by Timothy Zahn
Skyler turned around. Behind the purple blob bouncing in front of his eyes, he saw a slim figure emerge from the woods at the far end of the landing field. "Kanai?" he asked.
"Yes," Lonato Kanai confirmed, coming up to Skyler and bowing from the waist. "Do I take it from your arrival that something interesting is about to happen?"
"We certainly hope so," Skyler said, lifting his hand and giving an all-clear signal to the others. "How did you know we were coming?"
"I didn't," Kanai said. "But when an off-world shuttle is due in, I spend the night either here or at one of our other cabins, watching for supply shipments." He smiled faintly. "Or, even more hopefully, for blackcollar drop pods."
"Must be lonely duty," Skyler commented as Hawking and O'Hara came up from both sides. "You remember Dawis Hawking from our last pass through the area. Commando Kelly O'Hara; Commando Lonato Kanai. One of the leaders of the Phoenix resistance group."
Kanai's lip twitched. "Formerly one of its leaders," he said quietly. "No longer."
Skyler frowned. "Is there a problem with Phoenix?"
"Perhaps it's only a difference of opinion," Kanai said evasively. "But come—I have a car ready. Load your packs in the trunk and I'll take you to see Reger."
"Thank you," Skyler said. Manx Reger, one of Denver's most powerful crime bosses, hadn't been particularly pleased the last time the Plinry blackcollars had come through his territory, their presence threatening to upset the comfortable status quo that existed between the various crime bosses who effectively ran the region. Still, when they'd left he'd been cautiously interested in Anne Silcox's plans to rebuild a Resistance cell in the area.
Skyler could only hope the man was still feeling charitable toward unannounced guests.
* * *
Dragging himself out of a deep sleep, General Avral Poirot, head of Security for Denver, got to the phone on the third ring. "Poirot," he said, his voice croaking a little with dry throat.
"Bailey, sir," Colonel Pytor Bailey's voice answered. "I think we may finally have Manx Reger."
The last wisps of sleep vanished from Poirot's brain. "Explain."
"We had a drop pod breech in the mountains west of Boulder about half an hour ago," Bailey said. "Same general location where Reger usually gets his Resistance deliveries."
Poirot scowled into the darkness. Reger had been getting those deliveries at irregular intervals for nearly a year now, ever since Lathe's blackcollar team had come roaring into town and assassinated retired North American Prefect Ivas Trendor.
Why a man of Reger's wealth and comfort had gotten involved with the Resistance was still a mystery. But involved he was, and Poirot knew it.
But knowing and proving were two different things, even with the lax standards of evidence the Ryqril overlords permitted in cases like this. So far they'd never been able to catch Reger with the goods, or to find any other tangible evidence that he was involved. "How does this particular drop give him to us?"
"Because this one's chutes didn't open," Bailey said. "Which means that instead of being packed and ready to be thrown onto a truck, whatever it was should be scattered fairly randomly across the landscape."
Poirot smiled grimly as he swung his legs out of bed. And scattered merchandise could take quite a while to collect back together. If they hurried, they might make it to Reger's place before the goods did. "Do we have any spotters in the area?"
"I've scrambled two from Boulder," Bailey said. "They're still en route to the drop area."
"Keep them high," Poirot warned. "I don't want them scaring away the scavengers."
"Yes, sir," Bailey said.
"And then grab a couple of unmarked cars and a strike team," Poirot added, pulling his uniform off the bedside rack. "You and I are going to be sitting with Mr. Reger in his conversation room when the merchandise arrives."
* * *
"There it is," Lathe said, pointing out one of the shuttle cargo bay's small portholes at the dark mass coming rapidly up toward them from below. "Ever been to a frontline world in the Ryqril-Chryselli war, Caine?"
"No," Caine said, a shiver running through him. Growing up in Central Europe, though, he'd seen the kind of warfare the Ryqril could unleash when they wanted to. Lathe and the others, stationed on Plinry, had seen far more of it. "Any idea how badly it's been mauled?"
"Lepkowski didn't mention anything in particular," Lathe said. "I imagine we'll find out soon enough. Spadafora?"
"All set," Tardy Spadafora confirmed, straightening from his check of the large winch bolted to the deck at the shuttle's stern. "You sure this thing's going to work?"
"We've done it in reverse," Lathe reminded them. "How much harder can it be going the other direction?"
"Yeah, that's one way to look at it," Spadafora said dryly. "Sounds remarkably like those classic last words, 'Hey, everyone—watch this.'"
"You're welcome to ride the shuttle the rest of the way to the spaceport if you'd prefer," Lathe offered.
Spadafora wrinkled his nose. "No, that's okay."
Above the aft hatchway, an amber light blinked on. "Here we go," Lathe said. "Everyone into position."
