Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"I guess you were right," Spadafora said. "It isn't any harder going down."

"What about the harpoon?" Caine asked, eyeing it dubiously. It had buried a good two-thirds of its length into the ground and didn't look like it was going to be coming out any time soon.

"We leave it," Lathe said, pulling off his goggles and battle-hood and stowing them in his coat pockets.

"Besides, they'll figure it out anyway as soon as the hang gliders are down." He pointed south. "If we're on target, there should be a town about a klick down the hill."

"How big a town?" Caine asked.

"Big enough to have some cars lying around waiting to be borrowed," Lathe assured him.

"Plus a few public phones," Spadafora added.

"Right," Lathe agreed. "We'll want to contact Shaw as soon as possible, make sure he's ready to receive.

I'll do that while you three find a car." He looked at his watch. "If we hurry, we should be in Inkosi City in a couple of hours."

"There they go," Khala Security Prefect Daov Haberdae said, nodding at the long-range telescope display. "Right on schedule."

"Yes," Galway murmured, frowning at the indistinct hang gliders as they sorted themselves out from the scattering wreckage of the shattered drop pods.

"Dae yae ha' ratchers on the gro'nd?" Taakh asked.

"We have watchers all over the area, Your Eminence," Haberdae assured him. "Whenever and wherever they come down, we'll have them covered."

"Excellent," Taakh said.

"I just hope Prefect Galway's right about them being of some use," Haberdae added under his breath.

"I've got a lot of men and resources tied up in this."

With a supreme effort, Galway ignored him. Haberdae didn't like Galway's plan. He hadn't liked it right from the very beginning, and hadn't been at all shy about saying so. The fact that Taakh's support of the operation meant that neither Haberdae nor anyone else on Khala got a vote in the matter only made it worse.

And the Ryq hadn't been shy about making that clear, either. Nor, apparently, was he interested in starting now. "I ha' seen Lathe in action," Taakh said in response to Haberdae's quiet comment, taking a step closer to the prefect. "The 'lan rill rork."

Haberdae grimaced. "Yes, Your Eminence," he said, his voice neutral again. Loyalty-conditioning permitted a man to offer suggestions to a Ryqril, or in certain circumstances to even argue with them.

But no one argued with khassq-class warriors. Not if they wanted to stay alive.

"Looks like they're splitting into two groups, sir," one of the techs at the monitor panel spoke up.

"Yae ha' 'oth directions co'ered?"

"Everything is covered, Your Eminence," Haberdae said. His voice was properly respectful, but beneath it his patience was clearly strained. "From that altitude, they have a maximum range of maybe thirty kilometers. We've got fifty klicks covered, in every direction—"

"Something's wrong," Galway interrupted him, the back of his neck starting to tingle as he stared at the silhouettes of the hang gliders.

"There's nothing wrong," Haberdae growled. "My people have them covered."

"They're not there," Galway said, his vague apprehensions suddenly becoming certainty. "Those are decoys."

Haberdae turned to the control board. "Vaandar?" he demanded.

"Sensors clearly show a person hanging under each of those gliders," the tech assured him.

"The sensors are wrong," Galway insisted, swiveling to the communications section of his panel and keying a switch. "Because that's all they're doing—hanging. They're not controlling the gliders.

Dispatch? Get me fifty men—"

"Hold it," Haberdae snapped, grabbing the armrest of Galway's chair and giving a yank that brought him rolling back from the board. "You already have all the men you're entitled to for this operation. You do not have authority to grab any more without my permission." He looked at Taakh. "Isn't that right, Your Eminence?" he added.

"The gliders aren't under control," Galway said, carefully pronouncing each word. "They're decoys.

Lathe and the others got off somewhere else."

"Rhere?" Taakh demanded.

"Exactly," Haberdae seconded. "We've had the shuttle under surveillance the entire way."

"Except where it dipped into the Falkarie Mountain foothills," Galway reminded him. "There were a nearly two minutes where the sensors were blocked."

"And the ground observers had visual contact the whole time," Haberdae countered. "They would have seen any parachutes."

"Then they didn't use parachutes," Galway insisted. "Look, Prefect, I don't know how they did it. All I know is that they're not with those gliders."

"Ha' yae other e'idence?" Taakh asked.

Galway braced himself. "No evidence, Your Eminence. Just my experience with the way Lathe does things."

"Then 'Re'ect Ha'erdae is correct," the Ryq said. "Yae nay not rekest his other nen."

And there would be no appeal, Galway knew. Not with Taakh. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said. "In that case, may I be excused for a few minutes? The gliders won't land for at least another half hour, and I have some other matters to attend to."

Taakh inclined his head. "Yae nay go."

"Thank you," Galway said. Standing up, he headed for the door.

"Don't you touch my people," Haberdae warned.

"I wouldn't think of it," Galway assured him.

No, he wouldn't touch any of Haberdae's precious Security men, he thought grimly as the door sealed itself behind him. Not even the ones who were currently doing absolutely nothing except lounging around Inkosi City's main entry roads, as if Lathe would be foolish enough to enter a city along such obvious routes.

But then, Haberdae's Security men were hardly the only resources available. There was an entire government's worth of bureaucrats and tech workers scattered around the city, all of them loyaltyconditioned, none of them under Haberdae's legal jurisdiction. If Galway could get them out onto the streets and highways in the next half hour—all the streets, not just the obvious entry points—maybe they could spot the incoming blackcollars in time to get Judas and the special ops team in position to intercept them.

Picking up his pace, he hurried down the brightly lit corridor. With luck, maybe he could still pull this off.

"So has anyone been inside the mountain since we left?" Skyler asked as they drove eastward along the winding road toward Reger's estate.

"Anne and I went in a couple of times in the first few months," Kanai said. "We wanted to see if there was any more information on Whiplash we might have missed earlier."

Skyler nodded, thinking of the irony of it all. The old Torch resistance organization had spent its last days in Aegis Mountain, working to develop a drug capable of breaking the hitherto unbreakable Ryqril loyalty-conditioning. And they'd succeeded, only to succumb to the residual chemical warfare contamination in the base before they'd even had a chance to use it. "Was there?"

"Not that we could find," Kanai said. "We were able to get a couple other sections of the base operational, though, complete with heat and power. We got one of the elevators running, too."

"I hope you didn't go near the main command level," Hawking warned.

"And risk bringing the entire mountain down on us?" Kanai snorted gently. "Give us a little more credit than that, Commando Hawking."

"I'm sure he was just asking," Skyler assured him. "But you haven't been inside lately?"

In the reflected glow of the headlights, Skyler saw Kanai's lips compress briefly. "As I say, we've had some differences of opinion. I'm mostly working with Reger these days."

"What kind of differences?" Skyler pressed.

"Perhaps it would be best if we wait until ..."