Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

by Timothy Zahn

  "Because I need to know where we're going before we lift off."

  "But we have to go to Earth first and organize a crew."

  "Earth is the first place they'll look for us," Lathe explained patiently. "We'll just have to try and pick up a crew in the other system instead. Now which is it?"

  Caine pursed his lips. "System M-4. Orion Sector."

  "Hmm. Argent's system." Lathe nodded, frowning slightly.

  "Is that good or bad?"

  "A little of both. A thriving planet—I assume Argent's still thriving—will make it easier to find a crew. On the other hand, Orion Sector runs up to the TDE-Chryselli border, which probably implies a strong Ryqril presence."

  "Uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."

  "It could be better," Lathe agreed. Raising the communicator, he flipped it on. "Lathe to Dodds. Lathe to Dodds."

  A moment later a response came. "Dodds here."

  "How's flight prep coming?"

  "I just finished. You have the information?"

  "Yes—number thirteen on our list. Got that?"

  "One-three, right. If you'll clear me with the tower I'll be off. Safe flight to you."

  "You too." Lathe tapped a couple more switches. "Lathe to whoever's in the tower."

  "Novak here," the answer came promptly. "We were eavesdropping on your last call. What's Dodds doing?"

  "Special assignment," Lathe said curtly. "I want you to shut down the lasers until he's cleared atmosphere."

  There was a short silence. "I don't recall Dhonau mentioning this," Novak said.

  "He didn't; this is on my authority," Lathe told him.

  "I see." A moment passed. "Antiaircraft lasers shut down."

  "Good. Call Dodds and tell him we can lift when ready." Shutting off the communicator, Lathe fastened it to his belt and turned to look at the rows of Corsairs.

  Caine cleared his throat. "Just what is this mission, Lathe?"

  "Later." He nodded at the field. "There he goes."

  A diffuse glow was visible now, reflecting faintly from other fighters and the glaze-surface. As Caine watched, a dark bulk rose from the far end of the field, the blue-violet light from its gravs casting strangely colored shadows. Rotating to point eastward, it shot upward with surprising speed until it was almost invisible against the starry background. Then, abruptly, a white star erupted as the main drive kicked in. Arcing across the sky, it was lost to sight within seconds.

  Lathe stirred, his left hand seeking his right wrist. "Someone's approaching the 'port," he told Caine. "Security car, the tower says. Mordecai's on his way; I want you to go to the ship with him, where you'll be safe."

  "What about you?" Caine asked.

  "I'm going to meet the car." He saw the look on Caine's face and added, "I'll be in no danger—this isn't an attack force coming. But your safety's too vital to take even small risks with. Go on."

  Reluctantly, Caine got out, watching as Lathe circled back toward the 'port gate. Mordecai appeared at his side and together they set off across the field.

  Lathe was waiting by the gate when the Security car rolled to a stop. The driver stepped out, his hands empty and held slightly away from his body. Spotting Lathe, he walked toward him.

  It was Prefect Galway.

  "I'm alone and unarmed," were his first words. "I'm here for a parley."

  "What makes you think we've got anything to talk about?" Lathe asked, quietly putting away the throwing star he'd been palming.

  Galway frowned as he studied what he could see of Lathe's face. "Comsquare Lathe, isn't it?" He shook his head ruefully. "Damn, but you had us fooled. I still can't believe what you've done to us."

  "It wasn't all that easy, actually," Lathe told him. "You, particularly, have an unceasingly suspicious mind. But you didn't come here just to exchange compliments. What do you want?"

  Galway glanced through the gate into the 'port. "Basically, I'm here to offer some advice." He turned back to face the blackcollar. "As a diversion and a lure, the riot you started was brilliant. But don't overdo it."

  "What do you mean?" Lathe asked evenly.

  "I mean you've got the population at flash point. Everyone in Capstone knows what's happening by now. They're looking at the trouble a few hundred teen-agers are giving us and probably wondering what an uprising by the whole population would do."

  "What would it do?"

