Taakh's roar of anger changed to a grunt of pain as Mordecai slammed his right elbow across the other's forearm, clearly trying to shake the sword loose from his grip. He slammed the Ryq's arm again; and then Taakh took a long step backward, gripped the sword with both hands, and pulled up and back.
Mordecai tried to hold on, but the Ryq's size and weight were far more than he could handle. Even as he was lifted bodily off the floor he let go with his left hand and allowed the nunchaku to swing around and away from the blade as Taakh continued to yank the sword upward. Both of them raced to get their weapons back under firm control; Mordecai won by a fraction of a second, swinging a stinging nunchaku blow across Taakh's face before being forced to leap away from the sword's whistling slash.
Lifting the weapon again, the Ryq leaped forward, pressing his attack as he tried to once again to push Mordecai to the wall. But he was finally starting to show some fatigue, and his swinging weapon was moving marginally but noticeably slower. Mordecai dodged with relative ease, and again managed to slip out of the potential trap and back to the center of the room.
But Mordecai was slowing down, too, missing two of his blocks as he fended off the flashing sword, only reflex and luck keeping the blows from taking him out of the fight permanently. He was in trouble; and as Galway watched helplessly, he realized suddenly that Mordecai was trying to work his way back to the door and escape.
Taakh saw it, too. With every step toward the door that Mordecai tried to take, the Ryq countered with one that forced him back toward the center of the room.
And then, as Taakh continued to press him back, Mordecai's foot caught the edge of the laser Taakh had thrown at him earlier, and he jerked slightly as he tried to regain his balance.
It was all the opening Taakh needed. Leaping forward, he slashed his sword downward again toward Mordecai's head. With his feet still tangled beneath him, Mordecai had no option but to once again swing his nunchaku up in a two-handed grip and catch the descending blade on the chain. Twisting to the side, barely making it in time, he again whipped the left-hand stick around the sword, twisting the chain around the hilt.
Only this time, Taakh was ready. Instead of simply pulling back and trying to free his sword, he reached over with his free hand and wrapped his hand around Mordecai's in an unbreakable grip.
And with that, Galway knew, it was all over. In his mind's eye he could see the inevitable outcome: Mordecai hauled off his feet, dangling helplessly in midair from his own nunchaku while the Ryq kicked him into a bloody, broken puppet. With a triumphant bellow, Taakh planted his feet and heaved himself backward, his massive shoulder and arm and back muscles bulging as he pulled the puny human off the floor.
Only to Galway's astonishment, Mordecai didn't resist the maneuver. Instead, he moved with it, leaping upward as he pulled down on his nunchaku for extra power, his efforts combining with Taakh's to send him flying toward the ceiling. Tucking his knees to his chest, rotating around the pivot point like an athlete around a high bar, he swung completely over the startled khassq's shoulder, straightening out his legs again as his body slammed hard against Taakh's back. Arching his own back, he pulled with all his strength on the nunchaku still wrapped around the base of the sword blade.
And with Ryqril muscles still pulling the sword up, and human ones pulling it down and back, the sword tip was driven solidly into Taakh's forehead.
Some trick of balance and locked muscles held the Ryq upright for another half second. Then, without a sound, his legs collapsed beneath him, and he toppled over onto the floor.
Slowly, Galway tore his eyes away from the dead khassq and looked at Mordecai. "You killed him," he heard himself say.
"Yeah," Mordecai said, breathing hard. "It seemed the thing to do."
"What happens now?" Judas asked, his voice shaking.
Galway looked down again at Taakh. "Nothing," he said. "It's all over."
"The bottom line," Skyler said, "is that it's all over."
Daasaa's eyes flicked to Bailey, standing under Flynn's watchful eye, then back to Skyler. "I dae not understand."
"I think you do," Skyler said. "In fact, as a battle architect, you probably understand better than any Ryq on the planet." He nodded back at Halaak's body. "Certainly better than he would have."
Daasaa shook his head. "Yae cannot 'ight us," he insisted. "There are not enou' o' yae tae rin."
"But that's just the problem—you don't know how many of us there are," Skyler said. "Worse than that, you don't know who we are." He pointed at the crumpled bodies of Poirot and the lieutenant. "You see, you don't have just a single Judas in your governmental ranks, or even just two or three. You have a whole army of them. And there's no way to identify them. Not until it's too late."
"Then re rill sin'ly reno'e all o' they," Daasaa countered.
"You can't do that, either," Skyler countered right back. "There aren't nearly enough of you in the TDE
to control us without the collaborationist bureaucracy you've set in place. Your only option would be to bring in a bunch of troops to take their place. Only you can't, because if you do you won't have enough forces to keep back the Chryselli."
"You see, friend, you've suddenly run into military doctrine's number one blunder," Hawking put in.
"You've got yourselves a two-front war."
"Yae cannot 'ight us," Daasaa insisted again. "Re can destroy yaer cities rhene'er re rish."
"Can you?" Skyler asked pointedly. "Can you really? Aside from the defenses around your private enclaves and maybe a few hundred Corsairs, you have practically nothing in the TDE under your direct control. Most of the weaponry is handled by your tame Security forces ... who aren't going to be tame much longer."
For a long minute Daasaa didn't reply. Skyler listened to the distant chirping of the evening insects, mentally crossing his fingers. If Daasaa didn't go for this, the TDE was going to be in for a long, bloody nightmare of attrition that could end up being worse than anything they'd seen during the actual war itself. "Re rill not gi' u' rithout 'attle," the Ryq said at last.
"But it's a battle you can't win," Skyler told him. "Oh, you can certainly kill a lot of humans, if that's what matters to you. But we have the numbers, and with Whiplash we'll have access to the weaponry, and the people, and the inner fortresses. Eventually, inevitably, you'll lose." He paused. "But there is an alternative."
Daasaa's dark eyes were steady on him. "I an listening."
"You leave," Skyler said flatly. "All of you—tonight, tomorrow, next week, but you all leave. You pull out your people and your troops—hell, take all the weapons you can stuff aboard your ships if you want to. But you pull out."
Daasaa barked a short, derisive laugh. "And this gains us rhat?"
"It gains you breathing space," Skyler said. "You see, if you pull out slowly, scorching the ground as you go, you'll give humanity time to organize and build back the political control systems we need to function as a cohesive society. But if you leave now—" he grimaced "—I guarantee months or years of chaos as your government flunkies try to hold onto power and the various Resistance groups try to seize it and everyone else just tries to figure out how the hell this freedom thing works. We've seen it happen time and time again when a nation or region is suddenly freed from tyranny. Trust me, it'll happen this time, too."