by Timothy Zahn
Lathe nodded. "Caine, go check out our back door."
"Right," Caine said, standing up as he finished pulling on his gloves. He headed toward the archway into the back room, noting that the bar's patrons were making a hasty but orderly retreat away from the center of the upcoming action.
He'd just reached the partition when the front door was flung open and two armored and helmeted figures walked purposefully into the bar. Behind their faceplates Caine could see their eyes darting back and forth, their paral-dart pistols swinging warningly around the room.
They'd made it three steps inside when Lathe and Spadafora lifted their slingshots and sent a pair of yellow pellets squarely into the intruders' faceplates.
No nonexplosive projectile could penetrate that plastic, Caine knew, certainly nothing propelled by human muscle. But unlike the blackcollars' regular slingshot rounds, these pellets weren't designed for destruction. Instead, they burst on impact, splattering the faceplates with a thick, instant-setting paint.
Whatever curses the Security men might have uttered were lost in the double shot they sent blindly in the direction the pellets had come from, one of the paral-dart clusters scattering off the top of Caine's battle-hood as he ducked into a low crouch. Lathe and Spadafora were already out of the line of fire, Spadafora moving to the right with another paint pellet in hand, Lathe moving left and forward and stowing his slingshot in favor of his nunchaku. Caine caught a glimpse of two more Security men crowding in behind their comrades as Lathe swung the flail into one of the blinded men's helmets, sending him staggering, and Spadafora threaded a shot neatly between the two front men into the faceplate of one of the newcomers.
Caine didn't wait to see any more. He slipped around the partition into the back room, his own nunchaku cocked and ready under his arm. The room's chairs were stacked neatly on top of the tables in preparation for cleaning, and the only light showing was a single panel glowing softly in the ceiling. Senses alert, he made his way between the tables to the rear exit. For a moment he paused there, listening, then eased the door open.
It opened into a deserted alley. Carefully, he leaned out and looked out.
And staggered back into the edge of the door as a cluster of paral-darts slammed into his face, most of them ricocheting from his goggles and hood but a few sinking into the exposed skin of his cheek.
He dropped his nunchaku as his face went instantly numb, his hand grabbing for the tingler on his wrist. But the drug in his bloodstream was too fast. Even as his fingers dug under the sleeve, both arms went dead. Half a second later his legs folded under him and he sprawled helplessly in the doorway, lying halfway out into the alley.
He'd landed with his face turned uselessly toward the bar's outside wall, but he could hear the running feet coming toward him. The footsteps came to a halt, and he was pulled the rest of the way through the door and turned onto his back. A half dozen hard faces were looking down at him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a couple pairs of hands unfastening his coat and throwing it open. Other hands attacked the civilian clothing beneath the coat, unfastening it as well and deftly maneuvering the shirt and slacks off his paralyzed limbs and tossing the clothing to someone outside his field of view. They took his nunchaku and slingshot from their respective sheaths, removed the knives from his forearm and calf sheaths and the shuriken from their thigh and belt pouches, and took his tingler from his wrist. Then, clad only in his flexarmor and the undersuit beneath it, he was lifted and hurried down the alley in the direction from which the ambushers had come. There was the muffled sound of a vehicle door opening, and he was shoved unceremoniously into the back of some kind of van.
Waiting for him there was Prefect Jamus Galway.
"Caine," Galway said gravely as the door closed again behind him and the vehicle lurched forward. The prefect's face was strangely somber as he gazed down at his trophy, with no hint of triumph or even satisfaction that Caine could see. "My apologies for all this. If it makes it any easier, let me assure you that we have no intention of killing or even hurting Lathe and the others. They're far too valuable to us as they are."
Too valuable. To us. With his face still paralyzed, Caine couldn't reply. It was, he reflected, probably just as well.
* * *
The first Security man staggered and collapsed, the impact of Lathe's nunchaku penetrating his helmet to stun the skull and brain underneath. The comsquare brushed against the second blinded man as he fell, who responded by spinning that direction and firing another blast of paral-darts. Lathe ducked beneath the shot and swung his nunchaku into the back of other's leg, toppling him on top of his friend.
Two more men were charging in behind them. One had already been blinded, and as Lathe swung his nunchaku around in a half circle and cocked it again beneath his arm Spadafora sent a fourth paint pellet past his head to splatter over the other's faceplate. Lathe made a crouching leap over the tangled bodies of the first two attackers and slashed his nunchaku across the third Security man's gun arm, sending his weapon spinning off across the nearby tables, then slammed a kick to his stomach that folded him up and dropped him to the floor.
The fourth Security man was firing off random rounds, clearly in hopes of hitting something, when Lathe's nunchaku slammed across his yellow-coated faceplate with a force that flipped him halfway over before he hit the floor.
Two more Security men were charging through the door, this pair already firing before they'd even made it inside. Lathe spun around to put his back to them, letting the salvos scatter off his flexarmor as he snatched out a pair of shuriken. His spin brought him back around to face them, and he hurled the stars hard into their kneepads.
