- Chapter 8

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# CHAPTER 8

The short ride from the mall parking lot had been a rough one, Lathe thought as he braced himself against the inside of Unit One's trunk. Still, he had little cause to complain. Mordecai, hanging to the underside of the vehicle, had it considerably harder. He just hoped the other hadn't fallen off somewhere along the way.

The car made one final turn and braked to a halt. Four doors opened and closed as the Security men made their exit, and then all was silence.

Lathe gave it a fifteen count, then dug to his tingler. Mordecai—report.

Inside Security perimeter, the reply came promptly. Clearly, the other had made it through okay. Estimate fifteen to twenty in ambush formation—eight more in backstop position.

Lathe nodded to himself. So he'd been right. Security expected the others to pop out of the subway at the allegedly secret Thirteenth Street exit and were hoping to nab them as they did so. Clear to exit? he signaled.

Clear.

Lathe found the trunk release and popped the lid. Easing it open a crack, he looked outside.

He was facing away from the main ambush ring, looking back toward the mall half a kilometer away. The eight-man rear guard was positioned a dozen meters behind him, a thirty-degree arc of protection standing silent vigil behind the row of parked Security cars, waiting alertly for the missing blackcollars to appear.

Only they were facing the wrong way.

He opened the trunk a few centimeters more and looked up at the sky. The spotters hovering overhead wouldn't be making that same mistake, of course, at least not to the same degree. Still, he would bet heavily that their attention was currently split between the subway exit and the area west of the mall where he and Mordecai had disappeared. Theoretically, parked Security cars should be of little interest to anyone at the moment.

Time to find out whether or not that was true. Giving the rear sentry line one last look, he opened the trunk just far enough to roll out, pulling the lid mostly shut again as he landed on hands and knees on the pavement. Dropping to his belly, he crawled quickly out of sight beneath the car.

"Pleasant ride?" Mordecai murmured as Lathe joined him. The smaller man was working industriously at one of the throwing knives he'd wedged into the car frame earlier to serve as a handhold.

"A little bumpy," Lathe told him. "You?"

With a final tug, the knife came free. "I've had worse," Mordecai said, slipping the weapon back into its thigh sheath. "How do you want to work this?"

Lathe crawled to the side of the car where he could get a better look at the Security cordon. It was a fairly standard containment formation: four men in each of four clusters, the nearest of them about twenty meters away, crouching behind small bushes and parked vehicles at the edge of a narrow and mostly empty parking area. The focus of their semicircle was a large storage shed fastened against the rear of what seemed to be a hardware store on the other side of the lot.

The hunters' equipment was something of a hardware store in its own right. Two of the men in each foursome sported paral-dart rifles, the third carried a flechette rifle, and the fourth had one of the snub-nose laser rifles that had once been Security standard issue. Each man also had a couple of grenades in a sling carrier at his belt. Everyone wore visored helmets and protective vests.

Mordecai crawled up beside him. "Is that the exit?" he asked.

"Up through the ground and out the shed," Lathe confirmed. "You don't see Galway anywhere, do you?"

"Not in this group," Mordecai said. "Were you expecting him to show up personally for the capture?"

Lathe shrugged. "I thought he might."

"Galway's not that stupid," Mordecai said. "Did you notice the grenades?"

Lathe nodded. "Concussion, most likely. No one's wearing enough armor for them to risk frags."

"Still shows they're pretty serious," Mordecai said. "I presume we'll be doing a standard cannonball with the two nearest groups?"

"Cannonball with those, steamroller with the others," Lathe confirmed.

"Taking out the flanking laser gunners first?"

"Yes," Lathe agreed reluctantly. Ideally, he would have preferred to neutralize the entire bunch with hands and feet and nunchaku, minimizing the risk of killing any of them. With Whiplash, enemies like these were also possible future allies.

But two shots with those lasers could punch through their flexarmor, and they couldn't afford to let anyone get that second shot. "Of course, once we're finished we'll still have that sentry line behind us to deal with," he reminded Mordecai.

"Plus the spotters overhead," Mordecai said.

"True." Lathe rubbed his cheek. "Maybe Shaw will have some ideas."

Right on cue, his wrist tingled. At exit. Situation?

Lathe slid two fingers beneath his sleeve. Sixteen-man Security trap cordon—eight-man rear guard—one or more spotters in air.

Weaponry?

Paral-darts, flechette rifles, lasers, grenades.

There was a short pause. Take out cordon—get laser to me.

Lathe cocked an eyebrow at Mordecai. "He is a tactor," Mordecai pointed out. "I assume he knows what he's doing."

