Blackcollar: The Judas Solution (39 page)

"There," one of the techs said suddenly, pointing at the display. "Four human IR signatures moving south-southwest."

"Only four?" Ramirez asked.

"The fifth must be driving the van," Bailey said.

"Then it is tine," Daasaa declared. "Assen'le yaer tean, Colonel 'Ailey. Re nust 'e ready ren they reach their goal."

"The team is ready now, Your Eminence," Bailey said. "And I have a Groundhopper transport standing ready."

Daasaa tilted his head slightly to the side. "A Groundho'er carries only trel'e 'assengers."

"Your pardon, Your Eminence, but there
are
only twelve of us," Bailey said, quickly running the numbers through his head again. "There are the three techs, the six Security men, you and
Khassq
Warrior Halaak, and me."

"And General 'Oirot," Daasaa said. He shifted his gaze— "
And
Lieutenant Ranirez." Bailey looked at Ramirez, seeing his own surprise mirrored in the other's face. Poirot, for his part, merely looked thoughtful. "I was planning to leave Lieutenant Ramirez here to coordinate the operation," he said carefully. "And I thought General Poirot was still under suspicion."

"Yae are all under sus'icion," Halaak said, his eyes glittering. "That is 'recisely rhy yae are all coning."

"It is tine to 'ind out who the true traitor is," Daasaa said, his voice ominous. "Gather yaer tean, Colonel

'Ailey. It is tine tae go."

* * *

"You sure you know where we're going?" Hawking puffed as Skyler led them to the crest of yet another wooded hill.

"Absolutely," Skyler assured him, glancing up at the drifting clouds visible between the leafy branches overhead. "Another half klick, tops."

"That's what you said half a klick ago," O'Hara murmured, just loudly enough for Skyler to hear.

"Half a klick ago I said it was a
whole
klick," Skyler corrected. "Try to pay attention, will you?" O'Hara muttered something not quite seditious about the decline in the standards of blackcollar leadership. Skyler responded in equally facetious kind, and the two of them fell silent. Flynn didn't join in the banter. He'd hardly slept last night, despite the heavy activity of the previous day, thoughts of Jensen's plans and fate swirling unpleasantly through his mind.

Which, on one level, was rather surprising to him. He'd had his share of training exercises with Jensen back on Plinry, of course, and had found the man to be a competent if somewhat distant instructor. He'd also sat in on many a late-night bull session where Jensen's state of mind had been dissected in minute and low-fact detail.

But until this mission he hadn't actually known very much about the man. Even now, after a couple of days of tromping the Rocky Mountain wilderness together, he knew he hadn't even scratched the other's paint. But at the same time, those days had created some kind of bond of understanding and respect between them, something completely intangible but just as definitely real.

Flynn didn't want to see Jensen sacrifice himself. Not even if such a sacrifice made a point to the Ryqril. Not even if it proved the key to ultimate victory.

Back on Plinry, he'd often wondered how Jensen could have been so affected by Novak's death, especially after so many other blackcollars had died. Now, in contrast, it was perfectly understandable. A man didn't always get to choose who his friends and kindred spirits would be. Sometimes, the universe made those decisions for him.

"Aha," Skyler said, stopping suddenly at the top of yet another short ridge. "O ye of little faith. There it is."

Flynn hurried up the ridge, trying not to jostle O'Hara and Hawking on the way. He reached Skyler's side and scanned the greenery in front of them.

Which seemed to be nothing
but
greenery. "Where?" he asked.

"There," Hawking said, pointing at the end of a hill that opened up into a small clearing. "See the grating there, just beneath the overhang?"

"I see it," O'Hara said. "Nicely done."

"Flynn?" Skyler asked.

And finally, Flynn spotted it: an irregularly patterned grille, two meters across, set back almost invisibly in the shadow beneath the overhanging rock and grass. "Got it," he said. "Man. I wouldn't have believed you could hide something that big right out in the open."

"We'd better get inside," Hawking warned. "We don't want Security swooping down on Kanai and finding the rest of the birds have flown."

"Right," Skyler said, heading down the ridge toward the clearing. "The grating's been cut free—"

"Cover!" O'Hara snapped.

For an instant Flynn continued down the ridge, muscles frozen by surprise even as the blackcollars'

superior reflexes sent them diving to all sides.

