The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  Lathe finished talking, and for a long moment the garage was filled with the silence of mental digestion. Then, across the room, another lane opened in the crowd and a tall, bulky man stepped forward, stopping midway between Lathe and Tremayne. He sent glances at both men, finally turned to the blackcollar. “Comsquare, I’m Commander Garth Nmura, senior Star Force officer here,” he said, his voice rich with an accent Caine couldn’t place. “I notice you stopped short of actually ordering us to assist you. Do you plan to give such an order; and if so, under what authority?”

  “I’d prefer voluntary cooperation,” Lathe said. “However, if necessary—” he gestured in Caine’s direction—“my colleague, Allen Caine, has full military authority under General Kratochvil of Earth. I myself am in direct succession to General Lepkowski of Plinry Sector Command.”

  Nmura shrugged. “We have only your word for that.”

  “True. On the other hand, without secure communications, no authorization I could produce would be above suspicion.”

  “I know,” Nmura nodded. “Understand—I’m not just being stubborn. You’re asking us to put our lives and the safety of our families on the line, and I can’t order that without something besides your unsupported word. For all we know, this could be some crazy entrapment scheme.”

  “Too subtle for collies,” Kwon muttered near Caine’s ear. Mordecai, on Caine’s other side, grunted agreement.

  “Besides which,” Nmura continued, glancing back at Tremayne, “I get the impression Radix hasn’t quite accepted you, either.”

  Lathe started to speak, but Tremayne unexpectedly cut in. “Not true, Commander,” he said. “Our activity has been minimized at Comsquare Lathe’s own request, for valid reasons. But their operation has always had our full support.”

  Caine looked at the other in surprise; but the sincerity in the Radix leader’s voice was fully matched in his face. With an effort Caine kept his own expression neutral, wondering what Tremayne was up to.

  Nmura seemed to have doubts, too. Once more he glanced between Lathe and Tremayne before addressing the latter. “Are you saying you’ve accepted Comsquare Lathe’s credentials?”

  “His best credentials are that he’s a blackcollar comsquare. We accept him on that basis.”

  “I see,” Nmura said slowly. He hesitated, and Caine had the sudden impression of a man trying to find wind direction on a calm day. “The main risks are still there, of course.”

  A few meters away a hand rose over the crowd. “Garth, can I say something?”

  Nmura craned his neck to identify the speaker. “Sure, Rayd, go ahead.”

  “Well, it seems to me we’ve been sitting on our duffs long enough,” Rayd said. His voice was strong and confident, that of a man used to casual leadership. “We’ve got a damn good chance here to really hit the Ryqril—and anybody who doesn’t believe that should try to remember when blackcollars ever risked their necks on something hopeless.” A murmur of approval was beginning to rise all around them, and Rayd raised his voice to compensate. “And I think we ought to remember how many times Radix has stuck their necks out to keep us in Idunine. Let’s not give people the impression that the Star Force takes a free ride from anyone!”

  The calm day was gone, and it was clear which way the wind was blowing. Raising his hand to silence the growing swell, Nmura nodded to Lathe. “It sounds like we have a consensus,” he said dryly. “All right; you’ve got yourself a crew. When do we move?”

  “Two or three days,” Lathe said. “We’ll need to get transport off-planet, and you need to organize into crews and start working out the necessary start-up procedures.” He looked at Tremayne. “Can Radix put all these men up here for that long?”

  “We’ll manage. Jer?” Tremayne located Jeremiah Dan and gestured toward Nmura. “Jer, see the commander about billeting for his men. Lathe, we’ll need to talk about the next step.”

  The meeting was clearly over, and as pockets of conversation began to form around the room, Caine felt Kwon touch his arm. “Let’s head back upstairs,” the massive blackcollar said. “Lathe can handle things here.”

  Caine nodded absently, his thoughts elsewhere. From the hostility of a day or two ago Tremayne had become a model of cooperation with surprising speed. Suspicious speed, perhaps. At best it was politics, an effort to appear united in front of the vets. At worst…Lathe’s earlier prediction about the government’s reaction lurked at the base of his mind. It was an unfair thought, he knew—Tremayne had probably done his about-face simply because he now understood the mission’s importance.