Their guns wobbled off target as they fought for balance. Ducking beneath the weapons, Lathe took one of them down with his nunchaku and the other with a sweep and a heel-kick as he hit the floor.
He had just delivered a knockout blow with his nunchaku to the last man when his tingler came to life: outside clear. "Let's go," he called back to Spadafora. "Caine?"
There was no answer. "Caine!" Lathe called again, digging for his own tingler. Caine?
Outside, the reply came. Coming around to front.
Acknowledged, Lathe sent as he got to his feet and looked around. Aside from the downed Security men, everyone else in the bar seemed to have been untouched by the brief battle. "Sorry about the trouble," he said, nodding to the bartender and waiter.
There were two unmarked Security cars parked by the front of the building. Spadafora headed directly to the closest and pulled open the door, leaning halfway inside as he studied the interior. Mordecai was standing between the two cars, a shuriken ready in each hand, his head moving back and forth as he watched for trouble. Two more armored men lay sprawled unconscious at his feet. "Where's Caine?" Lathe asked him.
"Here," the younger man called as he came jogging into sight around the side of the building. "Sorry—I thought we were going out the back."
"Change of plans," Lathe said. "Spadafora?"
"Looks clear," the other called, still leaning into the car. "Not picking up any tracers, and I don't see any booby traps."
"Good enough," Lathe said. "Everyone in."
He got into the front passenger seat, the other two blackcollars climbing into the back, as Caine slid in behind the wheel and started the car. "Where to?" he asked as he pulled out onto the road again.
"Guardrail Tavern," Lathe told him. "Now we can go meet Tactor Shaw."
* * *
Tactor Kieran Shaw, chief of the Khala blackcollars, wasn't at all what Judas had expected.
Lathe and Spadafora certainly weren't huge men, but they were at least a bit bigger than average, with a calm but almost tangible presence that made them seem even larger. Mordecai, the smallest member of the Plinry contingent, was noticeably shorter than the other two, but he had even more of a sense of coiled-spring danger about him than the others. Even Caine, paralyzed on his back in an alley, had nevertheless managed someh
ow to maintain a sense of dignity during the brief time Judas had seen him back there behind the bar.
Shaw, completely bald and shorter even than Mordecai, seemed neither dangerous, charismatic, nor dignified. Considering this was a man who'd achieved the second-highest rank in the blackcollar hierarchy, it was a severe disappointment. "You certainly took your time getting here," he said almost peevishly as they were escorted into a windowless room in the electronics manufacturing plant where the Khala blackcollars had apparently set up shop. "You get lost? Or couldn't you wait until you got here to find yourself a drink?"
"We stopped by a bar on the west side to try to get the lay of the land," Lathe said. His voice was civil enough, but Judas could see in his face that he wasn't overly impressed by the man, either. "Trolling for Resistance or criminal elements is part of the standard procedure."
"For the record," Spadafora put in helpfully, "we never actually drank anything."
"For the record," Shaw said, his voice going a little fussier, "stirring up Security is always a bad idea. Especially when there's no reason for it. Considering the present situation, it was an extremely bad idea."
"Our presence here alone would have stirred them up," Lathe pointed out. "I doubt the incident at the bar changed things one way or the other."
"I'm glad you're so confident about that," Shaw said stiffly. "Which then leads us to point number two. Namely, what the hell are you doing here in the first place?"
"You told General Lepkowski—"
"I told Lepkowski about the Khorstron Tactical Center so that he could pass on the information to the Chryselli," Shaw cut him off. "I never intended for him to blab about it all over the TDE. I especially never intended for him to invite a bunch of wild cards to drop in and get in the way."
"I apologize for the misunderstanding," Lathe said, his voice starting to take on a little acid of its own. "The fact remains that we're here, and we're going to take the tac center. You can either help us or stay out of our way."
Shaw's eyes narrowed. It had probably been a long time, Judas guessed, since anyone had talked to him that way. "Who do you think you're talking to, Comsquare?" he demanded. "I'm the senior blackcollar officer here. More than that, this is my world. I decide what happens or doesn't happen on Khala."
"Our branch of the TDE military no longer exists in any formal sense," Lathe countered. "Our ranks—and your authority—went with it."
Shaw snorted. "As I said: wild cards."
"Hardly." Lathe gestured toward Judas. "Caine here is a duly authorized representative of Earth's Resistance leaders. He's all the authority I need."
"Not on my world he isn't," Shaw insisted, giving Judas a quick and piercing look. "I make the decisions here."
"Fine," Lathe said. "So make a decision."
For a long moment the two men glared at each other in silence, and Judas held his breath. Everything here depended on Lathe having a free hand to plan and execute the blackcollars' infiltration of the Khorstron tac center. If Shaw hamstrung those efforts out of sheer pique, all of it would be for nothing.
To his relief, Shaw blinked first. "I'm willing to listen to reason," he said grudgingly. "Let's hear your plan."
