The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  For a long moment neither man moved or spoke. Then Pittman took a deep breath. “Whatever you’re going to say to me, I wish you’d go ahead and get it over with.”

  “All right,” Caine said. His eyes flicked over the younger man’s face, noting the tension lines there—lines he’d never really paid attention to before. “You’ve been playing this game for quite a while, I understand. Why?”

  “You mean how did the Ryqril force me to—?”

  “No, I mean why did you go to Lathe instead of simply playing along with them?”

  Pittman turned to face him, a vaguely bewildered look on his face. “What the hell else was I supposed to do? Betray all of you for real?”

  “Why not? Whatever they had on you must have been a real sun-cruncher for them to trust you so fully.” Caine frowned, a sudden thought striking him. “Unless they thought they’d gotten you loyalty-conditioned?”

  Pittman snorted. “Galway’s not stupid enough to try something that obvious. It takes fifteen days to condition someone that thoroughly, and if they’d tried keeping me out of circulation that long they, might just as well have phoned Lathe and announced their intentions.”

  Caine nodded. He knew all that, of course, but for a moment he’d dared to hope Pittman might have stumbled on a way to break the Ryqril’s loyalty-conditioning technique. “Then back to question one: why didn’t you simply play on Galway’s side?”

  Pittman dropped his eyes, turned back to face the windshield. “Because I couldn’t,” he said simply. “You’re my friends; my comrades-in-arms, if you want to get sentimental about it. I couldn’t betray you, no matter what it cost.”

  He swallowed, and Caine saw his jaw muscles tighten momentarily. “What is it going to cost?” he asked quietly.

  “With luck…nothing. At least, that’s what Lathe’s promised me.”

  “And you trust him to come through?”

  Pittman turned back to face Caine, a wry smile on his lips. “Why not? You do.”

  Caine snorted. “That’s hardly an apt comparison. I never get to choose whether to trust him or not.”

  “Sure you do. You don’t have to put up with all of his high-handed finagling—not really. You could go to him right now, tell him he’s pulled one too many fast ones at your expense and that you’re taking off. But you’re not going to, and we both know it. Why not?”

  “Because he’s the best tactician I’ve ever known, I suppose,” Caine said, almost grudgingly. “Because—hell, I don’t know why.”

  “In other words, because you trust him to get the job done right, with the least hazard to your own skin…and you’re smart enough to prefer getting bruises on your pride to watching your teammates die around you.”

  Pittman broke off abruptly. Caine studied his face for a long moment, then snorted. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. We both trust him…and we both hate it.”

  Pittman shrugged fractionally. “It beats getting killed with dignity. I guess. The hell with it.” He nodded toward the alley mouth. “Who do you suppose he’s calling? Quinn?”

  “I sure hope not. This town’s going to heat up enough as it is without him waving red gloves under someone’s nose.”

  “Yeah. Well…maybe he’s just calling Reger. Someone safe, anyway. That would be a change.”

  “It would be nice,” Caine agreed heavily. “But somehow, I doubt it.”

  Kanai had just finished his dinner, and was wondering without any real enthusiasm what he should do for the rest of the evening, when the phone twittered.

  He paused, turning to look at it, his hand falling to his shuriken pouch. There were perhaps a dozen people who might be calling him, most of them mad at him, none of them anyone he really wanted to talk to. Glaring at the phone, he willed it to shut up.

  But the person on the other end was persistent…and Kanai had been the blackcollars’ contact man too long to easily ignore a phone call. With a sigh, he picked up the handset. “Yes?”

  “Kanai?”

  The blackcollar squeezed the handset with sudden pressure. “Lathe?”

  “Right. Your line being tapped?”

  “Certainly not,” Kanai answered, automatically giving the old blackcollar code response for yes.

  “Okay. I want to talk to Bernhard—let him know how things went tonight. Can you arrange that?”

  “Probably,” Kanai said cautiously. How things went tonight! A smokescreen for Security’s benefit, or was Bernhard working some sort of game behind his back? “When do you want to talk to him?” he asked Lathe, forcing his voice to remain casual.