  But if Lathe was right, someone else in Radix also understood things now…and if the government chose to go for a draw instead of a win, Mordecai and Kwon were going to start earning their keep the hard way. Shivering slightly, he increased his pace.

  CHAPTER 26

  “INCREDIBLE,” COLONEL EAKINS MURMURED, staring into his mug and shaking his head slowly. “Sitting out there right under our noses. Do you suppose they’re still operational?”

  “Probably.” Galway felt cold inside; his own mug sat ignored on the desk in front of him. You’ll find out some day, Lathe had said to him at the Plinry ’port, and from that he’d assumed the blackcollars were on the trail of something big. But not something like this. “With all their systems off or on low/standby, all that could go wrong would be fuel or air leakage or slow interior corrosion—and that last will be negligible if they were left unpressurized.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the subject,” Apostoleris commented as he hung up the phone he’d been talking on.

  “My father was in the Star Force,” Galway explained briefly. “Jensen still holding out?”

  Apostoleris nodded. “We’ll break him, though.”

  “Why bother? Your spies have already given you everything he’s likely to know. Why not just kill him and get it over with?”

  “Dead bait doesn’t attract any fish,” the other countered. “Or are you forgetting Skyler and Novak?”

  “They wouldn’t know he was dead until it was too late.”

  Eakins looked up from his mug. “You keep implying they might actually get that far,” he said, sounding a little annoyed. “This is not like Cerbe, Galway—we’re on top of them this time.”

  Tired, Galway rubbed his forehead. “I know. I just don’t want to underestimate them again.”

  “We won’t.” Apostoleris was grimly confident. “You’re right about Jensen—I don’t think he knows anything useful. But Skyler and Novak have been with Lathe this whole time; they’re bound to know more about his plans.”

  “Your spies in Radix have a better chance of getting that information,” Galway insisted.

  Apostoleris snorted and shook his head in disgust. “You just don’t have the stomach for this, do you?” he said bluntly. “Maybe that’s why they got away with all their crap on Plinry. Hey?”

  Galway didn’t answer. Belatedly, he realized that Apostoleris was taking the blackcollars’ operation on an intensely personal level, almost as if he were engaged in a private duel with Lathe. It was a dangerous trap to fall into—the Security prefect could easily lose sight of the war even as he concentrated on winning minor skirmishes. In many ways Apostoleris was behaving like an amateur chess player, equating board strength with number of pieces taken.

  Sighing, Galway looked down at his watch. Forty minutes to sunset, the earliest Skyler was likely to move. The blackcollars had their explosives and false IDs, and latest reports indicated Apostoleris’s three-level trap was ready. It would work…and would surely cost a great deal of human life. Perhaps Apostoleris was right, he thought; perhaps he didn’t have the stomach for unnecessary death. But then, life on Plinry forced a somewhat more frugal view of one’s resources.

  Shifting in his chair, Galway picked up his mug and sipped at the cooling drink. Thirty-eight minutes to sunset.

  CHAPTER 27

  “TEN MINUTES TO SUNDOWN,” Valentine reported from the front seat of thei
r parked car.

  Skyler nodded, willing to take his word for it. The thick overcast was still in place above Millaire, the sun completely invisible behind it. Already the city’s streetlights had come on, and Skyler judged it was almost dark enough to move.

  “When do we leave?” Novak asked, craning his neck to look back at Skyler.

  “Half an hour, I think. We’ll take another hour to set the explosives, and by then it’ll be dark enough to start.” As he spoke, he glanced around, taking a quick survey of the area. No one was visible; he’d picked a commercial-type street in the midst of rush hour to park on an hour ago, and now the block was essentially deserted. Pursing his lips over clenched jaws, he slid his nunchaku silently out of its sheath. Taking a deep breath, he swung the sticks in a hard, short arc, striking Valentine at the base of the skull.

