and your authority—went with it."
Shaw snorted. "As I said: wild cards."
"Hardly." Lathe gestured toward Judas. "Caine here is a duly authorized representative of Earth's Resistance leaders. He's all the authority I need."
"Not on my world he isn't," Shaw insisted, giving Judas a quick and piercing look. "I make the decisions here."
"Fine," Lathe said. "So make a decision."
For a long moment the two men glared at each other in silence, and Judas held his breath. Everything here depended on Lathe having a free hand to plan and execute the blackcollars' infiltration of the Khorstron tac center. If Shaw hamstrung those efforts out of sheer pique, all of it would be for nothing.
To his relief, Shaw blinked first. "I'm willing to listen to reason," he said grudgingly. "Let's hear your plan."
"First, I need to know what we're up against," Lathe said. "I'll need complete maps of the city and the area around Khorstron, a vehicle we can use, and every relevant news report from the past two months that you can dig up."
"And a safe place to go to ground?"
"I assumed that was a given," Lathe said. "We'll catch a few hours of sleep, then maybe we can go someplace where we can get a look at the center. Can you arrange all that?"
"Of course," Shaw said. "If I so choose."
The corner of Lathe's lip tightened; Shaw responded with a placid smile. The big fish, Judas thought cynically, making it clear that others swam in his little pond solely at his pleasure. "And?" Lathe prompted.
Shaw gave it couple more seconds, then shrugged. "I'll get you a safe house and whatever maps and data we have on hand," he said.
"Thank you," Lathe said. "By the way, Lepkowski implied you might have a few other blackcollars on hand."
"More than just a few," Shaw said, his eyes glittering. "I have a full company."
Lathe's eyes widened. "A company?"
"Yes, indeed," Shaw said, clearly enjoying the moment. "Eight squads, twelve blackcollars each."
Judas felt his throat tighten. Nearly a hundred blackcollars? Here?
The big fish, he realized with a sinking feeling, was bigger than he'd expected. Possibly bigger than anyone had expected.
And suddenly, Galway's plan wasn't looking nearly so good anymore.
From the number of tight twists and turns the road had taken during the last half hour of the trip, Caine concluded they'd left Inkosi City and headed into the mountains, either back to the Falkarie range to the west where he and the others had landed or else into the somewhat gentler slopes of the Deerline Mountains to the south.
At last they came to a halt, and he was hauled through the back doors onto a rolling stretcher. They had come to a low, flat structure nestled among the trees, its design indicating it had started life as some kind of camouflaged military strongpoint. Caine caught a glimpse of the waist-high posts of a sensor ring a dozen meters out, but saw no other vehicles. A minute later he was rolled up a gentle slope and through a thick door into a small entryway room with an elevator beyond it. From the slightly musty smell he guessed the strongpoint had been out of service for at least a few years.
The perfect place to hide a captive whose friends didn't even know he was missing.
The elevator took them down two levels below ground, letting them out into a long corridor lined with numbered but otherwise unmarked doors. Halfway down the corridor was his new home, a small room equipped with a table, a set of bunk beds, a large and squishy-looking comfort chair, and a corner bathroom facility complete with toilet, sink, and shower stall.
A pair of burly Security men transferred him from the stretcher to the lower bunk. There, with considerable difficulty, they got his close-fitting flexarmor off him. When he was finally down to his padded undersuit, they stepped back to be replaced by a medic who gave him an injection in the side of his neck. A minute of uncomfortable tingling later, the paralyzing drug had been neutralized and his body returned to normal function again.
"How do you feel?" Galway's voice asked.
Caine turned his head. The prefect was standing a couple of steps inside the room, the two Security men flanking him watchfully with paral-dart guns ready in their hands. "Do you care?" Caine countered.
Galway's face didn't even twitch. "Yes," he said.
Lathe, Caine knew, had always believed that Galway wasn't just a loyalty-conditioned thug, but that he genuinely cared for the people the Ryqril had set him up to keep in check. Now, studying the prefect's expression, Caine decided the comsquare's assessment had indeed been correct. "I'm fine," he said. "I hope you're not going to try to convince me that you caught the others this easily."
Galway snorted. "Hardly," he said. "The last time I was part of a genuine blackcollar capture, we lost a lot of men and equipment in the process."
"Denver?"
"Argent," Galway corrected, a little dryly. "Denver hardly counts as genuine."
"I suppose not," Caine conceded. "So the others are all right?"
"They're alive, well, and free," Galway assured him.
"And blissfully unaware I'm no longer with them?"
Galway's forehead wrinkled slightly. "You caught all that, did you? Interesting."
"Not really," Caine said, silently cursing himself. He should have played stupid a little longer. Too late now. "I was lying right there when he started putting on my clothes."
"He wasn't supposed to let you see him."
"He was a little hard to miss," Caine said. "Where'd you find a set of flexarmor for him, anyway?"
"There was apparently an incident on Shiloh a few months back," Galway said, still looking a little troubled. "Several sets of flexarmor became available."
Caine grimaced. "I don't think I want to know the details."
"Neither do I," Galway said. "I gather, then, that you've figured out what we're doing?"
"Enough of it," Caine said. "You went back to Earth and found another of the Alain Rienzi clones that the Resistance started growing in the expectation that the Rienzi family would stay in the Ryqril's good graces long enough for it to be worth impersonating him."
"Very good," Galway said. "The irony being that in this case, we're using one clone to impersonate another." He gestured toward Caine.
"Yes, that part was obvious, thank you," Caine growled. Over the past two years he'd mostly worked through his feelings at being a clone. But only mostly. "So what happens now? You loyalty-condition me and swap us out again?"
Galway shook his head. "Fortunately for you, that won't be necessary. Knowing Lathe, I'm expecting the timing here to be tight enough that there wouldn't be enough time for the conditioning. And frankly, considering you've had both Resistance psychor training and whatever mental tricks the blackcollars might have taught you, I'm not sure I'd trust you on your own no matter how long the Ryqril had to work on you."
"Thanks for the compliment," Caine said. "What do you mean by the timing being tight?"
"I'd have thought that was obvious," Galway said, eyeing him closely. "Lathe intends to break into the Khorstron Tactical Center. We intend to let him."
"What makes you think that's why we're here?" Caine countered, frowning. So the whole tac center thing had indeed been a trap, just as Lathe had surmised.
But they were going to let the blackcollars in?
"No, I'm sure you're just here to sample the local cuisine," Galway said, stepping back to the doorway.
"At any rate, you can look forward to a few quiet days here, after which you'll be released." He hesitated. "I'll try to get the Ryqril to let you go back to Plinry."
"After the others are dead?"
"Hopefully, after the others are on their way elsewhere," Galway assured him. "We'll just have to see how this first test goes."
" 'Test'?"
"Perhaps I'll be able to tell you all about it someday," Galway said. "In the meantime, whatever hospitality I can offer is yours. Is there anything you'd like?"