Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"My heart bleeds for him," Caine said, gingerly holding back a tangle of wires as he traced his eyes along the new circuit he'd created. Almost ready. "I trust you and he both noted that I didn't damage anyone more than necessary. I can't speak for his record, though."

"Yes, I did notice," Galway assured him. "That's one reason I'm here: to try to get you out safely and peacefully."

Caine smiled. Galway wasn't half bad at this, actually. "What makes you think I have any interest in surrendering?"

Even through the thick door he thought he could hear Galway's sigh. "I already gave you my list of reasons," the other said. "I'm sure others will occur to you. Come on, Caine—you've proved your point."

Caine ignored him. One final connection ... there. Letting the wires dangle loose again, he turned to the breaker he'd wired the circuit to and flipped it on. If he'd done it right, the concealed searchlights outside the strongpoint would now be blazing away into the sky.

Ideally, he would have liked to be able to send a message in blackcollar tingler code. But that would have required him to separately wire two different sets of the lights, and there was no way to know which of them were working and which weren't. He would have to settle instead for a simple standard Morse code SOS.

"Caine?"

"I'm still here," Caine assured him, watching the power indicators as he flipped the circuit breaker in the rhythmic three dots/three dashes/three dots pattern. There was definitely power going out, which meant at least one of the searchlights was operating. Excellent. "Sorry—I thought you were finished."

"I'm trying to keep you from getting killed, Caine," Galway said. "And I may be the only one out here who actually cares about that."

"Your humanity does you justice," Caine said, frowning at the meter as the power indicator began jumping wildly. Were Galway's people outside cutting all the wires? Grimacing, he repeated his signal, wondering if he should switch to something more specifically aimed at Lathe.

And then, without warning, there was a sizzle of blue fire around the breaker, and a tingling jolt ran through his fingers and up his arm. An instant later he was thrown backward across the tiny room to slam hard against the wall.

He slumped to the floor, his whole arm shaking violently, his numbed brain only vaguely aware of the sound of men breaking down the makeshift barricade he'd set up across the door. A minute later rough hands grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet, ripping off his jumpsuit and scattering the pages of his paral-dart armor. Then, dressed only in his undersuit, he was hauled out into the corridor.

Galway was waiting there, along with a dozen armed and riot-armored Security men. "Are you all right?" the prefect asked.

"I'm fine," Caine said, wincing at the slurring of the words coming from his still numb mouth. "That was cute."

Galway shrugged. "A simple voltage surge across your breaker seemed the safest way to neutralize you, once we figured out what you were doing."

"Only you figured it out too late," Caine said. "Half of Inkosi City must have seen the lights before you shut them down. Lathe's bound to hear about it."

Galway shook his head. "Lathe won't hear about it, Caine, because the lights never came on," he said.

"We'd already cut the wires."

Caine stared at him. "But I saw ..." He trailed off.

"We'd wired matching loads into a couple of them," Galway explained, confirming Caine's unspoken conclusion. "No one saw anything. No one will be coming for you."

He gestured down the corridor. "Let's get you back to your quarters," he said. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to call it a day."

Spadafora was crouched out of sight at the center of a clump of bushes as Lathe and Mordecai slipped in to join him. "Got your signal," Lathe murmured. "We're on?"

"You ask for it, you get it," Spadafora said, pointing through the leaves at the unmarked Security car parked beside the strongpoint's door.

The unlit door. For that matter, Lathe noted with interest, there weren't any lights showing anywhere on or around the base. "And they were even thoughtful enough to turn off all the lights for us," he commented.

"They may be off now," Spadafora said. "But an hour ago there was a whole crowd out here with flashlights blazing, scurrying around like poked bugs."

"Looking for you?"

"That's what I thought at first," Spadafora said. "But they were mostly hunting around the bushes and tree stumps east of the building, doing a lot of wire cutting. Looked like some of them might have been doing some rewiring, too."

"Interesting," Lathe murmured. "And you're sure it was Galway?"

"Positive," Spadafora said. "There were a driver and guard, too, big ones, taking up most of the front seat. But it was definitely Galway riding in back."

"Then we'd better get started." Lathe gestured toward the chest-high posts flanking the narrow weedgrown gravel drive, posts that bore a striking resemblance to the ones supporting the Khorstron fence.

"They've been adequately taken care of?"

"As adequately as plutonium blobs can make them," Spadafora assured him, hefting his slingshot. "By the way, just for the record, I'm getting tired of always pulling the more mind-numbing assignments."

"Complaint noted," Lathe said, pulling out the compact tool kit he'd borrowed from one of Shaw's men.

"But don't worry. Starting tonight, things are going to get much more interesting. Mordecai?"

"Ready," the other said.

Taking a deep breath, Lathe got his feet under him and sprinted down the drive, his senses alert for trouble. He passed between the posts and kept going, and a few seconds later was crouched down beside the still-warm side of Galway's government car.

A car which, according to Shaw, contained a handy transponder which would pass both car and passengers straight through a special set of gates in the government center's protective outer wall.

Of course, what was waiting in those garage areas would be somewhat more problematic. But they'd face that challenge if and when they got there. "Anything?" he whispered as Mordecai crouched down beside him.

The other shook his head, then nodded toward the strongpoint door. Lathe nodded back; and as Mordecai slipped around the other side of the car to stand guard, Lathe dropped onto his back and wriggled his way underneath the engine.

His worst fear about this part of the plan was that Khala Security might have fiddled with their vehicle fleet over the years, altering them to the point where none of the blackcollars' bag of tricks would work.

But he'd had the opportunity to check that out while he and Mordecai had been waiting to hit the subway ambush, and had found that there were no such changes, or at least nothing that would interfere with the plan. Fixing the clamp to the fuel line took ninety seconds; and then he was out and heading again for Spadafora's cozy sniper's nest. From the lack of sound behind him, he guessed that Mordecai was right on his heels.

They reached Spadafora's bushes and again ducked out of sight. "Anything?" Lathe asked.

"Nothing I could see," Spadafora reported.

"Nothing at the door, either," Mordecai added.

"Shameful security they have around here," Lathe commented, peering one last time through the bushes.

"I wonder what Galway's doing in there."

"Whatever it is, I hope it was worth the trip," Spadafora said. "Are we ready to go?"

"We're ready," Lathe confirmed. "Let's see if we can find you some of that excitement you've been looking for."

The door closed with a solid snick of the lock, cutting off Galway's last view of Caine stretched out on his bunk. "I gather we won't be giving him any more books to read?" the duty sergeant suggested from the prefect's side as they headed back toward the elevator.