"Of course," Quinn went on offhandedly, "the Ryqril might consider leaving your people alone for a while if we knew what your mission here was—keep their paperwork and records clean, you know.

It had to do with Aegis Mountain, didn't it?"

"Why don't you go to hell?" Lathe suggested conversationally. "You're just wasting our time here, Quinn, and you know it. We're not giving anything away free, and your chances of getting it without our cooperation range from slim to zero."

Quinn snorted. "And you're of course sticking to your ridiculous offer of information for the release of your teammates? Don't make me laugh, Lathe."

The comsquare shrugged. "Suit yourself. So, Galway: enjoying your visit to the homeworld?"

The prefect remained silent, and Caine shifted his eyes from the two seated officials to the knot of three Security guards lounging four meters away by the room's door. Standing there with no special alertness—no lasers or other heavy weaponry, their paral-dart pistols still in their holsters—it was a breakout begging to happen. And Caine could almost cry with frustration... because as vulnerable as the guards looked, they might as well have been in an armored bunker a klick away. Seated naked on bolted-down chairs, hands cuffed behind their backs and ankles hobbled by twenty centimeters of chain, he and the blackcollars were about as helpless as Caine could imagine being. About the only other thing Quinn could have done would have been to chain them bodily to their chairs, and it was slowly becoming apparent that the general's failure to do that was, along with the sloppy guard arrangement, a deliberate touch designed to tantalize his prisoners.

Caine didn't know about the others, but for him the gambit certainly worked. And it made him hate the bastard even more.

Lost in his own thoughts, he was startled when Galway abruptly got to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, General," the prefect said, "I'd like to get back to the situation room, see if there's any word on Mordecai."

"Sit down, Galway," Quinn said coldly. "You've spent a lot of your time here foam-mouthing about how these blackcollars of yours were unstoppable and unbreakable. Well, you were wrong about the first, and you're damn well going to watch while I prove you wrong about the second, too."

Skyler stirred, his ankle hobbles clinking as he did so. "You make friends wherever you go, don't you, Quinn?" he said dryly. "You know, I'll bet that if I walked over there and started beating your head in, half your subordinates would line up outside that door to buy tickets to the show."

Quinn glowered at him. "Perhaps we ought to experiment—but with you as the subject. What do you think of th—"

The last word was cut off by the abrupt blaring of alarm horns outside in the hallway. "What the hell?" Quinn snarled, turning to look at the door. "Sergeant, find out what's going on out there."

"Yes, sir." One of the guards reached for the door— It happened so quickly that if Caine's eyes hadn't already turned back to the blackcollars he would have missed it completely. Without warning, Skyler suddenly dropped out of his chair onto his back, knees tucked tightly against his chest.

Almost before he'd even hit the floor, Jensen was also in motion, throwing himself full-length onto the big blackcollar as if attacking him. He landed with his belly on Skyler's feet—

And with a convulsive shove, Skyler kicked the other over his head to crash into the knot of guards.

The Security men didn't have a chance. Bound hand and foot and without any balance to speak of, Jensen still tore into them like a tiger into sheep. His head, knees, and feet became blurs as he knocked the guards to the floor, jabbing them to death with short but vicious blows even as they struggled impotently to escape.

A motion to his right caught Caine's eye, and he turned to see Lathe similarly sprawled over Quinn and Galway, holding them down as Skyler rolled over to assist him. Breaking his paralysis, Caine got to his feet and hopped over to where Jensen was levering himself to a kneeling position. "Check their pockets for the key to these things," the blackcollar instructed, already searching one of the limp forms himself. Swallowing, shame at his own inaction hot on his cheeks, Caine obeyed.

"Got it," Skyler announced. "Right where you'd expect—didn't trust anyone but yourself with the key, did you, General?"

"Damn—you," Quinn managed, the sound muffled by his own arm pinned across his mouth. "You'll never get off this floor alive."

"Really? I've heard that song before." Releasing his restraints, Skyler freed Lathe and then tossed the keys across to Caine.

"What's going on?" Caine asked, twisting around to pick up the keys and setting to work on Jensen's wrist cuffs. An uncomfortable suspicion was starting to set in. "Is that Mordecai running amok out there?"

"Mordecai and Pittman both," Lathe told him, fastening his former restraints securely around Quinn.

"At least—"

"Pittman?" Caine gasped. Across the room Galway inhaled sharply. "But Quinn said—"

"Oh, come on, Caine," Skyler chided mildly as he fastened Galway's ankles to one of the chairs.

"You know better than to take a collie's word for anything, don't you? How's it look out there, Jensen?"

Jensen had opened the door a crack and was peering out cautiously. "All the activity's around the corner down there, near the elevator. If we hurry, we ought to be able to surprise the collies with a rear-action sortie." Squatting down, he started to strip the uniform from one of the guards.

"Good," Lathe nodded. "Just make sure Mordecai doesn't get you in the process." He turned back to Quinn. "You'll forgive us if we take leave of your hospitality," he said, reaching down to draw the general's paral-dart pistol from its holster. "Pleasant dreams, and better luck next time."

"You won't get out of here alive," Quinn spat, his face contorted with fury... and then the burst of needles caught him in the chest and he slumped in his chair.

"Lathe," Galway said as the comsquare turned to him. "If you're not lying—if Pittman's really on your side—"

"I know," Lathe said. "One way or another, it'll all be over soon."

Galway hissed between clenched teeth, his expression a mirror of emotions too convoluted for Caine to unravel. Then Lathe's pistol cracked and the prefect joined Quinn in helplessness.

A minute later the former prisoners were outside in the hall. "Let's get at them," Lathe said briskly,

"and hope Mordecai got the armory open before they sealed it from downstairs. We'll need what's inside some of the nunchaku if we're going to get out of here."

Caine took a deep breath. "Whatever you've got in mind, I hate it already."

The comsquare almost smiled. "As it happens, Caine, the hard part is actually over. Help me make sure all the cameras and microphones are disabled and I'll tell you all about it."

—

"Well?" Major Eberly O'Dae demanded.

The man at the monitor bank shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry, Major, but without vision and audio there's no way to tell for sure what's happening up there. All I can say is that there's no more running going on anymore—people are still walking around, but no one's running."

O'Dae cursed under his breath. So the fighting was over—or else had gone to a stalemate siege—and there was no way to tell which side was on top. Though it unfortunately wasn't too hard to make a good guess.

And General Quinn was square in the middle of it.

"You're sure they got into the armory?" he asked, wishing an instant later that he'd kept his mouth shut. It was at least the third time he'd asked that same question, and the others were bound to notice that.

There was a general shuffling of feet around the situation room, and the man at the monitors threw him an odd look before answering. "Yes, sir, quite certain. They haven't been fired yet, but the power-pack readings show several of the laser rifles have definitely been moved from the armory to other parts of the floor."