Mordecai and Spadafora maneuvered themselves around the sides of the winch, pausing along the way to fasten the safety lines on their parachute-style harnesses to rings welded to the bay walls. Caine moved up behind Mordecai and did the same, feeling awkward and clumsy in his multiple layers of clothing. Beneath his long, light-absorbing civilian-cut coat he wore shirt and slacks, beneath which was his flexarmor. Above the coat, adding another twenty kilos to his weight, was a backpack with extra weapons, clothing, and emergency rations.
"Once more into the breech, as the poet said," Lathe commented, his eyes on Caine as he moved into position behind Spadafora. "You all right?"
"Of course," Caine said, his pounding heart belying the confident words. He'd done drop-pod insertions twice now, both of them more or less successfully. He might have even enjoyed doing it a third time.
Leave it to Lathe to suddenly change the rules on him.
"Get ready," Lathe said. The light turned red— "Go."
Mordecai slapped the release, and the shuttle bay was suddenly filled with a swirling windstorm as the drop door swung down into its usual ramp configuration. Caine grabbed his safety line, struggling for balance as his legs were nearly swept out from under him. The deck shuddered; and suddenly, out the open back, he saw the drop pods that had been fastened to the shuttle's outer hull go tumbling into the night behind them. "Drop pods away," Mordecai announced, peering out into the darkness. "Attitude and trajectory look good."
Lathe nodded. "Four minutes."
"Four minutes," Spadafora repeated, kneeling down beside the winch and unreeling a few meters of slender cable fastened to a large and very wicked-looking barb-nosed harpoon. Unfastening the harpoon from its harness, he carried it to a launcher attached to the floor just in front of the drop door and loaded it in.
Caine gazed out at the churning slipstream, counting down the seconds to himself as he visualized the drop pods' path. They would be popping their chutes about now, he knew, slowing their descent toward the ground below. Another minute, and their onboard timers would trigger their controlled destruction, blowing open the floors and breaking their walls into sections, each of which would sprout wings and turn itself into a self-leveling hang glider.
It would look exactly like the last two times he and the blackcollars had clandestinely landed on Ryqril-controlled worlds. Just like Skyler and his team should be doing on Earth at this very moment, in fact.
Only here on Khala there wouldn't be any infiltrators riding those hang gliders, just eight sensor-realistic dummies strapped beneath the wide, gray-black wings. Eight make-believe blackcollars, apparently intent on sneaking into Khala right under Security's collective nose.
And with luck, that would be where Security's collective nose would be pointing for the next half hour or so.
"Thirty seconds," Lat
he called from beside the launcher.
Spadafora moved back into position on his side of the winch and got his secondary line in hand. Caine did the same, checking one last time to make sure his main safety cable wasn't near anything it could get caught or tangled on. Resettling his harness comfortably across his shoulders and thighs, he made sure his goggles and gas filter were securely in place. It was going to be like a hurricane when they hit the air out there.
"Here we go," Lathe said, flipping up a protective panel on the launcher and resting his gloved hand on the glowing red button beneath it. "Harpoon in five ... three, two, one."
He pressed the button; and with a burst of compressed air the harpoon blasted out the open hatch. It disappeared downward into the night, the slender attached cable from the winch reeling out madly behind it.
Caine felt his hand curl into a fist. Theoretically, Lathe had picked a landing area that would be clear of people or livestock or homes or anything else that would be instantly killed or destroyed by the harpoon's impact. But mistakes sometimes happened....
He had half expected the harpoon's impact to be transmitted along the cable into something he might feel. But he was still waiting when Lathe turned his head toward them. "It's down," he called. "Go."
And in a single smooth motion, Spadafora unhooked the safety line that fastened him to the shuttle wall, snapped the large carabiner ring of his secondary line around the unreeling cable, and leaped out into the night.
Lathe was right behind him, then Mordecai; and then it was Caine's turn. Setting his teeth firmly together, working the two cables as he'd practiced on the trip, he popped his first line from the wall, attached his second to the cable, and jumped.
For the first few dizzying seconds he actually slid upward with the momentum he'd been given by the shuttle's own forward motion. Then friction and air resistance and gravity dragged him to a halt, and a moment later he was sliding downward with increasing speed.
He gripped his line with one hand and waved the other against the air in an effort to keep himself facing the direction he was moving. The broken clouds overhead were blocking most of the starlight, but there was enough getting through to show the ground rushing up toward him.
He couldn't see the three blackcollars anywhere below him. Was that simply because of the light-absorbing coats they were all wearing? Or had their connection lines somehow failed, dropping them off the cable to their deaths? And if theirs had failed, wouldn't his likely do so as well? He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
And exhaled that breath in a huff as the ring above him suddenly seemed to catch, sending his feet swinging upward and his harness digging into his thighs as the deceleration dragged at him like a fighter-turn G-force. He caught a glimpse of figures on the ground beneath him, the urgently flashing purple marker lights at the rear of the harpoon—
And then, with welcome anticlimax, he slid to an almost gentle stop with his feet safely on the ground.
