Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar - The Judas Solution

"Denied," Daasaa said. "Yae and the other o'icers rill stay here."

Poirot's lips compressed briefly. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said again.

Halaak took a step closer to the prisoners. "Yae rill renain here, too," he added, his eyes glittering, his hand resting on the hilt of his short sword. "Unless yae rish tae try tae escape."

So that was why they'd left the blackcollars' legs unshackled. "Looking to add a few blackcollars to your trophy wall?" he asked.

"One o' yae killed a Ryqril rarrior outside the Aegis Nountain 'ase," Halaak said, his voice dark. "I rould relcone the chance tae a'enge his death."

"I'm sure you would," Skyler said quietly. "Maybe you'll get your chance."

The sun had disappeared behind the buildings of Inkosi City as Judas and the three Plinry blackcollars sat in a car at the town's southeastern edge. Visible through the sparse woodland to their right was the Khorstron Tactical Center. An hour or so until sundown, Judas estimated, plus another hour to allow dusk to turn into night, and the attack would finally begin.

Seated beside him behind the steering wheel, Lathe stirred. "Almost time," he said.

Judas frowned past him at the clear blue sky. "We're not waiting until full dark?"

"With modern sensors there's not a lot of difference between day and night," Mordecai reminded him from the backseat.

"Except that they'll also probably assume we'll wait until dark," Spadafora added from behind Judas.

"The first rule of warfare is to try not to play to the enemy's expectations."

"Of course," Judas murmured, wondering briefly if Galway and Haberdae would be caught by surprise by the schedule. If they weren't inside Khorstron already, he suspected, they weren't going to get there in time. "So how exactly is Shaw handling the initial attack?" he asked. "You're not all going to try to climb the fence at that one spot where the sensors got fried, are you?"

"With the Ryqril in the bunkers shooting leisurely at us as we popped over?" Lathe pointed out. "No, we have some nice camouflage all prepared." He pointed. "Here it comes now."

Judas peered out the windshield, shading his eyes with his hand. An unmarked panel truck was driving slowly down the access road leading to Khorstron's western fence gate. "I don't remember any truck bombs in the original planning," he said uneasily.

"A truck bomb wouldn't work here," Spadafora told him. "The fence's sensor array includes explosives detectors. A load that big couldn't get within three blocks without setting them off."

"Just stick with us, Caine," Lathe added. "We'll try to get you through what's ahead."

"Wait a second," Judas said, his skin starting to crawl. "I thought I was supposed to be on the penetration team."

"You are," Lathe said, smiling tightly as he gestured to the four of them. "We're it."

Judas stared at him ... and before he could think of anything to say the truck blew up into a cloud of heavy, dense, white smoke.

"Here we go," Lathe muttered as he started the car. "Filters."

"What is that?" Judas asked as he fumbled for his gas filter.

"It's your standard high-tech smoke screen," Spadafora said, his voice muffled by his own filter. "Shaw had a few left over from the war. Basically, it's a heavy chemical fog rich in suspended metallic particulates, which—well, there you go."

The Ryqril in the two guard bunkers flanking the gate had opened fire on the truck now, its outline barely visible through the fog rolling its leisurely way toward the tac center on a stiff westerly breeze.

With each laser shot, the entire cloud lit up like a brilliant green strobe light. "Not only does it scatter some of the laser light, thereby reducing its effectiveness," Spadafora went on, "but as an extra bonus, it bounces that light all around and right back into everyone's eyes."

"Makes it very hard to see unless your goggles include a special polarized layer," Lathe added as he settled his own goggles into place. "Which ours do, of course."

He'd barely finished when the laser barrage apparently hit a sensitive spot and the truck disintegrated into a burst of flame that lit up the billowing cloud even more brilliantly than the lasers had. "Phase One complete," Spadafora commented as a fresh surge of white smoke boiled upward like a volcanic plume and started falling leisurely over toward the tac center grounds.

"Phase Two begun," Lathe said, pointing across Judas's chest. A dozen vehicles had suddenly appeared from various areas around the southern and western sides of the center, bouncing wildly as they drove at high speed through the trees. "They're coming in on the east and north sides, too," the comsquare added.

All of them heading straight for the sensor fence, Judas saw, and the sonic trap Shaw had warned was built into the posts. "And what exactly is this supposed to accomplish?"

"Just watch," Spadafora advised, an edge of malicious amusement in his voice. "Watch, and learn."

Taakh snarled something, and the half-dozen Ryqril techs seated at the security monitor room's wraparound console bent feverishly to work. "What did he say?" Haberdae muttered.

"I don't know," Galway murmured back. In the year he'd spent with Taakh he'd managed to pick up a little bit of Ryqrili, but not nearly enough for a situation like this. And the conquerors had been very careful not to give any formal language instruction to their human slaves. "Best guess is that he wants them to analyze the smoke screen."

Haberdae grunted and fell silent. Shifting his attention away from the approaching smoke, Galway concentrated instead on the monitors showing the views to north and south.

One of the techs was giving a short speech now. Taakh listened in silence, then turned to the two humans. "It is a chenical cloud designed tae con'use sensors," he told them. "It also scatters sone o' the strength o' laser 'ire." He jabbed a finger at Galway. "Yae rill nake a note o' it."

Galway nodded. "As you command, Your Eminence."

The Ryq turned back to the monitors. The smoke had passed the fence, Galway saw, and was starting to roll around the building itself.

And there they were, right on cue: fifty cars appearing suddenly from streets and driveways and from beneath camo nets, all of them charging at full speed straight toward the Khorstron fence.

One of the techs had obviously seen them, too. He snapped something at Taakh, and the big khassq stepped to his side. "Are they 'ools tae think re rill 'e caught un're'ared?" he growled contemptu-ously.

"Maybe they're a diversion while the real infiltration team sneaks over the fence where they fried the sensors," Haberdae suggested. "Without sensors, you'll never spot them in this damn smoke."

"Somehow, I don't think sneaking is the plan," Galway said.

"I thought that's what blackcollars did best," Haberdae growled.

Galway nodded at the monitors. "Let's find out."

The smoke screen was filling the entire grounds now, and the techs had switched the displays from straight visual to the false-color images of sensor scans. Galway had never found such scans to be very clear, and even the best of the images were now being hampered further by snowlike flickers. The worst of them showed nothing but multicolored static. "Those must be the pictures coming from the sensors on the building," Haberdae said, gesturing toward the latter group.

"With the ones where you can actually see something coming from the sensors in the fence posts,"

Galway agreed, nodding. "Whatever they've got in that smoke, it's damn good."

Haberdae grunted. "I just hope they don't realize how blind we really are."

Around the perimeter, the cars were braking to a halt, stopping ten to fifteen meters back from the fence.