She had to give the Zerellians credit. They knew how to cater a private party with a lot of money to spend. Raptor had indicated their impending arrival, and the meal had been laid out in style. Most importantly, no staff would return to the room until summoned.
“Sure we can’t take a few minutes to eat first?” Hawk joked.
“Later,” Raptor snapped, all business. “Any questions?” When there were none, he touched a microcomputer on his wrist. “I’ve deactivated the door sensor. Let’s go.”
They stripped off their outer clothes, revealing the sleek black jumpsuits beneath. Raptor then led them out the back of the room, where they dashed across the barren courtyard behind the building. There, they scaled a three-meter-high wall and dropped behind an outbuilding at the rear of a personal estate.
Raptor glanced at his wrist, then nodded at Fallon.
Under the cover of the outbuilding, Fallon lowered her backpack to the ground and sat next to it. In seconds, she’d extracted a hand-sized dark-gray drone, its controls, and two VR headsets. She handed one to Raptor and put the other on her own head.
With the tiniest movement of her fingers, she launched the drone and it immediately became invisible. Even in daylight it would have been hard to spot.
Via the headset, the drone’s perspective filled her vision as she flew it around the estate. She saw the outbuilding and her team, as well as the top of her own head, then zoomed off to canvas the entire area. She noted two guards and a security camera at every entrance. Every window also had a camera. Seated next to her, Raptor saw everything she did through the second pair of goggles.
She took him on a tour of every feature of the place. She kept her altitude low, to avoid tripping any passive detection. Most planets had such systems, but an able pilot with the latest technology would always be ahead of them.
She felt a hand press her thigh. Raptor had what he needed. She brought the drone back, landed it, and removed her VR gear.
Raptor had already taken his off. He made a series of gestures, instructing Hawk to follow him and Peregrine to lead Ross and Fallon two minutes behind.
By the time the second group arrived, Raptor and Hawk had taken out the two guards, opened the door, and dragged the pair inside. Ross and Peregrine stripped the guards of their uniforms and put them on over their jumpsuits. They took special care of the guards’ comports, which would no doubt send an alarm if they were out of position for much longer. Then they took the guards’ places at the door.
Fallon trailed Raptor while Hawk followed on her heels as they rushed down the hallway, careful not to make noise on the black-and-white tiled floor.
From here, Raptor would be working from blueprints of the building that had been filed with the housing commission when it was built. If any unreported restructuring had happened since, Avian Unit could be in trouble. But Raptor led them decisively down one hall, took a left, then stopped at a security breakstop—a solid metal wall that was vacuum sealed and locked. To get to Colb, Raptor had to find a way past it. He gestured for Fallon and Hawk to cover him while he worked at the electronic mechanism.
The moment Fallon started to worry, she heard a soft beep and a woomph as the seal broke. The wall retracted to the side.
“Here we go.” Raptor opened the door behind the breakstop.
They rushed in, ready to take on however many dozens of guards Colb had, only to stop short when they saw the man himself, standing in the middle of the room. Smiling.
“Greetings, my young friends,” Colb said, bowing to them as a teacher would to a student. Or a parent to a child. “I’m glad you’ve finally made it.”
They searched the place to be sure it wasn’t a trap. But there was no one there pulling Colb’s strings. A message to Peregrine and Hawk had them arriving a few minutes later, looking wary. Fallon felt the same.
“Ah.” Colb bowed to them, and they returned the bow. “Now we can begin. Shall we sit?” He indicated a traditional tea table.
The members of Avian Unit exchanged uneasy looks.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t simply summon you, right?” He looked from one face to another. “Well, I’ll be honest. I didn’t know exactly who I was waiting for. I’d hoped that someone would figure out what Krazinski was up to. But until someone came looking for me, I couldn’t know who was in his pocket and who wasn’t.” He looked directly at Fallon. “I’m glad it was you.”
“How do you know we’re not here to capture you for him?” Peregrine asked.
“Because he wouldn’t want you to, if you were working for him. He’d want to keep me right here, frozen in a prison of my own making, unsure of who I can trust.”
Fallon searched his elderly, familiar face as he talked. He was only a little older than her father, but time and the loss of Colb’s wife had taken a great toll on him. She saw nothing that indicated insincerity though. He looked just as he had when he’d read her stories when she was a little girl.
“Is that why your security was so easy to break?” Raptor asked.
“Well, it was enough to keep out the looky loos,” Colb answered. “But I needed you to be able to get in.”
“Hell of a risk,” Hawk noted. Clearly, he’d dispensed with proper protocol for addressing a senior officer.
Colb smiled, ignoring the breach. “Not really. You were my last hope. If it turned out I truly had no allies, then I might as well meet the wrong end of a stinger. At least that would raise questions.”
Fallon exchanged a look with