  “There’s a street six blocks north of last night’s popbox—we’ll be at a house two blocks west of that intersection. Got that?

  “I think so.” Popbox—that had to be the place they’d popped up out of Anne Silcox’s tunnel. Visualizing a map of Denver…“Yes, I know where it is. You want me to bring Bernhard there tonight?”

  “Affirmative. Alone, of course.”

  “Of course.” Translation: no Security tails. Possible, but only if he worked fast. “We’ll be there shortly.”

  “Good. Oh, and you might tell Bernhard that Anne Silcox will also be here.”

  “Right,” Kanai said, stomach tightening with sudden uncertainty.

  The line went dead, and for a couple of heartbeats Kanai stared unseeing at the instrument. Anne Silcox? But that was impossible—less than twenty-four hours ago Bernhard had indicated he would be turning her over to Quinn.

  “Damn,” Kanai hissed between his teeth. Something strange was happening here, and whatever it was, he already didn’t like it. Gathering up his gear, he grabbed a coat and slipped out the door.

  The Security man at the monitor bank shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Prefect Galway, but there’s nothing more I can tell you. There were four high-power comm-frequency laser pulses in each of these three directions, each pulse consisting of the single word ‘Christmas.’ We’ve got the source pinpointed to an area a short way out into the mountains, but until and unless General Quinn releases the spotters from search duty over Denver, there’s nothing I can do about looking for it.”

  Galway clenched his jaw with frustration. “And if the damn thing is mobile, it could be packed up and back in someone’s garage before we find it.”

  “I’m afraid that’s about right,” the officer agreed.

  “Damn.” Galway stared at the star images displayed on the monitors, his eyes shifting among the three superimposed circles. At the end of one of those vectors was the mysterious spacecraft that had been skulking out there ever since Lathe’s team had landed on Earth. Clearly, it was the intended recipient for the unauthorized message; just as clearly, at least to Galway’s thinking, the message itself had come from Lathe. A prearranged signal to action…but action of what sort? One way or another, it’ll all be over soon, Lathe had said, referring to the consequences of Pittman’s actions. What could he have meant, by that?

  “Oh, hell,” Galway muttered as a sudden thought struck him. Crazy—utterly crazy—but it was exactly the sort of thing Lathe would do—

  “Galway!”

  The prefect jerked around, startled, to see Quinn and two other Security men stride into the situation room. “General,” he said, stepping toward the other, “there’s been a signal to the ship out there—”

  “Galway; pending a full investigation through the Ryqril officials on Plinry, you’re confined to quarters,” Quinn cut him off. “Your alleged double-agent scheme has been a total fiasco, resulting in loss of life, damage to government property, and the escape of valuable prisoners. Escort him to his quarters, men.”

  “What?” Galway stared, unable to believe his ears, as the two Security men stepped to his side. “You’re not serious. All right, so Lathe and Pittman pulled the sheets over our heads. We haven’t lost the whole—”

  “What do you mean, our heads?” Quinn snarled. “You’re the one they fooled.”

  “Me and the Ryqril on Plinry,” Galway sh
ot back. “Let’s not forget they were the ones who initiated the whole project.”

  “We’ve got only your word and some possibly forged papers for that,” Quinn said icily. “Maybe when we do some inquiries we’ll find out you had more to do with it than you claim. Eh?”

  Galway felt his stomach tighten up. This couldn’t be happening—it just couldn’t. Had Quinn gone totally insane? He looked to the man at the monitor for support, saw only carefully measured blankness in the other’s eyes. “General,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm as he turned again to face Quinn. “A signal’s been sent to the enemy ship out there, and if I’m right we’re on the verge of losing any last bit of leverage we might still have on Pittman—”

  “To hell with Pittman!” Quinn thundered. “He had his chance to cooperate—now he can damn well roast with the rest of them. And when we’ve dealt with them, it’ll be your turn in the pit. Go on, get him out of here.”