"We can hope," Lathe agreed. Acknowledged, he sent. Attack in ten.

Acknowledged. Laser to me in thirty.

Giving him and Mordecai a whole twenty seconds to deal with the rest of the cordon, Lathe noted wryly. The man was too generous. "Ready?" he murmured.

Mordecai had already shuffled across to the other side of the car. "Ready," he murmured back.

Pulling out two shuriken and his nunchaku, Lathe counted down the rest of the seconds; and as his mental clock reached zero, he rolled out from under the car, got to his feet, and headed silently toward the nearest group.

With their attention the other direction, the Security men never saw him coming. But someone in one of the spotters obviously did. He'd covered only half the twenty-meter gap when suddenly everyone gave a sort of simultaneous group twitch and spun around.

Lathe's first shuriken took out the closer of the two laser gunners, catching him in the narrow gap between helmet visor and the top of his chest armor. The second, more distant target fell with the other throwing star buried in the same place. A cluster of paral-darts bounced off Lathe's shoulder, while another cluster and a high-velocity flechette whistled past without even touching him. The rest of the gunners, taken by surprise and clearly rattled, were firing wildly.

Given time, they would undoubtedly correct their aim. Lathe had no intention of giving them that time. A second volley of paral-darts caught him in the stomach; and then he was in the middle of his target group.

He took out the first of the remaining three men with a side kick to the other's chest, the power of the blow against his armor sending him crashing hard onto the pavement. The second man swung his gun sideways toward Lathe's head; dropping into a one-legged crouch, Lathe slammed his fist into the man's thigh in a punch that paralyzed the muscle and likewise dropped him to the ground. The last man sent a final burst of paral-darts uselessly at Lathe's back before the blackcollar's nunchaku swung around and slammed into his helmet.

One group down; one to go. Lathe snatched up the laser rifle still gripped in the dead gunner's hands, using the momentary pause in the action to check out Mordecai's progress. The other blackcollar had likewise taken out his first batch and was sprinting toward his next set of targets. With the borrowed laser rifle in his left hand and his nunchaku in his right, Lathe turned and headed toward his own second group.

They were holding their ground, he noted with a touch of professional admiration. Two of the men had dropped to one knee, the third standing behind them in a standard volley formation. As Lathe started toward them, they opened fire.

The flechette gunner was good, his first shot catching Lathe squarely in the chest. The impact staggered him, slowing his charge and throwing off his balance as the flexarmor went rigid to absorb the blow. The gunner's second shot was nearly as well centered, this one bouncing off his abdomen and impeding his charge even more. Then, as his third shot also connected, the gunner shouted something to his companions.

And one of the kneeling paral-dart gunners dropped his weapon and dived for the laser rifle lying on the ground beside the dead gunner.

Lathe swore under his breath, dropping the laser rifle he was carrying and trying to get to his shuriken. But the flexarmor rigidity that had protected him from the high-velocity flechettes was now unexpectedly working against him. He was still trying to force his stiffened arm down to one of his weapons pouches when the Security man reached the laser rifle and scooped it up, swiveling back around as he brought it to his shoulder.

And then, as Lathe's fingers finally closed on one of his throwing stars, a flash of light sizzled past his face from the right.

The rear sentry line had joined the battle.

Clenching his teeth, Lathe dropped to one knee, the agonizingly slow movement slowed even further as a fourth flechette hammered into his abdomen. The laser gunner in front of him was nearly into position now, the barrel of his rifle swinging around to point directly at him. Lathe finally got his shuriken free and struggled to raise his arm to throw, knowing he wouldn't be in time.

But as he braced himself for the blast, the gunner jerked suddenly to the side, his laser swinging wildly away as both man and weapon sprawled onto the ground.

Lathe had forgotten about Shaw. Apparently, so had everyone else.

He looked to his left. The tactor was framed in the open shed door, his arm windmilling as he sent a second shuriken on its way, this one taking out the flechette-gunner marksman. Reaching down, Lathe picked up the laser rifle he'd dropped and tossed it toward Shaw, then half turned to send his own shuriken in the direction of the rear picket line. There was a burst of laser light from behind him—

And from the center of the picket line came a brilliant flash and a thunderclap that slammed Lathe flat onto his back.

Trained reflexes took over, bringing his arm down to slap out the impact and then rolling himself back up into a crouch. His ears were still ringing; fortunately, the battle-hood had protected him from most of the concussion from the grenade Shaw had set off with his laser shot.

The men in the rear picket line, though, were definitely down for the count. The man who'd been wearing the particular grenade Shaw had hit was probably down permanently.

