The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “So you did get Idunine. I hoped you had, but I had doubts…”

  “My senility?”

  Caine nodded. “It was a good act.” He looked around the room. “All of it was. I can’t believe you managed to fool everyone for so long.”

  “Thirty years.” Lathe glanced around, then turned back, all business again. “Come over here and get suited. We’ve got a flexarmor outfit that should fit you.”

  He led the way toward a bank of lockers. “Where are we?” Caine asked as they passed a humming bug stomper, one of five or six he could see spaced around the room.

  “The old tube station under Hamner Lodge,” Lathe told him. “Been unused since the end of the war. We started uncaching our equipment and moving it here about five years ago, after the collies got tired of dogging our every move. The track between here and Capstone is still good, and we’ve put our own power supplies into those two monorail cars. Here we are.”

  They had stopped before an open locker, and on Lathe’s order Caine began to strip. “I hope that stuff’s all it’s cracked up to be,” he commented, eyeing Lathe’s own flexarmor dubiously.

  “It is,” Lathe assured him as Caine put on a soft one-piece suit of underwear. “It’ll stop most non-explosive handgun projectiles, including some that’ll throw you a meter backward from the impact alone. It goes rigid under that kind of punch, by the way, spreading the impact around. A clean hit with an antiarmor laser will get through, but the usual antipersonnel settings will just take off the top layer.”

  “So the second shot gets through?”

  “The average gunner only gets one,” Lathe said calmly.

  Caine swallowed. “Oh.”

  “Understand, though, that this isn’t medieval plate armor,” the other continued. “For hand-to-hand combat you’re on your own. Punches and kicks are too slow to make it go rigid.”

  Great. “Thanks for the warning.”

  Lathe apparently heard something in his tone. “You should consider yourself lucky we even had an outfit you could wear,” he said, a bit tartly. “A lot of the boys going into combat tonight won’t have anything but plain black cloth and maybe a flexarmor vest.”

  “How come?”

  “Because most of the kids are just that: kids. We recruited them during martial arts classes a few years back—right under Galway’s nose, as a matter of fact. They’ve been training with us ever since.”

  There was something in the old blackcollar’s voice that made Caine pause in the act of fastening on a short-sleeved bodysuit. “It was pretty rough, wasn’t it?” he asked. “All the ridicule and disrespect…I don’t think I could’ve taken it.”

  “A lot of us couldn’t,” Lathe muttered. “That’s what kept the guerrilla war going so long. They wouldn’t give up the fighting.”

  “Whereas you knew when to quit?”

  For a second Caine thought he’d overstepped a fine line. But the anger only flickered across Lathe’s face without staying there. “We didn’t give in, we just changed tactics. Those of us who could.” He made a sound that was half sigh, half snort. “Let me tell you a story.

  “About seven hundred years ago, back in Old Japan on Earth, there was a lord named Kira who tricked an enemy into shaming himself. The enemy, Asano, committed suicide, the customary response for shame in that culture. Asano’s forty-seven samurai warriors were supposed to follow suit, but instead they disbanded and dropped out of polite society. They lost their wives, families, and friends, and were treated with contempt by everyone. Naturally, Kira decided they were harmless.

  “And then, one winter morning, all forty-seven suddenly appeared at Kira’s palace. They overpowered the guards, captured Kira and killed him. Only then did they fulfill their duty and commit suicide themselves.”

  He fell silent. Caine, not knowing what to say, concentrated on his dressing. Aside from its exotic material, the suit was standard commando design, with built-in knife sheaths on forearms and calves and square pouches on the front of each thigh and behind the belt buckle. All were empty, a fact he found a bit curious. “How does it feel?” Lathe asked.

  Caine took a few steps and tried a Series of karate punches and kicks. The flexarmor was remarkably supple. “Feels fine,” he reported.

  “Good. Grab the gloves, battle-hood, goggles, and also the coat and pants you wore here, and we’ll get going.”

  “What about weapons?”

  “You don’t get any,” Lathe told him, cutting off his protests with a raised hand. “I know, I know, you’re combat trained to the hilt and can use any weapon this side of Chaparral. But to us, you’re a dangerous amateur who’d do more damage to himself with our kind of weaponry than to the enemy.”