  Even as the Argentian slumped forward, Novak was twisting around in his seat, his own nunchaku coming reflexively to hand. “What—”

  Skyler cut him off with a sharp shake of his head, gave him four quick hand signals. Frowning, Novak put his nunchaku down and reached under the dashboard, coming up a moment later with two freshly disconnected wires. Taking the portable bug stomper Skyler handed him, he connected the wires to it and flipped it on. The device came to life; a green light flashed briefly as it did so.

  “No bugs,” Skyler muttered. “They’re cockier than I expected.”

  “Who, the collies?” Novak still looked confused.

  “Yeah. I guess they figured their spy had us covered well enough.”

  Novak glanced at Valentine’s crumpled figure and then looked back at Skyler, his eyes demanding explanation.

  Skyler sighed. “You heard his slip yourself. Remember earlier, when he suggested a soft penetration? He said we could do the same thing Lathe and O’Hara had done. How did he know it was O’Hara who hit Cerbe Prison?”

  Novak frowned. “He supposedly got that from Radix contacts—” he began slowly.

  “Right. But how would they know which blackcollars were involved? Lathe wouldn’t have given that out, and it certainly isn’t public knowledge yet. That leaves exactly one source.”

  Novak shook his head. “This is pretty flimsy evidence to hang a man on.”

  “I’m not done yet.” Skyler dug his new Security ID from his pocket. “What were you going to ask him when he first mentioned this forger of his?”

  “When you cut me off? I wanted to know why anybody would bother forging something that could damn you that quickly.”

  “Good question. Mine was why Tremayne had never mentioned these supposed Radix forgers.” Skyler slanted the ID toward the fading light. “Beautiful work. I studied it for ten straight minutes earlier and didn’t see a single error anywhere.”

  Novak was gazing thoughtfully at Valentine. “Lathe said he got into the Strip with a simple visual check,” he mused. “You’d think the collies would be more thorough if there were false IDs known to be in circulation.” Reaching over, he picked up Valentine’s right hand. A dragonhead ring glinted there; with some effort Novak got it off. “A hunch,” he said, squinting at the ring in the faint glow of his shielded penlight. “If he’s a collie spy his ring will be a fake…hmm. It’s got the Centauri A logo behind the crest.” He drew one point of the crest along the steel roof brace, examined both the point and the scratch it made. “And it’s genuine hullmetal,” he said with a sigh, handing the ring and penlight across to Skyler.

  “Could be stolen,” Skyler offered, but even as he said it he felt uncertainty returning. He’d been a hundred percent sure…but the ring dropped that to eighty percent, and he couldn’t justify a quick execution with those odds. “I still don’t think he should come with us.”

  “Okay. We leave him for interrogation when we get back?”

  “I suppose—” Skyler broke off as something on Valentine’s ring caught his eye.

  “What is it?” Novak asked.

  “Examine the eyes,” Skyler said quietly, handing the ring and light back.

  “They’re just the usual slitted-pupils carved into the metal,” the other said. For a long moment he studied the ring in silence; and when he looked up his face was carved from black ice. “The original eyes have been removed,” he said softly. “These were grafted in afterward. This used to be a comsquare’s ring.”

  “Or a tactor’s, or even a secturion’s—they may have had to scour the whole TDE for a captured dragonhead that would fit him.”

  “Deliberate deception.” Novak’s voice was hard. “That pretty well settles the issue, I guess. We’ve been compromised—and we’re going to have to modify our plans.”

  Skyler grimaced. “I know. I’ve been trying all afternoon to come up with something else that might work.”

  “Then you haven’t been trying. The answer’s obvious.” Novak explained.

  “No.” Skyler shook his head. “Out of the question.”

  Novak snorted impatiently. “You’re trying to be noble, but you’re just wasting time. It’s the only way we’re going to clear an escape route all the way out of town, and you know it.”

  Skyler did; but that didn’t make it easier to accept. “I can’t allow—”

  “Rafe,” Novak said quietly, “if Jensen’s being tortured in there I want to get him out—or to give him a clean death. He’s my friend—please let me take this risk for him.”

