The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “All set up in a corner of the equipment shed—all I have to do is move the launcher out here and anchor it.”

  Lathe nodded. Stepping to the edge of the shed, he looked around it. Barely three hundred meters away, across the Strip wall, sat Henslowe Prison. Shifting his gaze slightly, Lathe studied the handful of guards patrolling its perimeter, their gait indicating no special alertness.

  Behind him, Skyler said, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  “No,” Lathe admitted, turning back to face the other. “But I don’t see any other way to get the vets out. Do you?”

  “Suppose we went ahead and told Radix why we were here,” Skyler said slowly. “When the word got back to the collies, wouldn’t they release the vets in hopes we would lead them to the ships? We’d have to outmaneuver whatever trap they set, of course, but we’ll probably have to do that anyway.”

  Lathe shook his head. “The problem is that they would hold off any release until they had some of the vets loyalty-conditioned. We’re going to have enough trouble with the Radix spies; I don’t want to have any in our crew, too.”

  “They may already be conditioning them,” Skyler pointed out.

  “Undetectable conditioning can’t be done in under fifteen days or so. They’ve known about us less than half that time. If we get the vets out in the next couple of days we can weed out any plants.”

  “Unless the collies caught Dodds right after he landed and made him talk,” Skyler said, eyeing Lathe speculatively. “That could have given them up to nine extra days.”

  Lathe kept his face expressionless. “What makes you think Dodds is even on Argent, let alone captured?”

  Skyler smiled lopsidedly. “Still a military secret, huh? Come on, Lathe—you can tell me what sort of devious chicanery you and he are up to.”

  Lathe shook his head. “If it doesn’t work out it’ll be better if no one knew anything about it.”

  For a moment Skyler studied his face. Then he gave a small shrug. “Okay. It’s your show. I just hope none of us accidentally trips over him.”

  “Dodds knows how to stay out from underfoot,” Lathe said shortly, picking up the suitcase. “I’ll give you a ‘ready-one’ when I want to leave. You have a couple of cars ready?”

  “Yes—yours is a dark blue one across the street. It’s already unlocked.” He hesitated, as if about to say something else, then touched Lathe on the shoulder. “Be sure to keep your facial muscles firm—you don’t want to look too old.”

  Lathe gave him a tight smile. “You just worry about your part. I’ll be okay.”

  He waited until he was on the stairs before he let the smile fade. Skyler was Lathe’s best friend, and he would never come right out and demand to know what Dodds was doing, even in private. But if he was wondering about it, others probably were too, and it didn’t take much uncertainty to interfere with combat abilities. But there was nothing Lathe could do about it.

  The car was waiting where Skyler had said it would be, and soon Lathe had arrived back at the mangled Avis Street gate. Again, the opposition had moved quickly: a fresh crop of Security men were already on duty, though the bodies of the previous guardians still lay where they had fallen. One of the new men, a laser rifle clutched across his chest, signaled for Lathe to stop.

  “What the hell happened here?” the blackcollar demanded as the other stepped to the side of the car.

  The other straightened minutely as he caught sight of the uniform’s insignia. “Gate crasher, sir. May I see your ID, please?”

  “Someone unauthorized got in?” Lathe asked sharply, handing over the card. The patrol car parked nearby might have the equipment for a full fingerprint and retina scan, and a properly done air of urgency should help discourage its use. “When was this?”

  “Half an hour ago, sir,” the other replied. “They got out, too. Haven’t you been in the comm net?”

  “I’ve been on an assignment outside the city that I couldn’t take communications gear on. Damn! I’ve got to check in right away.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hesitating only an instant, he handed back the ID and waved the blackcollar on.

  There were several tall buildings within two blocks of Henslowe Prison, but only one had both the necessary height and a clear view of the prison yard. Leaving the car out in front, Lathe lugged his suitcase into the lobby and rode the elevator all the way to the twenty-second floor. The service stairway was locked, but not seriously, and within another minute he was on the roof. Stepping to the edge nearest Henslowe, he opened the suitcase and got to work.

