Lathe shrugged. "Perhaps. All right—probably, even. But I don't think it's completely hopeless.
Anything people can get out of other people can get into. It's largely a matter of locating those other people."
"And hoping the Ryqril haven't already set up shop in the base," Jensen murmured.
Hawking snorted gently. "It wouldn't be the first time blackcollars have planned to invade a Ryqril stronghold."
"Not even the first time this year," Jensen said archly. "That is, if Christmas is still on schedule."
"It is," Lathe said. "The point is that we've got an awful damn lot to gain if we do somehow manage to pull this off."
"Yes," the fifth blackcollar, Mordecai, said quietly, the first time he'd spoken since the meeting began. Lathe studied the other's dark face for a moment; but, characteristically, the small man added nothing more to his single word of agreement.
It was enough, though. Mordecai didn't talk much, but his support carried a lot of weight on a mission of this sort. "Well, who wants to live forever, anyway?" Skyler shrugged. "Any idea what we can expect in the way of opposition?"
"The government center's here," Lathe told him, tapping a spot wedged between the southwestern edge of Denver proper and a ridge the computer had labeled Hogback. "Originally a separate town named Athena, apparently full of support personnel and families for Aegis during the war. It was a logical spot for the collies to set up shop, and they seem to have done so."
"Where's the Ryqril section?" Hawking asked, frowning at the photo.
"Oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be one," Lathe said. "At least there's no separately fortified enclave within Athena."
"Which are two ways of saying the same thing," Skyler rumbled. "Bad sign, Lathe—if the cockroach spawn aren't there, they've got to be somewhere they consider safe."
"Such as Aegis Mountain?" Jensen suggested.
"Well, yes, the logic does seem to lead us that way," Lathe admitted. "But I'm not ready to carve it in stone quite yet. There may be other rat holes in the area the Ryqril have found and appropriated.
We'll just have to wait and see."
That was, unfortunately, the bottom line for nearly everything about the mission. Still, Lathe had to admit they'd managed on a lot less up-front data on other missions. This time, at the very least, they knew their target city still existed.
—
And finally, it was time to go.
For Caine, it was with an odd feeling of displaced deja vu that he followed Lepkowski to the hanger where the specially equipped shuttle was waiting: displaced, because the last time he'd been the greenest of Lathe's team, the one from whom the fine points of strategy and tactics had been withheld. This time—
This time he was the leader, the man in charge of it all. The man with both the authority and the responsibility for other men's lives. A sobering thought; but down deep he had to admit that it was exhilarating, as well.
The shuttle was a standard ground-to-orbit craft, with one important design difference. Attached to each side, at both fore and aft positions, were two pairs of drop pods, shaped like truncated cones three meters tall. Each pod would hold up to four men.
It was Braune who asked the obvious question as Lepkowski led the way toward the forward pair of pods. "What're the ones in back for?"
"Decoys," Lepkowski said over his shoulder. "We drop them a klick or two before yours go."
"Won't they draw more attention?" Pittman asked.
"If you're scope-visible at the time it's not going to make any difference if we drop one pod or sixty."
The general shook his head. "This way the enemy's response at least gets diluted a little."
Inside, the pods were a maze of cables, straps, and bars. Caine settled himself into the starboard one with Pittman, Braune, and Alamzad, leaving Colvin to himself in the supply pod on the other side.
"All set," he told Lepkowski after everyone was strapped into place. "Seal us up and let's get going."
"Good luck," Lepkowski said... and then the thick door swung shut, plunging them into darkness.
The waiting's always the hardest part, Caine told himself; but in this case good management on someone's part had minimized that annoyance. Caine's eyes had barely adjusted to the faint glow of the pod's luminous instruments when he felt the subtle vibrations of someone boarding the shuttle...
and then another, and another. The Earthbound passengers, heading groundside. Caine wondered briefly if they would face an angry Security grilling on arrival, but put that concern out of his mind.
None of them were in any way connected with the impending illegal entry into Ryqril-owned territory, and Security wasn't likely to pick on them once that fact was established. Caine hoped not, anyway.
It was perhaps a quarter hour after the footfalls had ceased when the pod gave a jerk and Caine's stomach abruptly tried to climb up his esophagus. "Going down," Braune murmured in a conversational tone that almost succeeded in covering up his nervousness.
"Down but not out," Caine replied, eyes on the altimeter. The shuttle pilot, he knew, would be dropping the pods at five klicks... almost there...
A dull thud, more felt than heard, made him start against his straps before he realized it was the decoy pods breaking free. "Here we go," he told the others... and with a wrench they were suddenly in free fall.
Someone hissed something under his breath. A second later gravity returned with twin jolts as Caine popped the drogue and main chutes. "Get ready," he said as their flight smoothed again. "Five seconds to breakout... three, two, one—
He wrenched the control, and the pod's walls split from floor to ceiling, the floor disintegrated, and the four men were flung apart into the darkness as the wall sections they were strapped to caught the inrush of air and separated. Caine got a dizzying glimpse of stars above and black ground below; and then, with a snap of spring-loaded connectors and a hiss of compressed air, the pod section above him unfolded into a hang-glider wing. For a second he felt himself slipping sideways as the glider leveled itself, and then he was flying smoothly over the landscape far below.
His second experience with blackcollar drop pods. Eventually, he supposed, one got used to the ride.
Licking his lips briefly, he made a quick scan of the visible sky. Off to his left were two starless blotches that could be other gliders. "Report, Colvin," he said into the short-range mike curving along his cheek.
"I think I can see everyone," Colvin's voice came in his ear. "You're all below and ahead of me."
"UV beacons in turn," Caine ordered. "Pittman... Braune... Alamzad... me."
"Yeah, you're all more or less together," Colvin reported. "Zad, you don't seem very steady, though.
You having trouble?"
"I don't know." Even through the radio Alamzad's tension was clearly audible. "Either I've got a loose connection somewhere or the damn wind direction keeps changing."
"It's the wind," Pittman put in. "I've got some of that, too, and you're closer in to the mountain than I am."
Mountain? Caine peered into the darkness. Sure enough, there was a sharp peak looming off to his right that he hadn't noticed before. Shielding from Security's radar, for sure, but as a sudden eddy current bucked his glider he began to wonder if the protection was going to be worth it. If the winds decreased their flight range badly enough—
"I'm going down!" Alamzad snapped abruptly. "A downdraft of some kind. Trying to pull up—"
"No!" Colvin barked before Caine could respond. "Ride it—pull up and you'll stall."
"Too late," Alamzad said with a hissing sigh of resignation. "I'm going down. Hope I can find a clearing or something."
For a long second Caine's mind seemed to freeze. Down in unknown territory, far from any sort of populace to disappear into....
The moment passed, his Resistance and blackcollar training driving logic and calmness into his mind. "Alamzad, turn on your UV," he ordered. "Colvin, there should be a road somewhere nearby angling southeast into Denver. Can you see it?"