"No, sir. I think they must have disabled it at the same time they took out the cameras."
O'Dae grimaced. He'd been holding out hope that someone had just left a switch turned off in the control room or something. And without the floor's remote defenses to rely on, there was only one way to preempt any escape attempt. "Order the commando squad to get ready," he told the other. "I'll lead the first wave in myself."
The man's lip twitched, but he nodded. "Yes, sir. Do you want the medics along with them?"
"No—stretcher teams will be called up when a given area's clear, but the medics themselves will wait in the infirmary. We're going to have a lot of casualties to take care of, and I don't want to risk any of the medics too close to the fighting."
"Yes, sir." The other paused, listening. "All right, Major; the squad's ready anytime. Armed, armored, and they've been shown pictures of all the blackcollars up there. Including Mordecai and Pittman."
"Good." O'Dae sure as hell didn't want one or more of the blackcollars donning Security uniforms and walking blithely out through the front door. "We'll attack as soon as I get up there."
—
The elevator slowed, came to a stop. "Get ready," O'Dae murmured, his voice sounding oddly hollow as it echoed inside his armored faceplate. The door slid open, and he threw himself out of the car to land in kneeling position three meters down the hallway, laser rifle raised and ready.
Anticlimax. No laser beams lanced out, no one hurled any of those damned throwing stars at them, no one even looked out of any of the rooms or cross corridors to see what was happening. In fact, if it hadn't been for the bodies scattered down the hallway, it would have been easy to believe nothing at all had happened here.
The motionless, unnaturally twisted bodies. O'Dae looked once, then turned his eyes quickly away, stomach churning inside him. "O'Dae to monitor," he called into his mike. "Laser fire still going on down by the elevator shaft?"
"Negative, sir," the reply came in his ear. "Lasers have stopped firing and have been moved... looks like to the southeastern corner of the floor."
The safe room, of course. O'Dae's lip twisted into a grim smile. Yes, the blackcollars would have the brains to hole up there when their timetable was disrupted—nowhere else on five could hold out against laser fire for long.
Which meant O'Dae's hunch had been correct—they were expecting to be rescued. "Double the guard on the building's entrances," he ordered into his mike. "An assault could come at any time."
"Yes, sir. Is it clear enough to send litter teams up there?"
O'Dae scanned the hall once more. "Yeah, go ahead and send the first team up—second commando wave can follow them."
"Acknowledged."
Though at the moment it was still an open question as to whether or not the casualties were beyond the medics' help. "Hanson, Peters—check this group for survivors," O'Dae ordered, gesturing around them. "Tag anyone who's alive for the stretchers. The rest of you'll come with me down the hall and make sure they haven't left a rear guard to ambush us."
Carefully, he set off, his men flanking him. The first two rooms they checked were empty, the third had two bodies lying in it... and the fourth had a survivor.
He was just getting gingerly to his knees, hands cradling his head, as they entered. "Who—? Oh, God, you're here," he said hoarsely.
O'Dae stepped forward and caught the man's arm as he started to weave again, helped him into a sitting position. "How do you feel?" he asked, eyes darting briefly to the sloppily tied bandage covering the back and side of the other's head and the blood that was still dribbling out from beneath it.
"Lousy," the other groaned. "Dizzy. I got the bleeding stopped... must have fainted again. Can I sit down?"
O'Dae started to tell him he was sitting, thought better of it. "Why don't you lie down instead?" he suggested. "The stretchers'll be here in a minute to take you downstairs."
"Okay," the other sighed. Already he was beginning to fade again. Beside him lay the medkit he'd apparently managed to get down from the wall; bunching up another of the kit's bandages, O'Dae made a pillow for the other's head and laid him down on it. Almost as an afterthought, he took a moment to study the other's face. Young, smooth, almost feminine—a fresh recruit, probably, or else someone whose family could buy more Idunine than they either needed or deserved....
Resolutely, O'Dae turned his eyes away. Whoever he was, he definitely wasn't one of the blackcollars. "What are you all standing around here for?" he snapped at the rest of the squad grouped around him. "Let's get back to business."
They stepped back into the hall and continued on their cautious way. Behind them, barely audible through their armor, came a noise, and O'Dae turned around as a stretcher team emerged from the elevator and moved to the first of the crumpled bodies. "One in here, too," he called to them, pointing toward the room he'd just left. Their officer waved in acknowledgment, and O'Dae turned away with an odd feeling of relief. Hunting escaped prisoners could be highly unpleasant duty, especially if there was shooting to be done, but he would take it over stretcher carrying any day of the month. At least with prisoner hunting it was the enemy who usually got hurt, not his fellow Security men.
And some of the enemy were going to be hurt tonight. O'Dae was going to make damn sure of that.
Gripping his laser tighter, he hurried to catch up with his men as, behind him, the second wave of commandos arrived.
Chapter 28
Galway's head had fallen forward in such a way that the door was out of his sight, and his first clue that the rescuers were at hand was the tingle of a needle in his arm as paral-drug antidote was injected. "We'll have you out of here in a minute, sir," someone murmured in his ear. "Please be as quiet as possible—we think the blackcollars are holed up in the safe room across the hall, and we don't want them to know we're here until we're ready to blow them out of there."
"Ungh," Galway grunted in acknowledgment. Making noise wasn't likely to be a problem for at least a few more minutes; his tongue still felt like a long-dead animal.
Quinn was apparently made of sterner stuff. "Damn them all," the general ground out hoarsely.
"Damn them—damn that Pittman, especially. Who's that—Major O'Dae? What's the situation, Major?"
"Not too bad, sir—I think they've outsmarted themselves." The major whispered a quick summary of events both inside and outside the Security building. Galway listened with half an ear, most of his attention on getting his muscles going again after nearly a half hour of paralysis. Still, if the major was reading things correctly, the situation did indeed seem to be under control at the moment.
A circumstance that struck him as suspiciously odd.
"...we've taken fifteen injured men downstairs to the infirmary already—mostly head wounds, I gather, from what I could see of the bloodstains. Haven't had a report from down there lately, but most of the casualties apparently had good heartbeats, so my guess is they're doing all right—"
"Yes, fine," Quinn broke in, swearing under his breath as he gingerly massaged his calf muscles.
"Never mind the wounded for now. You're sure the blackcollars are in the safe room?"
"We've been over the entire floor, General," O'Dae assured him. "There's nowhere else they could be."
"Could they have disguised themselves as Security men and gone down with your litter teams?"
Galway asked, forcing the words out past his still-wooden tongue.
"No, sir," O'Dae said, sounding both confident and a little indignant. "No one but the injured have left the floor—we've made damn sure of that."
"Then perhaps—"
"And they were injured, all of them," O'Dae added, "unless you're suggesting the blackcollars cracked their own skulls for blood to dab themselves with."
"You did have medics up here making sure it was real blood, then?" Galway persisted, something in him unwilling to let go of it.