"I didn't say it didn't work," she retorted, her voice suddenly bitter. "I said it wouldn't do any good.
We've quietly kidnapped and treated over a dozen loyalty-conditioned government workers in the past eight months. Not a single one of them is interested in joining us."
Skyler looked over at Kanai, standing silently against the wall. "Kanai?" he invited. "You want to jump into this?"
"She's right, as far as she goes," he conceded. "All those we've tried it on have gone straight back to their jobs."
"We can't get anything from them?" Skyler asked. "If not cooperation, at least some information?"
"There are a couple who occasionally slip us a little something," Anne said. "But only a little, and it's never anything really useful."
"Of course, none of them has access to anything really high up anyway," Kanai added. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying."
"Until when?" Anne countered. "Until we get to someone who'll blow the whistle on us with his superiors instead of cowering in his cubicle trying desperately to pretend nothing's happened to him? If you think Security's interested in us now, just wait till you see what happens then."
"Seems to me that Security's reaction is kind of moot at this point," Hawking offered.
"Yes, thanks to you," Anne said, glaring at Skyler again. "What in the world did you think—?"
"You know," Reger interrupted, "maybe we should sit down, nice and quiet, and take this from the top.
Skyler can start it off by telling us where Lathe's lurking and what he's up to this time."
"Actually, Lathe isn't here," Skyler said. "He got invited to Khala to break into a Ryq tac center."
Anne blinked. "He got what?"
"Let's sit down," Reger repeated, more firmly this time. "Discuss this like civilized men and women."
Anne snorted. But she stalked over to a chair beside Poirot's couch and dropped into it. "Fine," she said.
"I'm sitting."
"Thank you," Reger said, pulling up a chair to the other side of the couch and sitting down. "You were saying, Skyler?"
"We got word that the Ryqril were building a new tac coordination center on Khala," Skyler said, pulling up a third chair equidistant from Anne and Reger and signaling O'Hara, Hawking, and Kanai to remain standing on guard. "It seemed way too tempting a target to pass up."
"Sounds like a trap," Anne muttered.
"Of course it's a trap," Skyler agreed. "Which just makes the whole thing that much more intriguing. At any rate, Lathe took a team there to see if we can turn it to our advantage."
"Enough of an advantage for a final victory?" Anne countered. "That is what you meant about this being the last hornets' nest we'd ever need, isn't it?"
"What do you mean, victory?" Reger echoed, frowning. "As in throwing the Ryqril out of the TDE?"
Skyler shrugged. "Basically."
Reger shook his head. "That's impossible."
"Lathe doesn't think so," Skyler said. "Between us and the Chryselli, we've got the Ryqril in a pretty tight place right now. A big enough push in the right direction might just do the trick."
"The right direction being this Ryqril tac center, I presume," Reger said, his eyes settled into a sort of distant stare. "So why are you here?"
"Because chaos in one place is less impressive than simultaneous chaos in two widely separated places,"
Skyler told him. "The idea is—was—for us to help you and Phoenix and your loyalty-conditioned moles turn this city upside down."
Anne shook her head. "It's not going to happen," she said. "The system here is just too set and stable.
Nobody wants to rock the boat."
Skyler rubbed his chin, gazing at Poirot's sleeping face as he tried to think. Lathe was the tactical genius of the group, and the plan he'd worked out for the Earth part of the operation was a typically solid piece of work.
Unfortunately, it had assumed a thriving Phoenix and a large number of Whiplash-treated moles.
Without that, it wasn't going to work.
Which meant they needed a Plan B. Only at this point, Skyler didn't have one. And he wasn't at all sure he could come up with one.
"For myself, I'm not convinced the moles are as resistant to the idea of rebellion as Anne believes,"
Kanai put in. "Perhaps each one merely thinks there's nothing he or she personally can do."
"Maybe if they knew they weren't alone but that they had allies," Reger agreed. "Possibly even allies in high places." He gestured at Poirot.
Skyler pursed his lips. That was why he'd brought the general here, after all.
But if Poirot also wasn't willing to cooperate, the secret of Whiplash's existence would be broken the minute he stepped foot inside the Athena government center. Was that a risk they wanted to take right now?
Anne was obviously thinking along the same lines. "I don't think any of you has the slightest idea what Security can do when they're genuinely panicked," she warned. "If they find out about Whiplash, they'll turn this entire district inside out."
Abruptly, Skyler made his decision. "It's a risk," he agreed. "But this is war. Risks are part of the job."
"Then let's quit wasting time," Reger said firmly. "Get the Whiplash out, and let's do it."
With a start, Caine snapped awake.
He held still in his bunk, maintaining the slow, steady breathing of a sleeping man. The cell was still dark, he could tell through his closed eyelids, and the faint background hum of the base's generator filled the room, its murmur effectively blanketing any sounds there might have been of stealthy footsteps or stealthier breathing.
But Caine had gone through all of Lathe's wearying and sometimes—he'd thought at the time—stupid blindfolded training exercises. As a result, he had sensory resources that had probably never even occurred to his captors. Effectively both blind and deaf, he focused instead on the patterns of moving air brushing across his face and neck and hands.
There was someone standing at the end of his bunk.
Carefully, he opened his eyes to slits. A big man was standing there, little more than a black shadow set against the faint light coming in through the open cell door. For a moment the man just stood there, doing something with the bunk supports. Once, he turned his head slightly, and Caine caught a profile of his face and the misshapen silhouette that showed he was wearing either infrared or light-enhancement goggles.
The man finished whatever he was doing and headed toward the other side of the room. As he moved away from the bunk, unblocking the view of the door, Caine saw that there was a second man standing framed in the doorway. From the lack of visible arms in his silhouette, he was probably holding a paraldart pistol in a two-handed grip, pointed in Caine's direction.
And though the light out there was too faint for any genuine shadows, there was enough subtle movement against the background light to show there was at least one other backup man somewhere out of sight. Sleeping or not, they weren't taking any chances with their prisoner.
The intruder reached the bathroom area and stopped at the shower enclosure, and Caine suppressed a smile as he finally understood what was going on. The watchers in the monitor room had apparently been annoyed at Caine's earlier blockage of two of their three cameras, and had decided to take advantage of the nighttime hours to remedy the situation.
Perfect.
Because Caine could easily fix things back again in the morning. The only trick would be to wait just the right amount of time before "discovering" the reactivated cameras so that they wouldn't suspect he'd been awake tonight.
And if they thought they'd sneaked in once without waking him, they might be willing to try it again.
Yes, he decided. This had definite possibilities.
The Security man finished his work and left, closing the door soundlessly behind him.
Caine was still considering his options when he again drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 6