  His first task was to set up the rocket launcher, carefully positioning it for the necessary azimuth range. When it was finally ready, he pulled a large capsule from the suitcase and slammed it down hard near the launcher’s base. It split open, releasing a bubbling, foul-smelling brown fluid which pooled around it. Stepping back quickly, Lathe stripped off his borrowed Security uniform and began arming himself with nunchaku, shuriken, and throwing knives. The pool stopped bubbling before he finished, and when he checked it a minute later it had hardened into a shiny mass, solidly gluing the launcher to the roof. From the suitcase he pulled a coil of silvery line, tying one end of it to the launcher’s take-up reel and the other to a blue-and-white-striped rocket. Adding gloves, battle-hood, goggles, and a radio headset to his flexarmor outfit completed his preparations; and, with one last look at Henslowe, he fitted a rocket into the launcher and sent it on its way.

  It hit just in front of the prison’s main entrance, and suddenly there was a cloud of thick white smoke expanding in all directions. Lathe reset the launcher’s aim as the dull phuff of the impact reached him and picked up his second missile. “Spotter one: direct hit,” Skyler’s voice crackled in his ear. “Correct four degrees for second shot.”

  “Acknowledged,” Vale’s voice came back. “Second shot away.” Obeying the cue, Lathe fired again, and a second cloud erupted directly between the sentry boxes flanking the gate.

  “Leader two: preparing Ram,” Kwon’s voice said.

  Lathe touched his mike control. “Leader one: squad ready.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Smiling tightly, Lathe loaded the blue-and-white missile and carefully adjusted the aim. Kwon and Vale weren’t anywhere within ten klicks of Henslowe at the moment, but with a simple disk recording plus Skyler’s skillful hand on the playback selector any eavesdropping collies should be convinced a major attack was in progress.

  The missile arched from its tube, trailing silver line behind it, and Lathe watched its path with some anxiety. The concern was wasted; the missile smacked cleanly onto the prison roof and he could clearly see the brown fluid leaking from the nosecone. Checking his watch, Lathe loaded his last missile and again adjusted aim. “Leader one: starting our run.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Kwon’s voice. “Ram away.”

  Lathe fired the missile, and was fitting a forearm band with attached pulley onto his left wrist when the roar of the explosion reached him. The blast punched a temporary hole in the white cloud surrounding the fence, and through it Lathe could see that the gate had been apparently undamaged by the high-explosive. “Leader one,” he said. “Ram ineffective.”

  “Spotter one: confirmed,” Skyler said. There was a brief pause, and Lathe wondered if the other had prepared for this contingency.

  He had. “Leader two: we’ll just have to go over, then,” Kwon said.

  “Acknowledged,” Lathe said. “Go when ready.” Checking his watch, he touched a switch on the launcher and started reeling in the slack in the line. He had to get over to the prison roof while they were busy watching for a ground-level attack. Chances were good they wouldn’t see him come in—smoke screens had been militarily obsolete for centuries, but prison guards usually didn’t carry fancy scanners. The line tightened; shutting the reel off, Lathe locked it in place and made sure the flaps of his battle-hood were fastened snugly to the edges of his gas filter, leaving no opening for
the paral-darts he would probably be facing. Snapping his forearm pulley over the line, he took a deep breath and rolled over the edge of the roof.

  The trip down the line took nearly a minute, and in that time Lathe glimpsed three Security cars racing for the prison from different directions. More evidence of Security’s quick reflexes, he thought, hoping he hadn’t jumped the gun with this operation. If Security reacted too quickly…but it was too late to worry about that now.

  He hit the roof running, releasing the pulley before the downward angle of the line could pull him off balance. Pausing only long enough to hinge the pulley back out of his way, he headed at a fast jog for the equipment shed in the center of the roof. He was barely ten steps away when the shed door swung open and three laser-armed guards charged out.