  "Destroy Plinry," Galway said, and Lathe was struck by the intensity in the prefect's voice. "The Ryqril section of the Hub can't be taken—I'm sure you know that. Even if a revolt succeeded in boxing them in, it would last only until the next Ryqril courier showed up. A week after that the Corsairs would come." Galway waved toward the south, where the lights of Capstone were visible. "We haven't even recovered from the last war. How much punitive action do you think we could take?"

  "Not much," Lathe admitted. "So what do you want from me?"

  "I'd like you to stop the revolt. I'd settle for slowing it down, since you probably aren't interested in stopping it. We can negotiate a deal, if necessary, but bear in mind the kinds of concessions I can make are limited."

  Lathe remained silent for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "No negotiations needed, Galway. We're not out to liberate Plinry—not this time, anyway. Our people will be going underground for a while, but if you don't push them or retaliate against Capstone's people they won't give you any more trouble."

  Galway's eyes burned into his. "Your word?"

  "I'll give the orders. That's all I can guarantee."

  A slight twitch which might have been a smile. "All right. I'll try to keep my people in check, as well. Otherwise, there might not be a world here when you come back." Once more his eyes flicked toward the landing field and the dark ships there. "I'd give my last dose of Idunine to know what you're up to."

  "You'll find out some day."

  "I'm sure I will," Galway said dryly. Turning, he returned to his car and drove off.

  From his vantage point near the lumpy freighter, Caine watched Galway drive away, his mind a tangle of conflicting thoughts. The meeting had been peaceful, even friendly, and the two men had talked for a long time. Why? More importantly, why had Lathe made so sure that there weren't any witnesses to the conversation?

  He shook his head, feeling a little silly. Suspicions like that were highly unfair—the meeting had probably been a perfectly aboveboard parley. Still.... Caine became aware of the cassette reader in his hand and, almost unconsciously, gripped it a little tighter. Practically since his arrival the blackcollars had been calling the shots, and even now he was being treated rather like a piece of valuable cargo. But when the final crunch came, it would be Allen Caine who held the ace. And it wasn't a card he would give away lightly... nor to just anyone.

  Lathe was coming toward the freighter now. Shifting the reader to his other hand, Caine headed for the ship's cargo hatch. Perhaps the blackcollars would let him help with the loading.

  CHAPTER 9

  The freighter's navigational computer put the distance to Argent as six parsecs. A Corsair would make the trip in three days; Caine's old passenger liner could have done it in seven. The freighter, designed for fuel efficiency rather than speed, took almost twelve.

  There were twelve exceptionally busy days, however. While most of the eleven blackcollars aboard worked at organizing the equipment they'd brought along, Lathe detailed Skyler and Novak to give Caine a condensed version of blackcollar training. It was an intensive course, straining Caine's mnemonic and fighting skills to the limit. He learned the blackcollar combat codes, both tingler and hand signal forms; was given new unarmed fighting techniques and drilled in their use; and acquired at least a modest proficiency with nunchaku, slingshot, and shuriken. In between lessons he spent his time getting to know his fellow travelers... and asking carefully worded questions.

  "Oh, yeah, me and Tardy go back to before the war. He knew every still on Plinry, and we used to steal the whiskey from 'em and use it as a prim
er in our bombs. Lathe? No, I didn't meet him till after the amnesty...."

  "...Seems to me Lathe and Dodds had adjacent units—somewhere in the New Karachi area, I think. I didn't know either of them until I started coming to the lodge get-togethers...."

  "...Dodds was always a quiet sort; never worked out with us at the lodge. I hear a nerve gas attack laid him out during the war and sort of scrambled his fighting reflexes. Smart guy, though, and he and Lathe get along pretty well. Sure, I've known Lathe a long time—we were standing in line together for the collie interrogation...."

  And so it went, until Caine was forced to the inescapable conclusion that no one aboard had ever heard of Lathe or Dodds until after the war.

  The revelation wasn't all that remarkable, of course. Plinry had started with three hundred blackcollars—twenty-five of the standard twelve-man guerrilla teams—and with only thirty-one left it was reasonable that several of them would be the sole survivors of their units. Still, combined with Lathe's steadfast refusal to discuss Dodds's special mission, this new bit of information made Caine uneasy.

