Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"You might be, at that," Galway said tartly. "Underestimating blackcollars is a dangerous game."

Haberdae lifted his eyebrows. "And you know this from personal experience?"

Galway took a deep breath. As diplomatic as possible ... "Yes, I do," he said evenly. "Which is why I don't want to do it again."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taakh shift position slightly. "Enou'," the Ryq said. His voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking the tone of command behind it. "Yae rill not argue rith 'Re'ect Galray."

"My apologies, Your Eminence," Haberdae said, turning toward the Ryq and bowing slightly. His tone was subservient, but there was a hint of resentment beneath it that even his loyalty-conditioning couldn't entirely erase. "I will, of course, defer to Prefect Galway in all matters of strategy and tactics on this operation." He turned back to Galway. "What are your orders? Sir."

"We first need to make sure that Lathe will be the main planner on the Khorstron raid," Galway said, choosing to accept Haberdae's new deference as genuine, which both men knew perfectly well wasn't true. "I'd prefer Judas stay in the background, but if necessary he and Caine's Earth Resistance authority can be used to support Lathe's position. If that doesn't work, we may have to look for a way to take Shaw out of the equation."

"Or maybe we should just go ahead and do that now," Haberdae suggested.

Galway shook his head. "Tricky," he said. "And dangerous. We don't want to risk Lathe getting caught in the crossfire."

"It would still be worth working out some contingency plans," Haberdae pressed.

Galway sighed silently. "Fine. Go ahead."

"I'll get on it at once," Haberdae promised, heading for the door. "You coming?"

"Not yet," Galway said. "I want to watch Caine a while first."

Haberdae snorted under his breath. "I trust you realize that keeping him alive is a complete waste of time and energy and manpower."

"I don't kill unnecessarily," Galway said stiffly.

Haberdae gave him a thin smile. "Of course not," he said. "Neither do I."

The clothing Galway had left him turned out to be a loose-fitting, long-sleeved jumpsuit and soft indoor boot-slippers, the whole outfit made of a thin, crepelike orange cloth. Caine got dressed, then spent the next hour exploring his cell, methodically going over every square centimeter. From the design and lack of built-in surveillance equipment, he guessed the room had begun life as crew quarters and not a prison.

That meant retrofits, all of which proved easy enough to spot.

The most obvious were the tiny cameras. The first, concealed in one of the bunk bed supports facing the door, provided the hidden watchers with a view of the bathroom area and the door itself. The second, in the top of the shower enclosure, covered the bunk beds and the rest of that half of the room. There was also a smaller and much more subtly hidden camera in the room's far upper corner, probably a fish-eye lens that by itself could monitor nearly the entire room. Apparently, the plan was for him to congratulate himself on spotting the first two cameras and miss the third. There was also a single audio pickup.

His parallel search for something he could use to break out of his prison was somewhat less rewarding.

The bunk bed frame was bolted to the wall with the kind of nonreversible screws that required a special tool to remove. The mattress itself was soft and floppy, filled with some kind of foam chips, with no internal springs or anything else he could adapt as a weapon. The table was fastened to the floor, while the comfort chair was far too large and heavy to be of any use as a weapon—he could throw it once and probably flatten whomever it landed on, but he would never get a second shot with it before the rest of the guards piled on top of him. The bunk's two blankets, while thick enough to be effective at their task, were composed of a flimsy cloth that would tear with very little effort, making them useless as bonds or choke cords. The large bathroom towel was made of a similar material.

The room's single door ran all the way to the ceiling, preventing him from suspending himself out of sight above it in the classic jungle-cat-drop position so beloved by action melodramas. There was likewise no room to hide beneath the lower bunk, and the shower enclosure was completely transparent.

There was a click of the lock, and he turned as one of his guards opened the door, a thick sheaf of paper in his hands. "Here," he said, watching Caine warily as he crouched down and set the stack on the floor just inside the door. "Prefect Galway's compliments."

"What is it?" Caine asked, frowning at the papers.

"You asked for a book," the guard said. "There it is." His eyes still on Caine, he grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it closed again.

Caine crossed to the papers and picked them up, mentally chalking up one more to Galway's credit. An electronic book would have required an electronic reader, whose inner workings Caine might have been able to jury-rig into a weapon against the surveillance cameras. A standard bound book, on the other hand, could have been used as a throwing weapon. Instead, Galway had given him five hundred individual pages that couldn't be used for anything except reading material.

Or so he apparently thought.

Setting the rest of the sheaf of papers on the floor beside the comfort chair, he took the first page and tore off the upper two corners. Going to the shower enclosure, he moistened them with drops of liquid soap from the dispenser, then took them to the two obvious cameras and carefully pasted one over each of the lenses.

That left the third camera still intact, of course. But he was willing to play the game for now and pretend he hadn't spotted that one. If and when he was ready to make his move, its presence shouldn't matter.

He took the rest of the page and meticulously folded and refolded it until he had a narrow, stiff, rulershaped probe. Then, lugging the comfort chair over to the door, he sat down and began prodding carefully at the crack between the door and the frame. It was late and he was tired, but it would look odd if he didn't put at least a little effort into freeing himself.

There was no way such a flimsy probe could actually spring the lock, of course, and he could imagine the secret watchers having a good laugh at the would-be blackcollar's pathetic would-be escape attempt.

They were welcome to their amusement. Playing with the lock this way gave him a perfect excuse to press his ear against the metal wall and to listen to the noises conducted through it. The first step, Lathe always said, was to scout out the territory and to learn the unique rhythms of people and movement and equipment.

Working industriously with his folded paper, Caine settled in to begin learning the rhythms of his new home.

"General?" the officer at the Novak's comm station called. "Passenger section reports the shuttle has returned."

"Acknowledged," Lepkowski said, turning away from the bridge canopy and his contemplation of the darkened world turning beneath him. "What's current status on Security communications down there?"

"Still low-level, sir," the officer said. "Aside from that one thirty-minute spike, it's all been very quiet down there."

That spike most likely being when Security realized that the drop pods had carried only hang-gliding dummies. If things had gone according to plan, Lathe and the others should have been safely to Inkosi City by then, possibly even at Shaw's place and under the Khala blackcollars' protection.

If things hadn't gone according to plan, they might already be dead.

With an effort, he shook away the thought. They were in danger, certainly. Every military operation, no matter how carefully planned, carried risks. But he'd known these men a long time. If anyone could pull this off, it was them.