Galway squeezed hard on the phone handset. With the heavy weapons at the guards' disposal, it would be no trick at all to storm the generator room and turn Caine into ground meat. But Galway would prefer to get him out alive if at all possible. "Barricade the corridor so he can't get out," he instructed the sergeant. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Understood. Thank you, sir."

Galway hung up, shutting down his reader and pulling out the magnecoded card that contained Judas's report on the evening's activities. "How in hell's name did he get out of his cell?" Haberdae demanded.

"I don't know," Galway said, dropping the card into his jacket's side pocket and checking his paral-dart gun. "But once we figure that out, I presume the Ryqril will find it another useful bit of information on how blackcollars do things."

"I'm sure they'll love it," Haberdae said stiffly. "You taking Taakh with you?"

"He's sleeping," Galway said, holstering his gun again and heading for the door. "And I don't think I want him up there right now anyway." He paused and looked back at Haberdae. "I know you and your men don't want him up there."

Haberdae grimaced. "Yeah," he muttered. "Well. Have fun."

"I will," Galway said. "Don't wait up."

Caine was still working on his rewiring project when a tap came at the barricaded generator room door.

"Caine?" Galway's voice came. "It's Galway."

"Go away, Prefect," Caine called back. "If you or any of your trolls out there try to come in, I'll rip random limbs off you."

"No one's coming in," Galway assured him. "But be reasonable, will you? You're ten meters underground, and that room has only this one door. There's absolutely nowhere you can go."

"Maybe I like it in here."

"Or maybe you're just being stubborn," Galway countered. "You have no food, or water, or weapons.

What are you expecting to accomplish?"

"I have a paral-dart gun."

"I meant no weapons that can do you any good," Galway said. "Unlike the guards out here, who have much heavier weapons available."

"Then why don't you use them?" Caine asked.

"The duty sergeant wants to," Galway told him. "He's highly upset at what you did to his men. Not to mention how this is going to look on his record."

"My heart bleeds for him," Caine said, gingerly holding back a tangle of wires as he traced his eyes along the new circuit he'd created. Almost ready. "I trust you and he both noted that I didn't damage anyone more than necessary. I can't speak for his record, though."

"Yes, I did notice," Galway assured him. "That's one reason I'm here: to try to get you out safely and peacefully."

Caine smiled. Galway wasn't half bad at this, actually. "What makes you think I have any interest in surrendering?"

Even through the thick door he thought he could hear Galway's sigh. "I already gave you my list of reasons," the other said. "I'm sure others will occur to you. Come on, Caine—you've proved your point."

Caine ignored him. One final connection ... there. Letting the wires dangle loose again, he turned to the breaker he'd wired the circuit to and flipped it on. If he'd done it right, the concealed searchlights outside the strongpoint would now be blazing away into the sky.

Ideally, he would have liked to be able to send a message in blackcollar tingler code. But that would have required him to separately wire two different sets of the lights, and there was no way to know which of them were working and which weren't. He would have to settle instead for a simple standard Morse code SOS.

"Caine?"

"I'm still here," Caine assured him, watching the power indicators as he flipped the circuit breaker in the rhythmic three dots/three dashes/three dots pattern. There was definitely power going out, which meant at least one of the searchlights was operating. Excellent. "Sorry—I thought you were finished."

"I'm trying to keep you from getting killed, Caine," Galway said. "And I may be the only one out here who actually cares about that."

"Your humanity does you justice," Caine said, frowning at the meter as the power indicator began jumping wildly. Were Galway's people outside cutting all the wires? Grimacing, he repeated his signal, wondering if he should switch to something more specifically aimed at Lathe.

And then, without warning, there was a sizzle of blue fire around the breaker, and a tingling jolt ran through his fingers and up his arm. An instant later he was thrown backward across the tiny room to slam hard against the wall.

He slumped to the floor, his whole arm shaking violently, his numbed brain only vaguely aware of the sound of men breaking down the makeshift barricade he'd set up across the door. A minute later rough hands grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet, ripping off his jumpsuit and scattering the pages of his paral-dart armor. Then, dressed only in his undersuit, he was hauled out into the corridor.

Galway was waiting there, along with a dozen armed and riot-armored Security men. "Are you all right?" the prefect asked.

"I'm fine," Caine said, wincing at the slurring of the words coming from his still numb mouth. "That was cute."

Galway shrugged. "A simple voltage surge across your breaker seemed the safest way to neutralize you, once we figured out what you were doing."

"Only you figured it out too late," Caine said. "Half of Inkosi City must have seen the lights before you shut them down. Lathe's bound to hear about it."

Galway shook his head. "Lathe won't hear about it, Caine, because the lights never came on," he said.

"We'd already cut the wires."

Caine stared at him. "But I saw ..." He trailed off.

"We'd wired matching loads into a couple of them," Galway explained, confirming Caine's unspoken conclusion. "No one saw anything. No one will be coming for you."

He gestured down the corridor. "Let's get you back to your quarters," he said. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to call it a day."

Spadafora was crouched out of sight at the center of a clump of bushes as Lathe and Mordecai slipped in to join him. "Got your signal," Lathe murmured. "We're on?"

"You ask for it, you get it," Spadafora said, pointing through the leaves at the unmarked Security car parked beside the strongpoint's door.

The unlit door. For that matter, Lathe noted with interest, there weren't any lights showing anywhere on or around the base. "And they were even thoughtful enough to turn off all the lights for us," he commented.

"They may be off now," Spadafora said. "But an hour ago there was a whole crowd out here with flashlights blazing, scurrying around like poked bugs."

"Looking for you?"

"That's what I thought at first," Spadafora said. "But they were mostly hunting around the bushes and tree stumps east of the building, doing a lot of wire cutting. Looked like some of them might have been doing some rewiring, too."

"Interesting," Lathe murmured. "And you're sure it was Galway?"

"Positive," Spadafora said. "There were a driver and guard, too, big ones, taking up most of the front seat. But it was definitely Galway riding in back."

"Then we'd better get started." Lathe gestured toward the chest-high posts flanking the narrow weedgrown gravel drive, posts that bore a striking resemblance to the ones supporting the Khorstron fence.

"They've been adequately taken care of?"

"As adequately as plutonium blobs can make them," Spadafora assured him, hefting his slingshot. "By the way, just for the record, I'm getting tired of always pulling the more mind-numbing assignments."

"Complaint noted," Lathe said, pulling out the compact tool kit he'd borrowed from one of Shaw's men.

"But don't worry. Starting tonight, things are going to get much more interesting. Mordecai?"