by Timothy Zahn
Galway shook his head. "Fortunately for you, that won't be necessary. Knowing Lathe, I'm expecting the timing here to be tight enough that there wouldn't be enough time for the conditioning. And frankly, considering you've had both Resistance psychor training and whatever mental tricks the blackcollars might have taught you, I'm not sure I'd trust you on your own no matter how long the Ryqril had to work on you."
"Thanks for the compliment," Caine said. "What do you mean by the timing being tight?"
"I'd have thought that was obvious," Galway said, eyeing him closely. "Lathe intends to break into the Khorstron Tactical Center. We intend to let him."
"What makes you think that's why we're here?" Caine countered, frowning. So the whole tac center thing had indeed been a trap, just as Lathe had surmised.
But they were going to let the blackcollars in?
"No, I'm sure you're just here to sample the local cuisine," Galway said, stepping back to the doorway. "At any rate, you can look forward to a few quiet days here, after which you'll be released." He hesitated. "I'll try to get the Ryqril to let you go back to Plinry."
"After the others are dead?"
"Hopefully, after the others are on their way elsewhere," Galway assured him. "We'll just have to see how this first test goes."
" 'Test'?"
"Perhaps I'll be able to tell you all about it someday," Galway said. "In the meantime, whatever hospitality I can offer is yours. Is there anything you'd like?"
"How about something to read?" Caine suggested. "The history and current events of this part of Khala, maybe. Some maps of Inkosi City and the environs would be nice, too."
Galway smiled faintly. "In case you're able to escape?"
"That's the primary duty of a prisoner of war," Caine reminded him. "Some actual clothing would be nice, too. It's rather chilly in here."
"The clothing's on the top bunk," Galway said, pointing above him. "As to the rest, I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you," Caine said. "Maybe some music, too." He looked around the bare room. "And some pictures and a carpet."
"It is rather grim, isn't it?" Galway agreed, looking around as well. "It was a spotter strongpoint during the war, using radar and searchlights to target incoming Ryqril ships."
"With the Ryqril response to such targeting thus being drawn away from the more important military and civilian areas?"
"Exactly," Galway said. "I understand there was a whole semicircle of these expendable, more or less single-use facilities around Inkosi City."
"I guess the guys in this one were lucky."
"As lucky as anyone was afterwards," Galway said quietly, and Caine could see his throat tighten with memories. For a moment he seemed to gaze into the past, and then his expression cleared and he focused again on Caine. "At any rate, I'll leave orders about the music and reading material."
"Off to attend to more pressing matters?"
"The game continues," Galway said, stepping back into the corridor. "You unfortunately, are now off the board. Good night."
He disappeared down the corridor. The two Security men backed out behind him, their eyes on Caine the whole time. The door closed with a solid-sounding thud, followed by an equally solid thud from the lock.
And Caine was alone.
* * *
Galway made sure the cell door was locked securely behind them. Then, leaving the two Security men behind on guard, he headed back to the elevator and the command/monitor room two floors up.
He saw no one else in the lower-level corridor, or in the elevator, or in the ground-floor corridors. Not surprising, really. Haberdae had made it very clear that the Autumn-Three Strongpoint would be running a skeleton crew, with no more personnel than he himself judged to be absolutely essential for the care and guarding of their single prisoner.
Penny wise, the old saying whispered through Galway's mind. Pound foolish.
Haberdae was waiting in the command room, his arms folded across his chest as he stood behind the tech at the monitor bank, glaring at the three active screens that showed the inside of Caine's cell. Taakh stood off in one of the corners like a silent, brooding statue. "What's he doing?" Galway asked as he came into the room.
"So far, just looking around," the tech reported. "I can't tell whether or not he's spotted the cameras."
"He's certainly spotted two of them," Galway said, coming up beside Haberdae. "It'll be interesting to see if he disables them or simply tries to work around them as much as possible."
"I'm sure whatever he does will be fascinating," Haberdae growled. "In the meantime, if you can drag your mind back to the main business at hand, we have a potentially serious problem brewing. Your man Judas reports Lathe and the Khala blackcollars may be setting up for a turf war."
Galway frowned. "Over what?"
"What do you think?" Haberdae retorted. "Over the whole Khorstron operation. Our pompous little Tactor Shaw has apparently gotten his back up and seems to think that whatever is done here should be under his command."
There was an obvious comparison just begging to be made, but Galway had already resolved to be as diplomatic as possible while in Haberdae's jurisdiction. "What does Lathe say about it?" he asked instead.
"He seems inclined to fight," Haberdae said. "He invoked Caine's Earth-based authority and Shaw backed off a little. But he might still reconsider." He eyed Galway. "And if he does, he's got the manpower to back it up. According to Shaw, he has nearly a hundred blackcollars on call."
Galway stared at him. "Why didn't you tell me he had that kind of force available?"
