The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “Ready,” Skyler said, and Lathe left the door at a dead run, adjusting the pulley on his left wrist as he traveled. Barely slowing down as he reached the low parapet, he snapped the pulley onto the line and launched himself into space.

  The wind of his passage buffeted him as he slid down the taut line. Beneath him the prison yard and Strip wall swept past, and he caught a glimpse of eight Security cars pulled up by the prison fence, their occupants firing wildly at him. But most of the half-minute trip remained afterwards a blur of agony as the tension on his left arm pulled his flexarmor tightly against his burned shoulder.…It was almost a shock when Skyler suddenly loomed ahead of him, arms outstretched to break his momentum.

  “You okay?” the big blackcollar asked anxiously as Lathe unfastened his pulley.

  “I’ll live,” Lathe assured him, removing his gas filter. “Nice job, Skyler; my skin is indebted to you. Don’t bother with anything except the eavesdropper—the rest can be replaced, and there’ll be collies crawling all over this building any minute now.”

  “Okay by me. Hang on a second, though….” Reaching down, Skyler picked up his launcher’s trigger grip and squeezed it, sending one last missile flashing into the sky. Lathe turned, watching as it dropped into the gap where the Avis Street gate had stood earlier that day. Three Security patrol cars, racing from the Strip toward that exit, swerved violently to avoid the explosion. One of them didn’t make it.

  “That should hold up the pursuit a bit,” Skyler said blandly, tossing the trigger grip aside. “Did you get everything done in there that you wanted to?”

  Pulling off his goggles and battle-hood, Lathe took a deep breath of fresh air. The gentle breeze felt cold on his sweaty skin. “I think so,” he said. “Let’s go home; it’s been a busy morning.”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE RADIO CODE USED by Argent Security was just different enough from Plinry’s system to be incomprehensible to Prefect Jamus Galway as the patrol car maneuvered through the crowded Calarand streets. But that crisp tone of voice and his driver’s impotent swearing were all too familiar.

  Somewhere, Lathe’s blackcollars had struck.

  Calarand was larger in both directions than any city Galway had ever seen, and he looked around with interest and some envy as they drove toward its center. Despite occasional war scars the buildings were generally in better shape than those of Capstone; the pedestrians walking along the street were better dressed and fed; and there were a lot more vehicles. Apparently Argent, had accepted the inevitable early on, surrendering before something like the Groundfire attack became necessary. The moral was obvious. Perhaps Lathe was just a slow learner.

  A thin trail of smoke was rising into the air ahead and slightly to their left. “Are we going past that smoke up there?” Galway asked the driver.

  The other shook his head. “Too risky. The rebels might still be around.”

  “I doubt it. Blackcollars tend to hit fast and pull out. I’d like to see what they’ve done.”

  The driver gave him a sideways glance. “Well…all right.” Picking up his phone, he reported the change in route.

  The gate area was a mess. The smoke was coming from a burned-out patrol car that had crashed into the dirty-white wall. Crashed after it had been hit, he noted; the blast pattern from an airborne missile was evident in the twisted metal. The gate itself was crumpled off to both sides. Galway shivered as the car moved slowly through the Security, fire, and medical people swarming around the area. It was too reminiscent of the aftermath on Plinry.

  The driver obviously didn’t like the sight, either—or perhaps the white knuckles and hard stares of the guards who passed them through made him nervous. He sped up as soon as they were clear of the bedlam, and the area was soon lost behind them. A few blocks brought them to a second metal-mesh gate, this one stronger looking than the first. The wall it was set into looked like the one enclosing Capstone’s Hub; tall and gray, with an induction field sensor system. The outside guards looked as edgy as those back at the ruined gate had, and the four inside men had their lasers raised. The ID check was no simple visual, either—portable equipment was brought out to take both men’s finger and retina prints. Gazing down the laser muzzles, it seemed to take forever for the city computer to finish its comparison. But at last it did so, and a few minutes later the car pulled up to an impressive white building.

