The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “Oh.” Lathe gave the all-clear, and with a crunch of dead leaves Caine and the five hidden blackcollars stepped into the clearing. Caine wished he could see the expressions under those mesh-masks; combat-garbed blackcollars were an impressive sight—

  “You sure brought a mob with you,” she said, eyeing them. “Is this it?”

  “We also have a spotter at the edge of the woods,” Skyler said.

  “All right. The cars won’t carry everyone; some of you’ll have to walk.” She nodded to her three companions who, unlike her, still held their rifles uncertainly at the ready. “You can take these four directly through the woods to the house. We’ll take the others and their baggage in the cars.”

  “But, Li, we still don’t know who they are,” one of the Argentians objected, gesturing toward Vale with his weapon.

  “They’re blackcollars—which means they’re on our side,” she explained patiently. “So get moving. And I suggest you sling your rifle before he takes it away from you again.”

  The man snorted, but started off into the woods, the other six men close behind. The woman nodded to Skyler. “Let’s go.”

  The “house” they were driven to was actually more like a woodland estate. Nestled into the far edge of the woods were a three-floor stone house, a large garage, and three or four shedlike buildings at various distances from the main building. A concealed trap door in one of the latter led to a tunnel heading in the direction of the main house. Following it, they emerged into a well-furnished subbasement. Two threadbare couches and several chairs lined the walls, and there was even a microwave cooker and a stack of sterile-pack food. Less domestic looking was the humming bug stomper sitting next to the phone. Two other tunnels and a door headed off from various walls.

  “Make yourselves at home, gentlemen,” the woman said. She had pulled off the mesh-mask and Caine got his first look at her face.

  It was a great disappointment. From her voice Caine had rather expected her to be beautiful; the lovely, stormy-eyed patriot of youthful fantasies. Instead, she was about as plain-featured as she could possibly be. Her light-brown hair, cut short in a style which was easy to care for, did nothing to soften the squareness of her face, and her violet eyes seemed more tired than stormy. He felt vaguely cheated—and was instantly ashamed of his reaction.

  “I suppose we should introduce ourselves somewhere along in here,” Skyler said. “I’m Rafe Skyler; this is Mordecai; Allen Caine; Kelly O’Hara….”

  She nodded to each as Skyler went down the list. “My name’s Lianna Rhodes,” she said when he had finished. “I’m more or less in charge of the Radix cell in this region.”

  “Does this Radix have a central leadership?” Hawking asked.

  “Yes—the main HQ is in Calarand, Argent’s capital. We’ve got a supposedly secure phone link to them, but I don’t like to use it. If you’ll write up something about this mission of yours, I’ll encode it for you and we can send it by runner.”

  “Fine.” Skyler nodded.

  The two drivers, who’d been hiding the cars, came in as Skyler and Hawking were composing a suitable note, and Lianna pulled one aside for a brief conversation. He nodded and headed across the room, disappearing through the door there. Caine caught Lianna’s eye and nodded questioningly toward it. “Leads to a storeroom,” she explained. “That was Jason Ho; he’ll be running your note to Calarand and needs to change clothes first. We’ll get all of you some normal clothes, too,” she added, eyeing his black flexarmor.

  “Perhaps we could take a look outside and upstairs first,” Novak suggested. “Nothing against your security, but we like to check things out ourselves.”

  “Look outside all you want,” Lianna said. “But the main house is off-limits. It’s owned by the local Commerce Subaltern and is loaded with anti-intruder systems.”

  The air was suddenly electric. “Explain, please,” Skyler said softly.

  “Oh, don’t worry, nobody’s up there—Navare and his people only come here during vacations. We don’t come near the place then, naturally, but at other times it’s safe enough as long as you avoid the main house.”

  “Debatable,” O’Hara rumbled. “Don’t they ever wonder what happened to their subbasement?”

  “They don’t know it’s here—the connection was sealed off and the official blueprints altered before the war ended. Besides, who would even look for a Radix cell under a quizler’s own nose?”

  “Practically no one,” Skyler admitted. “Your idea?”

