For Uncle Timmy—

Who locked up the mountain and then gave me the key.

The wind coming northward over Ralston Buttes had been increasing steadily throughout the night, shifting gradually around toward the west with the promise of bad weather coming in behind it.

Lying flat on his belly beneath one of the surrounding pine trees, Lonato Kanai listened as the branches scratched at his flexarmor battle-hood and peered through the gloom at the darkened mansion directly ahead. In an hour—maybe sooner—the storm would arrive, drenching the whole Denver plateau and turning the slope he was on into fairly obnoxious mud. But long before that happened Kanai and his fellow blackcollars would be on their way home. It had taken them six hours to crawl through the last hundred meters of forest, but now all the early-warning motion sensors were behind them and the target lay open ahead.

Reasonably open, anyway. There were still the roof-mounted chain guns and hedge mines, their infrared and ultrasonic autotarget systems waiting only for the intruders to move away from the waving tree branches and onto the elaborately sculpted lawn. And, of course, inside the mansion itself would be a dozen or more armed men.

Reaching to his left forearm, Kanai unlimbered the collapsed sniper's slingshot strapped there and unfolded it, setting the brace against his arm and slipping a tiny lead sphere into the pouch. He'd barely managed to make marksman rating during the war, but thirty years of practice had honed his skills considerably. The nearest ultrasonic projector—a small tripartite horn—was nestled under the eave, just barely visible in the cloud-reflected lights of Denver over the hills to the east. Eyes on the projector, peripheral vision and other senses alert, Kanai eased his elbows into a less uncomfortable position and waited for the signal.

It wasn't long in coming. Abruptly, the tingler on his right wrist came to life, tapping the dots and dashes of blackcollar combat code into two sections of skin: attack.

Even through the whistling wind Kanai heard the crack as his lead shot drilled its way deep into the ultrasonic projector. Quickly he set up his second shot as the sounds of other freshly ruined sensors reached him. Ahead, the side door that was their target was suddenly rimmed in red warning lights.

The nighttime sentry chief was right on top of things... for all the good it would do him. Kanai's second shot arced lazily toward the door—slow enough for the antipersonnel motion sensors to pick up—

And the eaves directly above the door exploded into a lethal cloud of flechettes.

The tiny metal darts were still ricocheting off the patio flagstones when the two black-clad men flanking Kanai rose from cover and zigzagged off toward the mansion. On the rooftop a chain gun began to track; an instant later its first salvo went wild as the impact of Kanai's shot knocked it a couple of degrees off target. Beside the door a gunport slid open, and a scatter of flechettes sprayed at the running men. Uselessly, of course, as the few darts that managed to connect were stopped by their flexarmor. One of the attackers windmilled his arms, sending black throwing stars into the gunport. The barrel sagged as the shuriken found a target... and then the runners were at the door, one crouching beside it as the other slapped tiny shaped charges in an X pattern on the nearest window. With luck, Kanai's elimination of some of the door's automatic defenses would delude the mansion's defenders into expecting the main assault there.

The attackers dropped to the ground, and the window exploded with flashes.

It didn't shatter—the glasstic was too strong for that—but when the afterimages faded Kanai could see the honeycomb of cracks there. A few good whacks with a nunchaku would finish the job... and then only the inside defenders would be left.

Both attackers were on their feet now, flanking the window and flailing away at the glasstic with their nunchaku. Kanai loaded another pellet into his slingshot, trying to watch everywhere at once for the inevitable counterattack.

His tingler gave first warning: Bandits coming around north side. A second later they were there: three of them, encased in heavy body armor, with flechette repeaters at the ready. Two came around the corner into military kneeling stances, their repeaters laying down an inaccurate but intimidating fire. The third stepped between them, a scud grenade clutched in his hand.

Amateurs. Behind his gas filter Kanai's lip twisted with contempt. Scud-grenade needles were a danger even to flexarmor at sufficiently point-blank range, and armored as they were the defenders were essentially invulnerable to the throwing stars and nunchaku of their attackers... and their blatant overconfidence was going to kill all three of them. The man with the grenade armed it and swung his arm back for an underhand throw—

And Kanai's tiny pellet slammed into his wrist.

Without hurting him, of course, through all that armor. But the impact was more than enough to knock the grenade from his casual grip and send it to the ground.

Kanai didn't see the thing go off; even at his distance he wasn't taking chances with scud needles against his goggles, and he kept his face pressed into the grass until the deadly sleet had spent itself against the trees around him. When he again looked up, all three armored defenders were lying motionless on the ground. Shifting his eyes to the broken window, he was just in time to see the second of the two black-clad men disappear inside the mansion.

Kanai: inside backup, his tingler signaled. Getting his feet under him, he sprinted across the lawn.

The roof chain gun remained unfocused; those who should have been manning it were apparently busy elsewhere. Replacing his slingshot in its sheath as he ran, Kanai drew his nunchaku and prepared his mind and reflexes for the shift from long-range to close-in fighting.

But for the moment, at least, the fighting was over. Four bodies decorated the floor near the window, their weapons scattered about even more randomly. All four faces were familiar: street lice, the cheapest and most expendable part of Reger's organization. Put into the attackers' path for the sole purpose of slowing them down... which meant the real soldiers were farther in, waiting. Senses alert, Kanai headed inward.

To find the "real soldiers" hadn't done any better than their amateur counterparts. Kanai passed three more bodies, two of them still with deathgrips on their guns. All three had clearly been shooting from cover... and all three now carried shuriken in vital spots. Shifting his nunchaku to his left hand, Kanai drew out a pair of his own throwing stars—just in case—and continued on.

The sound of voices reached him half a hallway from the room where the trail ended. Conversational voices—calm, even, incongruous amid the carnage. Reaching the room, Kanai looked in.

It was a tableau he'd seen time after weary time before in the last few years. The two black-clad men stood at apparent ease a few meters from their middle-aged target victim, the five additional bodies silently staining the carpet around them showing their casual stance for the illusion it was. The attackers were always the same, the minor bodies might as well be; it was only the target victim who ever changed.

At least, Kanai thought, this one isn't begging.

Manx Reger wasn't begging. Standing by his bed, a dressing gown thrown haphazardly on, he spoke with the calm tones of a man who has already prepared himself for death. "So I'm overreaching myself, am I?" he was saying to the leftmost of the men confronting him. "Has it occurred to you, Bernhard, that you may be overreaching yourself?"