  A dignified-looking man with colonel’s insignia was waiting at the curb. “Prefect Galway? I’m Colonel Eakins, head of Security for Calarand. Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the spaceport, but we’ve been busy this morning. Please come along—Perfect Apostoleris is waiting.”

  “I couldn’t understand much of what was coming in over the radio,” Galway said as they entered the building. “What was it, a guerrilla raid?”

  “We’re still trying to figure it out. It was supposed to be only a soft probe.”

  An elevator ride and two short corridors brought them to a conference room. A pile of tapes and papers sat on a reader-equipped table. “I’ll get the prefect; you can start reading what we’ve got so far,” Eakins said, pointing him toward the stack before vanishing back out the door. Sitting down at the table, Galway began to skim the papers. He was about a third of the way through when Eakins returned with a short, heavyset man.

  Galway stood up as Eakins made the introductions. “Galway,” Prefect Apostoleris nodded in greeting, his eyes measuring the other briefly. “Excuse me for dropping your title, but there’s only one Security Prefect on Argent and I’m it. Sit, sit; let’s see what you’ve brought us.”

  Galway sat down slowly as the others took seats across from him. Opening his briefcase, he pulled out the stack of files and handed them over. Apostoleris took the top one off and flipped through its pages. He opened the second briefly, then reached for a tape and slid it into the reader. The screen lit up, and Galway found himself looking at a room containing several cots. Lying on the cots or moving among them were half a dozen black-clad men.

  “Recognize any of them?” Apostoleris asked.

  Galway leaned forward slightly. “I’d say that, from left to right, you’ve got Dawis Hawking, Freeman Vale, James Novak, and Mordecai. The big one lying down is probably either Charles Kwon or Kelly O’Hara, and the one at far right is Alain Rienzi, from Earth.”

  “Very good. Except that Rienzi’s going by the name Allen Caine here. That name ring any bells?”

  Galway considered, then shook his head. “Where did you get the tape?”

  “One of our spies,” Apostoleris said shortly, changing tapes. “All right, now, what about these?”

  This one was audio, and Galway listened to the four voices in growing fascination as he realized what it was. “Leader One is Comsquare Damon Lathe,” he told them. “Leader Two is Kwon, and Spotter One is Rafe Skyler. I’m not sure about the other one.” He looked at Eakins. “This the raid they just pulled?”

  “Yes and no,” the colonel said. “One of them—Leader One, we think—slid down a line to Henslowe Prison, came in the roof door, and damn near got into the records room two floors down before escaping. But the rest of their operation never materialized. We’re still not sure whether it was real or just a feint.”

  Galway was still struggling with the first part. “He got in and out? Weren’t there guards—?”

  “Of course there were,” Apostoleris snapped. “He demolished eighteen of them along the way—six of them dead.”

  “Oh.” Galway winced inwardly; but mixed in with the sympathetic pain was a tiny nugget of personal vindication. At least he wasn’t the only one who’d underestimated the blackcollars.

  “Never mind that for now.” Apostoleris tapped the files. “This everything you’ve got on them?”

  Galway nodded. “I’ll warn you that the personal information—”

  “Is worthless. I don’t care about that. What I really want is whatever old pictures you’ve got.”

  Galway understood. “There’s a chronologic
al set near the end of each file, taken three years apart.”

  Apostoleris shuffled through the first file until he located the photos. “Damn. Face covered up by beard on most of these. You should’ve ordered him to shave.”

  “On what grounds? They weren’t criminals—they’d received a complete amnesty when they surrendered.”

  Apostoleris’s response was a snort. Gathering up the files, he headed for the door. “I guess it’s better than nothing. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The door closed behind him, and Galway looked over at Eakins, wondering what to say. Surprisingly, the colonel chuckled. “Fearsome, isn’t he? Don’t worry, he’ll cool off when things are under control again.”

  “That’s good to know. I thought he was mad at me personally.” He nodded toward the door. “I’m not sure how much those photos would have helped even if they hadn’t been wearing beards. Going back to normal Idunine dosages after so long won’t bring them back to exactly the same facial structures.”