  Caine felt a flash of anger. “Look, Lathe—”

  “No, you look.” Lathe jumped back and from a long sheath on his hip withdrew two thirty-centimeter-long wooden sticks connected at one end by a few centimeters of black plastic chain. Gripping one stick, Lathe proceeded to whirl the other around his head and body in a bewildering pattern, occasionally snapping the sticks so that one whipped out and back in a barely visible blur. Caine swallowed—he’d never before seen a nunchaku handled with such lethal skill. “Okay, I’m convinced—for close-range work. But for long-range you’ll need guns, and I hold a marksman rating.”

  Lathe brought the sticks together and slid them back into their sheath. “Jensen!” he called across the room. “Give me a target!”

  A blond-haired man nodded and broke a piece of plastic board off the crate he’d just opened. Glancing around, he tossed it toward a relatively empty section of floor.

  His attention on the board, Caine saw only a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye—but there was no missing the sharp thwok as the board jumped in midair like a scorched bat. Jensen retrieved the board and spun it in a lazy arc back to Lathe. “We seldom use guns,” the comsquare said quietly, extracting the deadly looking black throwing star from the plastic and slipping it back into one of his thigh pouches. “They’re too easy to track.”

  Caine got his tongue working. “All right. I’m convinced.”

  “Good. Then there’s just one other thing I want to say.” He turned and locked eyes with Caine. “I still don’t know whether you’re really who you claim to be or a spy sent to betray us…but if you do, I swear your friends won’t be able to stop me from killing you. Understand?”

  Caine forced himself to return Lathe’s gaze. “Yes. And I won’t betray you.”

  Lathe held his eyes another second, then nodded curtly and stepped back. “All right. Let’s get moving.”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE LAST FEW WISPY clouds had been blown away by the time they left the lodge, and the stars were blazing down with a brilliance Caine had never seen from Earth. He hardly noticed them, though; there were more important things on his mind.

  The van was crowded. Along with Lathe and Caine were Mordecai, Dawis Hawking, and a wizened old blackcollar Lathe identified as Tardy Spadafora. The latter, who was driving, followed Mordecai’s earlier route into the city. But as they approached the Hub, he made a slight detour, stopping near the gray wall. When he started up again, he and Caine were alone.

  Minutes later, they coasted to a halt twenty meters from the brightly lit east gate. Setting his teeth, Caine took the heavy briefcase by Spadafora’s seat and got out, striving for nonchalance as he walked toward the floodlights. His coat and pants concealed all of his flexarmor outfit except his boots—which looked enough like current styles to go unnoticed—but it still took an eternity to reach the nearest of the two outside guards. Handing over his ID, he waited another eternity for the Security man to look it over and give the signal. Seconds later, Caine was inside the Hub.

  Autocabs were routinely kept at the Hub’s gates during low-demand hours, so Caine had no trouble with transportation. Following his instructions, he arrived a few minutes later at a cul-de-sac ending by the wall. The apartment buildings lining the street were dark, mo
st of the tenants apparently having turned in for the night. A missing light by one of the outside stairways was creating a large wedge of shadow, and Caine stepped into it to await developments.

  “Any trouble?” a voice murmured from the darkness, and Caine nearly wrenched his neck spinning around. Lathe crouched a bare meter away; behind him, Mordecai and Hawking were rising to their feet.

  “No—none,” Caine said. “I left my outerwear under the seat, okay?”

  “Fine. I’ll take that,” Lathe said, pointing to the briefcase. “Call an autocab, will you?”

  Caine handed over the case and triggered his hailer, wondering only briefly why he hadn’t simply been told to keep the cab he’d arrived in. Clearly, Lathe didn’t want to leave too clear a trail through tonight’s events. Looking back down the street, he could see approaching headlights.

  “We’re not taking the briefcase?” he whispered as Lathe joined him at the edge of the shadow.

  The blackcollar shook his head. “It’s for Skyler’s team—their shuriken, knives, and other metal equipment. We couldn’t bring them over the wall; there’s an induction field along the top and outer face that would have triggered an alarm.”

