by Timothy Zahn
The tape ended, and Caine uncurled his fists. "So what's the verdict?" he asked. "Are you graduating us now, or do I have to wait until the next time the Novak heads for Earth?"
Lathe set his elbows on the desk in front of him, fingering the ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand as he gazed into Caine's face. Caine's eyes dropped to the ring: a silvery dragonhead, its batwing crest curving back over the knuckle, its ruby-red eyes proclaiming its owner to be a blackcollar comsquare. A symbol of ability, dedication, and sheer fighting power... and for Caine, a symbol too of what he intended to do with his new skills.
"You'd like to wear the dragon, wouldn't you?" Lathe asked into his thoughts.
"Not without earning it," Caine told him.
Lathe shrugged fractionally, his eyes still on Caine's. "We could grant you a special exception, provided we could find an unused ring to fit you."
"What good would that do?" Caine snorted. "I want to be a blackcollar, not just dress like one."
Lathe pursed his lips. "If we had any Backlash, you'd be the first to get it. You know that."
Caine nodded. Backlash—the code name for the drug that had been the heart of the whole blackcollar project. Given in a tailored dosage pattern, it permanently altered a man's neural chemistry, effectively doubling his speed and reflexes in combat situations. Backlash, and Backlash alone, had allowed the blackcollars to successfully pit their low-tech, low-profile weaponry against the more sophisticated Ryqril equipment and, in many cases, come out ahead. Shuriken and nunchaku passed detectors set for lasers and high-metal projectile guns without raising a ripple; Backlash speed and blackcollar marksmanship turned them into deadlier weapons than they had any right to be.
But there was no Backlash on Plinry, and no indication that it still existed anywhere else in the TDE... and if that was true, the first generation of blackcollars would also be the last.
Lathe was speaking again, and Caine snapped his attention back to the blackcollar. "But without it, you and your team are about as ready as we can make you," the older man said. "So if you want to talk to Lepkowski about travel arrangements, this is the time to do so."
Caine licked his lips briefly. The moment he'd been aiming at for the past year... the moment when he would leave the relative safety of Plinry and strike out on his own against the Ryqril puppet government on Earth.
But there was no way he was going to show his private uncertainties before Lathe. "Good," he said briskly, getting to his feet. "Is the general still here?"
"He will be for another two hours. Then a shuttle's due to take him back up."
Caine nodded. "Okay. See you later."
—
General Avril Lepkowski's room at Hamner Lodge was small and sparsely furnished, as befit a man who'd spent perhaps a total of six days there in the past year. A cot, a desk and pair of chairs, a computer with scramble/code capability—brought down from one of the Nova-class warships Lathe and his blackcollars had dug out of decades-old storage from under the Ryqril collective snout a year earlier—and, of course, one of the ubiquitous "bug stompers" that seemed to sprout around the lodge and environs exactly like what their mushroom shapes suggested. Caine eyed the device dubiously as he entered the room. At the moment a good bug stomper was supposed to be proof against all known electronic monitoring devices, but that was bound to change someday. Unfortunately, no one would immediately know when that happened.
"Be with you in a minute, Caine," Lepkowski said, eyes on something tracking across his display.
Nodding silently, Caine took the chair beside the desk, from which the screen was out of view.
Whatever Lepkowski was working on, it was probably none of Caine's immediate business... and both Lathe and Lepkowski were very big on the compartmentalization of secrets. If you didn't need to know, you weren't told. And you didn't ask twice.
A minute later the older man sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Damn them all back to hell," he muttered.
"Trouble?" Caine asked.
"Yes, but so far only at the annoyance level." Lepkowski gestured at his screen. "The Karachi's last intelligence sweep through the TDE indicates the war front with the Chryselli has shifted again, and the damn Ryqril convoy routes have changed accordingly. Means we're going to have to detour around Navarre and maybe New Morocco if we don't want to run into anything big."