  For the first time Lianna dropped her eyes. “No, it was my father’s. He headed this cell until…recently.”

  The awkward silence was broken by the sound of footsteps, and from one of the tunnels Lathe and his group appeared, along with their Argentian escort. “Any trouble?” Lianna asked the latter.

  One of the men shook his head. “No, but we’d better get them out of here soon,” he said as he and the others pulled off their mesh-masks. “A Security flier just came in from the direction of Calarand—they’re not going to be happy to find their prisoners gone.”

  “Pretty fast reaction,” Lianna said thoughtfully. “Okay, we’ll take them to the Harmon house—that should be far enough away from Janus to be outside any cordon they throw up. Jason’s going to Calarand, see if HQ wants them. You about ready with that?” she added to Skyler.

  Lathe had moved to Skyler’s side and was reading the note over his shoulder. “There’s one other thing,” the comsquare spoke up. “One of our people didn’t jump with us, but rode the ship farther in. If he made it out he’ll be alone and probably gone to ground. Can you get a search party out to try and find him?”

  “Put it in your note,” Lianna said shortly. “We can’t handle something like that from here.”

  The safe house was a couple of hours’ drive away, and they reached it without incident. They stayed there most of the day, catching up on food and sleep and being fitted with Argentian clothing. Hawking discovered that the cell’s spare bug stomper was broken and spent most of the afternoon fixing it. For the rest of them, though, it was mostly waiting.

  Finally, around sunset, word came from Calarand via secure line that the Radix chief would meet with them. Half an hour later they were rolling down a dusty road in a loose convoy of five vehicles. Sitting in the back seat of the middle car, wedged between Mordecai and Kwon, Caine tried to doze through the long trip. He wasn’t very successful. Calarand, a small voice kept whispering, was a complete unknown, full of Security forces and untested allies.

  And very likely lots of Ryqril, too.

  CHAPTER 11

  ARGENT’S YELLOW-ORANGE SUN was peeking over the horizon as the convoy came in sight of Calarand. After the relative flatness of Capstone, Calarand’s thirty and forty-story buildings gave Caine a flash of déjà vu back to New Geneva. But as they drove through the outskirts of the city, he saw that, like Capstone, Calarand had seen its share of war. There were no blast holes or piles of rubble, of course, but the buildings were liberally dotted with slightly mismatched patching, a few of them showing glazed areas where laser cannon had been used. Even in the relatively dim light the sight was depressing, and it sharpened Caine’s already guilty awareness of how little Earth itself had suffered.

  “This section is mainly low-skill laborers and light industry,” Lianna, sitting next to the driver, was saying when Caine tuned back in to the conversation in the car.

  “What sort of industry?” Kwon asked, gazing out the side window.

  “Around here, mostly textiles and small appliances. Farther in, in the Strip, there’s weapon-component manufacture. The Strip’s a sort of buffer zone between the government center and the outer city,” she added. “You go through metal and power source detectors and usually soniscopes to get in or out, but you don’t need a quizler ID card.”

  “Odd setup,” Kwon commented.

  She shrugged. “The weapons work fluctuates a lot, depending on Ryqril war needs. I guess they didn’t want to con
dition a whole crowd of workers that they’d only occasionally need.”

  Kwon glanced at Mordecai, and Caine could read the thought that passed between the blackcollars: a weapons plant that was only semi-restricted was practically a hand-lettered invitation for havoc.

  Pedestrians and a fair number of vehicles were on the move by the time they pulled up in front of a blocky four-floor apartment house. A hundred meters ahead, Caine caught a glimpse of Hawking’s white hair disappearing into a different building. “Hey!” he said, pointing.

  “Relax, Caine; they’re just using a different entrance,” Lianna told him. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They went inside and Lianna took them down a flight of stairs to a basement apartment. The middle-aged occupant let them in and, after exchanging sign and countersign with Lianna, ushered them into a tunnel hidden behind the bedroom wardrobe. Lianna, penlight in hand, went first, and Caine counted a hundred thirty steps before they arrived at a narrow spiral staircase and started up. He estimated they were three floors above street level when Lianna pushed open a panel and led them, blinking, into a brightly lit room.