  Caine glanced back at the imposing gray barrier with some surprise. “You went over the wall? I thought there were sensors built into the surface to prevent that.”

  “There are,” Lathe agreed. “But the wall was built by forced labor—and we were among the workers. Certain patches of the surface were specially treated to age faster than the rest. They’ve since flaked off, taking their sensors with them.”

  “Why didn’t the Ryqril replace them?”

  Lathe shrugged. “Why should they? It looks like random decay, and the remaining sensors would detect any ladder or lifter. But if you follow the proper path you can climb the thing without setting off its defenses.”

  The autocab arrived and the four men piled in. “Where to?” Caine asked, hand poised over the map.

  “A hundred meters past the Records Building,” Lathe said. “I want to get a look at the place.”

  Caine touched the appropriate spot on the map. Silently, the autocab headed down the empty street.

  The air in the Apex Club was thick with the dank smoke of hasta sticks mixed with the odor of beer and cheap hot-pots. Sitting alone at a table near the low stage, Samm Durbin gazed around the room and tried to gauge the mood of the two-hundred-odd teen-agers crammed into the club. Angry, he decided. A rumor about a new government jobs scheme had been officially quashed less than an hour ago, and the loss of even this flicker of hope was sitting poorly with the mostly unemployed young patrons. The lighting manager had sensed the mood, and the flashing light patterns were leaning heavily toward reds, their frequency nervous and slightly irritating. When the crowd was like this, Durbin knew, it followed a standard pattern: lots of beer would flow as the teens tried to get drunk; the music would give them a chance to dance away their frustration; and finally, numbed and broke, they would trudge home. Occasionally a fist fight would break out, but that was the worst things ever got. High sales, minimal risk—few businesses this close to the hated wall could do so well. No wonder the management encouraged angry crowds.

  Tonight, though, was going to be different.

  On the stage the group struck their first chord, a harsh dissonance that told Durbin they’d picked up on the crowd’s mood, too. Sipping his steaming hot-pot, Durbin stole a glance at his watch. Four songs, maybe five, and it would be time to move.

  Even in the middle of the night several of the Records Building’s windows showed lights. Hugging the building across the street, Caine gazed at the four-floor brick edifice, wondering how many people were in there. It hadn’t really registered at the time, but Lathe’s comment during the autocab ride that this place was guarded by another induction field alarm meant they would be going in practically unarmed. The three blackcollars had their nunchakus, and Hawking also sported a wooden slingshot with stones for ammunition. And that was it. A single guard with a laser could take all four of them. Sweating under his flexarmor, Caine wondered if there was still time to call the whole thing off.

  The three blackcollars finished their whispered consultation and Lathe pointed Caine to the rear corner of the Records Building; “That looks about the best spot; out of the way and no lights showing. We’ll cross one at a time—you’re third. You’ll feel a tingling near the wall, but ignore it.”

  Without waiting for an acknowledgment, Lathe glanced both directions down the street and set off in a deceptively fast lope. Hawking was next; and then it was Caine’s turn. He ran as fast as he could without sacrificing silence, but it still seemed to take him twice as long as it had the others. He reached the target corner to find Lathe already two meters up the wall, gripping the bricks with the aid of plastic crampons. By the time Mordecai arrived, Lathe was gently testing the latch on the nearest second-floor window.

  That particular latch was apparently a good one; Lathe abandoned it and inched his way across the wall to the next window. He had better luck there, and within seconds had it open. Disappearing inside, he reappeared almost immediately and gave the others a hand signal. Tapping Caine’s shoulder, Hawking braced himself against the bricks and cupped his hands. Stepping up, Caine pushed off the ground with his other foot, walking his hands up the wall as Hawking pushed upward. The tingling was strongest right next to the building, and Caine’s hands were a bit numb as he reached for the sill. Lathe grabbed his arm and gave him an assist through the window into a small office. Scrambling back to his feet, Caine turned to offer a hand to the next one up. Two hands—Mordecai’s—were already gripping the sill; poking his head out, Caine saw that Hawking was literally climbing up the smaller man, finding handholds on boots, belt, and shoulder. He reached the window and entered unassisted. Mordecai followed, closing the window behind him.

