell—that was near the hangar, Corporal? Not in?"
"Report says near, sir. But it could be just a diversion."
The major grimaced as that thought penetrated the tension surrounding his mind and then split, amoeba-style, into two equally nasty possibilities. A diversion as prelude to an attack on Athena's air power? Or a diversion designed to empty the Security building itself of troops? It could be either...
and the real hell of it was that it didn't matter. He had to send reinforcements to those other buildings, just in case. Which meant he could likely have a skeleton crew available here if the blackcollars tired of their attack on the elevators and tried to simply fight their way out.
And there was only one way he could think of to prevent that. If the blackcollars were indeed relying on allies skulking around Athena to set up their escape for them, the last thing he could afford was to allow them control of the timetable. "Lieutenant Baker, what's the situation with the elevator to five?" he called to the man at the detention monitors.
"Uh... we've got the override set up, Major," the other reported. "The blackcollars can't use it to get down."
"I was thinking more of our using it to get up," O'Dae growled. "Are the spotters up and in place?"
"One hovering in view of each side of the building. They can't see much, though—they're keeping their distance."
Cowards. Still, as long as they prevented anyone from sliding out a window on a rope, it didn't much matter how far back they were. "Still no response from the gas flood system, I take it?"
"No, sir. I think they must have disabled it at the same time they took out the cameras."
O'Dae grimaced. He'd been holding out hope that someone had just left a switch turned off in the control room or something. And without the floor's remote defenses to rely on, there was only one way to preempt any escape attempt. "Order the commando squad to get ready," he told the other. "I'll lead the first wave in myself."
The man's lip twitched, but he nodded. "Yes, sir. Do you want the medics along with them?"
"No—stretcher teams will be called up when a given area's clear, but the medics themselves will wait in the infirmary. We're going to have a lot of casualties to take care of, and I don't want to risk any of the medics too close to the fighting."
"Yes, sir." The other paused, listening. "All right, Major; the squad's ready anytime. Armed, armored, and they've been shown pictures of all the blackcollars up there. Including Mordecai and Pittman."
"Good." O'Dae sure as hell didn't want one or more of the blackcollars donning Security uniforms and walking blithely out through the front door. "We'll attack as soon as I get up there."
—
The elevator slowed, came to a stop. "Get ready," O'Dae murmured, his voice sounding oddly hollow as it echoed inside his armored faceplate. The door slid open, and he threw himself out of the car to land in kneeling position three meters down the hallway, laser rifle raised and ready.
Anticlimax. No laser beams lanced out, no one hurled any of those damned throwing stars at them, no one even looked out of any of the rooms or cross corridors to see what was happening. In fact, if it hadn't been for the bodies scattered down the hallway, it would have been easy to believe nothing at all had happened here.
The motionless, unnaturally twisted bodies. O'Dae looked once, then turned his eyes quickly away, stomach churning inside him. "O'Dae to monitor," he called into his mike. "Laser fire still going on down by the elevator shaft?"
"Negative, sir," the reply came in his ear. "Lasers have stopped firing and have been moved... looks like to the southeastern corner of the floor."
The safe room, of course. O'Dae's lip twisted into a grim smile. Yes, the blackcollars would have the brains to hole up there when their timetable was disrupted—nowhere else on five could hold out against laser fire for long.
Which meant O'Dae's hunch had been correct—they were expecting to be rescued. "Double the guard on the building's entrances," he ordered into his mike. "An assault could come at any time."
"Yes, sir. Is it clear enough to send litter teams up there?"
O'Dae scanned the hall once more. "Yeah, go ahead and send the first team up—second commando wave can follow them."
"Acknowledged."
Though at the moment it was still an open question as to whether or not the casualties were beyond the medics' help. "Hanson, Peters—check this group for survivors," O'Dae ordered, gesturing around them. "Tag anyone who's alive for the stretchers. The rest of you'll come with me down the hall and make sure they haven't left a rear guard to ambush us."
Carefully, he set off, his men flanking him. The first two rooms they checked were empty, the third had two bodies lying in it... and the fourth had a survivor.
He was just getting gingerly to his knees, hands cradling his head, as they entered. "Who—? Oh, God, you're here," he said hoarsely.
O'Dae stepped forward and caught the man's arm as he started to weave again, helped him into a sitting position. "How do you feel?" he asked, eyes darting briefly to the sloppily tied bandage covering the back and side of the other's head and the blood that was still dribbling out from beneath it.
"Lousy," the other groaned. "Dizzy. I got the blee
ding stopped... must have fainted again. Can I sit down?"
O'Dae started to tell him he was sitting, thought better of it. "Why don't you lie down instead?" he suggested. "The stretchers'll be here in a minute to take you downstairs."
"Okay," the other sighed. Already he was beginning to fade again. Beside him lay the medkit he'd apparently managed to get down from the wall; bunching up another of the kit's bandages, O'Dae made a pillow for the other's head and laid him down on it. Almost as an afterthought, he took a moment to study the other's face. Young, smooth, almost feminine—a fresh recruit, probably, or else someone whose family could buy more Idunine than they either needed or deserved....
Resolutely, O'Dae turned his eyes away. Whoever he was, he definitely wasn't one of the blackcollars. "What are you all standing around here for?" he snapped at the rest of the squad grouped around him. "Let's get back to business."
They stepped back into the hall and continued on their cautious way. Behind them, barely audible through their armor, came a noise, and O'Dae turned around as a stretcher team emerged from the elevator and moved to the first of the crumpled bodies. "One in here, too," he called to them, pointing toward the room he'd just left. Their officer waved in acknowledgment, and O'Dae turned away with an odd feeling of relief. Hunting escaped prisoners could be highly unpleasant duty, especially if there was shooting to be done, but he would take it over stretcher carrying any day of the month. At least with prisoner hunting it was the enemy who usually got hurt, not his fellow Security men.
And some of the enemy were going to be hurt tonight. O'Dae was going to make damn sure of that.
Gripping his laser tighter, he hurried to catch up with his men as, behind him, the second wave of commandos arrived.
Chapter 28
Galway's head had fallen forward in such a way that the door was out of his sight, and his first clue that the rescuers were at hand was the tingle of a needle in his arm as paral-drug antidote was injected. "We'll have you out of here in a minute, sir," someone murmured in his ear. "Please be as quiet as possible—we think the blackcollars are holed up in the safe room across the hall, and we don't want them to know we're here until we're ready to blow them out of there."