  They weren’t expecting to find anyone—that much was instantly clear from their startled expressions and the mad scramble to bring their rifles to bear. Lathe’s shuriken took the lead man in the forehead, knocking him down for his comrades to stumble over. Half a second later Lathe was among them, and two seconds after that it was all over. Scooping up one of the rifles, he stepped over the bodies and headed down the shed steps. Chances were good that the guards had come from the two administrative floors at the top of the prison, sent to the roof to try to see past the smokescreen hampering the defenders below—and since the top two floors were where Lathe was headed, the more guards he could quickly put out of action, the safer he would be. Theoretically.

  The stairs dead-ended at a heavy door one flight down. Cracking it open, Lathe glimpsed a brightly lit corridor and heard the sound of muted alarms and running feet. He eased the door closed and drew his nunchaku…and a moment later he’d reduced the threat by four more.

  About a dozen civilian men and women were already in the corridor when he entered, their faces frozen with shock at the unexpected invasion. “You!” Lathe called, gesturing to the nearest man. “Where are the records kept?”

  The other opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Lathe took a step toward him—and suddenly the alarms doubled in volume. “Intruder on fifteen!” a hidden loudspeaker bawled. “Defensive procedures, all personnel!”

  Any action, or so the old rule went, was better than doing nothing. A dozen meters in either direction the hallway hit T-junctions; flipping a mental coin the blackcollar ran to his left. The people in that direction scattered as he approached, prudently offering no resistance.

  The far corridor, like the one he was in, was lined with what appeared to be office doors. It was possible, of course, that the records section was off in the other direction; but the quality of the hall carpets suggested this floor was occupied by the prison’s top management. The next level down, he decided, was a more likely place to look. To the left he spotted a bank of elevators and a stairway door, and he was turning to go in that direction when a white-hot pain erupted in his left shoulder.

  Combat reflexes took over, sending Lathe diving for the corner, his torso twisting to keep the laser beam from resting too long on a single spot. The burning point slid up toward his neck before it disappeared, and as he hit the floor of the corridor he got just a glimpse of a uniformed figure back at the far T-junction.

  His landing and roll weren’t too bad, given the circumstances, and as he came back into a crouch he discovered he still had a grip on his captured laser. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, he hooked an eye back around the corner, rifle at the ready. His assailant wasn’t charging, but had taken up a similar defensive position around the far corner. Either very cautious or expecting reinforcements…and Lathe suddenly decided he didn’t like having an elevator bank behind him. Firing a long burst down the center hall to make sure the guard stayed put, Lathe turned and hurried toward the elevators.

  He reached them, paused a fraction of a second, and headed instead for the stairway door. All three elevator motors were operating, and the implications of that were all too obvious. There was a chance that the stairs were still free of enemies, though. Slipping through the door, he discovered the landing itself was empty. Senses alert, he started down.

  A faint humming from his captured laser was all the warning he got, but he acted on it instantly. Hurling the weapon away from him, he flattened himself against the wall just as the laser exploded, sending bits of metal ricocheting from the walls and Lathe’s flexarmor. He turned around cautiously, scanning the walls for the induction resonators that had blown the laser’s powerpack. He should have expected something like that, he berated himself; elevators and stairways were about the only places that that kind of resonance cavity could be set up. Taking a deep breath, he continued down to the next landing and carefully cracked the door.

  The hallway, resembling the one he’d just left, was similarly deserted. Stepping from the stairwell, Lathe glanced both directions and headed down the hall to his right, an uneasy feeling seeping into him. Certainly the hall should be clear of civilians—they’d had ample time to lock themselves in their offices by now—but surely all the guards hadn’t gone chasing upstairs after him. The loudspeaker, which had announced his entry into the stairwell, had gone ominously silent. Almost certainly there was a trap already waiting down here for him, and he had to find and neutralize it before Security could bring up more men from the main prison below.