Lathe was already at his side. "Everyone clear," the comsquare ordered, grabbing Caine's upper arm in a steadying grip with one hand as he slashed a knife through the connecting line with the other. Spadafora, Caine saw, was standing beside the harpoon, his hand poised over an opened control cover. Half guiding, half dragging Caine a few steps away, Lathe gestured to Spadafora.
The other pressed the control; and with a sizzle of high-voltage current, the cable still unreeling from the distant shuttle evaporated in a puff of acerbic smoke.
"I guess you were right," Spadafora said. "It isn't any harder going down."
"What about the harpoon?" Caine asked, eyeing it dubiously. It had buried a good two-thirds of its length into the ground and didn't look like it was going to be coming out any time soon.
"We leave it," Lathe said, pulling off his goggles and battle-hood and stowing them in his coat pockets. "Besides, they'll figure it out anyway as soon as the hang gliders are down." He pointed south. "If we're on target, there should be a town about a klick down the hill."
"How big a town?" Caine asked.
"Big enough to have some cars lying around waiting to be borrowed," Lathe assured him.
"Plus a few public phones," Spadafora added.
"Right," Lathe agreed. "We'll want to contact Shaw as soon as possible, make sure he's ready to receive. I'll do that while you three find a car." He looked at his watch. "If we hurry, we should be in Inkosi City in a couple of hours."
* * *
"There they go," Khala Security Prefect Daov Haberdae said, nodding at the long-range telescope display. "Right on schedule."
"Yes," Galway murmured, frowning at the indistinct hang gliders as they sorted themselves out from the scattering wreckage of the shattered drop pods.
"Dae yae ha' ratchers on the gro'nd?" Taakh asked.
"We have watchers all over the area, Your Eminence," Haberdae assured him. "Whenever and wherever they come down, we'll have them covered."
"Excellent," Taakh said.
"I just hope Prefect Galway's right about them being of some use," Haberdae added under his breath. "I've got a lot of men and resources tied up in this."
With a supreme effort, Galway ignored him. Haberdae didn't like Galway's plan. He hadn't liked it right from the very beginning, and hadn't been at all shy about saying so. The fact that Taakh's support of the operation meant that neither Haberdae nor anyone else on Khala got a vote in the matter only made it worse.
And the Ryq hadn't been shy about making that clear, either. Nor, apparently, was he interested in starting now. "I ha' seen Lathe in action," Taakh said in response to Haberdae's quiet comment, taking a step closer to the prefect. "The 'lan rill rork."
Haberdae grimaced. "Yes, Your Eminence," he said, his voice neutral again. Loyalty-conditioning permitted a man to offer suggestions to a Ryqril, or in certain circumstances to even argue with them.
But no one argued with khassq-class warriors. Not if they wanted to stay alive.
"Looks like they're splitting into two groups, sir," one of the techs at the monitor panel spoke up.
"Yae ha' 'oth directions co'ered?"
"Everything is covered, Your Eminence," Haberdae said. His voice was properly respectful, but beneath it his patience was clearly strained. "From that altitude, they have a maximum range of maybe thirty kilometers. We've got fifty klicks covered, in every direction—"
"Something's wrong," Galway interrupted him, the back of his neck starting to tingle as he stared at the silhouettes of the hang gliders.
"There's nothing wrong," Haberdae growled. "My people have them covered."
"They're not there," Galway said, his vague apprehensions suddenly becoming certainty. "Those are decoys."
Haberdae turned to the control board. "Vaandar?" he demanded.
"Sensors clearly show a person hanging under each of those gliders," the tech assured him.
"The sensors are wrong," Galway insisted, swiveling to the communications section of his panel and keying a switch. "Because that's all they're doing—hanging. They're not controlling the gliders. Dispatch? Get me fifty men—"
"Hold it," Haberdae snapped, grabbing the armrest of Galway's chair and giving a yank that brought him rolling back from the board. "You already have all the men you're entitled to for this operation. You do not have authority to grab any more without my permission." He looked at Taakh. "Isn't that right, Your Eminence?" he added.
"The gliders aren't under control," Galway said, carefully pronouncing each word. "They're decoys. Lathe and the others got off somewhere else."
"Rhere?" Taakh demanded.
"Exactly," Haberdae seconded. "We've had the shuttle under surveillance the entire way."
"Except where it dipped into the Falkarie Mountain foothills," Galway reminded him. "There were a nearly two minutes where the sensors were blocked."
"And the ground observers had visual contact the whole time," Haberdae countered. "They would have seen any parachutes."
"Then they didn't use
parachutes," Galway insisted. "Look, Prefect, I don't know how they did it. All I know is that they're not with those gliders."
"Ha' yae other e'idence?" Taakh asked.
Galway braced himself. "No evidence, Your Eminence. Just my experience with the way Lathe does things."
"Then 'Re'ect Ha'erdae is correct," the Ryq said. "Yae nay not rekest his other nen."
And there would be no appeal, Galway knew. Not with Taakh. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said. "In that case, may I be excused for a few minutes? The gliders won't land for at least another half hour, and I have some other matters to attend to."