The Judas Solution

His first, hopeful thought was that Flynn had returned with the rest of the blackcollars. Surely between Flynn and Skyler he would find someone who would be willing to help plead his case to Jensen.

  But the whisper of hope was barely formed before it evaporated in the cold light of reality. He'd traveled this tunnel with Jensen, and he knew how the other moved. There was no way a group of blackcollars would make the kind of noise he was hearing.

  And if it wasn't the blackcollars, there was only one other possibility.

  He collected another set of bruises as he retraced his steps back toward the base. But this time he hardly noticed, his full attention focused on making the trip with as much speed and stealth as he could manage.

  Finally, after a short eternity, he arrived and set off across the storage room as fast as his leg would let him. Hopefully, Jensen had gone back to the Talus. If he hadn't, if he was somewhere else in the base, Foxleigh could search for hours without finding him.

  And neither he nor Jensen had nearly that much time to work with. Clenching his teeth, pushing his leg as hard as he could, he reached the corridor and turned toward the elevator.

  And gasped as something whipped across his vision to settle firmly against his throat. "It's me—it's me," he gasped.

  "Yes, I see it's you," Jensen growled into his ear, the pressure of the nunchaku sticks against his throat not letting up even a little. "You have got to be the noisiest infiltrator—"

  "They're coming," Foxleigh cut him off. "Footsteps in the tunnel. Lots of them."

  The nunchaku sticks stayed against his throat, but the pressure eased slightly. "It's probably Flynn and Skyler," Jensen said.

  "No." Foxleigh tried to shake his head, discovered he couldn't. "They're way too loud to be blackcollars."

  Jensen hissed, an coldly ominous sound. "So Security's found the back door. Too bad."

  "It sounded like a lot of them," Foxleigh said. "Let me help you."

  "Thanks, but I can handle it myself."

  "Your ribs are going to limit what you can do," Foxleigh persisted. "Besides, I learned enough tactics to know that a situation like this requires a double-flank trap. I can be the other flank."

  "No."

  "I have to help you," Foxleigh begged. "Please."

  For a long moment Jensen remained silent. "You lied to me earlier," he said at last. "Tell me what you lied about."

  Foxleigh closed his eyes, tears of ancient shame welling up behind his eyelids. So here it was at last. "I told you I was shot down in the final battle," he said, the words feeling like hot embers in his mouth. "I wasn't. I was driving back to the base when the Ryqril attacked."

  "You were AWOL?"

  "Not on purpose," Foxleigh said, wincing at the pleading defensiveness in his voice. "There was a girl I knew in Central City, and—I didn't expect the Ryqril to attack so soon. I swear."

  Jensen sighed. "Yeah, that happened a lot in that war," he conceded. "What happened then?"

  "What happened is that I never made it," Foxleigh said bitterly. "I saw them coming in and pushed my speed and took a curve too fast. I tried to keep going on foot, but I'd wrecked my leg the same time I wrecked the car. After that ... well, the rest of it goes pretty much the way I told you."

  "Except for why you stayed in Shelter Valley," Jensen said. "You didn't just get used to it, did you? You were hoping for another crack at the Ryqril."

  Foxleigh snorted. "Fine—so it's been an obsession. Haven't you ever obsessed over something?"

  "No," Jensen said flatly. He hesitated. "Nothing that interfered with my duty, anyway."

  "Your duty?" Foxleigh countered. "This is my duty, Commando. This is—" He broke off, blinking back another pair of tears. "That Talus we prepped, the one named Gotterdammerung?" he said quietly. "That's my fighter, Jensen. The one I should have been flying in that battle. The one I should have died in."

  For a minute Jensen didn't reply. Foxleigh waited, his mind wrapped in a strange sense of peace, as if thirty years of accumulated dread and anticipation and forlorn hope had been flushed away in the catharsis of his long overdue confession. Whatever happened now, it would simply happen.

  And then, as the internal pressure of his emotional turmoil faded, so did the external pressure against his throat. "We'll take them in the storage room," Jensen said, stepping out from behind him. A knife flashed, and with a quick slash Foxleigh's hands were free. "I trust you remember how to use this?" he added as he handed Foxleigh the pistol he'd taken from him.

  "Oh, yes," Foxleigh said softly as the familiar weight of his issue sidearm settled into his hand. At least once a day for the first five years of his self-imposed exile, he'd cleaned the gun, loaded it, and held the muzzle to his own head as he decided whether or not to pass judgment upon himself for his failures.

  Now, after thirty years, he would finally have the chance to give his life for something more useful and fitting than simple punishment. "I remember very well."

  * * *

  There were more Ryqril waiting at the west door than Judas had expected. But their numbers actually ended up working against them, denying them the maneuverability that might otherwise have made the battle more even.

  As it was, the fight was over very quickly. Taking on their enemies' lasers and short swords with nothing but hands, feet, shuriken, and nunchaku, Lathe and the others waded systematically through the crowd until every one of the Ryqril were incapacitated, unconscious, or dead.

