The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “We wouldn’t have wanted a laser in the elevator, anyway—elevators and stairwells have the nasty habit of carrying resonance detonators for the purpose of destroying captured weapons. Okay—ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Pittman pushed the READ button, holding the officer’s hand steady on the plate. Simultaneously, Mordecai heaved the man straight up out of his chair, turning the head to face the retina scanner. Bracing the limp body against his chest, he pried open the eyelids with thumb and forefinger and held his breath.

  There was a beep, and something that sounded like a relay clicking. “Elevator,” Mordecai murmured, dropping the officer back into his chair and reaching for the touch plate under the desktop. Behind him, the doors slid open; a moment later they closed again with both men aboard.

  “How long?” Pittman asked. There was a slight quaver in his voice—the first Mordecai had heard since this whole thing started.

  “Till they catch on?” The blackcollar shrugged, digging out his spare shuriken pouch and pressing it into the youth’s hand. “Not very. That’s why your first job upstairs will be to disable the elevator. Quietly, if possible—I’d like a few minutes to get the lay of the land before I hit the place.”

  “I’ll try.”

  The doors opened, and Mordecai strode out, eyes darting everywhere. The long hallway dead-ended at the elevator, he saw, a duty desk like the one downstairs positioned a few meters in front of it. A potentially good spot to defend the elevator from, once the officer seated there was eliminated. Ahead, several doors opened out into the hallway, one of them with the heavy look of armor reinforcement. Beside it was another guard station; and with a rush of adrenaline-fueled recklessness, the blackcollar passed the duty desk and stepped boldly up to the Security man at the armory. “You got the blackcollar equipment inside?” he asked gruffly.

  “Yeah,” the other said, looking up.

  “Get it all out, fast,” Mordecai growled, half turning to peer down the hall. “We’ve got a report that some of the nunchaku are loaded with explosives—the general wants ’em out of there before they blow and take the whole armory out.”

  “Krij it—weren’t the damn things bomb-sniffed?” the other muttered, reaching under his desk. But even as he lowered his eyes, his brain caught up with him and his expression twitched…and when his hand came back into sight it was holding a paral-dart pistol. “All right, you—”

  Spinning a hundred and eighty degrees, Mordecai bent at the waist and snapped his right foot out in a back kick toward the other’s head. The pistol went off with the crack of compressed air, the needles washing over Mordecai’s back and legs. He spun back around, hand poised to grab the gun if necessary, but between the kick and the ricochets from Mordecai’s flexarmor, the officer was down for the duration.

  And down the hall, the alarms began blaring.

  “Damn,” Mordecai muttered as he leaped over the desk. From the elevator end of the hall there was a shout, and he glanced over to see the duty officer collapse over his desk, a shuriken protruding from his temple. Ignoring the sounds starting to come from the other end of the hall, Mordecai snatched his battle-hood and gloves from his tunic and got them on, studying the controls for the armory door as he did so. It looked like the same system as they’d found downstairs at the elevator, with a proper ID check all that was required for access.

  At least until someone downstairs sealed the door by remote control.

  A splatter of needles bounced off his goggles and battle-hood, and he looked up to see four Security men racing like kamikazes directly toward him. “Cameras!” he snapped.

  “Already taken out,” Pittman shouted from behind him.

  “Good,” Mordecai called back. “Get over here when it’s clear.” A new wave of needles washed over him, and with a convulsive leap, the blackcollar cleared the desk and landed in front of his attackers, nunchaku lashing out.

  Three more seconds and the men were scattered broken around him. Someone down the hall stepped imprudently into view and started shooting. Mordecai sent him crashing to the floor with a spinning shuriken as Pittman slid to cover at the desk behind him. “I’ve got the elevator locked up here,” the youth reported, breathing a bit heavily. “I got both cameras I could see pointed this direction.”

  “Good.” Mordecai jerked his head toward the armory door. “Same trick as downstairs—get busy. I’ll try to keep the collies away from you while I spring the others.”