  Squinting in the glare, Caine looked around. The room was windowless and respectively sized, sort of a cross between a large private office and a small company boardroom. A dozen young, hard-looking men stood against the walls; from an open door across the room the remaining blackcollars and Argentian escort were filing in. And in the center, seated on one side of a large bug stomper-equipped table, were four men.

  They were the leaders of Radix; Caine knew it instantly. The cool, speculative looks they wore as they studied their visitors, the age and experience that even periodic Idunine use couldn’t erase from their eyes—all of it merely reinforced that undefinable air of authority and responsibility that he’d seen in the Resistance-leaders on Earth. Casually, Caine studied each of the four in turn, trying to gauge their reaction to the newcomers. It was a futile exercise—necessity had long ago made masks of their faces.

  The door closed, and one of the seated men stood up. “Janus team, please step off to the side there.”

  Lianna’s group complied, leaving Caine and the ten blackcollars standing in front of the table. The man raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Lathe took a half step forward. “I’m Comsquare Damon Lathe, in command of this squad, acting under the authority of General Kratochvil of Earth,” he said in a clipped, military tone. “And you?”

  “Ral Tremayne,” the other said. “In charge of the organization Radix. Can you prove your identity or authorization?”

  “If you mean with signature tapes or papers, no. However, given that we’re blackcollars, our loyalties should be obvious.”

  “A lot of you blackcollars just gave up after the war,” the olive-skinned man at Tremayne’s left said coolly.

  “A lot of us died in it, too,” Lathe said.

  “All too many,” agreed the slender man sitting on Tremayne’s right. His eyes were on Lathe’s face as he rose to his feet. “Serle Bakshi; Comsquare,” he introduced himself, his hand forming a fistlike salute. The red eyes in his dragonhead ring flickered briefly in the light.

  Lathe smiled with clear surprise and repeated the gesture. “Greatly pleased, Comsquare. I’d hoped to find other blackcollars on Argent, but I hadn’t really expected—”

  The faint sound behind them had barely registered on Caine’s consciousness when the room abruptly exploded with activity. Twisting around, he was just in time to see Haven’s thrown nunchaku wrap itself around the outstretched gun arm of one of the Radix guards standing there. The arm swiveled against the wall with the impact, the clatter of the nunchaku sticks drowning out the youth’s exclamation. The pistol he’d been holding skittered across the floor and into the wall; another guard, reaching to retrieve it, jerked back as a black star buried three centimeters of itself in the wall directly above the weapon.

  And then there was silence…the silence of a tautly coiled spring. From the karate stance he’d automatically dropped into, Caine saw that the blackcollars were similarly poised for combat. Crouched low, they faced outward from their central position, waiting with throwing stars at the ready.

  All except Lathe. As far as Caine could tell the old comsquare hadn’t moved a single muscle during the incident. Now, in the brittle stillness, he stepped to the edge of the table, his eyes blazing with anger. Shifting his gaze between Tremayne and Bakshi, he jabbed a finger at the phone sitting by the bug stomper. “Call them up here,” he said, biting out each word. “Everyone; all your guards and soldiers. We’ll take them hand to hand, maybe kill a dozen or so. Will that convince you we’re really blackcollars?”

  “My sincerest apologies,” Tremayne said in a low voice. Strangely enough, he didn’t seem particularly frightened. “I know it wasn’t fair, but we had to make sure.”

  “Fair? We might have killed him. We might have killed all of you.”

  A faint smile brushed Tremayne’s lips. “I have perhaps more faith in your self-control than you do, Comsquare.”

  “And I have better knowledge of blackcollar reflexes than you do,” Lathe countered, cooling down some. “Okay, you’ve had your fun. Next time, we assume it’s a real attack and aim to kill. Make sure your people know it.” He gave the all-clear and stepped back as the blackcollars straightened up, shuriken and nunchakus vanishing once more.

