"'Erha's that neans they no longer need the 'ase," Daasaa said, his tone suggesting the kind of fate that Bailey could expect if the opportunity to get into Aegis had slipped through their fingers.
"I'm certain they'll need to go back in," Bailey said quickly. "Whatever the blackcollars came here for, this rescue couldn't have been more than just a little detour. They're still going to need whatever resources are in there."
"'Erha's," Daasaa said again. "Re shall see."
They'd found some food, and they'd had some rest; and now Foxleigh stood beside Jensen at the end of the road. "So this is what you came all this way for?" he murmured, his voice hushed with a reverence he hadn't realized he could still feel. "This is what you hiked through the wilderness and fought bears to get to?"
"This is it," Jensen confirmed. "Why? Don't you think it'll deliver a sufficiently big bang?"
Foxleigh took a deep breath as he looked up at the sleek fighter stretched out in front of them, crouched on its landing skids like a mountain lion preparing to spring. "No, I think a functional Talus-6 interceptor will pack all the bang you could possibly want," he assured the blackcollar.
And with that, Foxleigh's moment of reverence vanished. Even an advanced fighter was, after all, only a tool. A simple means to an end. "What exactly are you planning to do with it?" he asked, running a hand over the coating of dust to expose a hand-lettered word written on the underside missile rack.
"What do you think I want with it?" Jensen countered, giving him an odd look.
"There's more than one possibility." Foxleigh pointed to the word he'd uncovered. "See this?"
Jensen craned his neck. " 'Gotterdammerung'?"
"It's the old Germanic version of 'doomsday,' " Foxleigh explained. "A composer named Richard Wagner wrote about fourteen hours of opera about it." He tapped the metal. "The point is that there are enough kilotons packed away in here to make sure the Ryqril never take anything out of the mountain except radioactive slag."
"I'm not destroying Aegis," Jensen said firmly. "It's resisted the Ryqril too long for us to just blow it up."
"Then what are you doing?" Foxleigh persisted. "You think a single fighter dodging Corsairs over North America is going to do anyone any good?"
"Depends on what you mean by any good," Jensen said. "What does any of this have to do with you, anyway?"
"I just want to make sure you're not going to blow up the fighter and the base with me still in it,"
Foxleigh said, backpedaling quickly. The last thing he wanted to do was start Jensen wondering. Not until they had the Talus prepped, anyway.
"Don't worry about it," Jensen assured him. "As soon as I'm sure I won't need extra hands, you'll be heading for home."
"I appreciate that," Foxleigh said. As if he intended to do anything of the sort. "You have any idea how to prep this thing?"
"Not really," Jensen conceded. "But I'm sure the procedural manuals are on file around here somewhere."
"Probably," Foxleigh agreed. "Let's go find them."
"So Kevin's still a prisoner?" Anne asked, her tone flat and dark and accusing.
"I'm afraid so," Skyler said, not any happier about it than Anne was. "I don't know why they picked him, unless it was because they already had a look-alike on hand."
"Instead of looking for someone to blame," Reger spoke up from his usual seat in the corner, "you might try a little gratitude that Skyler was able to identify the substitution so quickly. If he hadn't, we'd probably all be in Athena right now."
"I know," Anne said, lowering her eyes. "I just ... you're sure it wasn't Kevin?"
"I'm positive," Skyler said. "He knew the password, and he could easily have passed as the man in the photo you showed us. Security's mistake was that they weren't as confident as they should have been and tried to hedge their bets."
"You mean the hoods?" Reger asked.
Skyler nodded. "Poirot must have thought that once we did the password check we might be too rushed to take them off, especially given how solidly the things had been taped in place. That would have postponed any close-up exam for a while, maybe even until we were back here or someplace equally vulnerable to a surprise attack."
"Only they also wouldn't want their spy traveling blind," Hawking added. "Hence, the trick hood."
"Which looked opaque from the outside but was reasonably transparent from the inside," Skyler finished. "Fortunately, we were expecting something like that and checked all the hoods. The one calling himself Dorfman was the only one who flunked."
"So how do we get him out?" Anne said, clearly not impressed by the blackcollars' on-the-spot detective work. "And Rob's still missing, too."
"I don't know how to answer that," Skyler conceded. "I doubt they'll be foolish enough to try this baitand- raid stunt again."
"You did get into Athena once before," Flynn reminded him.
"Different time, different circumstances," Skyler said. "We'd never be able to pull off something like that again."
"So what you're saying is that they're stuck there?" Anne demanded.
"Anne," Reger said warningly. "It wasn't Skyler's fault."
Anne took a deep breath, and Skyler could see the counterargument flickering across her eyes. If the blackcollars hadn't come blasting into town ... "I know," she said at last, her voice suddenly very tired.
"I'm sorry, Skyler."
"I'm sorry, too," Skyler said. "It's never easy to lose comrades."
"But don't forget that these aren't necessarily lost," O'Hara added. "As long as they're alive, there's always hope."
"Which almost makes it worse," Anne said. "If they were dead, there would at least be some closure.
This way ..." She shook her head. "Never mind. The point is that five of them are free. I should be content with that." She got to her feet. "I should also be helping Kanai get them settled. Good night, everyone."
"Good night," Skyler said for all of them.
Anne stepped to the doorway. There she paused, turning to touch eyes with each of them. "And thank you," she said.
Turning again, she left the room, closing the door behind her. "Some people are never satisfied,"
Hawking commented.
"You can add me to that list," Skyler said as he slumped tiredly in his chair. The rescue had worked, pretty much exactly the way he'd planned it. He should be content. Hell, he should be ecstatic.
But he wasn't.
"I wonder how Jensen's spending his evening," O'Hara murmured.
Skyler grimaced. Jensen. One more failure to chalk up to his leadership, except that this failure had the potential to blossom into a full-bore disaster. "We'll find out tomorrow," he said. "Flynn, did you get Trapper off all right?"
"He was fine when he headed out from here," Flynn confirmed. "Though of course he'll probably find Security waiting on his doorstep, who may or may not buy his story about being abducted at knifepoint."
"Maybe we can do something for him after we corral Jensen," Skyler said. Dorfman, Jensen, and now Trapper. The far end of this plan just kept throwing off loose ends.
"Assuming the whole town isn't already locked up in Athena," Flynn murmured.
"If they are, they are," O'Hara said firmly. "Focus on what can be changed, not on what can't." He lifted his eyebrows at Skyler. "Good advice for all of us," he added.
"I never said otherwise," Skyler replied evenly.