"All of it," Galway said mechanically, his thoughts freezing. Judas—the blackcollars—
"Rhat then ras their 'lan?" Taakh demanded.
"Their plan was me," Galway said, turning back to the Ryq. "Everything they did from the moment they landed was aimed toward one of two goals: to get them into Khorstron, and to get me alone for a few minutes."
"Rich they did last night."
"Exactly," Galway said, taking a casual step toward Judas. "Caine was running on his own timetable, with orders to make some kind of escape attempt after a couple of days that would hopefully lure me out of Inkosi City and up into the mountains to check on him. They already had Spadafora in position to fry the entryway sensors so that they could get in and gimmick my car while I was inside."
"Yet yae are loyalty-conditioned," Taakh said.
"I was," Galway corrected. "I just learned last night that they have a drug called Whiplash that breaks loyalty-conditioning."
"That is not 'ossi'le," Taakh said flatly.
Galway spread his hands to the sides. "I'm proof that it works," he pointed out, taking another step to his side. One more step, and he would be beside Judas's chair.
"But why?" Judas asked, clearly still not understanding. "They were already running rings around us.
What did they need you for?"
"Many things," Galway told him. "Because they weren't running rings around us, not really. Not until this afternoon. If you think back, Your Eminence, I was the one who suggested that the bunker fire was probably a diversion. I also pointed out that one of the dummies had been tossed on top of the south tunnel and suggested Shaw's men might be trying for a breach there." He looked at Haberdae. "And of course, I'm the one who turned off the corridor lasers after Haberdae turned them on."
"Fine," Haberdae said. "So they get into Khorstron. So what? There's nothing useful in here for them to steal."
"It was never about stealing anything," Galway said, taking the step that put him at Judas's side.
"Khorstron was just a means to an end. The real point of the plan is much more subtle." He turned back to face Taakh, letting his hand drop casually to Judas's left wrist.
And as he did so, his fingertips pressed against the tingler beneath the other's flexarmor sleeve.
He didn't know blackcollar tingler code. But he didn't have to. Hopefully, a long, sustained signal would be properly interpreted as a cry for help. "You see, Your Eminence, what this little exercise has demonstrated is that your universe has abruptly changed," he told Taakh. "If we can penetrate right to the center of a Ryqril base—"
"Your Eminence!" Judas barked, his eyes suddenly wide. "He's signaling with my tingler!"
"Stand aray," Taakh snarled, taking a long step forward, his hand lifted to strike.
Galway dived to his left, trying to get out of the other's reach. But the khassq was too big and too fast.
His hand slapped across the side of Galway's head hard enough to spin him halfway around.
The prefect tumbled to the floor, a stab of pain knifing through his head and neck as he scrabbled back up into a sitting position. Shoving against the floor with his feet, his bloody hands raised in front of his face, he slithered backward, trying to get away from the killing blow that would certainly be coming next.
But the blow didn't come. His back bumped up against the wall, and still the blow didn't come.
Carefully, hesitantly, he lowered his hands.
Taakh wasn't looking at him. He was turned to face the door, his hands curled into claws at his sides.
And standing facing him just inside the doorway was Mordecai.
For a moment they just stood there, gazing silently across the gap between them, each warrior apparently sizing up the other. Then, abruptly, Taakh leaped sideways, grabbed Judas's chair, and heaved it and Judas straight at Mordecai.
The blackcollar was far too quick to be caught that easily. He sidestepped effortlessly, leaving Judas to continue on to crash with a yelp onto the floor beside the door.
But Taakh hadn't really cared whether Mordecai was caught by the chair or not. Even as the blackcollar dodged, the khassq dived across the room behind the rest of the chairs, his outstretched hands reaching for the laser he'd knocked earlier from Galway's grip.
But if Mordecai was too fast to be caught by a thrown chair, he was also too smart to be taken in by such an obvious diversion. Taakh was still two meters from the laser when a shuriken flashed across the room to bury itself into the weapon's side. There was a flicker of light and a brief cloud of sparks, and the weapon was dead.
Taakh scooped it up anyway, squeezed the trigger once to make sure, then spun and hurled it at Mordecai's head. Again Mordecai managed to evade the missile, but this time it cost him the accuracy of his next shuriken. The throwing star flashed past Taakh's head without connecting as the Ryq dodged out of the way and again threw himself across the room, this time aiming for his short sword. Another shuriken caught him in the upper arm as he hit the floor and rolled back to his feet with the sword ready in his hand. Spinning around to face Mordecai, he pulled the shuriken from his arm and charged.
The blackcollar leaped to the side, whipping out his nunchaku and spinning it in a blinding arc toward Taakh's head. The Ryq swung his sword up to meet the flail, and the weapons met with an earsplitting crash and a brief shower of hardwood splinters. Taakh let the impact bounce the sword back, riding its altered momentum around in a tight circle and stabbing up toward Mordecai's side. The blackcollar danced back out of its way, and as the tip burned bare millimeters past his ribs he snapped his left arm down and around, catching the back of Taakh's sword hand with his own forearm and adding a little extra momentum to his thrust. Taakh seemed to stumble as his center of balance was thrown off; twisting around, Mordecai threw a spinning kick at the Ryq's torso as he simultaneously swung the nunchaku at his head.
The flail missed, but the kick connected. With a grunt, Taakh swung his sword again, a pair of quick, downward blows toward Mordecai's shoulders and head. The blackcollar dodged both attacks and leaped back out of range, his back bouncing against the wall as he suddenly ran out of maneuvering room. With a roar, Taakh leaped forward, this time swinging his sword horizontally at Mordecai's torso. Ducking under the blow, Mordecai braced one hand against the wall and snapped a side kick into the alien's abdomen.
It was a solid, powerful blow, the sheer impact of it sending Taakh staggering back. Shoving off the wall, Mordecai followed it up with another nunchaku attack, but the Ryq managed to get his sword back up in time to block the swinging flail. But the impact threw him a little farther off balance, allowing Mordecai to duck past him away from the wall and back into the center of the room. Taakh spun to face him, and for another moment the two opponents seemed to pause, sword and nunchaku poised and ready.
For Galway, his head and neck and fingers throbbing as he gazed at the tableau, it was a moment of unrelieved blackness. Taakh, khassq-class warrior of the Ryq, stood strong and tall and muscular, hardly affected by the blows his opponent had managed to land. Mordecai, human blackcollar, was unmarked, but in the confined space of the monitor room he could hardly avoid his enemy forever.
And with the Ryq standing nearly twice his height and pulling perhaps three times his weight, it wouldn't take more than a single solid punch or sword slash to bring the fight to an end.
Galway looked desperately around the room, searching for something—anything—he could use as a weapon. Something he could use to tip the odds even a little in Mordecai's direction.
He was still looking when Taakh, his moment of combat meditation apparently over, leaped again to the attack.
Once again, he slashed his sword down toward Mordecai's head. This time, though, Mordecai didn't simply dodge away, but instead lifted his nunchaku upright, one stick gripped in each hand with the connecting plastic chain stretched horizontally above him, ready to receive the blow. The blade slammed into the chain, its momentum pressing it downward toward Mordecai's head. Turning his body out from under the descending weapon, Mordecai swiveled one of the nunchaku sticks around, letting the sword's momentum carry the weapon down past his shoulder. Before Taakh could recover his balance, the blackcollar swung his left arm around the sword point, looping the nunchaku around the weapon. The chain wrapped solidly around the base of the blade, trapping it in place.