Blackcollar: The Judas Solution by Timothy Zahn

else that would be instantly killed or destroyed by the harpoon's impact. But mistakes sometimes happened....
    He had half expected the harpoon's impact to be transmitted along the cable into something he might feel. But he was still waiting when Lathe turned his head toward them. "It's down," he called. "Go." And in a single smooth motion, Spadafora unhooked the safety line that fastened him to the shuttle wall, snapped the large carabiner ring of his secondary line around the unreeling cable, and leaped out into the night.
    Lathe was right behind him, then Mordecai; and then it was Caine's turn. Setting his teeth firmly together, working the two cables as he'd practiced on the trip, he popped his first line from the wall, attached his second to the cable, and jumped.
    For the first few dizzying seconds he actually slid upward with the momentum he'd been given by the shuttle's own forward motion. Then friction and air resistance and gravity dragged him to a halt, and a moment later he was sliding downward with increasing speed.
    He gripped his line with one hand and waved the other against the air in an effort to keep himself facing the direction he was moving. The broken clouds overhead were blocking most of the starlight, but there was enough getting through to show the ground rushing up toward him.
    He couldn't see the three blackcollars anywhere below him. Was that simply because of the light-absorbing coats they were all wearing? Or had their connection lines somehow failed, dropping them off the cable to their deaths? And if theirs had failed, wouldn't his likely do so as well? He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
    And exhaled that breath in a huff as the ring above him suddenly seemed to catch, sending his feet swinging upward and his harness digging into his thighs as the deceleration dragged at him like a fighter-turn G-force. He caught a glimpse of figures on the ground beneath him, the urgently flashing purple marker lights at the rear of the harpoon—
    And then, with welcome anticlimax, he slid to an almost gentle stop with his feet safely on the ground. Lathe was already at his side. "Everyone clear," the comsquare ordered, grabbing Caine's upper arm in a steadying grip with one hand as he slashed a knife through the connecting line with the other. Spadafora, Caine saw, was standing beside the harpoon, his hand poised over an opened control cover. Half guiding, half dragging Caine a few steps away, Lathe gestured to Spadafora. The other pressed the control; and with a sizzle of high-voltage current, the cable still unreeling from the distant shuttle evaporated in a puff of acerbic smoke.
    "I guess you were right," Spadafora said. "It isn't any harder going down."
    "What about the harpoon?" Caine asked, eyeing it dubiously. It had buried a good two-thirds of its length into the ground and didn't look like it was going to be coming out any time soon.
    "We leave it," Lathe said, pulling off his goggles and battle-hood and stowing them in his coat pockets.
    "Besides, they'll figure it out anyway as soon as the hang gliders are down." He pointed south. "If we're on target, there should be a town about a klick down the hill."
    "How big a town?" Caine asked.
    "Big enough to have some cars lying around waiting to be borrowed," Lathe assured him.
    "Plus a few public phones," Spadafora added.
    "Right," Lathe agreed. "We'll want to contact Shaw as soon as possible, make sure he's ready to receive. I'll do that while you three find a car." He looked at his watch. "If we hurry, we should be in Inkosi City in a couple of hours."
    * * *
    "There they go," Khala Security Prefect Daov Haberdae said, nodding at the long-range telescope display. "Right on schedule."
    "Yes," Galway murmured, frowning at the indistinct hang gliders as they sorted themselves out from the scattering wreckage of the shattered drop pods.
    "Dae yae ha' ratchers on the gro'nd?" Taakh asked.
    "We have watchers all over the area, Your Eminence,"