  Three days out from Argent, when he finally finished decoding the Plinry record, he put the eight critical numbers—six spatial, two temporal—into a special mental file. Six hours of self-hypnosis later, it was ringed by a series of psycho-mental blocks that no drug or neurotrace could break before killing him.

  No one—neither Lathe nor anyone else—would get those numbers until Caine was good and ready to give them up.

  Argent was a bright speck with a clearly discernible disk when the freighter reentered normal space. Chelsey Jensen, at the helm, set the computer to working out an approach curve, and then punched for a schematic of the system. "That one's Argent," he told Caine, tapping the second planet. "Third or fourth most Earthlike world in the TDE and a real goldmine of minerals. The place was filthy rich before the war."

  "Hmm." The schematic showed twelve more planets plus a strangely shaped haze. "What's that?" Caine asked, pointing to the latter.

  "It's an asteroid belt, called the Diamond Ring for obvious reasons."

  "What makes it bunch like that instead of distributing itself more evenly?"

  "No idea. Made mining a lot easier, though, with so much of the stuff concentrated in one place. Ten to one it's where your Novas are hidden, too."

  "Maybe. A good place to run guerrilla raids from, too."

  In his mind's eye Caine could see tiny fighters appearing from nowhere to strike at the Ryqril forces—

  "Not really. Asteroid belts aren't that dense; even the Diamond there is mostly empty space, and a ship moving with any decent drive trail would be trivial to track You'd do better hiding in a swamp or forest down on Argent."

  The heroic vision vanished. "Oh. Is that what we're going to do, then?"

  "Yes and no," a new voice said, and Caine turned as Lathe came up the tight spiral staircase. "We'll hide someplace like that for a day or so until we can contact the local underground."

  Caine blinked. "You've been in touch with Argent's underground?"

  Lathe gave him an odd look. "Of course not. We've been isolated on Plinry; you know that."

  "But you just said—" Caine snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course. Dodds. He's already here, isn't he?"

  "Caine, you have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions." Lathe turned to Jensen. "Situation?"

  "The autopilot's taking us in," Jensen said, studying the readouts. "ETA of fifteen hours. Of course, we'll be challenged long before then."

  "All right. Go get some rest and finish your preparations; I'll have Spadafora watch things here. Be back in nine hours."

  "Right." With one last glance at the instruments Jensen crossed the room and vanished down the stairway.

  "You, too," Lathe told Caine. "Go to the cargo bay and help get the drop pods ready."

  "I want to be here when you talk to the planet," Caine said.

  Lathe shrugged. "Okay. Just make sure you're in your flexarmor, ready to go."

  Thirty minutes out of Argent's main traffic orbits, the call finally came. "Unidentified freighter on vector two-eight-zero, plus four-mark-nine, this is Argent Space Control. Identify yourselves."

  Jensen gestured to the hand mike clamped to the control board. Picking it up, Lathe glanced at Caine and thumbed it on. "This is Trader First Class Donovan; special cargo from Magna Graecia. Request priority orbit insertion away from major lanes."

  "Your landing ID code?"

  "I have none. This is a special cargo, as I said. I was given a code number and told to repeat it only to the Security Prefect's office."

  Caine could almost hear the traffic controller sit up straighter. "Understood. Ringing Security now," he said. A minute passed and a new voice came on the speaker. "Security Prefect's office; Lieutenant Peron. What's this about a special cargo?"

  "That's right," Lathe said. "Special and hazardous. The code gamma-twelve should identify it to you."

  "Who gave you that code?"

  "A Graecian Security officer—called himself Hydra. Look, he's down there somewhere; just get him over there and he'll confirm it."

  There was a short pause. "We have no agent with that code name," he said, suspicion creeping into his voice. "Are you sure he was a genuine Security agent?"

  "Positive, but I told you he works out of Magna Graecia, not Argent. He said he'd fly on ahead to get all the paperwork done so I could get rid of this stuff."

  Another pause. "One moment."

  Lathe turned off his mike. "Jensen, call down and order everyone into the pods. I don't know how long I can keep them running in circles down there, and we may need to break fast."