  Reaching the floor’s central corridor, he paused to glance around the corner—and barely got his head back before concentrated laser fire struck the wall, the thermal shock blasting chips from the masonry. Snatching a shuriken, he flipped it blindly around the corner. But the action was more reflex than anything else; his single glance had been enough to show him his mission had just ended. A minimum of ten guards had been visible, arrayed in standing and kneeling semicircles around a glass door that was almost undoubtedly the computer room. Either they’d guessed his target or the man he’d asked directions from upstairs had finally found his voice. The guards, though heavily armed, had been unarmored, and Lathe knew he could eventually beat them down…but he also knew he couldn’t single-handedly take on a whole prison. Turning, he sprinted back for the stairway, hoping he wouldn’t find the stairs to the roof in enemy hands.

  By some miracle the landing was still empty as he charged through the stairway door—but it was instantly clear that that was about to change. The whole stairwell echoed with the sound of running feet, coming from both above and below him. Grimacing, Lathe unlimbered his nunchaku and started up.

  The stairwell loudspeaker had resumed calling out his movements, but with all the noise perhaps the six Security men charging downstairs never heard that he was coming toward them—either that or they didn’t really understand how dangerous a blackcollar could be in close quarters. Whichever, they came clattering down with no attempt at caution or tactical spacing. The front rank began firing as soon as he appeared, their aim understandably erratic. Ignoring the deadly lances of light sweeping through the air around him, Lathe snatched a throwing star and, with all the accuracy he could muster, sent it threading through the mob to strike the last man in line…and as those just ahead of the dead guard learned first-hand about the domino effect, the blackcollar hurled his nunchaku spinning into the faces of those in front. Seldom before had Lathe seen such a standard uphill attack work so well; within a second the entire group of soldiers was tumbling helplessly down the stairs. Scooping up the nunchaku, Lathe grabbed the banister and vaulted over the tangle. The remaining steps he took three at a time.

  They’d left two men in the fifteenth floor hallway as backup, but they weren’t really ready for him and a pair of throwing stars cleared the path. Hurrying down the corridor, Lathe retraced his earlier route, hoping the man who’d been guarding the entrance to the roof stairway had left.

  He hadn’t. The muzzle of a laser rifle was still poking around the far corner as the blackcollar turned into the central hallway. Hurling a shuriken at the single visible eye, Lathe increased his speed, trying to reach the stairway door before the gu
ard could line up a clean shot.

  The attempt was only partially successful. The shuriken missed completely, apparently whipping by so quickly the guard didn’t even have time to duck back. His first shot grazed Lathe’s left thigh; his second went over the blackcollar’s head as Lathe launched himself into a flat dive and somersault that took him to within a few meters of the stairway door. Still in a crouch, he threw four more shuriken in rapid succession, finally managing to force the gunner back long enough to cover the remaining distance and get the door open. Another burst of fire hit the metal panel as he bounded into the stairway and headed up.

  For the past few minutes he’d been ignoring the continuous stream of orders and comments Skyler had been feeding into the air waves; orders, he knew, that should be giving Security’s listeners reasons why the blackcollars’ ground attack had not yet begun. Now, Lathe boosted power on his own microphone and cut in. “Ready-one, this is leader one,” he called. “Abort mission, ready-one; repeat, abort.”

  “Ready-one received,” Skyler’s voice crackled, sounding tight. “Exit visa away. Did you get it?”

  “Negative. Pull back and disperse.”

  “Acknowledged. Better hurry; vultures on the rise.”

  Which meant Skyler had spotted patrol boats approaching. He had to get off the roof quickly or risk having his escape route blocked.

  He emerged on the rooftop to find a new blue-and-white-striped missile resting in a bubbling pool, its trailing line disappearing off the roof in the direction of Skyler’s building. Low in the sky beyond, he could see four sleek patrol boats rapidly closing on the city.

  The adhesive took thirty seconds to solidify, and in that time four Security men charged out the door directly into Lathe’s nunchaku. For once, the roles were reversed, with Lathe in the relatively safe defensive position. He only hoped that the rest of the guards that were undoubtedly gathering would hold off long enough for him to get safely to Skyler’s building before they attacked.