Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"I understand," Lepkowski said, pulling the card from the reader and handing it back to the Chryselli.

"I'll head back immediately and contact Comsquare Lathe."

[And he will eliminate this threat?]

"Absolutely," Lepkowski assured him. "You can count on it."

They had laid him in the drainage ditch by the side of the road, Galway discovered as his brain finally dragged its way out of the long, turbulent blackness. Laid him, not dropped him, for which he supposed he should be grateful.

But he wasn't. Not particularly. His head ached like hell, his muscles were trembling with the aftermath of their attack, and his neck was threatening to go into a painful cramp from the position his head had ended up in.

But overriding it all was the echo of Lathe's last words to him. With a breathtaking suddenness, the plan had changed.

It would take time to sort through it all. But right now, he had only one urgent job: to sound the alarm before the blackcollars reached the government center.

With a supreme effort, he dragged himself to his feet. To his mild surprise, the movement actually eased the pain and discomfort in both head and his muscles. He tried waving his arms around a little, which helped even more.

The driver and guard were still unconscious, laid out on the ground as neatly as the blackcollars had left Galway himself. Both men's weapons were missing, of course, as was Galway's own paral-dart pistol.

More to the immediate point, so were their comms.

Which left Galway with only one option. The strongpoint, he guessed, was no more than a kilometer away. Taking a few deep breaths to clear his lungs, he headed back along the road at the fastest jog he could manage.

"There it is," Lathe said, pointing ahead. "You see that gold crown sort of thing sticking up above the wall?"

"You mean inside the wall?" Spadafora asked, leaning over the seat between Lathe and Mordecai for a better look.

"It's not actually inside," Lathe told him. "The special-access gates are in deep indentations, set far enough back from the street that a passing government car won't accidentally trigger them when no one actually wants to go in."

"Pretty stupid design, if you ask me," Mordecai commented.

Lathe shrugged. "Shaw tells me there were a lot of riots here in the early years of the occupation. The top officials didn't want to leave their cars open to potshots from the mobs when they had to stop at guard stations for ID checks. By the time things settled down and Security got order restored, they'd gotten used to the convenience."

They drove past the gate. "Okay, yeah, I see how it works," Spadafora said as Lathe continued down the street and turned at the next corner. "Shouldn't be a problem. You want me any place in particular?"

"No, your choice," Lathe told him. "Just be ready to jump in any direction if the reaction is hotter than expected."

"Got it," the other said as Lathe turned again onto the next street, heading them back toward the gate one block away from the wall. "Anywhere here is good."

Lathe rolled the car to a halt by the walkway, and Spadafora hopped out into the deserted street. "I hope you realize how conspicuous we are," Mordecai warned as Lathe pulled away again. "I don't think we've seen ten other cars since we left the mountains."

"You don't always get to control the timing," Lathe reminded him. They continued down the street, catching another glimpse of the gate as they passed the cross street that led directly toward it. "What do you think? One block or two?"

"You think the steering can handle two?"

Lathe wiggled the wheel experimentally. "Seems pretty tight," he said. "Especially since, as you say, there's hardly any other traffic, which means we can run it straight down the middle of the street where it'll have the most wiggle room."

Mordecai nodded. "Let's make it two, then."

A few minutes and three turns later Lathe once again stopped the car, this time in the middle of the cross street with the car pointed toward the special-access gate two blocks away. Mordecai was ready with the tie rope, and together they got the steering wheel anchored securely in place. "How fast do we want?"

Mordecai asked as he produced a pair of shuriken from his weapons pouch.

"Not very," Lathe said, pulling on his battle-hood and gloves. "They normally don't head in any faster than about thirty klicks per hour. We should probably run it a little slower than that."

"Okay." Crouching on the pavement beside the open driver's door, Mordecai pressed down experimentally on the accelerator with his hand, bringing the tachometer to the right spot and wedging one of the shuriken into the floor beneath the pedal. "Ready."

Lathe moved to the side and got a hand on the open door. "Go."

In a single smooth motion Mordecai shifted the car into gear, pressed the accelerator down against the shuriken he'd just placed, and then jabbed the other throwing star above it into the side of the center console, wedging the pedal firmly in place between them. The car leaped forward, and he just missed getting his arm slammed in the door as Lathe swung it closed. Rolling along at perhaps ten kilometers per hour, the car trundled its way down the street, heading straight for the gate. "And away we go,"

Lathe murmured, pulling out a pair of shuriken of his own.

Keeping to the shadows, the two blackcollars set off after the vehicle, setting their pace so that the car pulled slowly but steadily ahead. The car crossed the first street without incident ... crossed the second street, the one paralleling the wall, again without running afoul of other traffic ... headed into the indentation on its final approach to the gate, which according to Shaw's information should even now be opening.

Only it wasn't.

"Uh-oh," Lathe muttered, holding out a warning hand to Mordecai as he slowed to a walk.

The words were barely out of his mouth when, with a muffled crunching of metal and plastic, the car rolled almost leisurely into the closed gate. An instant later all four of the open windows exploded with thick black smoke from the bomb they'd set in the backseat.

"Looks like Galway recovered fast enough to make it back to the strongpoint," Lathe commented.

"Or else they normally shut down the transponder system at night," Mordecai said. "How much effort do you want to put into this?"

"Not that much," Lathe assured him, reaching to his tingler. Spadafora: withdraw to Point Two. "All I care about is that they now have some evidence that we're more interested in the government center than we are in getting into Khorstron. That should help keep Haberdae's own people battening down the hatches here instead of getting in our way."

The wall's outer lights were starting to come on as the two blackcollars ran lightly down the street away from the still-smoking car. Spadafora was waiting at the agreed-upon rendezvous point, with a car already hot-wired and ready. "That has to be the shortest mission on record," he commented as he pulled away from the curb. "Can we go home now?"

"Yes, let's," Lathe said, leaning back in the seat and closing his eyes. "It's been a very long day."

To Galway's mild surprise, Haberdae himself showed up at the strongpoint to pick him up. Or at least, he was surprised until he saw who the van's other passenger was.

"Dae the 'lackcollars now know e'erything?" Taakh demanded harshly as he strode through the door, the Security men who had gathered in the entryway room backing up hastily at his approach. He came to a halt a meter away from where Galway was sitting, glaring down at him.

"No, Your Eminence, they don't," Galway assured him. "They never got into the strongpoint, and they never asked either my escort or me what we were doing up here."