  "Everyone all right?" Lathe asked as he crouched over one of the bodies. "Caine?"

  "I'm fine," Judas assured him, looking around the room with the sense of unreality he always seemed to experience when watching blackcollars in action.

  "Nothing here," Spadafora said. He was crouched over another of the bodies, his hands darting deftly through the various pockets and pouches in his baldric and pants.

  "Or here," Lathe agreed, standing back up. "That could be good or bad."

  "What are you looking for?" Judas asked.

  "Immunity transponder," Spadafora explained, crossing to where Mordecai was peering out the half-open door leading into the inner corridor. "Something to shut down those autotarget lasers Shaw warned they probably have installed around the core." He nodded toward the bodies. "Only none of our friends here seems to be carrying one."

  "Which either means they've shut down the interior defenses, or that this particular crowd was considered expendable," Lathe said.

  "Or else that none of these particular warriors were authorized to leave this area," Judas pointed out, some of the tension between his shoulders easing. This one, at least, he knew the answer to—Galway had told him they would be leaving the lasers off.

  "Maybe," Lathe said, picking up two of the short swords that lay scattered across the floor and sliding them into his belt at the small of his back where they'd be out of the way. "Let's find out. Mordecai, take point."

  Mordecai nodded and opened the door the rest of the way.

  And dropped into a crouch as a laser bolt sizzled past where his head had just been. Judas caught a glimpse of a Ryq crouched in partial concealment around the corner of the next cross corridor, dropping the muzzle of his laser as he tried to line up his second shot.

  The shot never came. Mordecai's shuriken flashed across the distance and the Ryq toppled over, the throwing star buried in his forehead. Another alien started to lean out, ducked quickly back as Spadafora sent a primer cap past the corner to explode against the cross corridor's far wall.

  And as he fired off a second cap to the other side of the intersection, Mordecai and Lathe were on the move, running silently toward the concealed defenders. They reached the intersection simultaneously, one turning to each side of the cross corridor and charging in among the hidden aliens. There was a single surprised squawk from someone; and then Lathe flashed a hand signal, and Judas and Spadafora ran up to join them.

  By the time they arrived it was over. Five armed Ryqril lay scattered on the floor on Lathe's side, wh
ile six bodies decorated Mordecai's. The rest of the cross corridor, on both sides, was deserted. "One down, four to go," Lathe said, peering at the four cross corridors cutting across their path ahead. "Spadafora, watch the backtrail; Caine, stay close to him."

  Shifting his nunchaku to his left hand and pulling out a fresh pair of shuriken with his right, he started forward.

  * * *

  There were nine of them in all: six heavily armed Security types followed by three lightly armed men carrying tech-type equipment boxes. All were young, all were clearly nervous, and as they filed one by one through the scorched entrance they formed themselves into a parade-ground-perfect semicircle perimeter until the three techs had negotiated the last part of the passage and joined them.

  The whole spectacle was so training-school fresh that it made Foxleigh wince. Clearly, these were brand-new recruits to the Ryqril cause, chosen for their courage and stamina.

  And, no doubt, their expendability.

  He grimaced, fingering his pistol as the group reformed itself into a standard boxed-centipede formation and started moving toward the door. He couldn't afford to think of them as people, he reminded himself firmly. They were the enemy, their presence an obstacle to his own redemption.

  Lifting his gun, bracing his wrist on the edge of the box he was hiding behind, he lined up the muzzle on the lead Security man and squeezed the trigger.

  His aim was every bit as good as he'd promised Jensen it would be. The leader toppled over, and the rest of the group behind him erupted in instant chaos. For a few precious seconds they looked around in panicked bewilderment, the echoes from walls and ceiling apparently having confused the direction the shot had come from. Foxleigh lined up his gun on the next man in line; and as he did so one of the armed men in back twitched violently and similarly collapsed to the floor. Foxleigh fired his second shot, and one more of the enemy was eliminated.

  But this time one of the others had apparently spotted his muzzle flash. There was a hoarse shout over the echoes, a pointed finger—

  And suddenly Foxleigh's hiding place was the center of a hailstorm of return fire.

  He ducked back as a horizontal hail of paral-darts thudded into his box or burned past to clatter against the far wall. He stuck his hand around the side, exposing as little flesh as possible, and blindly fired two quick shots before yanking his hand back. As he did so, the soft chuff-chuff of paral-dart fire was joined by the sharper cracks as some of the Security men switched over to flechette guns. Foxleigh could hear tearing sounds as the tough plastic of his refuge began to disintegrate under the assault. He started to stick his hand out for another shot, jerked it back as a stray flechette sliced a thin line of pain across his wrist. The barrage seemed to waver....

  And then, abruptly, all was silence.

  Foxleigh waited another handful of seconds, then eased a cautious eye around the corner of his box.

  They were all down. All of them. Two of the three techs were still twitching, clearly still alive. None of the others was moving at all. Gathering himself back to his feet, Foxleigh limped over for a closer look.