Caine grimaced. The huge Ryqril war machine which had overrun the TDE thirty years earlier was currently locked in combat with the Chryselli Homelands, and the legged furballs were giving the Ryqril a distinct run for their money. It was the only reason Lepkowski's three Novas were being allowed to wander around loose, in fact—the Ryqril simply couldn't afford the front-line ships and time it would take to chase them down. But that didn't mean a ship that just happened to bump into one of the Novas wouldn't take a shot at it. "You going to have any trouble hitting Earth?"
Lepkowski shook his head. "None at all—Earth's way off the convoy routes. I understand your team's riding with me."
"News travels fast," Caine said. Of course, Lathe would have given Lepkowski advance notice of the team's graduation. "Tell me, General, do you have any ideas about where military secrets on Earth might still be preserved?"
Lepkowski's eyebrows rose slightly. "Any particular secrets you had in mind?"
Caine took a deep breath, suddenly afraid this was going to sound either stupid or boastful or both.
"As a matter of fact, yes," he said between stiff lips. "I want to find the formula for Backlash. The blackcollar drug."
—
If Lepkowski thought the goal ludicrous, it wasn't immediately evident. For a long moment the general eyed Caine in silence, his face giving away nothing. Then he twitched a shrug. "Nothing like starting at the very top of the list. I suppose it's occurred to you that other people have undoubtedly gone on the same treasure hunt over the past thirty years, and that there's no evidence anyone's succeeded yet."
The thought had crossed Caine's mind. Frequently. "True. But maybe they were looking in the wrong place."
"And you expect me to know the right places?"
"I know you were in charge of this sector before the Ryqril took it. Surely you knew most of the military safe drops on Earth and elsewhere."
Lepkowski snorted, a wry smile touching his lips. "Safe drop. I haven't heard that term in years.
Your tutors had a definite military bias."
"General Morris Kratochvil was one of them."
"Kratochvil." The age lines around Lepkowski's eyes seemed to deepen. "A good man... No, Caine, the formula for Backlash wouldn't have been put in any safe drop. If it still exists, it'd have to be in one of the Seven Sisters."
Caine frowned. He'd heard that term before.... "Those were the seven top command/defense bases, weren't they? One per continent, roughly."
"Right." The general nodded. "Major secrets of all sorts would have been stored there.
Unfortunately... well, maybe there's a way to check." Leaning forward again, he began working his keyboard. "We've got some orbital maps of Earth from our last flyby a few months back. Thirty years is a long time, but the force necessary to destroy one of the Sisters ought to have left some lingering scars."
Within a very few minutes that prediction was painfully borne out. Six of the seven spots Lepkowski pointed to were in the middle of either slowly eroding blast craters or unnaturally defoliated wildernesses. Or both.
The seventh...
"Almost completely untouched," Lepkowski murmured as he tried various image-enhancement programs and topographical reconstructions. "Incredible. How could they have missed it?"
"Where is the base, exactly?" Caine asked.
Lepkowski did something to the keyboard and a topographic overlay appeared on the orbital photo.
"Here," he said, tapping a wide mountain peak. "Aegis Mountain, about thirty klicks west of Denver, North America. Major highway passes north of it here; the entrance opens onto it about here."<
br />
Caine stared hard at the image. No defoliation; certainly no obvious crater. "What are those things up there to the north?" he asked, pointing to a pair of slightly off-color patches.
"Uh..." Lepkowski tapped keys. "Neutron missile scars, I'd say. Probably from the war—they don't look recent."
"Could that be how the base was neutralized? Saturation neutron bombing?"
"No, Aegis had better shielding than that. But you're right—the base was neutralized somehow. The Ryqril surely wouldn't have left a fully manned and armed base sitting untouched on the doorstep of a major metro area."
"Maybe they didn't need to destroy it," Caine suggested. "Maybe they got inside and took it over."
"In which case you might as well scratch any plans to get in yourself." Lepkowski rubbed his chin.
"Hard to believe, though. Once the base was locked down no one should have been able to get in without bringing the whole mountain down on top of himself."
