Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"Good afternoon," Nikolos greeted them as he stepped into the cabin between a pair of Warriors. "I wish I could say I was pleased to see you."

Caroline glanced at her husband, caught the quick twitch of his lip. Clearly, he wasn't any more surprised to see Nikolos than she was. "Likewise," Roger told the Command-Tactician. "Cozy setup you have here."

"We like it," Nikolos said, gesturing them to the couch as he eased himself into one of the two rickety cabriolet chairs. The wicker protested under his weight, but held. "Let me guess," he went on.

"It was that comment I made about pulling back to upstate New York."

"Basically," Roger confirmed as he and Caroline also sat down.

Nikolos nodded heavily. "I knew it was a mistake the minute I said it, but all I could do was hope you hadn't noticed. Dare I ask how you found this place so quickly?"

"Dare we ask where Melantha is?" Roger countered.

"I wish I knew," Nikolos said ruefully. "I certainly don't have her."

"Of course not," Roger said. "And this is just your summer retreat, right?"

"No, this is precisely what I'm sure you've already surmised," Nikolos said calmly. "Our last fallback position, prepared in the event that the Grays succeed in pushing us out of the city."

"Where you can continue the fight on your own terms?"

Nikolos shook his head. "If we're pushed back here, the war will already have been lost," he said.

"This will become little more than our final resting place, a land where our remaining people can fade back into the shadows of the hills and woods."

"Or a place where you can relax in comfort while Melantha destroys New York and the Grays?"

Caroline suggested, her throat tight.

There was a smoldering fire in Nikolos's eyes as he turned to her. "Look, Humans, it's my job to protect my people from our enemies," he bit out. "If dropping a few buildings is what it takes to accomplish that, then yes, that's exactly what I'll do."

"But only if you can persuade Melantha to cooperate," Roger said.

"I don't need Melantha," Nikolos shot back, leaning forward in his emotion, his hands gripping the armrests of his chair. "Damian can—"

He broke off abruptly. "I'm afraid you're going to have to be our guests for awhile," he said, his voice suddenly stiff and formal as he stood up. "Accommodations are being prepared for you at the main house. The Group Commander will send for you in about an hour."

Turning his back on them, he headed for the door. "Just remember one thing," Roger called after him. "If you want to kill Grays, you're right, we probably can't stop you. But if you start wrecking buildings and killing our people, this retreat of yours won't hide you for long."

"We hid from the Others for generations," Nikolos countered, half turning to look over his shoulder at them. "And they at least knew who and what they were looking for. You really think we can't hide from a people who don't even know we exist?"

He strode out into the gathering dusk. The two Warriors followed, closing the door behind them.

"Yeah, but there you had a whole valley to hide in," Roger muttered at the door. He took a deep breath, let it out in a ragged sigh, and turned to Caroline. "Was it my imagination, or did Nikolos actually lose control there for a minute?"

"It certainly looked that way," Caroline agreed, thinking back to that suddenly cut off sentence. "Has anyone mentioned Damian before?"

"Not to me," Roger said. "I'm still trying to figure out whether or not he has Melantha. One minute he'll say something that sounds like he does, the next minute he'll say something just the opposite."

Caroline shivered. "Roger, we've got to get out of here," she said. "Get back to the city and warn someone."

"I'm open to suggestions."

She looked around the room, trying to think. The cabin was late forties or early fifties, she'd already decided. A lot of such summer hideaways had sprung up about that time throughout the Catskills, many of them of rather hasty construction. The windows would be single-paned, the walls minimally insulated if at all, the floor—

The floor.

She looked down at the floor. Standard overlay flooring, the boards with that rough and rustic look.

Getting down on her knees, she held her palm just over the floorboards. With the fire drawing air from the rest of the cabin... "Do you feel air coming through the floor?" she asked.

Roger got down beside her, licking a finger and holding it over one of the larger cracks between boards. "I think so," he said after a moment. "But that fire's drawing in a lot of air. It could be a leak from somewhere else."

"I don't think there's any subflooring here, Roger," she said. "Just these boards nailed to the joists, with a crawl space underneath."

"No slab?"

"Wasn't required back then for this type of building," she told him. "And I remember seeing skirting boards on the outside at ground level as we were coming in. It's a crawl space, all right."

Roger tapped the board thoughtfully. "And if we can get through, then we can get out."

For a long moment they looked at each other. "There's still the guards outside," she reminded him.

"Let's worry about that when we get there," Roger said. "How do we start?"

"Go see if there's anything we can use to pull nails," she said, straightening up again. "Don't forget to check the kitchen drawers. I'll look for a place to—"

She gave a strained chuckle. "What?" he demanded.

"I almost said I'd look for a place to dig," she said. "Like we were on Treasure Island or something."

"More like a prisoner-of-war camp," he pointed out, heading for the kitchen. "I'll see what I can find."

By the time he returned, she'd located their best bet. "The previous occupants did a good job of cleaning it out," he told her, dumping a double handful of junk onto the couch. "But this potato peeler might get a couple of the nails started before it gives out."

"Maybe even more than a couple," Caroline agreed, looking over the rest of his loot. Half a hinge, a bent drill bit, a piece of an egg beater, and a power cord like the one on her mother's old waffle iron.

"And for actually prying up the boards once the nails are out, I thought we could use that sparkblocking thingy," he added.

"It's called a fender," Caroline identified it, eyeing the low metal barrier in front of the fireplace.

"Yes, that might work."

"So that's our tool kit," he concluded. "Where's our spot?"

"Right here," Caroline said, pointing to the corner she was standing in. "You see the stains on the ceiling? That's from rain or snow leakage. It's partially rotted the boards here—you can feel how soft it is compared to the rest of the floor."

He pressed a foot down onto the spot. "Looks good," he agreed. Picking up the potato peeler, he knelt down and got to work.

Caroline picked up the broken hinge, her stomach twisting inside her. They could certainly get out of the cabin—she was sure of that now. But after they did...

She stepped to the other end of the board he was working on. Clearly, Roger hadn't thought it all the way through yet. Better not to distract him.

Getting down on her knees, she started digging into the softened wood.

"What do you mean, the car's gone?" Powell demanded into the phone. "I left orders for it to be watched."

"There was a glitch in the stakeout schedule," Smith said, sounding as frustrated as Powell felt. "By the time I realized that, it was too late. But I found a newsstand guy who saw them get in and drive off."

"But it was Fierenzo?" Powell asked, some of the tension in his chest easing a little. Whatever else was going on, his partner was still alive.

"The news guy identified his photo," Smith confirmed. "The others were two males: one mid-teens, who got in back, the other mid-twenties, who got into the front passenger seat. He described them as both being dark-haired and kind of squat." He paused. "He also said that as the car pulled away, he saw the older one holding a gun."