  Lathe was across the room, listening at the door. As Caine and the others joined him, he cracked the panel open. Muted light poured in as Lathe looked both directions and then opened the door just enough to sidle out. The others followed into a dim hallway lined with doors.

  “One floor up, right?” Lathe whispered.

  Caine nodded. “Right. Stairway’s that direction.”

  They reached the stairs without seeing anyone. One flight up, Lathe stealthily opened the stairwell door and looked out. Just as stealthily, he closed it again.

  “Guards?” Caine whispered.

  “A Ryq,” Lathe whispered back, sliding his nunchaku from its sheath.

  Caine’s heart skipped a beat. What was an alien doing here, especially at this time of night?”

  “Out late, isn’t he?” Mordecai suggested softly. He didn’t seem overly concerned.

  “Yes, but I’m not worried,” Lathe told him. “He wasn’t armed more than usual and was talking amicably enough with one of the night staff.”

  “Think they suspect anything?” Hawking asked. “Or is this just a spot inspection?”

  “The latter, I’d say.”

  “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Caine broke in nervously. Not armed more than usual meant the alien was wearing both a wide-bladed short sword and a very lethal hand laser. “What if he comes in here?”

  “Relax,” Hawking advised him. “He’s not going to bother with any stairwells. We just have to wait here until he leaves. There’s enough slack in our timing to accommodate him.”

  “Unless you’d rather attack,” Lathe suggested mildly.

  Caine shivered. The thought of fighting even an unarmed Ryq would have made his stomach tighten, and he felt a flash of anger at Lathe for making light of a very real danger.

  In the distance an elevator motor began whining. Lathe waited until the sound stopped and then peeked out the door again. This time he continued on into the hall.

  Unlike the floor below, there were only two doors opening off this hallway. One, on the right-hand side, had a glass panel set into it, through which bright light was
streaming. Lathe gestured toward it, eyebrows raised questioningly. “The main records computer,” Caine whispered. “The archive tapes are stored across the hall, if the lobby floor plan was correct.”

  Lathe nodded and motioned to Hawking. Together they moved down the hall, Lathe taking a careful look through the computer room window as Hawking crouched low and tested the doorknob opposite. After a moment they both returned.

  “Door’s locked,” Hawking reported.

  “Mine, too,” Lathe said. “Four operator types inside.”

  “Straight frontal?” Mordecai murmured.

  Lathe shook his head. “They’re too far away. However, the room’s two stories high and there’s a wide cable tray spanning it about three meters up, with a service hatch at each end. Take a look.”

  Mordecai went to the door and glanced inside. Returning, he gestured back and all four men retreated again to the stairwell. “No problem,” Mordecai said. Without further comment he headed up the stairs.

  “Where’s he going?” Caine asked.

  “To clear out the computer room,” Lathe told him in an abstracted tone.

  “Alone?”

  Lathe gave him a patient look. “Caine, Mordecai just happens to be the best hand-to-hand fighter I’ve ever seen—possibly the best that’s ever lived. He won’t have any trouble in there.”

  “Time to go,” Hawking murmured a moment later.

  Lathe nodded and—after checking the hall—led the way back to the computer room. Glancing cautiously through the window, he motioned for Caine to look.

  The room was indeed large, with much of the central area taken up by a “pillar computer” of pre-war human design. Lining the walls were peripheral units of various sorts, and the hum of cooling fans could be heard even through the door. Next to the pillar was a control station; grouped around it were the four operators Lathe had mentioned. Almost directly above them, crawling carefully along the overhead cable tray, was Mordecai.

  Caine’s heart was pounding painfully, and he licked his dry lips without obvious effect. No matter how good Mordecai might have once been, the odds here were lousy. All one of them had to do was look up and it was all over. And even if he took them by surprise, it was still four to one. Hands itching for a weapon, Caine watched helplessly as Mordecai reached position above the control station—and, down the hall, the elevator opened.