"First, I need to know what we're up against," Lathe said. "I'll need complete maps of the city and the area around Khorstron, a vehicle we can use, and every relevant news report from the past two months that you can dig up."
"And a safe place to go to ground?"
"I assumed that was a given," Lathe said. "We'll catch a few hours of sleep, then maybe we can go someplace where we can get a look at the center. Can you arrange all that?"
"Of course," Shaw said. "If I so choose."
The corner of Lathe's lip tightened; Shaw responded with a placid smile. The big fish, Judas thought cynically, making it clear that others swam in his little pond solely at his pleasure. "And?" Lathe prompted.
Shaw gave it couple more seconds, then shrugged. "I'll get you a safe house and whatever maps and data we have on hand," he said.
"Thank you," Lathe said. "By the way, Lepkowski implied you might have a few other blackcollars on hand."
"More than just a few," Shaw said, his eyes glittering. "I have a full company."
Lathe's eyes widened. "A company?"
"Yes, indeed," Shaw said, clearly enjoying the moment. "Eight squads, twelve blackcollars each."
Judas felt his throat tighten. Nearly a hundred blackcollars? Here?
The big fish, he realized with a sinking feeling, was bigger than he'd expected. Possibly bigger than anyone had expected.
And suddenly, Galway's plan wasn't looking nearly so good anymore.
* * *
From the number of tight twists and turns the road had taken during the last half hour of the trip, Caine concluded they'd left Inkosi City and headed into the mountains, either back to the Falkarie range to the west where he and the others had landed or else into the somewhat gentler slopes of the Deerline Mountains to the south.
At last they came to a halt, and he was hauled through the back doors onto a rolling stretcher. They had come to a low, flat structure nestled among the trees, its design indicating it had started life as some kind of camouflaged military strongpoint. Caine caught a glimpse of the waist-high posts of a sensor ring a dozen meters out, but saw no other vehicles. A minute later he was rolled up a gentle slope and through a thick door into a small entryway room with an elevator beyond it. From the slightly musty smell he guessed the strongpoint had been out of service for at least a few years.
The perfect place to hide a captive whose friends didn't even know he was missing.
The elevator took them down two levels below ground, letting them out into a long corridor lined with numbered but otherwise unmarked doors. Halfway down the corridor was his new home, a small room equipped with a table, a set of bunk beds, a large and squishy-looking comfort chair, and a corner bathroom facility complete with toilet, sink, and shower stall.
A pair of burly Security men transferred him from the stretcher to the lower bunk. There, with considerable difficulty, they got his close-fitting flexarmor off him. When he was finally down to his padded undersuit, they stepped back to be replaced by a medic who gave him an injection in the side of his neck. A minute of uncomfortable tingling later, the paralyzing drug had been neutralized and his body returned to normal function again.
"How do you feel?" Galway's voice asked.
Caine turned his head. The prefect was standing a couple of steps inside the room, the two Security men flanking him watchfully with paral-dart guns ready in their hands. "Do you care?" Caine countered.
Galway's face didn't even twitch. "Yes," he said.
Lathe, Caine knew, had always believed that Galway wasn't just a loyalty-conditioned thug, but that he genuinely cared for the people the Ryqril had set him up to keep in check. Now, studying the prefect's expression, Caine decided the comsquare's assessment had indeed been correct. "I'm fine," he said. "I hope you're not going to try to convince me that you caught the others this easily."
Galway snorted. "Hardly," he said. "The last time I was part of a genuine blackcollar capture, we lost a lot of men and equipment in the process."
"Denver?"
"Argent," Galway corrected, a little dryly. "Denver hardly counts as genuine."
"I suppose not," Caine conceded. "So the others are all right?"
"They're alive, well, and free," Galway assured him.
"And blissfully unaware I'm no longer with them?"
Galway's forehead wrinkled slightly. "You caught all that, did you? Interesting."
"Not really," Caine said, silently cursing himself. He should have played stupid a little longer. Too late now. "I was lying right there when he started putting on my clothes."
"He wasn't supposed to let you see him."
"He was a little hard to miss," Caine said. "Where'd you find a set of flexarmor for him, anyway?"
"There was apparently an incident on Shiloh a f
ew months back," Galway said, still looking a little troubled. "Several sets of flexarmor became available."
Caine grimaced. "I don't think I want to know the details."
"Neither do I," Galway said. "I gather, then, that you've figured out what we're doing?"
"Enough of it," Caine said. "You went back to Earth and found another of the Alain Rienzi clones that the Resistance started growing in the expectation that the Rienzi family would stay in the Ryqril's good graces long enough for it to be worth impersonating him."
"Very good," Galway said. "The irony being that in this case, we're using one clone to impersonate another." He gestured toward Caine.
"Yes, that part was obvious, thank you," Caine growled. Over the past two years he'd mostly worked through his feelings at being a clone. But only mostly. "So what happens now? You loyalty-condition me and swap us out again?"