  Hands curled into impotent fists at his side, Galway let them lead him from the situation room. It’ll be all right, he told himself, trying with only limited success to believe it. It’ll be all right. He’s sending word to Plinry—that’s the important thing. Maybe it’ll get there in time. Until then—

  Until then he would just have to sit quietly by and hope Quinn came to his senses soon. And hope to hell that Lathe didn’t shred the city into ribbons before then.

  The city, and any chance of survival for Plinry.

  Chapter 30

  THE TWO BLACKCOLLARS ARRIVED three minutes after Hawking’s tingler alerted the group inside—Bernhard was wary and grim as death itself as he slipped through the safe house door, Kanai behind him looking only marginally more comfortable. Standing off to one side beside Anne Silcox, fingers resting casually on the grips of his nunchaku, Caine watched as they stepped to the middle of the room where Lathe waited, and he saw, for the first time, the depth of hostility in Bernhard’s eyes as he gazed at Lathe.

  Once, Caine remembered with a trace of bitterness, he’d hoped to find allies among these same Denver blackcollars. Seldom had he ever had a dream shattered quite so thoroughly.

  Bernhard broke the brittle silence first. “I hear through the grapevine that you’ve been busy tonight,” he said, his voice deceptively casual.

  “A bit,” Lathe replied, matching his tone. “The grapevine provide any details?”

  “It says your entire team was captured trying to break into Athena.” Bernhard’s eyes flicked across to Caine, lingered on Silcox before returning to Lathe. “I see the operation didn’t take.”

  “No, it didn’t. Any hints as to how we got out?”

  “Not really, except that you took a lot of guards and part of the perimeter fence with you when you left.”

  “There were some explosions elsewhere in Athena that provided a diversion for us,” Lathe told him. “Nothing but timed limpet mines designed to spread out the opposition…but Quinn doesn’t know that. He thinks we had help. Help that was able to sneak into Athena on its own to stir up trouble. You want to take a guess as to who the likely suspects will be?”

  Bernhard’s expression didn’t change, but suddenly the room seemed colder. “Quinn’s not that stupid,” he said softly. “He’ll recognize a cheap frame-up like that for what it is.”

  “Maybe.” Lathe shrugged. “But to be perfectly blunt, I don’t think you can afford to take that chance. Not after agreeing to help Quinn capture us.”

  Bernhard glanced again at Silcox. “So you know about that. Well, I warned you, Lathe—don’t say I didn’t. I warned you at least twice to get out of Denver while you could.”

  “And I told you we weren’t ready to go. But that’s old business. More important at the moment is how you’re going to convince Quinn that you haven’t double-dealt him. And it won’t be easy—we’ve already shown him one alleged traitor that was still on our side.”

  “Well, then, I suppose we’ll just have to take you out as promised,” Bernhard gritted. “That ought to convince him, don’t you think?”

  “Very likely,” Lathe agreed. “But how are you going to do it? You don’t know how to find us, you don’t know where or when we’re going to strike, you don’t even know why we’re here. So how are you going to capture us?”

  Bernhard’s eyes flicked to Caine and Silcox. “At the moment it’s two against one,” he said pointedly. “Whatever guard shield you’ve got outside would be too late to help.”

  Beside him, Kanai stirred. “I won’t fight him, Bernhard,” he said softly. “I told you that last night.”

  “Offhand, I’d guess a lot of your other blackcollars will feel the same way,” Lathe told Bernhard. “How many can you rely on, do you suppose? Two? Three?”

  “Enough,” the other said shortly. “Blackcollars who take as many stupid chances as you do shouldn’t be too hard to take out.”

  Lathe shook his head. “You’ve completely missed the point of what we’ve been doing. The whole campaign was designed to force Quinn to admit he couldn’t keep up with us and to hire or force you to go after us. Now you’ve got the job, whether you like it or not—and that puts you square in the nutcracker with us. If you don’t deliver damn fast, Quinn’s bound to come to the conclusion that you’ve come over to our side.…and he knows where to find you.”

  “Not if I don’t want him to,” Bernhard ground out.

  “Only if you’re willing to leave Denver entirely.” Lathe shook his head. “And I’m guessing you’d just as soon stay in your comfy little sinecure.”

