Alamzad cleared his throat. "Not to push or anything, Caine, but as long as we're all together now anyway... how about breaking down and telling us just what we're supposed to do once we get there?"

Caine could feel Lepkowski's eyes on him. "Sorry," he said, looking at each of his team as he spoke.

"But this is too important a mission to take any risks whatsoever with. It's not that I don't trust you," he added, "but there's always a chance Security might snatch one of you... and even psychor conditioning techniques can be broken with the right kind of pressure."

None of the four liked it—that much was obvious from their faces. But they accepted it without further argument.

—

Some of that same faith was also in evidence later on in a different part of the starship, but in this case the participants had a good deal more experience on which to base it. Seated together with his own four-man team, Lathe ran through the details of Caine's plan. "...so we'll drop approximately three klicks back and one up from their drop point," he finished, marking the spot on his copy of Lepkowski's map. "Colvin seemed to think we'd have some trouble with winds, but I don't see us having any choice."

"How about dropping from an entirely separate shuttle?" Chelsey Jensen suggested. "If we go first we could be on the ground near Caine's landing site and keep track of them that way."

"Doubt if Lepkowski could finagle loads well enough to justify two shuttles," Dawis Hawking said, shaking his head. "Besides, two obvious drops might stir up Security more than we can really afford."

"That's the clincher," Lathe agreed. "Security's used to us doing things one way now, and keeping the illusion that we're still following that pattern is the way to buy us some time."

"Which we're going to be on short enough rations of as it is," Rafe Skyler said with a shake of his head. "Lathe, this is about as crazy a scheme as I've ever seen you tackle. No matter what shape Aegis Mountain's in, Caine's got about zero chance in a thousand of getting inside. With or without us playing backstop for him."

Lathe shrugged. "Perhaps. All right—probably, even. But I don't think it's completely hopeless.

Anything people can get out of other people can get into. It's largely a matter of locating those other people."

"And hoping the Ryqril haven't already set up shop in the base," Jensen murmured.

Hawking snorted gently. "It wouldn't be the first time blackcollars have planned to invade a Ryqril stronghold."

"Not even the first time this year," Jensen said archly. "That is, if Christmas is still on schedule."

"It is," Lathe said. "The point is that we've got an awful damn lot to gain if we do somehow manage to pull this off."

"Yes," the fifth blackcollar, Mordecai, said quietly, the first time he'd spoken since the meeting began. Lathe studied the other's dark face for a moment; but, characteristically, the small man added nothing more to his single word of agreement.

It was enough, though. Mordecai didn't talk much, but his support carried a lot of weight on a mission of this sort. "Well, who wants to live forever, anyway?" Skyler shrugged. "Any idea what we can expect in the way of opposition?"

"The government center's here," Lathe told him, tapping a spot wedged between the southwestern edge of Denver proper and a ridge the computer had labeled Hogback. "Originally a separate town named Athena, apparently full of support personnel and families for Aegis during the war. It was a logical spot for the collies to set up shop, and they seem to have done so."

"Where's the Ryqril section?" Hawking asked, frowning at the photo.

"Oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be one," Lathe said. "At least there's no separately fortified enclave within Athena."

"Which are two ways of saying the same thing," Skyler rumbled. "Bad sign, Lathe—if the cockroach spawn aren't there, they've got to be somewhere they consider safe."

"Such as Aegis Mountain?" Jensen suggested.

"Well, yes, the logic does seem to lead us that way," Lathe admitted. "But I'm not ready to carve it in stone quite yet. There may be other rat holes in the area the Ryqril have found and appropriated.

We'll just have to wait and see."

That was, unfortunately, the bottom line for nearly everything about the mission. Still, Lathe had to admit they'd managed on a lot less up-front data on other missions. This time, at the very least, they knew their target city still existed.

—

And finally, it was time to go.

For Caine, it was with an odd feeling of displaced deja vu that he followed Lepkowski to the hanger where the specially equipped shuttle was waiting: displaced, because the last time he'd been the greenest of Lathe's team, the one from whom the fine points of strategy and tactics had been withheld. This time—

This time he was the leader, the man in charge of it all. The man with both the authority and the responsibility for other men's lives. A sobering thought; but down deep he had to admit that it was exhilarating, as well.

The shuttle was a standard ground-to-orbit craft, with one important design difference. Attached to each side, at both fore and aft positions, were two pairs of drop pods, shaped like truncated cones three meters tall. Each pod would hold up to four men.

It was Braune who asked the obvious question as Lepkowski led the way toward the forward pair of pods. "What're the ones in back for?"

"Decoys," Lepkowski said over his shoulder. "We drop them a klick or two before yours go."

"Won't they draw more attention?" Pittman asked.

"If you're scope-visible at the time it's not going to make any difference if we drop one pod or sixty."

The general shook his head. "This way the enemy's response at least gets diluted a little."

Inside, the pods were a maze of cables, straps, and bars. Caine settled himself into the starboard one with Pittman, Braune, and Alamzad, leaving Colvin to himself in the supply pod on the other side.

"All set," he told Lepkowski after everyone was strapped into place. "Seal us up and let's get going."

"Good luck," Lepkowski said... and then the thick door swung shut, plunging them into darkness.

The waiting's always the hardest part, Caine told himself; but in this case good management on someone's part had minimized that annoyance. Caine's eyes had barely adjusted to the faint glow of the pod's luminous instruments when he felt the subtle vibrations of someone boarding the shuttle...

and then another, and another. The Earthbound passengers, heading groundside. Caine wondered briefly if they would face an angry Security grilling on arrival, but put that concern out of his mind.

None of them were in any way connected with the impending illegal entry into Ryqril-owned territory, and Security wasn't likely to pick on them once that fact was established. Caine hoped not, anyway.

It was perhaps a quarter hour after the footfalls had ceased when the pod gave a jerk and Caine's stomach abruptly tried to climb up his esophagus. "Going down," Braune murmured in a conversational tone that almost succeeded in covering up his nervousness.

"Down but not out," Caine replied, eyes on the altimeter. The shuttle pilot, he knew, would be dropping the pods at five klicks... almost there...

A dull thud, more felt than heard, made him start against his straps before he realized it was the decoy pods breaking free. "Here we go," he told the others... and with a wrench they were suddenly in free fall.

Someone hissed something under his breath. A second later gravity returned with twin jolts as Caine popped the drogue and main chutes. "Get ready," he said as their flight smoothed again. "Five seconds to breakout... three, two, one—

He wrenched the control, and the pod's walls split from floor to ceiling, the floor disintegrated, and the four men were flung apart into the darkness as the wall sections they were strapped to caught the inrush of air and separated. Caine got a dizzying glimpse of stars above and black ground below; and then, with a snap of spring-loaded connectors and a hiss of compressed air, the pod section above him unfolded into a hang-glider wing. For a second he felt himself slipping sideways as the glider leveled itself, and then he was flying smoothly over the landscape far below.