For a long moment the Ryq stared down his long, openmouthed snout at him. Then, deliberately, he turned back to the tech. "Yae rill decry't it at runce," he repeated.

The tech's mouth twitched. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said.

Taakh turned back to Galway. "How dae yae intend tae learn their 'lans?"

"Unfortunately, at this point we can't," Galway said. "Between their bug stompers and other countermeasures we're not going to get any kind of eavesdropping devices within five klicks of any of them."

"Then rhy is yaer spy not here?"

"It would have been too risky to put in the spy here in their own territory," Galway said. "There'll be time enough for the switch once they're on Khala and too busy to notice any small discrepancies in his behavior or mannerisms."

"Yae are 'ery certain."

Galway hid a grimace. No, he wasn't certain at all.

But it had to work. It wasn't just his own life hanging by a thread here, but also the safety of his world.

Neither Taakh or anyone else had explicitly stated that Plinry would pay the price for any failures, but Galway knew how to read between the lines. "I understand these blackcollars, Your Eminence," he said as calmly as he could. "They are going to go to Khala; and when they do, we'll have the solution we're looking for."

"'Erha's," the Ryq said, clearly not convinced. But he had his orders, and for the moment, at least, Galway was in charge. "Rhat dae re dae next?"

Galway hunched his shoulders slightly. In many ways, this next step was the hardest of them all. "We wait."

Skyler and Mordecai listened in silence as Lathe laid out the situation. "So you think this is it?" Skyler asked when he'd finished.

"Yes, I do," Lathe said. "A tac center is the kind of prize that only comes around once a lifetime."

"Which means it's probably some kind of trap," Skyler said.

"Oh, without a doubt," Lathe agreed calmly. "The point is that this is exactly the sort of thing Galway would set up: challenging, yet ultimately possible."