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"It's not that old." Alamzad shook his head. "Ten to twenty years at the most, I'd guess."

Which meant someone could conceivably still be living in the area. Caine took a quick three-sixty of the area, wondering with a twinge of uneasiness whether they were being watched. "If anyone challenges us, we're hikers out for an afternoon's walk," he instructed the others. "Try to keep your shirts fastened all the way up so the flexarmor doesn't show, and keep all weapons out of sight unless absolutely necessary. Clear?"

There were muttered assents. "Up and over?" Colvin asked, nodding at the gate.

"We'll go upslope a ways instead and go over the fence." Caine pointed, glancing at the blue sky overhead. "It's about time to head overland anyway... and suddenly I don't care much for this open creekbed."

It wasn't nearly as easy as it had looked. The slopes bordering the creek seemed to be composed mainly of loose soil and looser rock, and climbing them was an awkward and noisy operation. The trees dotting the region, far from being a help, were actually much more of a hindrance, and Alamzad narrowly escaped a bad fall when he snatched at one of the dead lower branches for support and had it snap off in his hand.

But again luck was with them, and they made it up to the first ridge without either injury or—as far as they could tell—attracting any unwanted attention. Caine hoped that kind of luck would hold out; he'd seldom seen terrain that combined such high travel difficulty with such low combat cover. If it came to a fight, their hidden flexarmor was almost literally all the protection they would have.

The continued on up. Fortunately, with the first ridge behind them the slopes became gentle enough to be handled without any serious risk of falling. The computer-generated contour lines superimposed on his map, Caine quickly discovered, couldn't be taken too literally, and after traversing a couple of rough patches unnecessarily he gave up and reordered the team from vertical to horizontal formation. Spread twenty meters apart across the hill, staying in contact via tingler, they were able to find the easiest routes upward more quickly.

An hour after leaving the road, they were there.

The final hill wasn't much more than a gentle hump on the surrounding terrain, and they took it in a cautious crawl with senses alert for guards and alarms. As with the rest of the trip, though, they made it through apparently undetected; and as they reached the hilltop, Caine raised his head cautiously and peered through the grass and trees at the Ryqril base below.

There was, unfortunately, no question at all of the ownership. Ryqril design permeated the place: the not-quite-geodesic-dome construction of both the main buildings and the smaller barracks units; the spindly sensor tower with its gently rotating metal/power-detector dishes; and above all the heavy black laser cannons mounted at the corners of the camp's perimeter, line-of-sight death for anything the detectors chose to label as a threat.

A dry lump settled into Caine's throat as he thought about that. Easing his head back down out of line-of-sight range, he gestured the others to take a look. They did so, in equally cautious turn. Then, huddling closely together against the still existing danger of sound sensors, they discussed the situation.

"So much for the direct approach," Colvin whispered with a grimace. "You suppose the town a few klicks west is theirs, too?"

"Has to be," Pittman said. "That base down there can't hold more than fifty to a hundred Ryqril, and they'd want at least three times that many to keep an eye on a city the size of Denver."

"And this isn't nearly secure enough for a full-fledged Ryqril enclave, anyway," Braune put in.

Alamzad snorted gently, but nodded. "Four multigig autolasers would sure as hell make me feel secure—yeah, yeah, I know how they are."

"Paranoids," Braune murmured. "All of Aegis Mountain to protect them, and they need lasers too."

Caine shook his head. "They're not in Aegis," he said. "At least not in the base proper."

Braune frowned at him. "What do you mean? The outer door is gone—you can see that from here."

"The outer door wouldn't have been that hard to crack," Caine told him. "It's the barriers farther in that would give them trouble. But look at the placement of the lasers down there—they're set up to defend the encampment, not the tunnel entrance. Ergo, they haven't got anything to speak of in the tunnel itself."

Alamzad eased up for a second look. "You're right," he agreed, settling back into the group. "Which means what we've got here is nothing more than a task force trying to get into Aegis without destroying it."

"Wonder why they're bothering," Colvin murmured. "Their technology level is essentially the same as ours."

"Probably better—they won the war, after all," was Braune's dry rejoinder. "Maybe there's something specific in there they want."

"Why not? There's apparently something in there we want," Pittman added, cocking an eyebrow at Caine.

"Yes, well, I think we've seen enough," Caine said, evading the other's unvoiced question. A

kilometer from a Ryqril base was no place to discuss their mission. "We know the Ryqril haven't gotten in the front door, and that we're not going to. Let's see if we can round it out as a perfect day by getting out of here without being caught."

The first hundred meters back down the hill were the most nerve-racking—more so than even the approach had been, as the thought of those lasers below added an extra dollop of caution to their crawling technique. But again, they might have been forest deer for all the notice they attracted, and within a few minutes they were heading back down the slopes toward the stream and their car.

The return trip took longer than the approach had. The inexact contours on the map and Caine's attempts to find an easier route conspired to shift them farther to the east than he'd intended, and by the time he realized his error they were already committed to what was becoming a very tricky slope indeed.

"Any idea where we are?" Pittman asked as they began working their way through a patch of small cacti around a steep-sided bluff.

"The road should be that way," Alamzad said before Caine could answer. "No real way we can miss it—it cuts directly across our path. The real question is how far we are from where we left the car."

"Not far at all," Caine told them, tapping the map. "If I'm right, the road is right around the bluff here—"

"And about four hundred meters down?" Colvin put in dryly.

"Something like that," Caine admitted. "But we'll come down right at the mouth of the creek we followed on our way up, if that makes you feel better."

"Shh!" Braune hissed suddenly. "I hear another car."

Not just another car, Caine realized as they all strained their ears, but another car on the stones beside the road... on the stones, and coasting to a halt.

There was no need for orders. Simultaneously, all five spread apart on the steep hillside into a loose stalking pattern, pulling sniper's slingshots from their packs as they did so. Whoever was down there, they'd found the team's car.

Five minutes of cautious movement brought them within sight of the scene, and if it wasn't as bad as Caine had feared, it was bad enough. A second car was pulled up to the bushes a dozen meters behind theirs, and three men were busy stripping off the camouflage netting. A fourth man was walking guard around the area, a compact machine pistol of some kind cradled in his arms.

Flechettes or slugs, probably, but either way clearly not one of Security's standard snub-nosed laser rifles. Whoever the intruders were, at least they weren't Security.

The team continued down the mountain, Braune and Pittman in the lead giving information on path and cover to the others via tingler. Below, the intruders had gotten the net off and began a thorough examination of their find. The supplies in the trunk seemed to surprise them, and there were a couple of intense discussions followed by uneasy glances at the surrounding hills. That was fine with Caine; the longer they took to make up their minds as to what they'd stumbled on, the better his chances of making sure they didn't keep it.