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Wedge and his pilots passed through that crowd of amateur assassins and continued onward, forcing themselves to walk at a measured pace. “So far, so good,” Wedge said, his voice low. “Keep your eyes on the flatscreens on the buildings. If we see ourselves on them in real-time, we know we’re in trouble.”

“What’s the plan?” Tycho asked.

“They know where we’re going. And we do have to go there if we’re going to get off-planet. I suppose we could try to find enough privately owned Blades on balconies … but then we’d be stuck there, trying to get through security measures we’re not used to, while they have time to recognize us and come after us again.” Wedge shook his head. “No, we’ve got to get to the air base.

“They’ll have people on the most obvious routes to the base, and probably a whole congregation at the base’s main gates. So we go by side streets and back routes until we’re near the base …” Wedge stopped, considering.

“Getting into the base is the hard part,” Janson said. “It has transparisteel walls eight meters high, higher than those blasted reduced-power repulsorlift transports can go. Easily guarded gates are our only entry points. Wish we had Page’s commandos or the Wraiths and a couple of days to prepare.”

“We improvise,” Wedge said. “We need a wheeled transport, one of the flatcam units our pursuers are carrying, and four sets of women’s clothing.”

Hobbie looked crestfallen. “Boss, please tell me you’re not putting us in women’s clothing.”

“Very well,” Wedge said. “I’m not putting us in women’s clothing.”

10

Half an hour later, the four of them sat, wearing Adumari women’s clothing taken from a middle-class family’s apartment, in a wheeled transport two blocks from the gates into Giltella Air Base. Hobbie stared with a hurt expression at Wedge, who ignored him.

On this ill-lit section of street, running between warehouses serving the air base, the pilots were well concealed by darkness. This was not to be the case when they neared the air base’s front gates, which were brilliantly illuminated by glow lamps atop tall poles. Even at this distance, the pilots could clearly see the crowd that awaited them at the gates.

“You lied to me,” Hobbie said.

“I did,” Wedge said. “With my brilliant achievements in the diplomatic profession has come the realization that lies can be powerful motivators.”

“My faith is shattered.”

“You knew, when I said we needed four sets of women’s clothing, that we were going to end up in them. You knew. So any hopes you had to the contrary were just self-delusion.”

“I understand that. But I’d rather blame you than me.”

Wedge grinned. “Tycho, what are we facing?”

“A hundred fifty, more like two hundred, easy,” Tycho said. “So, fifty to one odds.”

“Not too bad,” Janson said, and cracked his knuckles. “So. Who’s best-looking in women’s dress? I vote for myself.”

“Quiet,” Wedge said. “Tycho, do you have the broadcast figured out?”

Tycho nodded. “I think so. But we’re going to have to rely some on luck.”

“We are doomed,” Hobbie said.

Tycho gestured at the flatcam unit they’d taken from a man who now slept, with a bump the size of a comlink on his forehead, behind a stairwell in a residential building a few blocks from here. “I can’t override the local flatcams,” he said. “There’s no equipment for that, no procedure. Just a specific broadcast protocol. My guess is that when we broadcast the recording, some manager at the local information distributor will decide whether or not to put it up on the flatscreens citywide.”

“Which they will,” Wedge said. “Considering the subject matter. All right, start broadcasting.” He set the wheeled transport into motion, heading straight toward the two hundred eager killers awaiting them at the airfield’s gates. Tycho hit a set of buttons on the flatcam’s side and then carefully placed the device out on the street. Within moments it was lost to sight behind them.

The flatscreens on the buildings they passed—screens not so numerous as on the buildings in the richer quadrants