The final gunner in the group Lathe had been heading for had also been thrown to the ground by the concussion, and Lathe could see him visibly twitching with the aftereffects of the blast. For a second he considered making sure the man stayed put, decided it wouldn't be necessary, and turned again to Shaw.

The tactor was still standing in the shed doorway, his eyes and laser now pointed upward. "Need any help?" Lathe called.

"Get us some transport," Shaw called back, firing a pair of shots into the sky. "Caine? Let's go."

All of the Security cars, as Lathe had noted earlier, were parked in a loose group between the two lines of Security men. He ran to the closest, found the key still in it, and climbed behind the wheel. Ready, he signaled with his tingler.

No one tried to stop the others as they piled into the car. Twenty seconds later, they were back on the street.

"Everyone all right?" Lathe asked as he pulled onto one of the major thoroughfares, throwing a quick look at the two men in the rear seat.

"Quite all right," Shaw assured him, his head halfway out the window beside him as he stared up at the sky. "I don't suppose you happened to get a count of how many spotters they had deployed."

"Sorry," Lathe said. "We must have missed the sign marking the command van."

Shaw grunted. "Well, as long as they stay out of my range, they also won't be close enough to track us when we dump the car. Take a left at that next light."

"Where are we going?" Mordecai asked.

"Ring Village quarter," Shaw told him. "Largely controlled by a fairly unsavory crime boss named Bilnius. One more stolen car won't even be noticed there."

"Not to mention the one we plan to steal on our way out?" Lathe suggested.

"Borrow, not steal," Shaw corrected him. "Speaking of plans, I seem to remember you having a plan for getting into Khorstron."

"I have the start of one, yes," Lathe said. "It still needs some fleshing out."

"And some extra personnel, too, I expect," Shaw said. "Fine. I'll start pulling my people together tonight." He pulled his head back inside the window and looked meaningfully at Lathe's profile. "But I'll be the one in charge of them."

Lathe cocked his head. "As you wish."

"Good," Shaw said, poking his head out the window again. "As long as that's clear. Tomorrow, after we've had a chance to rest, we'll see about fleshing out this plan of yours."

* * *

The bodies had been removed, the injured had been sent for treatment, and the wreckage and weaponry had been collected and carted away. From all appearances, the parking area behind Sheffer's Hardware was once again back to normal.

But it wasn't, Galway knew as he stood gazing across the bloodstained pavement. It would never be normal again. Men had fallen here, and with their deaths this place was subtly but forever changed.

He'd seen the same thing back on Plinry. Far too many times.

He heard a footstep, and turned to see Haberdae come up behind him. "They gave the spotters the slip," he said, his voice dark and cold. "Dumped the car and slipped away while it was dodging one of Shaw's laser barrages."

Galway nodded. He'd known that would happen, of course. He'd predicted as much in the command van as soon as the blackcollars had commandeered the vehicle and roared their way out of Haberdae's trap.

But there was nothing to be gained by bringing that up now. For the first time in the six months since Galway and Judas had first arrived on Khala, Haberdae had completely lost his condescending smugness. Now, finally, he truly understood what it was the blackcollars represented.

And he was angry. Deeply and bitterly angry.

"At least they don't have the car anymore," Galway commented, searching for some bright spot in all this. "With those onboard transponders that let the cars into the government center—"

"Into the inner garage areas," Haberdae cut him off tartly. "And you know perfectly well they're as secure as the wall itself."

"Of course," Galway said quickly, not believing it for a minute. Unlike the Security men on the wall and outer gates, the guards in the garages wouldn't be expecting anyone but high government officials to be driving into their areas. It was exactly the sort of mental blind spot that blackcollars loved to play with.

"Never mind the car anyway," Haberdae went on grimly. "You know Taakh better than I do. When's he going to pick out a few of my men to kill over this?"

"Actually, I don't think he will," Galway said. "Don't forget, he personally signed off on—" your plan "—on tonight's plan. He can't start passing out responsibility for the defeat without taking some of it for himself, and he has way too much pride for that. I'm guessing he'll stay as quiet as possible and wait for it to go away."

Haberdae let his gaze sweep slowly over the area. "You're the one who brought these men here, Galway," he said. His voice was controlled, almost calm, but there was the odor of death beneath it. "You're the one who turned them loose on my city and my world."

"They're not loose, Prefect," Galway said, an icy shiver running through him. Haberdae was looking for someone to kill ... and Galway was the closest likely target. "Judas is with them. They are under control."

"Eight of my men just died," Haberdae reminded him, the death-odor growing stronger. "You call that being under control?"