  “Right. Good luck.”

  “You too.” Nunchaku and shuriken at the ready, Mordecai sprinted down the hallway.

  Chapter 27

  HATRED, LATHE AND THE others had continually warned their trainees, was a subtle poison that did the hater more harm than it did his victim. Caine knew that, agreed with the philosophy behind it…and yet, when it came down to the wire, he found all the logic in the universe didn’t do him a damn bit of good.

  He hated General Quinn. Hated the man with a passion. And more than that, felt good about hating him.

  It wasn’t just the fact that the general had beaten them—wasn’t even the fact that he’d beaten them so decisively. Instead, it was the increasingly apparent fact that the bastard was determined to gloat over his victory.

  Somehow, Caine had always expected to be treated with some measure of respect when he finally lost to the enemy. Quinn, obviously, was determined not to give him even that much.

  Was in fact even going out of his way to twist the knife. Seated across the conference room from Caine and three of the blackcollars, an uncomfortable-looking Galway beside him, he turned his monologue once again to the subject he’d already talked to death: Pittman and his treachery.

  “He wasn’t just recently suborned, you know,” the general said, crossing his legs casually as he sent his gaze around at the four prisoners facing him. “He’s been your double agent for, what, six months now, Galway?”

  Galway shrugged. “Something like that,” he said. Unlike Quinn, the prefect didn’t seem to be getting any special pleasure out of this.

  “He’s been very useful, too,” Quinn said, “and not only regarding this mission. We’ll be able to take that snake school of yours apart as soon as we debrief him fully and get a squad of commandos out to Plinry.”

  Caine bit down hard on his tongue, knowing full well that that was the kind of reaction Quinn was looking for but not giving a damn. The cameras in the room would be recording all their expressions and body language for later analysis, and he knew he should be sitting as passively as Lathe, Skyler, and Jensen beside him. But he couldn’t. He’d trained with Pittman, had worked side by side with him, had risked his life with him…and the realization that he’d been so wrong about the other’s character was more than he could bear.

  “Of course,” Quinn went on offhandedly, “the Ryqril might consider leaving your people alone for a while if we knew what your mission here was—keep their paperwork and records clean, you know. It had to do with Aegis Mountain, didn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you go to hell?” Lathe suggested conversationally. “You’re just wasting our time here, Quinn, and you know it. We’re not giving anything away free, and your chances of getting it without our cooperation range from slim to zero.”

  Quinn snorted. “And you’re of course sticking to your ridiculous offer of information for the release of your teammates? Don’t make me laugh, Lathe.”

  The comsquare shrugged. “Suit yourself. So, Galway: enjoying your visit to the homeworld?”

  The prefect remained silent, and Caine shifted his eyes from the two seated officials to the knot of three Security guards lounging four meters away by the room’s door. Standing there with no special alertness—no lasers or other heavy weaponry, their paral-dart pistols still in their holsters—it was a breakout begging to happen. And Caine could almost cry with frustration…because as vulnerable as the guards looked, they might as well have been in an armored bunker a klick away. Seated naked on bolted-down chairs, han
ds cuffed behind their backs and ankles hobbled by twenty centimeters of chain, he and the blackcollars were about as helpless as Caine could imagine being. About the only other thing Quinn could have done would have been to chain them bodily to their chairs, and it was slowly becoming apparent that the general’s failure to do that was, along with the sloppy guard arrangement, a deliberate touch designed to tantalize his prisoners.

  Caine didn’t know about the others, but for him the gambit certainly worked. And it made him hate the bastard even more.

  Lost in his own thoughts, he was startled when Galway abruptly got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, General,” the prefect said, “I’d like to get back to the situation room, see if there’s any word on Mordecai.”

  “Sit down, Galway,” Quinn said coldly. “You’ve spent a lot of your time here foam-mouthing about how these blackcollars of yours were unstoppable and unbreakable. Well, you were wrong about the first, and you’re damn well going to watch while I prove you wrong about the second, too.”

