Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

Rubbing the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, he looked away from the new siding to the sunlight glistening off the mountains to the west. There were still times when he missed the level of human companionship he'd enjoyed before the war, but he had to admit there were compensations to living out here. He let his gaze sweep across the sky, drinking in the magnificent panorama as he shifted his eyes from west to south to east....

He paused, frowning. There were a lot of Security spotters drifting around over there today. A lot of them.

For a minute he watched the spotters, an old sensation tingling the back of his neck. Then, setting down his hammer, he limped around to the front of the cabin and went inside. Crossing to the south-facing window, the one that looked down on the handful of houses below, he selected the red shade and pulled it all the way down. Toby's old signal to let his semiestranged family know that he urgently needed help.

Foxleigh could only hope someone down there would notice it soon. He hoped even more strongly that Adamson or his son would be willing to make the trek up here.

Because something was brewing out there to the east. Something big, judging from Security's reaction to it.

Maybe the blackcollars had returned.

He hoped so. He desperately hoped so. A year ago, when they'd sneaked into Aegis Mountain, he'd hesitated too long and missed his opportunity.

But not this time. This time he would be ready for them.

Throwing another look at the spotters drifting through the sky, he headed back outside and returned to his work.

"General Poirot?"

With an effort, Poirot pried open his eyes. Two men stood over him, their faces silhouetted against soft lights. "How do you feel, General?" one of the men asked.

Poirot frowned. That was a good question, actually. His head hurt fiercely, and his mouth had that peculiar dryness that usually meant a long night's sleep. His body seemed heavy, too, as if he'd slept either too much or too little. Memories were starting to tiptoe back now: the fiasco at Reger's estate, the blackcollar Skyler knocking the world out from under him. Skyler would pay for that, he promised himself distantly.

But there was something else, too, mixed in with the subdued embarrassment and irritation. A brandnew sensation he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"How do you feel about the Ryqril, for instance?" the second man suggested.

The Ryqril? Poirot frowned, the open-snouted faces of humanity's enslavers floating up in front of his mind's eye.

He stiffened. No—it was impossible. He'd been loyalty-conditioned. Loyalty-conditioned. The images and thoughts and feelings trickling through him simply could not exist.

But they did.

"That's right, General," the first man said quietly. "Welcome to your new world."

Lathe had had everyone spend a couple of hours looking over the maps and other data Shaw had given them, and then had ordered them all to get some sleep.

It was late afternoon by the time Judas woke up. "Morning, Caine," Spadafora greeted him as he passed Judas's couch, a heavy-looking box in his hands. "Afternoon, rather. Better get dressed—Shaw's coming by in half an hour for a drive up into the Deerline Mountains."

Judas felt his stomach tighten. The real Caine was hidden away somewhere in those mountains. "What are we going there for?" he asked cautiously.

"He says there are some places where we can get a good look at the Khorstron center," Spadafora called over his shoulder as he disappeared into one of the house's bedrooms. "Move it or get left behind."

The safe house had come equipped with a fully stocked pantry. Judas fixed himself a quick breakfast and then hit the shower. By the time Shaw arrived, he was dressed and ready to go.

"Come on, come on—it's not getting any earlier out there," the tactor said briskly as he looked around.

"Where's Spadafora?"

"He's not going," Lathe said, gesturing to Mordecai and Judas. "It'll just be the three of us."

Shaw made a face. "I wish you'd said something—I could have brought a car instead of a van," he growled. "Cheaper to run. Never mind; let's just do it."

The foothills of the Deerline Mountains ran right up to the southern edge of Inkosi City, with a couple of the pricier suburban areas scattered around its lower slopes. The Ryqril had refused to let Judas inside the tac center even after he'd been loyalty-conditioned, but Galway had brought him up into the mountains once during his training to give him a view of the place. As the rectangular city street grid gave way to winding mountain roads, he wondered if Shaw would end up taking the blackcollars to the same spot Galway had chosen.

Oddly enough, though their route was very different, they ended up not more than a hundred meters from the spot where Judas had been the last time. Perhaps Galway really did understand how these blackcollars thought.

"I really don't know what Lepkowski was thinking," Shaw said as they stood among the trees at the edge of the cliff. "If he thought your team was just going to walk in there, he was badly mistaken."

"I'm sure he wasn't expecting it to be that easy," Lathe said, peering through a set of binoculars at the squat, two-story octagon rising from the lightly forested plain east of the city.

"That's for sure," Judas murmured, shading his eyes against the glare of the sunlight as it sent evening shadows across the ground. The place had looked pretty impenetrable when Galway had showed it to him a few months ago, and at that time the Ryqril had still been working on it. Now, with everything up and running, it looked even worse.

The building had no windows and only four doors, one each facing east, west, north, and south. A pair of bunkers flanked each of the doors, with firing slits that would allow targeting in a nearly hundredeighty- degree horizontal arc. The building's ventilation exhaust vents were on the roof, encased in armored boxes with heavy grates over the vents. There were no visible intake valves, and Judas had no idea where they actually were. Also atop the building, set back a few meters from each of the eight corners, were antiaircraft laser batteries, their muzzles pointed vigilantly skyward. The trees and shrubbery for fifty meters around the center had been cleared away, and a two-meter-tall mesh fence marked the outer perimeter. Like the building itself, the fence had just four entrances, each flanked by another pair of guard bunkers.

"It's going to be a challenge, all right," Lathe agreed. "But one of the truisms of war is that there's a way into anything."

"Good luck," Shaw muttered.

"For instance," Lathe continued, "that fence isn't nearly high enough to keep out determined trespassers."

"It doesn't have to be," Shaw said acidly. "Notice how thick the fence posts are? Not only are there a full range of sensors in there, but there's also a sonic net anchored above the fence. Even if you managed to sneak up to the fence without them spotting you, jumping or climbing over it would scramble your balance and dump you on your face."

"Allowing the Ryqril to stroll out of the bunkers and beat the sand out of you?" Judas suggested.

"They can't get out of the bunkers, at least not directly," Shaw said. "But then, they really wouldn't have to. The whole area inside the fence, for about three meters back, is booby-trapped with scud grenades and hedge mines." He lifted his eyebrows at Judas. "If you managed not to trigger one of them, and the Ryqril shooting at you from the building bunkers somehow kept missing, then they'd send the warriors outside to beat the sand out of you."

"Must do things in their proper order, Caine," Lathe agreed mildly. "However, I wasn't implying we'd actually be going in over the fence. My point was simply that the fence's height is an enticement, and the fact that the Ryqril seem interested in luring in sightseers implies a level of overconfidence that can be exploited."