  Jensen nodded and began speaking softly into the intercom. Glancing out the viewport, Caine could see the edge of Argent's blue-and-white disk, now less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant. A big, dangerous world—and the fact that he would be with eleven blackcollars didn't seem nearly as reassuring as it had a few days ago.

  At the control board, the speaker again came to life. "This is Colonel Eakins, Assistant Security Prefect for Argent. Can you tell me anything more about this Hydra?"

  "I can describe him for you," Lathe offered, launching into a three-minute description which seemed, to Caine, to be that of Plinry's Prefect Galway. Perhaps, he thought, Lathe did have a sense of humor. "But if he's not already down there I don't know what's happened."

  "It's possible he works directly under the Ryqril military governor," Eakins rumbled. "We'll send a message there right away. In the meantime, you're cleared for deep polar orbit; we'll feed course data to your computer."

  A two-tone signal acknowledged receipt. "Thank you," Lathe said. "And make sure everyone else stays clear of me. This stuff is damn touchy and I don't want a drive backwash anywhere near it."

  There was a short silence. "I think I understand," Eakins said. "Very well. Argent out."

  Lathe shut off the mike and replaced it in its clamps. "Just about in orbit," Jensen reported. "When do you want to head in?"

  Lathe rubbed his dragonhead ring thoughtfully. "Let's hold off as long as possible," he suggested. "If we can study the territory we'll have a better chance of finding a good landing spot."

  "Right." Jensen hit some switches and four display screens came to life.

  Lathe glanced at Caine before turning to the screens. "Caine, go to the bay and get into your pod. I don't want you hanging around here until the last minute and then rushing to get strapped in."

  Caine nodded. "Okay. See you below." He hesitated. "Good luck, Jensen," he added.

  The drop pods were shaped like truncated cones, each about three meters tall with a two-meter-diameter base. There were five of them crowded by the cargo hatch: two four-passenger models and three which would be carrying cargo plus one passenger. Jensen, who would still be flying when the others left, had a smaller pod stashed in the bridge's emergency lock.

  The others were already in their places, and from the open pod doors came rustlin
gs as straps and buckles were adjusted and double-checked. Crossing the floor, Caine peered into the narrow door of his pod. "There room for me in there yet?" he called.

  From the shadows inside, Skyler waved an arm. "Sure; come on up."

  Stepping up over the pod's thick ceramic heat shield, Caine squeezed through the opening and sidled a step to his right, twisting and ducking to avoid the three-dimensional maze of cables, straps, and bars hanging from the ceiling. Wedging himself between Vale and Novak, he strapped into his harness.

  And then came the waiting.

  Listening to the quiet conversation in the pod, studying the blackcollars' faces, Caine was struck as never before by the underlying similarity between these men. Underneath their differences in style and manner was a deep feeling of what? Strength, he decided, combined perhaps with a casual confidence—qualities hard to reconcile with the raging warriors of the legends. A bit disappointing, he had to admit, and yet, the quietness was somehow reassuring.

  They had been waiting nearly an hour when the pod abruptly jerked to the side as Jensen threw the freighter into a maneuver too fast for the artificial gravity to quite compensate. Conversation cut off instantly, and Caine could hear the muted whine of straining engines.

  "This is it," Novak, by the pod door, announced grimly. He seemed unusually tense, but Caine knew it had nothing to do with the upcoming ride. He'd noted earlier in the trip that a special friendship existed between Jensen and Novak... and for several minutes after the others were gone Jensen was going to be a hellishly big target. "Shall I seal up?"

  "Wait'll Lathe gets here," Skyler told him.

  Seconds later the bay door slid open. "Button up, everyone," Lathe called, loping to his pod. "Jensen will blow the hatch in less than a minute. When you pop, head due west."

  Novak reached out and pulled the door closed, plunging the pod into darkness. In his imagination Caine could see patrol ships diving toward them, threatening to open fire. Jensen would be stalling for time, claiming mechanical trouble, trying to get them in as close as possible—

  And with a dull blast the pod gave a spine-wrenching lurch. An instant later they were tumbling through space, twisting violently as the freighter's turbulence caught them.