Caine bit at his lip. "Maybe it was unlocked, then. Surrendered to them."
Lepkowski was silent a long moment. Then he shook his head. "No, that doesn't sound right, either.
Kratochvil wouldn't have given Aegis away. And neither would the local commander."
There was another pause. "So what's your end-line assessment?" Caine asked at last. "Is there any use in my looking for Backlash there?"
"Your chances are slim at best," Lepkowski said bluntly. "Whether Aegis is locked down, burned out, or up to its hangar level in Ryqril, your chances of getting in are almost nonexistent. Maybe with some help—but I don't even know what kind of help you could find in the area."
"I might," Caine said. "There were supposed to be some blackcollars working in the central continent somewhere. And my Resistance tutors also had limited contact with a North American group called Torch."
"Competent?"
Caine shrugged. "They were still around when I left, as far as I know. Real hard-wrapped fanatics, from what I heard—ready to do anything to overthrow the Ryqril."
Lepkowski shook his head. "I wouldn't go near them if I were you. Never trust fanatics any farther than you absolutely have to."
"Because they take stupid chances?"
"And because they'll turn on you in a second if you stray half a step off their personal version of the
'correct' way."
Caine hissed a breath between his teeth. "Well... is there any other place in the TDE where I'd have a better shot? What about Centauri A?"
"The blackcollar training center?" The general shook his head. "It's gone. Bombed so thoroughly the planet looks to be headed into an ice age. The Ryqril had had enough experience with blackcollars by then to know they sure as hell didn't want any more of them coming out of Centauri."
No, of course the Ryqril didn't want any more blackcollars. Caine had seen for himself just what blackcollars could do against the aliens and their loyalty-conditioned human allies... and the memories reminded him of exactly why he'd decided on this goal in the first place. "All right," he said slowly. "Then Aegis is it, I guess. Can you tell me anything about the base—layout, defenses, anything?"
Lepkowski eyed him. "I can give you a few generalities, but not much more." He tapped a spot on the photo. "The entrance is off the highway here. Leads back under the crest of the mountain, about three klicks away. The tunnel is wide enough for fighter aircraft, which would be rolled out onto the highway for launch."
"About how many of them were there?"
"Aircraft? I'd say a hundred at least, maybe more. But there won't be any of them left—they would all have been out attacking Ryqril landing craft and escorts at the end."
"None of the survivors would have had the proper codes to get back in?"
"There aren't any codes for opening a battle-sealed fortress from the outside," Lepkowski said flatly.
"When I said no one could get in, I meant it. Unless the people inside open up, the place stays sealed. Well. Below the hangar level are eight personnel levels, plus one more with the fusion generators and gas turbine and fuel cell backups. Water from artesian wells dug to various depths, air through long ventilation tunnels with a dozen different filtration systems. Enough food, fuel, and spare parts to survive a good fifteen years. That's for the entire contingent of about two thousand officers and enlisted men, of course."
Caine shook his head in wonderment. "The place must be huge. Any emergency escape tunnels?"
"There would have been one, but don't count on using it. It would have been collapsed automatically after any survivors got out."
"Or collapsed manually by those still inside?"
"Point," Lepkowski admitted. "A small contingent could have survived in there this long. If they'd lost weapons capability during the last battle the Ryqril might have postponed dealing with them....
No. No, it doesn't make sense. They wouldn't have left a group of potential rebels locked up in a functional military base."
"Unless they don't know where the entrance is," Caine suggested suddenly. "If there were even a minor rock fall—"
"Except that anyone in Denver could have shown them where it was," Lepkowski put in dryly. "It wasn't exactly hidden or anything. In fact"—he peered at the display—"it looks to me like there's a small encampment right by the door now."
If there was, Caine's untrained eyes couldn't spot it. "A Ryqril checkpoint? Or just a group of cultists worshipping the dead base?"