  He and Jensen reached them at the same time, the blackcollar pressing a hand to his thincast above his injured ribs. "Thanks for your help," he said, his voice strained a little.

  "You're welcome." Foxleigh looked around at the bodies, feeling more than a little sick. "I wish to God we hadn't had to do that."

  Jensen sighed. "So do I," he said. "This war was never supposed to be against our own people. Damn the Ryqril to hell for doing this to them."

  "And to us." Foxleigh took a deep breath. "Speaking of hell, it's time for us to deliver some." He looked up from the bodies and locked eyes with Jensen. "I presume we're not going to have any more nonsense about who's going to fly my plane?"

  "No," Jensen said quietly. "Under the circumstances, I think you deserve a final crack."

  "Thank you." Foxleigh hesitated, then turned his gun around and offered it to Jensen. "Here—I won't be needing this anymore. Tie up the survivors and meet me back at the Talus."

  He started to turn away, but Jensen caught his arm. "I was willing to fly the fighter into that hell, you know," the blackcollar said quietly.

  "I know," Foxleigh assured him. "And I'm sure the ghosts of your past appreciate the thought. But this is my world, and my duty."

  "And you have your own ghosts to deal with?"

  "Actually, I've been able to mostly put them to rest over the years," Foxleigh said, eyeing him. The man still wasn't completely convinced, he sensed. "You mentioned someone named Novak just before I pulled my gun on you. A friend of yours?"

  "The best," Jensen said, a flicker of old pain crossing his face. "Two years ago, on Argent, he died in my place."

  "I'm sorry," Foxleigh said. "But look at it this way. If I'd been in Gotterdammerung that day like I should have been, I'd probably have died very quickly, certainly without making any real difference. Was Novak a pilot?"

  Jensen shook his head. "He couldn't have found the throttle with a map."

  "So if he'd been here instead of you, he probably wouldn't have had any reason to want to get into Aegis," Foxleigh said. "And without someone to help me, I wouldn't have been able to get in. I trust you see where I'm with this."

  Jensen rolled his eyes. "By surviving the way we did, we're now going to get a better shot at hurting the Ryqril than we would have had otherwise?"

  "Basically," Foxleigh said. "Don't you love it when the universe gives you object lessons?"

  "Not really," Jensen said candidly. "But I guess it's better than no lessons at all."

  "Agreed," Foxleigh said. "So tie them up and let's get to it. We've got a final checklist to run. And odds are I'm going to need your help getting into the cockpit."

  * * *

  The last cross corridor had been cleared, with another half-dozen Ryqril bodies to add to the afternoon's toll, and Spadafora had spotted and driven back two attempted sorties from behind.

  It had been a good assault, Lathe knew, as such things went. All four of them had collected a number of laser burns across their flexarmor, but so far none of the enemy had been lucky enough to get that crucial second shot that would burn all the way through to the fragile skin and bone and blood underneath.

  Eventually, they would, he knew. Certainly for many of the blackcollars embroiled in the battle outside their skill and luck had already run out. The tingler messages flashing back and forth between Shaw's men was a bitter reminder of what it was costing to keep the bulk of Taakh's troops pinned down and out of the inside team's way.

  It was up to Lathe to make sure those men hadn't given their lives for nothing.

  "Is that it?" Spadafora asked, coming up behind him and pointing to the door directly ahead.

  "Should be," Lathe agreed, reaching behind him and sliding one of the appropriated Ryqril short swords from his belt. "Let's see what's happening with those lasers." Holding the sword like a spear, he threw it toward the door.

  And flinched back as the acrid green flash of a laser slashed out, slicing across the flying blade and sending a spray of liquid metal droplets in all directions. By the time the sword completed its arc, barely half of the hilt was left to bounce off the door.

  "That answers that question," Spadafora said conversationally.

  Lathe nodded grimly. "I guess it does."

  * * *

  From the other side of the monitor room door came a soft thunk. "What was that?" Haberdae demanded, half turning in his seat to look at the door.

  "Something hit the door," Galway told him. "Something thrown, probably, that your defense lasers weren't able to completely disintegrate."

  "Maybe it was a spare arm bone," Haberdae said with a sniff.

  "I doubt it," Galway said. He drew a deep breath. "They didn't follow you to the strongpoint, you know."

  Haberdae frowned. "What?"

  "They didn't follow you to the strongpoint the night of the casino attack," Galway repeate
d. "They already knew that was where Caine was being held."

  Haberdae's face was a surging sea of bewilderment. "What the bloody hell are you talking about?" he demanded.

  Lifting Taakh's laser, Galway shot him in the leg.

  The bewilderment vanished into utter disbelief as Haberdae bellowed in pain. Ignoring him, Galway shifted his aim to the row of Ryqril techs, shooting his way systematically down the line of suddenly panicked aliens until all of them were dead. Then, stepping to the control board, he lifted the orange cover and turned off the defense lasers.

  He'd just closed the cover again when a much louder thud came from the door. "Galway!" Haberdae hissed between clenched teeth, his hands gripping his injured thigh. "What the hell are you doing?"