But it was too late for any of them. Even as Flynn finally braked to a halt the small canisters falling from the sky slammed into the ground all around them, exploding into white clouds of cloying-sweet gas. He was asleep before he hit the ground.

* * *

It had taken some ingenuity and several trips with the drag carts, but Foxleigh and Jensen had finally managed to fuel and prep the Talus. "Next step is to figure out how to get it into one of the aircraft lifts," Foxleigh said as they coiled the last cables and hoses clear. "There are a pair of upper-level launch bays to the east and west. Which ones were you planning to use?"

"We won't need the launch bays," Jensen told him. "Or the elevator, either." Foxleigh stared. "You mean ... straight out the main entrance? But isn't there a Ryqril base set up there?

Adamson told me there was."

"Oh, there's a base, all right," Jensen said. "A big one, too. That's the whole point."

"What whole point?" Foxleigh retorted. "In case you haven't noticed, Ryqril bases always include large, nasty antiaircraft lasers. You won't get fifty meters before you get vaporized."

"Ah, but this base runs right up against the side of the mountain," Jensen said. "Going out through the front door will actually put me
inside
the defenses."

"Really," Foxleigh murmured. "Adamson never mentioned that part."

"He probably never got close enough to see that part," Jensen said. "The Ryqril are touchy about visitors."

"I see," Foxleigh said. Yes; it would do nicely. "Of course, they've got other weapons in there besides the antiaircraft lasers. Once you're in, you very likely won't be coming out again."

"I wasn't intending to," Jensen said quietly. "This one's for Novak and all the rest who've died at Ryqril hands."

He turned back to face the Talus ... and as he did so, Foxleigh slipped his hand inside his jacket and drew his gun. "Actually, there's going to be a small change—"

He'd never seen a blackcollar move before. Had never dreamed that a human being
could
move that fast. An instant later he found his gun hand pointed toward the ceiling, his arm locked above his head between Jensen's two hands, the blackcollar facing him with their noses no more than ten centimeters apart.

And he had no idea how he'd even gotten into that position.

"I'm disappointed, Toby," Jensen said, his voice dark and cold as he gazed into Foxleigh's face. "Not surprised, really. But disappointed."

"I wasn't going to hurt you," Foxleigh insisted.

"No, of course not." Sliding his left hand along Foxleigh's right wrist, the blackcollar deftly plucked the gun from his hand and stepped back. "We wondered about this gun, Flynn and I," he said, turning the weapon over in his hand as he inspected it. "I was hoping you were just some war veteran who'd been hiding out all this time."

"I am," Foxleigh said, rubbing his elbow where Jensen had overextended it. "My name's Lieutenant Samuel Foxleigh, TDE Air Defense."

"Of course," Jensen said. "Let me guess: you flew Talus interceptors."

"As a matter of fact, I did," Foxleigh said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

"And you ended up out here how?"

"I was shot down in the final battle," Foxleigh said, his gaze drifting to the fighter looming over them. "I hurt my leg when I bailed out, but I was able to make it to Shelter Valley. Doc Adamson patched me up; but as soon as it was clear that we'd lost and the Ryqril were landing in force to set up shop, he knew I couldn't stay there."

"Why not?"

"The town was too small," Foxleigh said. "Everyone knew everyone else, and there were two or three Adamson didn't trust to keep their mouths shut under pressure. So he took me up to the cabin and asked Toby to put me up for a while."

"So there
was
an actual Toby?"

"Adamson's uncle," Foxleigh said. "He'd moved up to the cabin about ten years earlier to get away from what he called the irritations of civilization."

"Not much of an escape," Jensen pointed out. "He was, what, a whole two hundred meters out of town?"

"But everyone knew to leave him alone," Foxleigh said. "Actually, the cabin's location was a compromise with the rest of his family, who were adamant about him not disappearing off somewhere into the wild and maybe dying in an accident without them even knowing about it."

"And then you showed up," Jensen said. "He must have been thrilled."

"Thrilled isn't the word for it," Foxleigh said ruefully, remembering the long and heated discussions. "But Adamson promised it wouldn't be for long, just until the Ryqril and their collaborators finished the census we knew they'd be taking of the mountain areas. Once that was over, I could move back down to Shelter Valley, and eventually to Denver."