"Don't laugh—it could easily be something that crazy." Lepkowski pointed to a spot a few kilometers west. "That town shows signs of habitation, too, despite the fact that the tunnel linking the highway through to Denver has clearly collapsed. I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't want to live that isolated from everywhere else."
"Unless the Ryqril allow them aircars—yes, I know how likely that is. What about those ventilation tunnels you mentioned? Could someone get in that way?"
"Only if he had more lives than a litter of kittens. Those tunnels have at least eight types of sensors, hooked to three separate sets of active and passive defense systems. Lethal defense systems."
"After thirty years—"
"Some of them will be working for another century or two."
Caine pursed his lips. The whole thing was sounding less promising by the minute... and he might have said so if Lepkowski hadn't beaten him to it. "You know, Caine, the more I think about this the more I think the mission would be a dangerous waste of time. If the Ryqril haven't been able to get in, you won't be able to either; and if they have gotten in, you won't want to. Maybe you'd better go for something a little less ambitious."
Something a bit easier for beginners? Even if that wasn't what Lepkowski had meant, the thought was too much to ignore. "Thanks for the advice, sir," he said, perhaps a shade too stiffly. "But it's my time to waste. It can't hurt to just take a look."
Lepkowski shrugged. "It's your team and your mission. But you're totally insane to even consider it."
Caine had to smile at that one. "Any more than you are to zip around the TDE in that big flying target of yours? But let's keep my insanity our private secret, if you don't mind," he added, glancing automatically at the humming bug stomper. "Even my team isn't going to know the objective until they need to; I don't want anyone else knowing, either."
"Not even Lathe?"
"No. Compartmentalization of secrets, remember?"
Lepkowski's eyes bored into his. "It's hardly the same thing. Lathe is in charge here."
"Here he's in charge. Not on Earth."
For a moment the general gazed at him, a frown creasing his forehead. Then he shrugged. "I suppose I can understand how you feel. It is your first command, after all. Well... good luck. If there's anything else I can do to help, just let me know."
"Thank you, sir, but I think all we'll need from you now is safe passage to Earth. The rest will be up to us."
The rest will have to be up to us, Caine reflected as he returned to his own room. Any details about
Denver that Lepkowski or the blackcollars might have once had would be at least thirty years out of date. His team would have to pick them up once they were down.
And hope that local Security was slow on the uptake.
Chapter 2
Seen from several kilometers up, the picture artificially enhanced six ways from center, Caine's blindman test was still one hell of an impressive display. Prefect Jamus Galway, head of Plinry Security, ran the tape twice before turning to his aide. "Have the Ryqril seen a copy of this tape?" he asked.
Ragusin shrugged helplessly. "This tape and all the others. There's still no change in the order."
The order. No need to specify, of course. Monitor all activities at the blackcollar training camp but do not attempt disruption. Galway had appealed it twice, but the Ryqril had consistently turned him down, and the apparent foolishness of that position was beginning to get to him. Were the aliens so intimidated by those three Novas that they were willing to put up with a military school in occupied territory? A school run by blackcollars, for God's sake?
"It could be worse," Ragusin broke into his thoughts. "At least they're not turning out full blackcollars—the analysis shows Caine's reflexes are only a few percent better than when he began the training. Same range of improvement we've found with the other trainees."
Galway nodded. He knew all that, probably better than anyone else on Plinry. The training center had occupied far too many of his waking hours over the past few months, taking his attention away from other, more routine, security matters. There were reports on the rise of teenage gangs in Capstone's poorer sections which he'd barely had time to skim; details on the upgrading of the Hub's protective wall that he should be paying better attention to. And to be fair, as long as Lathe was turning out little more than unusually good guerrilla soldiers—and as long as Ryqril could keep tabs on both school and graduates—there really was little danger to either Plinry or the Ryqril Empire as a whole.
Or so the logic went. Galway didn't believe a word of it.
He ran the tape again. There was little data yet on such things, but Galway's gut feeling was that Caine had passed. "So Caine is finished here. Any idea when he'll be leaving? And with whom?"