"Could be stolen," Skyler offered, but even as he said it he felt uncertainty returning. He'd been a hundred percent sure... but the ring dropped that to eighty percent, and he couldn't justify a quick execution with those odds. "I still don't think he should come with us."
"Okay. We leave him for interrogation when we get back?"
"I suppose—" Skyler broke off as something on Valentine's ring caught his eye.
"What is it?" Novak asked.
"Examine the eyes," Skyler said quietly, handing the ring and light back.
"They're just the usual slitted-pupils carved into the metal," the other said. For a long moment he studied the ring in silence; and when he looked up his face was carved from black ice. "The original eyes have been removed," he said softly. "These were grafted in afterward. This used to be a comsquare's ring."
"Or a tactor's, or even a secturion's—they may have had to scour the whole TDE for a captured dragonhead that would fit him."
"Deliberate deception." Novak's voice was hard. "That pretty well settles the issue, I guess. We've been compromised—and we're going to have to modify our plans."
Skyler grimaced. "I know. I've been trying all afternoon to come up with something else that might work."
"Then you haven't been trying. The answer's obvious." Novak explained.
"No." Skyler shook his head. "Out of the question."
Novak snorted impatiently. "You're trying to be noble, but you're just wasting time. It's the only way we're going to clear an escape route all the way out of town, and you know it."
Skyler did; but that didn't make it easier to accept. "I can't allow—"
"Rafe," Novak said quietly, "if Jensen's being tortured in there I want to get him out—or to give him a clean death. He's my friend—please let me take this risk for him."
Skyler sighed. "All right," he said at last. "We'll leave the car here—it's probably known. We can get another vehicle easily enough." Steeling himself, Skyler drew a knife from its forearm sheath. Execution of a spy is not murder, he told himself. "Valentine stays too, of course."
He raised the knife, but Novak touched his arm. "I'll do it," the other said grimly. "I consider it his fault Jensen got captured."
A few minutes later, bags of equipment and explosives over their shoulders, the two blackcollars exited from opposite sides of the car and started down the street.
Behind its outer wall and courtyard the ten-story government building stood dark against Millaire's skyline, its only lighted windows those on the first three floors. Gazing at it from the vacant office building across the street, Skyler once more checked the floor plan they'd found among their car's maps. "You know where you're heading?" he asked the shadow beside him.
Novak nodded. "First floor west; control room and secondary support column." His voice was calm, his hands steady as he checked the ties on his shoulder-slung bundle. The bundle worried Skyler; even wrapped in the late Valentine's flexarmor, the high-explosives it contained could be set off prematurely by a direct laser blast. But they hadn't had time to put together anything safer.
"Okay." There was a great deal more to be said, but Skyler could sense Novak didn't want to hear it. Swallowing hard, Skyler contented himself with a brief gripping of the other's shoulder. Then, silently, he led the way back outside.
Their diversionary blasts began right on schedule, sending dull roars one at a time from selected spots a few blocks from the government building. By the third blast the flow of Security men through the wall's mesh gate had begun; by the seventh it had dropped to a trickle.
"Quite a show," Novak murmured through his gas filter as they crouched in an alleyway. "Maybe they really have emptied the building."
"Maybe. It's a bunch less to deal with, anyway." Taking a deep breath, Skyler thumbed the safety off the radio detonator they'd rigged up. "Here goes." Flattening himself against the wall beside Novak, he flipped the switch.
The blue-white flash lit up the streets as the sound of the blast echoed through the tall buildings like a mad ricochet. Skyler shot a quick glance around the corner and then was off and running toward the fading red glow where their handmade shaped charge had blown a hole through the wall a quarter of the way around from the gate. Through the ringing in his ears he could hear excited shouts from the guards there. For perhaps a few more seconds, though, they wouldn't realize the script had been changed.... Skidding to a halt, Skyler leaned over and thrust his arms and torso through the hole; a tight fit, but he knew he could make it. Novak, arriving half a second behind him, grabbed his legs and pushed, shoving him unceremoniously through onto the ground. Scrambling up into a crouch, Skyler looked around. The courtyard was deserted and, except for a gravel path just inside the wall, basically featureless. Behind him, Novak's bundle came through the hole, followed by Novak himself. "How's it look?" he whispered, slinging the package over his shoulder again.
"No obvious defenses; probably needle mines everywhere except under this path." Skyler pointed toward the building. "That looks like the emergency exit the map showed. Let's go—and stay in my footprints in case there's something stronger than needle mines out there."
Like twin ghosts, they set off across the courtyard... and around by the gate, Security slowly began to realize that something had gone wrong.
Jensen became aware only gradually that the latest cycle of questioning was over, bringing with it an end to the debilitating flow of emetics that had been turning his stomach inside out for the past hour. He took a slow breath, forcing his battered digestive system to unknot and trying to ignore the smell of vomit in his nostrils. Characteristically, the collies had turned the lights back on so that he could see what he had done to himself. A wasted refinement; he was too tired to keep his eyes open, anyway.
From in front of him came the sound of a door opening and a light breeze swept over him, inducing a violent shiver. Raising his head against the weakness in his muscles, he saw Prefect Galway enter the interrogation cell and close the door behind him. Stepping over the mess on the floor, he moved to Jensen's right and sat down on a small stool facing the blackcollar. A gunbelt, Jensen noted, was secured to his waist.
For a moment the prefect studied him in silence. "Not easy, is it?" he said at last, his almost conversational tone sounding distant in Jensen's ears. "Pain-block techniques don't work very well against an indirect pain like vomiting."
"They work well enough," Jensen rasped. "It's still too early to start gloating."
Galway shook his head. "I don't gloat over pain. If I'd had my way you'd already be dead."
Jensen blinked back the tears of fatigue and tried to read the other's face. But there was no malice there; nothing but grimness and—Jensen thought—a touch of compassion. "Thank you," he said, and meant it.
"Don't bother," Galway retorted. "If I thought you knew anything worthwhile I wouldn't mind them getting it out of you any way they could. But all we're really doing is humiliating you for no justifiable reason. It's a waste of time and ties down far too many men."
"Afraid I'll escape?" Jensen asked. The picture of him breaking out of Security HQ in this condition almost made him smile.
"Actually, yes." Galway drew his laser from its holster, checked the safety, and laid the weapon in his lap. "Skyler and Novak are across the street right now, preparing to launch a rescue attempt."