"We pushed them too hard, and we paid the price," Galway said, again fighting against the urge to remind Haberdae that it was his rashness that had brought this disaster down on them. "There's nothing we can do about it now except make sure those deaths ultimately serve some purpose."

Haberdae snorted. "Like proving to the blackcollars how infallible they are?"

"Like making this work," Galway countered, some anger of his own starting to stir inside him. He'd had just about enough of Haberdae's attitude. All of his attitudes. "We've made an attempt to capture them, which Lathe probably would have expected somewhere along the line anyway. So now we pull back as if we're licking our wounds and let him have a free hand to plan the Khorstron attack."

"Unless Shaw still insists on running the show," Haberdae pointed out. "In which case we're right back where we started."

"We'll find out soon enough," Galway said. "But even if Shaw still wants overall command authority, he has to be smart enough to realize now that he's in a real war. And war is no place for petty rivalries."

Haberdae looked sideways at him. "Like ours?"

Galway grimaced. "That's not what I meant."

"No, of course not." Haberdae looked back at the parking lot. "You can call it petty if you want, Galway. But I'm the one responsible for what happens on Khala. Not the Ryqril; certainly not you. It was my men who died here tonight ... and someone's going to pay for that."

Galway shivered. "You're welcome to hold that thought," he said. "Just be careful to keep it within the guidelines of the plan."

"Oh, don't worry," Haberdae said tartly. "I would never do anything to upset the plan. Are you finished here?"

"Yes," Galway said. In fact, he'd been finished several minutes ago. "We should get to the hospital and start debriefing any of the injured who are ready to talk."

"You go ahead," Haberdae said. "I've got some other business to attend to first." Turning, he strode off toward the handful of vehicles parked behind them.

"Fine," Galway murmured softly to himself as he watched the other go. "I guess I'll see you later."

* * *

Caine's breakfast delivery had come early, despite his late-night arrival at his new quarters. Unlike the silent midnight raid, though, this one had come with all the casual noise and bustle that one would expect from a normal operating prison.

It was only after he'd finished the meal bars and tea and was able to surreptitiously check the cameras that he realized he'd underestimated the opposition. Instead of simply and obviously removing the moistened bits of paper Caine had used to blind them, they'd replaced the paper with something that looked almost exactly the same but was presumably treated to actually be transparent.

He'd spent the day again listening at the door while pretending to fiddle with the lock, all the while trying to decide how he should respond to their little reverse sabotage gambit. Now, as evening began to fade toward night, he still didn't have an answer.

But there were other answers he did have, at least preliminary ones. The building's power generator appeared to be on this level, somewhere at the far end of the corridor from the elevator they'd brought him in on. There were always two guards on duty outside his cell, that number doubling whenever his door was going to be opened for meal delivery. There were also at least six other guards quartered in other rooms on this level, with duty shifts changing three times a day. His watch, like his clothes, had gone with Galway's imported replacement, but Caine had a good time sense and was pretty sure the shift changes were at more or less the standard eight/four/midnight hours.

Occasionally, the pitch of the generator hum would change, and shortly thereafter he would hear one or two men arrive and head down the corridor at a more casual civilian gait than the crisper step of the guards. Either the generator required periodic care and feeding, or else it was old and cranky enough that it had to be occasionally persuaded to keep working.

Those, at least, were the basics of what he had to work with, though he would need another day or two of observation before he would feel confident enough of the prison's routine to make any sort of overt move. Hopefully, he would have that time.

In the distance, he heard the elevator doors open, and the footsteps of three Security men heading his way.

Quickly, he slid his paper probe out of sight inside the collar of his jumpsuit and hopped up from the comfort chair. Grabbing the arms, he lugged it back across the floor to where it usually sat near the center of the room and picked up the top few sheets of paper from his reading stack on the floor.

He was settled again in the chair, pretending to be engrossed in the book, when the lock clicked and the door swung open.

But it wasn't the evening meal he'd been expecting. Instead, a big man he'd never seen before strode into the room, his eyes hard as he gazed at Caine. "So you're Caine," he said without preamble.

"Unless Galway got the two of us mixed up," Caine said. "You my new roommate?"

The other's eyes hardened even more. "You think you're cute, don't you?" he said softly. "You think you're like all those other blackcollars, ready to take on the world and beat it to a pulp."

"Actually, people in orange jumpsuits usually aren't the ones doing the beating," Caine reminded him. "Mr.—ah ...?"

"Prefect," the other corrected him darkly. "Prefect Daov Haberdae, commanding all Security forces on Khala."

"Ah," Caine said, nodding. "Except for the ones Prefect Galway's commandeered, I assume."

