Blackcollar: The Judas Solution by Timothy Zahn Page B

Security men, he thought grimly as the door sealed itself behind him. Not even the ones who were currently doing absolutely nothing except lounging around Inkosi City's main entry roads, as if Lathe would be foolish enough to enter a city along such obvious routes.
    But then, Haberdae's Security men were hardly the only resources available. There was an entire government's worth of bureaucrats and tech workers scattered around the city, all of them loyalty-conditioned, none of them under Haberdae's legal jurisdiction. If Galway could get them out onto the streets and highways in the next half hour— all the streets, not just the obvious entry points—maybe they could spot the incoming blackcollars in time to get Judas and the special ops team in position to intercept them.
    Picking up his pace, he hurried down the brightly lit corridor. With luck, maybe he could still pull this off. CHAPTER 3
    "So has anyone been inside the mountain since we left?" Skyler asked as they drove eastward along the winding road toward Reger's estate.
    "Anne and I went in a couple of times in the first few months," Kanai said. "We wanted to see if there was any more information on Whiplash we might have missed earlier."
    Skyler nodded, thinking of the irony of it all. The old Torch resistance organization had spent its last days in Aegis Mountain, working to develop a drug capable of breaking the hitherto unbreakable Ryqril loyalty-conditioning. And they'd succeeded, only to succumb to the residual chemical warfare contamination in the base before they'd even had a chance to use it. "Was there?"
    "Not that we could find," Kanai said. "We were able to get a couple other sections of the base operational, though, complete with heat and power. We got one of the elevators running, too."
    "I hope you didn't go near the main command level," Hawking warned.
    "And risk bringing the entire mountain down on us?" Kanai snorted gently. "Give us a little more credit than that, Commando Hawking."
    "I'm sure he was just asking," Skyler assured him. "But you haven't been inside lately?" In the reflected glow of the headlights, Skyler saw Kanai's lips compress briefly. "As I say, we've had some differences of opinion. I'm mostly working with Reger these days."
    "What kind of differences?" Skyler pressed.
    "Perhaps it would be best if we wait until ..."
    He trailed off.
    "What is it?" Skyler asked, looking out the windshield.
    "That's the road to Reger's estate," Kanai said, pointing ahead to a road branching off to the right.
    "Those two houses on either side of the intersection have their porch lights on."
    "And they shouldn't?" Skyler asked.
    "All the houses on that road are owned by Reger's people," Kanai said. The car came up to the road, and he drove past without slowing. "The porch lights are never lit unless something's wrong."
    "Any other ways in?" O'Hara asked.
    "There's an access road along the west side of the estate," Hawking said. "It'll bring us right up to the sensor keyhole Jensen and I put in."
    "Unless Reger's closed it up," Skyler said.
    "I don't believe he has," Kanai said. "No one but a blackcollar would be able to sneak in along it anyway."
    "Okay, get us back to that road," Skyler said. "You and Hawking know the system and grounds best—you'll go in through the keyhole. O'Hara and I will give you some lead time, then we'll come in the front door."
    It took Kanai a few minutes by back street and other people's access roads to return them to the western edge of the Reger estate. Maneuvering the car around the worst of the potholes, he came to a halt a few meters from the outer fence, a simple-looking wire-mesh design, two meters tall, that probably looked like any number of other property-line fences in this part of the mountains. "Electrified, no doubt," O'Hara commented as the four blackcollars approached it.
    "Yes, but not seriously," Hawking assured him. "Jensen cranked back most of the juice so that he could run pressure sensors along the