  Skyler sighed. “All right,” he said at last. “We’ll leave the car here—it’s probably known. We can get another vehicle easily enough.” Steeling himself, Skyler drew a knife from its forearm sheath. Execution of a spy is not murder, he told himself. “Valentine stays too, of course.”

  He raised the knife, but Novak touched his arm. “I’ll do it,” the other said grimly. “I consider it his fault Jensen got captured.”

  A few minutes later, bags of equipment and explosives over their shoulders, the two blackcollars exited from opposite sides of the car and started down the street.

  Behind its outer wall and courtyard the ten-story government building stood dark against Millaire’s skyline, its only lighted windows those on the first three floors. Gazing at it from the vacant office building across the street, Skyler once more checked the floor plan they’d found among their car’s maps. “You know where you’re heading?” he asked the shadow beside him.

  Novak nodded. “First floor west; control room and secondary support column.” His voice was calm, his hands steady as he checked the ties on his shoulder-slung bundle. The bundle worried Skyler; even wrapped in the late Valentine’s flexarmor, the high-explosives it contained could be set off prematurely by a direct laser blast. But they hadn’t had time to put together anything safer.

  “Okay.” There was a great deal more to be said, but Skyler could sense Novak didn’t want to hear it. Swallowing hard, Skyler contented himself with a brief gripping of the other’s shoulder. Then, silently, he led the way back outside.

  Their diversionary blasts began right on schedule, sending dull roars one at a time from selected spots a few blocks from the government building. By the third blast the flow of Security men through the wall’s mesh gate had begun; by the seventh it had dropped to a trickle.

  “Quite a show,” Novak murmured through his gas filter as they crouched in an alleyway. “Maybe they really have emptied the building.”

  “Maybe. It’s a bunch less to deal with, anyway.” Taking a deep breath, Skyler thumbed the safety off the radio detonator they’d rigged up. “Here goes.” Flattening himself against the wall beside Novak, he flipped the switch.

  The blue-white flash lit up the streets as the sound of the blast echoed through the tall buildings like a mad ricochet. Skyler shot a quick glance around the corner and then was off and running toward the fading red glow where their handmade shaped charge had blown a hole through the wall a quarter of the way around from the gate. Through the ringing in his ears he could hear excited shouts from the guards there. For perhaps a few more seconds, though, they wouldn
’t realize the script had been changed….Skidding to a halt, Skyler leaned over and thrust his arms and torso through the hole; a tight fit, but he knew he could make it. Novak, arriving half a second behind him, grabbed his legs, and pushed, shoving him unceremoniously through onto the ground. Scrambling up into a crouch, Skyler looked around. The courtyard was deserted and, except for a gravel path just inside the wall, basically featureless. Behind him, Novak’s bundle came through the hole, followed by Novak himself. “How’s it look?” he whispered, slinging the package over his shoulder again.

  “No obvious defenses; probably needle mines everywhere except under this path.” Skyler pointed toward the building. “That looks like the emergency exit the map showed. Let’s go—and stay in my footprints in case there’s something stronger than needle mines out there.”

  Like twin ghosts, they set off across the courtyard…and around by the gate, Security slowly began to realize that something had gone wrong.

  Jensen became aware only gradually that the latest cycle of questioning was over, bringing with it an end to the debilitating flow of emetics that had been turning his stomach inside out for the past hour. He took a slow breath, forcing his battered digestive system to unknot and trying to ignore the smell of vomit in his nostrils. Characteristically, the collies had turned the lights back on so that he could see what he had done to himself. A wasted refinement; he was too tired to keep his eyes open, anyway.

  From in front of him came the sound of a door opening and a light breeze swept over him, inducing a violent shiver. Raising his head against the weakness in his muscles, he saw Prefect Galway enter the interrogation cell and close the door behind him. Stepping over the mess on the floor, he moved to Jensen’s right and sat down on a small stool facing the blackcollar. A gunbelt, Jensen noted, was secured to his waist.