Haberdae hissed out a breath. "I don't know what it is with you backwater Plinry rats," he ground out, taking a step forward. As he did so, a pair of guards stepped hastily into the room behind him, their paral-dart guns leveled warningly at Caine's chest. "What is it that makes you think you're better than the rest of us?"

"You got me," Caine said, wondering if he should mention that, strictly speaking, he was actually from Earth, not Plinry. "What's the matter? Isn't Galway saluting or sirring you properly?"

Without warning, the big man charged.

He was at the chair in three quick steps, slapping the pages out of Caine's hand and hauling Caine bodily to his feet by the front of his orange jumpsuit. "I lost eight men today, you son of a snake," he snarled, his nose bare centimeters from Caine's. "Eight men."

With an effort, Caine forced himself to remain impassive. He could drop the man in an instant, he knew. A single properly placed blow could stun him, knock him cold, or permanently cripple him—Caine's choice.

But this wasn't the time. The cell door was open, but the guards were deployed and alert, their guns out and ready. All an attack on Haberdae would buy him would be another period of paralysis.

Besides, if he was very, very clever ...

"Eight men, huh?" he commented, looking Haberdae straight in the eye. "Lathe must have been feeling generous."

And an instant later Caine was flying across the room as Haberdae hurled him sideways toward the wall.

Reflexively, Caine twisted his legs and arms around, trying to get his feet back under him. He made it in time and hit the floor a meter from the end of the bunk bed.

He could have stuck the landing like a professional gymnast, a feat which would no doubt have impressed the watching guards. Instead, he continued to stagger in the direction he'd been thrown, his arms flailing as if he was fighting to get his balance back, watching out of the corner of his eye as he aimed for just the right spot. With an impressively loud clatter, he slammed into the end of the bunk bed, the impact turning him halfway around as his hands again waved around as if for balance.

And under cover of the movement, his fingertips deftly flicked off the gimmicked paper his midnight visitors had put over the hidden camera lens.

He turned back around to find that Haberdae had followed him across the room. Again the big man grabbed a fistful of his jumpsuit, hauling him completely upright. "You're going to die, Caine," Haberdae said, his voice too low for anyone but Caine to hear. "You hear me? Whatever Galway said or promised, you are going to die before this is over. And Lathe and your other friends are going to die, too."

"You'll have no trouble killing me," Caine assured him. "Best of luck with the others."

"Oh, there won't be any luck involved," Haberdae assured him. "I already know how I'm going to do it. The Khorstron Tactical Center, the one Galway thinks Lathe can break into? Right outside the central core area are a set of autotarget defense lasers strong enough to punch straight through your fancy flexarmor. Galway plans to have them shut off, to make sure the blackcollars can get all the way to the very center."

He tightened his grip. "Only they won't be," he said. "I'm going to be right there when they attack ... and I'm going to make sure they're live and tracking. I only wish there was a way to let them know who it was who beat them."

Letting go of the jumpsuit, he gave Caine a sharp shove backward into the end of the bunk bed. "Enjoy your night," he said. "It's one of the last you'll ever have."

Turning, he strode out of the room. The two guards waited until he was in the corridor, then backed out behind him. "Don't forget your people still owe me dinner," Caine called after him as the door swung shut.

He stayed where he was for another minute, half expecting Haberdae to decide he had a little more anger to get out of his system. But the door remained closed, and eventually Caine headed across the room and began collecting the papers the prefect had knocked out of his hand. By and by, as he went about his limited range of options for his evening activities, he would pretend to notice that the camera by the bed had been unblocked and use another bit of soapy paper to block it again. Then, just to make sure, he would naturally replace the paper on the other camera.

And then he would see whether they would be brave enough to make another quiet excursion into his room tonight to again undo his sabotage.

He hoped they would. He hoped it very much.

* * *

The last of the debriefings had been completed, and Galway had returned to his quarters and was preparing for bed when Judas's message came. While insisting he maintain overall command of the Khorstron Center operation, Shaw had nevertheless agreed to turn over planning to Lathe.

It was a victory of sorts, Galway knew. Moreover, it was exactly as he'd predicted. Maybe it would finally convince Haberdae that he did indeed know what he was doing, and persuade the other to give him at least a little genuine cooperation.

But ultimately, it didn't matter whether Haberdae came around or not. Lathe would succeed in penetrating the Khorstron center; and when he did even the most skeptical Ryq would have no choice but to recognize the valuable resource they had in the blackcollars.

After that, there would be nowhere to go but up. Galway would guide, and Lathe would serve, and Plinry's safety would be assured. After years of bare subsistence, the Ryqril would finally be forced to do right by his people.

He was still smiling at that thought when he drifted off to sleep.

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