  Skyler stirred, his ankle hobbles clinking as he did so. “You make friends wherever you go, don’t you, Quinn?” he said dryly. “You know, I’ll bet that if I walked over there and started beating your head in, half your subordinates would line up outside that door to buy tickets to the show.”

  Quinn glowered at him. “Perhaps we ought to experiment—but with you as the subject. What do you think of th—”

  The last word was cut off by the abrupt blaring of alarm horns outside in the hallway. “What the hell?” Quinn snarled, turning to look at the door. “Sergeant, find out what’s going on out there.”

  “Yes, sir.” One of the guards reached for the door—

  It happened so quickly that if Caine’s eyes hadn’t already turned back to the blackcollars he would have missed it completely. Without warning, Skyler suddenly dropped out of his chair onto his back, knees tucked tightly against his chest. Almost before he’d even hit the floor, Jensen was also in motion, throwing himself full-length onto the big blackcollar as if attacking him. He landed with his belly on Skyler’s feet—

  And with a convulsive shove, Skyler kicked the other over his head to crash into the knot of guards.

  The Security men didn’t have a chance. Bound hand and foot and without any balance to speak of, Jensen still tore into them like a tiger into sheep. His head, knees, and feet became blurs as he knocked the guards to the floor, jabbing them to death with short but vicious blows even as they struggled impotently to escape.

  A motion to his right caught Caine’s eye, and he turned to see Lathe similarly sprawled over Quinn and Galway, holding them down as Skyler rolled over to assist him. Breaking his paralysis, Caine got to his feet and hopped over to where Jensen was levering himself to a kneeling position. “Check their pockets for the key to these things,” the blackcollar instructed, already searching one of the limp forms himself. Swallowing, shame at his own inaction hot on his cheeks, Caine obeyed.

  “Got it,” Skyler announced. “Right where you’d expect—didn’t trust anyone but yourself with the key, did you, General?”

  “Damn—you,” Quinn managed, the sound muffled by his own arm pinned across his mouth. “You’ll never get off this floor alive.”

  “Really? I’ve heard that song before.” Releasing his restraints, Skyler freed Lathe and then tossed the keys across to Caine.

  “What’s going on?” Caine asked, twisting around to pick up the keys and setting to work on Jensen’s wrist cuffs. An uncomfortable suspicion was starting to set in. “Is that Mordecai running amok out there?”

  “Mordecai and Pittman both,” Lathe told him, fastening his former restraints securely around Quinn. “At least—”

  “Pittman?” Caine gasped. Across the room Galway inhaled sharply. “But Quinn said—”

  “Oh, come on, Caine,” Skyler chided mildly as he fastened Galway’s ankles to one of the chairs. “You know better than to take a collie’s word for anything, don’t you? How’s it look out there, Jensen?”

  Jensen had opened the door a crack and was peering out cautiously. “All the activity’s around the corner down there, near the elevator. If we hurry, we ought to be able to surprise the collies with a rear-action sortie.” Squatting down, he started to strip the uniform from one of the guards.

  “Good,” Lathe nodded. “Just make sure Mordecai doesn’t get you in the process.” He turned back to Quinn. “You’ll forgive us if we take leave of your hospitality,” he said, reaching down to draw the general’s paral-dart pistol from its holster “Pleasant dreams, and better luck next time.”

  “You won’t get out of here alive,” Quinn spat, his face contorted with fury…and then the burst of needles caught him in the chest and he slumped in his chair.

  “Lathe,” Galway said as the comsquare turned to him. “If you’re not lying—if Pittman’s really on your side—”

  “I know,” Lathe said. “One way or another, it’ll all be over soon.”

  Galway hissed between clenched teeth, his expression a mirror of emotions too convoluted for Caine to unravel. Then Lathe’s pistol cracked and the prefect joined Quinn in helplessness.

  A minute later the former prisoners were outside in the hall. “Let’s get at them,” Lathe said briskly, “and hope Mordecai got the armory open before they sealed it from downstairs. We’ll need what’s inside some of the nunchaku if we’re going to get out of here.”