"So what went wrong?"

"What do you think?" Foxleigh retorted. "The Ryqril decided to stick that damned sensor pylon at the edge of town. That meant Security could be popping in at any time to check on the thing. Worse, it meant everyone would be on file somewhere, which killed any chance for me to slip into town and pretend I'd always been there."

"So you and Toby became permanent roommates?" Jensen suggested.

Foxleigh swallowed. "Only for a while," he said quietly. "Three months later he caught pneumonia and died."

"Leaving you his cabin and his name."

"Everyone in town already knew about old Toby the hermit," Foxleigh said. "But no one outside the Adamson family had seen him recently enough to remember what he looked like. It seemed the perfect place to hide."

"Temporarily, anyway," Jensen said. "Only you seem to have made it permanent." Foxleigh felt his stomach tighten. "I guess I just got used to it." Jensen shook his head. "Lie number two," he said.

Foxleigh frowned. "What?"

"That was lie number two," Jensen said. "Lie number one was in your story somewhere, though I'm not sure exactly where. But this was definitely number two. You want to try again?" Foxleigh sighed. "All right," he said. "The fact is that I wanted to stay near the mountain. I knew it was locked down, but I thought someday I might be able to find a way back in."

"To do what?"

"Basically, to do exactly what you're planning," Foxleigh said. "I wanted to take a fighter and do as much damage as I could to the Ryqril before they caught up with me." He squared his shoulders. "And I'll guarantee I'm a better pilot than you are."

"No doubt," Jensen agreed. "So what exactly do you want?"

"What I just said," Foxleigh told him. "Let me take the Talus out into the Ryqril base."

"Sounds reasonable," Jensen said. "The answer's no."

He said it so calmly that for a second the word didn't register. When it finally did, it hit Foxleigh like a slap in the face. "What do you mean,
no
?" he demanded.

"I mean that before you pulled this I might have been interested," Jensen said, hefting the gun. "Now, your currency's all been burned."

"I wasn't going to shoot you," Foxleigh insisted again, his stomach churning. This was his last, his very last chance. "I just wanted to make sure you'd listen."

"And if I didn't, you had the final argument?" Jensen shook his head. "Sorry, Toby. Or Foxleigh, or whatever your real name is."

"It's Foxleigh."

"Whatever." Jensen gestured back toward the elevator. "Come on. You're going home." Silently, they made their way back down to the Level Nine storage room where they'd first entered Aegis Mountain. Sitting Foxleigh down on one of the crates, Jensen poked around for a few minutes and came up with a short length of thin cord. "I'm going to tie your hands together," he told Foxleigh as he set to work. "It'll make some parts of the trip a little tricky, I'm afraid, but a former fighter pilot should be able to make do."

"What about the rope ladder?" Foxleigh asked. "I can't climb it this way."

"The housing on the sonic Torch set up at the base of the shaft has a couple of sharp edges on it," Jensen told him. "I damn near sliced my hand open on one of them on our way out last time. A little work and you should be able to cut yourself free."

"And meanwhile you'll be committing suicide?"

"I'll be avenging fallen comrades," Jensen corrected. "And, with luck, I'll be helping bring all this to an end. Okay; on your feet."

"Wait a second," Foxleigh said as Jensen took his arm helped him up. "What do you mean, bring it to an end? Bring
what
to an end?"

"The Ryqril domination, of course," Jensen said. "What else is there?"

"No—hold it," Foxleigh protested as Jensen started pulling him toward the tunnel. "How is shooting up one Ryqril base going to do
that
?"

"Just part of the larger whole," Jensen said. "I'd love to chat about it, but I've got work to do." Gently but firmly he pushed Foxleigh through the opening. "Get going."

"Jensen, I want to be a part of what you're doing," Foxleigh said, trying one final time. "I
need
to be a part of it."

"And don't try to come back," Jensen added, shoving Foxleigh's gun into his own belt. "If you do, I'll kill you." Turning, he strode back across the room.

Foxleigh watched him go, his heart feeling like a chunk of lead. It had been his absolute last chance. And he'd blown it.

Jensen disappeared out the door. Foxleigh stood there a little longer, wondering if he should follow the other and try again. All the blackcollar could do would be to follow through on his warning and kill him. And one way or another, Foxleigh was already dead.