"Because we didn't know," Haberdae countered. "Besides, what does it matter? As long as they get into Khorstron, why do we care how many of them it takes?"
"Because I don't want them going in like the Charge of the Light Brigade," Galway said. "I want Lathe to do the magic he does with small teams."
"Oh, relax," Haberdae said scornfully. "In my opinion, Shaw's blowing smoke. He might possibly have a hundred blackcollars on paper, but I doubt more than a few of them are in any shape to fight. If he can actually field even fifteen blackcollars, I'll be very surprised."
"You might be, at that," Galway said tartly. "Underestimating blackcollars is a dangerous game."
Haberdae lifted his eyebrows. "And you know this from personal experience?"
Galway took a deep breath. As diplomatic as possible ... "Yes, I do," he said evenly. "Which is why I don't want to do it again."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taakh shift position slightly. "Enou'," the Ryq said. His voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking the tone of command behind it. "Yae rill not argue rith 'Re'ect Galray."
"My apologies, Your Eminence," Haberdae said, turning toward the Ryq and bowing slightly. His tone was subservient, but there was a hint of resentment beneath it that even his loyalty-conditioning couldn't entirely erase. "I will, of course, defer to Prefect Galway in all matters of strategy and tactics on this operation." He turned back to Galway. "What are your orders? Sir."
"We first need to make sure that Lathe will be the main planner on the Khorstron raid," Galway said, choosing to accept Haberdae's new deference as genuine, which both men knew perfectly well wasn't true. "I'd prefer Judas stay in the background, but if necessary he and Caine's Earth Resistance authority can be used to support Lathe's position. If that doesn't work, we may have to look for a way to take Shaw out of the equation."
"Or maybe we should just go ahead and do that now," Haberdae suggested.
Galway shook his head. "Tricky," he said. "And dangerous. We don't want to risk Lathe getting caught in the crossfire."
"It would still be worth working out some contingency plans," Haberdae pressed.
Galway sighed silently. "Fine. Go ahead."
"I'll get on it at once," Haberdae promised, heading for the door. "You coming?"
"Not yet," Galway said. "I want to watch Caine a while first."
Haberdae snorted under his breath. "I trust you realize t
hat keeping him alive is a complete waste of time and energy and manpower."
"I don't kill unnecessarily," Galway said stiffly.
Haberdae gave him a thin smile. "Of course not," he said. "Neither do I."
* * *
The clothing Galway had left him turned out to be a loose-fitting, long-sleeved jumpsuit and soft indoor boot-slippers, the whole outfit made of a thin, crepelike orange cloth. Caine got dressed, then spent the next hour exploring his cell, methodically going over every square centimeter. From the design and lack of built-in surveillance equipment, he guessed the room had begun life as crew quarters and not a prison. That meant retrofits, all of which proved easy enough to spot.
The most obvious were the tiny cameras. The first, concealed in one of the bunk bed supports facing the door, provided the hidden watchers with a view of the bathroom area and the door itself. The second, in the top of the shower enclosure, covered the bunk beds and the rest of that half of the room. There was also a smaller and much more subtly hidden camera in the room's far upper corner, probably a fish-eye lens that by itself could monitor nearly the entire room. Apparently, the plan was for him to congratulate himself on spotting the first two cameras and miss the third. There was also a single audio pickup.
His parallel search for something he could use to break out of his prison was somewhat less rewarding. The bunk bed frame was bolted to the wall with the kind of nonreversible screws that required a special tool to remove. The mattress itself was soft and floppy, filled with some kind of foam chips, with no internal springs or anything else he could adapt as a weapon. The table was fastened to the floor, while the comfort chair was far too large and heavy to be of any use as a weapon—he could throw it once and probably flatten whomever it landed on, but he would never get a second shot with it before the rest of the guards piled on top of him. The bunk's two blankets, while thick enough to be effective at their task, were composed of a flimsy cloth that would tear with very little effort, making them useless as bonds or choke cords. The large bathroom towel was made of a similar material.
The room's single door ran all the way to the ceiling, preventing him from suspending himself out of sight above it in the classic jungle-cat-drop position so beloved by action melodramas. There was likewise no room to hide beneath the lower bunk, and the shower enclosure was completely transparent.
There was a click of the lock, and he turned as one of his guards opened the door, a thick sheaf of paper in his hands. "Here," he said, watching Caine warily as he crouched down and set the stack on the floor just inside the door. "Prefect Galway's compliments."
"What is it?" Caine asked, frowning at the papers.
"You asked for a book," the guard said. "There it is." His eyes still on Caine, he grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it closed again.
Caine crossed to the papers and picked them up, mentally chalking up one more to Galway's credit. An electronic book would have required an electronic reader, whose inner workings Caine might have been able to jury-rig into a weapon against the surveillance cameras. A standard bound book, on the other hand, could have been used as a throwing weapon. Instead, Galway had given him five hundred individual pages that couldn't be used for anything except reading material.