  “I know. So does the prefect. But he’s worried enough to take anything at this point.”

  “Are you? Worried, I mean.”

  Eakins’s face was grim. “An hour and a half ago we had three of your blackcollars trapped like lizards in an ice pit. They escaped, broke into the medium-security area called the Strip, broke back out of it; and then, having gotten completely clear, came back in and tried to get to Henslowe’s records before escaping for good. You bet I’m worried.” He pulled the tape of the raid from the machine and put it on the pile. “Look, Prefect—”

  “‘Galway’ will do, Colonel. You heard what Prefect Apostoleris said.”

  A quick smile. “Okay, Galway. Look, we didn’t just bring you here to play escort to those files. Your blackcollars went to an incredible amount of trouble to get here—ditto and a half for this Caine. We need to know why.”

  “Can’t your spies tell you? I assumed you had the underground fairly well infiltrated.”

  “Oh, we do. We’ve got agents from one end of Radix to the other. But so far all we know is that Lathe wants to bring together all the old veterans of the TDE Star Force. At the moment they’re all locked in Henslowe, which is probably why he went there today.”

  “I wondered about that.…” Galway pondered. “I don’t know what to tell you. They broke into the archives on Plinry and recorded sections of six tapes—we know which parts but not what they needed them for. Everything else they did, I think, was just designed to get them their freighter and Corsair.”

  Eakins sat up straighter. “They took a Corsair too?”

  “Yes. I saw it lift myself. Didn’t it arrive?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Frowning, the colonel touched a button on the reader. “Get me Data Search.”

  “Data Search; Vetter.”

  “Eakins. Pull all records on Corsairs entering Argent system in the past two weeks, including Ryqril military data if you can get it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eakins switched off. “This may not do any good. Corsairs have a bundle of sensor shielding gear, and if it came in on low drive with everything running only the Ryqril would have detected it. It’s possible they let him land without telling us.”

  “To interrogate him?”

  “Or else he was already one of theirs,” Eakins said uncomfortably.

  Galway tapped his fingertips idly on the table. He’d had the same thoughts about Rienzi—Caine—once. “I’ve heard blackcollars can’t be loyalty-conditioned, though. And it’s hard to believe a fake one could fool the rest that long.”

  “Oh, it’s possible. Believe me.” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t make sense in this case. Why would the Ryqril play along with them if they could have quashed it back on Plinry?”

  “Well, clearly the blackcollars are looking for something. The Plinry archives had part of the puzzle and the Star Force vets must have another.” Galway frowned. “Lathe told me before they left that revolt wasn’t his immediate goal, and also that I’d find out someday what they were up to. That implies it’s something big. Maybe the Ryqril are going to hold off until they find it before moving in.”

  “Possible,” Eakins conceded. “If blackcollars really can’t be mind-probed that would be the only way to do it. And the Ryqril are interested; they passed some information to us just this morning. Not that it helped much.” He shook his head, as if still not believing it.

  “You haven’t had much experience with blackcollars?” Galway probed gently.

  “There are some left on Argent, scattered through Radix. But they’ve kept to more limited forms of action. Supply shipment hijackings, occasional bombings—harassment, really. This open warfare stuff is new to us.”

  Galway smiled bitterly. “Tell me about it.”

  The door opened and Apostoleris strode in. “All right,” he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted, “let’s discuss our next move. It seems clear that someone we’re holding in Henslowe is vital to whatever Lathe is trying to accomplish. Our reports say he wants all the vets, but his actions today suggest a single man among them might have what he wants. Since we don’t yet know who, we’ll have to put all of them beyond his reach.”

  “Can we increase the guard at Henslowe?” Eakins asked.

  “Not enough.” The prefect shook his head. “Henslowe’s too vulnerable, too accessible to outsiders. I think this morning adequately proved that. We’re going to move them—that much I’ve already decided. The question is where.”