  “All the more reason to take you out,” Bernhard said, but Caine could see the confidence beginning to fade. “But all right, then; let’s hear your solution to the mess.”

  For a long moment Lathe gazed at him. “You can do what I asked when we first met. Help us carry out our mission.”

  Bernhard snorted. “Oh, that would be a grand idea, wouldn’t it? Exactly the thing to get Quinn off our backs.”

  “You give us the help we need,” Lathe continued, as if the other hadn’t spoken, “and we’ll provide you with some bodies to show Quinn. Bodies that even the experts won’t be able to prove aren’t us.”

  “What?” Silcox whispered at Caine’s side. “He didn’t mention any of that part to me.”

  He hadn’t mentioned it to Caine, either. “Just stay cool,” he whispered back. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  If Bernhard found the suggestion outrageous, it wasn’t immediately evident. “That’s a damned big risk for us to take,” Bernhard said, shaking his head. “Safer to just take you on.”

  Lathe shrugged. “That’s your choice. But I’ll tell you straight out: if you don’t help’ us, you’ll soon wish you had. We can take this city apart—you know it and I know it. And every raid we pull will nudge Quinn a step closer to ordering your own destruction.”

  “Suppose I offer to help you?” Kanai spoke up suddenly. “There’s no need to take all of us down just because Bernhard won’t cooperate, is there?”

  Bernhard threw his companion a glance, but even as he started to speak Lathe shook his head. “Sorry, Kanai. We may be able to use your help later, but first of all we need something only Bernhard can provide. Well, Bernhard?”

  The other glowered at him. “I don’t take well to blackmail, Lathe. Or to threats.”

  “I don’t like them much myself,” Lathe came back. “But our options at this point are limited, and I haven’t got time for anything with more finesse.”

  “Damn you—”

  “I suggest you think it over—you’ll probably have at least a couple of days before Quinn gets impatient and drops the sky on you. Discuss it with your team; certainly with your boss, Sartan. In fact, maybe I ought to talk to him myself.”

  Bernhard’s eyes narrowed. “Leave Sartan out of this—it’s none of his business.”

  “Why not? I’d think he’d have a vested interest in protecting his roughneck squad. Well, no matter. If you don’t tell him, there are other ways to get a
message there.”

  “Oh, really?” Bernhard’s lip twitched in an almost-smile. “Well, you go right ahead, then, and give him a call.”

  Lathe cocked an eyebrow thoughtfully. “You really don’t care if I feed him my version of all this, do you? Interesting.” He shrugged. “Well, anyway, between Quinn and Sartan I think you’ll eventually change your mind about helping us. I’ll be in touch for when you do.”

  Bernhard pursed his lips. “Lathe—”

  “No, don’t try it,” the comsquare said. “I have a man through the doorway over there with a sniper’s slingshot trained on you, and I don’t think you’d like fighting me on your back.”

  A disbelieving look flashed across. Bernhard’s face, followed by a rueful smile. “I begin to see why Quinn is always underestimating you. You’re good, Lathe…but in the long run it won’t be enough.” Turning on his heel, he strode out the door. Kanai sent a last, unreadable look at Caine and Silcox, then followed.

  Lathe inhaled audibly, let the breath out in a whoosh as he turned to Caine. “And that is that,” he said. “For now, anyway. Well, Anne?”

  She nodded. “He’s the one,” she said with a sigh. “Strange; they always referred to blackcollars so positively. Maybe he’s changed since they vanished.”

  “ ‘The one’?” Caine asked, frowning. “The one what?”

  “The blackcollar she occasionally saw with her Torch friends,” Lathe told him. “More to the immediate point, the one who was there the day before they set her up in the Shandygaff and all disappeared.”

  Caine focused on Silcox. “Why didn’t you say anything about that earlier?”

  “Because it wasn’t any of your business,” she retorted. “And because if Torch is doing something special, I didn’t want a group of self-appointed heroes charging in and shaking up the cart.”

  Caine snorted. “Nice of you to come around a little, anyway.”