Or so he apparently thought.
Setting the rest of the sheaf of papers on the floor beside the comfort chair, he took the first page and tore off the upper two corners. Going to the shower enclosure, he moistened them with drops of liquid soap from the dispenser, then took them to the two obvious cameras and carefully pasted one over each of the lenses.
That left the third camera still intact, of course. But he was willing to play the game for now and pretend he hadn't spotted that one. If and when he was ready to make his move, its presence shouldn't matter.
He took the rest of the page and meticulously folded and refolded it until he had a narrow, stiff, ruler-shaped probe. Then, lugging the comfort chair over to the door, he sat down and began prodding carefully at the crack between the door and the frame. It was late and he was tired, but it would look odd if he didn't put at least a little effort into freeing himself.
There was no way such a flimsy probe could actually spring the lock, of course, and he could imagine the secret watchers having a good laugh at the would-be blackcollar's pathetic would-be escape attempt.
They were welcome to their amusement. Playing with the lock this way gave him a perfect excuse to press his ear against the metal wall and to listen to the noises conducted through it. The first step, Lathe always said, was to scout out the territory and to learn the unique rhythms of people and movement and equipment.
Working industriously with his folded paper, Caine settled in to begin learning the rhythms of his new home.
* * *
"General?" the officer at the Novak's comm station called. "Passenger section reports the shuttle has returned."
"Acknowledged," Lepkowski said, turning away from the bridge canopy and his contemplation of the darkened world turning beneath him. "What's current status on Security communications down there?"
"Still low-level, sir," the officer said. "Aside from that one thirty-minute spike, it's all been very quiet down there."
That spike most likely being when Security realized that the drop pods had carried only hang-gliding dummies. If things had gone according to plan, Lathe and the others should have been safely to Inkosi City by then, possibly even at Shaw's place and under the Khala blackcollars' protection.
If things hadn't gone according to plan, they might already be dead.
With an effort, he shook away the thought. They were in danger, certainly. Every military operation, no matter how carefully planned, carried risks. But he'd known these men a long time. If anyone could pull this off, it was them.
And meanwhile, he had more important things to do than worry. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped up behind the helmsman. "Change of plans, Lieutenant," he said, pulling a magnecoded card from his tunic pocket. "Here's our new course setting."
"Yes, sir," the other said, frowning slightly as he took the card and plugged it into the reader. "It'll take us about three days," he said, peering at the display. "That'll run us nearly a week off schedule, plus whatever time we spend there."
"The passengers will get over it," Lepkowski assured him.
The other smiled faintly. "Yes, sir. Helm stands ready."
"On our way, then," Lepkowski said. "Full power; flank speed as soon as she'll take it."
"Yes, sir."
Ponderously, the Novak began to pull itself out of orbit; and as it did so, Lepkowski gave the planet below one final look. Everything was going well down there, he told himself firmly. Of course it was.
CHAPTER 5
"Silcox's building is just around the corner," Reger said, pointing through the windshield at the next intersecting street. "Second from the corner on the right. You can see it over the row of houses here."
"I see it," Skyler said, leaning forward to look past Kanai's shoulder as he adjusted his goggles over his battle-hood. The building was relatively short, four stories tall, with only the top visible above the two-story duplexes lining the street they were driving on.
He shifted his attention back to the street itself, searching for other traffic. But aside from rows of parked cars along both curbs, no other vehicles were in sight. "Hawking?"
"All set," Hawking confirmed, sealing the last fastener at the neck of his borrowed general's uniform. "Did you want us to do a drive-by first?"
"Better not," Skyler said, getting a grip on the door handle. "A Security general shouldn't have to search for his stakeouts. Kanai?"
"Ready," the other blackcollar said.
"Okay, Reger, slow down," Skyler ordered. There were a pair of parked vans coming up that would be ideal. "Kanai ... go."
Together, they wrenched open their doors and jumped from the slowly moving car, hitting the ground jogging. Kanai ducked between the vans, with Skyler right behind him
. They waited there until Reger had made a leisurely turn around the corner, then stole across the lawn between the two duplexes, coming to a halt in the shadow of a stubby tree a dozen meters from the side of Anne's building.
Besides being short, the building was also relatively narrow, at least compared to the other apartment houses in the neighborhood. There were only two apartments per floor, Kanai had told them, with Anne's on the third floor east, the opposite side from their current position. The building had interior hallways, a staircase at each end of the building, and a single door front and rear on the first floor. Security's observers would probably be watching both those doors, of course.
Unfortunately for them, there were other ways into a building besides the doors. Especially a building like this one, whose exterior walls were composed of an alternating pattern of brick and rough-cut stone.