"Relax, Galway—your blackcollars are coming." He smiled tightly. "Let's enjoy the show."
CHAPTER 19
The passage through the tunnel had been tricky enough when Foxleigh's hands had been available to help protect him from the multitude of protrusions that reached out toward head and feet and hips. This time, with his hands tied together, was far worse. He'd made it only halfway through, and had already given up trying to count the bruises he'd collected, when he heard the sounds of footsteps ahead.
He froze, holding his breath as he listened. It was footsteps, all right. At least a half-dozen sets of them, possibly more.
His first, hopeful thought was that Flynn had returned with the rest of the blackcollars. Surely between Flynn and Skyler he would find someone who would be willing to help plead his case to Jensen.
But the whisper of hope was barely formed before it evaporated in the cold light of reality. He'd traveled this tunnel with Jensen, and he knew how the other moved. There was no way a group of blackcollars would make the kind of noise he was hearing.
And if it wasn't the blackcollars, there was only one other possibility.
He collected another set of bruises as he retraced his steps back toward the base. But this time he hardly noticed, his full attention focused on making the trip with as much speed and stealth as he could manage.
Finally, after a short eternity, he arrived and set off across the storage room as fast as his leg would let him. Hopefully, Jensen had gone back to the Talus. If he hadn't, if he was somewhere else in the base, Foxleigh could search for hours without finding him.
And neither he nor Jensen had nearly that much time to work with. Clenching his teeth, pushing his leg as hard as he could, he reached the corridor and turned toward the elevator.
And gasped as something whipped across his vision to settle firmly against his throat. "It's me—it's me," he gasped.
"Yes, I see it's you," Jensen growled into his ear, the pressure of the nunchaku sticks against his throat not letting up even a little. "You have got to be the noisiest infiltrator—"
"They're coming," Foxleigh cut him off. "Footsteps in the tunnel. Lots of them."
The nunchaku sticks stayed against his throat, but the pressure eased slightly. "It's probably Flynn and Skyler," Jensen said.
"No." Foxleigh tried to shake his head, discovered he couldn't. "They're way too loud to be blackcollars."
Jensen hissed, an coldly ominous sound. "So Security's found the back door. Too bad."
"It sounded like a lot of them," Foxleigh said. "Let me help you."
"Thanks, but I can handle it myself."
"Your ribs are going to limit what you can do," Foxleigh persisted. "Besides, I learned enough tactics to know that a situation like this requires a double-flank trap. I can be the other flank."
"No."
"I have to help you," Foxleigh begged. "Please."
For a long moment Jensen remained silent. "You lied to me earlier," he said at last. "Tell me what you lied about."
Foxleigh closed his eyes, tears of ancient shame welling up behind his eyelids. So here it was at last. "I told you I was shot down in the final battle," he said, the words feeling like hot embers in his mouth. "I wasn't. I was driving back to the base when the Ryqril attacked."
"You were AWOL?"
"Not on purpose," Foxleigh said, wincing at the pleading defensiveness in his voice. "There was a girl I knew in Central City, and—I didn't expect the Ryqril to attack so soon. I swear."
Jensen sighed. "Yeah, that happened a lot in that war," he conceded. "What happened then?"
"What happened is that I never made it," Foxleigh said bitterly. "I saw them coming in and pushed my speed and took a curve too fast. I tried to keep going on foot, but I'd wrecked my leg the same time I wrecked the car. After that ... well, the rest of it goes pretty much the way I told you."
"Except for why you stayed in Shelter Valley," Jensen said. "You didn't just get used to it, did you? You were hoping for another crack at the Ryqril."
Foxleigh snorted. "Fine—so it's been an obsession. Haven't you ever obsessed over something?"
"No," Jensen said flatly. He hesitated. "Nothing that interfered with my duty, anyway."
"Your duty?" Foxleigh countered. "This is my duty, Commando. This is—" He broke off, blinking back another pair of tears. "That Talus we prepped, the one named Gotterdammerung?" he said quietly.
"That's my fighter, Jensen. The one I should have been flying in that battle. The one I should have died in."
For a minute Jensen didn't reply. Foxleigh waited, his mind wrapped in a strange sense of peace, as if thirty years of accumulated dread and anticipation and forlorn hope had been flushed away in the catharsis of his long overdue confession. Whatever happened now, it would simply happen.
And then, as the internal pressure of his emotional turmoil faded, so did the external pressure against his throat. "We'll take them in the storage room," Jensen said, stepping out from behind him. A knife flashed, and with a quick slash Foxleigh's hands were free. "I trust you remember how to use this?" he added as he handed Foxleigh the pistol he'd taken from him.
"Oh, yes," Foxleigh said softly as the familiar weight of his issue sidearm settled into his hand. At least once a day for the first five years of his self-imposed exile, he'd cleaned the gun, loaded it, and held the muzzle to his own head as he decided whether or not to pass judgment upon himself for his failures.
Now, after thirty years, he would finally have the chance to give his life for something more useful and fitting than simple punishment. "I remember very well."
There were more Ryqril waiting at the west door than Judas had expected. But their numbers actually ended up working against them, denying them the maneuverability that might otherwise have made the battle more even.
As it was, the fight was over very quickly. Taking on their enemies' lasers and short swords with nothing but hands, feet, shuriken, and nunchaku, Lathe and the others waded systematically through the crowd until every one of the Ryqril were incapacitated, unconscious, or dead.
"Everyone all right?" Lathe asked as he crouched over one of the bodies. "Caine?"
"I'm fine," Judas assured him, looking around the room with the sense of unreality he always seemed to experience when watching blackcollars in action.
"Nothing here," Spadafora said. He was crouched over another of the bodies, his hands darting deftly through the various pockets and pouches in his baldric and pants.
"Or here," Lathe agreed, standing back up. "That could be good or bad."
"What are you looking for?" Judas asked.
"Immunity transponder," Spadafora explained, crossing to where Mordecai was peering out the halfopen door leading into the inner corridor. "Something to shut down those autotarget lasers Shaw warned they probably have installed around the core." He nodded toward the bodies. "Only none of our friends here seems to be carrying one."
"Which either means they've shut down the interior defenses, or that this particular crowd was considered expendable," Lathe said.
"Or else that none of these particular warriors were authorized to leave this area," Judas pointed out, some of the tension between his shoulders easing. This one, at least, he knew the answer to—Galway had told him they would be leaving the lasers off.
"Maybe," Lathe said, picking up two of the short swords that lay scattered across the floor and sliding them into his belt at the small of his back where they'd be out of the way. "Let's find out. Mordecai, take point."
Mordecai nodded and opened the door the rest of the way.
And dropped into a crouch as a laser bolt sizzled past where his head had just been. Judas caught a glimpse of a Ryq crouched in partial concealment around the corner of the next cross corridor, dropping the muzzle of his laser as he tried to line up his second shot.