  “Why not split them up?” Galway suggested. “Scatter them around the planet in groups of five or ten.”

  “Because we don’t have enough men to guard that many groups,” Apostoleris said, with contempt.”

  “You assume they’re looking for a single man and that they know who he is,” Galway answered, piqued in spite of himself at the prefect’s attitude. “For all we know, they could need information from ten of them. And even if it is only one, odds are a dispersion would drop him halfway around the planet.”

  Again Apostoleris shook his head. “Good points, but consider the possibility that this whole thing is an elaborate feint. In that case we’d be committing suicide if we tied up that many men on guard duty. No, we need some place both inaccessible and relatively easy to guard. Aboard an orbiting troop carrier, maybe. That would be out of Lathe’s reach.”

  Galway and Eakins exchanged glances. “Possibly not, sir,” the colonel said slowly. “A Corsair lifted with them from Plinry. I’ve got Data Search trying to find out if it’s landed here or not.”

  Apostoleris picked up one of the tapes and fingered it idly, frowning. “Hmm. Well, even with a ship they’d have trouble getting to the prisoners up there…but they could decide to kill them rather than let us learn their secret.” He shook his head decisively. “No, I’m not giving Lathe that option. I suppose that leaves Cerbe Prison.”

  Galway looked at Eakins and raised his eyebrows questioningly. “It’s a converted fortress a hundred kilometers southeast of Calarand,” the colonel explained. “High-security place. Not really designed for so many prisoners, though.”

  “We’ll manage,” Apostoleris said. “They won’t be there very long. We can have them all interrogated in a few weeks, and when we find the one—or ones,” he added, nodding at Galway—“the rest can be returned to Henslowe. Comments?”

  For a moment there was silence, “All right,” the prefect said. “Eakins, get this Corsair business nailed down. I’ll call Cerbe and start making arrangements for the transfer. Galway, you might as well keep reading the reports. Maybe you’ll come up with something useful. Questions? Fine; get busy.”

  He was out the door almost before the others could stand up. With a reassuring smile, Eakins followed his boss out, leaving Galway alone with the pile of reports.

  Frowning, Galway looked at the stack. It seemed so reasonable…and yet, there was something about it he didn’t like at all. The prison raid, perhaps. It seemed obvious that Lathe had
badly underestimated Henslowe’s strength; but somehow Galway couldn’t see the blackcollar making mistakes like that. But if the raid hadn’t been for information, then what had it been for? He had no answer for that. Yet.

  Sliding the first tape into the reader, he hunched over and got to work.

  For nine of Argent’s ten months the riverside community of Split was just one of dozens of small towns dotting the eastern regions of the Rumelian Mountains, its residents maintaining a quiet existence unnoticed by anyone except the loggers working upriver. The tenth month was just the opposite, as for five weeks daredevils from as far away as Calarand descended on the region to ride the spring-swollen Hemoth River. The income that brought in was usually enough to finance the town for the rest of the year. It was an arrangement everyone seemed happy with, and it hadn’t changed in years. Until now.

  Now, suddenly, the mountains had become a beehive. Patrol boats dotted the skies off to the north, and military-style vehicles were driving through town at least once a day. No one was talking much, but rumor had it someone had broken jail and Security wanted him back.

  The latest convoy—two vehicles with maybe four men in each—roared past San’s Supplies, headed south. Sandor Gree looked up briefly, then returned to his inventory list and order forms. Business had undergone a boomlet recently, and there were several items he would have to reorder. The trick was in not ordering too much, of course. Swearing genially at the mixed blessings that had fallen upon him, he made a mark on one of the forms.

  The front door opened with a squeak and Gree looked up again as a man in Security gray-green walked in. “Afternoon,” he nodded. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need some low-bulk foods that my team can carry into the mountains,” the Security man said.

  “Sure thing.” Gree came from behind the counter and led the way to one of the shelves. “Thought you folks had your own stuff,” he commented, hoping the other would speak again.