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Galway nodded. "As you command, Your Eminence."
The Ryq turned back to the monitors. The smoke had passed the fence, Galway saw, and was starting to roll around the building itself.
And there they were, right on cue: fifty cars appearing suddenly from streets and driveways and from beneath camo nets, all of them charging at full speed straight toward the Khorstron fence.
One of the techs had obviously seen them, too. He snapped something at Taakh, and the big khassq stepped to his side. "Are they 'ools tae think re rill 'e caught un're'ared?" he growled contemptu-ously.
"Maybe they're a diversion while the real infiltration team sneaks over the fence where they fried the sensors," Haberdae suggested. "Without sensors, you'll never spot them in this damn smoke."
"Somehow, I don't think sneaking is the plan," Galway said.
"I thought that's what blackcollars did best," Haberdae growled.
Galway nodded at the monitors. "Let's find out."
The smoke screen was filling the entire grounds now, and the techs had switched the displays from straight visual to the false-color images of sensor scans. Galway had never found such scans to be very clear, and even the best of the images were now being hampered further by snowlike flickers. The worst of them showed nothing but multicolored static. "Those must be the pictures coming from the sensors on the building," Haberdae said, gesturing toward the latter group.
"With the ones where you can actually see something coming from the sensors in the fence posts,"
Galway agreed, nodding. "Whatever they've got in that smoke, it's damn good."
Haberdae grunted. "I just hope they don't realize how blind we really are."
Around the perimeter, the cars were braking to a halt, stopping ten to fifteen meters back from the fence.
The doors swung open and blackcollars emerged into the smoke in groups of three, each group huddling close together as they hurried across the remaining distance. "What are they doing?" Haberdae demanded, starting to sound uneasy. "I thought they knew about the sonics in the fence posts."
"That's what Judas said," Galway agreed. The groups reached the fence, and in near-perfect unison the two end men in each set reached down to grab the feet of the man in the middle and hurl him up and over the fence.
Haberdae inhaled sharply. "What the hell—?"
"Relax," Galway said, pointing to the monitors as the flying blackcollars hit the ground and toppled over to lie flat and unmoving. "They're down. The sonic must have gotten them."
"The sonic and the mines," Haberdae corrected, pointing to the grounds schematic where five orange lights were flashing at various points just inside the fence. "I wonder whether that flexarmor is good enough to block scud grenade needles."
Across the room, one of the techs spat something. "So that is their 'lan," Taakh rumbled. "The in'iltrators carry large quantities o' ex'losi'es."
"You think they're trying to blast the fence?" Haberdae asked.
"They could have done that from the outside and stayed away from the sonic and mines," Galway reminded him. On the displays, the shadowy images of the blackcollars still outside were drifting away, heading back toward their cars.
"'Re'ect Galray is correct," Taakh agreed. "They think tae wait until the sur'i'ing in'iltrators are reco'ered, then use their ex'losi'es tae 'last down the doors."
"While meanwhile the blackcollars still outside drive the cars through the fence?" Haberdae suggested.
"I' that is their 'lan, they rill 'e disa'ointed," Taakh said with malicious satisfaction. "The 'ence is 'ar tae strong tae crash through."
"Meanwhile, we have the inside group to deal with," Haberdae reminded him.
"That rill not 'e a 'ro'len," Taakh assured him. He snapped an order, and on the edge of the building monitor displays, just barely visible through the smoke, Galway saw the tips of laser rifle muzzles emerge from the firing slits in the bunkers flanking the building's doors, tracking downward toward the figures still lying motionless on the ground. "I don't like this," Galway warned. "There's some catch here."
"The catch rill 'e 'or they," Taakh said. Gesturing imperiously to one of the techs, he snapped an order.
Lathe had maneuvered their car through a line of trees toward the southwestern part of the fence as the smoke screen spread out over the base, heading for the section where Shaw had said the radiationwrecked sensor post was located. The last thirty meters were done in near-total blindness as the fog settled down around the grounds. "Everyone out," the comsquare called as he shut off the engine.
"Spadafora, get the shields. Caine, come with me."
"Sure," Judas muttered, grimacing behind his filter and goggles as Lathe led the way through the smoke.
He'd had always hated blindfold games, hated them with a passion. "What exactly are we doing?"
"We're going over the fence," Lathe said. "Hold up here."
"You know, you promised I'd be kept in the loop," Judas said as he stopped. "This hardly qualifies."
"Events are moving faster than expected," Spadafora said, coming up behind him and handing over one of the body shields. "If you'd rather, you can wait for us in the car."
Judas swallowed a curse. In full honesty he would like nothing better than to sit this one out. The Ryqril in there would be playing for keeps, and the flexarmor he was wearing wasn't guaranteed against anything but the first laser shot. Maybe not even that much.
But Galway needed someone on this end of the attack to pick up on any details they might miss from inside the tac center. "Thanks, but I'm going," he growled.
"Good," Lathe said. "You can start by hooking your shield over your back to keep your hands free." He demonstrated.
Judas had just gotten the shield in position when his tingler came to life: all blackcollars, stand ready; launch in five.
"What are we launching?" Judas asked as Mordecai grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a crouch.
"We're not using missiles, are we?"
"Of a sort," Lathe said. "We're tossing a few bodies over the fence."
In the distance, Judas heard a series of muffled thuds. "That didn't sound like bodies hitting the ground," he said apprehensively.
"Scud grenades," Spadafora identified the sounds. "Some of them must have landed on the mines."
Judas grimaced. "Are they all right?"
"As all right as the rest of them," Lathe said. "Turn your eyes away from the fence a moment."
Judas had barely complied when the inside of the cloud abruptly lit up with brilliant green light as a dozen or more lasers all fired at once.
And an instant later he was thrown to the ground as the whole cloud seemed to erupt in a single, violent explosion.
Even at the very center of the base, Galway felt the vibration of the multiple blasts. "Good God,"
Haberdae gasped as every sensor screen went solid white and then turned to static. "What the hell kind of explosives have they got?"
"It wasn't the quality," Galway said grimly. "It was the quantity."
"The what?"
"Don't you see?" Galway said, pointing to the fence sensor monitors. "Those weren't real people they tossed over the fence. They were more of those same sensor dummies they had riding their decoy hang gliders when they first arrived. Only this batch were loaded with explosives."
Taakh was snarling at the techs, who were in turn pounding frantically at their keyboards. "And they were lying right by the fence," Haberdae murmured, his voice suddenly graveyard quiet as he pointed to the grounds schematic. The entire fence line was flashing orange now, Galway saw. "Shaped charges designed to send a pressure wave through the ground when they blew," the prefect added. "Probably took out the whole minefield."