Pittman nodded. He had the ID pressed against the reader screen now and was trying to maneuver the officer's hand onto the fingerprint plate. "The only monitor station I know of is down in the situation room, and it's not getting that much attention."

Mordecai grunted. The officer, his wind starting to come back, was attempting to struggle. The blackcollar took a moment to punch him at the base of the skull and he went limp again. "We'll be taking out the cameras right away, anyway. You have your battle-hood and gloves?"

Pittman grimaced. "No—I couldn't come up with a good enough reason to keep them. They may be up where the others' gear is stored, though, in a room just down the hall from the elevator. I saw some of the stuff being put away on the monitors when I was downstairs."

"Any real firepower up there, or just paral-dart guns?"

"All I saw the guards carrying was the latter, but that room looked like it doubled as a small armory.

Sorry, but I couldn't find a quiet way into the big one downstairs."

"We wouldn't have wanted a laser in the elevator, anyway—elevators and stairwells have the nasty habit of carrying resonance detonators for the purpose of destroying captured weapons.

Okay—ready?"

"Ready."

Pittman pushed the read button, holding the officer's hand steady on the plate. Simultaneously, Mordecai heaved the man straight up out of his chair, turning the head to face the retina scanner.

Bracing the limp body against his chest, he pried open the eyelids with thumb and forefinger and held his breath.

There was a beep, and something that sounded like a relay clicking. "Elevator," Mordecai murmured, dropping the officer back into his chair and reaching for the touch plate under the desktop. Behind him, the doors slid open; a moment later they closed again with both men aboard.

"How long?" Pittman asked. There was a slight quaver in his voice—the first Mordecai had heard since this whole thing started.

"Till they catch on?" The blackcollar shrugged, digging out his spare shuriken pouch and pressing it into the youth's hand. "Not very. That's why your first job upstairs will be to disable the elevator.

Quietly, if possible—I'd like a few minutes to get the lay of the land before I hit the place."

"I'll try."

The doors opened, and Mordecai strode out, eyes darting everywhere. The long hallway dead-ended at the elevator, he saw, a duty desk like the one downstairs positioned a few meters in front of it. A

potentially good spot to defend the elevator from, once the officer seated there was eliminated.

Ahead, several doors opened out into the hallway, one of them with the heavy look of armor reinforcement. Beside it was another guard station; and with a rush of adrenaline-fueled recklessness, the blackcollar passed the duty desk and stepped boldly up to the Security man at the armory. "You got the blackcollar equipment inside?" he asked gruffly.

"Yeah," the other said, looking up.

"Get it all out, fast," Mordecai growled, half turning to peer down the hall. "We've got a report that some of the nunchaku are loaded with explosives—the general wants 'em out of there before they blow and take the whole armory out."

"Krij it—weren't the damn things bomb-sniffed?" the other muttered, reaching under his desk. But even as he lowered his eyes, his brain caught up with him and his expression twitched... and when his hand came back into sight it was holding a paral-dart pistol. "All right, you—"

Spinning a hundred and eighty degrees, Mordecai bent at the waist and snapped his right foot out in a back kick toward the other's head. The pistol went off with the crack of compressed air, the needles washing over Mordecai's back and legs. He spun back around, hand poised to grab the gun if necessary, but between the kick and the ricochets from Mordecai's flexarmor, the officer was down for the duration.

And down the hall, the alarms began blaring.

"Damn," Mordecai muttered as he leaped over the desk. From the elevator end of the hall there was a shout, and he glanced over to see the duty officer collapse over his desk, a shuriken protruding from his temple. Ignoring the sounds starting to come from the other end of the hall, Mordecai snatched his battle-hood and gloves from his tunic and got them on, studying the controls for the armory door as he did so. It looked like the same system as they'd found downstairs at the elevator, with a proper ID check all that was required for access.

At least until someone downstairs sealed the door by remote control.

A splatter of needles bounced off his goggles and battle-hood, and he looked up to see four Security men racing like kamikazes directly toward him. "Cameras!" he snapped.

"Already taken out," Pittman shouted from behind him.

"Good," Mordecai called back. "Get over here when it's clear." A new wave of needles washed over him, and with a convulsive leap, the blackcollar cleared the desk and landed in front of his attackers, nunchaku lashing out.

Three more seconds and the men were scattered broken around him. Someone down the hall stepped imprudently into view and started shooting. Mordecai sent him crashing to the floor with a spinning shuriken as Pittman slid to cover at the desk behind him. "I've got the elevator locked up here," the youth reported, breathing a bit heavily. "I got both cameras I could see pointed this direction."

"Good." Mordecai jerked his head toward the armory door. "Same trick as downstairs—get busy. I'll try to keep the collies away from you while I spring the others."

"Right. Good luck."

"You too." Nunchaku and shuriken at the ready, Mordecai sprinted down the hallway.

Hatred, Lathe and the others had continually warned their trainees, was a subtle poison that did the hater more harm than it did his victim. Caine knew that, agreed with the philosophy behind it... and yet, when it came down to the wire, he found all the logic in the universe didn't do him a damn bit of good.

He hated General Quinn. Hated the man with a passion. And more than that, felt good about hating him.

It wasn't just the fact that the general had beaten them—wasn't even the fact that he'd beaten them so decisively. Instead, it was the increasingly apparent fact that the bastard was determined to gloat over his victory.

Somehow, Caine had always expected to be treated with some measure of respect when he finally lost to the enemy. Quinn, obviously, was determined not to give him even that much.

Was in fact even going out of his way to twist the knife. Seated across the conference room from Caine and three of the blackcollars, an uncomfortable-looking Galway beside him, he turned his monologue once again to the subject he'd already talked to death: Pittman and his treachery.

"He wasn't just recently suborned, you know," the general said, crossing his legs casually as he sent his gaze around at the four prisoners facing him. "He's been your double agent for, what, six months now, Galway?"

Galway shrugged. "Something like that," he said. Unlike Quinn, the prefect didn't seem to be getting any special pleasure out of this.

"He's been very useful, too," Quinn said, "and not only regarding this mission. We'll be able to take that snake school of yours apart as soon as we debrief him fully and get a squad of commandos out to Plinry."

Caine bit down hard on his tongue, knowing full well that that was the kind of reaction Quinn was looking for but not giving a damn. The cameras in the room would be recording all their expressions and body language for later analysis, and he knew he should be sitting as passively as Lathe, Skyler, and Jensen beside him. But he couldn't. He'd trained with Pittman, had worked side by side with him, had risked his life with him... and the realization that he'd been so wrong about the other's character was more than he could bear.