  Tremayne glanced around at the guards. “All right, you can go now. Make sure everything’s secure.” He gestured at Lianna’s group. “And see that Janus team gets breakfast and a place to sleep.”

  When the door was again closed, Tremayne gestured to the other chairs around the table. “Comsquare; gentlemen…?” he said as he and Bakshi seated themselves.

  Lathe, Skyler, and Hawking took him up on the offer and sat down facing the Radix leaders. Caine and the others remained on their feet, either standing nearby or drifting around the room.

  “Now, what exactly is it you want here?” Tremayne asked, leaning forward and clasping his hands atop the table like a horizontal victory salute.

  “First of all, answers to a few questions. Number one: have you had any word about Jensen yet?”

  Tremayne gestured to the scholarly looking man at Bakshi’s right. “My aide, Jeremiah Dan, is handling that. Jer?”

  Dan steepled his fingers. “Your ship—I assume it was yours—crashed on the eastern slope of the Rumelian Mountains some thirty hours ago. We know approximately where; the problem at the moment is that Security has closed off the whole area. We have a small cell already in the region and they’ve been alerted, but that’s the best we can do right now.”

  Lathe’s jaw tightened momentarily. “Well, keep us informed. If you hear he’s been found—by either, side—let me know immediately.” He looked back at Tremayne. “That leads into my second question. I’d like to know something about your organization; specifically, its size and distribution and how well you’ve done against the Ryqril.”

  “Seems to me it would be simpler for you to tell us first exactly what you want,” Bakshi suggested mildly. “Then we can tell you if we can supply it.”

  “Simpler, maybe, but not as interesting,” Skyler spoke up. “Besides, knowing what size team you’ve got often determines which game you’re going to play.”

  Bakshi started to reply, but Tremayne laid a restraining hand on the blackcollar’s arm. “No, he’s right, Serle. Well, let’s see. Radix currently has something like half a million members and active support personnel, out of a planetary population of one and a quarter billion. We’re distributed pretty well around the world, though we tend to be concentrated in large cities like Calarand.”

  “What about your security?” Lathe asked. “I’d think with cells as big as this one you’d have a large infiltration problem.”

  Tremayne shrugged. “Actually I think we have less of one this way, since everyone in a cell has to agree on accepting a new member. The quizlers occasionally try and slip in ringers, but we catch them quickly enough.�
��

  Lathe nodded. “All right. Now tell us about your notch record.”

  “Well, we’re still here, despite quizler efforts to the contrary,” Tremayne said with a humorless smile. “Other than that, it’s not as good as we’d like. We harass them here and there—hijacking goods shipments, for example—but the really big targets are essentially invulnerable.”

  “You know this from experience?” Skyler asked politely.

  “Very painful experience. Usually we recognize the inevitable early enough to pull back and cut our losses.”

  “You have some specific target in mind?” Jeremiah Dan asked.

  “Eventually, yes,” Lathe said. “First of all, though, we’ll need you to locate all the old Star Force veterans you can find. I presume there were a number trapped on the ground when the defense folded?”

  “Yes,” Tremayne said, forehead corrugating. “But the war was a long time ago.”

  “That won’t be a problem if they’ve been getting Idunine regularly,” Vale put in quietly from somewhere behind Caine.

  “They have been getting Idunine, haven’t they?” Skyler asked, eyeing the Argentians’ youthful faces.

  “Now look—” the olive-skinned man began.

  “At ease, Uri,” Tremayne said. “As it happens, Commando, we’ve been very successful at intercepting Idunine shipments. And war veterans are high on our priority list.”

  “Good.” Lathe nodded. “Then I’d like your people to start rounding them up as soon as possible.”

  “I’m afraid the rounding up’s already been done,” Dan spoke up. “Word came last night, Ral; I didn’t get a chance to tell you.”

  “Oh, hell,” Bakshi growled. “Again?”

  Dan nodded.

  Tremayne looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I guess you’re out of luck, Comsquare. All three hundred fifty of the old starmen have been locked away, probably for a couple of months.”