  Caine took a deep breath. “Whatever you’ve got in mind, I hate it already.”

  The comsquare almost smiled. “As it happens, Caine, the hard part is actually over. Help me make sure all the cameras and microphones are disabled and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Well?” Major Eberly O’Dae demanded.

  The man at the monitor bank shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Major, but without vision and audio there’s no way to tell for sure what’s happening up there. All I can say is that there’s no more running going on anymore—people are still walking around, but no one’s running.”

  O’Dae cursed under his breath. So the fighting was over—or else had gone to a stalemate siege—and there was no way to tell which side was on top. Though it unfortunately wasn’t too hard to make a good guess.

  And General Quinn was square in the middle of it.

  “You’re sure they got into the armory?” he asked, wishing an instant later that he’d kept his mouth shut. It was at least the third time he’d asked that same question, and the others were bound to notice that.

  There was a general shuffling of feet around the situation room, and the man at the monitors threw him an odd look before answering. “Yes, sir, quite certain. They haven’t been fired yet, but the power-pack readings show several of the laser rifles have definitely been moved from the armory to other parts of the floor.”

  “The fact the lasers haven’t been fired probably means the blackcollars are in control,” someone murmured from the side.

  “I’d figured that out, thank you,” O’Dae growled. When you don’t need a senior officer, he thought bitterly, they’re always right there on top of you. Colonel Poirot was supposed to be on his way, but until he got here O’Dae was in charge of this mess, and he knew full well he was out of his depth.

  “Major! Got something now,” the man at the monitor announced abruptly. “Laser fire…about fifteen meters down the hall from—ah-ha.” He looked up. “They’re trying to burn through the wall by the main elevator bank, the ones that bypass five.”

  O’Dae felt a flood of relief. “Oh, they are, are they?” he said, and someone else snickered. The steel protecting those elevator shafts was specially reinforced against just this trick; the prisoners could fire all night and most of the next day without breaking through.

  Which meant that O’Dae was off the hook. However long it took Poirot to get here, he could now afford to simply sit back and wait until then. The blackcollars weren’t going anywhere—

  “Major!”

  O’Dae turned and
looked over the crowd to the man at the audio comm panel. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Explosion outside the Central Municipal Building, sir—the night guards there say the door’s been blown.”

  “What?” O’Dae shoved through the others to the panel, stomach churning with fresh tension. The Central Muni held a lot of records, more than a few of them top-classified. Not to mention several pieces of equipment that were well-nigh irreplaceable. “Anyone trying to get in?”

  “Not yet—at least they don’t think so,” the other said, shaking his head. “But they want some backup, fast.”

  “No kidding. Captain! Get a double squad over there, on the slider.”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer left the situation room at a dead run.

  O’Dae took a ragged breath, but he’d barely let it out before the man beside him swore. “Damn it. Major—another blast, this one near the spotter hangar.”

  O’Dae stared, hardly believing it. “What the hell—that was near the hangar. Corporal? Not in?”

  “Report says near, sir. But it could be just a diversion.”

  The major grimaced as that thought penetrated the tension surrounding his mind and then split, amoeba-style, into two equally nasty possibilities. A diversion as prelude to an attack on Athena’s air power? Or a diversion designed to empty the Security building itself of troops? It could be either…and the real hell of it was that it didn’t matter. He had to send reinforcements to those other buildings, just in case. Which meant he could likely have a skeleton crew available here if the blackcollars tired of their attack on the elevators and tried to simply fight their way out.

  And there was only one way he could think of to prevent that. If the blackcollars were indeed relying on allies skulking around Athena to set up their escape for them, the last thing he could afford was to allow them control of the timetable. “Lieutenant Baker, what’s the situation with the elevator to five?” he called to the man at the detention monitors.

  “Uh…we’ve got the override set up, Major,” the other reported. “The blackcollars can’t use it to get down.”